FROM THE LIBRARY OF REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON. D. D. BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO THE LIBRARY OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Stctlom -'■■| ^ Vol. II. is in the Press, and will be Ready about the end of May. A.NNA,LS "LOW-CHUECH" PARTY IN ENGLAND, J}0\VN TO THE DEATH OF AECHBISIIOP TAIT // BY TIIE REV. W. H. B. PROBY, M.A,, AUTHOR OF " LETTERS ON CHRISTIAN RELIGION," ETC. IX TWO VOLUMES, VOL. I. KoAX' aiTiaTia c'iCpaKtv aya9d lKoi] T.hnt; kokci. Clem. Alex., Shviii. IV. iii., inif. LONDON : J. T. HAYES, 17, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1888. PKISTED BT KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LIN'COLN'S INN FIKLD?, W.f.'. ; AND MIDDLE MILL KINGSTON-ON-TU AME?. PEEFACE. This work is iutended to be a contribution to the modern history of the Church of England ; and .of the Church of England exclusivelv, and not of her Irish sister, or of any of her Colonial or other daughters. This will account for the omission of much matter which might otherwise have been inserted, such as the rise of the " Keformed Episcopal Church " (or " Churches,'^ for the schism has already, like a hydra, become double). An excuse is perhaps needed for my use of the badly shaped adjective " Low-Church." The term " Evangelical " is well known as that which the members of the party take to- themselves. But I could not use it in reference to them without implying that I am myself not evangelical ; which no minister of Christ could for a moment admit without denying his own principles. My authorities will be found, for the most part, indicated in the notes. To several brethren, Low-Churchmen and others, with the greater number of whom I have no per- sonal acquaintance, my acknowledgments aro due for the kindness with which they have answered inquiries. I foresee that much in this work will be very displeasing to my Low-Church brethren. I am sorry for it, but cannot help it. The greater part of the work is occupied with statements of fact ; and facts, though they rhay be belied, yet cannot be altered, whoever may be displeased with them. The rest of the work is occupied with reflections suggested by, or with conclusions drawn from, the facts stated. These reflections were made, of course, from the author's standing- iv PREFACE. point, and the conclusions are what commended themselves to his mind as reasonable. If any critics think either the reflections or the conclusions to be unreasonable, I have no objection in the world to be told on what grounds they think so ; only they must not think that they have overthrown any position of mine if they have done no more than point it out for public reprobation or ridicule. Some Low-Church reviewers are rather apt to forget this. Two popular ideas I have endeavoured to explode. One is, the idea that the Book of Common Prayer is to be regarded as in the main the work of the men commonly designated as Eeformers. In regard of this I have shown that the Prayer-book as we now have it is in the main the work of Reformers truly so called, but marred by the Zuinglianism of another set of men, who numbered only three, if so many, in common with the company of original compilers, and who would have been very glad to do away with the Book altogether. The other idea is that these so- called " Eeformers "' were generally sound and Scriptural in their doctrine. Of course, those persons with whom " Pro- testantism " and " truth " are synonymous terms will not accept this conclusion ; if, however, the test of truth is What has been generally received in the Church, the distinctive tenets of Calvinism and Zuinglianism must needs be deemed erroneous. I have not sci-upled to use, in reference to them, the terms " heresy " and " heretical," believing Calvinism to be essentially a denial of God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and who thus manifests Himself as Love, — and believing Zuingh'anism to be essentially a denial of God as manifested in flesh. I can indeed truly say that in writing what follows, I have not sought to give pain to any one, whether individual or party. But in narrating history it is necessary to call a spade a spade, stigmatising false teaching as false teaching, and wrong conduct as wrong conduct. If any one feels aggrieved at this, his wise course will be to bring his opinions, or his practice, into conformity witli the Supreme Eule; and if I fall foul of him then, he PREFACE. V must please to accept the assurance that the event is unintentional on my part. One conclusion, indeed, will, I believe, grow upon my readers all the while that they are perusing the Annals of ■vrhat I have called the Immoral Period, and probably from an earlier time still: and that is, that the Loiv-Church party has no moral position in the Church of England at all. And it is a conclusion to which I think every honest and unprejudiced person must come. The position of Low- Churchmen in the Church of England is analogous to the position, in an Anabaptist congregation, of one who believed the validity and duty of Infant Baptism. As baptized people living in England, Low-Church people have a right, at the hands of the Church of England, to all ordinances of the Catholic Church to which baptized people are entitled, as far as those ordinances are recognised in the Prayer-book. But they have no moral right to serve in any office of ministry. And it is the duty of those to whom belongs the responsibility of appointing to office to keep them out. Not indeed that when a Low-Churchman has found his way in, he is to be ejected on the first opportunity ; that would be ignoring the truth that although the Low-Church party has not a moral position in the Church, yet it has an historical one. But we mean that if a man denies Baptismal Eegeneration, the validity of priestly absolution, or the authority of the Church in controversies of faith, he ought not to be admitted to holy orders : that when a clergyman has preached against the doctrine of the Keal Presence, or the doctrine that the Holy Grhost is ministejed in ordina- tion, he should not be advanced to any office of rule; and, finally, that when a clergyman, having got admission to a spiritual charge on a false pretence of assenting to the teaching of the Prayer-book, uses his position for the object of encouraging his hearers to disbelieve any part of that teaching, and still more when he subscribes his money for the persecution of brethren whose only offence is that of inculcating Prayer-book doctrines and practising Prayer- vi PKEFACE. book rules irrespectively of Privy Council falsehoods, he should be treated as being (what he really is) unfit for the society of gentlemen. A little wholesome discipline of this kind would soon stop the mouths of such designing scoundrels* as libel the English Church Union, or the Anglican members of the Association for Promoting the Unity of Christendom, as though they were conspiring to bring the English nation under the yoke of Rome. Thus, then, I send forth these Annals. May Grod bless them to the promotion of His truth, and (if the wish is not too presumptuous) to the general spiritual welfare of the Anglican Communion. • My respected Publisher suggests that I should alter this word for a milder one. I do not, however, think the term too strong for any person who wilfully hears false witness against his neighbour ; and especially if he does so on the pretence of religion. CONTENTS. Chapter I. — Introductory Remarks. Origin of the term " Low-Church." Object of the present Work. Protestantism an Intellectual Move- ment affecting Religion. Two Objections answered. Chapter II. — The English Reformation properly so called, distin- guished from the work of the Zuinglians. The latter Work really Destructive and Revolutionary. The Reformation properly so called represented in King Edward's First Prayer-book : the work of the Zuinglians, in the Second. Cranmer, the Leader of the Zuinglians in England. Chapter III. — Cranmer on the Lord's Supper. Becou's Catechism King Edward's Catechism, written by Poynet. Nowell's Edition of it. Ridley ; Latimer ; Bradford ; Coverdale ; Hooper ; Bale ; Philpot. Chapter IV, — Zuinglian Divines, continued. Parker j Sandys; Jewel; Pilkington ; Grindal ; Whitgif t. Chapter V. — Zuinglian Language disparaging the Old Religion. The Geneva Version of the Bible: its Characteristics, Its Popularity : Causes thereof. Foxe; his Acts and 3fonuments. The Country flooded with Zuinglian Teaching. Large number of Zuinglian Clergy. Chapter VI, — Bancroft maintains the Divine Authority of Episcopacy. His Canons, Zuinglianism succeeded by Calvinism : probable Causes of this,- Arminius, Spread of his Opinions, arrested by Abbot. Laud. OverthroAV of Monarchy and Episcopacy. The Restoration. Act of Uniformity: its Results. Continuance of Puritanism in the Church of Enp:land. viii CONTENTS. CiiAi'TKiJ Vll.—State of tlie Churcli of England in the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Arrangement of Churcli Buildings. Church Furniture. Prayers. Tsalmody. Celebrations of the Eucharist. Sermons. Occasional OHices. Private Life of the Clergy. Of the Upper Classes. Of tlie I'easantry. Character of lleligion. CuArTEii VIII.— Methodism : its two Branches, under Wesley and Whitfield. Ilomaine, the first Low-Church Leader in point of Time. Chapter IX. — Henry Venn the Elder. Law's Serious Call. Venn's Ministerial Work. Iluddersfield. Complete Duty of Mem. Yelling. Venn's Religious System and Practice. CuAi'TER X.— Tlie Pious Period. John Newton. William Cowper. Chapter XI. — Pious Period, continued. Samuel Walker of Truro. Chapter XIL— Pious Period, continued. Thomas Ptobinson of Leicester. Ilis Chrhtian System. Chapter XIII. — Pious Period, continued. Hon. and Rev. Bromley Cadogan. Rev. Richard Cecil. Rev. T. S. Grimshawe. Chapter XIV.— Pious Period, continued. Thomas Scott. Chapter XV. — Pious Period, continued. Isaac Milner. Joseph Miluer's History of the Church of Christ. Chapter XVI. — Pious Period, continued. Charles Simeon. Chapter XVII. — Pious Period, continued. William Wilberforce. Doddridge's Rise and Progress. Wilberforce's Practical View (f Christianity. Chapter XVIII.— Pious Period, continued. The " Clapham Sect." Henry Thornton. Zachary Macaulay. John Venn. Ilamiah More. Chapter XIX.— The Low-Church Party at the Close of the Eighteenth Century. Summary of their Religious System. Means adopted by them for Propagating their Religious Views. The Pulpit. Other Modes of Teaching. Hymnals. CONTENTS. IX Chapter XX. — Period of INIissionary Zeal. The " Cliiircli 3Iissionary Society." The Christian Observer. Chapter XXI. — Period of Missionary Zeal, continued. Early Life of Daniel Wilson the Elder. London Society for Promoting Chris- tianity among the Jews. Hannah More's Practical Piety, Chapter XXIT. — Period of Missionary Zeal, continued. John AVilliam Cunningham. Edward Bickersteth. Promotion of Milner and Pyder. Sumner's Apostolical Preaching. Controversy on Baptism. Irish Society. Calvinistic Secession. Newfoundland School Society. May Meetings. Chapter XXIII. — Period of Missionary Zeal, continued. Legh Rich- mond : his Conversion and Labours. Mr. Stewart's efforts towards Prayer for Spiritual Revival. Controversy about Hymns. Dis- cussion concerning Unfulfilled Scripture Prophecy. Mr. Drum- mond's Meetings at Albury. Dr. Charles Richard Sumner con- secrated Bishop of Llandaff. Chapter XXIV. — Commencement of the Movement termed " Irving- ism." Line taken by the Low-Church Party with regard to it. Chapter XXV. — Ministerial Labours of Daniel Wilson in England. His appointment to the Bishopric of Calcutta. Chapter XXVI. — Results of I^ow-Church Work. Failure of the Party to effect Great Reforms. Decline in Personal Piety. Chapter XXVII. — Causes of Low-Church Failure. No Principle of Spiritual Progress. Positive Elements of Deterioration. Spiritual Indolence. Party Spirit. Party Conceit. Unreality. Cant. Ignorance. Object of Preaching — Conversion, not Spiritual Training. Narrow Circle of Doctrines. Extempore Preaching. Unscriptural Asceticism. Positive Theological Error. Sabbatarianism. " Verbal Inspiration." Chapter XXVIII.— Peculiarities of the Low-Church Party. Undue Exaltation of Preaching. Depreciation of Common Prayer. Ignor- ance of General Theology. Intellectual Stupidity. Uncharitable- ness. Judging of others. Jewish Mania. Anglo-Israelism. Ignorance of Scripture. X CONTENTS. CuAPTKii XXIX.— The Polemical Period. Keble's Assize-sermon. The Tracts for the Times. Controversy in the Christian Observer. CiiAPTETi XXX.— Polemical Period, continued. Further Opposition to the Tract arians and their Doctrines. Bishop Bagot of Oxford. The Four Tutors. Bishop Sumner of Winchester. The llev. Hugh Stowell. CiiAPTKR XXXI. — Polemical Period, continued. " Church Pastoral Aid Society." Colonial Church Society. Memorials about S.P.C.K. Publications. Prayer for Departed Ones : Carisbrooke Tombstone Case. The Parker Society. CuAPTKR XXXII.— Polemical Period, continued. The Primate and other Bishops join Low-Church Missionary Societies. Anglican Bishopric at Jerusalem. Dr. Alexander. Election of Poetry Pro- fessor at Oxford. Dr. Gilbert, Bishop of Chichester. "Holy Cross" Church, Leeds. "Society for Maintenance of Scriptural Principles." Dr. Ollivant, Pegius Professor of Divinity at Cam- bridge. Suspension of Dr. Pusey. Chapter XXXIII. — Polemical Period, continued. Bishop Blomfield's recommendation of Rubrical Conformity ; resisted by Islington Laity and Clergy. Bishop Philpotts of Exeter enjoins use of Surplice in Pulpit. Eiots at Exeter. Causes of the Ill-feeling. Proposal for Revision of the Prayer-book and Canons. CiiAi'TEii XXXIV. — Polemical Period, continued. Protestantism not favourable to Art ; and especially hostile to Symbolism. Stained Window for Calcutta Cathedral. Cambridge Camden Society. Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge. Stone Altar decided to be Illegal. Rev. W. Goode on a Buckinghamshire Architectural Society. Difficulties about St. Saviour's, Leeds. Establishment of the Cheltenham Training Colleges. CuAPTEn XXXV. — Polemical Period, continued. Divisions in the Low- Church Party. The " Evangelical Alliance." Mr. Bickersteth and the Scottish Episcopal Church. Chapter XXX^'I. — Polemical Period, continued. Mr. Close on Church Architecture and Church Restoration. Death of Charlotte Elizabeth. Appointment of Dr. Gobat to the Anglican Episcopate CONTENTS. XI at Jerusalem. Appointment of Dr. Ilampdeu to the See of Hereford. Low Cburclimen and the " Irish Fever," Inhibition of Mr. Neale. Dr. J. B. Sumner, Archbishop of Canterbury. Low- Church Ferments in the Exeter Diocese. More Surplice Riots. Society for Irish Church Missions to Reman Catholics. "Church Missionary Society's" Jubilee. Chapter XXXYII. — Polemical Period, continued. Dr. Ollivant, Bishop of Lkndaff. Rev. J. W. Cuuninfrham, Editor of the Christimi Obferier. Death of the Rev. E. Eickersteth. His Labours and Pietv. .A^NN^LS OF THE ^'LOW-CHUECH" PAETY IN ENGLAND, DOWN TO THE DEATPI OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT. — 1_^ CHAPTER T. Introductory Remarks. Origin of the terra " J^ow-Cliurcli." Object of the present Work'. Protestantism an Intellectual Movement, affecting Religion, Two Objections answered. The history of a religious sect, if faitlifully studied, may always be made a means of profit : nor is less profit to he derived from the history of a religious party, even though, under the influence of outward circumstances, the party should not have become a strictly marked sect. This will, we trust, be found true when we study the history of that party in the Church of England to which the terra " Low-Church " has long been appUed : a party which, we may safely prophesy, will have left abiding results upon the Church, even after it shall, as a party, have ceased to exist. How the term " Low-Churcli " arose is not very certain ; but the explanation will be found a very true one which was given, we do not know when. 2 2 CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH OF EiNGLAND. and according to which a " Low-Churchman " is a Churchman who has a low opinion of the Church in comparison with himself; a "High Church- man," on the contrary, being one who has a high opinion of the Church in a like comparison. As we shall see hereafter, one of the characteristics of the party — in wJiich it shares with other Pro- testant parties — is to lose sight of the Church in the supreme importance of the individual members severally to themselves. If we contemplate the Church of England at the present time in the light of her present formularies, we find her holding certain doctrines which are vul- garly designated as Popish, Puseyite, Tractarian, or Ritualistic, and wdiich we may comprise under the term Doctrines of Sacramental Grace, including the doctrine of the sacramental character of the Church itself, as the Body of Christ, indwelt by the Holy Ghost, and the doctrine of a true Priesthood, by which the One Higli Priest in heaven fulfils His priestly office on earth. But at the same time we find a party within her which either fails to main- tain those doctrines, or denies them altogether. How did this party originate ? and how came it to maintain its position, and with such force of aggression as to bring upon adherents of the other party— the Church's faithful and honest children- suspension, imprisonment, and heavy costs of legal proceedings ? To answer these questions, and to hold up the party as furnishing in some cases examples to be copied, and in other cases examples to be avoided, is the object of the present work. If we seek to PROTESTANTISM AN INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT. 3 find out how it originated, we naturally look first to that religious teaching which had most vogue in our country in the times of the Eeformation and next after. The party which was formed by Protestant teaching may be regarded as the material out of which (considered as existino- in its descendants) the subsequent Low-Church party was formed. Protestantism has often been considered as a religious movement. This we believe to be a mis- take. Religion, no doubt, came to be mixed up with it ; its beginning in Martin Luther may have been — nay, probably was — really religious ; but Martin Luther was only one of the leaders in the movement ; and, in our country, not the most popular either. And when the system is considered which was taught at Geneva, the system founded by the hard-headed and cold-hearted Calvin ; and when the system is considered which was taught at Zurich, the system of the rationalizing and not always moral Zwingli; and when, moreover, it is remembered how great influence those systems have had in our country from the time that they were first declared by popular preachers and writers ; we seem shut up to the conclusion that Protestantism in England — as indeed, we believe. Protestantism abroad — was an intellectual rather than a religious movement. What of religion appeared in it arose from the removal of those fetters by which the intellect had been hindered from exercisinor itself in a rehgious way. Peligion, be it remembered, seeks to work in a man by all his powers and faculties, the hitellect among the rest. But on the PROTESTANTISM AN other hand, tlic removal of an obstacle to the exercise of religion is not necessarily a religious act in itself: and thus tlie breakini^ of those theo- logical bonds b}^ which tlie intellects of men iii the middle ages Iiad been fettered was not in itself of necessity a really religions movement any more than was that bodily movement done of late bv certain prison-warders in setting at liberty such priests as Sidney Faithhorn Green and PJchai-d Enraght. And in the case of the first Protestant leaders themselves, the movement was not one of spiritual life rising up against a false theology, but merely the visfour of the intellect rebellino- successfully against intellectual usurpation ; in- tellectual, we say, although the usurpation was carried on in the name of theology, and by eccle- siastical authorities. The doctrine of Transubstan- tiation, for instance, is not, strictly speaking, a theological doctrine at all : it is a mere philoso- phical attempt to explain a theological truth by philosophical ideas. It is indeed true that when the fetters of the intellect had been broken, the spiritual life was enabled, in consequence, to develop itself in directions in which it had been unable to develop itself before ; and thus the average amount of piety in the reformed Church of England is probably greater now than it has been at any other period since the country had become Chris- tian ; but this does not alter the character of that movement through which the liberation in question was effected. This is seen by the history of those communities on the Continent which have been formed on Protestant principles. Those new INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT. 5 societies (erroneously called cliiirclies) to which the Protestant movement gave birth have been merely intellectual societies, giving birth in their turn to schools of philosophy here and there, but in which religion has steadily declined. And the like may be observed in the history of English Dissent, which is the true representative of Pro- testantism in England, Every one of the old Dissentino- consfres^ations has become Unitarian ; and in those which have been formed in modern times there has come to be a falling away in the same direction, by the path of Eationalism: the Unitarians being (as we must not omit to remark) one of the most intellectual of all the Protestant sects. By way of objection to the view which we are taking, two cjuestions may be asked. How is it that of the Puritan leaders at the Savoy Con- ference, in 1661, so few have left any name behind them?* And how comes it that the Low-Church party in the Church of England not only has never been celebrated for its intellect or learning, but iias produced the most striking instances of ignorance and stupidity ?f To such questions the * The twenty-one Puritan divines at the Savoy Conference were Edward Keynolds, Bishop of Norwich, Anthony Tuckney, CD , Master of St. John's, Cambridge, John Conant, D.D., Regius Pro- fessor of Divinity at Oxford, William Spurstow, D.D., John Wallis, D.D., Savilian Professor at Oxford, Thomas Manton, D.D., Edmund Calamy, Richard Baxter, Arthur Jackson, Thomas Case, Samuel Clarke, Matthew Newcomen, Thomas Horton, D.D., Thomas Jacomb, D.D., William Bate, John Rawlinson, William Cooper, John Light- foot, D.D., John Collings, D.D., Benjamin W!'oodbridge, D.D., and William Drake. t Mr. Townsend, the editor of Foxe's^^ci"* and Mo7iu7nei2ts, gra,\e]y 6 CHARACTER OF PROTESTANTISM. answer is, tliat in the cases in question a sound common sense lias been overborne by a false theology : and by a theology which, being mainly negative, had a proportionately small character for intellect. We have used the term " Protestantism " rather than " Eeformation," because, although in England the effect produced was a reformation of the Church, yet abroad the effect was not a reformation of the old, but a destruction of the old, and a forma- tion of something entirely new. And not only so, but even in England, so far as Protestant principles prevailed, tlie tendency was in the same direction. In England, the true Eeformation-lines were not Protestant, but Catholic : as soon as Protestantism prevailed, the Church of England was laid in ruins. But, nevertheless, it is to Protestants rather than to Catholics that we must look for the original material out of which the Low-Church party in England was formed. And it must, therefore, be our first business to trace the history of English Protestantism so far as may be suffi- cient to shov7 how the party arose. And this accordingly we shall endeavour to do, and thus see what kind of material it was which, when argues that because " a Roman Catholic " orig-iiially signified a Catholic subject of the Roman Empire, therefore all members of the Episcopal Church of England are still entitled to be called Roman Catholics ! (Life of Foxe, p. 115). The late Earl of Shaftesbury once visited a A illage in which, owing to tlie shifting of the population, it had been found necesmry to build a new church. The old church, however, was not pulled down; and the clergyman, as his wife told the noble carl, was in the habit of going in periodically and offering a prayer for the parish. " I say," said his lordship, relating the matter, " that is idolatry — downright idolatry." TWO ANTAGONISTIC WORKS. wrought upon (as we believe it to have been) by the special and supernatural action of God the Holy Ghost, became at first a means of so much good, and afterwards a means of so much evil. CHAPTER 11. The English Eeformation properly so called distinguished -from the work of the Zuinglians. This latter Work really Destructive and Kevolutionary. The Reformation properly so called represented in King Edward's First Prayer Book: the work of the Zuinglians in the Second. Cranmer, the Leader of the Zuinglians in England. Most persons who have treated of the Eeforma- tion in England have treated it as including the work of those Protestant divines whom Cranmer and other highly placed men brought over from the Continent for the purpose of teaching Zuin- gflian heresies. We believe this to be an utter mistake. We believe that at the times whereof we are now writing there were two works not only distinct from one another, but essentially antagonistic to one another : the one a work of reformation, the other a work tending to destruc- tion and substitution : the one, a simple clearing away of abuses and errors both in doctrine and in practice, the other, an introduction of formal heresy : the one in origin English, the other foreign : the one led by that Convocation which though only of one province (that of Canterbury) may be regarded as practically representing the mind of the English clergy in general, the other initiated by King Edward the Sixth's Privy Council, in which the Zuinglian Cranmer was 8 FIRST TRAYER-BOOK a principal member, and by an obsequious Par- liament. The way had been prepared for both tliese works by William Tyndale in that translation of the Holy Scriptures for which his name will ever remain among the worthiest in English history, and for the latter work in some other publications of his which were largely read, and in which may be discerned somewhat of a leaning towards Zuinglianism, though not that pronounced heresy which so abounds in the writings of other so-called Heformers. The former work of the two just described —the Reformation properly so-called- may be considered as represented in its devotional aspect, and indirectly in its doctrinal aspect also, by the First Prayer Book of King Edward VL This book, as Mr, Blunt remarks, " may very lairly be called an expurgated and condensed English version of the ancient Missal, Breviary, and Manual."* It was framed on the old Catholic lines ; and thus we find Bishop Gardiner of Win- chester writing to the Privy Council in these terms: that "he had deliberately considered of all the offices contained in the Common Prayer Book and all the several branches of it ; that though he could not have made it in that manner had the matter been referred unto him, yet that he found such things therein as did very well satisfy his conscience ; and, therefore, that he would not only execute it in his own person, but cause the same to be officiated by all those of his • The Reformation of the Church of Eiif/lan(l,hy the llev. John Henry Blunt, vol. ii. p. 93. OF KING EDWARD VI. 9 diocese." In the preparation of this book, which was done by a Committee of Convocation, Arch- bishop Cranmer, as president of the Convocation, had naturally a share; but there is.no evidence how far the influence of that shameless time- server extended: whether, when the book was being prepared, he still held the Catholic faith, or whether he had even then begun to Protes- tantise ; and, in the latter case (which seems to us the more probable one), whether he was out- voted by the majority in debate, or whether he deemed it the most politic course to dissemble his real o])inions and trim his sails according to the orthodox views of his brother- clergy. We have said that from the Eeformation pro- perly so-called, as represented in King Edward's First Prayer Book, the work of Protestantism is to be carefully distinguished. The First Prayer Book was established by Act of Parliament in January, 1.549, was published early in the folio w- ino- March, and came into use in some churches in April, thougli not enforced by the Act until Whitsun Day, July 9th. Scarcely, however, had the Church G^ot accustomed to its use when it became the subject of attack at the hands of a party which both for its theology and its practical guidance looked up to Zuinglian heretics. The teaching of Martin Luther that men are justified by faith apart from works prepared the way for the teaching of Ulrich Zwingli that men are justified by faith apart from sacraments. From this heresy there naturally followed the rest of what we may call the anti-sacramental 10 ZUINGLIAN TEACHERS system ; the practical issue whereof liad been, from the very first, more or less disuse of tlie Sacraments, and an accompaniment whereof has been a depreciation of worship. Now, at the time whereof we speak, Zuinglian tenets were being diUgently propagated by Peter Martyr, Eegius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and Martin Bucer, Eegius Professor at Cambridge, and after them by Latimer, Hooper, Bradford, and Becon ; besides two men who had as members of the Committee of Convocation helped to bring out the First Prayer Book — the very book the principles of which they now sought to under- mine— Nicholas Eidley. Bishop of llocliester, and Tliomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, the latter of whom had joined with the Duke of Somerset in 1548 in invitincj Bucer to England. There was, indeed, some outward disagreement between Hooper on the one hand and Cranmer and Pidley on the other, when the former refused to wear the vestments then prescribed by law. It was not, however, a disagreement as to prin- ciples. So far as appears, the question of prin- ciples was never allowed to come up ; but was always put aside by the consideration of authority. So far as appears, it was never urged against Hooper that a bishop, being of a higher order than a priest, ought to have the superiority of his order signified by distinctive vestments ; nor tliat tlie order to which he himself was to be admitted was the same order as that which had subsisted in tlie Catholic Church under the name of the Episcopate ever since the first age of IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 11 Christianity, and had been handed down in its reality and validity by Popish prelates, and that thus the vestments distinctive of it should rather be the same as were worn by Popish prelates than be of a new fashion altogether. And when Hooper was imprisoned, it was not because he disagreed on any important principle with Cran- mer and Eidle}'-, but merely because he refused for the time to accept a law of which his con- science disapproved. And when at length he submitted, it was merely by unworthily allowing his conscience to be over-ridden by the same law to wdiich Cranmer and Eidley were willing to submit without any conscientious scruples at all. That Cranmer and Eidley were really one with Hooper in regard to the principle of vestments is evident from the line taken in an authorised for- mulary to which we must now call attention — King Edward the Sixth's Second Prayer Book ; and in which it was prescribed " that the minister at the time of the Communion, and at all other times in his ministration, shall use neither alb, vestment, nor cope " (as had been ordered in the First Prayer Book): " but being archbishop or bishop, he shall have and wear a rochet : and being a priest or deacon, he shall have and wear a surplice only." As the work of reformation properly so called may be considered to have been represented by the First Prayer Book, so the work of Protestantis- ing may be considered as represented, though but imperfectly, in this Second Prayer Book. In this Book there were a very few minor improvements 12 SECOND PKAYER-BOOK on the former, but the Eucharistic office was so altered tliat, while it did not necessarily invalidate the Eucharistic act, and while it still prescribed tliat the Communion should be received in a kneel- ing posture, it might in other respects be accepted and used by a Zuinglian no less than by a Catholic. There was no provision made for oblation of the bread and wine by the celebrant before consecra- tion. The invocation in the First Book, " with Thy Holy Spirit and word vouchsafe to bl^ess and sanc^tify these Thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the Body and Blood of Th}^ most dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ," was changed into the following: "Grant that we receiving these Thy creatures of bread and wine, according to Thy Son our Saviour Jesu Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of His deatli and passion, may be partakers of His most blessed Body and Blood." And in the administra- tion, wliereas in the First Book the form had been, " The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life," now it was merely : " Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thine heart by faith witli ilianksgiving:" and the like cliange in the admi- nistration of the chalice. Otlier offices were altered with the same Zuinglian view. Zwingli had, it may be remembered, written thus:— "I beheve, yea, I know, tliat so far are any Sacraments from con- ferring grace, that they do not even bring it or dispense it." This Book, we say, was the nearest authorised DEPRECIATED BY ZUIXGLIA>:S. 13 representation of Protestantism in the Cliurcli of England in the time of Edward VI. Its enforce- ment by law was the work of the Government rather than of the Church ; for that a strong pres- sure must have been brought to bear upon Convo- cation with a view to its acceptance — if indeed (wdiich is not certain) Convocation ever did accept it at all — is evident from Kincf Edward's havin^T^ declared (as reported by Sir John Cheke to Peter Martyr) that if Convocation refused to make certain Zuinglian changes, he would make them himself, using his ro}-al authority in Parliament for the purpose.* But even the Second Prayer Book did not go far enough for the Protestantisincj party. Cranmer was a correspondent of Henry Bidlinger, who had succeeded Zwingli as "Minister of the Church in Zurich : " and Whittinorham, afterwards the Presbyterian Dean of Durham, and who had married a sister of Calvin's wife, describes himself as having heard from Bullinger " that Cranmer, Bishop of Canterbury, had drawn up a book of praj^er an hundred times more perfect than this we now have : " but that " the same could not take place, for that he was matched with such a wicked clergy and convocation, with other enemies. "f This unpublished Prayer Book is not known to be extant ; and the politic Cranmer knew well how to keep his opinions concealed * Strype's Cranmer, ii. 663 ; Eccl. Hist. Soc. ; cited in Blunt, ii. p. 102. t A brief discourse of the troubles berjun at Frankfort in Germamj Anno Domini 1554. About the Book of Common Prayer and Cere- monies, ScQ. 14 ZUINGLIAN AIMS : until the most favourable time was come for mak- ing them known. Independently, however, of it, nothing can be more certain than that the Protes- tantising party aimed at forming the old Catholic Church of England into a new community, with a new religion according to Ulrich Zwingli. Not the purifying of the traditional ordinances from what seemed to them unscriptural accretions, but the rooting of the traditional ordinances altogether out, and the establishing of new ones framed according to the framers' own interpretations of Scripture. There was not to be the old Eucharistic sacrifice " commonly called the Mass," but a new use of bread and wine ; that is to say, a distribu- tion of them in sign of profession made by the communicant concerning what the Lord was then supposed to be doing to him by his own faith in the Lord ; so preposterously was the Zuinglian doctrine expressed.* There was to be a new ministry ; not the old threefold ministry of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons,'}' but a twofold order of Ministers and Deacons ; or more accurately, a single order, the deaconship being a mere per- manent lay office. There was to be a new style of prayer, in which, as long as the Prayer Book con- * See Becon's Comparison hetiveen the LoriVs Supper and the Popes Masses; and especially the Latin lines at the commencement ; which for blasphemy would probably far distance even Church- Asso- ciatiouist publications. t " Tell me if your Masses be done anywhere else than in your hallowed sanctuaries, upon your sanctified altars, and in your holy ornaments and consecrated cups ? Neither may any do them, unless they be anointed thereto by your bishops and sorcerers." Bale's Select Works (Parker Soc), p. 208. REVOLUTION, NOT REFORMATION. 15 tinued in force, the daily offices were to be said with as much variation as possible, in point of ceremonial, from the older offices ; * but the Prayer Book was deemed to have still far too much of superstition about it ; and it was desired that for the old and brief collects and responses long forms should be substituted, and that the Mag- nificat and Benedictus might cease to be recited. It was quite in this spirit that after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, we find Archbishop Grindal enjoining the Archdeacon of York that not even an altar-cloth which had been used for the Mass, should be laid upon the Communion-table ; " but that new be provided, .where provision hath not so been made afore." And after his translation to the see of Canterbury, we find him inquiring whether the Communion is ministered in any chalice hereto- fore used at Mass." The only matter in which, as these Prolestantizers would have it, the new was to be a real continuation of the old was the posses- sion of material buildings, worldly endowments, and (perhaps) worldly titles. * Tlie Second Prayer Book ordered the minister so to turn himself that the people might the better hear. Accordingly Bishop Hooper, iu his Visitation Book, enjoins " that the minister in the use of the communion and prayers thereof turn his face towards the people." (Article xliii. Later Writings, t^.\2S.) He also inquires " whether the clergy sit at one part of their service, kneel at another, and stand at another .... the which alterance of their gesture caused the people to think that the hearing of the service were sufficient." (Interrogatories, xviii. Later Wrifi/iffs, -p. 14:0.) How the minister's change of gesture caused such a thouglit iu the minds of the people remains a mystery unexplained unto tliis day. We should have thought that the reading of prayers towards the people was far more likely to have generated the superstition in question. 16 CRAN'MER ON THE LORD'S SUPPER. The leader of the Zuinglian party in England was really Cranmer. He it was who had brought Zuinglian divines into England to teach their per- nicious opinions. Hooper made, perhaps, the most noise and stir, but the cliief culprit was the Arch- bishop of Canterbury. How he and others taught ZuingUan doctrine we may now see. CHAPTEE m. Craiimer on the Lord's Supper. Becoii's Catechism. King Edward's Catechism, written by Poynet. Nowell's Edition of it. Ridley. Latimer. Bradford. Coverdale. Hooper. Bale. Pliilpot. " Are ve not children of transg-ression, a seed of falsehood P " — Isaiah Ivii. 4. We will now give some account of the principal divines by whose teaching the Church of England became to a great extent Zuinglianised. In 1553 Archbishop Cranmer published, in Ijatin, a " Defence of the True Doctrine of the Sacrament," on the Protestant side. To this Bishop Gardiner, of Winchester, wrote an answer ; and Cranmer rejoined, embodying in liis rejoinder the whole of Gardiner's work. The title of Cranmer's rejoinder will give a fair idea of the spirit in which the work was conceived ; it commences thus : — " An Answer by the Reverend Father in God, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, and Metro- politan, unto a crafty and sophistical cavillation, devised by Stephen Gardiner, Doctor of Law, late Bishop of Winchester," &c. Gardiner's ans'.ver. 17 When we add, that in this work the mo.st reverend disputant continually charges his right reverend opponent with sleight, craft, wiliness, and untruth, and in several places condescends to call him a cuttle, it will be readily perceived that the book is answerable to its title. Gardiner's position (the position of all thosj who contend for transubstantiation) was one of false philosophy united to true theology. Cranmer sought to overthrow him by a union of false theology with true philosophy. Thus each prevails over the other in one respect or another. Gardiner makes a strong point wlien- ever he attacks Cranmer's denial of the Real Presence ; while Cranmer makes a strong point whenever he attacks the doctrine of a carnal presence. And, on the other hand, Gardiner has hard work to evade the testimonies of various holy fathers, to whom the idea of a carnal presence would have been abhorrent if it had ever oc- curred; and Cranmer can only escape the force of Gardiner's arij^aments for the Eeal Presence in the Sacrament, irrespective of the recipients, by abuse of his opponent, and the most palpable shiftino- of terms,* bef?o"ino-3 of the point in question,f and misrepresentations of what Gardiner had said. And it may indeed, perhaps, be reason- able matter for question, how far the manner in which Protestants ordinarily cany 0:1 their * See, e.g., on p. 205, the parag'i'aph beginning-, '• And when you say," &c., cf. p. 204, near the bottom. t See, e.g., the passage (hi vol. I. p. 145) which begins, "Bat the epistle," &c. Also p. 147, " But it appeareth," &c. 3 18 cranmer's view controversy with Catholics of the present day (whether Koman or Anglican) is not capable of being traced indirectly to the overbearing un- scrupulousness shown by Archbishop Cranmer in this treatise. Cranmer's view of the Sacrament was, that Christ is present in the ministration of it, just as He is present wherever two or three are gathered in His Name ; but that the consecrated elements are in themselves nothing but figures of His Body and Blood (p. 103 and passim). According to him, the only Eeal Presence is a presence in the hearts of the communicants ; nor in all of them, but only in such as receive the Sacrament worthily, so that the term "consecration" is not in strictness a proper term to use,* and the " change of bread and wine in the Sacrament " is wrought " in us " (!). Thus the Sacrament of the altar, like that of the font, was meant, not so much " as a means whereby we" might receive "God's grace," but rather as a kind of sermon (p. 41), meant as help to weak faith (p. 42), and to provoke us not to neglect the duty of worshipping Christ (p. 253). And since faith alone feeds upon Christ, indepen- dently of Sacraments, Cranmer does not hesitate to affirm that people did feed upon Him thus before the Eucharist was instituted (p. 25), and that Jewish rites were such as Christian Sacraments (pp. 75, 7G). And the practice of reserving the Sacrament was, by consequence, utterly useless ; Christ being " not ])resent in the • " Consecration [as they call it)'' (p. 45). OF THE SACRAMENTP. 19 forms of bread and wine out of the ministration " (p. 272). One caution should be given to those who, reading the controversial writings of these Pro- testant divines, might understand some of their language as tantamount to a denial of Zuinglian doctrine. Thus Cranmer protests over and over again against behig understood to say that the bread in the holy Eucharist is a bare sign of the Lord's Body. And Eidley, in his last examination before the commissioners, grants " a Sacramental mutation to be in the bread and wine." A little consideration, however, will show that even this language is perfectly consistent with Zuinglian heresy. " Bare " may be understood in two senses : it may be understood as signifying with- out any quality specially connected with the thing to which tlie adjective in question is applied. And in this case, we suppose, not even a Socinian would say that the bread in the Communion is a " bare " sign of Christ's Body, but would admit that to the ris^ht use of the said bread there was some spiritual benefit annexed, which is not annexed to any use of any other bread. Another signification, however, is, that the relation ex- pressed by the following noun is the only relation which it has: i.e.^ in the present case, that in declaring the consecrated bread to be a bare sign of Christ's Body, the relation denoted by the word "sign" is the only relation which the bread in question has to the Lord's Body : in other words, whatever good effects may follow from the use of the bread, it is itself a sign, and nothing more ; 3—2 20 CRANMER ON THE CHURCH. it is not a vehicle by which the presence of the Supernatunil Body is conveyed to all alike. When the advocates of the old learning charged the Protestant divines with affirming the consecrated bread to be a bare sign, they used the term in the latter sense. When, on the other hand, the Protestant divines protested that the bread was not a bare sign, they used the term in the former sense. And that protestation of Eidley to which we have just alluded, is to be understood in like manner. With unsoundness on the subject of the Sacra- ments, was naturally connected unsoundness on the subject of the Church. " The Holy Church," says Cranmer, " is so unknown to the world, that no man can discern it, but God alone, Who only searcheth the hearts of all men, and knoweth His true children from others that be but bastards. This Church," he continues, " is the pillar of truth ; " and then immediately he proceeds, " be- cause it resteth upon God's word, which is the true and sure foundation ; " thus not only perverting the obvious meaning of the text cited,* even while referring to that text in the margin — treating it as if it meant that the Church is grounded upon God's truth as revealed in the Scriptures, instead of being a pillar to hold up that truth for all men to see who have eyes— but also denying in effect the assertion made by the Apostle in that very place, that the Church is the * 1 Tim. iii. 15. " The house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the piller and ground of the truth." BECON.S CATECHISM. 21 ground or foundation whereon God's truth is appointed to rest, Cranmer's schemes for ecclesiastical revolution were aided not a little, and furthered after his death, b}^ his chaplain, Thomas Becon ; whom, from this connection with the Zuinglian arcli- bishop, we mention here. He survived the Marian persecution, and was popular both as a preacher and as an author.* The principal work of his to which we are now concerned to refer was his Catechism. This was written in 1560, two years after the accession of Queen Elizabeth,f when (or about the time when) the author was Eector of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, and Prebendary of Can- terbury. It is a dialogue between father and son, in which tlie father asks questions, and is instructed by his son at great length ; the in- structions including extracts from the Fathers, which are supposed to make in favour of Protestantism. The doctrinal part treats of repentance, faith, law, prayer, and Sacraments; the practical part, of the duties of persons in various spheres of life. In this treatise we find a few expressions which, taken alone, might indicate soundness in the faith ; but in other places (and, sometimes, very soon after) Becon takes care to guard against Cathohc interpre- tations. Thus we read of baptism as delivering from sin (p. 204) : that the children of Christians have faith and the Holy Ghost, and, therefore, * See the Biographical notice in the Parker Society's edition of his works, pp. xiii. xv. t Ih. p. 244. 22 becon's catechism. may be baptized (p. 214) : but we are also bidden not to interpret this as signifying that baptism gives grace (p. 217). In fact, so far from any sacrament giving grace (p. 218), it is a sign of grace given already (p. 220). (Of course, Becon knows nothinfj of Christ's resurrection-life com- municated to us in baptism; nor of any distinction between a baptism ministered before the descent of the Holy Ghost, and that which initiates into the Christian Church now.) Crossing in baptism is not commended ; in receiving the Holy Com- munion, sitting is deemed the best posture. In the ministry, there is no distinction in order between bishops and other ministers : deacons, however, are a distinct order : and men may deem themselves rightly and divinely called to the ministry of the word (as distinguished from deaconship) if they are called " of the magistrate and of the people" (!). The doctrine of the holy Eucharist is flat Zuinglianism ; the elements being called by the names of those things which they re- present. St. Augustine little thought, when writing a passage* to this effect, how his words would be perverted in the cause of a heresy whereof, in his time, no one had dreamt. The use of the surplice is spoken of by Becon as lawful, if enjoined by the magistrate ; but it were better to follow the • Non est dictum Petra significabat Christum ; sed, Petra erat Christ us. Nee dictum est, Bonum semen significabat filios regni, aut, zizania significabaut filios maligni, sed dictum est, Bonum semen hi sunt fiUi regni ; zizania autem filii maligni. Sicut ergo solet loqui Scriptura, res significantes tanquam illas quae significantur appellans, ita locutus est Dominus, etc. (I?i Ev. Joann. Tr. Ixiii. 2. On Johnxii'. 31.) "king edwakd's catechism." 23 example of the Lord, and to minister in one's ordinary habiliments (p. 300, cf. 299). While on the subject of catechisms, we should mention the " Short Catechism, or plain instruc- tion, containing the sum of Christian learning, set forth by the King's authority for all schoolmasters to teach." This was published in Latin, in the year l.')52. An English version was published with authority in the same year : the year, it will be remembered, in which the Second Prayer Book came out. Dr. Eandolph remarks concerning this Catechism, that it " was the last work of the Ee- formers " (he means, the Protestant authorities) " in that reign " (King Edward's) ; " whence it may be fairly understood to contain, as far as it goes, their ultimate decision, and to represent the sense of the Church of England as then established ; " or rather, as we should say, the sense of what, in the way of teaching, the ruling powers in the Church of England wished to enforce. The Ro3^al Injunc- tion prefixed to it declares it to have been " written by a certain godly and learned man," and to have been debated and diligently examined by " certain Bishops and other learned men whose judgment," says the young King, "we have in great estima- tion." But it does not appear to have been sane tioned by Convocation. The " godly and learned " author is asserted by Heylin * to have been John Poynet (otherwise spelt Poinet, Ponet, and Ponnet), intruding Bishop of Winchester, and adulterer. f * Historia Qidnquartictdaris, part II. cb. xv. § 1. London, 16C0. Certamen Epistolare, pp. 160-1. London, 1659. t The Privy Council had uncanonically deprived Gardiner, tlie true 24 •' KING EDWARD'S CATECHISM." This aiitliorship is confirmed by a letter from Sir John Cheke to BnlHnger, dated June 7th, 1553. In takino- a, view of the doctrine taufjlit in (Ills Catechism, we shall find it convenient to notice another Catechism based upon it, and wliicli may for all practical purposes be considered as a revised edition of it; we mean the one written or edited l)y Alexander Xowell. Nowell -was one of those wlio went into exile for safety's sake, living, during tlie Marian persecution, first at Strasburg and afterwards at Frankfort, at which latter place " he at first adhered " (we are told) " to the party who advocated the ' new discipline ' against Horn and tlie strictly episcopaUan party. He was, however, afterwards found among those who enforced the importance of unity in essentials, and who ex- l)iossed their willingness to submit to authority as regarded matters ceremonial. Yet when the question of rites and ceremonies came to be dis- cussed in the Convocation of 15G2, Nowell, with otliers, propcsed some relaxation in tlie rubrics of King Edward the Sixth's Service Book, as regarded the wearing of the surplice, the cross in baptism, r.nd other like matters, respecting which some ministers had scruples. Afterwards, also, we find liiin acting as a pacificator in the proceeding's v.liich were taken against Sampson, Dean of Christ Churc]], and Humphry, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, for refusing the prescribed eccle- siastical liabils. l»i.sliop of tlio Peo, ar.d put roynet in liis place. 3'oynet had married li.e Avifc of a Notfingluim butcher, but was divorced from her four months after his appointment to the bishopric. NOWELL. 25 " When, on the death of Queen Mary, the exiles returned to England, Nowell was among those who were employed to carry out Queen Elizabeth's plans for the reformation of religion. One of the most efficacious of those plans was the appointing of visitors for different parts of the country, whose duty it should be to see that such injunctions and ordinances as were issued by authority respecting religion and ecclesiastical affairs were complied with. To Nowell and others were assigned, in 1559, the visitation of the dioceses of Lincoln, Peterborough, Oxford, and Lichfield. Early in the following year Bishop Grindal collated Nowell to the archdeaconr}^ of Middlesex, to the rectory of Saltwood (which, however, he very soon resigned), and to a stall in the church at Canterbury. In the same year he was appointed to a stall in St. Peter's, Westminster, which from being a monastery had been erected into a collegiate church ; and at the close of the year Nowell was preferred to the deanery of St. Paul's, which he held till his death. " In the Convocation which revised the ' Articles of Eeligion ' agreed upon in the reign of King- Edward VI., Nowell was chosen prolocutor, and took an active part in the proceedings of that assembly. He was soon after employed to com- pose a Homily, to be added to the Form of Prayer, which was put forth in consequence of the plague which was rao-inof."* * Biographical notice in tbe Parker Society's edition, pp. 2, 3. 26 CATECHISMS OF NOWELL Nowell's Catechism, after being printed by appointment of the two Archbishops, and after undergoing alteration in certain places, was both "allowed," as Nowell himself writes to Sir William Cecil, by the Bishops, " and by the whole clergy of the Lower Convocation-house subscribed unto." We shall have occasion to refer to this hereafter. For the present it will suffice to notice the following passages in Nowell's Catechism, and in the earlier Catechism put forth by King Edward. In King Edward's Catechism the Church is de- fined to be " a most beautiful kingdom and holy commonwealth," to the furnishing of which com- monwealth belong all they, as many as do truly fear, honour, and call upon God, wholly applying their mind to holy and godly living ; and all those that, putting all their hope and trust in Him, do assuredly look for the bliss of everlasting life. Later on, it is defined as "a certain multitude of men .... which in all points are governed and ruled by the laws and statutes of their King and High Bishop Christ, in the bond of charity : which use His holy mysteries, that are commonly called Sacraments, with such pureness and simplicity (as touching their nature and substance) as the Apostles of Christ used and left behind in writing. The marks therefore of this Church are : first, pure preaching of the gospel ; then brotherly love, out of which, as members of all one body, springeth goodwill of each to other ; thirdly, upright and uncorrupted use of the Lord's Sacraments AND KING EDWARD. 11 according to the ordinance of the gospel ; last of all, brotherly correction, and excommunication, or banishinof those out of the Church that will not amend their lives." In the holy Eucharist, according to King Edward's Catechism, " the bread representeth " Christ's Body, " the wine standeth instead and place of His Blood." The bread spoken of in the sixth chapter of St. John is declared to be " the true knowledge and taste of Christ, That was born and died for us, wherewith the faithful soul is fed." In other words, it is not (what the Lord declared it to be) His Flesh (p. 521). Nowell's view of the Sacraments (which he counts to be two in number) is thus stated : " Whereas .... thou givest to the Sacraments the strengtli and efficacy to seal and confirm God's promises in our hearts, thou seemest to assign to them the proper offices of the Holy Ghost. — S. To lighten and give bright clearness to men's minds and souls, and to make their con- sciences quiet and in security, as they be indeed, so ought they to be accounted the proper work of the Holy Ghost alone, and to be imputed to Him, and this praise not to be transferred to any other. But this is no impediment but that God may give to His mysteries the second place in quieting and stablishing our minds and con- sciences, but yet so that nothing be abated from the virtue of His Spirit." (" Catechism," pp. 206, 207.) A Sacrament, in fact, is "an outward testifying of God's goodwill and bountifulness towards us, through Christ, by a visible sign 28 ^•o^^•ELL'ri catechism. representing an invisible and spiritnal grace, by which the promises of God touching forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation given through Christ are as it were sealed, and the truth of them is more certainly confirmed in onr hearts " (p. 205). Tlius God's promises are presented to our senses, that they may be confirmed to our minds without doubtinsf : in other words, that a man who throuo-h reading the Bible or hearino* a sermon comes to think himself in a state of salvation, may come to a more firm opinion of the same tlirough partaking of a little common bread and wine ; and that is all. Of course a person holding these views knows nothing of that work whereby the Holy Ghost sanctifies the outward part of a Sacrament. Thus KoAvell is found to explain the Sacraments metaphysically rather than theologically. He de- fines them merely as signs of grace and of God's ])romises; and leaves his readers to find out as best they may how Sacraments come to be this. And even when he seems to speak of them as means whereby grace is conveyed, he again recurs to the position, as unable to get beyond it, that in Baptism we have a seal and pledge of forgiveness. In other words, God gives His promises as in an unsealed deed ; He also gives Sacraments as waxen seals, which the person may Inj his own act of reception tack on to the deed ; and if a person does this, his faith in the promises is supposed to be strengthened, but even if he neglects to do it, his salvation will not be affected thereby. If Nowell liad only realised the truth that Baptism nowell's catechism. ^9 makes us one with Christ (as St. Paul speaks twice over* of our having been baptized into Him), so that Christ's righteousness becomes our riofhteous- ' ness, His death and burial our death and burial, and His new life our new life, No well might have saved himself much disquisition, which for the purposes of practical religion is useless, or nearly so. His fear, too, of formalism makes him imagine it necessary to say (what in one aspect is an obvious truism, and in another aspect is utterl}^ false) that it is not the mere washing with water that profits ; as though a man should take pains to explain to one sitting in a chair, that it is not the seat of the chair that supports him, but the legs. It is in keeping with this, that although Nowell has spoken of Baptism as the means of our regeneration, and the Holy Communion as the means of our spiritual nourishment, yet, when describing specially the use of Baptism, he can only speak of it as an enforcement of responsibility as to faith and repentance. Nowell's ignorance of the nature of the Christian dispensation appears in that he makes Circumcision and Baptism to be like one another, and to have one cause {i.e. apparently, object) and order, being alike sacraments of faith and repentance ; and the Gospel differing from the Law, in that God's grace is more plentifully poured and more clearly declared under the one than under the otlier. His definition of the Church, the Body of Christ, * Rom. vi. 3. Gal. iii. 27. 30 '-THK yABIiATH." RIDLEY. is " the body of the Christian commonweal ; that is, the universal number and fellowsliip of all the faithful, wliom God through Christ hath before all beginning of time appointed to everlasting life." "It containeth and compriseth the uni- versal number of the faithful that have lived and shall live in all places and ages since the beginning of the world." We ought not, in noticing these two Catechisms, to omit noticing what is said in the earlier of them about the Sabbath, and which apparently paved the way for Puritan doctrine on that matter. In summing up the duties of the First Table of the Decalogue, it is said, "Last of all this ought we to hold stedfastly and with devout conscience, that we keep liolily and religiously the Sabbath day ; which was appointed out from the other for rest end service of God." And further on, " As for those things that are used to to {qu. be) done on the Sabbath day, as ceremonies, and exercises in the service of God, tlie}^ are tokens and witnesses of this assured trust." Bishop Eidley was led to change his views on the hol}^ Eucharist through reading Bertram's treatise thereupon, and conferring with Cranmer and Peter Martyr. As to the Church, he held that that Church which is Christ's Body, and of which Christ is the Head, " standeth only of living stones and true Christians, not only outwardly in name and title, but inwardly in heart and in truth." (" Works," p. 126.) How much he knew of the main difference between the Christian RIDLEY. LATIMER. BRADFORD. 31 dispensation and former dispensations, will appear from the following passage : " If any man will stiffly affirm, that universality doth so pertain unto the Church, that whatsoever Christ hath promised to the Church, it must needs be under- stood of that {i.e. of " the mingled and universal Church,") I would gladly know of the same man where that universal Church was, in the times of the patriarchs and prophets, of Noah, Abraham, and Moses (at such times as the people would have stoned him), of Elias, of Jeremy, in the time of Christ, and the dispersion of the Apostles," &c. {lb. p. 127.) Bishop Latimer, disputing at Oxford about the holy Eucharist, said, " I refer myself to my lord of Canterbury's book wholly herein " (viz., in inter- preting certain sayings of the fathers on the subject in question). (" Rem.ains," p. 276.) He professed also to have been confirmed in his judg- ment by Cranmer's book especially. {lb. p. 265.) One of the most popular teachers of Zuin- glianism in England was John Bradford, who was put to death for heresy in the reign of Queen Mary. We might indeed have begun to think better things of him when reading his sermon on the Lord's Supper. Bradford begins that dis- course by speaking of Baptism as a sacrament " wherewith we be enrolled, as it were, into the household and funnily of God." (" Sermons," &c., p. 82.) As to the bread in the Holy Communion, he prays all his hearers " heartily to beware of these and such like words, that it is but a sign or figure of His (Christ's) Body ; except " they " will 32 BRADFORD. discern bstwixt signs which signify onl)-, and signs which also do represent, confirm, and seal np, or (as a man may say) give with their signification " (pp. 1)3, 94). " As Baptism signifieth not only tlie cleansim? of the conscience from, sin by the merits of Christ's Blood, bnt ' is also a very cleansing from sin ; " so, " in the Lord's Supper the bread is called the partaking of the Lord's Body, and not only a bare sign of the body of the Lord" (p. 94). And, therefore, he continues, " inasmuch as the Holy Ghost is wiser than man, and had foresight of the evils that might be, and yet notwithstanding doth call it Christ's Body, I think we should do evil if we should take upon us to reform His speech " (p. 95). Even in that same discourse, however, Zuinglian doctrine peeps out here and there, hi an early part of it there occurs this expression (the like to which w^e have marked above, when speaking of Cranmer's treatise), " After the words of con- secration (rt.v they call them) be spoken." Further on, our abidino- in Christ is declared to be a metaphysical expression (p. 99). Two ends are specified as those for which the Sacrament was instituted : our having in memory Christ's death, and our being assured of communion with Him. (jSFot, it will be observed, our having a real com- munion with Him really strengthened, but merely our being subjectively assured of a communion wJiich we have already independently of the Sacrament.) And when, in the fervour of his discourse, he tells his hearers that in the Avorthy receiving of the Sacrament they shall receive BRADFORD. 33 remission of all their sins, he deems it necessary to correct himself by saying, " or rather certainty that they are remitted" (p. 107). And thus in his conference with Harpsfield, he refuses to acknowledcre a Eeal Presence in the Sacrament. " If I should include Christ's real presence in the Sacrament, or tie Him to it, otherwise than to the faith of the receiver, then the wicked man should receive Him; which I do not, nor will not, believe, by God's grace " (p. 511). And when, he being in conference with Archbishop Heath, of York, the Archbishop spoke of Christ's lying on the altai-, he replied, " Indeed I believe not such a presence " (p. 522). And to Dr. Weston he said, " A man may speak a thing figuratively, and lie not, as Christ did in His Last Supper " (p. 547). Bradford gave considerable prominence to the Calvinistic doctrine of election ; insomuch that in his " Defence of Election " he declares a belief of our own personal election (and this, for aught that appears to the contrary, independent of baptism), to be, "of all things which God requireth of us, not only most principal, but also the whole sum : so that ' without this faith ' there is nothing we do tliat can please God." He denies that Christ died for the sins of the whole world literally ; distinguishing the world which God has reconciled in Christ from the world for which Christ prayed not ; referring to John xvii. 9.* * '' I pray for tliem ; I pray not for the world, but for tliem M'bich Tbou bast given Me." Bradford did. not notice tbat tbe Lord does pray for tbe world afterwards, when He says, "tbat tbe world may believe tbat Tbou bas sent Me" (v. 21), and again, " tbat tbe world 4 34 BRADFORD. COVERDALE. " For look," he adds, " for whom He ' prayed not,' for them He died not." This Calvinism Bradford had learnt, apparently, from Sampson, who survived the persecution, and became a non- conformist, though winked at by the authorities. He was one of those who objected to wearing the proper ecclesiastical vestments. As to the observance of the Fourth Command- ment, Bradford held it to consist in the observance of the Lord's Day : " although the Jews' seventh day be abrogated and taken away." " The principal thing God, in this commandment, did respect was the ministry of his word and Sacra- ments," (!) Miles Coverdale derived his first inclination to Protestantism through the education which he received from Dr. Barnes, Prior of the Augustinian monastery at Cambridge ; who was arrested also for heresy, and induced to recant, in or about the year 1526. A sermon, preached by him on St. Anthony's Day, convinced a brother friar, Topley, who also was a priest, that the bread iu the holy Eucharist was but the remembrance of Christ's Body. (Biographical Notice in " Eemains," p. ix. note.) Cromwell, who had aided Coverdale, was be- headed in 1540, and Dr. Barnes was burnt two days afterwards. It was probably on account of these events that Coverdale betook himself to Germany; residing in the first instance at Tubingen, may know tlmt Thou bast sent Me" (v. 23); and that thus His words in verse 9 must mean merely that He was not praying for the world at that particular moment. COVERDALE. 35 and afterwards at Bergzabern, in the Duchy of Deux-ponts, supporting himself at this place by keeping a school, and by his pastoral charge, to which he had been promoted in consequence of his knowledge of the German language. (lb. p. xii.) Here he was " honourably esteemed by all the ministers of the word and other learned men " in those parts.* In 1548, he returned to England; was consecrated to the see of Exeter in 1551, but deprived and imprisoned by Queen Mary. He was released in 1555, at the intercession of the King of Denmark, and then retired to that country, and afterwards to Geneva. In 1558 he returned to England ; feehng " the scruples relating to the habits" (Biographical Notice, p. XV.), with reference to which it may be noted that when he was assisting at the consecration of Archbishop Parker, the only ecclesiastical vestment which he wore Avas a long woollen cassock. Bale speaks of him as having taught Christ purely.f The character of Bale's own teaching we shall see by-and-by. Of Coverdale it may suffice to add that in his " Defence of a Certain Poor Christian. Man," he says, " that the holy CathoHc Church is nothing else but a fellowship of saints. And the same is also the bride of Christ, without spot or wrinkle, purified through the blood of the Bridegroom Himself; even the * Letter from Richard Hilles to BuUinger, dated Strasburg, April 16, 1545. (Original Letters, p. 257.) t Scriptores illustrea majoris Britannia?, cited in Coverdale's Remains, p. xxii. 4- 2 36 COVERDALE. HOOrER. heavenly Hierusalem, into the which no unclean person cometh. ... To this Church pertain all they, that since the beginning of the world have been saved, and that shall be saved unto the end thereof." ("Eeraains," p. 461.) And of the holy Eucharist he writes, "Why do they call it a sacrifice, seeing it is but a remembrance of a sacrifice ? . . . . He saith not, ' Ofi^er My Body and My Blood.' " [lb. p. 471.) Where, by the way, the reader who knows his Greek Testa- ment will remark that Coverdale here contradicts the express declarations of Scripture, seeing that it was of the already consecrated elements tliat .the Lord said, " Offer * this for commemoration •of Me." John Hooper, to whom, rather than to Cranm.er or Eidley, the Protestant party looked up as to a leader, having graduated at Oxford, became a member of a Cistercian monastery at Gloucester. While living the life of a courtier in the reign * The connection in which the verb nomTs, rendered, in the Authorised Version, "do," in I Cor. xi. 25, shows that the meaning must be that which we have here preferred. In that verse, the verb has for its object the understood antecedent of a pronoun (tovto) which has occurred in the clause before, and is understood after irh'^Ti in the clause after. Now, where three pronouns are either expressed or understood in three several clauses in tiiis manner, they must refer to one and the same antecedent ; for if a second antecedent is intended, it must be not merely understood, but expressed : in other words, if the second tovto had meant this rite or ceremony, a word for " rite " or "ceremony" must have been inserted after it. The only antecedent, then, can be TroTijpiov, " cup," and the meaning of the verb must be one which will suit with this : in other words, it must be, not "do" (because one cannot talk of doing a cup), but " offer," a meaning which the verb continually has, besides its representatives in Hebrew and Aramaic. See, for instance, Ex. xxix. 38. HOOPER. 37 of King Henry VIII., he read some of the writings of Zwingli and Bullinger, and soon came to embrace some, at least, of the doctrines con- tained therein. Beinsf then in dangler throiiirh the Six Articles Act, he went to France for a short time ; but after his return had to fly again, and this time to Strasburg. After a second return to England, he fixed himself at Zurich, in March, 1547, having married Ann de Tserclas, apparently in the year before. During his two years' sojourn at Zurich, he enjoyed, we are told, the intimacy of Bullino-er and other leadino- members of the Protestant community there. "For Bullinger he entertained the highest regard, and was a diligent attendant at his lectures ; and his letters in after years abound with expressions of gratitude for past instruction, and with requests for copies of sermon-notes and other writings. We find him at this period corresponding with Bucer on the subject of the Sacraments : John a-Lasco also was amongst the number of his associates ; and the friendship which was commenced between them here was continued subsequently in England."* Soon after his arrival in London, in May, 1549, he was appointed chaplain to the Duke of Somerset. " He at once devoted himself to the work of teaching, lecturing generally twice every day ; " in which work " he was," his opponent, Dr. Smith, tells us, " so admired by the people, that they held him for a prophet ; nay, they looked upon him as some deity " (p. x.). Yet * Biographical notice prefixed to Hooper's Later Writings, p. ix. 38 HOOPER. he was not much of a theologian ; for how could a theologian write this theological " bull " (as it may be called) ? "I believe . . . .all the works, merits, doings, and obedience of man to- wards God, although they be done by the Spirit of God, in the grace of God, yet being thus done, be of no validity, worthiness, nor merit before God, except God by mercy and grace account them worthy, for the worthiness and merit of Jesus Christ." In his "Brief and Clear Confession of the Christian Faith," the 24th article, concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, begins thus : " I believe also that while He was upon the said cross, dying and giving up His spirit unto God His Father, He descended into hell ; that is to say. He did verily taste and feel the great distress and heaviness of death, and likewise the pains and torments of hell, that is to say, the great wrath and severe judg- ment of God upon Him, even as if God had utterly forsaken Him." He refers, however, to " the text of St. Peter" (apparently, 1 Peter iii. 19, 20), which he confesses to be yet covered and hid from him. He uses the term " Sabbath day," as would seem, for "Sunday" ("Later Writings," p. 137); and speaks of the Holy Ghost as regenerating us, mean- ing, that He effects our progressive conversion. His dislike of the old vestments is well known. In the 28th article of his "Brief and Clear Con- fession" he says that the mass " ought to be abohshed, and the Holy Supper of the Lord to be restored and set in His perfection again." This was published in 1550, while King Edward's First Prayer Book was still in use ; that book wherein HOOPER. 39 the Eucliaristic office was thus headed : '• The Supper of the Lord, aud the Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass." Hooper's views are set forth not only in this " Brief and Clear Confession of the Christian Faith," but also in another document, entitled, " A Godly Confession and Protestation of the Christian Faith," and addressed to King Edward VI., the Privy Council, and the Parliament, under date December 20th, 1550. The publishing of this was after his refusal to be consecrated bishop according to King Edward's First Ordinal then in force, and while he was continuing to denounce that formulary, and after his being in consequence forbidden by the Privy Council to preach or lecture without further license, and " commanded to keep his house, unless it were to go to the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishops of Ely, London, or Lincoln, for counsel and satisfaction of his conscience." Li this latter document, speaking of the Church, he says, " These two marks, the true preaching of God's word and right use of the Sacraments, declare what aud where the true Church is. . . . For in the blessed Virgin's time the Pharisees and bishops * were accounted to be the true Church ; yet, by reason their doctrine was corrupt, the true Church rested not in them, but in Simeon, Zachary, Ehsabeth, the shepherds, and others." ("Later Writings," p. 87.) He had said, in his " Brief and Clear Confession," " As touchinoj the visible Church, which is the * I.e. Cliief Priests. 40 HOOPER. congregation of the good and tlie wicked, of the chosen and of tlie reprobate, and generally of all those which say they believe in Christ, I do not believe that to be the Church, because that Church is seen of the eye, and the faith thereof is in visible things.* 1 believe that this invisible Church is the field of the Lord God, wherein is neither darnel nor cockle. . . . The same Church is the bo:ly of Christ, wherein there is never a rotten, corrupt, or infected member." (lb. p. 41.) As to Sacraments, of which Hooper admits only two, " in the law of Moses was Circumcision and the Paschal Lamb ; and their places (qu. in their places) avc have J3aptisin and the Supper of the Lord, diverse in external elements and ceremonies, but one in effect, mystery, and thing itself; saving that their Sacraments showed the graces of God to be o-iven unto men in Christ to come, and ours declare the graces of God to be given in Christ that is already come " (p. 88). " And as verily as we eat and drink Christ in the Holy Supper, so did the fathers eat Christ in their Sacraments ; no less Christ's body then to be born, than we now that He is born." (" Early Writings," p. 12G.) " This is the definition of the Lord's Supper. It is a ceremony instituted by Christ to confirm and manifest our society and communion, His Body and Blood, until He come to judgment." * According to this reasoning, Hooper slioiild not have believed the Bible, because that is a visible thing. It will be noted, too, how alien Hooper's theology was from that which implies " the Catholic Church," to consist of "all wlio profess and call themselves Christians." The Prayer for all Conditions of Men, however, was not composed in Hooper's time. HOOPER. BALE. 41 By the written word (we are told in another place), we " are made clean, and thereby do receive the self-same thing as much as we do by tlie Sacra- ments : " and this Hooper explains, or rather obscures, saying immediately after, " That is to say, Jesus Clirist by His word, which is the word of faith, give til and communicateth Himself nnto us, as well as by the Sacraments, albeit it be by another manner and fashion." " Without the right use " (of the Lord's Supper), " the bread and wine in nothing differ from other common bread and wine that is commonly used" (pp. 48,49). "The words that Christ spoke to His disciples- in giving them the bread, saying, 'This is My Body,' I understand and believe to be spoken by a figurative manner of speech, called metonymia" (p. 48). " As concerning the ministers of the Church," Hooper does not express himself with clearness, except wliere saying that none should be believed save when speaking the word of God. He is sorry with all his "heart to see the Church of Ciirist degenerated into a civil policy." This, let it be noted, is the bishop who afterwards spoke of parishioners as committed to his care and faith from God and the Kiiufs 3Iijesty. ' (Visitation Book, 1551, 1552, printed in " Later Writings," p. 119.) Another Zuinglian who w.is appointed to the Episcopate by the Governmant of King Edward VI. was John Bale. He is designated by the Eev. Henry Christmas, who edited a selection of his works for the Parker Society, as one of the most 42 BALE. distinguished among the lesser lights of the Ee- formation. He was born in 1495, and educated first at a Carmelite convent in Norwich, and after- wards at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he studied civil law and took holy orders. From Lord Wentworth he learned the doctrines of Protestantism, which he soon embraced with ardour, and in consequence deemed it prudent, in 1540, or soon after, to retire with his family to Germany. The accession, however, of Edward VI. revived Bale's hopes : he returned to England, and no long time elapsed before he became rector of Bishopstoke in Hampshire, to which benefice was added, in three or four years, the vicarage of Swaflliam in Norfolk. In 1553 he was consecrated by the Archbishop of Dublin to the see of Ossory, and was the first prelate consecrated in Ireland according to King Edward's ordinal. This consecration was illegal ; for King Edward's ordinal had not been accepted by the Irish Church and kingdom at the time. Bale soon gave offence in his diocese to clergy and laity alike, probably by the bitterness of his Protestantism ; and on the accession of Queen Mary ran away from his diocese, intending to reach Holland ; but was captured by pirates, and sold as a slave. Having, however, obtained his freedom, he came at length to Basle, and remained there until the accession of Queen Elizabeth ; when he returned to England, but not to his diocese. He died at Canterbury, where he had been appointed to a prebend. His death took place in 1563. BALE. 43 " Bishop Bale," says his editor, " occupied such a position in connection with the history of the Reformation, that it was in a manner necessary for the Parker Society, in pursuance of its plan, to republish some of his numerous works ; but there are others of them, it must be acknow- ledged, which could not with propriety be pre- sented to the public ; and the reprinting of the present portion of them must not be considered as indicating an approval of all he either said or did." * As a specimen of his controversial language, we may take his designation of the party of the Old Learning, with Stephen Gardiner at their head, and the priests ordained accord- ing to the ancient rite, who were on the same side : " The boisterous tyrants of Sodom, with their great Nimrod, Winchester, and the exe- crable citizens of Gomorrah, with their shorn smeared captains." f Fleshly men, he says, soon after, " have always, for lucre's sake, gloriously garnished their holy mother, the madam of mis- chief and proud synagogue of Satan, with gold, silver, pearl, precious stone, velvets, silks, mitres, copes, crosses, cruets, ceremonies, censings, bless- ings, babblings, brawlings, processions, puppets, and such otlier mad masteries :{: (whereof the church that Christ left here behind Him knew not one jot), to provoke the carnal idiots to her whoredom in the spirit." ^ The above are ex- * Select Works of John Bale, D.D., Bisliop of Ossory, p. xi. t/6. p. 259. X Perhaps masteriea is here a raispriiit for mysteries. § Select Works, pp. 259, 260. 44 BALE. tracts from the preface to the " Image of Both Churches," a commentary on the Revelation. It will be noticed how, in the latter of them, Bale enumerates mitres, copes, crosses, cruets, bless- ings (benedictions, we presume, of sundry things, as water, bells, &c.), and processions, as " mad mysteries " (if our reading be correct). Other expressions used by this grave and reverend father in God with respect to those who thought differently from him are, " tlie bloody remnant of Antichrist ; " * *' the malignant syna- gogue of Satan ; "f " the wicked school of Anti- christ."^ In one place he says that there is no mention made in the Bible of masses, private or public ; § in another that bread in a box is not Christ's Body ; || while in another we read " Christ forbade his bishops, under pain of damnation, to take any lordship upon them, Luke xii.^l How is this followed by our prelates ? He commanded them also to possess neither gold nor silver,** How is this commandment obeyed ? If we looked so earnestly to Christ's instructions, as we look to tlie Pope's, to be observed, these would also be seen to by Act of Parliament."-f f * Select Works, p. 133. t lb. % lb. p. 141. § lb. p. 152. II lb. p. 163. T[ Luke xii. 45, 46, " If tliat servant say in his heart. My lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to beat the man-servants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken, the lord of that servant; will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers." *• Mutt. X. 9, " Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses." ft Select Works, p. 175. BALE. PHILPOT. 45 In publishing the opinion as held by Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, that the Church con- sists of the saved, he does so without a word of qualification.* In one passage he commends Anne Askew for denying the Sacrament to be Christ's Body and Blood : f and he speaks of the consecra- tion of the elements, and of ordination according to the ancient ritual, in these terms : " As touching the priest's consecration, which is such a charm of enchantment which may not be done but by an oiled officer of the Pope's generation, she did godly to reject it in that clouting kind.":}: Mr. Christmas speaks of Bale as having re- nounced monastic vows, but does not give any evidence of Bale's having taken such vows. The celibate state of priests in mediaeval times, as in the Roman communion to this day, was matter not of personal vow but of ecclesiastical discipline. We demur, therefore, to admitting that the many virtues — that is, what passed with the Government for virtues — by which Bale manifested his fitness for rule in the reformed and purified church were enhanced by the additional virtue of perjury, though that undoubtedly was the case with Bishop Coverdale. Another divine with Zuinglian leanings (to say the best of him) was Archdeacon Philpot, who was burnt for heresy in Queen Mary's days. Mr. Blunt thinks that the differences between him and his opponents in theological matters were little more than verbal, and points out that his " Ex- * Select Works, p. 33. t lb. p. 212. \ lb. pp. 232, 233. 46 PHILPOT AND OTHERS. aminations," as we have them now, have been altered by Foxe, not without the assent of Grindal. But the charge against him appears to have been that of denying the Eeal Presence, irrespectively of Transubstantiation ; and in his letter on Infant Baptism, nothing occurs to indi- cate that he recognised Baptism as a means of conveying Divine grace to those who had no special Divine grace at all. It is to be observed, too, that Zuinglian doctrine as to the Eucharist was maintained, the " papistical doctrine of free-will " denied, and prayer for the dead rejected as useless, in a " declaration concerning religion " which was subscribed by Hooper, Ferrar, Coverdale, Brad- ford, Dr. Eowland Taylor, Archdeacon Philpot, Edward Crome, John Rogers, Laurence Sanders, Edmund Lawrence, and two other individuals who only gave their initials. CHAPTER IV. Zuiiig-liau Diviues coutinued. Parker. Sandys, Jewel, Pilkiiio-ton, Griudal, Whitgift. Among the lesser lights of Protestantism, and who carried on the Zuinglian tradition into the reign of Queen Elizabeth, may be mentioned Archbishops Parker, Sandys, Grindal, and Whit- gift, and Bishops Jewel and Pilkington, Parkei?, the fact of whose consecration is not now denied by any honest historians, even of the Roman Obedience, and on whose consecration the present PARKER. 47 Anglican Episcopate mainly depends, was named by Bucer as one of his executors.* He seems not to have been latterly as decided a Zuinglian as in former years ; for, although in seeking to make Dr. Sampson, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, conform to the law or to ecclesiastical habit,'!' he had said, " I am persuaded that time and indifferent reading on your party [= part] will give cause to join again to our communion ; / mean not in doctrine, but in this matter of this ecclesiastical policy ; ":{: and although he wished the Protestant Dean Nowell, whose Zuinglian opinions we have already noticed, to preach before Queen Elizabeth in the Lent of 1565, yet in a letter supposed to have been written in 1566 he conveys a civil hint to Matthias Flacius Illyricus, John Wigand, and Matthias Judex, that he did not agree with their teaching alto- gether. II And he complains of the Puritans slandering both him and Lord Burghley " with infamous books and libels, lying they " cared " not how deep." What, however, Parker's theological opinions were does not appear very cleai'ly from his correspondence. His leading idea seems to have been that of serving God, his sovereign, and her laws, and making everybody else do the same, and so long as there was an outward obedience to * Correspondence of Archbishop Parker, pp. 46, 47. t The Royal injunctions, which the Archbishop sought to enforce, were, that the square cap be worn rather than the round hat ; that in the chapel the surplice and hood be worn ; and that the Com- munion he received in wafer-bread (as in many Protestant communi- ties even now), and by communicants kneeling. _ X lb. p. 245. ;| lb. p. 207. 48 PARKER. the Queen's injunctions, which included conformity to the Book of Common Prayer and a refusal of the Pope's jurisdiction, the Archbishop does not seem to have troubled himself much about the doctrine which was taught or believed. He procured a prebend in St. Paul's Cathedral for Dr. Sampson, when that divine had been turned out of his deanery for nonconformity. It did not, seemingly, matter to him that Sampson should continue to teach Protestant heresy, pro- vided only that he did so in a surplice, a hood, and a square cap.* It speaks also for Parker's indifference to Puritan tenets, that Grindal's elevation from the see of London to that of York was owing to his influence with the Queen. On February 6th, 1570-1, he writes, with refer- ence to the teaching of the Church of England on the Holy Communion, and the form of the bread used therein : " We be in one uniform doctrine of the same, and so cut off much matter of variance which the Lutherans and Zuinglians do hatefully maintain." This would seem to indicate that the Church of England did not then hold any positive doctrine as to the Eucharist ; that, in common with the Lutherans and Zuing- lians, she rejected the theory of Transubstantia- tion, but allowed the question to remain an open * A passage in one of tlie Zurich letters illustrates this : the writer, describing the state of the Church of England, says, " There is no great difficulty raised about other points of doctrine (other, that is, than the Koyal Supremacy), provided the party is willing to obey the laws and statutes of the realm." — "Zurich Letters." 2nd Series, p. 358. SANDYS. 49 one, how the words, " This is My Body," were to be understood.* Edwin Sandys was Master of St. Catherine's Hall, Cambridge (now St. Catherine's College), and Vice-Chancellor of the University, at the time when Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed ; on which occasion he preached, at a day's notice, a sermon which would seem to have been in favour of her pretensions. This, and his known inclina- tion to Protestantism, occasioned him to be appre- hended, and imprisoned, first in the Tower, and afterwards in the Marshalsea, for several months in all. He was then set at liberty ; but again sought for, Bishop Gardiner repenting of not having advised Queen Mary to keep him in custody. He managed, however, to elude the Government, and escaped to Strasburg ; whence he afterwards removed to Zurich, and was Peter Martyr's guest for the space of five weeks. Here he received tidings of Queen Mary's decease. " Master Bullinger and the ministers feasted him, and he took his leave and returned to Strasburg ; and so Master Grindall " (afterwards Archbishop) " and he came towards England, and came to London the same day that Queen Elizabeth was crowned." (This is from Foxe.) He was soon made, first. Bishop of Worcester (December 21st, 1559), then Bishop of London (1570), and after- wards Archbishop of York. Sandys' Zuinglianism is not as pronounced as the Zuinglianism of some other divines of the * Correspondence, cclxxxvi. (p. 379). 50 SANDYS. period ; but the taint does appear here and there in his sermons. Witness this passage (" Sermons," p. 303): "God's gift, without sealing, is sure; as He Himself is all one without changing : yet, to bear with our infirmity, and to make us more secure of His promise, to His writing and word He added these outward signs and seals, to estab- lish our faith, and to certify us that His promise is most certain. He giveth us, therefore, these holy and visible signs of bread and wine, and saith, ' Take and eat, this is My Body and Blood ; ' giving unto the signs the names which are proper to the things signified by them ; as we use to do even in common speech, when the sign is a lively representation and image of the thing," He ob- jected to the use of the ancient vestments, but did not refuse to wear them ; and even laboured to secure conformity by compulsion; and when Dean Whittingham of Durham, whose only ordi- nation was what he had received from "ministers" at Geneva, refused the Archbishop's metropolitan visitation, the Archbishop excommunicated him. That Sandj's was not in advance of his time, as to the duty of toleration, appears from such passages as these: "The little foxes w^hich destroy the vineyard must be taken, and nets must be spread by which the papal stragglers, the firebrands of seditions, and the pests of the Church, may be snared and fall The Almighty Lord will be present to us both as a leader and an avenger, if we only be fervent in zeal for the House of God, burning? with desire. nor receive into any friendship those whom (we SANDYS. JEWEL. 51 know) to be of hostile mind towards our Lord and His Church ; for those who are faithless toward God cannot be faithful to their prince." ("Sermons," p. 441.) As Bishop of Worcester, he tried to get females forbidden to minister Baptism in any case, even of emergency ; such prohibition being in accordance with a Puritan crotchet. He also tried to get a prohibition of the sign of the cross in public Baptism. These proposals he desired should be enacted by the Archbishop on behalf of the Church, and by the Queen on behalf of the State ; and with this view brou£fht them before Convo- cation ; but without success. John Jewel, an exile for his religious opinions in the time of Queen Mary, but who returned after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and was promoted by her to the see of Salisbury, was the celebrated author of the " Apology for the Church of Enoiand," which obtained a kind of recognition by the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury. That work was published origi- nally in Latin in the year 1562; and was highly satisfactory to Peter Martyr, Bullinger, and others :* by which the reader will easily judge that it was not without its taint of Zuinglianism. As indeed is witnessed by the following passages : "We say that Eucharistia, the Supper of the Lord, is a Sacrament, that is to wit, an evident tokenf * See Letter from P. Martyr prefixed, in the Parker Society's edition. t Page 65, near bottom. Symholum conspicuum is the expression in the Latin. In the Defence of the Apology the word used here is not " token," but " representation." 5—2 52 JEWEL. of the Body and Blood of Christ." " It is our faitli that applieth the death and cross of Christ to our benefit, and not the act of the massing priest " (p. G4, near bottom). As indeed in the " Defence," p, 55S ; "It is neither the worlv of the priest, nor the nature of the Sacrament as of itself, that maketh us partakers of Christ's death, but only the faith of the receiver." He describes Zwingli as a most excellent man (p. 7-i), and as a teacher of the Gospel {ib.); and in that part of the " Defence " which refers to this passage, says, "Thus is Christ's body present, not realhj nor in substance, but only in myster3^" Of the question as to the being of Christ's bod}" in one only place, or in many. Jewel says that that question is " neither weighty nor great," In the "Defence" he says " that in respect either of salvation, or of other article, of God the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Ghost, or of any other the grounds and principles of the Christian faith, it is not weighty. In that respect we speak it truly : othervYise we say the error is weighty" (p. 023). Jewel did not see how the Sacramental system of the Catholic Church is bound up with the Incar- nation, so that those who refuse the former come naturally to deny the latter. In a letter dated May 22nd, 1558, Jewel thanks Bullinger for quickening the zeal and courage which the Puritan party had shown in striving to get the Church of England puritanized ; and adds that he and his friends were doing what they could in the same line, and that all things were coming to what he deemed a better state. Writing JEWEL. PILKI^'GTON. 53 on the IGtli of November in the same year, he complams of the crucifix and hghts in the Queen's Chapel, and calls the Popish vestments relics of the Amorites, which ought (sa3^s he) to be extir- pated to the deepest roots. (Neal, vol. i. p. 125.) Jewel's Puritanism comes out in his " Apology," where he finds fault implicitly with the popes for consecrating oil, chalices, churches, and altars, as if there were anythiug wrong or inappro]oriate in so doing (p. 104). It is no wonder, then, that after Dr. Humphreys had been obliged to resign his headship of Magdalene College, and his Divinity professorship in the University of Oxford, for nonconformity, Jewel made Humphreys his chaplain. Bishop Pilkixgton is said by Bucer to have " acquitted himself " in his public lectures at Cambridge "learnedly and piously."' He was one of the exiles under Queen Mary, and lived at Zurich, Basle, Geneva, and Frankfort. In 1558 he returned to England ; and two years later he delivered a funeral oration at Cambridsje in com- memoration of Bucer and Faoius. He was con- secrated to the see of Durham, March 2nd, 1560. In one of his controversial writings there occurs this passage, savouring of Presbyterianism : " Yet remains one doubt unanswered in these few words, when he says that ' the government of the Church was committed to bishops,' as though they had received a 'larger and higher commission from God of doctrine and discipline than the lower priests or ministers have, and thereby might chal'enge a greater prerogative. But this is to be understood, 54 PILKINGTON. GRINDAL. that the privileges and superiorities which bishops have above other ministers are rather granted by man for maintaining of better order and quietness in commonwealths, than commanded by God in His Word. Ministers have better knowledge and utterance some than, other, but their ministry is of equal dignity. God's commission and com- mandment is like and indifferent to all, priest, bishop, archbishop, prelate, by what name soever he be called." (Works, p. 493.) Writing about the Sacrament of the Eucharist, he speaks of the strong solutions of Eucharistic questions (which solutions had been put forth by " that godly learned Bishop," Eidley, when he was visiting the University of Cambridge), as being " yet uncon- futed" (p. 523). Elsewhere he implies that Cranmer's work against Gardiner " stands uncon- futed." Neal attributes to him Puritan principles generally (vol. i. p. 350). Edmund Gkindal was born about 1519, at Hensingham, near St. Bees. Educated, probably, first at Furness Abbey, he went in due time to Magdalene College, Cambridge ; whence he migrated to Christ's, and afterwards to Pembroke, where he was under the mastership of Nicholas Eidley. He became B.A. in 1537-8; and M.A. in 1541 ; and on July 4th, 1544, was ordained Deacon by Bishop Bird, of Chester. On June 20th, 1549, he took part with Guest, Pilkington, and some others, iu disputing publicly against Transubstantiation. This disputation was held before the Commissioners appointed to visit the University, of whom Bishop Eidley, of Eochester, GKINDAL. 00 appears to have been what we should call the chairman. When Eidley was translated to London, he made Grindal one of his chaplains ; he made him also precentor of St Paul's, August 24th, 1551. To these preferments was added, in the December of the same year, one of the royal chaplaincies, which involved then, as Dean Hook tells us, the being sent from time to time to preach in various parts of the kingdom. Grindal was on terms of friendship with Peter Martyr. In 1551, or thereabouts, he formed an intimate acquaintance with Martin Bucer. He attended Bucer in his last illness, and took a prominent place among the mourners at his funeral. Shortly after the accession of Queen Mary he went abroad, visiting Geneva, and settling eventually at Strasburg ; there he lived in one of those collegiate institutions which, says Dean Hook, the English exiles formed in many, and perhaps in most, of the towns where they sojourned. In the Frankfort troubles he took the part of a peace-maker, but apparently in vain. Foxe found in Grindal a kindred spirit : he received the narratives of the executions for heresy under Queen Mary, and transmitted them to Foxe. After Elizabeth came to the throne, he returned to England, arriving with Sandys and No well on the day of her coronation (January 15th, 1559) ; and was speedily emplo3^ed, along with Parker, Sandys, Pilkington, Cox, and others, in revising the Prayer Book. In his religion Grindal was a more pronounced Protestant than Parker, though, perhaps, not so 56 GRIND Al.. thorough a one as Sandys. In his Sacramental theology he appears to have been a Zuinglian. He, along with Bishop Home, of Winchester, recorded, in a letter to Bullinger, an approval of the "Black Eubric," which, at that time, ran thus : " This ought not to be understood as if any adoration is or ought to be done .... to any real and essential presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood there existing." In his "Dialogue between Custom and Verity " it is said that " Men of themselves be, and evermore were, forgetful of the benefits of God. And, therefore, it was behoveful, that they should be admonished and stirred up with some visible and outward tokens ; as with the passover lamb, the brazen serpent, and the like. ... So likewise Christ left us a memorial and remembrance of His death and passion in outward tokens, that when the child should demand of his father what the breaking of the bread and drinking of the cup meaneth, he might answer him, that like as the bread is broken, so Christ was broken and rent upon the cross, to redeem the soul of man. And likewise, as wine fostereth and comforteth the body, so doth the blood of Christ cherish and relieve the soul." ("Foxe," vi. p. 338.) In his inward spirit, indeed, Grindal may have held to the trutli of the Eeal Presence ; but his theological intellect saw no alternative between gross Capernaitism and nihilistic Zuinglianism, and embraced the latter rather than the former. As to the interrogations in Infant Baptism, he and Home had said, " We publicly profess, and diligently teach, that GRINDAL. 57 questions of tliis kind are not very suitable to be proposed to infants. . . . We do not defend the signing with the sign of the cross the forehead of the infant already baptised." He authorised his Vicar-General to license one John Morrison to celebrate Divine offices and minister the Sacra- ments throughout the province of Canterbury, in virtue of Morrison's Presbyterian ordination. The license was dated April 6th, 1582. (N"eal, vol. i. p. 385-6.) Neal attributes to Grindal a hiffh esteem for the name and doctrines of Calvin ; with whom, as with the German divines, Grindal held, says he, a constant correspondence. (Vol. i. p. 395.) He disapproved of praying for the faithful departed, even when the " popish purgatory " was not maintained. In the examination of certain nonconforming Londoners before the Queen's Commissioners, he said, "all reformed Churches do differ in rites and ceremonies, and we agree with all reformed Churches in substance of doctrine." ("Eemains," p. 308.) In the same examination he said, " You see me wear a cope or a surplice at Paul's. I had rather minister with- out these things, but for order's sake and obedience to the prince." (lb. p. 211.) When, in Parker's time, he had been ordered, as Bishop of London, to draw up a form of prayer to be used during the continuance of the plague, he drew up a form after Puritan ideas, so that his Metropolitan had to revise it on Prayer Book lines before it could be issued. ("Hook," vol. iv. [N.S.] p. 430.) In his "Injunctions for the Laity" (5) he ordered the altar-stones to " be broken, defaced, and bestowed .58 GRINDAL. WHITGIFT. to some common use ; " and that the perambula- tion of a parish should be done at Eogation-tide, and the Psalms and Litany said, without wearing any surplices or carrjang of banners. {lb. p. 18.) Also that No well's " Catechism " should be taught in Latin by all engaged in tuition. ' {lb. p. 20.) Grindal died, July 6th, 1 583. John Whitgift, born at Great Grimsby in Lincolnshire, in the year 1530, was sent to St. Anthony's School in London, where he boarded with an aunt, who was a staunch Eomanist. Not being able to agree altogether with her in religion, he returned to his father, who in due time sent him to Queens' College, Cambridge. From thence he soon migrated to Pembroke Hall (since Pemr broke College), where his tutor was Jolni Brad- ford,* afterwards burnt for heresy. By him and by Grindal (afterwards Archbishop) he was recom- mended to Eidley, then Master of Pembroke ; and he, when elevated to the see of London, made Whitgift one of his chaplains, according to Dr. Hook ; who, however, states afterwards that Whit- gift did not take holy orders till 1560, when Queen Elizabeth was on the throne. In 1563 he became Margaret Professor of Divinity; in 1567 Master of Pembroke; in 1570, Master of Trinity; and in 1573, Dean of Lincoln, from whence he was promoted in 1576 to the bishopric of Worcester, being consecrated to that see on the 21st of April, by Archbishop Grindal, whom he succeeded in the primacy. • Bradford's Writings, ed. Parker Society, p. 20. WHITGIFT. .09 What Catholic reputation Whitgift has arises from his having sought to enforce outward con- formity to the laws of the Church, and pointed out in his writings the reasonableness of confor- mity to the usages established by law. He allowed Cartwright, the great leader, in his time, of the Puritan partj^, to preach at Warwick, on the sole condition of his promising to promote the peace of the Church, and not to impugn her laws, orders, and government. To him, and to certain divines, whom, for that purpose, he had associated with himself, the Church owed the Calvinistic "Lam- beth Articles." Those articles, however, the Church never accepted ; and, indeed, Whitgift himself, on learning the Queen's disapprobation of them, " en- joined the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge to use his own discretion with respect to their publication."* Whitgift died on the last day of February, 1604. Of him, and of the Eeformation-prelates generally of the Elizabethan period, the Puritans continually asserted that in doctrine they were one with them. CHAPTER V. Zuinglian Language disparaging the Old Religion. The Geneva Version of the Bible : its Characteristics. Its Popularity : Causes thereof. Foxe : his " Acts and Monuments." The Country flooded with Zuinglian Teaching. Large number of Zuinglian Clergy. Thus, then, was Zuinglianism formally taught in the Church of England. Nor was it by direct declaration alone that the pernicious heresj' was inculcated : it was a common plan with the * Hook, T. [N.S.] p. 160. 60 ZUINGLIAN LANGUAGE. Protestant preachers to speak of the old tradi- tional ordinances not by their old names, but by- new names implying some disparagement or other. Thus, a priest is with them a massmonger or a shaveling; ordination is an oiling. Sometimes, where the old names are retained, it is in cases where they are not found in those English versions of Scripture which were then commonly used, and were tlius capable of being untruthfully set in contrast with the ordinances as professedly used by the Protestants. Thus "the Mass" will be spoken of in contrast with " the Lord's Supper ; " the idea being thus insinuated that the rite commonly known as the Mass was not the rite instituted by the Lord on the night when He was betrayed. So Bishop Hooper directs parishioners to inquire " whether the Communion be used in such place, and after such sort, as most varieth and is distant from the Popish Mass." (" Later Writings," p. 143.) And Bishop Bale informs his readers that there is no mention in the Bible of masses, private or jniblic. (" Select Works," p. 152 ) Our account, however, of the propagation of Zuinglianism would be very defective if we failed to take note of what miGflit be called the one great work done by the Genevan exiles during the Marian persecution — we mean the bringing out that English translation of the Bible known as the Geneva Version. Amono- the authors of this version were Wliittingham, Sampson, and Coverdale (three notorious Zuinglians, as we have seen), besides Goodman and Pullain. The translator of the New Testament was Whittingham. THE GENEVA BIBLE. 61 The New Testament, thus translated, was printed abroad in 1557, and the whole Bible (except the Apocrypha,* which in this version had no place) in 1560. And " whatever may have been its faults " (we quote now from a competent writer on this subject) " the Geneva Bible was un- questionably, for sixty years, the most popular of all versions. Largely imported in the early years of Elizabeth (the writer probably means of Elizabeth's reign), it was printed in England in 1561. . . . Not less than eighty editions, some of the whole Bible, were printed between 1558 and 1611. It kept its ground for some time, even against the A[uthorised] V[ersion], and gave way, as it were, slowly and under protest. The causes of this general acceptance are not difficult to ascertain. The volume was, in all its editions, cheaper and more portable — a small quarto, instead of the large folio of Cranmer's ' Great Bible.' It was the first Bible which laid aside the obsolescent black letter, and appeared in Eoman type. It was the first which, following the Hebrew example, recognised the division into verses, so dear to the preachers or hearers of sermons, . . . The notes were often really helpful in dealing with the difficulties of Scripture, and were looked on as spiritual and evangelical." " It was accordingly " (the same writer con- tinues) " the version specially adopted by the great Puritan party, through the whole reign of Elizabeth, and far into that of James." And (as * This exception has itself an exception. " The Prayer of Manasseh, King' of the Jewes" follows the Second Book of the Chronicles. 62 THE GENEVA BIBLE. we might have expected, considering its author- ship) we find unmistakable Puritan characteristics. " It presents, in a Calendar prefixed to the Bible, something like a declaration of war against the established order of the Church's lessons, com- memorating Scripture facts, and the deaths of the great Keformers, but ignoring Saints' days alto- gether." The Apocrypha is entirely ignored, with the exception, noticed above, of the Prayer of Manasseh. And for the doctrine taught in the notes, let the following specimens suffice : On Acts xiii. 48, "... . as many as were or- dained unto eternal life believed." " Therefore either all were not appointed to everlasting life, or else all should have believed, but because that is not so, it followeth that some certain were ordained, and therefore God did not only foreknow, but also foreordain, that neither faith nor the effects of faith should be the cause of His ordaining or appointment, but His ordaining the cause of faith." On Heb. vi. 4, "... . and have tasted," &c. " We must mark the force of this word, for it is one thing to believe as Lydia did, whose heart God* opened. Acts xvi. 13, and another thing to * In the passage of the Acts to which reference is here made, the Genevan rendering is " The Lord." The Genevan note therefore on Heb. vi. 4 affords an illustration of the practice so much adopted by the Puritans, of using that appellation in reference, not to our Lord Jesus Christ (of Whom, when it has the definite article in the Greek, it is the ordinary New Testament designation), but to God the Father. This probably arose from Puritan preference of the phraseology of the Old Testament to that of the New. God the Father is scarcely ever termed " Lord " in the New Testament save when THE GENEVA BIBLE. 63 have some taste." The words, " if they fall away " m the next verse have no explanation. Nor is any explanation given of the words in John xv. 6, " If a man abide not in Me." On Heb. x. 26, " if we sin willingly," &c., the only note is, " Without any cause or occasion or show of occasion." On Ool. ii. 12, " in that ye are buried with Him through baptism," the note is " The taking away of an objection: we need not so much as the external sign which our fathers had, seeing that our Baptism is a most effectual pledge and witness, of that inward restorino; and renewingf." On Eom. vi. 3, " Know ye not that all we which have been baptised into Jesus Christ have been baptised into His death ; " the first note is, " There are three parts of this sanctification, to wit, the death of the old man or sin, his burial, and the resurrection of the new man, defending [qu. de- scending) into us from the virtue of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, of which benefit our baptism is the sign and pledge." On Gal. iii. 27, "For all ye that are baptized into Christ, have put on Christ ; " the first note is, " Using a general particle, lest the Jews at the least should not think themselves bound with the band of the Law, he pronounceth that Baptism is common to all behevers, because it is a pledge of our delivery in Christ, as well to the Jews as to the Grecians, that by this means all may be truly that word (being then ordinarily witliont the article) is intended to represent the most sacred name Jehovah, which a Jew would not pronounce. 64 THE GENEVA BIBLE. one in Glirist, that is to say, that promised seed to Abraham and inheritors of everlasting hfe." Evidently meant to explain the text away. It should also be noted that the authors of the Genevan Version endeavoured to express by the use of italics such words as did not represent any particular words in the original : as did afterwards King James's translators; and Milton, in those metrical parodies of the Psalms which are printed among his poems. This probably helped to prepare the way for the modern Low-Church dogma of Verbal Inspiration. The publication of this version must have been a master-stroke, and given an incalculable impetus to the spread of Zuinglianism in England. To the ordinary Englishman the lightness of the cost would outweigh, in his good opinions, all the doctrinal errors which might be found in the notes. Not being trained to discriminate between the true and the false in matters at issue between two parties, when both parties agreed in recom- mending the perusal of the Bible in some English version or other, the ordinary Englishman would take for granted that no notes to an English Bible could be very bad. And then the notes, being for the most part simply dogmatic in their tone, and not appealing to the reason for the truth of their theological statements, were read, and indo- lently believed. The readers deemed themselves to have been perusing Scripture-proofs of Zuinglian doctrine, whereas they had in reality been reading nothing more than certain Scripture-texts, coupled with the assertions made by Whittingham and his POrULARITY OF ZUINGLIANISM. 65 friends that the texts in question were to be understood in such and such a way. The popularity, however, which Zuinglian heresy had in the reign of Queen Elizabetli, and which it has not altogether lost even now, however little deserved, must be ascribed in part to the circumstances of the Zuinglian party in the Church of England at the commencement of Queen Elizabeth's reign. It has been often ob- served that persecution generally enliiits the feelings of the public at large on tlie side of the persecuted ; and so it was in the case of that party (exclusively, or almost so, we believe, composed of Zuinglians) which was persecuted in the time of Queen Mar3\ The Marian perse- cution had, too, a peculiar unpopularity of its own ; for it was mainly got up by foreigners ; not by " wily AVincliester " or even by " bloody Bonner," or by Mar)^ herself in the early part of her reign ; but by Philip of Spain, and by those Spanish ecclesiastics who swarmed about the English court after Mary had been married to him, and by Mary from that time only when she had come under his influence.* And the Marian prosecution of Zuinglians was set before Englishmen for perpetual generations by one who was himself a Zuinglian, and who, while a quasi- religious zeal was still hot in the breasts of the English public generally, stirred up the lire by the publication of the history. In 1563 John * See Blunt, Reformation of the Church of England, part ii. pp. 226, &c. 6 66 JOHN FOXE. Foxe published the first Eiighsh edition of his Ads and Monuiiienis. Foxe was born at Boston, in Lincohisliire, in the year 1517; and was sent by friends to Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1533. Here Alexander Nowell was appointed to be his chamber-fellow, according to the custom which then prevailed with regard to the poorer students. He was elected fellow of Magdalene in 1543, but expelled that college in 1545 for heres}''. Afterwards he appears to have been tutor in two families; in the family of the Earl of Surrey, after the earl had been attainted, and in that of Sir Thomas Lucy. After being in danger of his life on account of his theological opinions, he was, after King Edward's accession, ordained deacon by Bishop Eidley of London in 1550, and spent some time at Eeigate, in Surrey, teaching his pupils, preaching, and writing. After the accession of Queen Mary he went first to Frankfort, and then to Basle. Before, however, he left England the first part of his Acts and Monuments was published in Latin at Strasburg. This was in 1554. In the quarrel at Frankfort as to what form of service should be used by the English exiles in the church wherein they were allowed by the Pro- testant authorities to meet Foxe took a part. In their petition to the authorities the exiles had said nothing about the Book of Common Prayer, but had only asked permission to worship after their own manner ; and the terms accorded to them by the authorities were that they should not dissent from the French Protestants, either in doctrines or JOHN FOXF. 67 in ceremonies, but subscribe to the French con- fession of faith. To these terms the exiles agreed. In due time they elected for their minister John Knox, afterwards so celebrated, and who subse- quently seceded from them. And " though the principal reason adduced by the Frankfort exiles against the use of the Liturgy was the disapproba- tion of the magistrates, Whittingham and his party, when those magistrates subsequently autho- rised the book, refused to accept it."* And not only so, but "they resolved to admit none of their brethren who might afterwards come to Frankfort to their communion unless they should subscribe and conform to the rules and discipline of this novel worship, "f These were the circumstances under which Foxe arrived at Frankfort. Shortly after his arrival, he, along with Knox, Whitting- ham, and two others, was requested to prepare an order of worship, and did so. The form drawn up was not finally accepted by the congregation ; but Foxe thus showed how much he cared even for the Second Prayer Book of King Edward, Zuinglianised as it was. Soon after Queen Elizabeth's accession Foxe returned to England, and was employed by Bishop Parkhurst of Norwich in preaching ; conforming to the Prayer Book, but eager to see it altered, and (as we must infer) in the Zuinglian direction. His deep poverty was relieved by his being ap- pointed to a prebend in Salisbury Cathedral, and afterguards to a prebend or canonry at Durham : • Life of Foxe, prefixed to Acts and Monuments, vol. i. p. 38. ^ lb. 6—2 68 FOXE's ZU1NGLIANIS.M. but it does not appear that he ever proceeded in holy orders beyond the diaconate. Besides showing his Zuinglianism in those passages of his life on the continent which we have already remarked, Foxe expresses his opinions plainl}^ enough in his printed works. In one of what we may call the prolegomena to his Acts and Monuments he says that " albeit as no causes " of our salvation, " but either as sacra- ments or seals of faith, or as declarations thereof, or else as fruits and effects following the same, so baptism, and the supper of the Lord, are as testi- monies and proofs, that by our faith only in Christ are we justified ; that as our bodies are washed by water, and our life nourished by bread- and wine, so, by the blood of Christ our sins are purged, and the hunger of our souls relieved by the death of His Body." (How any hunger can be relieved by any mere death Foxe does not explain : we should be curious, if it were worth while, to learn how he would explain the tenth verse of the fifth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Eomans : " If, when we were enemies, we we?'e reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved hy His life,'' — of which text the Geneva Bible gives no explanation.) — So again, in Foxe's account of Eoman corruptions and errors as to the Sacraments, with which account he com- mences his Acts and Monumenis : " First, they err falsely in the number ; for where the institution of Christ ordaineth but two, they . . . have added to the prescription of the Lord's word, five other Sacraments. foxe's zuinglianism. 69 " Secondl3^ In tlie cause final tliey err ; for where tlie word hath ordained those Sacraments to excite our faith, and to give us admonitions of spiritual things, tliey, contrariwise, do teach that the Sacraments do not only stir up faith, but also that they avail and are effectual without faith. . . .* "Thirdly. In the operation and effect of the Sacraments they fail, where they, contrary to the Scriptures, do say that they give grace, and not only do signify, but also contain and exhibit that which they signify ; to wit, grace and salvation. " Fourthly. They err also in application, apply- ing their sacraments both to the quick and the dead ; to them also that be absent ; to remission of sins, and releasing from pain, &c." What is worse, Foxe allows himself to use ex- pressions which he must have known that his readers would have understood (if they understood them at all) in a wrong sense ; thus, presently after the passage just cited^ he charges the Eomanists with applying the words of baptism to water ; by which he means merely that in blessing water they invoke the Holy Trinity. And if the old English rite of blessing bells was similar to that prescribed in the Rituale Romanum, then in describing it he has told a simple falsehood, say- ing, that " where the use of the old Church of * It will be noticed bow Foxe bere asserts not only tbat faitb is necessary for receiving a sacrament aright, and so as to be bene- fitted by means of it, but tbat it is faitb in tbe receiver wbich makes tbe sacrament a means to bim of Divine grace ; wbicb last assertion is not only contrary to tbe Catbolic Faitb, but absurd in itself. 70 foxe's "acts and monuments." Rome was only to baptize men, tliey baptize also bells ; " for it is clear that the mere sprinkling of a bell with holy water could not be compared with the ministration of baptism to a human being, unless the sacred formula were used, " I baptize thee," &c. The work itself (the first English edition whereof appeared, after great expectation on the part of the English public, in one volume folio, March 20th, 1563) is itself a monument of Uterary diligence. Foxe took pains to give in it as many original documents as possible ; and in many cases, where he has only verbal report for his authority, he says as much to his readers. But Foxe's partisanship was both vehement and bitter. In one case at least he allows himself to heighten a description by a circumstance which was physically impossible, narrating of Lambert, who was burnt for Zuinglian heresy by order of Henry VIII. , that " he, lifting up such hands as he had, and his fingers ends flaming with fire, cried unto the people, in these words, ' None but Christ ; none but Christ.' "* Grindal writes of him that, with respect to the examina- tions of Archdeacon Philpot, Foxe had consulted him as to whether they should be doctored or not; and that by his counsel they were doctored accordingly. This disposes us to accept as true the charge brought against Foxe by a modern critic, and which, for the wickedness of it, we had hoped might prove erroneous ; the charge of having in Acts and Monuments, vol. v. p. 236. foxe's "acts and monuments." 71 one place actually interpolated his own words into a document which ho professes to quote, and for the purpose of giving some ancient celebrity a blackness of character which the person in question would not otherwise have had.* Such interpola- tions might be made in Foxe's time, and never detected until long afterwards, owing to the lack of means ; there having been such wholesale destruction of books, at first under Henry VIII., when the monasteries were dissolved and their property confiscated, and afterwards under the Protestant government of Edward VI. Moreover, Foxe's own personal estimates of character gave him a bias in interpreting facts which had a bear- ing on questions of character. Thus he can never see anything good either in "bloody Bonner" or in " wily Winchester." In narrating Bonner's declara- tion made by Chedsey at St. Paul's Cross, denying the imputation of cruelt}^ Foxe says that this was a mere pretence on Bonner's part ; but in proof thereof cites no more than a commission issued by him to the Archdeacon of Essex and two other priests, authorising them to make inquiry for heretics, and proceed against them according to law. Nor is Foxe guiltless of wilful misrepresen- tation of afterwards admitted facts. In one part of his history f he announces " the martyrdom of a young lad of eight years old, scourged to death in * I have not been able to find the charge in question, or the passage in Foxe to which it refers. The charge was brought, how- ever, I believe, in the Union Review. I saw the passage from the ancient document quoted at length, and likewise Foxe's quotation of it, with the interpolations marked. t Vol. viii. p. 510. 72 FOXE'S " ACTS AND MONUMENTS." Bishop Bonner's house in London." It appears, however, by the narrative ensuing, that the child in question came to see his father, John Fetty, then in the Lolhird's Tower * for heresy ; that on asking for his father lie was told by a chaplain that his father was a heretic ; that in reply the urchin charged the chaplain with being a heretic himself, and having "Balaam's mark" (whatever that was); that he was thereupon taken into the Bishop's palace and severely flogged ; that he was after- wards detained three- days, but on the expiration of that time released with his father ; and that he died within fourteen days after, " whether through this cruel scourging, or any other infirmity (says Foxe), / know not.'' In spite of all this, however, the upper house of the southern Convocation resolved, April 1571, that Foxe's Acts and Monuments should be placed in the churches, and in the houses of bishops, arch- deacons and some others, for general reading. This resolution never acquired canonical authority, but it was nevertheless acted upon, until (probably) the time of Archbishop Laud.f Foxe died in London, April 18th, 1587, and was buried under the chancel of Cripplegate Church. He affords but one example out of many, how, while the Government could not encourage nonconformity, and in fact, during the latter part * Is this auother instance of Foxe's veracity ? Is there a " Lollard's Tower," or was there ever one, in the palace of the Bishop of London ? t Life of Foxe, p. 114, prefixed to Townsend's edition of Acts and Monuments. PROTESTANTISM IN THE CHURCH. 73 of Queen Elizabeth's reign and onwards, persecuted Nonconformists with the most senseless persistency and cruelty, until, under Charles I., the tyranny of the Crown in this and other respects became no longer sufTerable, — yet nevertheless the doctrine recognised by the rulers was Protestant. In the times indeed of King Edward and Queen Elizabeth, Zuinglianism and Calvinism were the forms of teaching ordinarily given all over the Church : Zuinglianism, when the preacher was occupied with the nature and use of Sacraments, — Calvinism when he would expound the principles of God's action towards men : until at lenofth, as we shall see presently, Calvinism came to be in more repute than its sister-heresy Zuinglianism. Bishop Park- hurst of Norwich wished to God that all the English people would follow the Church of Zurich, as the most absolute pattern.* At Cambridge, the Divinity chairs were filled by men of Puritan principles, who might be turned out if they dis- obeyed the injunctions of the Crown, but who, if they had sufficient worldly prudence to con- form as far as was ordinarily deemed necessary, might be allowed to continue teaching Pro- testantism as long as they hved. And the like may be said of most of the authorities in the several colleges ; nor does Oxford seem to have been very far short of Cambridge in point of Protestantism, though Cambridge had herein the unenviable lead, Calvin's Institutes were read publicly in the Oxford Schools by appointment of • Neal, i. p. 325-6. 74 PROTESTANTISM IN THE CHURCH. the Convocation of tlie University, in 159G or tliereabouts :* and probably continued so ; for Laud, after lie became Archbishop, complained that at New College they were the chief subject in which candidates for fellowships were examined. Moreover the bishops themselves were all of them infected with the prevalent heresy ; so that when a young Puritan presented himself for ordination, he was not likely to be rejected on account of his religious opinions. In some cases those avIio occupied high positions ill the Universities made use of those positions, as long as they kept tliem, for teaching the 3'oung men under them how to carry out Puritan principles into practice ; as Sampson, Dean of Christchurcli ; Dr. Humphreys, President of Magdalene ; and the authorities in Trinity and St. John's Colleges in the University of Cambridge, with whose allowance there was, in 1565, a general refusal, in those colleges, to come to chapel in surplices. f The natural fruit of all this was more and more abundant as time went on. Nothing but Pro- testantism being taught from the pulpit, nothing but Protestantism could be learnt in the pews ; and the Protestantism, being more and more outspoken and uncompromising, must have made more and more way among the laity ; for Puritanism was poj)ular from its very com- mencement. The popularity of Protestant heresy in the time of Queen Elizabeth may be illus- trated by Shakespeare's applying the title of * Neal, i. p. 584. f Ibid., p. L>21. SPREAD OF PURITANISM. tO " martyr " to Sir Joliii Oldcastle. The character which now appears under the name of Sir John Falstaff passed oripinally under the name of Sir John Oklcastle. The alteration was made in deference to popular opinion, and to it the following passage refers in the Epilogue to the Second Part of AT;?// Henry IV. : " For any- thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions ; for Oldcastle died a mart}^-, and this is not the man." How great was the spread of the evil leaven we may judge by various statistics, given by Neal, of clerg3"men who were deprived, suspended, or otherwise punished, for nonconformity. For instance : Archbishop Whitgift is stated to have suspended, in 1583, about 238 clergymen in Xorfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, and Lincolnshire. Bishop Ajdmer of London is said to have suspended about thirty-eight clergymen in 1584. In 1586 more than 500 Puritan clergy had signed assent to the Book of Discipline.* In 1595 the London prisons had eighty-nine persons in them on account of religion — some Popish Eecusants, and the rest Protestant Nonconformists — of whom twenty-four had been committed by the Ecclesiastical Commis- sion, and the rest by the Council and the Bishops' Courts. f It appears also from a " survey " made in the beginning of the reign of James I. that the number of nonconforming clergy was then above 1 ,500. Bishop Eudd of St. David's described them, * Neal, i. p. 486. The Rook of Discipline was a set of Puritan canons, which it was sought to establish by private association. t Hid., p. 576. 76 SPREAD OF PURITANISM. in a speech delivered in Convocation in the year 1604, as beiiiir " divers liundreds in number."* In Archbishop l^ancroft's time more than 300 Puritan clergy were silenced or deprived. According to Dr. John Burges, Eector of Sutton Coldfield, the number of Puritan clergy in twenty-four counties of England was 754. Neal informs us, moreover, that Lady Bowes, in the reign of James I., gave £1,000 per annum for maintaining Nonconformist preachers in the north. f The histoiy, liowever, of the Eeformation times and of the post-Eeformation times affords a striking illustration of the force of the lex orandi as against the lex credendi when the two are in opposition. It had been the aim of the Edwardian government to turn the Ansjlican Church into a Zuinolian commune. With this view they had appointed Zuinglian teachers wherever they could ; and this policy was continued by Elizabeth. Moreover, the reforms of King Edward's da5^s would have altered the order of prayer and sacramental ministration so as to cause Catholic worship to cease ; but they found that such a course was for the time im- practicable : and thus, while the country was Hooded with heretical teaching from the pulpit, the form of worship still remained Catholic : definitely Catholic in some parts, and patient of a Catholic sense in most or all of the rest. And thus, through God's infinite mercy and grace, was preserved in the Church of England that element of true Catholicity which was destined to revive so wonderfully in the present century. * Neal; ii. p. 33. + Ibid., p. 149. CHAPTER VI. Bancroft maintains the Divine Authority of Episcopacy. His Canons, Zuinylianism succeeded by Calvinism : probable Causes of this. Arminius : spread of his Opinions, arrested by Abbot. Ijaud. Overthrow of Monarchy and Episcopacy. The Restoration. Act of Uniformity : its Results. Continuance of Puritanism in the Church of England. " From all false doctrine, heresy, and schism . . . Good Lord deliver us." EiCHARD Bancroft appears to have been tlie first of the Eeformation prelates who enunciated any Catholic principles as opposed to Protestantism. The point for which he stood up was the Divine appointment of Episcopacy as opposed to Presby- terianism. Bancroft was born at Farnworth in Lancashire, in the year 1544. He had his education first in the Grammar-School there, and afterwards at Christ's College, Cambridge ; where, after taking his B.A. degree in 1556-7, he migrated to Jesus. He became chaplain to Bishop Cox of Ely in 1575 ; received various preferments, and preached at St. Paul's Cross, from 1 John iv. 1, his Survey of the Pretended Holy Discipline, in which he condemned the Puritan party for insubordination and avarice, and maintained the agreement of the Prayer Book with the traditions of the Catholic Church from the Apostles downwards, and the superiority of Episcopacy to Presbyterianism. Bancroft became Bishop of London in 1597. To the Convocation which assembled under him as President the Church owes that canon (among 78 CALVINISM. others) which enjoins subscription to the following three articles: (1) The Eoyal Supremacy, — (2) the agreement of the Prayer-Book with the Word of God, along with a promise to use it and no other book in conducting public prayer and ministering Sacraments, — and (3) the agreement of the Thirty-nine Articles with God's Word. On his elevation to the primacy, which took place in December, 1604, he lost no time in enforcing this canon ; and those beneficed clergy who refused to subscribe were deprived ; and in the case of those who would neither subscribe to the three articles of the canon, nor promise conformity to the Prayer Book, the deprivation took place at once. It is now time to notice a change which had taken place in respect of the doctrine popularly taught and received in the Church of England. If Zuinglianism had had the upper hand in the Church under King Edward VL, Calvinism had the upper hand in the Cliurch under Queen Eliza- beth. Calvinism had indeed with Zuinglianism a great deal in common. In both systems the Church's sacramental system was denied ; in both much account was professedly made of Divine grace, to the depreciation of human action. But the Cal- viuistic view of sacraments was more religious, and so, less opposed to the Catholic doctrine than was the Zuinglian view. And Calvin's doctrine of ])redestination had been anticipated to a certain extent by St. Augustine of Hippo : besides which, his doctrine of reprobation followed logically on that of predestination, as stated by him. And even Catholic divines do not seem to have been CAUSE OF ITS SPREAD IN ENGLAND. 79 aware of the proper ground for combating the Calvinistic dogma of reprobation ; which ground is, as we take it, the truth that God elects some persons for the purpose, not of condemning the rest, but of blessing them. Thus it came to pass that some of Calvin's principles could find place in the theology of sundry eminent divines who knew better than to press those principles to their logical conclusion. Such divines were Hooker, Bishop Andrews, Bishop Davenant, and Fuller, the Church historian : and, i;i later times, Bishop Beveridge. What, however, it may be asked, was the cause of that transition which took place in the doctrinal views of English divines at this early period of the reformed Church of England ? The general history of Protestantism is one of decadence both spiritual and theological, and thus the natural course of things in the Cluirch of England would have been (as indeed it afterwards was, through a great part of the Church of England) to Socinianism rather than to Calvinism. How comes it that we have An- gUcan theology rising from the lower level to the higher one? The only answer to be given, we believe, to these questions is, that although Zuin- glianism was forced upon tlie Church of Eno-land by those in power, yet there was within her a strong element of Catholicism. The Church. had retained a true episcopate, and the valid administra- tion of those two Sacraments which are generally necessary to salvation ; and thus her spiritual life was preserved ; and the faithful ones among her children, in receiving the Sacraments thus 80 DECL1^'E OF CALVINISM. ministered to them, felt that those Sacraments must be more than what Zuinglian teachers gave them out to be. And thus those wlio otherwise would have been mere Zuinglians adopted Calvinistic theology to a certain extent as a kind of compro- mise ; and their acceptance of one Calvinistic dogma prepared the \tay for their acceptance of another. Calvinism, however, was not to have its way undisputed and unchecked. Shortly after James I. had come to the tlu'one of England, James Van Ilarmin, commonly known as Arminius, became, in Holland, the leader of the party called after him ; and tlie effect of liis teaching was such that although, so far as doctrine was concerned. King James was inclined to Calvinism, yet Calvinism in the Church of England began to decline ; nor did the proceedings at Dort operate at all towards checking the decline, although King James sent Bishop Carl- ton of LlandafT, Dr. Samuel Ward, Master of Sydney College, Cambridge, Dr. Davenant, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, and Dr. Goad, Prebendary of Canterbury,* to attend the Synod there, on pre- tence, apparently, of representing the Church of England, and although the decrees which were passed were accepted by those divines as well as b}^ the foreign Calvinists, a better move in the interests of the decaying heresy was the ap- * Dr. Hall, Dean of Worcester, and afterwards Bishop of Norwicli, liad been appointed to attend at Dort ; but he not being being able to bear the climate, Dr. Goad attended instead of him. ])r. Davenant, tliough he professed belief of Universal Redemption,, yet finally ac- cepted the decrees which were passed by the Dort divines. GEORGE ABBOT. 81 pointmsnt, in IGll, of George Abbot, Bisliop of Coventry and Lichfield, to the primacy, in succes- sion to Bancroft : for Abbot, while going in for the episcopal form of church government, yet preached, and both ably and popularly, some at least of the doctrines of Calvinism, and was, while at Oxford, the determined and persistent opponent of a young man whose lectures in the same Uni- versity were already beginning, under God, to quicken the dormant Catholicity in the Church of England ; we mean William Laud. Abbot had been consecrated, in December, 1609, to the see of Coventry and Lichfield, whence he was translated to London in the following January, and in about fourteen months after that, to Canterbury ; having never been the incumbent of any parish. He died in 1633, having occupied the throne of St. Augustine twenty-two years ; and was succeeded by his great theological opponent, Dr. William Laud, whom he had . consecrated nearly twelve years before to the see of St. David's, and who Iiad since been translated to that of London. How Puritanism in religion, having made common cause with liberty in politics against Catholicism in the Church allied with illegal tyranny in the State, overthrew both Church and Crown, and made martyrs of both Primate and King, and prevailed until the happy restoration of the Monarchy and the Hierarchy in the year 1660, is well known to every school-boy. The restora- tion took place ; the nation went mad with joy at having the King once more upon his throne and the old constitutional government in Church and 82 ACT OF UNIFORMITY. State once more in operation. And as liberty, since become rebellion, had identified itself with Puritanism, Puritanism was now regarded as identical with rebellion ; and was, through the passing of the Act of Uniformity, exterminated from the Church of England as utterly as could be ; at least, so far as regarded public profession. The Act of Uniformity established the Book of Common Prayer in its present form (save as re- gards the Lectionary) as the law of the land con- cerning divine worship and sacramental and ritual ministration. It ordered that every person hold- ing any ecclesiastical benefice or promotion should, upon some Sunday before the feast of St. Bar- tholomew (August 24th) in the year 1662, read in his church or chapel the Morning and Evening Prayer according to the Prayer Book, and then declare his " unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed in and by" the same book : and that the like should be done by every person who should thereafter be put into any ecclesiastical benefice or promotion, within two months after his admission ; unless upon just cause or impediment, to be approved by the Ordinary ; in which case the aforesaid regula- tions were to be complied with before the expira- tion of one month after the removal of such cause or impediment. It was also enacted that every person in holy orders, every fellow of a college, every master of a hospital, and every schoolmaster, should, before St. Bartholomew's Day, declare it unlawful to take up arms upon any ]:)retence against tlie King, should deny the obligation of CONFOKMING PURITANS. 83 the Solemn League and Covenant, and should promise conformity " to the Liturgy of the Church of Kuijlii.d as it is now by law established; " and further, that every holder of an ecclesiastical benefice or promotion, who had not already been ordained by a bisliop, should be ordained priest or deacon before St. Bartholomew's Day ; and that no person should be capable of institution to a benefice, or should presume to consecrate and ad- minister the Lord's Supper, until he had been epis- copally ordained to the priesthood. With the provisions of this Act several hundred Puritans complied. The number of those who refused compliance is variously given : the highest estimate makes it 2,000 ; others make it 1,500. All these, how many or how few soever they were,, were deprived ; and thus was all public acknow- ledgment of Puritanism, whether that of Calvin or that of Zwingli, swept out of the Church of England at one stroke. Under these circumstances it is no breach of charity to suppose that some of those who in 1662 professed assent and consent did so falsely. And these, with the successive generations of their disciples (if indeed those could be called disciples whose distinctive teaching, like the distinctive doctrine of their teachers, was mainly negative), made up the material out of which, in a future generation, the Low-Church party was to be formed, through the operation, as we believe, of GOD THE HOLY GHOST upon various in- dividuals. The old Puritan tradition, however, was not 7—2 84 COISTINUANCE OF entirely killed. There was still the same hatred to whatever its entertainers might deem to be Popery or popish. It was remembered that Zuinn-lians had held the hi 100 RELIGIOUS PROFESSION. assume that the peasantry of 1789 were only about the same in character and habits as had been the peasantry of the previous half-century. Nor was there much religion anywhere, even in mere outward profession. " By tlie most decorous persons Sunday was treated as a day of pleasure. Ladies of the most correct life, like Mrs. Montagu, had their regular Sunday parties and Sunday con- certs, to which Hannah More was invited. The Court had their Sunday drawing-room ; tlie Speaker and tlie Cabinet on that day gave their public dinners."* In church, before the service commenced, bowing, smiling, and kissing hands to one anotlier was the regular thing among the congregation, with persons whose position in life might have led one to expect at least out- ward decorum. f This was as late as 1821. And Mr. Cecil describes liow, when he came to Cliob- ham in 1800, and was sitting in the church vestry before divine service, he was affected even to tears " on hearing the noise and uproar of the boys, and the people in the gallery talking aloud to each other.";}; Disturbance, too, was not con- * William Wilberforce, his Frie7ids and his Times, p. 110. t Christian Observer for 18:^1, p. 484. Swift's Argument to prove that the Abolition of Christianity in England may, as things noio tend, be Attended loith some Inconvenience, and perhaps not Produce those Many Good Effects proposed thereby was written in 1708. In tliis satire, in order to show that the church-buildings are not mis- applied, he asks, " V^^here are more appointments and rendezvouses of gallantry ? Where more care to appear in the foremost box, with greater advantage of dress ? Where more meetings for business ? Wliere more bargains driven of aU sorts .^ And where more con- veniences or incitements to sleep ? " \ Tforks of the Eev. Richard Cecil, vol. i. p. 31. RARE COMMUNICATING. 101 fined to the time before the service in church actually commenced ; it was often kept up all through the prayers by persons who deemed the service a mere unavoidable preliminary to the sermon, and Avho therefore did not care how late they came into the sacred building, or how much noise they made by opening and shutting their seat-doors.* Even religious people did not deem frequent communion desirable. Paley, in a sermon on dangers to the clerical character, thus expresses himself: "Every atten- tive Christian will have observed how much more powerfully he is affected by any form of worship which is uncommon, than with the familiar returns of his own religious offices." And then, in citing several examples to illustrate his meaning, he adds, "He will be sensible of the difference when he approaches, a few times in the year, the Sacra- ment of the Lord's Supper." CHAPTER Yin. Methodism : its two Branches, under Wesley and Whitfield. Romaine, the first Low-Church Leader in point of Time. The state of the Church of Enofland was as described in the preceding chapter, when that movement took its rise which is known as Metho- dism, and which ran in two channels, the Arminian under the Wesleys, and the Calvinistic, under Whitfield and Lady Huntingdon. Charles Wesley was ordained deacon in 1735. George Whitfield was ordained deacon, and preached his * See a letter in the Christian Observer for March, 1804, p. 142. 102 METHODISM. first sermon, in 1734 ,or 1735, being then under twenty-one years of age. In the year 1738, John Wesley, who had been ordained deacon as far back as 1725, experienced what he termed con- version. In 1714 the first London conference of Wesleyan preachers was held.* Meanwhile William Law's Serious Call was being read ; f of wliicli work we shall have to speak hereafter. The efforts lof the Wesleys probably prepared many for becoming members of the Low-Church party, independently of the work done by the Wesleys in founding and extending the society named after them. And various preachers who may be called Methodists (though the societies formed by them were independent of Wesley's) must have done somewhat with the same result, after the Low-Church movement commenced : such preachers were Thomas Adam of Wintring- ham, Samuel Walker of Truro, John Fletcher of Madeley, and Thomas Charles of Bala.J Whit- field's preaching must have done still more than that of the Wesleys for bringing people into the Low-Church party, partly because he formed no society, save the congregation which met in his " Tabernacle," and thus by far the greater number of those members of the Established Church who were converted through his preaching must have remained, for a time at least, in the Church's An earlier conference seems to have been held in the country in 1743. t The first edition was published in 1729. X Mr. Adam preached from 1724 to 1784. Mr. Walker, from 1746 to 1761. Mr. Fletcher, from 1760 to 1785. Mr. Charles, from 1778 to 1814. WILLIAM ROMAINE. 103 outward communion, — and partly because, while his leaching on the subject of Divine grace was Calvinistic, as had been the teaching of the Re- formers, Calvin and Zwingli, their masters, having agreed herein, — that of the Wesleys and their preachers was distinctly and avowedly Arminian. The first Low-Church leader in point of time would seem to have been the Eev. William Eomaine. lie was born at Hartlepool, in the county of Durham, September 25th, 1714. His father was one of those French Protestants who had fled to England on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; and followed in England the business of a corn dealer. He was upright, charitable, and pious, conformed to the Church of England, and was so strict a Sabbatarian as never to allow any of his family to go out on a Sunday, except to church. Young William was sent to the grammar school founded by the Eev. Bernard Gilpin at Houghton-le -Spring, and thence to Oxford, entering first at Hertford College and afterwards at Christ Church. He was or- dained deacon, probably after the September Ember-W'Cek, in the year 1737, at Hereford, by Bishop Egerton ; and then served as curate of Loe Trenchard, near Lydford, in Devonshire, and afterwards, apparently, at Epsom, in the diocese of Winchester. He received priest's orders from Bishop Hoadly, and then served the curacy of Banstead, in the same diocese. While in this last charge, he became acquainted with Sir Daniel Lambert, who in the year 1741, when he was Lord Mayor of London, made Mr. Eomaine his chaplain. 104 WILLIAM ROMAINE. Mr, Eomaine had thus the opportunity of preach- ing in St. Paul's Cathedral. On the 4th of March, 1739, he preached before the University of Oxford. The title of his sermon was "The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated, from his having made express mention of, and insisted so much on, the Doctrine of a Future State : whereby Mr. Warburton's attempt to prove the Divine Legation of Moses from the Omission of a Future State is proved to be absurd and destructive of all revelation." In the end of the year 1741 he preached again before the University, on " Future Eewards and Punishments proved to be the Sanctions of the Mosaic Dispensation." In 1747 he became known to English students of Hebrew as the editor of Marius de Calasio's Hebrew Concordance and Lexicon (the first volume of which being published in that year), though it must be added that a translation of Psalm Ixxxvii. in a sermon on the seventh verse of that Psahn does not set his Hebrew scholarship in a very favourable light : and, being then in London, was in the act of going to take his passage by sea to his native county, his trunk having been already sent on board the vessel, when a gentleman, who had known his father, but was a total stranger to Mr. Eomaine himself, offered him his interest for the lectureship, then vacant, of the united parishes of St. George's, Botolph Lane, and St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate. Mr. Eomaine consented to become a candidate, on the understanding that he was not to feel obliged to canvass in person, and was elected in 1748. In the year following he was HIS MINISTERIAL WORK. 105 elected to two other lectureships, both at St. Dunstan's in the West; the one endowed with £18 a year, the other supported by voluntary contributions only. After some years, however, the rector of the parish disputed Mr. Eomaine's right to the pulpit, and occupied it himself during the prayers, to prevent Mr. Eomaine's entrance. The end of this opposition was that Mr. Eomaine's right to the endowed lectureship alone was estab- lished by a decision of Lord Mansfield, in the Court of King's Bench, before which the matter had been brought. It was, however, ruled also by the same authority that 7 p.m. was a convenient time for Mr. Eomaine's fulfilment of his duties accordingly ; and thereupon the church was open to him at that hour ; but the churchwardens would neither open it a minute before, nor light it in winter when it was open ; so that Mr. Eomaine had often to say prayers and preach his lecture by the light of a single caudle, held by himself; and his hearers used to congregate outside the ciiurch till the door was opened for them. And this con- tinued until the Bishop of London (Dr. Terrick, who had himself held the same two lectureships at once) prevailed with the rector and church- wardens to change the hour from 7 to 6, to open the church at a convenient time beforehand, and to light it in winter. On the 1st of April, 1750, Mr. Eomaine under- took the duty of assistant morning preacher at St. George's, Hanover Square, and continued to discharge it until September 20th, 1755, when, owing (as we are told by his biographer, Mr. 106 ROMAINE, RECTOR OF BLACKFRIARS. Cadogan) to the popularity and plainness of his ministry, he was required by the rector to leave. Soon afterwards, however, he became curate and morning preacher at St. Olave's, Southwark. " Here " (we are told) " he received his friends, particularly serious candidates for orders, admit- ting them to his early breakfast." On leaving this curacy he became morning preaclier for nearly two years at St. Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield ; and then at a chapel which afterwards came into the hands of Dissenters : and finally became rector of Blackfriars in 1766. His feelings on entering upon this new charge are thus described by himself: "My friends are rejoicing all around me, and wishing me that joy which I cannot take. It is my Master's will, and I submit. He knows what is best both for His own glory and His people's good, and I am certain He makes no mistakes in either of these points ; but my head hangs down upon the occasion, through the awful apprehensions which I ever had of the care of souls. I am frightened to think of watch- ing over two or three thousand when it is work enough to watch over one. The plague of my own heart almost wearies me to death ; what can I do with so vast a number ? "* " Nor was he less attentive to the temporal than to the spiritual concerns of his situation. He found the parsonage-house wholly unfit for the residence of a pastor, it having been turned into warehouses, and being wholly out of repair. He • Life of the Rev. W. Romaine, prefixed to his •works, p. 20. HIS GOOD DEEDS. 107 took down the old premises, and built a handsome rectory-house close to the church for himself and his posterity. The church also, when he took possession of the living, was surrounded with a dead wall, and the avenues leading to it very narrow. His parishioners, with whom he lived from the first in peace and harmony, were pre- vailed upon to repair the church, and to erect a gallery at the west end of it for the accommoda- tion of his numerous hearers, to pull down the high wall that inclosed it, so as to give it light and air, and to make all the avenues to it wide and commodious ; by which means " (the biographer adds) "it is become one of the best places of worship in London. Mr. Romaine, who never asked any favour for himself, but always acknow- ledged the smallest, solicited his friends that attended the church to present the united parishes with a token of their gratitude. This request was cheerfully complied with, and the sum collected towards defraying the expenses of erecting the gallery and other improvements amounted to five hundred pounds."* An extract from a letter of his may here be given, affordim? as it does some insight into his inner life : " My dear brother in our precious Jesus — In the year 1756 a weekly hour of prayer was agreed upon by several religious clergy and laity, in order to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, till He should be pleased to put a stop to the calamities of that time. He did hear • •Life, p. 22. 108 romaine's daily life. us, glory to a prayer-hearing God, and He turned our supplications into praises. About that period it began to be laid very near my heart to pray earnestly and often for the prosperity of our Zion, for "which [ never fail to make intercession in all my addresses to the throne of grace. ]3ut once a week, on Friday, I have what is called the clergy's litany, in which, after general petitions for the outpouring of the Spirit upon all the ministers of our Church, I make mention by name of those of my fellow-labourers whom God has highly honoured in making them faithful and useful in the ministry. As I go over their names, recom- mending them to the care, and their people to the blessing, of our glorious Head, it is my custom to ask particularly for them such things as I know or hear they want."* It does not appear that Mr. Eomaine had any ideas of the ministerial work as extending beyond preaching and teaching in public and private. But he seems to have been very diligent in his office as far as he understood it. When at home, his hour of breakfast was 6 ; he prayed with his family at 9 ; from 10 till 1 he usually visited the sick or his friends; at 1.30 he dined, and tlien retired to his study, or took a walk ; he supped at 7, conducted family worship again at 9, and went to bed at 10. After seven weeks' illness he departed to his rest July 26th, 1795, and was buried in the rectory vault of Blackfriars Church. * Life, p. 15. HIS OPINIONS. 109 As to Mr. Eoraaine'ti opinions,* they were what were called Evangelical ; and truly so, as distin- guished from the legal formalism tlien generally prevalent among professedly religious people : his gospel being the gospel of forgiveness through Christ's blood, and of forgiveness unto holiness and righteousness — but little or nothing more. What part Baptism had in his scheme of religion may be inferred from the fact that in a sermon on the words, " And Jesus said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature," and having, in the course of it to quote the first clause of the next verse, he quotes it thus: " He that believeth shall be saved ; " the words " and is baptized " being altogether omitted. On the other great Sacrament his Zuinglianism comes out ver}^ strongly in a little tract entitled llie Scripture doctrine of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper briefly stated. Here, having said, after the manner of the Protestant Eeformers, " The bread and wine, thus instituted, are signs to set before our senses what Christ's body and blood are to do to the soul" [one does not see why common bread and wine should not do this as well as those which have been consecrated] ; "from whence arose the necessitv of frivins; the same name to the sio-n as to the thin" sia^nified ; because, what the siocn does to the body, the thing signified does to the * Mr. Romaine's views on the mode of a sinner's acceptance witli God, as those views were understood and adopted by Mr. Grimsliawe, will be noticed farther on. Wilberforce, in his private Diary, notices Mr. Newton as having " owned that Romaine had made many anti- nomians." — Life of Wilberforce, vol. ii. p. 136. no ROMAINE. HENRY VENN THE ELDER. spul " [how the necessity follows hereon is not clear]; and having said, further, "The bread and wine are not only signs that there is spiritual life in Christ, but also as under a seal they convey it" (which last passage, taken by itself, would bear an orthodox sense); he proceeds thus: "The bread and wine are not signs to all receivers, but signs only to the faithful." We should not omit to mention that as in the early part of his ministry Mr. Eomaine received much opposition, as indeed we have seen ; so opposition seems to have been the rule in his experience generally. At one time he had the unhappy Dr. Dodd for one of his friends and admirers ; but after that unhappy man had begun to follow evil courses, he intimated to Mr. Eomaine that lie should be glad to see him at his house, but hoped not to be acknowledged by him if they should happen to meet in public company. If, however, we are asked who the chief pro- ffenitor of the Low-Church movement was, we can name no other than the Eev. Henry Venn the elder. CHAPTEE IX. Henry Venn the elder. Law's Serious Call. Venn's Ministerial Work. Iluddersfield. Complete Duty of Man. Yelling. Venn's Religious System and Practice. Henry Venn, born on the 2nd of March, 1724, at Barnes, in Surrey, was grandson on the mother's side to Richard Ashton, Esq., who, with Lord Preston and a gentleman named Elliot, was appre- hended in an attempt to convey certain treason. HENRY VENN THE ELDER. . Ill able correspondence to the ex-king James II. ; the only one of the three associates, as Lord Macaiilay tells us, who behaved on that occasion •with manly firmness. He was brought to trial for high treason, found guilty, and executed. Henry Venn, his descendant, had in his early age strong feelinofs and fj^reat vehemence of character. He would not come to a gentleman who had called upon his father ; and alleged as his reason that the gentleman was an Arian. He fought the son of a Nonconformist neighbour whenever he met him. On one occasion, hearing his elder brother very highly commended for some Latin exercises, his jealousy threw him into a fit. His school instruction was carried on first at Mortlake, then by Mr. Crofts of Fulham, then by the Eev. Mr. Catcott of Bristol, whose stern discipline was actually a recommendation in the eyes of young Venn ; and lastly, by the Eev. Dr. Pitman of Market Street, Herts. At the age of seventeen he went to Jesus College, Cambridcre. Here, in a large circle of friends, he was nevertheless very silent when in company ; having laid down a rule for himself to be acquainted with those alone from whom he could gain some improvement. "In the year 1745 he took the degree of B.A. In 1747 he was appointed by Dr. Battle .... to one of the University Scholarships," which the doctor had just founded, and the nomination to which, during his own life, he reserved to himself; and "in June, the same year, he was ordained deacon by Bishop Gibson, in the chapel of Fulham Palace, without a title, from the respect which the Bishop bore to ]12 Venn's first religious convictions. his father's memory. In 1749 he became M.A. ; previouspy] to which he had been elected Fellow of Queens' College, chiefly through the recommen- dation of Mr. Owen Manning, the tutor of Queens' who had formed an intimate friendship with him." "Hitherto," his son continues, "religion had made no particular impression on his mind. He was moral and decent in his conduct, regular in his attendance on public worship, and had accus- tomed himself chiefly to read books of divinity after he had taken his degree of B.A. ; but he was a stranger to that influence of religion which gives it a predominancy in the mind over everything besides, and to those views of the benefits and excellence of the Christian dispensation which render the Saviour the object of the highest afTec- tion and regard. He possessed, however, high ideas of clerical decorum, and scrupulous conscien- tiousness in doing faithfully whatever he was convinced to be right. . . . " The first considerable religious impression made upon his mind arose from an expression in the form of prayer which he had been daily accus- tomed to use, like the world in general, without paying much attention to it : ' That I may live to the glory of Thy Name ! ' The thought powerfully struck his mind : ' What is it, to live to the glory of God ? Do I Uve as I pray ? What course of life ought I to pursue to glorify God ? ' After much reflection on this subject, he came to this conclusion — That to live to the glory of God required that he should live a life of piety and religion, in a degree in which he was conscious he Venn's religious habits. 113 had not yet lived ; that he ought to be more strict in prayer, more dihgent in reading tlie Scripture and pious books, more generally holy in his con- duct; and, seeing the reasonableness of such a course of life, Jiis uprightness again discovered itself in immediately and steadily pursuing it. lie set apart stated seasons for meditation and prayer, turning his reading chiefly into a religious channel, and kept a strict account of the manner in wliich he spent his time and regulated his conduct. . . . "In this frame of mind, Law's Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, a book which has been tlie means of exciting many to a life of holiness, was particularly useful to him : he read it repeatedly, with peculiar interest and advantage ; and im- mediatel}^ began, with great sincerity, to frame his life according to the Christian model there de- lineated. He kept a diary of the state of his mind; a practice from which he derived great benefit, though not exactly in the way he expected, for it chiefly made him better acquainted with his own deficiency. He also allotted the hours of the day, as far as was consistent with the necessary duties and employments of his station, to particular acts of meditation and devotion. He kept frecpient fasts ; and was accustomed often to take solitary walks, in which his soul was engaged in prayer and communion with God. "For about six months after he was elected Fellow of Queens', he served the curacy of Barton, near Cambridge; where he distributed religious tracts, and conversed with the poor in a manner that several of them affectionately remembered 9 114 VENN'S RELIGIOUS HABITS. WILLIAM LAW. after an interval of above thirty years. . . . In July, 1750, lie ceased to reside in college, and began to devote liiinself entirely to ministerial services ; accepting the curacy of Mr. Langley, who held the livings of St. Matthew, Friday Street, in London, and West Horsley, near Guildford, in Surrey."* In serving one or other of these churches Mr. Venn continued until 1754. At this time, his son tells us, Mr Venn used often, when riding upon the downs, to chant the Te Deum; and sought to carry out the plan of life sketched out by Mr. Law in his work on "Christian Perfection." Mr. Law was indeed now, we are assured, Mr. Venn's favourite author. And this therefore seems the fittest place for giving some account of that work by which Mr. Law's name is best known, and which, as we have already seen, had a great influence upon Mr. Venn, as well as upon other people : the Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. In the early chapters of that w^ork the author dwells on the conduct of many persons professing Christianity, but whose general practice was in the most palpable inconsistency with the principles of Christian religion as set forth in the New Testa- ment. He shows also that true devotion consists in the sanctification of our whole life. Then comes an account of what this sanctification of the whole life is, in certain particular classes of people ; with some considerations inciting to the practice there- of. Mr. Law next proposes certain rules for the * Memoir, py. 10, &c. 'law's "serious call." 115 practice of religion ; such as having stated times of prayer, early rising, the best kind of prayers to say, and the use of psalms, of which he recom- mends the chanting rather than the ordinary reading. Many of his rules are valuable, and all of them- worth consideration. Some, however, are of a questionable character; as when we read, "If we would feel motions of joy and delight in God, we must practise all the outward acts of it, and make our voices call upon our hearts."* No doubt, as Mr. Law observes presently after, "out- ward actions are necessary to support inward tempers," but we should like to know how any amount of outward action can beget a joy and delight which has previously had no existence at all. From inculcating devotion he proceeds to incul- cate the virtues on which it rests ; and first, humility. Hence he takes occasion to inveigh against worldliness, the chief nourisher of pride ; showing how incompatible it is with a truthful profession of Christianity. He inveighs also against the kind of education which in his time was most general, and which tended to breed pride and envy rather than Christian graces. But it is to be observed that although he describes educa- tion as, according to his view, it ought to be, he ignores the baptismal grace of membership with Christ and participation in His life. He would take young people in hand, not as possessing within themselves a divine life already, which, being rightly and diligently cherished, will of itself produce the * Chap. XV. (p. 185). 9—2 116 law's "serious call." fruits of holy tempers and good works ; but merely as disciples of a philosophy, according to the rules whereof they are to force themselves to act. The leaven of Protestant subjectivity, not to say selfishness, appears in that while recommending in- tercession, he dwells much on the tendency of such . a practice to increase our own virtues. In the last chapters Mr. Law enforces the neces- sity of daily self-examination, both as to abstinence from sin and as to performance of those special rules which he takes for granted every good man has proposed to himself for his own private observance. In short, the Serious Call may be described as an exhortation to practical Christianity, but grounded on defective principles. A crucial test of sound- ness of principle we believe to be the system on which young baptized children are to be educated ; and the radical defect of Mr. Law's system of education we have already remarked. Several passages in his work indicate that certain Catholic doctrines and practices had not been entirely swept out of the Church of England, but had been con- tinued both through the Reformation and through the Puritan ascendancy in the seventeenth century : thus he looks upon the Christian ministry as a company of priests* serving at the altar ; an altar, too, on which the Body of Christ is often placed. He looks upon the faithful departed as associated with us in prayer. These truths, however, do not appear to have with him any necessary connexion with one another ; nor indeed does it appear how * Beginning of Chap/iv. (p. 32). law's "serious call." 117 in his system they can have any connexion ; for they depend upon the Incarnation, and upon our union with the Incarnate throu^rh havinix been baptized into Him : and where these two truths are not both of them held in their Uving force, if any other Catholic doctrines, or Catholic practices, are taken up, they will be liable to fall out ; and pro- babl}^ will fall out sooner or later, not having any proper coherence with the rest of the doctrinal structure. Now, although in one place* Mr. Law speaks of baptism as introducing its recipients into a fellowship with the Son of God, and although he does speak of such as having been baptized into Christ's Eesurrection,'!' yet he does not realise the truth of the new birth as taking place in baptism. To be born again of the Spirit (which word he spells with a small 6-), and to be in Christ a new creature, are, according to him, impossibilities, while the conduct is not according to Scripture rules. J So he says,§ "All the sons of Adam are to go through a painful, sickly life, denjdng and mortifying their natural appetites and crucifying the lust of the flesh, in order to have a share in the atonement of our Saviour's death." It never occurs to him that God gave us shares therein in our bap- tism, and before we had done anything towards mor- tifying our appetites or crucifying the flesh at all. And indeed he has very inadequate ideas of God's grace generally. " The Book of Life " he supposes to have men's works recorded in it ! |1 The real objective Presence of the Lord in the • Page 99. t Page 40. X Page 38. § Page 315. 1| Pages 227-8. 118 law's religious system. Sacrament of the altar is with him barren of all practical results, save that of a general reverence : thus in one place* he speaks of prayer as the nearest approach to God, and the highest enjoy- ment of Him that we are capable of in this life. In one placef he seems to deny that Christ suffered in our stead. This however is more in appearance than in reality ; for in the same chapter he speaks of the necessity that Christ should suffer . for our salvation ; which clearly involves vicarious- ness in some sense or other. On the other hand he speaks of " atoning for " a certain way of life by a contrary behaviour. He concludes by adducing sundry reasons for devotion and general Christian practice. Such was the religious system inculcated by the honest non-juring deacon ; who was, at the early point of Mr. Venn's clerical career, his favourite author. He was indeed induced to think the worse of Mr. Law's competency for religious guidance, by meeting one day, in a newly arrived and eagerly desired publication of Mr. Law's, with an expression " wherein Mr. Law seemed to repre- sent the Blood of Christ as of no more avail, in procuring our salvation, than the excellence of His moral character." But the Serious Call must have prepared him in no small degree for becoming the first of a party whose first motto might have been " Heart-religion rather than form-religion." At the time whereof we now speak the question (we are told) often occurred to Mr. Venn in the • Chap. xiv. near the beginning. f Chap. xvii. Venn's ministerul labours. 119,- pulpit, " Why do you impose upon others a stan-. dard to which you are conscious of not having attained yourself?" and a more attentive study of the Scriptures than he had hitherto used led him to appreciate more fully the office of Christ, and of Christ alone, as our Saviour ; and that we are to rely for our justification before God, not upon anything which we may do, even though done by His grace ; but upon His merits and His atonement. And there followed naturally a great change both in Mr. Venn's inward feelings and in his public preaching. "In 1754," we read in Mr. Venn's biography, " he accepted the curacy of Clapham, in Surrey, where he resided five years ; officiating at the same time, during the week, in three different churches in London, where he held lectureships. His regu- lar duties consisted of a full service* at Clapham on the Sunday morning ; a sermon in the afternoon at St. Alban's, Wood Street ; and in the evening at St. Swithin's, London Stone. On Tuesday morning, a sermon at St. Swithin's ; on Wednesday morning, at seven o'clock, at St. Antholin's ; and on Thurs- day evening at Clapham." And in 1759 he ac- cepted tlie vicarage of Huddersfield, in Yorkshire. He accepted this living from desire of usefulness, although the income was under £100 per annum, and the collection of it, consisting chiefly of the smallest sums, being made in a way the most dis- * This was the common expression then to denote prayers followed by a sermon. We once heard a notice given in church that there would be " a j)erfect service " at such a time ; the meaning havinj been the same. 120 CHANGE IX VENN'S OPINIONS. agreeable to his feelings. And when consequently he felt his circumstances painfully straitened, he was sustained by the faith of his newly-married wife, who urged him not on any account to desert what was evidently his sphere of duty, but rather to cast himself upon Divine Providence, trusting to have all his wants supplied. And in doing this he was not disappointed. His religious views at this time underwent a further change. " He had hitherto " (says his son) "been a zealous Arminian, hostile to the principles of Calvinism, which he thought equally repugnant to reason and to Scripture ; but the experience he now had of the conception of his nature, of the frailty and weakness of man, of the insufficiency of his best endeavours, led him gradually to ascribe more to the grace of God, and less to the power and free-will of man." "This change of sentiment," it is added, " gave a tincture to his preaching ; leading him to exalt, in higher strains, the grace and love of God in Christ Jesus, and to speak less of the power and excellence of man. But his Calvinism stopped here." To quote his own words, " Though the doctrines of grace are clear to me, I am still no friend to high Calvinism. A false, libertine Calvinism stops up every avenue ; sin, the law, holiness, experience, are all nothing. Predestination cancels the necessity of any change, and dispenses at once with all duty." Mr. Venn speaks of having 1,400 families under his care when he went to Huddersfield. This, at the average of five souls to each family, gives a population of 7,000. Yet we do not remember to VENN AT HUDDERSFIELD. 121 have found in any of his letters the expression of any idea to the effect that this v^as too large a cliarge for one priest. Still we must not be hard upon him on that account ; the duties of a parish priest were not recognised in his time to the same extent to which they are recognised now. *' As soon as Mr. Venn began to preach at Hud- dersfield, the church became crowded to such an extent tliat many were not able to procure admis- sion." " My audience this afternoon," he writes, April 15, 1779, " could not be less than upwards of 3,000." It was, however, probably as an author no less than as a preacher that he attained his eminence in the English religious world. While at Clapham he had commenced The Complete Duty of Man, and in 1763 he published it. This work, intended to counteract the teaching of The Whole Duty of Man, was described by its author as " a system of doctrinal and practical Christianity." And in it appear the excellencies and some of the defects of Mr. Venn's views. Thus in the second chapter the foundation of all real religion is de- clared to be, not (as we should have deemed) a conviction of the being of God, and of the duty incumbent upon us His creatures of worshipping and obeying Him, but a clear, strong, and abiding conviction of the excellence of the soul. Else- where, faith in Christ is thus described : Under the heart-felt conviction of a proud, rebellious spirit against tlie Most High God, and of the guilt conse- quent thereupon, and in abhorrence of the same, it is a dependence upon Christ's Blood as the pro- pitiation which God Himself hath set forth for 122 Venn's RELIGIOUS system. our sin ;* and also a dependence upon Him as' given by God to purify men for Himself. f These statements, it v^dll be seen, are not guarded against the error of those whose dependence on Christ is merely intellectual and emotional, and does not lead them to seek Him in His sacraments and other ordinances. The foundation of our dependence on Christ for pardon is described as being certain properties or attributes in the Lord ; but nothing is said about our having been put into Him through baptism. The foundation of our dependence on Him for victory over sin is described as being merely the truth that in the time of His mortal flesh He healed diseases and raised the dead, and is able to "save men now : but not a syllable is breathed about our having His resurrection-life infused into us at our baptism. The practical chapters are very good as far as they go; but the acceptance of the book by the religious public as being " a system of doctrinal and practical Chris- tianity " must have done a large amount of harm, through leading to the disparagement of tliose parts of the Christian system (as that system is held by the Church of England) on which Mr. Venn in tliis work is almost entirely silent — we mean especially the Sacraments. In 1771, Mr. Venn's health having begun to decUne, he left Huddersfield, and went to Yelling, near Huntingdon, having been presented to that living by Lord Chief Baron S my the. In coming- there, Mr. Venn entered upon a sphere of influence • Chap. X. t Ih. VENN AT YELLING. 123 which, if it was contracted in some respects, was enlarged in others beyond what his sphere had been. Yelling is about twelve miles from Cam- bridge, and this proximity led to his acquaintance with numerous members of the University, and, among others, with the Rev. Charles Simeon, when the latter was commencing his clerical life. To- wards the forming of the characters of these it cannot be doubted but Mr. Venn's influence con- tributed ; and to this influence, therefore, under Divine grace, must be ascribed whatever these men did in the cause of practical Christianity. Mr. Venn continued to officiate at Yelling for about twenty years. His decease took place, June 24th, 1797, at Clapham, whither he had removed about six months previously, and of which parisli his son was rector. To what remarks we made just now, bearing upon Mr. Venn's religious system, we may now add a few more. Mr. Venn took, indeed, Mr. Law's system of ethics, but he enforced it, first in his own case and then in the case of those to whom he preached, by means more powerful than those adduced by Mr. Law. These means were, certain subjective impressions produced by certain particular considerations. These considerations were mainl)'- two : That every individual is natu- rally in a state of perdition, and that every in- dividual who believes in Christ is taken out of a state of perdition and put into a state of salvation. These considerations were, in the Low-Church system, connected with others — such as Christ's Death on the Cross ; His twofold nature, that is, 124 Venn's religious system, daily life. Godhead and Manhood united ; Predestination and Election; the truth that salvation is preceded by sanctification : and the allowing greater or less prominence to one or another of these considera- tions gave rise to those differences of opinion whereof the Low-Church party has ever had some amount : some Low-Churchmen teachinoc that the Lord died, in some sense or other, for all: some dwelling more on those secret counsels of God from whence result the predestination and election of individuals : some seeking to beget subjective religious impressions by forcible oratorical appeals, and so to effect personal holiness and righteous- ness indirectly, others enforcing the necessity of these by a teacliing which was distinctl}^ practical. With all this the sacramental system, and indeed the system of the Church of England in general, was quite inconsistent. But of the inconsistency Mr. Venn was totally unaware. During the whole course of Mr. Venn's clerical life, his general practice exemplified those religious principles which he had embraced in his heart. His evident earnestness, both in the prayer-desk and in the pulpit, was on one occasion the means of impressing one Socinian and converting another. He describes a day at Yelling in these terms : — '^ I am up, one of the first in the house, soon after five o'clock, and when prayer and reading the blessed Word is done, my daughters make their appearance, and I teach them till Mrs. Venn comes down, at half-past eight. Then family prayer begins, which is often very sweet, as my mother's maid, and my own servants, are all, I believe, born Venn's family life. 125 of God. The children begin to sing prettily, and our praises, I trii&t, are heard on High, From breakfast, we are all employed, till we ride out, in fine weather, two hours for health ; and after dinner employed again. At six, I have always one hour for solemn meditation and icalking in my house, till seven. We have then, sometimes, twenty, sometimes more or less, of the people, to whom I expound the Word of the Blessed God : , Our devotions end at eight ; we sup and go to rest at ten. On Sundays I am still enabled to speak six hours, at three different times." . . . . " On one occasion," we are told, " when he overheard a violent quarrel, in the kitchen, be- tween Euth and one of the other servants, he was as much shocked and distressed as if some great loss had befallen him. After speaking to the servants, in the most serious manner, on their sinful conduct, he told them, that family prayers, while such tempers were allowed, would be a mockery ; and that they must all humble themselves before God in private, before he could allow them to meet together for social worship. Accordingly, family- prayers were discontinued for a week, duriug which time Mr. V.'s deportment bespoke the deepest concern and humiliation ; and during two days of that week he remained in his study alone, engaged in fasting and prayer."* Whether this was exactly the best course to follow we will not pretend to judge ; we cite it as an evidence of the reality of Mr. Venn's rehgion. His entire disin- * History of Ruth Clark, cited in Venn's Life, p. 199. 126 Venn's disinterestedness. terestedncss is shown in a letter, thus : " I under- stand, by my wife, your most kind and generous intention towards us in your will. The legacy would be exceedingly acceptable ; and I can. assure you the person from whom it would come would greatly enhance the benefit .... But an in- surmountahle bar stands in the way, the love of Him to whom we are both indebted, not for a transient benefit, for silver or gold, but for an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for us .... To be, there- fore, a stumbling-block in the way of any that are seeking after Him — to give the least countenance to any that would be glad to bring his followers into contempt, and to call in question their sincere and disinterested attachment to him — would grieve me whilst in health, darken my mind in sickness, and load me with self-condemnation upon my bed of death. How it would also render all my exhorta- tions feeble, and make them accounted only pulpit declamations if, when I was pressing that solemn truth upon my people, ' Love not the world, neither the things in the world,' they could say, ' Our minister, however, was careful to secure the favour of his rich proselyte, and at length to gain sufficiently by her ! ' After the most mature deli- beration, therefore, it is our request, which we cannot permit you to refuse us, that you will not leave us any other token of your regard than something of little value more than it derives from the giver."* • Life, pp. 110, 111. DEFECTS IN HIS RELIGIOUS SYSTEM. 127 The exemplary character, however, of Mr. Venn's practice could not make up, practically, for the defects of his theological system. And those defects were great. He does indeed write to a friend that he is one of God's people by baptism ;* and he recognised the Incarnation (God manifest in the flesh) as " the centre of all the truths ; " but he little thou^^ht what all this involves. " The means of Grace," according to him, were " Secret Prayer — Study of the Bible— Public Worship — Hearing faithful preachers — Christian society, and much Eetiremeut : " not only Baptism, but Confir- mation, Holy Communion, Absolution and priestly Benediction, being now entirely ignored. The child of Christian parents is, in his view, " incap- able of being treated as spiritual ; " our Lord's words " these little ones which believe in Me " being apparently forgotten. His grandson speaks of him as having been " ever the most firm and efficient friend " (!) of the Church of England. He conformed to the Liturgy (as conformity was understood in his time) outwardly, and to the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, and Holy Communion (as far as his conformity went) with joy ; he strove (and successfully) to get his people to sing and respond ; but no idea of the Church's authority in religion seems to have crossed his mind ; the only authority to which he seems to have con- ceived that young converts should defer was the opinion of " old disciples and their own teachers, who have had so much more experience. "f Thus * Life, Y' 1B3. f Ih- p. 552. 128 ENXOURAGEMENT OF SCHISM. it is not surprising that when he left Huddersfield, and a vicar of different views succeeded, "the people were all squandered (= dispersed) away from the church,"* and a meeting-house was built at Highfield, in which the Prayer Book was not used. Mr. Venn gave his sanction and assis- tance to the building of this schism-house, and advised the people to attend it. When, however, Mr. Venn's successor was succeeded in his turn, and after no long time, by a vicar of Mr. Venn's views, comparatively few returned to the parish church, f In teaching these views Mr. Venn stood alone, or as good as alone, for many years. We do not know why he is called by Sir James Stephen the last of the Anglican Church's four great " Evange- lical" fathers. He died June 24th, 1797; while of the other three mentioned in this connection by Sir James, Joseph Milner died November loth, 1797 ; John Newton, December 21st, 1807, and Thomas Scott, April 23rd, 1821. Venn was vicar of Huddersfield in 1759 Jive years before John Newton was ordained, thirteen before Thomas Eobinson was ordained, sevefiteen before Eichard Cecil was ordained, and seventeen before Thomas Scott accepted evangelical views. With no branches of Methodists had he ever any connection • Life, p. 42. t lb. pp. 162-3. Mr. Ilerford stated, at a discussion in the Macclesfield Ruridecanal Conference on the suhject of Home Reunion, that Mr. Venn recommended to the people the Rev. W. Moorhouse, a dissent- ing preacher, and who continued so for fifty years. — Church Thnes, October 27th, 1882. PIOUS PERIOD. 129 at all : so that he may be truly designated as having been, under God, the father of the Low- Church movement in the Church of England. CHAPTER X. The Pious Period. John Newton. William Cowper. We designate by the above title the period extend- ing from the ordination of John Newton in 1764 till the formation of the " Church Missionary Society " in 1798, not for the purpose of implying that piety was not a characteristic of any other period in the history of the Low-Church party, but merely because piety in general was the chief character- istic of the period in question ; piety in the midst of ungodliness and carelessness. As we have observed before, the first motto of the party might have been " Heart-religion rather than form-religion." How this was exemplified in Mr. Venn the elder, we have already seen. We will now, in accordance with our proposed plan, give biographical notices of the other early leaders of the party, which will amply suffice to justify us in designating that period of time in which most of them lived as the Pious period. In speaking of the several individuals who will successively pass under our notice, we shall specify the chief events in their lives which have a bearing upon our present subject, and the sources to which, under God, they owed the reviving of their spiritual life ; and shall give our readers data for forming opinions as to the influence exercised by the 10 130 JOHN NEWTON'S EARLY LIFE. several individuals of wliom we speak, upon the Church of England. The first name which claims our attention is that of John Newton. John Newton was born July 24th, 1725. His father, says he, was a man of remarkably good sense and great knowledge of the world ; and took great care of his son's morals, though he could not supply to him the place of a mother, Mrs. Newton having died before young Newton was seven years of age. She was a Nonconformist of piety and religious experience. By reading Lord Shaftesbury's Characteristics when not seventeen years old, he was prepared for that career of ungodliness and vice on which he soon entered. But about the same time a bridle was provided, in the form of an attachment which became with young Newton an overruling passion, and was the means, eventually, of working his escape from ruin both of body and of soul; and, at the time, of altering his course of life entirely from what had been planned ; so that instead of going to Jamaica, to spend four or five years under a merchant of Liverpool, an intimate friend of liis father's, he sailed with (as would seem) another of his father's friends to Venice, returned, and was (owing to imprudence on his part) pressed on board a man of war, the Harwich. Here, through bad companionship, he became an avowed infidel ; and his conduct was answerable to his unbelief. He tells us himself that at this time his love to Mary Catlett was the only restraint from evil which he had remaining. At Madeira he was JOHN NEWTON. 131 exchanged into a ship bound for the West Coast of Africa ; rejoicing that he coukl then be as aban- doned as he pleased, without any control. In about six months he got his discharge, on condi- tion of entering the service of a white settler ; and in the hope that he might make his fortune in the same way in which white settlers of that class made theirs, viz., by purchasing slaves and other merchandise, and selling them again to the captains of ships. Thus he lived, until in about fifteen months from his landing in Africa he was fetched home in a vessel belonging to a friend of his father's. While cruising in this vessel, and still in a state of spiritual hardness, he fell in with Stanhope's translation of St. Thomas a Kempis ; and while he was reading it carelessly for the purpose of whiling away the time, the thought came of its own accord (so to say) into his mind, AYhat if these things should be true ? The next night he was awoke from a sound sleep by the breaking of a violent sea on board ; the ship, being very much out of repair, was in great danger ; his serious and anxious thoughts were rekindled ; and when the ship was at last freed from water, hope revived, and he began to pray. After great dangers and priva- tions, he landed in Ireland. At this time he had no friend to whom he could unburden his mind, or of whom he could ask advice on religious matters ; and as to books, he had only a New Testament, Stanhope's translation of St. Thomas k Kempis, and a volume of Bishop Beveridge's Sermons. He was, however, no longer an infidel : he was 10—2 , 132 NEWTON IN THE SLAVE-TRADE. sorry for his past life, and purposed an immediate reformation ; and in particular, lie gave up the habit of swearing, in which he had previously been so confirmed as to ba an inventor of new oaths. He attended the church service twice daily, and received the Holy Communion on the first oppor- tunity ; engaging himself, as he tells us, to be the Lord's for ever, and only His. And " upon the whole " (he adds), " though my views of the Gospel salvation were very indistinct, I experienced a peace and satisfacticm in the ordinance that day to which I had been hitherto a perfect stranger."* He made another voyage, and " to purchase slaves : " so little had his newly-acquired religious principles, although unquestionably real, done to- wards loosening his conscience from the bonds of an unchristian public opinion then unquestioned. At Charlestown, in North Carolina, he had two or three opportunities of hearing a Dissenting preacher named Smith, whom he afterwards be- lieved " to have been an excellent and powerful preacher of the Gospel," but did not then rightly understand. On February 1st, 1750, he married the object of his afiections ; and in the following August made again another slave-trading voyage ; and that time as commander of the ship, in which he " established public worship, according to the Liturgy, twice every Lord's day," officiating him- self in his crew of thirty persons. In the interval between this and his next voyage he became * Memoirs of the Rev. John Newton, edited by the Rev. E. Bickersteth, p. 72, Newton's " sea-sunday." 133 acquainted (as he tells us) with books which gave him a farther view of Christian doctrine and expe- rience, particularly Scougal's Life of God in the Soul of Man, Hervey's Meditations, a ad the Life of Colonel Gardiner. Writinsf to Mrs. Newton in the course of one voyage, he says : " I now mean to give you some account how I pass a sea-Sunday, when I am favoured with a tolerable frame of mind, and am enabled, by the grace of God, to obtain some degree of mastery over the incumbrances of the flesh and the world, which, in my best hours, are too prevalent with me. " My evening devotions, when opportunity per- mits, commence about six o'clock the week and month round, and I am sometimes engaged a full hour, or more, in prayer and praise, without any remarkable weariness or repetition. You furnish me with much subject for both. On a Saturday evening, in particular, I beg a blessing upon your Sunday, upon your public worship and retirement. And as I know that where you are, you are unavoidably exposed to trifling company, to whom all days are alike, I pray that you may be shielded from their evil influence. I have likewise to pray for others, for our friends, for many of them by name, and according to the knowledge that I have of their circumstances ; and I extend my petitions to the general state of the world, that they who are strangers to that Gospel in which I have found so much peace, may be brought to the knowledge of it, and that they who neglect and despise it, as I once did, may, like me, obtain mercy. When these 134 Newton's " sea-sunday." and other points are gone over, and my praises offered for our temporal and spiritual blessings, and likewise my repeated confessions of the sins of my childhood, youth, and advanced years, as they occur to my remembrance, you will not wonder that an hour is elapsed. The remainder of the evening I pass in ruminating on the mercies of the preceding week, the subject of my reading, or whatever I can gain useful self- conference from. " I usually rise at four on a Sunday morning. My first employ is to beg a blessing upon the day for us both ; for all who, like you, are preparing to wait upon God in public, and for all who, like myself, are for a time excluded from that privilege. To this succeeds a serious walk upon deck. Then I read two or three select chapters. At breakfast I eat and drink more than I talk, for I have no one here to join in such conversation as I should then choose. At the hour of your going to church, I attend you in my mind with another prayer ; and at eleven o'clock the ship's bell rings my own little congregation about me. To them I read the morn- ing service, according to the Liturgy. Then I walk the deck, and attend my observation, as we call it, that is, to know by the sun (if it shines) at noon the latitude the ship is in. Then comes dinner. In the afternoon I frequently take a nap for half an hour ; if not, I read or write in a book I keep for that purpose. I wait upon you again lo church in the afternoon, and convene my ship's compan}-, as in the morning. At four o'clock I drink tea, which recruits my spirits for the even- ing. Then another Scripture lesson, and a walk, JOHN NEWTON. 135 brings six o'clock, which, as I have told you, is my hour for stated prayer. I remember you then again, in the most particular manner, and in trust that you are still preserved in safety for me, I endeavour to praise the Lord for His goodness so long vouchsafed to us." Newton was about to make another voyage, but was taken with a fit, probably apoplectic ; owing to which he resigned the command of the vessel, and never went to sea again. This was in 1754. The greater part of the next year was spent in London and Kent. In London he made the acquaintance of Mr. Brewer, of Stepney (appa- rently an Independent preacher), through a Captain Clunie, a member of Mr. Brewer's con- gregation, and who had already given Mr. Newton " a general view of the state of religion, with the errors and controversies of the times." Soon after, upon Mr. Whitfield's return from America, he was introduced to him, and found his ministry exceedingly useful, according to his own account. In August the same year he received the appointment of tide-waiter at Liverpool. Writing with reference to a period a few years later, he says, " I have conversed at large among all parties without joining any : " * and speaks of having ac- quired some knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac ; and of having kept up a course of divinity reading, in the best authors that came to his hand, in English, Latin, and French, though who these authors were he does not tell us. About the same * Memoir, p. 117. 136 NEWTON'S ORDINATION. time liis mind was turned to the subject of the Christian ministry with reference to himself. He says, " My first thought w^as to join the dissenters, from a presumption that I could not honestly make the required subscriptions ; but Mr. C , in a conversation upon these points, moderated my scruples : and preferring the Established Church in some other respects, I accepted a title from him, some months afterwards, and solicited ordination from the late Archbishop of York : I need not tell you I met a refusal . . . . " * He attempted on two occasions to preach in Dissenters' meeting- houses. The first time he broke down in about ten minutes from commencing ; all ideas having for- saken his mind. The second time lie had written his sermon in full, but (apparently from nervous- ness) could not take his eyes off his MS., but read it through like a boy saying a lesson. Doubts however occurred to him " touching the Indepen- dent scheme " ; and, Lord Dartmouth (the patron of Olney) using his influence in Mr. Newton's favour, he was ordained deacon, April 29th, 1764, to the curacy of Olney, by the Bishop of Lincoln (Dr. Green) at Buckden : and was advanced to the priesthood by the same prelate, June 17th, in the same year. The Vicar of Olney, the Eev. Moses Brown, was non-resident. The stipend of the curacy was £60 a year. We transcribe here another passage, taken from * Memoir, p. 120. The archbishop here mentioned must have been either Archbishop Gilbert, wlio entered upon the see in 1757, or his successor, the lion. R. Hay Drummond, who succeeded him in 1761, and occupied the see till 1777. CURATE OF OLNEY. 137. a letter of Mr. Newton's, which was Avritten while he was at Oliiey, and characteristic of the times : " I think the congregations have been as large within this month past as they were any time last summer, though the weather is cold, and the roads indifferent : there is a probability that, when the spring advances, more will come than we shall be able to seat. This put me upon planning a large gallery, to be erected the whole length of the north side of the church, from the door to the chancel. I communicated my wish to Lord Dart- mouth, who was pleased to approve it, and to promise his assistance. A plan has been made — ■ and the estimate is eighty-five pounds — to have four rows of handsome pews, and an open seat behind. As I intend to have the best front seat for the accommodation of my friends, and as I think it well to set a good example to the parish, that they may be stirred up to give freely, I have myself promised to subscribe five guineas." * And to show the spirit in which he carried on his ministry — "I hope the Lord will lead and guide you to what is best. I only say, ' If you can believe you shall be established,' " However, I should tell you, that long after He had given me some liberty of speech, at Olney, in the midst of my own people, and before a full congregation, my mouth was stopped again. That is, my mind was so confused that I only talked nonsense ; and I thought it my duty to tell the people I could not preach, because the Lord sus- • Memoir, p. 141. 138 NEWTON AT OLNEY. pended His assistance. I therefore stopped arid told them so. When I had made this acknow- ledgment, I had liberty again, only I could net resume the subject I had been upon. But I spoke freely on what had happened, and perhaps it was one of our best opportunities. It was so to me. My pride was kept down, my mind perfectly com- posed, and I went home as easy as if the whole parish had admired my sermon."* Mr. Newton laboured at Olney for fifteen years ; and apparently without effecting much reform in the general morality of the place. In 1779 he was inducted to the rectory of St. Mary Woolnoth, London, on the presentation of John Thornton, Esq., who had bought the living expressly for the purpose of getting Mr. Newton into it.f In an address to his new parishioners, Mr. Newton speaks of having thought it his duty to take several steps which must have appeared to some of them, says he, " unnecessary and troublesome innovations." What these were, however, does not appear. Here may be transcribed Mr. Newton's account of the state of Anglican religion as it was then in London, from his point of view. " There are in the establishment .... but two gospel ministers who have churches of their own — Mr. Eomaine and myself. I believe you need not my informa- tion concernincf his abilities and success. He is an eminent preacher, and has crowded auditories. But we have about ten clergymen, who, either as * Memoir, p. 14.3. t Christian Observer for 1865, p. 333. RELIGION IN LONDON. 139 morning preachers or lecturers, preach cither on the Lord's day, or at different times of the week, in perhaps fifteen or sixteen churches. The Tabernacle and Tottenham Court Chapel are very large ; they are in the hands of Mr. Whitfield's trustees, and the Gospel is dispensed in them to many thousands of people, by a diversity of ministers, clergy, dissenters, or lay-preachers, who are, in general, lively, faithful, and acceptable men. There is likewise the Lock, and another chapel in Westminster ; the former served chiefly by Mr. De Coetlogon, the latter by Mr. Peckwell — both well attended ; as is likewise Lady Huntingdon's chapel, which will hold about two thousand, and is supplied by able ministers. There is also another, not so large, in the same connexion: Mr, Wesley has one large chapel, and several smaller ; and though they are Arminians, as we say, there are many ex- cellent Christians, and some good preachers, among them. There are likewise several preachers whom I may call Independent Methodists, of the Metho- dist stock, and something in the dissenting form, but who stand singl}", not being connected with any of the dissenting boards. I should suppose that the churches, chapels, &c., which are open on the Lord's day, for those whom the world calls Methodists, as distinct from dissenters, will contain thirty thousand people, and in general they are all crowded." * Being himself "of the most friendly and com- municative disposition, his house was open to * Memoir, pp. 190-1. 140 Newton's work in London. Christians of all ranks and denominations. Here like a father among his children, he used to enter- tain, encourage, and instruct his friends ; especially younger ministers, or candidates for the ministry. Here also the poor, the afflicted, and the tempted found an asylum and a sympathy which they could scarcely find, in an equal degree, anywhere besides." We do not find, indeed, that his own views of the nature of the Christian ministry ex- tended much further than the regarding of it as an institution for preaching. In this part of his duty, however, he was very diligent ; occupying the pulpit twice on Sunday and once in the week. And when, in his eighty-first year, it was sugges- ted to him by Mr. Cecil, whether his increased infirmities were not a reason why he should stop preaching : " I cannot stop," said he, raising his voice. " What ! shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak ? " As to his relations with Dissenters, we are told that " he considered the strong prejudices which often alienate Churchmen and Dissenters as arising more from education than from principle. But being himself both a clergyman and an incum- bent in the Church of England, he wished to be consistent. In public, therefore, he felt he could not act with some ministers, whom he thought truly good men, and to whom he cordially wished success in their endeavours.'"* If this account is strictly accurate, it seems impossible to avoid ascribing Mr. Newton's conduct to a mere regard ♦ Memoir, p. 323. CHURCHMANSHIP. " CARDIPHONIA." 141 for appearances. If he had cordially accepted the principles of the Church of England, then, though he might forbear to judge or forbid his dissenting brethren, yet he could not cordially wish them success : if, on the other hand, he believed that Dissenters were doing God's work in a way which God's Word allowed, he ought not to have shrunk from joining them in public, even though at the cost of his own credit for Churchmanship. We would not indeed judge the man, more especially on such a general count as that conveyed in the above sentence from his biography ; inconsistency is one of the commonest vices of fallen human nature in general. But we cannot avoid noticing the trait of character just remarked as indicating in Newton a certain amount of opposition between Low-Church principles and the principles of a thorough-going Churchman. He faded gradually away, and finally departed, December 21st, 1807 ; and was buried in a vault under the church of which he had been rector. Newton's influence, save in the circle of his per- sonal friends, and those who came to him for special pastoral ministration, was more that of a writer than that of a preacher. His own spiritual experiences admirably fitted him to guide those who had any share of the like experiences ; saving, of course, as far as his guidance might fail through unsound- ness in his theology. His Cardiphonia deals with subjective feelings and emotions, and the value of the volume of letters so entitled consists, as it has consisted from the first, in the descriptions therein of such feelings and emotions which pious 142 OLNEY HYMNS. WILLIAM COWPER. Calvinists have, and in which they share more or less with pious Christians of every denomination and party. It is the like cause which has en- deared to many that large part of the Olney Hljmns which is from the pen of Newton, in spite of the prosiness of Newton's rhyming com- positions in general, and the utter bathos of some, which occasionally becomes even ridiculous. And now that we mention the Olney Hymns, we call to mind that " the most popular poet of his generation " (as Cowpek was styled by Southey) must certainly have his name enrolled among the names of Low-Church leaders, inasmuch as he must have contributed, in no small degree, by his poems, to popularising the Low-Church movement among the educated classes. William Cowper, born November 15th (old style), 1731, at Great Berkhamstead in Hertfordshire, of which parish his father was rector, began, in 1776, his Progress of Error; which, with Error ^ Hope, Charity, Conversation, Retirement, and some smaller pieces, were published in one volume in 1782. Li 1785 he published The Task and Tirocinium. Li 1791 his translation of Homer came out. But it is to the original poems above-named, and to the small quota contributed by Cowper in or before 1776 to the Olney Hymn-book, that we go for a view of Cowper's sentiments in religion. Those poems and hymns were written in the interval between two attacks of a melancholy religious mania. The first of these attacks occurred in 1752 ; in consequence of it Cowper was placed under the medical care of Dr, Cotton, of St. Albans ; WILLIAM COWPER. 143 and then it was that he " first obtained a clear view of those sublime and animating doctrines which so distinguished and exalted his future strains." * This acquaintance with the Gospel-system as understood by Low-Church people commenced in 1763. We may surmise that it was connected, directly or indirectly, with the preaching of George Whitfield, whom Cowper celebrates under the name Leuconomus. But however that may be, it was helped forward by the poet's intercourse with Newton, which began in 1767, and for the sake of which Cowper removed to Olney, Newton being then curate in charge of that parish. From the second attack of his malady, which occurred in 1773, he was only relieved, April 25th, 1800, by death. Cowper's influence upon the Low-Church move- ment cannot have been in anywise inconsiderable. Between sixty and seventy of the Olney Hymns were written by him ; in fact Newton would not have written as many for that collection as he did, had not Cowper's powers of mind failed him after he had commenced his part of the work. Nor was hymn-writing the only way in which Cowper benefited his party. The doctrines which he believed, and in which his afflicted mind had found some relief from its depression, he set forth, and satirised the opponents of them in poems which, though not of the highest order, have nevertheless a deservedly great reputation. The reader, how- * Memoir of the Rev. John Newton, p. 157. 144 COWTER. WALKER OF TRURO. ever, will not find in any of Cowper's poems, so far as our memory serves us, any of those heresies which the Low-Church party held. Cowper was, it is true, a Calvinist, and some expressions in his poems may be interpreted in a Calvinistic sense ; but we cannot recall any to which we cannot con- ceive of St. Paul as assenting ; unless it be those which assume the Christian Sabbath to be Sunday, and those which speak of Christians as entering heavenly glory at death. The unw^holesomeness of his subjectivity also comes up in the lines com- mencing : " Sometimes a light surprises The Christian while he sings ; It is the Lord who rises With healing in His wings." * It did not occur to Cowper that what he was describing was a realisation, purely subjective, of the Lord as risen already some eighteen hundred years ago for all mankind. CHAPTER XL Pious Period continued. Samuel Walker of Truro. One of those who probably prepared the way in their own neighbourhood in no small degree for the spread of Low-Church religion was the Rev. Samuel Walker. He was born at Exeter, December 16th, 1714. His father was Robert Walker, Esq. ; his mother, Margaret, daughter of the Rev. Richard • Olney Hymns, Book iii. Hymn 48. WALKER OF TRURO. 145 Hall, Rector of St. Edmund and All Hallows in the aforesaid city. At eighteen years of age he went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. degree in 1737 ; in which year also he was ordained deacon, to the curacy of Dodescombe Leigh, near Exeter. In 1740 he took the vicarage of Lanivery, in Cornwall, to hold until a nephew of the patron came of age ; this took place in the summer of 1746, and Mr. Walker then undertook the curacy of Truro. Of his incumbent he afterwards wrote : " Whose natural defects and blameable timidity are such, that he has never done the least thing since I have been here ; " * and again in another place : " The most timid creature in the world, with whom I can only live on civil terms. He was vastly fearful he might incur some general reproach by having any hand in procuring me an assistant, as it is a main object with him that the world may know he does not patronise my proceedings. How- ever, if it might be done so that he should be no otherwise concerned in it than to give his consent, he would make no objection." f It may be well also to note the terms on which he had undertaken the curacy. " Before I came hither," he writes in the summer of 1759, " it was agreed between Mr. and me that I should serve the cure, and have one-half of the income for my maintenance. No sooner was I come hither, and saw the circum- stances of the livins;, than I found our agreement would not go down with the people ; and as the income rises in a manner altogether from voluntary * Sidney's Life of the Rev. S. Walker, p. 310. t lb. p. 23. 11 146 WALKER OF TRURO. donations, must be to our mutual detriment. I therefore proposed paying my principal a certain sum, instead of his half. This was consented to, but with reservation of liberty to return to the original agreement when he might see fit. This reserved right was insisted on at Christmas last ; by which means my income is not only consider- ably lessened, but rendered quite precarious." The incumbent, it appears, wished to make money out of the popularity of his curate. Of this period of Mr. Walker's life his biographer writes thus : " He had been ' at least a year ' in his curacy at Truro before he fell under ' any suspicion or uneasiness' about himself or his manner of preaching. The first impression that he was in error arose from reflection on a conver- sation between himself and a few of his parisli- ioners, on the subject o^ justifying and saving faith, to which he was judiciously led by a pious and able individual. This was Mr. Conon, master of the grammar-school at Truro, who, he said, was ' verily the first person he had ever met with truly possessed of the mind of Christ, and by whose means he became sensible that all was wrong within and without.' It was a singular incident which led to this good man's intimacy with his minister, Mr. Walker received a letter containing a sum of money, which the writer requested him to pay at the custom-house, as justly due to the revenue, for duty on some French wines he had used for his health. He had been unsuccessful in his attempts, in that age of smuggling on the coast, to obtain any on which custom had been paid, but WALKER OF TKUHO. 147 the virtuous conscience of the spiritual Christian remembered his Master's divine command. The letter contained an apology for troubling Mr, Walker, but stated that his high character would prevent all suspicion of a want of straightforward honesty in the transaction. Curious to know whether the same happy conscientiousness was manifest in all his doings, Mr. Walker sought his acquaintance, and the result was a respect ap- proaching to veneration for one who exhibited, in his daily habits, all the true influence of religion on a Christian's heart and actions. The attractions of his conversation and the purity of his life at length ripened intercourse into intimacy, and the result was the conversion of the minister, through the wise and prudent instrumentality of his pious friend." * His conversion, that is, from mere "historical notions" (as he calls them) of the leading doctrines of the Gospel, to the feeling and knowing those doctrines practically : " The corrup- tion of man's nature, his misery and helplessness, the satisfaction and sufficiency of Christ, the necessity of a renewed mind, the need of the work of the Spirit." Hitherto, he acknowledges, his heart had been in the world, and a desire of applause had been in a great measure his motive. Now, however, he preached the necessity of " repentance, faith, and the new birth," and against worldliness and for- mality; and in consequence he became the subject of vehement opposition, and was even insulted in • Life, pp. 8, 9. 11—2 148 WALKER OF TRURO. the pulpit. But at the same time his preaching was attended by large crowds ; " so that it was remarked, ' you might fire a cannon down every street in Truro in church-time, without the chance of killing a single human being.' " * And at last the play-house and the cock-pit were forsaken and given up to other purposes, and similar reforms extended to places in the neighbourhood through his instrumentality. f And so many came to inquire of him privately on matters of religion that he was obliged, for the purpose of seeing them, to rent two extra rooms.;]; Soon after his arrival at Truro he was presented to the vicarage of Talland. Although, however, the Bishop had given him leave of absence, yet, being unable to fulfil the duties of his vicarage in person, he resigned the preferment ; and this, when by so doing he brought himself into a state of com- parative poverty. He had several other offers of preferment, but declined them all, believing that God had called him to labour at Truro. In the same spirit of disinterestedness he abstained from a marriage which he might probably have contracted, and which seemed on most grounds highly desir- able ; the consideration which moved him in this matter being, " What would the world say of me ? Would they not imagine that the hope of obtaining such a prize influenced my profession of religion ? " " His holiness of life," says his biographer, " was the fruit of constant and deeply-spiritual com- munion with God. He was emphatically a man of » Life, p. 17. t lb. p. 1 8. t 75. p. 19. WALKER OF TRURO. 149 prayer, and reaped the rich fruits of that prevail- in o- exercise. He once mentioned to a friend who pressed the question earnestly, that he was some- times favoured in prayer with such rapturous views of the excellency of divine things, that he almost enjoyed a foretaste of heaven. He added, how- ever, with singular wisdom, ' I never mentioned this, for three reasons. First, it might have held out to my people a false standard of religion, causing them to substitute feeling for holiness ; secondly, it might have discouraged some pious and humble persons, who from various causes are destitute of such enjoyments ; and thirdly, it might have encouraged those presumptuous enthusiasts, whose arrogant pretensions I am always aiming to expose. * In 1754 Mr. Walker formed the persons awakened under his ministry, and who were willing to be so formed, into two societies ; one entirely of single men, the other of married couples and unmarried women. The objects of these societies were, the glorifying of God, the quickening and confirming the members in faith and holiness, and the making them useful to their neighbours. With these views Mr. Walker gave them advice and rules ; among which last was this : " That .... no person be admitted a member of this society, or allowed to continue such, who is a member of any other religious meeting, or follows any other preaching than that of the established ministry in this town. * Life, pp. 54, 55. 150 WALKER OF TRURO. That none be admitted members but such as are inhabitants here and communicants, and that no person at any time be introduced but at the requcit of the director,"* i.e., of Mr. Walker himself. The societies met weekly for devotion according to an office drawn up by Mr. Walker, and the reading of some instructive treatise ; which reading was followed by an exhortation to humility, heard by all present standing. There were also other meetings, of not less than five nor more than eio-ht : married with married, men with men, and women with women. This was for correction of faults, warning of dangers, relieving despondency, and stimulating to Christian progress. And at these meetings each member filled, in turn, the office o^ inquirer for the day, and had to elicit from the rest accounts of their experience and conduct. The rest of the time was filled up with religious conversation, and concluded with prayer by the " inquirer." At these lesser meetings the director was never present. He gave, however, written advice for the conduct of them ; and by all these means he sought to keep his people " in the generality clear from the peculiarities of Methodism."! Mr. Walker was regular in observing the days and seasons held sacred by the Church. Special courses of sermons were preached in Christmastide, Lent, Eastertide, and Whitsuntide. He also gave a course of lectures on the Daily and Occasional « Life, pp. 63, 64. t lb p. 156. WALKER OF TRURO. 151 Offices. He catechised publicly, dividing his catechumens into classes according to their ages, and preparing them for the public exercise by instruction given in a more private manner. But he does not seem to have realised the doctrine of the Presence in the Holy Eucharist, or the offering spiritually made to God in the celebration. He opposed the unscriptural peculiarities of Metho- dism, and wrote faithful brotherly counsel to John Wesley, with a view to keeping the main body of Wesley's disciples in tlie communion of the Church of England. But his theological system was Protestant rather than Catholic : and to this probably w^as owning, in part at least, the friend- ship which subsisted between him and some excellent Dissenters — Mr. Darracott, for instance, the Independent minister at Wellington. We must carefully avoid the mistake of judging such things after the same manner in which w^e should judge of the like happening in our own times : at a time when true religion of any kind is peculiarly small in amount, those w^ho practise it will neces- sarily be more attracted to one another, and causes of separation will be less powerfully felt, than when it is more generally prevalent. But though we do not condemn the men, we yet con- sider the closeness of their friendship as indicating a similarity in their theology. The unsatisfactoriness of this theology is evident from what is told us by Mr. Walker's biographer. One letter of Mr. Walker's to the Eev. Thomas Adam, dated October 11th, 1759, has in it this passage : " That I am a sinner, I certainly know ; 152 WALKER OF TRURO. that there is no hope for me but in the Redeemer, I am perfectly satisfied ; but I want to have the grounds of His salvation as they lie in the Scriptures made plain, to me, and its great truths confirmed more abundantly in my heart. When I stagger, it is because I am not sufficiently stedfast in my belief that these things are so, and ex- perience shows me that as belief of their reality is established on my mind, I am set proportionably above fear and above the world." * No one, we think, could write thus who realised the truth of that standing in Christ to which he was admitted in his Baptism, and the nature of that Baptism which was the means of his admission. Mr. Walker, like his Low-Church brethren generally, was like a man who has climbed to a right posi- tion b}^ means of a defective scaffolding, and whose security on that position depends partially upon that same defective scaffolding. The like must liave been the case with Mr. Talbot, of Kineton. Mr. Walker speaks of him as being only imperfectly delivered from the sense of sin.f The principal trait in Mr. Walker's personal religion appears to have been self-scrutiny. If Methodism means the practice of systematically analj^sing and testing the motions, actions, and experiences of one's own mind and spirit, with a view to making those motions, actions, and ex- periences as far as possible what they ought to be, then was Mr. Walker a Methodist in the true sense of the vrord, though he never joined any society ♦ Sidney's Life of Walker, p. 486. t lb. p. 487. HIS PERSONAL RELIGION. 153 which owned Wesley or Whitfield as its founder. In one of his last letters he writes thus : " I could say something to you also concerning the grow- ing health of my soul, as I trust. Indeed I can say, with great truth, mercy embraceth me on every side. I have found of late a more happy concurrence of self-abasing and Christ-glorifying views than ever before in my life. Never before could I say such bad things of myself, or good ones of Him. I have been led to justify the Lord in taking me from my people, and in stopping my mouth ; j'ea, even should He never allow me to open it more, and lay me quite aside as a vessel in which He has no pleasure. Views of this kind have, I believe, wrought more resignation in my spirit to God's way with me ; but I desire to remember that if He liideth His face I shall be troubled. Yet why should I think He will ? He could never see anything in me worthy of His least regard : yet He has never forsaken me from the day that He first caused me to know Him, and in the perilous time. Oh, blessed be God ! How did He stand by and save me ! x\ll is free grace ; even glory is tlie gift of God through Christ, and if we do not look on it as such, we shall never long after it ; and pray remark that, and examine your heart closely upon it, the rather because the hope of glory in you can be your only security against the world." * Mr. Walker was member of a clerical club, composed, apparently, of men like-minded with * lb. p. 525. 154 WALKER OF TRURO. THOMAS ROBINSON. himself; and here the influence of his piety must have been great. He published, too, sundry- sermons and other papers. Beyond his own imme- diate neighbourhood, however, his light does not seem to have shone, if we put out of sight those few friends at a distance whom he edified by his correspondence and occasional visits. Nor, indeed, could it well have been otherwise, considering that (save for a very short time only) Mr. Walker was nothing more than curate in sole charge of a small country town. He departed to his rest July 19th, 1761, at Blacklieath, and was buried in Lewisham churcliyard. CHAPTER XII. Pious Period continued. Thomas Robinson of Leicester. His Christian System. The Eev. Thomas Eobinson was born Ausfust 29th, 1749 (O.S.). He was the son of a respectable hosier of Wakefield in Yorkshire, and was sent to Wakefield Grammar-school, to which the master, the Eev. Mr. Atkinson, considered him a credit. This opinion was so far shared by the governors of the school that they gave him a double exhibition, and he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sizar, in October, 1768. About that time he was much affected by a dream which he had of the Day of Judgment ; and the impression, his biographer understood him to say, he never wholly lost. He had great pleasure in dancing and plays, but was withal very exemplary as a student. " On reading Robinson's early zeal. 155 Ilervey's Theron and A.'. p. 248. t Even that work by which his name is best known did not prevent the editor of Foxe's Acts and Monuments from noting, 192 scott's influence and virtues. but his Force of Truth Was the means of converting Henry Kirke White from Deism to Christianity ; and his Commentary has doubtless influenced thousands of sermons, having been studied by preachers for the sake of finding in it materials to be worked up in public discourses. In 1865 at least 50,000 copies had been sold in England, and twice that number in America.* To his various virtues the Eev. John Mayor, vicar of Shawbury, near Shrewsbury, thus bears witness : " I always highly respected his humility in searching for, and readiness in receiving, truth from such as were far inferior to him in every- thing ; his great sincerity, prudence, and uniform zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. He was cheerful, with gravity ; and never seemed to lose sight of the great business of life, to glorify God and edify his brethren, and all about him."f Mr. Wilberforce writes of him, " I well remember it was stated to me that if, in the course of the day, he had been betrayed into v^hat he deemed an improper degree of warmth, with a measure of humility rarely to be found in any man, much less in one who could not but be conscious of his own superior powers, he would mention the circumstance, and implore forgiveness of his infirmity in the evening devotions of the family. Were I required to specify tlie particular in 184:3, as a fact " alike disgraceful to the church and people, to the universities and to the government of England, that " there vras " neither a commentary on the Bible, nor an ecclesiastical history, in their own language, worthy of the character, the opulence, the learning, or the religion of the nation." (Vol. i. p. 163.) * Christian Observer for 1865, p. 372. t Life, p 118. scott's church principles. 1 93 Christian principles which shone most conspi- cuously in his character, I should mention his simplicity of intention, his disinterestedness, and liis generous contempt of this world's wealth in comparison with those heavenly treasures on which his heart was supremely set."* Mr. Scott's " church principles " seem to have been not behind those of his Low-Church contem- poraries in general. We have already remarked the honesty shown by him at an early period of his ministerial course, in his giving up hopes of preferment rather than subscribe articles which he did not believe. That he had afterwards some sincere appreciation of the prayers in the Prayer- book is evident from his use of them in his family- devotions, though at a still later period of his life he prayed extempore. His " church principles " are thus described by himself: "In my own judgment, after, I hope, much serious and im- partial consideration, I am a moderate episcopalian and a paedobaptist ; but am entirely willing my brethren should be, some Presbyterians and some Independents, and not extremely unwilling that some should be Baptists ; rejoicing that Christ is preached, and the essentials of true religion upheld, among persons of different sentiments, and only grieved that each one will be what he is, jure divino, and judge and condemn others." His Calvinism, however moderate, and not pushed to its logical conclusions, was Calvinism still ; he thus expresses himself in one place : " Mr. Hart, in * Life, pp. 419, 20. 14 194 SCOTT AND THE PRAYER-BOOK. his hymns, often represents faith as consisting in a belief that Christ died for me^ in particular ; which being no proposition of Scripture, can only be directly known by a new revelation.* In March, 1817, he says, "I have undertaken to publish a translation of the ' Articles of the Synod of Dort,' and all that respects them. I scarcely ever read more sound divinity. "f In one place he speaks of himself as having little objection to the Athanasian Creed. ;J; On the formula, " Eeceive the Holy Ghost," in the ordi- nation of priests and the consecration of bishops, he says, " How far the words ... is {sic) scriptural or warrantable may be worthy the con- sideration of all persons more immediatel}^ con- cerned in the important transactions referred to."§ As to baptism, he speaks of himself as " really believing that every human being will exist to eternal agfes, and that the children, at least of believers, dying before they are capable of com- mitting actual sin, have the benefit of the new covenant." II Whereas the Prayer-book, it will be remembered, speaks thus : " It is certain by God's Word that children [whether of believers or not, but] ivliich are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved." He had some idea of the Holy Communion as a real means of grace, for in his last illness, and shortly * Of the text Ileb. ii. 9, " that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man," Scott has uo explanation at all, except so far as regards the meaning of tlie phrase, "taste death," which he considers to mean merely " to die." t Life, p. 806. X lb. p. 337. § Christian Observer for 1868, p. 294. |1 Life, p. 267. SCOTT'S THEOLOGY. 195 before his death, he sent to his family just as they had assembled for worship, saying that he wished them " to meet in his room, and join with him in the Lord's Supper, as a means of grace, through which he might receive that consolation which he was seeking."* As might have been expected, the defective character of his theology appears in his Com- mentary. Thus, when the Lord tells Nicodemus that no one can see or enter into the kino-dom of o God unless, &c., Scott explains the Lord's words thus : '' That is, no one can understand the nature of true religion, become Christ's true disciple, or inherit the happiness of heaven." He continues, " When a child is born into the world, though no new matter is brought into existence, yet ' a new creature ' is produced ; and all its capacities, senses, and limbs are new, and suited to that new life on which it has entered. Thus, when the grace of God changes the sinner's heart, the person indeed is the same ; but he becomes a new man, possessed of new capacities, perceptions, affections, and dispositions, and is prepared to make a new use of all his organs, senses, and faculties : he enters, as ' a new creature,' into the spiritual world, and becomes capable of employ- ments and satisfactions to which he was before an utter stranger." The above extracts are from Scott's Commentary on John iii. His explanation of the fifth verse of that chapter is as follows : — " ' Except a man be * Life, p. 349. 14—2 196 scott's theology. born of water and of the Spirit,' except his heart be purified by that inward working of the Holy Spirit, of which water has been the constant emblem, ' he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' " And then he endeavours to supplement this by a note of Whitby's, in which it is re- marked, " Water is really present in the sacrament of baptism, as an outward sign and seal of the spiritual and divine energy, which inwardly cleanses." Ananias's words to Saul, Acts xxii. IG, are thus paraphrased : " Why should he doubt any longer, or hesitate to profess his faith by being baptized, .'IS an outward sign of the washing away of his sins, and the seal, to him, and to all true believers, of that blessino-, and of the rio'hteousness of faith, as circumcision had been to Abraham ? " On 1 Peter iii. 21, Scott remarks, "Christ is the true Ark. His Churcli is within the ark, and it therefore is safe ; but all without will be swept by the deluge of Divine vengeance into destruction. Into this ark men enter by faith ; this faith Jews and Gentiles professed, when by baptism they were admitted into the Christian Church : and thus the baptismal water formed as it were the sign of their safety." On 1 Corinthians xii. 13, we read, " All true Christians had been baptized into Christ's mystical body by the communication of His life-giving Spirit " though Scott afterwards remarks, on the latter part of the verse, "Here the Apostle doubtless alluded to the wine used in the Lord's Supper, as before to Baptism.' scott's theology. 197 111 Eomans v. 10, "His life" is explained to mean " His intercession, autliorit}^, and omnipotent grace." . , . "The //i?f??.(/ Lord "(Scott continnes) "would complete the purpose of liis dying love by saving all believers to the uttermost," &c. The passage in Jolm v. 27, "because He is the Son of Man," Scott does not explain at all, save by quoting a note from Campbell, to this effect : "Because it suits the ends of Divine wisdom, that the Judge, as well as the Saviour of men, should Himself be a man." John XX. 23, is thus explained: "He authorised them to declare the only method in which sin would be forgiven, and the character and experi- ence of those who actually were pardoned, or the contrary. So that to the end of time, the rules and evidences of absolution or condemnation whicli they laid down, and which are contained in their writings, infallibly hold good; and all decisions concerning the state of any man or body of men, in respect of acceptance with God, whether by preaching* absolution, or excommunication, or in any other way, are valid and ratified in heaven, provided they accord with the doctrine and rules of the Apostles ; but not otherwise." The language in John vi, 52-58, he speaks of as figurative. "The human nature of the Word who was made flesh, was doubtless intended. . His 'flesh and blood' became 'meat and drink,' when He gave His Body to be wounded and His Blood to be shed on the cross for our sins, and * In the edition wbicli we have before us there Is no comma here. 198 scott's theology. when His soul was made a sacrifice to the divine justice. 'The flesh and blood' of Christ, as separated by death, procured salvation for sinners ; and the expressions here employed refer to the intention, efficacy, and benefits of the sufferings of Christ .... Our food does not sustain us by being prejyaj^ed; but by being received, digested, and incorporated; so Christ does not give life to our souls merely by dying for us, or by being exhibited in the gospel ; but as received through faith, digested as it were in humble meditation, and converted into nutriment to hope, love, and other holy affections." After remarking that " the Lord's Supper was not at this time instituted," he proceeds, ".No doubt it is the general duty of all real Christians frequently to commemorate the death of Christ at His table; but this is merely the 'out- ward sign' of the blessing here intended." This shows how his subsequent words are to be under- stood, (or rather, how they are not to be under- stood,) "The flesh of Christ is meat indeed, or, truly, emphatically, and exclusively." He gives no other explanation of verse 55. Further on he says, "Our Lord, however, must be supposed to refer to that sacred ordinance, which He intended to appoint as the memorial of His body broken and His blood shed, for the life of our souls; and as the outward sign of the manner in which we 'feed on Him in our hearts by faith with thanks- giving ; ' as a public profession of our inwardly receiving His atonement, and as a pledge to all true believers of everlasting life." 1 Corinthians x. 16, is thus paraphrased : TENDENCIES TO DISSENT. 199 "Would tliey not allow that the cup of wine, which was used in the Lord's Supper to represent spiritual blessings, and as an act of praise and thanksgiving to God, after it had been blessed and set apart by prayer for that purpose, was a token and pledge of their 'communion of the blood of Christ,' as the atonement for sin, and of their being made joint partakers of it? And was not the bread which they broke a token of their participating of His Body ? " With no better theology than is indicated in the above extracts, it is no wonder that Mr. Scott should have entertained apprehensions as to the future of his parish. "Some of the inhabitants" (he writes) " appear more hopeful than they were, and the congregations, as well as several instances, I hope, of conversion, have been much more en- couraging than for several years last past ; but what will take place when I am removed or laid aside, I cannot say. Many will, I fear, turn Dissenters ; and our Dissenters are not of the best sort."* How far these apprehensions were or were not justified by the event, we have no means of ascertaining. The parish of Aston Sandford is but small, the population in 1882 having been under 100 ; so that we should not expect to find a meeting-house in it unless under peculiar circum- stances. In the adjoining parish of Haddenham, however, a Wesleyan meeting-house was erected the year after Mr. Scott's decease. The "Baptist" meeting was in existence already. f * Memoir, p. 319. i' This I have from private information kindly given. CHAPTER XV. Pious Period continued. Isaac Milner. Joseph Miluer's Histort/ of the Church of Christ, Isaac Milner was born in Leeds, January 11th, 1750. That his father, a Quaker,* " was a man of strong sense and extraordinary industry and self-denial, there is," says Miss Milner, Isaac's niece and biographer, "abundant evidence." His mother, too, *' was remarkable for her sound and vigorous understanding, for the active turn of her mind, and for a vein of shrewd humour." It was his father's desire that Isaac and his brothers should have an education witli which Providence had not blessed him; and Isaac was sent along with his elder brother Joseph to the Leeds Grammar School, then under the Eev. Mr. Moore. His father, however, dying before Isaac was eleven years old, his mother removed him, and set him to learn several branches of the woollen manufactory as an apprentice. At school, however, he had been well grounded both in Latin and in Greek, and the knowledge thus acquired he kept up, reading classical authors in his intervals of leisure. After a while his brother Joseph obtained his release from apprenticeship, and took him as usher into his school at Hull; where, with his brother's assistance, he made progress not only in classics but also in mathe- matics. In 1770 his brother sent him as a sizar to Queens' College, Cambridge. He took his B.A. * Christian Observer for 1864, p. 742. ISAAC MILXER. 201 degree in 1774, as Senior Wrangler of that year, " with the honourable distinction oHncomparabilis," and subsequently was first Smith's Prizeman. He was ordained deacon on the 17th December, 1775, in Trinity College Chapel, by the Bishop of Peter- borough, Dr. Hinchliffe, then Master of that College. In 1776 he was elected Fellow of Queens'; and in 1777 he took the degree of M.A., and was appointed tutor. In this same year, March 22nd, he was ordained priest, in Trinity College Chapel, by Bishop Hinchliffe, acting for the Bishop of Ely. In 1778 he was presented to the rectory of St. Botolph's, Cambridge. His acquaintance with Mr. Wilberforce had already begun, when a tour was arranged in which the two should be travelling companions on the continent. On a subsequent continental tour, made in 1785, they read the Greek Testament together, and thus by degrees Mr. Wilberforce imbibed (as he says) Mr. Milner's sentiments of religion. How Mr. Milner's sentiments on matters of religion came to be what they were, does not appear. While in his undergraduate course, he had refused to sign a petition, got up by some Fellows of Queens', against subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles ; standing, in this refusal, alone among his fellow-students. But we are told that about this time he studied both the Bible and the Fathers deeply and critically : and he himself in 1804 professes to have studied Jonathan Edwards's work with very great care.* * Life, p. 295. 202 ISAAC MILNER. In 1788 Mr. Milner (who had taken the degree of B.D. two years before) was elected President of his college ; which now became, under him, a regular nursery of young Low-Church preachers ; for to it were sent every year some young men who were being educated by a private society called " The EUand Society " (and probably by other similar societies), with a view to serving in the Church as clergymen. And in December, 1791, he was, owing to the interest of Bishop Pretyman of Lincoln, nominated to the Deanery of Carlisle. He received bis formal appointment January 30th, 1792 ; and was in due time installed by proxy. It does not seem to have ever occurred to him that the duties of this new office involved anything which he could not well perform along with his duties connected with the College and the Uni- versity ; not even when to these last were added, in 1798, those of the Lucasian Professor of Mathe- matics, and some years later those of Vice- Chancellor of the University. On being, however, appointed Dean of Carlisle, he resigned his Cam- bridge rectory of St. Botolph's. In the same year he took the degree of D.D. Dr. Milner's chief theological work must be considered as having been the editing and con- tinuing of his brother Joseph's History of the Church of Christ. And it may not be out of place to remark here that by using this term " Church of Christ " in the way in which it was used by Joseph Milner, and after him by his brother the Dean, both those authors implicitly denied an article of the faitli. In their zeal for HIS THEOLOGY. 203 subjective appropriation of theological verities, they lost sight of the nature of those verities them- selves. In their zeal to beget a real faith they lost sight of those Sacraments wherein Christ is pre- sented for our faith to lay hold of, and of the Church, that great Sacrament which includes all the rest : and thus making out, not one Church, holy, catholic, and apostolic, but two Churches, one visible and one invisible, one (apparently) delusive and one real. Dean Mihier writes, in 1802, " If I had time and strength, I would obey your direc- tions about writing in defence of the True Church, occasionally."* The subject of Christian Baptism he declares to be "difficult and obscure. "f By "regeneration" he understands "the inward change and conversion of the heart to God, by whatever means it might be effected ;"[|; thus when any persons were " evidently without any spiritual life" (though of this it must ever be impossible to have any real proof), he would uniformly address them as unregenerate. Dr. Mant's sentiments (herein the opposite to his) he regarded as Popish. His plan for converting the heathen was to send them in the first place the pure Word of God in intelligible language, and, secondly, duly qualified teachers and expounders of the same.§ Of course, with this imperfect realisation of the chief realities of the Gospel, it is no matter for surprise that he should have written to Mr. Eichardson in 1800, "I feel assured that, for a good while, my earnest desire has been to * Life, p. 254. t lb. p. 6U. \ lb. p. 642. § lb. p. 607. 204 ISAAC AND JOSEPH MILNER. serve God according to my station, and to give myself wholly to Him ; and I hoped I was going on tolerably well ; but I find it no easy matter to look death and judgment in the face. . . . Though I should die without seeing any personal interests iu the Eedeemer's merits, I think — I hope — I should be found at His feet."* Nor shall we be surprised to find that with no better appreciation of the system of the Church of England, Dean Milner should have " subscribed liberally not only to the Moravian Missionary Establishments, but also to certain missionary associations conducted by the body of Wesleyan Methodists."! On the whole, it seems fair to say tliat what Dr. Milner did for the Low-Church party was to commend Low-Church religion by his life and influence among the learned, the scientific, the intellectual; just as Mr. Wilberforce (of whom we propose to speak hereafter) commended it by his life and influence among the upper classes in general. Of his elder brother, Joseph, personally, there is not much to be said, save to remind the reader of what we have already remarked as to his generosity towards Isaac ; who, in a biogra- phical notice of him, declared that he owed all tliat he had to the kindness of this same brother. Joseph Milner was elected vicar of Holy Trinity, Hull, by the Mayor and Corporation of that town in August, 1797 ; and thereupon resigned the mastership of the grammar-school. But a cold ♦ Life, p. 205. t lb. p. 610. JOSEPH MILNEK'S church HISTORY. 205 cauglit ill a journey, the same journey which he had to take to York for institution, brought on the illness of which he died in tlie foUowino; November. What we have now to do is to make a few remarks on that work by which he is chiefly known, and which he termed a " History of the Church of Christ." This work consisted originally of four volumes, tlie first of which was published in 1794. In issuing his proposals for printing it, the author promised his readers, as he reminds them in his Introduction, " An Ecclesiastical History on a New Plan." The new plan was to embrace the biography of such men as had been real, and not merely nominal, Christians, and not to insert anything in his work save what belonged to Christ's kingdom and to general piety. By " the Church of Christ," he meant what he called " the real Church." " Cer- tainly," said he, " the terms ' Church ' and ' Christian ' do in their most natural and primary sense respect only good men." Tlius it will be seen that he implicitly denied an Article of the Faith, He denied the existence of that Catholic Church whereof the Creed S2)eaks, and he sub- stituted for it a Church of his own imagining. And thus, no doubt, he contributed in no small degree to confirm the Low-Church party gener- ally in this heresy, wherein he and they shared in common. His writing an Ecclesiastical His- tory with this view was the great service which he rendered to his party in the religious world ; and a great service it was. The Eev. S. E. Maitland criticised both Joseph 206 JOSEPH milker's church history. Miliier's History and Joseph Milner liimself. He criticised the work as not answerable to the plan which the author professed to have formed, and as being in some respects misleading to the student, and he criticised the author as having written without sufficient reference to authorities, and so, as having been incompetent for the task which he had proposed to himself.* We do not ourselves profess to have read more than a few pages of Milner here and there, but as far as we have gone, Mr. Maitland's opinion appears to ]iave been fully borne out. For instance : the account given by Milner of the opinions con- cerning the holy Eucharist which were enter- tained by Wickliffe does not give us a favourable idea of the manner in which the works of that remarkable man had been by him studied. " Wickliffe appears," says he, " to have opposed the papistical doctrine of transubstantiation with all his might ; and at the same time to have maintained the true, ancient, and scriptural notion of the Lord's Supper." That Milner speaks of the scriptural notion of the Lord's Supper, i.e. of the holy Eucharist, as being ancient, does not lead us to believe that he had read the Fathers (we will not say studied them) to any better purpose than he had read Wickliffe ; for the view which he deemed scriptural appears to have been what we venture to call the Zuinglian heresy ; he quotes Wickliffe as saying, " The consecrated host which we see upon the altar * Facts and Documents illustrative of the History, Doctrine, and rites of the Albiijenses and Waldenses. London, 1S3'2. JOSEPH MILNER'S church HISTORY. i^07 is neither Christ nor any part of Him, but an effectual sign of Him," and presently afterwards speaks of the following statement of Wickliffe's concerning his doctrine as less satisfactory to the intelligent reader than the former : " The Eucharist is the Body of Christ in the form of ])read. The right faith of Christian men is this, that this worshipful Sacrament is bread and Christ's Body, as Jesus Christ is very God and very Man." But when we read in a note the following apology for not giving Wickliffe's exact words, even when inverted commas are used, " The originals are frequently in Latin, and cften in such antiquated English as would be unintel- ligible to ordinary readers," we cannot help thinking not only that they were unintelligible to Mr. Milner himself, but that Mr. Milner had not read even those which were in Latin. And when Mr. Milner said in his Introduction: " I have all along, to the best of my opportunity, con- sulted original records," we take the liberty of entertaining the belief that his opportunities were hardly any at all, in comparison with what he needed. Mr. Milner's work was reviewed in the Christian Observer. The reviewer was unduly severe in some respects, through forgetfulness of Milner's plainly avowed design, which was that of writing not a history of the Church, as that term has been commonly understood, but only a history of the Church as it was understood by himself: in other words, of that small minority of church- members who ma}^ be called true Christians, in 208 JOSEPH milner's church history. contradistinction from those whose Hves are in- consistent with a true profession of Christian rehgion. He did not, however, dwell upon the insufficiency of Mr. Milner's information : but, without saying so in so many words, left his readers to infer that Mr. Milner had penetrated recesses of private history which had been un- explored b}^ previous historians, and had perused with attention original writings which had been previously almost consigned to oblivion : whereas such an inference would have been in fact utterly erroneous. On this account, probably, and being more- over the onl}^ history written from a Low-Church standpoint, Milner's work became, with Low- Churchmen, the great authority in matters of Church history, even (in some cases) to the exclusion of Mosheim's. Thus the Eev. Charles Bridges, in his work on the Christian Ministry, tells his readers, when on the subject of studying such subjects, that "Mosheim will furnish the requisite information respecting the visible Church, and Milner respecting the real Church."* And besides the work of Milner, continued by Scott, the only ecclesiastical histories which Mr. Bicker- steth thought it necessary to specify for his "Curate's Library" were Burnet's llistorij of the Beformation and Whiston's Josephus.f * Christian Miiiistry, 6tli edition, p. 37. t The Christian Student, p. 415, as cited by Mr. Maitland ; in the 4tli edition (1829), after Mr. Bickersteth bad seen Mr. Maitland'a criticism, tbe list (in tbe Minister's Library) was enlarged. CHAPTER XYI. Pious Period continued. Charles Simeon, Of all the men whose mfluence contributed to advance the Low-Church party, none, perhaps, have had larger or more lasting influence, direct or indirect, than the Rev. Charles Simeon, Senior Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Minister of Trinity Church, in the same town. He was born at Reading, September 24th, 1758 ; and after a school-course at Eton, came up to King's in January, 1779. Being informed that he would be required to receive the Holy Communion in the College Chapel, he bought (among other books) Bishop Wilson on the Sacrament, from which he learned for the first time the truth of the vicarious and propitiatory character of the Sacri- fice consummated on Calvary ; and the truth thus received became to him the main incentive to a consistent Christian practice, and a most zealous use of all the opportunities which he had of spreading that Divine knowledge which had been so great a comfort to himself. He was ordained deacon on Trinity Sunday, May 26tli, 1782, by the Bishop of Ely (Dr. York), and commenced his public ministry by taking charge of St. Edward's Church during the Long Vaca- tion, when Mr. Atkinson, the incumbent, was away. It should be observed that from the time that he became a fellow of King's he had attended St. Edward's Church, finding that Mr. Atkinson came nearer in his teaching to what Simeon 15 210 CHARLES SIMEON. believed the truth of the Gospel than any other preacher. In 1782, or thereabouts, he made the acquamt- ance of Mr. John Venn and of his father, the Sector of Yelling ; and also of Mr. Cadogan and his friend Mrs. Talbot. In November the same year, he was appointed by his diocesan to the living of Trinity Church, then the largest church in the town, except Great St. Mary's ; and was ordained priest on the 23rd of September, 1783, in Trinity College Chapel, by Bishop Hinchliffe of Peterborough. Having at this time only one sermon to preach in the week at his own church, he used often on the week-days to preach in the churches of clergymen whose views agreed with his own ; in one church on Monday, in another on Tuesday, and in a third on Wednesday; and afterwards wrote concerning these preachings, that he had no doubt of their having been blessed to the conversion and salvation of many.* At this time, also, it was his custom to rise at four o'clock every morning, even in the winter ; and after lighting his fire, to occupy the time till eight o'clock in private prayer and devotional study of the Scriptures. On Advent Sunday, December 3rd, 1786, he preached before the University for the first time. Towards the end of 1788, when there was a great scarcity of bread, he initiated a plan by which the poor of twenty- four villages round Cambridge might have bread at half-price. In July, 1790, with the consent of * Carus's Life of Simeon, p. 61. CHARLES SIMEON. 211 his churchwardens, he estabhshed a Lecture on Sunday evenings in his church. His Sermon- class commenced about the same time. In this his method at first was " to form a system of natural and revealed relio'ion, and havinsf con- densed it," to read it to his class and let them write it from his dictation. By this means, and by his judicious rules for the composition and delivery of sermons, he must have influenced in no small degree the members of the then rising generation, and, through them, of innumerable congregations, to the increase of what the party termed Evangelical religion. Before he died he had completed a set of sermon- outlines (or " skeletons," as he termed them) on every seemingly important text in the Bible. Tliis work, which was comprised in twenty-one volumes octavo, was called " Hon^ Homiliticje." It was also his practice to receive at his rooms in college, once a week, those undergraduates who wished to ask questions bearing upon religion or the inter- pretation of Scripture. But that influence of his which has lasted longest, and will probably last as long as there are any Low-Church people in the Church at all, was that of Patronage. For some years before his death, Mr. Simeon had large sums of money given him by friends, to be disposed of by him for any good objects which he might have at heart ; and these sums, with some part of his own private fortune, he devoted, on the advice of the Eev. John Hampden Gurney,* to the purchase Christian Observer for 1862, p. 314. 15—2 212 CHARLES SIMEON. of advowsons, which he vested in the names of trustees, and thus made provision for the propaga- tion of his religious views in some fifty parishes all over England. It must be remembered, too, that, as time went on, the incumbents of several of these parishes acquired, in virtue of their office, the patronage of other churches besides. In 1796 he made a tour in Scotland, preaching in Presbyterian Kirks as readily as in buildings be- longing to the Episcopal Church ; which conduct he justified to himself thus : " Except when I preached in Episcopal chapels, I officiated precisely as they do in the Kirk of Scotland ; and I did so upon this principle : Presbyterianism is as much the established religion in North Britain as Epis- copacy is in the South ; there being no difference between them except in church government. As an Episcopalian, therefore, I preached in Episcopal chapels ; and as a member of the Established Church, I preached in the Presbyterian churches." He saw, in fact, no difference between the Kirk and the Church save in the matter of government. He had evidently not compared the language of the " Shorter Catechism " and " Confession of Faith " with that of the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, to say nothing of other Anglican formularies. Nor was this all ; he communicated in the Scottish Establishment, and even officiated at some of the Presbyterian communions. It is curious to observe, by the wa}^, that "the moderate party " in the Kirk raised an opposition to Mr. Simeon's preaching in Presbyterian pulpits, and complained against those Presbyterian ministers CHARLES SIMEON. 213 who had admitted him, on the ground that they were offending against their ecclesiastical laws. This was in 1797. In 1794 Mr. Simeon had been chosen Lecturer of Trinity Church without opposition, and he con- tinued minister and lecturer to within a few days of his decease, which took place Xovember 13 th, 1836. Mr. Simeon's churchmanship was rather a love for the words of prayer and praise put by the Church of England into the mouths of her chil- dren, than for that general system of devotion which the Prayer Book inculcates. He probably observed the rubrics as well as anybody did in his time ; but we have looked in vain through Mr. Carus's memoir for any intimation that he looked on his ministry as anything more than an office of preaching. He speaks in one place of " turning at the Creed " in Trinity Church ; but he did not hold the Objective Presence in the Sacra- ment of the Altar ; and, of course, not the Eucha- ristic Oblation. One point, however, in his theology merits special approval — his views on the Calvi- nistic controversy. It must be remembered that for very manj" years high Calvinism had found a standing-place in more than one pulpit of the Church of England : insomuch that a clergyman who lived about this time opposed missionary societies, because, as he said, they interfered with God's election. According to him, men did not perish for lack of knowledge, but because they were doomed to perish.* Mr. Simeon among others * Christian Observer for 1829, p. 172. 214 SIMEON'S THEOLOGY. was styled a Calvinist by sundry of his bretliren in the Church. In point of fact, however, his theology was, in respect of this controversy, thoroughly Scriptural. He professes to have made it an in- variable rule to endeavour to give to every portion of the Word of God its full and proper force, without considering one moment what scheme it favours, or whose system it is likely to advance.* And by way of illustrating how he succeeded herein, we need do no more than cite a note to one of his published sermons (to which note he himself declares that he attached great importance), and compare it with a passage from the commentary on Hosea by the late Dr. Pusey. Mr. Simeon says : "All good is from God, dispensed by Him in a way of sovereignty according to the counsels of His own will, and to the praise of the glory of His grace. All evil, whether moral or penal, is from man : the moral, as resulting from his own free choice ; the penal, as the just and necessary con- sequence of his sins. The author has no doubt but that there is in God's blessed Word a system, but it is a far broader system than either Calvinists or Arminians admit."f And Dr. Pusey says in effect the same thing, when, citing from ancient authors, and adopting their statements as his own, he writes thus: "The sum of the meaning is, all our destruc- tion is from ourselves ; all our salvation is from God. Perdition, reprobation, obduration, damna- tion, are not, properly and in themselves, from God, dooming to perdition, reprobating, obdurating, * Life, p. 529. t lb. p. 566. Simeon's theology. 215 damning, but from man sinning, and obdurating or hardening himself in sin to the end of life. Con- trariwise, predestination, calling, grace, are not from the foreseen merits of the predestinate, but from God, predestinating, calling, and, by His grace, forecoming the predestinate ' Many good things doeth God in man, which man doeth not, but none doeth man, which. God endueth not man to do.' "* Simeon's views of Baptism also are worth notic- ing, as they may have prepared not a few young Low-Churchmen for receiving the true Scripture doctrine of Baptismal Eegeneration as taught by the Church of England in her Prayer Book. It will be remarked that although in the latter part of the following? extracts he falls into the Zuinoiian form of expression, yet there was really a wide gulf between him and the Zuinglians. Speaking of some whom he had to treat as opponents, he says : " If by regeneration they meant an introduction into a new state, in which the baptized persons have a right and title to all the blessings of. salva- tion, we should have no controversy with them." And further on : " We admit, and beg you to bear in mind our admission, that great, exceeding great, benefit accrues to the soul from baptism. . . . Even from the ordinance itself we may consider great good as arising to the soul ; since, as in the case of circumcision, the person is thereby brought * Commentary on the Minor Prophets, Hosea xii. 9. The former of the two citations is taken by Dr. Pusey from Cornelius a Lapide, he in his turn taking the matter from earlier theologians. Tlie latter is taken from St. Augustine (c. 2 epp. Pet. ii. 21). 216 Simeon's theology. into covenant with God. The Israelites, as a nation in covenant with God, were highly privileged ; for 'to them,' as the Apostle says, 'belonged the adop- tion, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; The same, I doubt not, may be justly said of all that are baptized. ... By the very admission of persons into covenant with God, they are brought into a 7iew state, have a right and title to all these privileges ; and by the exercise of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ they come to the actual possession of them."* He afterwards proceeds to say : " Men do not distinguish between a change of state and a change of natare. Baptism is, as we have just shown, a change of state, for by it we b3come entitled to all the blessings of the new covenant ; but it is not a change of nature^ The defect, then, in Simeon's baptismal theology would seem to have been partly an inadequate CDucsptionof what the blessings of the Christian covenant are, and what that state is into which baptism brings every one who receives it, and partly a forgetfulness of the truth that no one can be entitled to those blessings, or be in that state, witliout being really and truly in Christ. And thus, strange to say, the theology of this Evan- gelical divine brinies to the conclusion that we are saved partly by Christ and partly by faith. True, he might reply that this faith is wrought in us by the Holy Ghost ; but against this there would lie * The above extracts are taken from a sermon entitled, An Appeal to Men of Wisdom and Candour, and are cited in Carus's Life of Simeon, pp. 545, &c. Simeon's theology. 217 two objections — one, that sucli an argument would invalidate the statement of St. Paul in Eomans xi. 16 (if genuine), "If it be of works, then it is no more grace : " for an opponent might reply to the Apostle, " Nay ; for the works whicli you allege to supplant grace are themselves wrought in us by grace ; " — and the other, that we are not saved by anything in ourselves at all, no matter what, or by whom wrought. With the above errors there were connected the denial of two truths concerning that change of heart which Simeon called " regeneration : " viz., that it is not generally effected all at once, but is gradual ; and that when a new-born infant sub- mits to be carried by those who are older than it, that submission is, in germ, the very faith (and, be it marked, a non-intellectual faith) which justifies before God, and was so exemplified in Abraham : so that new-barn children are worthy recipients of baptism independently of their intellects, and because of a non-intellectual faith. If, however, a young disciple accepted Simeon's views as to the fact of every baptized person being in a new state, and carried out those views to their logical conse- quences, he could not, we think, miss attaining to the full Catholic doctrine of Christian Baptism. In fact, in a note to a sermon in which, in reference to the Baptismal Service, he speaks of " thanking God for things whicli, if pressed to the utmost meaning of the words, might not be strictly true," he says :".... It appears that in the opinion of our Eeformers, regeneration and remission of sins did accompany baptism. But in what sense did 218 Simeon's theology they hold this sentiment ? Did they mention that there was no need for the seed, then sown in the heart of the baptized person, to grow up, and to bring forth fruit," &c. ? And again, after citing Galatians iii. 27, "As many of you as are baptized into Christ, have put on Christ;" Acts ii. 38, 39, " Eepent, and be baptized every one of you. . . . for the remission of sins;" 1 Peter iii. 21, "Bap- tism doth now save us ; " and 2 Peter i. 9, " He hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins," he asks, " Does not this very strongly coun- tenance the idea which our Eeformers entertained, that the remission of our sins, as well as the regeneration of our souls, is an attendant on the baptismal rite ? Perhaps it will be said that the inspired writers spake of persons who had been baptized at an adult age. But if they did so in some places, they certainly did not in others ; and where they did not, they must be understood as comprehending all, whether infants or adults." Those who would study Mr. Simeon's character or conduct at length must be referred to the Eev. William Carus's memoir of him. We may notice, however, here his disinterestedness ; content to serve Trinity Church for a mere pittance besides his college fellowship, and to continue serving it for more than fifty years, steadily refusing all other preferment. His disinterested regard for others, and joy in their success, was strikingly shown when, after returning from the Isle of Wight, whither he had gone for his health, he heard Mr. Thomason, his curate, preach, and marked the improvement which had resulted from AND CHARACTER. 219 Mr. Tliomason's fulfilment, during Mr. Simeon's absence, of duties which had previously been done by Mr. Simeon himself. Mr. Simeon turned there- upon to a friend, and said, " Now I know why I have been laid aside : I bless God for it."* Till 1793 he seems to have devoted a third part of his income to charitable purposes ; nor have we any reason to believe that his charity ever decreased. On February 25, 1807, he writes : " Fast-day. I have always judged it inexpedient for a minister to fast, because he is thereby in danger of unfitting himself for his work : but my neglect of it on other occa- sions laid a tenfold obligation on me to consecrate this day to God in fasting as well as prayer. "f We must now, however, leave Mr. Simeon to lie in peace in his unmarked resting-place beneath the stately chapel of his college, that we may mark the character and influence of one more distinsfuished than he. CHAPTEE XVII. Pious Period continued. William Wilberforce. Doddridge's Rise and Prorjress. Wilberforce's Practical View of Christianity. About five years after Mr. Simeon had commenced preaching, there took place an event which has effected, indirectly, but not the less strikingly, the most important results to a large portion of our world's inhabitants ; and yet was contained within the being of a single individual. We allude to * Life, p. 243. t Ih. p. 216. 210 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. William Wilberforce's conversion from spiritual carelessness to sucli a faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as involved both a thankful acceptance of His atonement, and a submission to the sanctifying influences of His Spirit. Wilberforce had been born of a good family, at Hull, August 24th, 1759, and had been sent to the grammar school of the same place, then taught by Joseph Milner and his brother Isaac, afterwards Dean of Carlisle. His mother, as we are told by his sons, " was a woman of real excellence, as well as of great and highly-cultivated taleats, but not possessed at this time of those views of the spiritual nature of religion which she adopted in later life. She was what I should call an Archbishop Tillotson Chris- tian. But in his uncle's house he was subjected to a new and powerful influence. His aunt was a great admirer of Whitefield's preaching, and kept up a friendly connection with the early Methodists." The lively aflections of young Wilberforce's heart, warmed by the kindness of his friends, readily assumed their tone.* Upon his father's death, which took place before young Wilberforce was ten years old. he came into the guardianship of the uncle aforesaid. And it appears to have been through fear of the probable result of his aunt's Low-Church influence that his mother at lenolh removed him to Hull, then " as gay a place as could be found out of London." And " no pious parent," he says, " ever laboured more to impress a beloved child with * Life, vol. i. p. 5. .WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 221 sentiments of piety, than they did to give me a taste for the world and its diversions."* In this they sncceeded. At the same time he attended the grammar school at PockHngton, where he acquired some knowledge of polite literature, includinsj the ancient classics. On leavini^ Pock- lington he went to St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1776, and was introduced, he says, on the very first night of his arrival, to as licentious a set of men as can well be conceived. They drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives. " I lived amongst them," he continues, " for some time, though I never relished their society .... and after the first year I shook ofl' in great measure my connection with them."f " ' I certainly did not then think and act as I do now,' he declared long afterwards ; ' but I was so far from what the world calls licentious, that I was rather complimented on being better than young men in general. '"J Being unexpectedly required to declare his assent to the Thirty-nine Articles, he refused, not having considered the matter, and this refusal cost him his degree till 1781. He had nearly completed his twenty-first year when, at tlie cost of more than £8,000, he became his native town's representative in the House of Commons. To London then he forthwith repaired, and mixed in all its gaieties, from which gambling was not excluded. He attended, however, the House of Commons diligently, and was intimate with Mr, Pitt and other politicians and leading * Life, vol. i. p. 8. t lb. p. 10. X lb. p. 12. 222 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. men. In 1784 he was elected member for York- shire. How wouhl he demean himself? how would he use his influence in a sphere so varied and so important? The same year provided the answer. Wilberforce had determined to make a tour on the continent. He wanted a travelling companion. " Whilst at York, he proposed to his friend, W. Burgh, to become his companion on a continental tour. To his great surprise the offer was declined ; and beinor thrown afterwards at Scarborouo-h into the company of Isaac Milner, the invitation was trans- ferred to him,"* accepted, and acted upon. Many years before, Wilberforce's grandfather had said, with reference to some such plan, " Billy shall travel with Milner, as soon as he is of age ; but if Bill}' turns Methodist, he shall not have a sixpence of mine." Wilberforce himself was at this time opposed to those views of religion which were called Methodistical ; but conversations with Mr. Milner in their tour, and especially conversations about Dr. Doddridge's Eise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, characterised b}' Mr. Milner as " one of the best books ever written," led in time to that very consummation which Wilber- force's grandfather had so strongly deprecated. This will be the best place for making some notes regarding the book in question. The author of the book was an Independent preacher, first at Kibworth, in Leicestershire, and Market Harborough, in the same county, and • Li:e, vol. i. p. 66. Doddridge's sise axd pbogress. 223 afterwards at Northampton. He was also head of a Dissenting academy, kept at the two last- named places successively ; and exercised his ministry from 1722 till his death, which took place in 1751. His object in writing the Rise and Progress was to awaken the careless, to convict sinners, and then to set forth salvation through Christ's atonement appropriated by faith ; and afterwards to help forward the spiritual life thus begotten or quickened, and the several tempers and acts by which it is to be manifested. Nor, we suppose, can any person rise up from a careful perusal of the work without experiencing benefit by means of it. It had, however, some defects, resulting naturally from the errors of that religious system in which Dr. Doddridge had been brought up. Thus, in reading it, we mark an ignorance of the difference between the work done by Christ once for all, and the work being done by Him now. God " is " (sa3's Doddridge) " in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." This is the less excusable, as the Doctor is avowedly citing a text of Scripture, wdiicli really runs " God icas in Christ," &c.* '■''Beady to he reconciled," is his equally erroneous expression in another place. f There is also manifested an ignorance of the object for which the Holy Ghost was sent. We read that Christ " sent down His Spirit . . . upon His apostles, to enable them in the most persuasive and authoritative manner to preach the Gospel. "J We find, moreover, of course, an ignorance of * 2 Cor. V. 19, cited in Rise and Proffiess, chap. viii. t Chap. X. J Chap. viii. 224 DODDRIDGE'S RISE AND PROGRESS. Christian Baptism as bringing us into a state of grace. "If thou this day sincerely believest in the Name of the Son of Go:l, thou shalt this day be taken under His care, and be numbered among those of His sheep to whom He hath graciously declared that He will give eternal life, and that they shall never perish."* Our responsibiUty, too, is spoken of as if it depended upon our having at some definite time formally surrendered ourselves to God by a solemn act of our own, instead of depending on the fact that by God's act done upon us in His ordinance of Baptism, we are members of Christ the perfectly dedicated One.f Thus also he speaks of becoming one of God's covenant- people " by a most express consent " on the con- vert's part. The great end of the Lord's Supper is declared to be our renewing, by means of it, our covenant with the Lord.J And instead of being told that all baptized people are incorporated by God's act, in their baptism, into one body which is the Body of Christ, originally constituted by the coming down of the Spirit of Christ on the first believers, we are told that God has commanded His servants to form themselves into societies. § Doddridge's views, too, concerning death and the Lord's Second Coming— in which views, as appears, he did but share Avith the pious people generally of his time — led him to such results as must seem curious enough to those who have learnt better. He speaks of death as a coming of the Lord ; as though a courtier's going into his sovereign's ante- * Hise and Progress, cliap. viii. t Chap. xxii. See also chap. xvii. t Chap, xviii. § Prayer at end of chap, xviii. wilberforce's conversion. 225 chamber were the same thing as the king's coming to visit the said courtier in his own house. And in contemplating the many and various evils in the world at large, he views them as so many reasons for desiring, not that the Lord may speedily come to reform them or remove them, but that he him- self may be taken out of the world by death. Such was the book to the teaching and exhorta- tions in which, in God's Providence, Wilberforce owed his conversion. To come back now to Wil- berforce himself He writes, November 21, 1785 : "It was not so much the fear of punishment by which I was affected as a sense of my great sinful- ness in having so long neglected the unspeakable mercies of my God and Saviour ; and such was the effect which this thought produced that for months I was in a state of the deepest depression from strong convictions of my guiU."* A week later, " True, Lord, I am wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked. What infinite love, that Christ should die to save such a sinner, and how necessary is it He should save us altogether, that we may appear before God with nothing of our own ! God grant I may not deceive myself in thinking I feel the. beginnings of gospel comfort. "f On November 30th, " I thought seriously this evening of going to converse with Mr. Newton. "J On December 2nd he wrote to Mr. Newton ; delivered the letter himself on Sunday, the 4th ; and called, by appoint- ment, the following Wednesday ; and thus began a lasting friendship with the saintly old penitent. * Life, vol. i. p. 89. f lb. p. 91. % lb. p. 93. 16 226 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. He made his first communion on Good Friday, April 14th, 1786, probably in Newton's church, that of St. Mary Woolnoth. And on June 22nd, in the same year, he thus expresses his faith : " I beheve that Christ died that all such (i.e., ungrate- ful, stupid, guilty creatures) who would throw themselves on Him, renouncing every claim of their own, and relying on His assurance of free pardon, might be reconciled to God, and receive the free gift of His Holy Spirit to renew them after the image of God in righteousness and true holi- ness."* He continued to have a high opinion of Doddridge's Rise and Progress, calling it his favourite volume.f Of the collective works of Doddridge and Witherspoon on llegeneration, he speaks in high terms ; % and similarly of Edwards on the Affections. § It should be observed, however, that he dislikes the term " Eegeneration." Generally speaking, his religion was of a practical rather than of a contemplative character. The discussion of points in theology he left to divines ; it was his to exemplify the effects of a sincere Christianity in his life, and, as an author, to labour for the inducement of others to do the same in their lives. His favourite writers," as we have just seen, were of the Puritan school ; the only preachers worth hearing in his time were those called Evan- gelical ; and thus we shall not be surprised when we find that his theology was defective in several points. Thus, he fails to realise his membership in Christ's Body. He gives the title of Christian * Life, vol. i. p. 117. t Letters, vol. ii. p. 193. X I^- P- 28. § Life, vol. iii. p. GQ, HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 227 friend to a Quaker.* In his opinion, " God's people " are those, and those only, who can be called true Christians. f With him the great business of life is to acquire a new nature. l|l He prays for a more sure hope, if according to God's will ! § In his classification of spiritual blessings he makes them all subjective : the experience which he has had of God's grace and mercy ; not the bestowal of that grace and mercy in the first instance. II He expresses to one of his children his ardent longing to see proofs of her having received Divine grace. ^ He once thought it wrong to go to Mr. Jay's meeting-house at Bath,** but afterwards attended it.ff He heard Dr. Chalmers on one occasion, and communicated once in a Dissenters' meeting. Jf But, withal, he was a true disciple of the Church of England in some important points. He speaks in one place of the " unscriptural character of Calvinism ; " §§ and dis- puted with Milner on Final Perseverance. || 1| He was no Sabbatarian, thouofh reverencing the Lord's Day. "I walked with him," said the Eev. Mr. Dykes, with respect to a Sunday in 1807, " for a considerable time. We called upon various friends, and I was much struck to see how totally he had dismissed from his mind all thoughts of the approaching contest. His conversation related entirely to subjects which suited the day." ^^ He • Life, vol. V. p. 231. t Letters, vol. ii. p. 23. % Life, vol. v. p. 156. § lb. vol. iii. p. 356. || lb. vol. iv. p. 346. ^ Letters, vol. ii. p. 236. ** Life, vol. V. p. 258. tt lb. vol. ii. pp. 189, 351. tX lb. vol. iv. p. 318. §§ lb. vol. v. p. 162. |1 11 lb. vol. ii. p. 344. ^1[ lb. vol. iii. p. 323. The contest was an election for Yorkshire. 16—2 228 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. practised fasting from time to time,* and remarked one Asli Wednesday, " We attend too little to these days."f In 1825 he wrote, "MissW consulted me lately about the point of duty respecting her attending her parish church. I urged it on the ground of the prayers composing the chief purpose of social worship. "J Voluntary associations were, in his mind, but poor substitutes for the Church. ij He desired to " attain what is real in Christian experience without running into a sect or party set of opinions. II " Let me look before me" (he wrote in his private journal at the commencement of one parliamentary session) " and solemnly implore the aid of God to guide, quicken, and preserve me. Let me endeavour to soar above the turmoil of this tempestuous world, and to experience joy and peace in believing. Let me consider what in former years have proved my chief occasions of falling, and provide against them. Let me remem- ber the peculiar character of a Christian ; gravitj^ in the House, cheerfulness, kindness, and placa- bility, with a secret guard and hidden seriousness. Let me preserve a sense of the vanity of earthly greatness and honour."^ Once when walking with one of his children in the Lake district, and on being asked why he would not buy a house there, and spend some time in it every year, his reply was, "I should enjoy it as much as any one, my dear, but we must remember we are not sent into the world merely to admire prospects and enjoy scenery. We have nobler objects of pursuit. • Life, vol. ii. p. 56. t lb. vol. v. p. 324. J lb. p. 252. § lb. vol. ii. p. 28. :i lb. p. 334. T lb. p. 115. HIS PIETY AND WORK. 229 We are commanded to imitate Him who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. It doubles my own enjoyment to see my dear children enjoy these scenes with me ; and now and then, when we need rest from severe labours, it may be permitted to us to luxuriate in such lovely spots, but it is to lit us for a return to duty ; and we must bear in mind, too, that at present we are in a world whicli is in a measure under the wrath of God, and there is much mercy in every natural l^eauty that is left in it. We may be contented to wait for the full enjoyment till we get above to that blessed place, where the desire of our gracious God to bless us shall meet with no obstruction, and His love shall have no check upon its full exercise."* His charities were as princely as they were unostentatious. Of Mr. Wilberforce's legislative work, and especially of that great work with which his name will ever be associated — the abolition of the slave trade — it does not fall within the scope of the present work to take more than this passing notice. But we may well note his zeal for the propagation of true religion as he understood it. As far back as 1787 he had succeeded in getting a society formed for the Reformation of Manners, like a former society which had a similar title. The society (we are told) " was soon in active and use- ful operation. The Duke of Montagu opened his house for its reception, and presided over its meetings — a post which was filled after his death * Life, vol. iv. pp. 389, 390. 230 wilberforce's practical view. by the late Lord (Chancellor) Bathurst, who was followed by Bishop Porteus ; and before its dis- solution it had obtained many valuable Acts of Parliament, and greatly checked the spread of blasphemous and indecent publications. It afforded also a centre from which many other useful schemes proceeded, and was the first example of those various associations which soon succeeded to the apathy of former years."* And on the 12th of April, 1797 was published A Practical View of the Prevailing Religions System oj Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country contrasted with Peal Christianity^ of which Mr. Newton wrote, " I deem it the most valuable and important publication of the present age." The title of the work we regard as unhappy, through lacking the modesty which an evangelist should ever manifest. But the work itself, while to a certain extent controversial, is as modest and charitable as could be desired. The first chapter combats prevailing inadequate conceptions of the importance of Christianity ; the second treats of the corruption of human nature ; the third exposes the chief defects of the prevailing religious system, as regards our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit ; chapter IV. discusses prevailing inade- quate conceptions concerning the nature and strictness of practical Christianity ; chapter V. treats of the excellence of Christianity in certain important particulars, and deduces thence an argument for its Divine origin. Chapter VI. is * Life, vol. i. p. 138. WILBERFORCE'S practical VIEfV. 231 occupied with a brief inquiry into the state of Christianity in England in Wilberforce's time ; a statement of its importance to us as a political community, and some practical hints. And some more practical hints, addressed to various classes of persons, close the book. " The effect of this work " (say Wilberforce's biographers) " can scarcely be overrated. Its circulation was at that time altogether without precedent. In 182G fifteen editions (and some very large impressions) had issued from the press in England. ' In India,' says Henry Martyn in 1807, ' Wilberforce is eagerly read.' In America the work was immediately reprinted, and within the same period twenty-five editions had been sold. It has been translated into the French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and German languages. Its in- fluence was proportionate to its diffusion. It may be affirmed beyond all question that it gave the first general impulse to that warmer and more earnest spring of piety which, amongst all its many evils, has happily distinguished the last half- century." * The good, how^ever, which was done by Wilber- force's book was probably not unmixed with positive harm. In one place f he points out (what doubtless is perfectly true) that some moral virtues may exist, and yet be totally unconnected with religion ; for instance, that an amiable temper may be the natural result of agreeable circumstances, and that usefulness in any sphere of life may be * Life, vol. ii. p. 205. t Chap. iv. § 4. 232 WILLIAM "WILBEKFORCE. owing merely to a love of activity. One conse- quence of this might well be the leading his readers to judge themselves ; but another con- sequence, considering the inbred tendency of human nature to evil, would almost certainly be the leading such readers as were already " Evan- gelical " to judge others. The system inculcated in the book is also, in some points, erroneous. The principle of practical Christianity is spoken of as if it were an intellectual thing. Mr. Wilberforce quotes approvingly the words of Hannah More, that Christianity is " a religion of motives." He does not see that thus Christianity would be a more difficult thing for children, and an impossible thing for infants ; seeing that the intellects of such, which alone are affected by motives, are imperfectly formed : and thus there would be no ground for the high dignity which the Lord assigns to infants in God's king- dom. He does not see that Christianity is a religion of life, of life derived from God, and which leads him who has it to do the works of God instinctively. His mistake on this point is plainly seen when he describes certain particular Doctrines as the centre to which the true Christian gravitates: the fact being (and probably Mr. Wilberforce himself would have admitted it, had it been pointed out to him) that the true Christian gravitates, not to any set of doctrines, but to a Person : not to any doctrine about Christ, but to Christ Himself. The evil consequences of this fatal mistake appeared when the Low-Church party began to decay; when for belief in Christ HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 233 was practically substituted belief of the doctrine of Justification by Faith, or belief of one's own individual justification, irrespectively of anything objective. The subjectivity of Mr. Wilberforce's religious system appeared in his speaking of the corruption of human nature as the basis and groundwork of Christianity.* (We should rather have said that the basis and groundwork of Christianity was God's love.) He takes for granted that the Scrip- tures speak of a thorough change, a renovation of our nature, as being necessary to our becoming true Christians. This is true, no doubt, in a certain sense ; but it is not true that the Scriptures speak of such a change as entirely wrought in any individual previously to his becoming a true Christian. The Scriptures describe facts already done ; and the change in question is not fully wrought in any individual until he attains to the resurrection from among the dead.f That state has been attained by Christ, and probably by some of the Old Testament saints ;J it will not be attained by us until Christ comes again the second time : but we have been baptized into Christ, and so have been granted to share partially in His resurrection-life ; and in proportion as we hold our baptismal position by that habit of the spirit which is called Faith, does the germ of His re- surrection-life work within us, and change our characters and practice by little and little into * Life, chap. ii. beginning-. t r))v i^avaaraaiv njv tK vtKpuiv, Phil. iii. 11. See also Luke xx. 35. I See Matt, xxvii. 52, 53. 234 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. the likeness of His. A change, a thorough change, is necessary, as Wilberforce says ; but it is no more than in progress even in the most advanced Christian. It is the same misapprehension of Scripture truth which leads Mr. Wilberforce to say, " Were we but faithful in the use of the means of grace which we enjoy, the operations of the Holy Spirit, prompting and aiding our diligent en- deavours, would infallibly crown our labours with success, and make us partakers of a Divine nature." If we had not been partakers of a Divine nature already through being baptized into the Only- besotten, we should not have been able to make a single step as Christians towards Christian perfec- tion.* Not having learnt to look upon the Lord as Head of a body whereof all baptized persons are now members, Mr. Wilberforce is found to speak of the relation in which the Lord stands to us as a paternal relation.f Now the sacred writers 7iever speak of the Lord as standing in this relation with respect to us.J It is remarkable, too, how * lu case this should seem opposed to what St. Peter says, 2 Peter i. 4, where he may seem to speak of heing made to partake in the Divine nature as a thing to be aimed at even by those who are Christians ah-eady, it may be well to remark that if in this passage "these" refers to *• promises," the word "promises" must then be understood in the sense of "things promised," including, first of all, the promise of regeneration in Baptism. If, however, on the other hand, it refers to " life and godliness," the implication will be that Christians have alraady within them the germs of those things wherein that "Divine nature" whereof they are to be partakers consists. t Chap. iii. § 2. X In Isaiah ix. 6, the probable rendering is, not "Everlasting HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 235 an ignorance of kindred truths leads liim into mis- statements of palpable fact. It is, he says, the influence of the Holy Spirit which is represented in the Scriptures " as . ... quickening us when dead,'" as " delivering us from the power of the Devil, as drawing us to God, as translating us into the kingdom of His dear Son." To illustrate his point, he refers, in notes, to certain texts ; but it will be found on examination that not one of those texts justifies his statement in regard of the points in question. The Catholic reader will not need to be reminded that Mr. Wilberforce's state- ments are perfectly true when taken apart from his opinions : the Holy Ghost does all the things specified, but He does them by His action upon and with the water in the Sacrament of Christian Baptism. Curiously enough, Mr. Wilberforce con- cludes that section of his work by saying, " The Liturgy of the Church of England strictly agrees with the representation which has been here given of the instructions of the Word of God." And still more curious, to those who have not studied the workings of fallen human nature, is the fact of his calling our dependence on our blessed Saviour " the meritorious cause of our acceptance with God : " thus substituting our faith in Christ for Christ Himself and His work.* In Mr, Wilberforce's private journal we con- tinually meet with records of his s^^eaking to Father," but either " Father of an age" (i.e., giving character to an age), or, "Father of eternity." And even where the Lord addresses His disciples as "children," it is never " Mt/ children." * Chap. iii. § 4. 236 THE "CLAPHAM SECT." persons on tlie all-important subject. But it was by liis " Practical View " that he did most for the cause of Low-Church religion. Christianity, taught as it was in that book, with all its errors and mistakes, and exemplified as it was in the author's practice, could not fail to have an influence for good in proportion as the author was known ; and that was more or less all over the world. Mr. Wilberforce departed this life July 29 th, 1833, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. CHAPTER XVIII. Pious Period continued. The " Clapliam Sect." Henry Thornton. Zachary Macaulay. John Venn. Hannah IMore. Of those who formed the nucleus of the " Clapham Sect " (as it was afterwards termed by Sydney Smith) Wilberforce was the chief in almost every way. In one part of his hfe Wilberforce had fixed his abode at Clapham : having become the sharer of Henry Thornton's abode, in the house which the latter had purchased in 1792. In the following year the Rev. John Venn, son of the author of the Complete Duiij of Man, and a Low-Churchman like his father, became Rector of Clapliam. And under Mr. Venn's pastorship were gathered, besides Wilberforce and Henry Thornton, several other eminent men who were like-minded with them on the all-important subject. Lord Teignmouth, the late Governor-General, who had " ruled India, as he ruled himself, by principles of justice and HENRY THORNTON. 237 truth ; " Charles Grant, the East India Director ; John Bowdler, the talented barrister and essayist ; Granville Sharpe, that clerk in the Ordnance Office, wlio had corrected, under a name not his own, in an important point of law, the most learned judges, and who was known as the pro- moter of manifold philanthropic schemes ; James Stephen, the Master in Chancery, and the vehement parliamentary denouncer of whatever he deemed unprincipled ; — all these were included in Mr. Venn's flock, and, with other kindred spirits, formed the " Clapham Sect." Of that double star, around which the lesser Evangelical luminaries of Clapham revolved, Heney Thornton must be deemed to have been the second in brightness and attractive force, as Wilberforce was evidently the first. Henry Thorn- ton's father, John Thornton, maintained the Dis- senting academy at N'ewport Pagnell for twenty- seven years ; and sent sums yearly to the Independent minister there to supply him with books, and with means of exercising charity. Young Henry became partner, and eventually a leading one, in a bank in Bartholomew Lane ; and entered the House of Commons in or soon after 1783 as member for South wark. He had been tempted to deem all hypocrites who made any particular profession of religion. What, however, he saw of Wilberforce convinced him that the view which he had taken of the religious world was not universally correct. Wilberforce intro- duced him to other valuable acquaintances, and used to take him to hear the preaching of Newton 238 HENRY THORNTON. and Scott. When John Thornton died, in 1792, Henry Thornton purchased an estate at Battersea Eise ; in the house already on this estate he took up his own abode, sharing it with Wilberforce ; and he built two other houses, letting one to Mr. Eliot, brother-in-law to Pitt, and the other to Mr. Grant. Like Wilberforce, he was a liberal distributor of the wealth entrusted to him by Providence : in one of the years before his marriage (which took place in the spring of 1796) he gave away between nine and ten thousand pounds ; and after he had become a husband and father, his charitable expenditure never fell, in any one year, below two thousand. He shared with Wilberforce in defraying the cost of those labours which were taken by Hannah More and her sister for the civiUsing and Christianising of their Somersetshire neighbours. Of his connection with the Christian Observer, when that periodical had been started, there will be more to remark hereafter ; other results of his indefatigable pen were a volume of Family Prayers and a Commentary on the Bible, composed origin- ally for use in his own household devotions ; both which works were edited, after his decease, by Sir Kobert Inglis. As an independent and high- principled member of the House of Commons, he took part in various important debates and divisions ; helping Wilberforce again and again with his advice. To him mainly the colony of Sierra Leone, planned in the interests of native Africans in general, and of newly liberated slaves in particular, owes its existence. " He devised the plan ; he formed the company ; he collected the ZACHARY MACAULAY. 239 capital ; he arranged the constitution ; he chose, equipped, and despatched the settlers ; he selected and sent out the governor ; he corresponded con- stantly with him ; he summoned, when needful, the committee ; in every difficulty the appeal was to him. He obtahied grants of money from Parliament ; each year, while the colony was independent, he supported the vote on the esti- mates ; when the colony passed to the Crown, it was he who arranged the terms."* He died January 16, 1815. Zachary Macaulay, father of Lord Macaulay, of manifold fame — critic, historic, and poetic — was the son of the Presbyterian minister of Cardross, Dumbartonshire. Sent at an early age to super- intend an estate in Jamaica, with its plantations and its slaves, he learnt enough of the details of slavery to determine him to come home and work for its abolition. The Sierra Leone Company, which had obtained a royal charter in 1791, and had Henry Tliornton for its chairman, appointed him in 1792 second in council in Sierra Leone, where, soon after his landing, in the following year, he became first in council and governor; and by his wise and vigorous action, restored order from confusion, obedience from mutiny, and confidence from incipient despair. He remained in the colony until, in 1799, it was (so to say) well on its legs, and with good prospects. He then became secretary to the board of directors at home, and continued so till, in 1808, the colony was trans- * William Wilberforce, his Fi-iends and his Times, by J. C. Colquboun, p. 286. 240 ZACHAKY MACAULAY. ferred to the Crown. A hard worker already, lie worked now, probably, harder than ever, as a member of the committee for the abolition of slavery. When, after all which he had done for Africa and Sierra Leone, a wretched accusation had been trumped up in 1814 by the person who had succeeded him as governor, and the committee to whom the question of his conduct liad been referred had examined into the charges, and exonerated him completely, he forbore to press (as he might have done) for a censure on the promoter of the accusation, in order that he might not cause a division in the Abolitionist party. And when Abolition was carried, and slavery had ceased and become unlawful within the British dominions, he wrote in French on the state of Hayti, on the West Indies, on the French Colonies, and on the Enghsh Colonies ; and thus worked towards the abolition of slavery by other powers, A clear thinker, but an unready speaker ; utterly unimaginative in mind, but great in his actions, he continued to toil in the interests of humanity, and especially of Africa, until he rested from his manifold and arduous labours in May, 1838. John Venn was born in 1758 : the son, as we have already remarked, of Henry Venn the elder, author of The Complete Duty of Man. His father sent him to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, wliere he took his B.A, desjree with mathematical honours in 1781. He was ordained deacon in 1732 on his father's title, and soon afterwards, with his father, suppUed the duty at St. Neot's, Huntingdonshire, for ten weeks, the Vicar of St. JOHN VENN. 241 Neot's beinsT absent. On the termination of this engagement, the cliiirchwardens and all the princi- pal inhabitants of the parish signed a memorial to the Vicar, requesting that Mr. John Venn might be appointed curate. In January, 1783, he was presented to the rectory of Little Dunham, near Swaffham, Norfolk. In 1793 he became Eector of Clapham, and remained so until his decease, which took place July 1, 1813. When we took up his sermons (of which three octavo volumes were published after his death) for the purpose of learning his religious views, the first sermon which we opened was No. VIII. on the doctrine of the Trinity ; the text being Matthew xxviii. 19. We were astonished to find it com- mencing thus : " If the Scriptures merely spoke of the Son of God and of the Spirit of God as Beings whom we ought to reverence and worship, we should surely, &c. . . . But when we are baptized into their names^' &c. This inaccuracy of language, however, is obviated in what follows, which shows that the preacher did not hold the existence of two or more Beings in God, or our being baptized into more than one Name. In other parts of these volumes we found evidence of ordinary Low-Church deficiency in regard of theological knowledge. In a sermon on the Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian dispensa- tions, Mr. John Venn mentions six circumstances in which is shown the superiority of the present dispensation to the former one ; and of these the fourth is " the larger and more abundant communi- cation of the Holy Spirit," implying that the pre- 17 242 JOHN VENN. HANNAH MORE. vious dispensation, or even dispensations, were to a certain extent dispensations of the Spirit; thus contradicting the express words of St. John, " The Holy Ghost was not yet [given], because that Jesus was not yet glorified,"* and contradicting also the tenor of St. Paul's arguments in more than one or two instances. By "regeneration" he understands a change of heart ; and baptism admits us, according to him, " into a solemn covenant with God, in which we promise this personal change. "f A curious expression this last, by the way, and especially coming from one who professed to refer all things to God's grace : as if a change of heart were our own work ; and as if God's words by the Prophet, " Make you a new heart and a new spirit,"^ were anything more than an exhortation to allow our Maker to create the new heart and new spirit within us.§ This, however, is but another instance of the slip-shod character of Low-Church theolog}^ Among those who helped forward the cause of Christian religion in general, and of the Low- Church party in particular, a principal place will have to be assigned to Hannah More. Born in 1745, the daughter of a respectable schoolmaster in Stapleton, Gloucestershire, she was brought up in a boarding-school kept by her eldest sister at Bristol, after the decease of their parents. In the summer of 1774 she came to London, and made numerous acquaintances in the literary world, such acquaintances as those of Sir Joshua Eeynolds, * John vii. 39. t Vol. iii. Sermon vi. X Ezek. xviii. 31. § Ps. li. 10. HANNAH MORE. 243 Garrick, Dr. Johnson, Bisliops Porteus, Lowth, and Barrington, Dr. Kennicott, Lord Chancellor Bathurst, Horace Walpole, General Oglethorpe, Lords Rodney, Macartney, and North, Sir William Jones, Dr. Perry, and Mrs. Delaney ; her literary fame having preceded her. She had, however, frequent attacks of illness ; when "she studied the writings of Fenelou and Pascal, and the Jansen- ists ; .... devoured South, Warburton, At ter- bury, Barrow, and Jeremy Taylor ; and she added to these the works of Baxter and Howe, Hall, Hopkins, and Doddridge," also the Epistles of St. Paul, with the commentary of Matthew Henry. A few years years later she heard jSTewton preach, and read some of his works. What she read and heard entered into her heart, and the fruit came out in her life. Of her work in her own neiijhbourhood it is not within our province to speak ; though ten parishes in that neighbourhood — Cheddar and the Mendip Hills — supplied with a thousand children the schools which she established ; though " the children soon showed the fruits of discipline ; and lessons of Scripture committed to memory, hymns and psalms read and sung, touched the children's affections and the hearts of the parents. Collier lads and dissolute young women were reclaimed. The workers in glass-houses, who had lived in such a fashion as to entitle their place to the name of Botany Bay and Little Hell, grew ashamed of their vices, and forsook them. Farmers, cold-hearted, close-fisted, and hard as stones, became gentle and sympathising. Industrial societies and benefit 17—2 244 HANNAH MORE. clubs dispersed new ideas, and awoke new desires. The lives of the people were altered."* It is more to our purpose to mention those writings by which she influenced for good, and very perceptibly, the upper classes of society. Thoughts on the Manners of the Great received her contributions in 1788. In 1790 she brought out her Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World. These and her other works attained a high degree of popularity. Ccelehs in Search of a Wife came out in 1809. Practical Piety was pubUshed in 1811, and Christian Morals in 1812. Her last work, Moral Sketches, was written in 1819. In her later years " gratifying testimonies poured in upon her both from England and America. It was found that persons moving in the higher classes of society, and exercising large influence, had received their first impressions of religion from her works."t She died at Clifton, September 7th, 1833 ; and was buried at Wrington, in Somer- setshire, near where John Locke lies. We shall find it most convenient to notice her work on Practical Piety at a somewhat later point in the course of these Annals. * Wilherforce, his Friends and his Times, p. 118. t ^^- P- 125. CHAPTER XIX. The Low-Church Party at the Close of the Eighteenth Century. Summary of their Religious System. Means adopted by them for Propagating their Religious Views. The Pulpit. Other Modes of Teaching. Hymnals. It will not be amiss to take now a general view of the Low-Church party as it was at the close of the eighteenth century. From what we have noted in previous chapters, it will be perceived that the main characteristic of the party at that time waa 2nety in the midst of ungodliness. General piety : love to God, arising, in individual persons, from a belief of God's love to them, and showing itself in good dispositions and good works. Towards this the fathers of the party prayed and preached and strove. " True religion," " vital Godliness," and the like are common phrases in the letters and utterances of the leaders of the movement, about the time now spoken of. And if it is desired to analyse Low-Church piety more fully, we shall find it consisting of a sense of the being and presence of Almighty God — a sense of one's own lost condition apart from Him — a belief of a certain relation between oneself and Him as an existent fact— a view of that relation as depending upon certain supposed action of God towards oneself, or (may be) upon a certain attitude of spirit on the part of oneself towards Him : the Divine action being called Grace, and the human attitude of spirit being called Faith. It is evident that where 246 LOW-CHURCH "CONVERSION." these conditions exist, there will be found a great degree of piety, in proportion to their intensity. Mr. Simeon's conversion (as he himself would probably have called it), and his action consequent thereupon, may be taken as a typical instance. "I continued" (he says) "with unabated earnestness to search out and mourn over the numberless iniquities of my former life ; and so greatly was my mind oppressed with the weight of them, that I frequently looked upon the dogs with envy ; wishing, if it were possible, that I could be blessed with their mortality, and they be cursed with my immortality in their stead. I set myself immedi- ately to undo all my former sins, as fast as I could ; and did it in some instances which required great self-denial .... my distress of mind continued for about three months .... But in Easter week (he means Holy week) as I was reading Bishop Wilson on the Lord's Supper, I met with an expression to this effect : ' That the Jews knew what they did when they transferred their sin to the head of their offering.' The thought rushed into my mind. What! may I transfer all my guilt to another ? Has God provided an offering for me, that I may lay my sins on His head ? then, God willing, I will not bear them on my soul one moment longer. Accordingly, I sought to lay my sins upon the sacred head of Jesus ; and on the Wednesday began to have a hope of mercy ; on the Thursday that hope increased ; on the Friday and Saturday it became more strong ; and on the Sunday morning (Easter-day, April 4) I awoke early with these words upon my heart and lips, Simeon's *' conversion." 247 ' Jesus Christ is risen to-day ; Hallelujah ! Halle- lujah!' From that hour peace flowed in rich abundance into my soul; and at the Lord's table in our chapel I had the sweetest access to God through my blessed Saviour. I remember on that occasion there being more bread consecrated than was sufficient for the communicants, the clergy- man gave some of us a piece more of it after the service ; and on my putting it into my mouth I covered my face with my hand and prayed. The clergyman seeing it smiled at me ; but I thought, if he had felt such a load taken ofl* from his soul as I did, and had been as sensible of his obligations to the Lord Jesus Christ as I was, he would not deem my prayers and praises at all superfluous."* It will be observed that the change thus described by Mr. Simeon in his religious feelings and emotions was entirely irrespective of any realisation of his baptism as having effected any- thing for him, or of the nature of that Person into Whom he had been baptized. The feelings and emotions which Mr. Simeon describes as having been his might quite conceivably be gone through by a heathen who was under Christian instruction, but had only heard of Christ as if He had been an individual man and no more, and had never heard about Christian baptism at all. A sense of personal sinfulness, together with a belief that God accepts the death of Jesus of Nazareth as a substitute for the death of the sinner, with, per- haps, the idea that the Lord's resurrection from * Carus's Memoir of Simeon, pp. 9, 10. 248 LOW-CHURCH " CONVERSION " the dead was an assurance of such acceptance — this was the sole ground on which the above described feelings and emotions rested. Such feelings and emotions found large expres- sion in the forms prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. Guilt could hardly be ac- knowledged and bewailed in more appropriate terms than those put by that formulary into the lij)s of communicants. Utter renunciation of self as a ground of confidence before God is most suit- ably expressed in the words of the Daily Confession, " There is no health in us." Trust in ithe Divine mercy as coming through Christ alone finds utter- ance in the same formula ; and is inculcated, in the Office for Visitation of the Sick, in that benediction which begins, " The Almighty Lord." The mode in which that mercy has been obtained is thus set forth in the Eucharistic Office : " Almighty God our heavenly Father, Who of Thy tender mercy didst give Thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption, who made there, by His one oblation of Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." The necessity of having new, clean, and contrite hearts is taught implicitly in the Versicles at Morning and Evening Prayer, and in the Collect for Ash Wednesday. The impossibility of doing anything without Divine grace is acknowledged in other collects ; and the same may be said of the truth that we are required to do good works, and to be in ourselves righteous, pure, and holy, after the model of Christ Jesus our Lord. This made AND OPINIONS. 249 Low-Churclimen willing to use the Prayer Book up to a certain point. The salvation which Low-Churchmen expected to receive on account of their faith, they expected to receive at death. In this they did not differ from other professedly religious people of their time. Pope's piece entitled The Dying Christian to his Soul expresses very well what the general ideas were on the subject. In this matter Anglican Christians generally were at variance with the teaching of the Prayer Book ; according to which we learn to pray over those who are departed that they may have their perfect consummation and bliss in the glory of a kingdom not yet come, though it is to be hastened through our prayers. But the horror of Popery was so deeply engrained in the ordinary English mind, and the doctrine of an intermediate state, and of the duty of praying for those in that state, * was so much forgotten, that error in these matters was in general not only tolerated, but treated as if it had been the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In short, the faitli which Low-Churchmen held at the time now under consideration, and to which they sought to bring others, may be described with tolerable accuracy as a faith in Jesus crucified, and that only. The Lord's Eesurrection, Ascension, and future coming were held either as matters of history, or as what were to become matters of * " Concerning My sons, and concerning the work of My hands, command ye Me." (Is. xlv. 11.) The faithful departed are some of God's sons, and it is a part of the work of Ilis hands to give them peaceful rest now, and joyful resurrection hereafter. 250 LOW-CHURCH DOCTRINES. history, and no more ; except so far as regarded the Intercession offered by the Lord in the highest heaven now, and His Eesurrection as leading to it, which intercession was truly regarded as having results in the present. And the reader will please to remark here that the above-named points, which formed the whole, or almost the whole, of ordinary Low-Church teaching, were entirely of a positive character. Zuinglianism was held indeed, but it was held in solution : tacitly rather than explicitly. It was not until a later period that the contact of a test caused the latent heresy to precipitate itself, and a Low-Churchman's faith (so to call it) came to in- clude not only the positive truths above named, but sundry negations as well — denial of" the Holy Catholic Church " in the sense in which those words were taken in primitive times, and denial of God's manifold grace as ministered in sacraments and sacramental ordinances. It will be observed, too, that the Low-Churchman's faith was theoretically based on a process of the intellect. A comprehen- sion, by the understanding, of the Divine plan of salvation as conceived by Low-Churchmen, was the necessary preliminary, in tlie Low-Church system, to the acceptance of that plan by the affec- tions, in its application to one's own case. It will thus be seen that the positive and distinc- tive doctrines of the Low-Church party were sound and true ; nor can we doubt but tlie belief of them in the times whereof we have spoken was due to the special action of God the Holy Ghost, Who is the Giver of life. Unfortunately, however, the THEIR DEFECTS. 251 faith of Low-Churchmen, with all the elements of truth which it contained, became perverted in their holding of it. This was because, while making much, and rightly, of faith, they had not learnt to hold the Faith in all its iutegrity. They had not learnt the truth of that article of the Creed, as it has been always held in the Church, " The Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints." They did not hold that article, either, in its connection with the previous one, " The Holy Ghost." The Divine Spirit wrought in them a belief of certain truths, but their belief of them became, as we said, perverted. In holding the truth that our salvation is of God's free grace alone, they referred the grace not to the act of God done to them severally in their baptism, but to an eternal decree, supposed to be immutable and irresistible, which forcibly converted them. In holding the truth that their sins were forgiven them on account of Christ's death, they referred the virtue of Christ's death to the same eternal decree, rather than to the fact of the Incarnation. They held not that in the Incar- nation God the Son had taken the whole race of men into union with Himself, so that His acts and sufferings should be the acts and sufferings of the race, and that the benefits of the redemption thus effected should only fail where they were deliber- ately refused ; but that God, by His eternal and immutable decree, had predestined Christ to die for such and such individuals elected from out of the race. In holding that the indwelling of the Holy Ghost is necessary for those who are to be saved, they referred that indwelling, not to the descent of 252 LOW-CHURCH DOCTRINES. the Spirit at Pentecost upon the company of the disciples, constituting them one body in Christ, which Spirit is therefore possessed by the whole company of those who are admitted into that Body by baptism, and, according to the Divine will and plan, should be ministered to individual members in the laying on of Apostles' hands ; instead of this, they referred His indwelling to a distinct advent of Him to each individual, such advent being sup- posed to take place when each individual severally was converted. According to them. Christian practice was not the result of the very life of Christ, wrought by the Holy Ghost in those mem- bers of Christ's body who do not refuse the Spirit's working, but so many acts of the man himself, he being induced to perform them by an intellectual consideration of the love of Christ shown towards him individually. In their theology, sacraments were not means of grace in any real sense of the words ; they were only means of grace so far as they were means of increasing faith. And this faith, not being taught to rest upon Christ in sacraments, had to rest merely on the imagination ; and men were taught to think thus : " Believe that you are saved, and then at once you are ; believe that 3^ou are justified by faith, and then at once you are so justified." And as to the Church, we have seen how the early Eeformers held the existence of two churches, a visible and an invisible ; the visible church being, apparently, the aggregate of such conofregations and individuals as held the chief principles of Protestantism, the rest being churches of Antichrist and synagogues of Satan, — LOW-CHURCH PRACTICE. 253 and the invisible church being the company of true believers, or (Calvinistically) the number of those who are predestined to eternal salvation, and con- cerning whom God foresees that they will be saved in point of fact. This was the view held, after the Eeformers, by Low-Churchmen.* Being, however, in reality the result of Divine grace, Low-Church faith was not unaccompanied by works. It wrought by love, and the love showed itself in action. Where it wrought most powerfully, there was manifested the fruit of the Spirit : love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle- ness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. And in Low-Church people generally it showed itself in outward and actual works. Of these some were positive ; such as those to be mentioned now. The great work of all others was that of hearing Low-Church sermons. The good Low-Churchman was not satisfied with hearing two sermons on Sunday ; he must needs have one in the week as well. Another work was Scripture-reading : though whether this work was done as well as talked about, and whether, if so, the doing bore to the talking any reasonable proportion is another thing ; and certainly Low-Churchmen have never been remarkable for making Scripture their study, with all their theory of verbal in- spiration. And a third was making prayers : or, if not able to make prayers oneself, attending, at all events, meetings whereat other persons * See {e.g.) a passage from Waldegrave's Way of Peace, cited below, p. , note. 254 SABBATARIANISM. made tliem ; tliese prayers being usually, if not always, extempore. Another important work by which a Low-Church- man might generally be known was his observance of the Lord's day as a Jewish Sabbath. We have spoken of tlie Low-Church party as inheriting the Zuinglian theology of the Eeformers, handed down to them by the Puritans. Of that theology the doctrine that Sunday ought to be observed as a sabbath — or rather, as the Sabbath — occupied a far more prominent position with modern Low- Church- men than it had done with tlie early Eeformers. One or two Eeformation divines, indeed — Poynet at all events* — had hinted at such a thing ; but the idea was first formally propounded, either by a Mr. Smith in a sermon on the first Sunday in Lent, 1585, before the University of Cambridge,f or by a Dr. Bound, in a treatise, 0/ the Sabbath, published ten years later ;J and was denoted, in the technical language of those times, by the term " Morality of the Sabbath : " by which term was meant the estimation of the fourth Commandment as a moral precept rather than a ceremonial one, and, by (consequence, the binding character of that Commandment in its literal sense, in the same way as the sixth, seventli, eighth, and ninth Commandments are bindinsf. This view was held in all its strictness by the Low-Church party ; it lay at the foundation of a society formed in 1831 for the observance * See above, p. 30. t Neal's History of the Puritans, vol. i. p. 465. 1 lb. p. 577. SABBATARIANISM. 255 of the Lord's Day,* and it was to a certain extent acted upon as well. We have heard a children's song which ran thus : " We must not play on Sunday, Because it is a sin : But we may play on Monday, On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, On Friday and on Saturday, Till Sunday comes again. " We must not laugh on Sunday, Because it is a sin : But we may laugh on IMonday," &c., &c. We have seen another which began : " Now I love the Sabbath day, Love it better than my play : And I very well can spare This whole day for praise and prayer." Well might Charles Simeon write, " I think that many Judaize too much, and that they would have joined the Pharisees in condemninq our Lord on many occasions. "f It should indeed be observed at the same time, that not a few High- Churchmen adopted in theory the same view as the Low- Church one : Bishop Blomfield in par- ticular, whose, " Family Prayers," in an enlarged edition, contained a prayer for Sunday which began thus, more curiously than intelligibly, " 0 Lord God of the Sabbath." But if we except Bishop Blomfield himself (and we do not know * The principles of the society recognised directly " the Divine and permanent obligation of this solemn institute of revealed religion." — Christian Observer, for 1831, p. 122. t Carus's Life of Simeon, p. 692. 256 LOW-CHURCH PRACTICE. that even he ought to be excepted), we doubt if any person not a Low-Churchman ever went as far as the Low-Church party did in carrying the theory into practice. We recollect being taught in our own childhood that it was wrong to write a letter, or pay a visit to a friend on Sunday, or to read on that day anything which was not of a reliojious character. A little school- fellow told us that he was allowed to ]use his water-colours on Sunday — a very questionable matter, as we ourselves were taught to think — provided that the subject to be coloured was " a Sunday one." Some Low-Church people desired the Postmaster to detain until Monday all letters for them which might arrive on Sunday. Putting, however, these practical errors aside, the manner in which the Low-Church leaders observed the Lord's day was certainly a manifestation of their piety. With them the first day of the week was not a weariness, to be shortened as much as possible by lying in bed late in the morning and retiring early at night, but the occasion of real and great spiritual enjoyment, in communion with God and Christ over and above what they had on most other days. Mostly, however, the works which evidenced a Low-Churchman's faith were of a negative character : such were those to be specified now : the abstaining from what were termed " worldly amusements ; " that is to say, from horse-races, from stage-plays, from dancing, whether public or private, and (according to some Low-Church authorities) from evening parties ; always excepting LOW-CHURCH WORKS. 257 such parties as were to have a distinctly religious character, owing to the exposition and the prayer with which the entertainment was to be wound up. When the game of croquet came into fashion, there were great discussions as to whether it also was to be included among worldly amuse- ments, or whether it might be permitted ; and we do not know that the question was ever formally settled. The period of which we are to speak presently furnished opportunities for works of yet another kind, in the rise of numerous societies of a more or less religious character, and which had to be supported and aided by the contributions, the pens, and the labours of Low-Church people. And the succeeding period furnished in its turn opportunities for a yet greater variety of works, in the active obstruction of what was beinsf done by some other religious people ; in other words, the contradicting or undermining what other religious people taught in the way of religious belief, and the opposing what they inculcated in the way of practice. This development, how- ever, of Low-Church principles does not appear to have commenced until a later period. Turning now to inquire what means Low- Churchmen employed for the propagation of their views, we shall have to remark that the chief means was the pulpit ; not only because the pulpit is the obvious means for propagating any religious doctrine whatever, but on this special account also, that the pulpit, according to Low-Church ideas, was the great means of 18 258 LOW-CHURCH PREACHING. grace — the great means, that is to say, by wliich God would not only convert His elect, but also bring them forward in His ways. Among the chief propagators of Low-Church doctrine we do indeed find some who were not preachers ; we find, for instance, a Wilberforce and a Hannah More ; but the greater number of them un- questionably were clergymen, occupants of the Anglican pulpit ; and we naturally inquire, then, further, what it was that gave Low-Church preach- ing then a force which it does not seem to have now? Several causes may be alleged. One, the earnest- ness of the preachers. " We have had the hum- drum lorn? enough " was Mr. Ludlam's remark to Mr. Eobinson, soon after the latter had come to Leicester. And this feeling must have been general, when any Low-Churchman began to preach : those who had no more public helps to their religion than what was afforded by one of Cowper's fashion- able clergy, mentioned by us before,* must have had some of their natural inclinations enlisted on the side of the preacher, even when he attacked their habitual carelessness, their self-righteousness, or their less respectable sins. Another cause was their belief in their office. Not only were the things which they said true, but they spoke them with a Divine authority ; such was their belief. This was expressed on the behalf of Mr. Eobinson of Leicester, in an exaggerated form, in the monument put up to his memor}- in St. Martin's * See above, p. 93. CAUSES OF ITS FORCE. 259 Church ; in which " the principal composition re- presents the late Mr. Eobinson receiving his com- mission to preach the Gospel immediately from the hafids of our Saviour Himself, who is represented as having descended on a cloud, and as placing the pastoral crosier in the right hand of Mr, Eobinson ; whilst He is also committing to him the Bible, on the open page of which is engraved, ' This is He who came by water and blood! ' "* Oftentimes the rnamier of the preaching was an additional commendation to the hearers, the ser- mon being spoken rather than read, and may be Avithout notes. There was indeed a prejudice against this, among the educated classes of that day ; it was thought that extempore speaking was for ranting Dissenters, and not for sober Churcli- people. This was exemplified in Henry Martyn's voyage to India, when his fellow-passengers begged him to preach to them written discourses. But among the lower classes this prejudice does not seem to have existed at all ; and even where it did exist, yet when it had been so far set aside that men went to hear the preacher in spite of it, it was quickly removed altogether by the pleasure of hearing a sermon such as could be heard with- out tedium. Here at least there was somethino- to keep people awake. * Vauglian's Account of the Rev. Thomas Robinson, p. 293. It probably never entered either into the mind of Mr. Bacon, the sculp- tor, or into the mind of anybody else, that thus Mr. Robinson was represented as an apostle : apostles being the only ministers who receive their commission from the Lord immediately and directly, without ordination by a merely human ecclesiastical superior, and are thus "neither o/man neither by man " (Gal. i. 1). 18—2 260 LOW-CHURCH PREACHING. All this must be coupled with the fact that no- where else in the Church of England could these characteristics be found, save in the Low-Church party ; or if they could be found anywhere else, the cases were only exceptional. This indeed was the chief cause of the force exerted by Low-Church preachers. Nor must it be forgotten that the doc- trine which the old Low-Church preachers taught was for all practical purposes new. Dr. Conyers's experience cannot have been isolated : it must have been such as a majority of the Anglican clergy of his day would have had to own, could they have been compelled to answer the question truly. " Dr. Conyers had been holden up as a pattern of what a minister should be, when, upon studying his Greek Testament one day, as his custom was, he came in the course of his reading to Ephesians iii. 8, ' Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.* * Eiches of Christ ! ' said he within himself : ' un- searchable riches ! What have I preached of these ? What do I know of these ? ' "* Novelty always has some attractions. With the pulpit must be classed those other modes of teaching which, at the time whereof we speak, were, we believe, employed by Low-Church- men alone : the familiar lecture in the cottage or school-room, and the exposition at family prayers : also the Sunday-school, and the visits of persons — mostly females — who devoted themselves to the * Vaugban's Accoujit of the Rev. Thomas liobinson, p. 254. OTHER AGENCIES : HYMNODY. 261 work of visiting tlie sick and poor. To the press we have already alluded in effect, when speaking of religious publications. One, however, of the most important means used for propagating Low-Church principles was the introduction of hymns into the public services of the Church — of hymns other than what miglit be found at the end of Sternhold and Hopkins, or Tate and Brady — and the use of regularly composed hymnals. The in- troduction of such hymnals was very much opposed at first by those who professed regard for Church order and Church-discipline. The introduction of one for use in a church in Sheffield without authority occasioned a suit in the Consistory Court of York. In that case the Archbishop of York acted as a mediator ; undertaking to compile a selection of psalms and hymns, and print it at his own expense, for use in the same church :* and this must have tended in no small desfree to en- courage the use of similar hymnals. Among these, the Olney Hymns must have been among the first. The book as we have it now cannot have been composed as a Church hymnal primarily : Hymn 70 in it is entitled " A Welcome to Christian Friends," and could hardly have been sung except in a private house ; and so also Hymn 71, to which are prefixed the words " At parting." Moreover, three sets of rhyming lines at the end, to which the name of " Poems " is given, cannot have been intended for singing at all. Many how- ever of the compositions in the volume were evi- * Christian Observer for 1822, p. 433, &c. 262 OLNEY HYMNS. dently composed for use in Olney Cliurcli : thus we have thirteen " hymns before annual sermons to young people, on new-years' evenings," and apparently ten more, designated as " hymns after sermons to young people, on new-years' evenings." And seven hymns are indicated as to be sung " be- fore sermon " and eight in like manner " after sermon." And a few are " sacramental hymns," evidently meant to be sung at the celebration of the holy Eucharist. While on the subject of the Olney Hymns, it may be well to remark that with the exception of those compositions which are grounded on texts of Scripture, the book is almost entirely occupied with descriptions of subjective feelings and emotions: the only one of the Christian seasons for which hymns are specially provided is Christmas. And (with the above exceptions) the only special occasions for which hymns are pro- vided are funerals. The Olney Hymn-book, however, was but one of the first in a whole library of such hterature. The hymns wherewith such books were made up (with usually, a selection from metrical versions of the Psalms) were in many cases totally unfit for use in public worship, being descriptions of indi- vidual experiences or supposed experiences, where- in no congregation whatever could be supposed to share at one and the same time. And some of the expressions used conveyed ideas which were utterly unreal : thus, after this had been sung — " The op'ning heavens around me shine With beams of sacred bliss, If Christ reveal Himself as mine, And tell me I am His," LOW-CHURCH HYMNS. 263 the next words put into the mouth of the congre- gation were — • " My soul would leave this heavy clay At that transporting word : Run up with joy the shining way, To see and m3et my Lord." Doctrinal hymns expressed for the most part those truths whereof Low-Churchmen made most account, such as human corruption, and the atone- ment and righteousness of Ciirist, and those other doctrines which Low-Churchmen held, but which were more or less erroneous : as, for instance, the sabbatical character and peculiar sanctity of the Lord's Day, set forth in such a stanza as this : " Another six-days' work is done, Another Sabbath is begun : Return, my soul, enjoy thy rest. Improve the day which God has blest," and the assumption of the faithful soul to heavenly glory immediately on its own departure from the body at death ; as in the following lines : " In vain my fancy strives to paint The moment after death. The glories that surround the saint When he resigns his breath. " Thus much (and this is all) we know ; They are completely blest." More unsatisfactory still was an alteration of Doddridge's well-known communion-hymn " My 264 LOW-CHURCH HYMNS. God, and is Thy table spread." The second stanza, as written by Doddridge, ran : " Hail, sacred feast, which Jesus makes, Rich banquet of His Flesh and Blood." This we rejoice to deem an evidence that He Who is above all ordinances both can and does com- municate the grace of His ordinances, even where to all human view the ordinances are not minis- tered according to His institution : for how could Doddridge have attained to the spiritual discern- ment of the Lord's Body and Blood, as those lines indicate that he had, if he had not been made partaker of those heavenly Things really and truly, even at his nonconformist table ? In that Low- Church hymnal, however, which was sometimes called, from its compiler, " Hall's Selection," and sometimes the " Mitre-book," from its having the ficrure of a mitre stamped on its cover, Doddridge's orthodox words were thus Zuinglianised : "Hail, sacred feast, which Jesus makes, Memorial of His Flesh and Blood." Another alteration which might be attributed to heresy, if it had not (as we believe it had) owed its origin to a simple unreasoning fear of everything which might conceivably be done or said by Eoman Catholics, was in a hymn beginning — ■ " When our heads are bowed with woe," — and whereof the last line in each stanza, " Jesu, Son of Mary, hear," was altered into " Jesu, Son of David, hear." A doctrinal hymn by Hart, entitled Experience, but which appears to be a metrical HYMNS. — ORGAIS'iyATION. 265 statement of the Five Points of Calvinism, appeared in a selection by the Eev. Samuel Silver, Vicar of Fulbourne All Saints, Cambridgeshire. Here is a specimen stanza : " To perseverance I agree ; The thiug- to me is clear, Because the Lord has promised me That 1 shall persevere." The whole book is a master-piece in its way ; but we do not suppose it ever became popular. CHAPTER XX. Period of Missionary Zeal. The Church Missionary Society. The Christian Observer. " Heaven does with us, as we with torches do ; Not light them for themselves : for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not." Measure for Measure, Act I. sc. i. . Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century the Low-Church party can hardly be said to have had any organisation ; they were an increasing number of individuals, but that was almost all. We use the term " ori?anisation " in the same sense in which it is used by persons speaking of political parties : not as signifying the formation of a cor- porate body with a settled constitution, and with officers appointed according to definite rules, but as expressing the conditions of a party with recog- nised principles both of theory and of practice, by which the said party comes to be marked off from 2GG LOW-CHURCH ORGANISATION. the rest of society, and having, moreover, certain known leaders, the g-eneraUty of wdiose recogni- tion, in the capacity of leaders, holds the party toijether. For it is in the nature of mankind to follow leaders much more than to strike out courses inde- pendently. And hence, even when the Protestant principle of private judgment is professed in the most unlimited terms, leaders are, we believe, in- variably found whose opinions are deemed to be law : and while the theory is admitted that even these leaders can be mistaken, yet the multitude who follow them are content to shape their prac- tice on the idea that the leaders (especially when they agree together) never are mistaken in point of fact. Such an organisation was formed through the intercourse which the old recognised Low- Church leaders had with one another ; and especially in the formation of clerical societies, such as that which met annually at Creaton, Northamptonshire, in 1809, or thereabouts ; and that which was formed by John Venn in the neighbourhood of Little Dunham, Norfolk, and which was either the first, or one of the first, of such societies. Tw^o events, however, took place about the time whereof we speak, and within a few years of one another, which events contributed in their several ways to make the organisation of the Low-Church party much more perfect than it had been. One of these events was the formation of the " Church Missionary Society," and the other was the starting of the Christian Observer. The. latter was the con- "CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY." 267 ceiitration of Low-Churchmen's literary ability, the former was the chief concentration of their re- ligious zeaL In the Christian Observer they venti- lated their views and opinions — tlie " Church Missionary Society " was the chief agency by which they sought to carry their views and opinions into practice. The " Church Missionary Society " was formed in the year 1798. At that time there was in the Church of England not any organisation avowedly for preaching the Gospel to the heathen. There was indeed tiie Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge ; and there was the Society for Propa- gation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts : the former had been founded in 1698, and the latter in 1701. But though the laws of eacli of these societies admitted of its funds being appropriated for the maintenance of missionaries to the heathen, that object was with the Society for Propagation of the Gospel only a secondary one ; while with the other society it can scarcely be said to have been an object at all. Of the Low-Church party, however, the missionary spirit speedily took hold, and, in the first place, of those who formed the " Clapham Sect." In 1783 had been formed in London a society called the Eclectic Society, the object of which was to discuss subjects of divinity with a view to mutual edification.* On the 8th of February, 1796, Mr. Simeon, of Cambridge, proposed to this society the question "With what propriety, and in * Bateman's Life of Bishop Daniel Wilson, vol. i. p. 217. 268 "CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY," wliat mode, can a mission be attempted to the heathen from the Estabhshed Church?" The discussion following thereupon led to the forma- tion of the " Church Missionary Society."* After the question had been discussed at several meet- ings of the Eclectic Society, a meeting was held at the Castle and Falcon Inn, Aldersgate Street, " for the purpose of instituting a society amongst the members of the Established Church for sending missionaries among the heathen," The Eev. John Venn, Eector of Clapham, was in the chair ; and at this meeting was established " The Society for Missions to Africa and the East." The Eclectic Society had been unanimously of opinion, says the Eev. John Venn, that the London Missionary Society " was not formed upon those principles which were either calculated to produce success, or to justify our publicly uniting with them."f Yet, originated as the new society was by a party in the Church rather than by the Church herself, and by a party too which was Pro- testant rather than Catholic, it was not likely to have been constituted on Church lines ; and its relations to the Anglican Church at large might become relations not only of independence but of antagonism. For many years (we are told by a warm supporter of the society) " it was the habit of the secretaries of some of the chief missionar}'' societies, the Church Missionary, the London, the Wesle3^an, to meet at one another's offices. They * MS. note by the Rev. Basil Woodd, one of the members present. This note is cited in Simeon's Life, p. 111. t Simeon's Life, p. 167. "CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY." 269 then mutually imparted the result of their ex- perience, in the conduct of their missions, in the selection and training of missionary candidates, and the course to be pursued with heathen con- verts. They discussed the methods of avoiding collision at home, or any matter which might ex- cite jealousy or discontent with their own society in the minds of their missionaries abroad. They were all engaged in one great work."* This, however, must not, we think, be deemed the fault of those by whom the " Church Missionary Society " was first formed. The society was an outcome of spiritual life and religious zeal ; and no one in those days ever dreamed that spiritual life and religious zeal had more to do with one mode of organisation than with another. Moreover, to have given the society in its birth a church- organisation properly so called would have been, almost certainly, to give it its death of inanition. Nobody in his senses would have brought into the society, and especially to be members of its execu- tive, a number of men who would have either chilled their brethren's hearts with their own lack of zeal, or, maybe, hindered their action by active opposition. Much therefore as we may regret that the society does not now work altogether upon Church lines, we cannot but acknowledge that it was better for it to have been constituted upon party lines than upon such lines as would practically amount to its not having been con- stituted at all. * Birks's Memoir of the Rev. K Bickersteth, vol. i. p. 374. 270 "CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY." There is another point, besides, which also, we think, has failed to receive sufficient attention. Constrained as the society was to take up a party position at home, its missionaries were constrained by the nature of things to take up a party position abroad. We do not conceive that any blame for this attached either to them or to the society ; what blame was deserved on account of the matter in question was deserved by the Church at large, which had given occasion for such a state of things to arise. Desirable, as no doubt it was, that the bishop of every colonial diocese should possess full canonical jurisdiction over every Anglican clergyman ministering within that diocese, it is nevertheless certain that no colonial bishop would claim such jurisdiction of right ; since no colonial bishop had been elected to his throne according to the ancient canons or customs. It is election which gives jurisdiction, just as it is consecration which conveys the spiritual gift requisite for exercising jurisdiction ; and though the colonial bishops had all been validly consecrated, not one of them had been canonically elected ; and hence what jurisdic- tion they had came only by virtue of a contract, undertaken by those who were minded to render canonical submission. This consideration, we ap- prehend, was not sufficiently borne in mind, even in cases where it had great importance ; and the consequence was that the "Church Missionary Society " came to have in time a worse character for ecclesiastical insubordination than it really deserved. But nevertheless, after making all allowance for ITS BAD CHURCHMANSHIP. 271 these considerations, it will still have to he ad- mitted that the "Church Missionary Society," which soon acquired the confidence of the whole Low- Church part3% did in some of its proceedings carry out the same erroneous principles of Church order which were involved in the religion of its supporters. And even had their doctrinal prin- ciples been sound, yet that alone would not have sufficed to keep them clear of serious errors in practice. For the work which they had taken upon themselves was one really beyond the powers of all of them together ; for it was the work of a spiritual Episcopate, for the efficient fulfilment whereof there is ever needed a special spiritual gift. That gift is conferred in consecration to the Episcopate ; but of the Episcopate no one of their committee was ej; officio a member. Thus, we re- peat, they were sure to fall into practical mistakes. And how much more then when their very churcli- manship was unsound ! Even Dean Milner, who subscribed liberally not only to the mission-work of the Moravians, but also to that of the Wes- leyans, conceived that the " Church Missionary Society " had not taken sufficient care to secure a conformity to Anglican discipline ; and appre- hended that from this laxity consequences injurious both to the interests of religion and to the credit of the Church of England were likely to ensue.* And when, after Dean Milner had gone to his rest, the committee of the Society not only accepted the pseudo-ordination of Lutheran communities as * Life of Dean Miluer,p. 610. 272 BAD CIIURCHMANSHIP. valid, but applied for Lutheran orilination in the case of at least one successful catechist ;* and when, still later, a pronounced Presbyterian be- came one of their recognised lay agents in the East Indies, it does not seem at all too much to say that to continue the title of " Church Missionary Society" involved a misnomer. The following passage from the preface to the English Ordinal will be remembered : " It is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scriptures and ancient authors that from the Apostles' time there have been these three orders of ministers in Christ's Church : Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. . . To the intent that these Orders may be continued, and reverently used and esteemed in the United Church of England and Ireland ; no man shall be accounted or taken to be a lawful Bishop, Priest, or Deacon in the United Church of England and Ireland, or suffered to execute any of the said functions, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted thereunto according to the form hereafter following, or hath had formerly Episcopal Conse- cration or Ordination." That passage too of the Catechism in which the child is taught to say, " I learn to believe ... in God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind ; " a statement to which Presbyterian doctrine is flatly opposed ; • The committee expressed their desire that the " ordained " Ger- man missionaries should confer with Mr. Garnon, an English clergy- man, then chaplain at Freetown, the capital of the colony of Sierra Leone, and "ordain" W. Augustine B. Johnson as a Lutheran minister ; and this was accordingly done by Messrs. Renner,Butscher, and Wenzel, March 31st, 1817. — Africa's Mountain Valley, by the author of Ministering Children, p. 58. PARTY-CHARACTEK. 273 for according to the Presbyterian formularies Christ redeemed, not all mankind, but only a cer- tain number elected or chosen out of mankind.* The "Church Missionary Society" was consti- tuted a Low-Church society, and it continued so. An attempt was made, in later years, by Mr. (afterwards Cardinal) Newman, to swamp the com- mittee by an influx of High-Churchmen ;f but the attempt did not succeed. What, Mr. Birks asks, has protected the society "from such calamities, but the a3gis of their principles, furnished to them by the subscribers at large ? " (whatever that last clause may mean). And when, later still, the secretary was asked to join in establishing a mis- sionary union for Paddington, apparently between his society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, he declined on the ground that such unions are fallacious things. J And no doubt he was right. The other means by which the organisation of the Low-Church party was effected was the publi- * " By the decree of God, for the mauifestatiou of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others preordained to everlasting death."— Cotifession of Faith, ch. iii. § iii. " These angels and men, thus predestinated and preordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed."— /6. § iv. " To all those for whom Christ hath purchased redemption. He doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same." — lb. ch. viii. § viii. " All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by His word and Spirit."— J6. ch. xi. § i. " Those whom God effec- tually calleth He also freely justifieth."— 76. ch. xi. § i. " Christ, by His obedience unto death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are thus justified." — ib. § iii. t Birks' Memoir of the Rev. E. Bickersteth, vol. i. p. 448. X Knight's Memoir of the Rev. H. Venn, p. 223. 19 274 THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. cation of the Christian Observer. This periodical was started by the " Clapham Sect : " Wilberforce and his friends were the first originators of the scheme, and the first supporters of the pubhcation; and Zachary Macaulay was tlie first editor. It came out every month, the first number in January, 1802, and hasted until 1875, when it was amalgamated with another periodical of consi- derably later date, under the title of The Christian Observer and Advocate, and may be considered as a fair exponent of the views generally held by Low-Church people, whether identical with one another or diverse. And being the only magazine of the kind which the Low-Church party has ever had, it may be taken as a true represen- tative of the literary excellence of what, after the first generation had passed away, if not sooner, deserved to be called the Illiterate or Stupid party in the Anglican Church. The design of the first promoters of the maga- zine, as stated in the original prospectus, was " to promote the increase of sound theological know- ledge, and to delineate the characters of primitive and unadulterated Christianity. As members of the Established Church they will occasionally examine, in a temperate manner, the principles on which that Church is founded ; and they will endeavour to explain and enforce the pious ten- dency of her rites, ceremonies, and liturgy." * And no doubt it was the honest belief of Wilber- force, and of others who had not made theology a • Preface to the Christian Observer for 1838. THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. 275 study, that with primitive Christianity the notions of their own party were in perfect harmony. And so said the editor, in the preface to the first volume of the New Series: "The design was to endeavour to promote the glory of God and the salvation of men, by setting forth the doctrines, and inculcating the precepts, of the Gospel, as understood and received by the Church of England. General discussions, matters of taste, science and literature, and a brief memorial of the passing events of the day, were proposed to be kept sub- ordinate to the above leading object, and to be rendered ancillary to it. But then he proceeded to add, " By the doctrines of the Church of England was understood, generally, those tenets in which the whole family of the orthodox Protestant Eeforma- tion concur with us, as recognised in our Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy : " where it will be noticed that (after the general usage of the Low-Church party) the Liturgy is put last. The lines generally taken by the editor and contributors were in accordance with the above statements. The first number comprised three departments, the miscellaneous, the literary, and the historical. The first had five sub-divisions : biographical (which gave a sketch of the first promulgation of Christianity), biblical, theological (including a translation of part of King Edward the Sixth's Zuinglian Catechism), ecclesiastical, and various. The literary department comprised a review of new publications, a review of reviews, &c., &c., literary and philosophical intelligence, and a list of new publications. The historical depart- 19—2 276 • THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. ment described the state and progress of religion, and gave a view of public affairs, a chronicle of foreign occurrences, and a chronicle of domestic occurrences ; closing with an obituary, and replies to correspondents. The plan was afterwards modified, and then a number of the magazine contained religious communications, miscellaneous articles, a review of new publi- cations, a review of reviews, &c., &c., literary and philosophical intelligence, a list of new publications, religious intelligence, a view of public affairs, and an obituary. And as to Church principles, the editor professed a strict neutrality ; that is to say, he would not be the vehement partisan either of Arminianism or of Calvinism ; either of High-Church, or Low- Church,* Later, however, the principles of the magazine were described by the editor as " Hookerite." f Eventually the magazine became the monthly organ of the Low -Church party exclusively. CHAPTER XXI. Period of Missionary Zeal, continued. Early Life of Daniel Wilson the elder, London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. Hannah More's Practical Piety. In 1802 Daniel Wilson, who afterwards became an eminent Low-Church leader, was ordained deacon : and this therefore will be a fitting place * Preface to vol. for 1821, p. iv. t Christian Observer for 1845, p. 171. DANIEL WILSON. 277 for briefly narrating the early history of that distinguished man. Daniel Wilson was born on the 2nd of July, 1778, in Spitallields, where his father was a silk manufacturer. At seven years of age he was sent to school, first to Eltham in Kent, and then to Hackney ; in which last place his master was the Eev. J. Eyre, who had been curate to Mr. Cecil, and was then minister of Eam's Chapel, Homerton. At fourteen years of age lie became apprentice to his uncle, Mr. William Wilson, a manufacturer and merchant of silk. Of his early religious training, such as it was, he writes, "My parents, for the first years of their marriage, were a kind of loose Church people, attending regularly at Mr. Eo- maine's, of Blackfriars Church, in the morning of the Sunday, and at the Tabernacle, I supj)ose, in the evening. When their young family made the distance from Blackfriars inconvenient, they attended at a Dissenting meeting-house in their neighbourhood in the morning, and at Spitalfields Church in the evening. My schoolmaster, how- ever, being a clergyman, though not strictly regular, I was accustomed to the Church service during the four years of my residence with him. When I went to live with my uncle, before 1 was fourteen, an entire change took place in these respects, for he was a strict and conscientious Churchman, attending first Mr. Eomaine, and after his death Mr. Crowther, of Christ Church, Newgate Street, Mr. Cecil, Mr. Scott, and Mr. Basil Woodd." The evening lecture at Spital- fields Church was preached at this time by the 278 DANIEL WILSON. Eev. Eicliard Cecil alternately with the Eev. J. Eoster. At this period Mr. Wilson professes himself to have been living in sin, and not only without prayer, but remarked for his irreverent conduct at church. Calvinism appears to have been the only form of religion which he knew. On one occasion he was urging the logical con- sequence of this system, viz. the non-responsibility of man. A companion in the warehouse remarked that God, Who appointed the end, had also ap- pointed the means. Wilson replied that he had none of those feelings towards God which God required and approved. " Well, then," said the other, " pray for the feelings." Daniel Wilson did so, thinking that he would be able to say that he had done all he could ; but his prayers were soon answered, in the rise within him of an uneasiness about his spiritual state. He then communicated with his old master, Mr. Eyre, with his mother, and with the Eev. John Newton, then rector of St. Mary Woohioth. The ministry which he received from these persons appears to have been, as indeed might have been expected, mainly a searching into Wilson's subjective feelings, instead of teaching him, as a Christian Evangelist ought to have done, the truths of Universal Eedemption, and his own baptismal standing in Christ. But though Wilson was thus continually despairing, yet that Lord into Whom he had been baptized, and Whose grace, therefore, was ever with him, though he knew it not, did not allow his faith to fail altogether : in making his first Communion in October, 1797, he received the sacrament not only to his spiritual JEWS MISSION SOCIETY. 279 life, but also to his comfort and joy. About the same time he felt a desire to become a minister in the Church. Various obstacles opposed themselves in his way to holy orders, but were in due time removed ; and having resided the requisite time at St. Edmund's Hall, Oxford, and taken his B.A. degree in March, 1801, he was ordained deacon by Bishop Brownlow North, of Winchester, on the 20th of September in the same year, to the curacy of Chobham and Bisley, whereof the Eev. Eichard Cecil was rector. And there we shall leave him for the present. In the year 1809 was founded the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews. This society was not constituted on Church lines, any more than the " Church Missionary Society." In fact, the character of its Churchmanship was seen in its fundamental rules ; for Eule I. enacted that the officers of the society must be members of the United Church of England and Ireland, oi^ (if foreigners) of a Protestant Church ; and Eule II. that public worship and the education of the children under the society, within the United Kingdom, should be conducted in strict conformity with the principles and formularies of the Establislied Church. (The reader will note the limiting qualifications which we have expressed in italics.) Thus Mr. Nico- layson, the society's missionary at Jerusalem in the year 1839, was quite within his engage- ments to the society when, on the visit of the Presbyterian ministers. Dr. Black, Dr. Keith and Mr. McCheyne, he not only administered 280 H. MORE'S rRACTICAL PIETY. Holy Communion to at least one person who was not kneeling, but admitted Dr. Keith to join with him in the ministration ;* thus con- travening both Eubric and Canon. Whether or not, however, as a result of increased manifes- tation of love and care for God's ancient people in the formation of this society, certain it is that at this same time the several Protestant missionary organisations "suddenly emerged from a state of comparative obscurity, and by a kind of simul- taneous movement engrossed the popular favour and sanction from one extremity of the kingdom to the other. "f Two years later there appeared Hannah More's Practical Piety, of which we may here give a brief account. The object of the work was very similar to the object of Wilberforce's Practical View of Christianiti/, except that it was not so avowedly polemical. It was to describe Christianity as a principle springing from the heart and influencing the practice. And, like the work of Wilberforce, it can, we suppose, be read by no sincere Christian without advantage. It manifests, however, very abundantly the defects of that religious system which the authoress had embraced. It manifests an ignorance of the way in which the principle of Christian religion is conferred, and an igno- rance of the Christian dispensation as a dispen- sation — nay, the dispensation — of the Spirit. * Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews, p. 189, Memoir and Remains of the Rev. R. M. McCheyne, p. 560. t Gritnshawe's Meinoir of the Rev. Legh Richmond, p. 129. H. more's practical piety. 281 " Our blessed Eedeemer," we read, " in over- coming the world, bequeathed us His command to overcome it also ; but as He did not give the command without the example, so He did not give the example without the offer of a power to obey the command." By the mission of the Holy Ghost, Christ has given the power generally ; and God, by causing us to be baptized into Christ, has conveyed the power to us in particular. This, however, Hannah More did not know. " Genuine religion " (we read again) " . . . . puts the Christian into a new state of things, a new con- dition of being." By this, Hannah More probably meant no more than that when a Christian's religion is genuine, that Christian has been put into a new state of things, into a new condition of being. But even this account would not convey a right notion of the case. It would most natur- ally be understood as meaning that genuineness of religion is the preliminary condition to which the being in a new state of things is the conse- quence. Whereas, however necessary may be the inquiry of a good conscience after God * as a preHminary to baptism, it is baptism which, brings us into the new condition wherein we can show, and ought to show, a genuine religion. As Hannah More truly points out, genuine religion " is . . . .a dedication."f And a dedication of self to God can only be done in the perfectly dedicated One, that is, Christ : and it cannot be done in Christ until we are made one with * (TvvsiSi'iaiiog ayaOijc iirtp- p. 10. IN PORT-GLASGOW. 321 Campbell, it is added, had on two occasions before this, and while lying on her sick bed, been made to speak in a new tongue. Of his own experience, and of his brother George's, herein, James Mac- donald says : " On Friday evening, when we were all together after prayer, Mary C 's mouth was again opened to speak clearly and plainly in an unknown tongue for about ten minutes ; after that, George's mouth was opened, and then mine. I felt it to be just the Spirit wdthin me. I had no more power over it than a trumpet has over sound. Mr. C came to us on Saturday, and when we were all together my mouth was opened, and I spake as the Spirit gave me utterance Mr. C then said : ' It is written, " Pray that ye may inter- pret ; " ' accordingly he prayed, and after he had finished I spake in words and sentences which George interpreted. He that interprets does not know what the meaning (of the tongue) is till he hears the voice of the Spirit speaking (the inter- pretation through him)."* " The first word of interpretation " (he says elsewhere) " was, ' Behold, He cometh, Jesus cometh.' "f Thus began in Scotland the movement since called " Irvingism " by an indifferent, scorning, or otherwise hostile public. Of course the circum- stances just narrated soon came to be known beyond the circle of those more immediately con- cerned ; and (as one of these writes) " the pulpits and newspapers are all against us : " and by the autumn of 1831 the Macdonalds had been refused Men f oration of Ajjostlcs and Prophets, p. 1.^, \ lb. p.W. 322 SPIRITUAL MANIFE3TATI0NS Commimion by their parisli minister. Some persons, however, attended their prayer-meetings with a view to judging candidly niid fairly con- cerning the phenomena ; and one writes thus : " The history of one of these prayer-meetings is the history of ail. I may probably as well relate what took place at the first which we attended. The mode of proceeding is, for each person who takes a part, first to read a psalm in metre, which is sung by the meeting, then a chapter from the Bible, and he then prays. On this occasion, after two other gentlemen, J. McD read and prayed. His prayer was most remarkable. The sympathising with the mind of our Saviour, inter- ceding for a world which tramples on His blood and rejects His mercy, and for a Church which grieves His Holy Ghost, the humiliations for sin, and the aspirations after holiness, were totall}^ different from anything I had ever before heard. He then, in the course of prayer and while engaged in intercession for others, began speaking in an unknown tongue, and after speaking for some time he sung, or rather chanted, in the same tongue. He tlien rose, and we all rose with him, and in a very loud voice and with great solemnity he addressed us in the same tongue for a con- siderable time. He then, with the same loudness of voice and manner, addressed us in English, calling on us to prepare for trial, for we had great trials to go through for the testimony of Jesus, to crucify the flesh, to lay aside every weight, to put far from us our fleshly wisdom, power, and strength, and to stay us in our God. After he had con- IN PORT-GLASGOW. 323 eluded, a sliort pause ensued, wlien suddenly the woman-servant of the McD 's arose, and spoke •(for a space of probably ten minutes) in an unknown tongue, and then in English. The latter was entirely from Scripture, consisting of passages from different parts and connected together in the most remarkable manner. The meeting concluded with a Psalm, a chapter, and prayer from another gentleman. Immediately on conclusion, Mrs. , one of the ladies who had received the Spirit, but had not received the gift of tongues (she received the gift while we were in the country), arose, went out of the room, and began speaking in a loud voice of the coming judgments. After she had spoken about five minutes, M. McD commenced also speaking, and Mrs. instantly ceased speaking. It is impossible to describe the solemnity and grandeur both of words and manner, in which she gave testimony to the judgments coming on the earth, but she directed the Church to the comins^ of the Lord as her hope of deliverance. When she had concluded we left the house " . . . . Those persons, while uttering the unknown sounds, as also while speaking in the Spirit in their own language, have every appear- ance of being under supernatural direction. . In addition to outward appearances, their own declarations, as the declarations of honest, pious, and sober individuals, may with propriety be taken in evidence. They declare that their organs of speech are made use of by the Spirit of God, and that they utter that which is given to 22—2 324 SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS them, and not the expressions of their own con- ceptions or their own intention. But I had numerous opportunities of observing a variety of facts fully conhrmatory of this. Whatever might have been the apparent exertion employed, I repeatedly observed that it had no exhausting effect upon them, that neither loudness of voice nor vehemence of action discomposed or exhausted them. And we had a remarkable instance of this in M. McD , who one morning, having, in con- sequence of a severe cold, so entirely lost the use of her voice as to be unable to speak out of a whisper, yet on a sudden commenced, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. continued speaking in a loud voice, sometimes in intercessory prayer in the Spirit, sometimes in denouncing the coming judg- ments, and occasionally speaking in an unknown tongue, and at the end of that time she relapsed exactly into her former state, neither better nor worse than she had been in the morning, but without the slightest exhaustion from her long- continued efforts. " In addition to what I have already stated, I have only to add my most decided testimony, that so far as three weeks' constant communication can enable me to judge — and I conceive that the oppor- tunities I enjoyed enabled me to form a correct judgment — the individuals thus gifted are persons living in close communion with God and in love towards Him, and towards all men, abounding in faith, and joy, and peace ; having an abhorrence of sin and a thirst for holiness, with an abasement of self and a hope full of immortality, such as I IN SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND. 325 never witnessed elsewhere, and which I find no- where recorded but in the history of the early Church ; and just as they are fervent in spirit, so are they diligent in the performance of all the relative duties of life. They are totally devoid of anything like fanaticism or enthusiasm ; but, on the contrary, are persons of great simplicity of character and of sound common sense They do not assume to be teachers ; they are not deeply read, but they seek to be taught of God, in the perusal of, and mediation on His revealed word, and to ' live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty.' ''* These manifestations continued in Port-Glasj^ow for about a year ; then they gradually lessened, and at last ceased. But it was no long time before the like manifes- tations broke out in Ensfland also. Amouix those who had visited Port-Glasgow for the purpose of inquiring into the spiritual phenomena there to be witnessed, were six persons from England, three ladies and three gentlemen. Of the latter, one was a solicitor (Mr. Cardale, from whose letter to the Morning Watch we have just quoted), another (Dr. Hamilton Eoe) a physician, and the third (Dr. Thompson) a retired army surgeon. Mr. Cardale was a zealous member of the Church of England. f His letter was read by the Rev. Edward Irving, minister of the National Scotch Church, Eegent Square, and who was then in the height of his * Letter to the Editor of the Morning Watch, signed "John B. Cardale," and dated Bedford Row, London, Nov. 16, 1830. t This information I have from a private sonrce. 326 SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS. popularity. He at once expressed his belief that the spiritual gifts of the Church's fitst age ought to have been possessed by the Church ever since. Mr. Cardale opened his house for a weekly prayer- meeting, that those who agreed with him in the same opinion might unite in praying for an out- pouring of the Spirit upon themselves as appeared to have taken place in Scotland. And " it was " (we are told) " at one of these meetings, six months after their commencement, that their prayer was answered in the person of his own wife ; one who had never associated with the brethren in Port- Glasgow, and whose whole character was the oppo- site of enthusiasm."* "The clergyman of the parish " (we are further told) " was duly informed of their proceedings, and besought to sanction them ; but he refused, and preached against them. Still they continued their attendance at his church for several months, and only when virtually ex- communicated, reluctantly withdrew from it to place themselves under the pastoral care of another clergyman : until at length compelled to seek shelter under Mr. Irving."f About the same time there occurred another remarkable case of healing. The subject was the youngest daughter of the Eev. Thomas Fancourt, of Hoxton Square, who had been an invalid for several years. Bleeding, cupping, leeches, issues, setons, had been employed., as well as change of air, rest, &c. : until one day she was suddenly restored, in the manner described * jRestoratio7i of Apostles and Prophets, p. 42. t lb. p. 43. MISS FANCOURT. 327 by herself: "In tlie montli of November, 1822, havinof for some months been in a bad state of health, it pleased God to visit me with hip-disease." (She then details the opinions of various medical men as to her disorder, and the treatment recom- mended by them severally, and adopted.) " In September, 1828, I returned home as unable to walk as when leaving it ; once or twice the attempt was made, but produced much pain, from this time no means have been used excepting con- stant confinement to the couch. Within these few weeks, even on the very day in which Jesus so manifested His Almighty power, I had attempted to walk : scarcely could I put one foot before the other ; the limbs trembled very much. Thus it continued till the 20th of October, 1830 ; when a kind friend, who had seen me about two months before, had been led by God to pray earnestly for my recover}^, remembering what is written, 'What- soever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.' He asked in faith, and God graciously answered his prayer. On Wednesday night, my friend being about to leave the room, Mr. G begged to be excused a short time. Sitting near me, we talked of his relatives, and of the death of his brother : rising, he said, ' They will expect me at supper,' and put out his hand. After asking some questions respecting the disease, he added, ' It is melancholy to see a person so constantly confined.' I answered, ' It is sent in mercy.' ' Do you think so ? do you think the same mercy could restore you ? ' God gave me faith, and I answered, ' Yes.' ' Do vou believe Jesus could heal, as in 328 MISS fancourt's healing. old times ? ' ' Yes.' ' Do you believe it is only unbelief that prevents it ? ' ' Yes.' ' Do you be- lieve that Jesus could heal you at this very time ? ' * Yes.' (Between these questions he was evidently engaged in prayer.) 'Then,' he added, 'get up and walk : come down to your family.' He then had hold of my hand ; lie 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 praying 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 dis- tance of one mile and a quarter. Up to this time God continues to strengthen me, and I am perfectly well. To Jesus be all the glory."* Her father subsequently says, — " The flesh on her legs was flabby and loose, which is ascertained to be now — what it was from the moment she arose and walked — firm as the flesh of a person in good health. ... No alteration in the appear- ance of her back took place before the event re- ferred to ; and . . . her backbone, which was curved before, is now perfectly straight. It is material to add that her collar bones are ascer- tained to be now quite equal, whereas one of them was previously much enlarged. . . . It is four years since she walked at all ; and then it was but * This statement appeared iu the Christiaii Observer for 1830, p. 709. MISS fancourt's iieali^ng. 329 for a sliort time, with the assistance of a stick, and subject to pain in the hip." " In corroboration of the above testimony, I am authorised to use the name — if called for — of a surgeon at the west end of the town, who, after a minute investigation of the case, took his leave with an unequivocal avowal of his decided conviction, that my daughter's restoration was the result of a peculiar interposition of Divine favour and power.''* We cite this occurrence, not as considerinof it to have been what can be called, without any qualification, " miraculous," but because it helped to bring out the opinions and attitude of the Low- Church party, with respect to spiritual manifesta- tions in general. A correspondent of the Christian Observer wrote, "All who know Miss Fancourt as well as I do, can testify with me to her sobriety of mind, and to the meekness and quiet- ness of her spirit. It should be remembered, that until the final address of Mr. G she had no idea whatever of what he proposed to attempt."f On the other hand, some other medical authorities seem to show undoubtedly that the cure might have been wrought through secondary causes, and according to natural laws. Mr. Tripe, who at- tended Miss Fancourt for a year and a half in Devonshire, was fully convinced at that time that the affection of the spineandhip was only nervous. J And Mr. Newnham, in a letter to the Christian * Letter cited in the Christian Observer for 1830, p. 710. t Christian Observer for 1830, p. 776. I Christian Obseri^er for 1831, p. 63, in "Answers to Correspon- dents." 330 . DICTA ABOUT MIRACLES. Observer, * saj^s that " no disorganisation had taken place;" for (1) there were no symptoms to show such disorganisation, and (2) there were symptoms present indicative of a state of disease independent of disorganisation. He considered that there had probably existed chronic inflamma- tion of the hip-joint, but not advanced to the ulterior stage of disorganisation. The disorder probably consisted of muscular feebleness, aided perhaps by a debihty of the function of volition. Mr. N 's rationale of the cure was agreeable to this view, viz. : that all which was wanted for Miss Fancourt's cure was a sufficient stimulus to the will, and that such stimulus was afforded, irrespec- tively of any spiritual action, by Mr. G 's words and manner. So that, as we said, we do not con- sider Miss Fancourt's case to have been necessarily miraculous in the ordinary unqualified acceptation of the term, though there was certainly spiritual action on the part of Mr. G , and that spiritual action was, indirectly at least, the means of effect- ing her cure. The general run, however, of the Low-Church party had taken up with the idea that extraordinary spiritual action was not to be looked for in the present age. The editor of the Christian Ob- server spoke of the " most dangerous and unscrip- tural opinion, that the age of miracles has revived. "f Elsewhere he said, " The miracles recorded in the sacred writings, we separate by a wide line of dis- tinction from all human narratives ;":{: and "we * Christian Observer for 1830, p. 810, &c. + Christian Observer for 1831, p. 710. | lb. p. 711. CHRISTIAN OBSERVER OX MIRACLES. 331 best vindicate the mirncles of Scripture wlien we place between them and all uninspired narra- tions a broad hne of demarcation, not to be trans- gressed."* We should have thought tliat there was a sufficient difference between any miracles^ true or false, and an}^ narratives^ to have prevented even an idiot from confounding between them ; assuming, however, the Editor to have meant, by "liuman narratives," miracles^ true or false, recorded in human narratives, the arbitrariness of such a dictum as his must strike every one. Why should he take for granted that ever}^ real miracle must be recorded in some book of canonical Scripture ? Why should he be compelled to say, in another place, in reference to Miss Fancourt's case, " We must admit any solution rather than a miracle" ? f Why should he be sliut up to such a wonderful piece of reasoning as the following, written in reference to the same case? "To say that a miracle is possible is nothing, for no Christian denies it ; to say it is probable is not to the purpose, for a miracle cannot be antecedently probable ; its being a miracle is utterly opposed to its having been something probable. Tlie real question is, is it proved ; so proved that you would stake Cliristianity itself upon its truth ? If it be not thus proved, it is not even probable ; it is utterly improbable. The very essence of a miracle is, that somethingf is irrefras^- ably proved to have taken place, which, if not thus proved, would not have been credible ; and such are the miracles in Scripture.":]^ ♦ Christian Observer for 1831, p. 711. t lb. p. 713. J lb. p. 16, note. 332 CHRISTIAN OBSERVER ON Here, it will be observed, the Editor had formed a certain class of occurrences, and ticketed it " miracles," both which things he had, doubtless, a right to do. Probably those who took the opposite view to his as to the cure of Miss Fancourt's healing used the term " miracle " to include any special act of God done otherwise than through the ordinary known laws of nature. Further, observing that Miss Fancourt's cure did not fall within the limits of the class which he accounted miraculous, he took it for granted that it must have been effected by God through the ordinary operation of natural laws. He failed also to see that on his premises no miracle can be proved in the absence of Apostles ; for how is any one to know that any particular occurrence, how- ever extraordinary, could not have been wrought otherwise than by Divine power specially put forth ? Still more painful was the attitude taken up by the Editor in reference to the spiritual manifesta- tions at Port Glasgow. Citing from the narrative above given, and ending the citation with the vrords, " Their whole deportment gives an impres- sion not to be conveyed in words, that their organs are made use of by supernatural power," he proceeded : " But we will not copy more : we sicken as we write, to think how the fair face of Eeligfion can be distorted and caricatured. Where the imposture ends and the insincerity begins, we cannot undertake to determine ; but can any man in his senses beheve that this compound of fraud and folly is the work of the Divine Spirit ? " * * Christian Observer for 1830, p. 782. SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS. 333 When reading this, we felt inclined to ask, What did the Editor imagine the spiritual manifestations of the first times of Christianit}^ to have been like? the utterance of tongues which no man under- stood*— other utterances when every member of the assembled church had every one a psalm, a doctrine, a revelation, or an interpretationf — so that if this Editor could have been there, his attitude would have been precisely that which St. Paul says would be taken up by an ignorant man or an unbeliever, in case such a person should hear all the congregation speaking in tongues. Besides, in stigmatising tlie phenomena at Port Glasgow as a compound of fraud and folly, it is obvious that he was simply begging the question at issue. In another place, after alluding to tke spiritual gifts enumerated in the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians, he said, "Were it not wise to turn from such questionable 'gifts,' to the soUd, prac- tical realities of vital, saving, sanctifying truth ? "J And this, in regard not of spurious gifts, but of real ones — of gifts which St. Paul bids his readers to desire, and some of which he would have them covet earnestly. Was there ever, we may ask, such a cool profession by Christian people, of contempt for Divine manifestations? Was there ever such an audacious refusal to obey plain precepts of Holy Scripture ? Among those who accepted the opinion that the spiritual manifestations were of God the Holy Ghost was the Eev. Edward Irving, Minister of the Scottish National Church (Presbyterian), * 1 Cor. xiv. 2. t lb- 26. % Christian Observer for 1831, p. 64. 334 EDWARD IRVING. Eegent Square. A prayer-meeting was soon started in connection with his congregation, for the special purpose of suppUcating that the like manifestations might take place amongst them; and in the course of time they did take place, and were allowed by Irving not only in prayer- meetings, but in the regular services of the congregation. For tliis irregularity (as it was deemed), the trustees of the Eegent Square Kirk took proceedings against him before the London Presbytery. Proceedings had previously been taken against him before the same Presbytery, by a private individual, for certain expressions in his public teaching which were unquestionably here- tical, implying as they did that our Lord Jesus Christ had, either in His human body, or in His human soul, or in His human spirit, some tendenc}^ to sin. Irving, however, and the trustees of his kirk had repudiated the jurisdiction of the Presbytery, on the ground of their trust-deed, which provided that he was to be subject to the Scottish authorities alone: and they had carried their point. Now, however, he did not get off; the case was referred to the Presbytery of Annan, in Scotland, which had ordained him. He appeared before that court, and, being found guilty, was deposed from his ministry on the 13th March, 1833. The trustees had already taken the step of excluding him from the building. May 4th, 1832. He continued, however, to teach those who followed him, first in the bazaar in Gray's Inn Lane, and afterwards in a large hall in Newman Street. SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS. 335 ;, There were spiritual manifestations of a similar kind in the house of J\ir. Drummond, of Albury Park, in Surrey. Mr. Drummond had sat in Parliament for the borough of Plympton Searle, but had since left Parliament, and did not return, till elected, in 1847, as the representative of West Surrey. He had, as we have already seen, thrown his house open at times to. between forty and fifty persons for the study of prophetic Scripture. The Bev. Hugh McXeile, afterwards celebrated as the self-styled " great and good," was then Eector of Albury, and had been accustomed to attend these meetings ; but when the spiritual utterances began, he ceased doing so, and eventually resigned the living, not feeling himself able to deal with the movement. On the 12th of May, 1833, there began to be spiritual manifestation of the same character in an Independent meeting-house in Artillery Lane, Bishopsgate ; the minister, the Eev. J. L. Millar, being suddenly called upon, and apparently in spiritual power, to abstain from ministering com- munion to his people that day, as he was about to do. And on the 8th of September in the same year, being Sunday, at the close of a sermon in Park Chapel, Chelsea, by the Rev. H. J. Owen, Minister of that chapel (in connection with tlie Church of England), a few words were spoken by a member of the congregation, which Mr. Owen, knowing the utterer to be a God-fearing man, and judging also, perhaps, from the character of the utterance, believed to be of the Holy Ghost. He called upon the Bishop (Dr. Blomfield) the next day, and reported the occurrence; whereupon the 336 H. J. OWEN. BAPTIST NOEL. Bishop informed him that such things could not be allowed in the Church of England. Mr. Owen desired that the Bishop would come and hear for himself, and then judge of the character of such utterances as that which had been reported. But the Bishop refused to do so, and insisted that they should not be allow^ed ; adding, "It all comes of your preaching about the Second Advent." By taking which line, we cannot but think, the Bishop put himself and the Church in the wrong, however the question might have to be answered whether the utterances prohibited were of the Holy Ghost or no. For if they were not, the Bishop would, we think, by virtue of the spiritual gift conferred upon him at his consecration, be able to discern the truth ; and if they were, it is to be assumed that the Church of England, being a true branch of that One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to which belongs the promise of the Spirit's perpetual indwelling, would find room even in her public services for that same Divine Spirit to manifest himself as He might will, in orderhness, and in subordination to the Lord Jesus Christ, whose Spirit He is, and whose authority is borne by bishops and priests in their several places. To return, however, to the Low-Church party. One of their lights at this time was the Hon. and Kev. Baptist W. Noel, minister of St. John's, Bedford Eow, and who afterwards seceded to the sect which calls itself Baptist. Of his cono-reo-ation, Mr. Cardale, the solicitor above named as one of those who had gone to Port- Glasgow to inquire into the spiritual movement GOODE ON SPIRITUAL GIFTS. 337 there, was a member. Some spiritual utterances broke out from within Mr. Cardale's famil}^ ; and the wild disorder with which the spiritual mani- festations were at that time often accompanied, and the heresy with wliich Mr. Irving, the most promi- nent amonsf those who believed them results of tha Holy Ghost's presence and working, was credited, formed, with Low-Churchmen sucli as Mr. Noel, excuses for looking upon the spiritual movement in general with disapproval. Mr. Noel himself was invited by Mr. Cardale to come, and hear, and judge concerning the utterances, and then advise him as to whether they should be encour- aged or not. But Mr. Noel, like Bishop Blomfield, declined ; and Low-Churchmen in general treated the movement with utter indifference, if not with active hostility. One book* indeed was written to disprove the claims to what were called the super- natural gifts of the Spirit (as if any of the Spirit's gifts were other than supernatural) ; but no one who knows anything of the claims in question, and of the facts on the ground whereof such claims were rightly or wrongly put forward, will think that the author succeeded in proving his point. And indeed the point must have been remarkably difficult to prove from the author's standing-point; for, by his own showing, he could not have had any actual knowledge of any real spiritual mani- festation at all, that is, of any which was of the Holy Ghost ; so that his volume was such as a * The Modern Claims to the Possession of the Extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit, stated and examined, etc. By the Rev. William Goode, afterwards Dean of Kipon. 23 338 LOW-CHURCH TARTY man might write to prove the spuriousness of a certain set of bank-notes, who had never seen a real bank-note in his Ufe. In general, if a Low- Church writer found it necessary to allude to the apparently supernatural phenomena, he contented himself with setting them down as "wild delu- sions,"* "infatuated talk,"f or " monstrous folly."J But the leaders of the party soon laid down the pen of controversy. Bickersteth wrote in his private journal, April 1st, 1832, "I went one morning to Mr. Irving's church, and heard the speakers with tongues. It did not appear to me a real work of the Spirit. I was depressed by it, as a delusion on the minds of eminent Christians. "§ And Simeon, writing in the same year, and designating as " brainsick enthusiasts " those who believed the Divine origin of the manifestations, says, " I am not controverting their sentiments — I do not hold tliem worthy of controversy." |1 In fact, whenever Low-Churchmen alluded at all to the movement now, it was, we believe, invariably in such terras as showed that Low-Church information concerning it was either imperfect or erroneous ; and when tliey attempted to oppose it, they did little else than betray their own ignorance. Therefore, after the first noise and stir which it made was over, they found it best to hold their peace, even from good words. They thus in effect published to the world that, whether on account of one cause or on account of another, they were not conscious to themselves of sufficient spiritual * Record. t Evangelical Magazine. X Christian Advoccde. § Life, vol. ii. p. 27. || Memoir, p. 6S9. AND " IRVINGISM." 339 discernment for dealing with the practical questions which it involved. And much the same may be said of the attitude taken up by them in regard to another religious movement, which commenced about the same time — the movement started by tlie -so-called Plymouth Brethren.* It was, therefore, to be expected that when, on the 14tli of July, 1835, there appeared to be a ful- filment of things spoken in apparently spiritual power seven years before at Donau Moos ; when, that is to say, twelve men were separated from all their previous engagements, whether eccle- siastical or other, to do tlie work of Apostles, to which work those who adhered to them believed that they had been previously designated by the Holy Ghost speaking in prophetic persons, f and when in 1836 and 1838 public testimony was - borne to this and to the grace which (it was said) the Lord was putting forth towards His Church ; J * See Miss E. J. Whately's little publication entitled Plymouth Brethrenism. (London, liatchards, 1879.) t The twelve originally designated were these : John Bate Cardale, solicitor ; Henry Urummond, banker and country gentleman ; H. King, clerk in the Tower ; H. Perceval, son of the Premier ; Nicholas Armstrong, an Irish clergyman ; Francis Valentine Woodhouse, a barrister; Henry Dalton, Incumbent of Bridgenorth, Shropshire; J. Tudor, artist ; T. Carlyle, advocate ; William Dow, formerly Presby- terian minister of Tongueland ; David Dow, formerly Presbyterian minister of Irongraj', Dumfries ; and Francis Sitwell, country gentle- man. Of these, Mr. David Dow declined to take the place of an Apostle, and his place was filled by a Mr. Duncan Mackenzie. \ In 1836 their "Testimony" was presented to the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England, the four Representative Pre- lates of the Church of Ireland, and to many of the English clergy ; also to King William IV., and as many Privy Councillors as could be got at, and would accept copies of it. In July, 183S, another " Test i- 23—2 340 " IRVINGISM." and when, further, in 1842 a worship of most Catholic character, with a Catholic liturgy and Catholic vestments, was seen in regular perform- ance in their congregations ; — it was, we repeat, to be expected that these things, however to be explained, were not deemed worthy of any par- ticular notice by Low-Church people. Another work, however, identical in some respects with the one nick-named, by a misnomer, " Irvingism," was arising within the Anglican com- munion ; a work which, in spite of the mistakes made by its first beginners, was destined to sup- plant in no small measure the work done by the Low-Church party, and which from the very beginning was the object of Low- Churchmen's unvarying and unfailing opposition. We refer, it need not be said, to that movement the first stage of which was called Tractarianism and Puseyism, and the second stage of it Eitualism. CHAPTER XXV. Ministerial Labours of Daniel Wilson in England, IIis Appointment to the Bishopric of Calcutta. Although the Low-Church party did not see any necessity of falling in with what, for aught they knew or cared, might be a special work of the Divine Head of the whole Church, for the benefit of the whole, they yet went on working in their mony " was delivered to Cardinal Acton, for the Pope ; in September, to Prince Metternich for the Emperor of Austria ; and soon after to Louis Philippe, King of the French. DANIEL Wilson's ministry. 341 way, and increasing botli in numbers and in in- fluence. In the year 1832 another Low-Church- man was promoted to the Episcopate, though not to a diocese at home. Daniel Wilson, Vicar of St. Mary's, Islington, was consecrated Bishop of Calcutta, in succession to Bishop Turner. We have already noticed Mr. Wilson's early career. We left him at Chobham, of which, as well as of Bisley, he was Curate. In November, 1803, he had married; in 1804 he had become Assistant-Tutor at St. Edmund's Hall, Oxford, succeedinsf to the office of Tutor and Vice- Principal in 1807. Meanwhile he had been serving first as curate of Worton, Oxfordshire, and afterwards as minister of St. John's Chapel, Bedford Eow, London ; occupying the latter charge from 1809 till 1824, when he became vicar of Islington. In June, 1812, he resigned altogether his duties to the Eev. John Hill, who had been a pupil trained under his own eye. This Mr. Hill taught Calvinism, and Calvinism of a very pronounced character ; and it may be interesting to note the explanation which he gave to his divinity class of the manner in which they mio-ht thank God for the re^feneration of an infant just baptized, while at the same time believing that the said inf^int mi»ht not have been regenerated at all. " When," said the Vice-Principal, " I am starting on a journey, I thank God for bringing me safe to the end of it." One undergraduate, on hearing this, whispered to his next neighbour, " The Vice may, but I don't." The change from Oxford to London involved 342 DANIEL Wilson's labours some sacrifice, for Mr.' Wilson's income was thus reduced from about c€500 per annum to about £300. It involved, moreover, plenty of work. Persons were now continually calling upon him about all manner of businesses. He took great pains in preparing young people for confirmation, and on one occasion presented to the Bishop no few^er than 325 candidates, a large proportion of whom afterwards became communicants. The average number of communicants at St. John's was from three to four hundred at each celebration. It was apparently under Mr. Wilson that the first real District Visiting Society was established ; and under him from five to eight hundred pounds were annually expended by this agency in relief of the poor. He also made tours occasionally for the " Church Missionary Society " and the British and Foreign Bible Society. When thus travelling with Dr. Marsh, a venerable clergjnnan of whom we shall speak hereafter, they sometimes had to sleep in the same apartment ; and on these occasions, says Dr. Marsli, the last thing he saw at night, and the first in the morning, was always Daniel Wilson on his knees. He started a scheme fur translating Scott's Commentary into French ; and carried on, with this view, a correspondence with many Protestant pastors abroad ; appointing committees in London, Paris, and Geneva, appointing trans- lators and raising funds. Failing health, how- ever, obliged him to withdraw ; and no more of the work was printed than St. Matthew, the Acts, and the Epistle to the Eomans. Mr. Wilson was also secretary to a society for educating young AND PIETY. 343 men for the ministry whose means were straitened. The nature of his religion at tliis time appears by the following extract from a letter dated December 3, 1821 : " My proud heart requires much disciphne. The world within as well as without the Church is seductive. To be upright with God, to subdue the selfish disorder of the passions, to walk humbly, to pray, to wait for heaven, to love the Master whom we serve and the service for His sake, and at last to ascribe everything to His mercy and grace — this is religion."* So, when hindered from work by an illness of many weeks, he said, "My anxious desire is to get the abiding permanent effect of a sanctified affliction. Affliction tends to awaken conscience, to unmask the world, to show the value of prayer, to endear the Saviour, to make us see the importance of an habitually close walk with God. God says He sits ' as a refiner and purifier of silver,' and I desire to submit to His blessed will." Afterwards, when a letter just received from Mrs. Hannah More was being read to him, in which she spoke of him in high terms, he stopped the reader ere the letter was well be- gun, and added, "Satan is ever ready to take advantage of the kindness of friends to fill the mind with vanity. "f In June, 1824, he was inducted vicar of Islington, the advowson of which living had been purchased by his father-in-law and bequeathed to him : and after preaching in the church once, and retiring * Life; vol. i. p. 219. t lb. p. 215. 344 D. WILSON AT ISLINGTON. again into the country, commenced his regular ministrations as vicar on Advent Sunday following. Under him the conOTCijation soon increased. There were, when he entered on the benefice, only two services on the Sunday, for only one of wdiicli the vicar was responsible, the other being supplied by an afternoon lecturer. At the first vestry-meeting in which he presided, the question was discussed whether the expenses of a third service should be paid by the churchwardens, or by voluntary sub- scriptions, and it was settled in favour of the former alternative ; the resolution having pre- viously been passed that for the third service (for which the vicar offered to be responsible) the seats should be free. The evening service was com- menced at once, and drew large congregations. Soon were formed schemes for church-building, tlie population of the parish being already 30,000, with only two placeg for Anglican worship, that is to say, St. Mary's parish church, and what was called " the chapel of ease." Three new churches were planned, and in due time built : St. John's, Hollo way; St. Paul's, Ball's Pond Eoad; and Holy Trinity, Cloudesley Square. Nine Sunday schools were started, and in due time six more. In 1828 the services at the motlier-church were, three on every Sunday and greater holy day (though, we are afraid, under this designation Ascension-day was not included), wdth one service (followed, ap- parently, like those just mentioned, by a sermon) in the week, and prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays and the lesser holy days. Mr. Wilson commenced also a celebration of the Eucharist a^ APPLIES FOR A BISEOPRIC. 345 8 a.m., though how often we are not told : it was probably once a month. Such were Mr. Wilson's parochial engagements, when, in 1831, Bishop Turner, of Calcutta, died. Mr. Wilson had already been asked by him to communicate his opinion on the duties of an Indian bishop, and had done so. And now, fearing that some indifferent appointment might be made, he urged upon Mr. Charles Grant, then President of the Board of Control under Earl Grey's Government, the great importance of the matter, and named " many persons wliom he deemed highly eligible. Having done this, the thought, he says, came into his mind as expressed in the prophet's words, ' Here am I, send me ; ' and he wrote again to state, that if a real emergency arose, and no one else could be found, he was ready to go His words are, ' I was compelled by conscience, and by an in- describable desire, to sacrifice myself, if God should accept the offering, and the emergency arise.' India was still accounted of at that time as a place of banishment from home and friends. No over- land route, no Suez railway, no electric telegraph abridged the intervening space, or alleviated the pain of separation. And as to the bishopric, a peculiar fatality seemed to have settled on it. Four bishops, prostrated by their overwhelming duties, or the uncongenial climate, had sunk and died within nine years."* After months of suspense the offer was accepted, and Mr. Wilson was consecrated on Sunday, April * Life, vol. i. p. 279. 346 DANIEL WILSON A BISHOP. 29tli, 1832, in Lambetli Palace Chapel, by Arcli- bisliop Howley, assisted by Bisliop Blomfield of London, Bisliop Monk of Gloucester, and Bisliop Gray of Bristol, the father of the Athanasius of Capetown. These were his meditations on the evening of that day : " Lord, I w^ould now adore Thee for Thy great grace given unto me ; that I should be called to the office of Chief Pastor and Bisliop of Thy Church. Oh ! guard me from the spiritual dangers to which I am most exposed — pride, self-consequence, worldliness of spirit, false dignity, human applause, abuse of authority, re- liance on past knowdedge or experience. Lord, give me simplicity of heart, boldness, steadiness, decision of character, deadness of affection to tlie world. Let me remember that the great vital points of religion are the main things to be kept constantly and steadily on my heart — then, com- passion, tender, deep compassion for souls — then, simplicity of object and abstraction from every other interfering claim — then, a spirit of prayer and supplication — then, the learning lessons from affliction when God sends it."* Curiously enough, comes almost immediately, in his biography, the record of a sort of Quakers'- meeting-breakfast, held in his owai house : " June 1st. I have had a most pleasant party to breakfast. Joseph John Gurney, Mrs. Fry, Mr. and Mrs. Buxton^ Mr. and Mrs. Hoare, Joseph Wilson of Clapham, &c., about twenty altogether. After reading the 45tli Psalm and praying, Mrs. Fry ♦ Life, yol. i. p. 289. HIS CHARACTEK. 347 made a prayer ; and before breakfast, during the pause, Mr. Gurney made a prayer, and again after breakfast. There was a most pleasing spirit of love and kindness. Mr. Gurney prayed for me that I might be kept humble, contrite, self-abased, lowly in heart."* The Quakers and the Low- Church Bishop were not far apart. Here Mr. Wilson's English career ended ; and we therefore take leave of him, except so far as we may recur to him again, to see him fighting Low-Church battles again in his native country. But we may cite some illustrations of his personal character. Such we have in a letter to a friend, written during a vacation, soon after his entrance on the duties of assistant-tutor at St. Edmund's Hall : *•• I like my position. Everything falls out as I could wish. But I see many dangers looming in the distance. M}' heart is already becoming entangled in worldl}^ studies, so that divine things lose their savour. I wish to count all things loss for Christ. I wish to love and cherish divine con- cerns ; but pride, ambition, secular pursuits, and cares beset me and make my path slippery and insecure. Pray for me."f Inquiring within him- self whether his sacred duties were flourishing, he writes : " Li these, the power is of God alone. I often find great enjoyment in them. But I want to get nearer to the consciences of men. I do not love my hearers as I ought, nor aim enough at their salvation : rather do I seem to desire their good opinion and applause. When hearts are * Life, vol. i. p. 290. t i^- P- IH. 348 BISHOP DANIEL WILSON'S touclied I do not give the whole glory to God. Grant, Almiglity God, that I may be more diligent in duty, that I may deal more closely with con- science, that I may bring home to myself the truths I preach to others, that I may love the flock more, and always be looking to Thee for the grace I need."* As to his " church principles," he describes them thus, after his consecration to the Episcopate : " Keal spiritual religion — sound, holy, scriptural ; full of the Saviour, abounding in the fruits of the Spirit, elevated above all petty quarrelsome points : this is what we must preach and exhibit. And when to this is added a firm attachment to our Protestant Established Church, all is done that we can effect for the discharge of the responsible duties committed to us."*!* These words (in spite of the not very intelligible expression " responsible duties ") express very well the character of Low- Churchmanship as regards church principles ; and explain how it is that Low-Churchmen were, and always had been, such had churchmen. Their churchmanship was not a part of their religion^ it was only an addition or appendage to it. The true Catholic has, and knows that he has, no spiritual life at all apart from the Catholic Church ; the Catholic Church, to tlie Anglican Churchman, is represented by the Church of England ; so that his obedience to church rules, his observance of church fasts and church festivals, his reception of church ministrations, are a very part of his re- * Life, vol. i. p. 119. t /6. p. 317. CHURCH TRINCIPLES. 349 ligion, as really and as necessarily as he himself is a part of the Church itself. To the Low-Church- man, however, the ordinances and appointments of the Church were but the dry posts to which he, as a young and green fruit-tree, was unavoidably fastened, and by which he imagined that his spiritual growth would, more likely than not, be hindered ; as no doubt his wilfulness and party spirit were. Another illustration of the same thing appears in a passage from a letter hj the same prelate to a scrupulous chaplain of the East India Company — if, indeed, the passage is not pure nonsense : " Discriminate clearly and affectionately between the outward privileges of the Church and the real obedience and love of the sincere Christian."* He reminded a junior chaplain of " the vigilance need- ful to lay the foundations of good Church habits and associations." But how much he appreciated and used the Church's own prescribed daily offices after he had become Bishop of Calcutta appears from the account given of the " family prayers " which were offered " in the chapel which he him- self had fitted up. His chaplain from the reading- desk read the appointed lesson, and he from his seat expounded and prayed. "f Life, vol. i. p. 381. f lb. p. 326. CHAPTEE XXVI. Results of Low-Church Work. Failure of the Party to effect great Iteforms. Decline in Personal Piety. Up to the yesLV 1833 or thereabouts the influence of the Low-Church clergy had been " rapidly increasing throughout the country." (We quote now from a pamphlet by the Eev. Daniel Wilson, Vicar of Islington, and son to the Bishop of Cal- cutta, which pamphlet was published in 1850, and entitled Our Protestant Faith in Danger.) "The pulpits of some of the most important parishes, both in tlie metropolis and larger provincial towns, were occupied by men of these sentiments. Their growing weight was evinced by the large and attentive congregations which attended their minis- try, the efficient manner in which their parishes were manao-ed, the success attendinof the reliositive elements of deterioration. One of these was the fostering of spiritual indolence. How could spiritual indolence be better fostered than by teaching in an unqualified manner that salvation and eternal glory were to be had through merely trusting to what had been done by another ? With St. Paul this trusting involved the submitting to baptism ; and in St. Paul's teaching baptism brought us into a connexion with Christ, so as to have His life in us, which life was to be cherished by our own Christian activity and repudiation of sin : but into Low-Church teachincf the Catholic doctrine of Christian baptism was never brought ; * Christian Observer for 1S04, p. 623. 364 PARTY-SriRIT. with the Low-Church preacher faith was every- thing— faith, apart from Sacraments. Thus the Low-Church believer had no incentive to Christian activity other than what love he might feel for God and Christ within himself. If, however, spiritual indolence was fostered by the Low-Church system, and true spiritual activity proportionably discouraged, the place of spiritual activity was made up to a certain extent by parly- spirit. And indeed party-action was, under the circumstances, unavoidable ; it was not reasonable to expect that those who held and taught one religion should voluntarily associate themselves with those who held and taught another ; and the various missionary societies which had been started by Low-Churchmen were all started, not on the broad platform of the Church of England, but on the narrow platform of the Low-Church party. And the spirit of the party showed itself not only ia the attitude which it took up with respect to Convocation, when Convocation was being revived as an active body, and with respect to Church Con- gresses when they were first brought into existence, but conspicuously when the so-called " Church Missionary Society " refused to let its missionaries in the diocese of Madras be superintended by a bishop wlio belonged to the Society for Propaga- tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and two assistant-bishops had to be consecrated, one for the missions of each society. With party-spirit was necessarily connected party-conceit ; and tlie party-conceit of Low- Churchmen was stroufr. And when the party PARTY-CONCEIT. 365- arose, nothing could be more natural or (humanly speaking) more excusable. For at that period of time Low-Churchmen were almost the only reli- gious people in tlie Church ; for the Methodists, with whom they had much in common, had already be- gun to drift awa}^ ; and the pious High-Churchmen were few, and made no figure or stir at all in the eyes of the world. And it will illustrate our pre- sent point to remark what wide significance those terms properly had which in the biographies of the older Low-Churchmen are used with reference to Low-Church principles and Low-Church practice. Occasionally we find the term " Evangelical" in use, and, naturally enough, in contradistinction from " moral ; " the latter being the natural epithet for a teaching which might come from any well- instructed heathen, or mere natural theologian. Most frequently, however, the expressions used are such as these : " True religion," " vital godliness," and the like ; and these expressions were grounded in truth. Under such circumstances how could frail human beings, compassed with iufirmit}^, fail of manifesting a large amount of party-conceit? It must be borne in mind, too, that the party- conceit of Low-Churchmen was owing to a special cause besides. Not only were they the only truly religious people, but no one who did not agree with them in the main could, in their view, be a truly religious person at all. No one, according to them, could be truly religious who was not justified by faith alone. And could any one be justified by faith alone without believing that he was so ? And further, could any one hold the doctrine of justifi- 366 PARTY-CONCEIT. cation by faitli alone without having been taught it by inward revelation from God ? Was not the doctrine contrary to man's natural pride and vain- glory ? Thus the root of all true religion was practically made to consist solely in holding the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And it is easy to see how this led naturally to a spiritual de- cadence. If the mere moralist trusted to an unsafe foundation, in trusting for salvation to his own works, how much more flimsy was this Low-Church foundation ! A man's soul was deemed to be safe through the mere intellectual belief of a doctrine in religious philosophy ! And when all this false supposition was held to be true in one's own case, and when, on the strength of its supposed truth, anathemas were dealt round to all who failed to give it their assent, more steps than one had been taken on the spiritual decline. Accustomed to ac- count themselves, and to be accounted by others, as the only party in the Church of England to whom the term " true Christians " and its syno- nyms were rightly applicable, they came naturally to look down with an air of superiority, little differing, if at all, from spiritual pride, upon every one who forbore to identify himself with their party. The question asked by St. Paul of the Corinthians, " What ! came the word of God unto you only ? " they practically answered in the affir- mative ; until at last the names of party leaders were considered as a guarantee for the Christianity of an institution, no matter how palpably contrary to the express precepts of the New Testament might be the practice which the institution in question PARTY-CONCEIT. 367 carried on.* Suoli party-conceit, setting itself up instead of the Holy Scriptures as the standard of Christian morahty, would of necessit}^ lead to greater and greater depths of spiritual decline ; though it must be owned that at the period where- * The operation of party-conceit at a later period is seen in tlie manner in wliicli the Rev. W. Knight, once Secretary of the " Church Missionary Society," describes the line taken by one occupying a high position in the Church. Mr. Knight prints {Memoir of Hennj Venn, B.D., page 175) the following extract from a letter written by the dignitary in question : " If you like to sound the Church Missionary Society as to funds, I have no objection, but nothing could induce me to submit to any dictation or interference on their part. The whole mission shall in every respect be managed by the Church here, or there shall be none. I have seen enough since I have been out here of the working of Societies to make me loathe them — alwavs except- ing the dear S.P.G., which seems to be mercifully preserved from the Society spirit. If the Church Missionary Society will follow the ex- ample of the S.P.G. and place £503 a year entirely at my disposal for the formation of a mission, I will thankfully accept of it. But if they mean to bargain for power, I will have nothing to do with, them. I see every day I live more and more clearly that the whole Church work must be done by the Church, and not by any other agency. And, thank God, this diocese is beginning to think so too. If the Church Missionary Society will not help me without annexino- conditions which the Church here will not assent to, and if the S.P.G. cannot assist us further, we must look to God for supplying us the means in other ways." The writer of the above extract was Bishop Gray, of Cape Town. But Mr. Knight gives no indication of this fact; unwilling, apparently, to perpetuate more than could be helped what in his opinion would be an obvious tarnish upon the fame of that great confessor ; the tarnish consisting in having spoken against the practice of so perfect an institution as the " Church Missionary Society ! " The same party-conceit is seen in a paper of Recollections by the Earl of Chichester, President of the Church Missionary Society. His Lordship says, "H.Venn had a wonderful talent for drawino- out a missionary, both at his own table and in the more august presence of the C.M.S. Committee." {Memoir of Henry Venn, B.D. page 283.) 368 UNREALITY. — CANT. of we are writing now it had not attained the full height just described. And the decHne was all the more rapid, by reason of the unreality which the Low-Church system generated in the personal character. " We are too ready " (says Hannah More) " to imagine that we are religious, because we know something of religion. We appropriate to ourselves the pious sentiments we read, and we talk as if tlie thoughts of other men's heads were really the feeUngs of our own hearts."* That is, in effect, we talk cant. And such an acknowledgment was true. Of tlie unreality just spoken of one manifestation was of necessity cant in various forms. By " cant " we mean affectation either in tone or in language. It is defined by Dr. Worcester as a " sing-song manner of speaking ; a whining or affected tone ; hypocritical speech ; pretension without sincerity, as indicated by lan- guage and air." " To cant," similarly, is (according to the same authority) "to talk in a jargon, or with affectation ; to speak in a whining or affected manner." And the word " cant," when used as an adjective, is defined to mean " vulgar, inelegant, affected, habitually or improperly used." If we are asked for a further definition of the substan- tive, we might say that cant is the slang of those who trifle in religion, as slang is the cant of those who trifle with things in general. The way in which a person comes to talk cant is this : The person has a certain amount of liking for the out- * Fractical Piety, cliap. viii. LOW-CHURCH CANT. 369 side of religion, and mistakes tins for a liking of religion in its essence. The object of his liking is necessarily the subject of his talk ; and being accustomed to associate with those who are con- versant with religion, he learns their manner of speech, and adopts it himself. As, however, he knows only the outside of religion, his talk neces- sarily fails of being answerable to religion in its essence : and is (to borrow a term from Eoman casuistry) material cant. If, however, he talks for the pleasure of remarking himself, or of showing off to otliers, what he supposes to be his superior knowledge of religion, the cant becomes formal. And this was exhibited in Low-Churchmen. As to tone, we have known one Low-Church clergyman who read the Bible in a peculiar kind of under- tone, as if he were afraid of readhig it. And as to language, Conybeare, in his Essay on Church Parties, cites several instances. " The words ''faithful^' ''tainted,' ''acceptable,' ''decided,' ''legal,' and many others, are used" [says he] " in a technical sense. We hear that Mr, A. has been more ''owned ' than Mr. B., and that Mr. C. has more ' seals ' than Mr. D.* Again, the word ' gracious ' is invested with a meaning as extensive as that attached by young ladies to ' nice.' Thus we hear of ' a gracious sermon,' ' a gracious meeting,' ' a gracious child,' and even ' a gracious whipping.' The word ' dark ' has also a new and peculiar usage. It is applied to every person, book, or place not im- * Mr. Conybeare says in a note, " A preacher is said in this phraseology to be 'owned' when he makes many converts, and his converts are called his ' seals.' ' 25 370 LOW-CHURCH CANT. pregnated with Eecordite principles. We once were witnesses of a ludicrous misunderstanding- resulting from this phraseology. ' What did you mean ' (said A. to B.) ' by telling me that was such a very dark village ? I rode over there to- day, and found the street particularly broad and cheerful, and there is not a tree in the place.' * The Gospel is not preached there,' was B.'s laconic reply."* We may remark, too, one particular species of cant as exhibited in Low-Church people : viz., that in which a person is rebuked for profane, or flippant, or unsuitable language — the fact being that the lano'uaGfe which occasioned the rebuke was merely not conventional. Thus the late Eev. Charles B. Tayler, a Low-Churchman, and a writer of what are called religious novels, rebukes one of the Tractarian writers for describing how a man once died of apoplexy in a pew, wdiich, having been made (after the fashion of the times) with lofty panels, hindered his fellows-worshippers from seeing the state in which he was ; and for pointing the moral — the only moral with which the writer in question was then concerned — in these terms : *' A pleasant consideration this, for nervous people, Vv^ho are fond of having their pews all to them- selves." This Mr. Tayler characterised as " fright- ful levity," and made his heroine say, " I cannot understand how any writer of a serious and godly mind could treat so awful a subject as death, and the death of such a character, with such levity."f * Essays Ecclesiastical and Social, pp. 91, 92. t Tayler's Margaret, or the Pearl, pp. 123-4. LOW-CHURCH IGNORANCE. 371 The writer of these pages was similarly rebuked, once upon a time, by a Low-Church correspondent in a country newspaper, for flippancy of language : the fact being that he had simply made a common- sense suGfo-estion in common-sense lan^ua^e, on the subject of improving the religion of a place. It will be observed that in all these cases the rebuker, in rebuking his neighbour for not talking cant, pro- claims, in effect, that he is an habitual cant-talker himself. Before leaving the mention of that party-conceit which was so abundant among Low-Church people, we should remark that it was helped forward even by what had followed from it as a result : we mean ignorance. Taking it for granted that they themselves were the only true Christians in Christendom, Low-Churchmen never cared to know what was going on in the w^ay of religion outside their own party. Thus, until a very late period it was the general belief among them that High-Churchmen were generally formalists ; that their services were a mere set of outward forms, in going through which the heart had no place : nor was this idea exploded until one day the Earl of Shaftesbury attended a service at St.. Alban's, Holborn, of which the Eev. Alexander Heriot Mackonochie was then the incumbent, and brought back the report that the devotion of the congregation was beyond all question. Independently, however, of those causes of decline which w^e have as yet specified, there were others involved in the Low-Church system. The Low- Church system was more for winning the uncon- 25—2 372 LOW-CHURCH UNEEALITY. verted to repentance and faitli than for spiritual training of the persons ahxady converted.* This may be illustrated by an anecdote told of some celebrated Low-Church divine, we forget who. He had been taken by a friend to visit an old woman, and asked her if she knew the way to heaven. She replied that in her opinion tliere were but three steps to heaven ; and on being asked wliat these were, said, " Out of self — into Christ — into glory." " I can teach her no more," said the clergyman. Not that pastoral ministry properly so called was wantonly ignored, or despised by Low-Churchmen in general ; but Low-Churcli divines had only a small amount of material where- with to fulfil it. Sanctification, by the Holy Ghost, of individuals redeemed, was, it is true, an impor- tant part of their teaching ; but it was taught rather in reference to those in whom it was not supposed to have been begun than in reference to any others. And even where no objection lay to the doctrine taught, yet the application had oftentimes a great tendency to generate unreality in those who accepted it. Full of earnestness as the first Low-Church preachers were, they failed to see that in proportion to their success then, would eventually be the lack of that very piety which they sought to inculcate. They may well be pardoned for this, for the thing * This was sometimes expressly avowed. An article in the Christian Observer for 1866 cites Dr. McNeile as having said, " Our object is, not simply to improve men who have been already saved — though that is part of our pastoral work — but tlie grand object of evangelical preaching is the conversion of sinners." (Page 206.) EDUCATION OF CHILDREX. 373 is palpably a paradox. Nevertheless, it is a truth, as a little investigation will show. Low-Church preachers put their hearers generally in an untrue position. Their own personal religious experience they took as the rule, instead of admitting that it might be exceptional. And then they strove to make their hearers feel accordino-lv, assumino- them to be heathens instead of Christians, and striving to make tliem feel as heathens rather than as Christians ; and not allowinsf them to feel as Christians until they had (in imagination at least) gone through the process of feeling as heathens. This arose from ignorance of the nature of Holy Baptism. The unreality resulting herefrom is very plainly seen in the manner in which the Low-Church system dealt with children. The essence of Catholic education is to teach the child that he is already in a state of salvation through Christ, and to train him to continue in it. The Catholic child learns to look upon himself as already being saved by Christ ; and to trace this salvation primarily to the work of the Eternal Son in our flesh, and secondarily to the fact of his having had all the benefits of Christ's work made over to him in his baptism. And he is taught at the same time that to him belongs, as he grows older, the responsi- bility of abiding in Christ, and keeping the grace which he has received, by a righteous and holy practice, to which practice he is trained by his parents and spiritual pastors. The Low-Church parent, on the other hand, taught his child to look upon liimself as a heathen, until he had undergone 374 UNREALITY ENCOURAGEr. a sensible conversion. And llie child, naturally taking for granted whatever his parents taught him, not only learned thus to ignore the grace which he had within him already, and which he had had from the moment of his baptism, and to look upon himself as a child of wrath while really he was a child of grace; — but was taught, as he grew older, to seek after such a set of emotions and feelings as those in which he supposed " conver- sion " to consist, and to work himself up, as far as he could, into those same emotions and feelings, if they did not come (so to say) of their own accord. Thus an imaginary piety of heart was cultivated at the greatest cost, perhaps, at which it could be cul- tivated— the cost of truthfulness to oneself. First the child, then the youth, then the grown person, learned to look at spiritual realities in an unreal way, and to deal with spiritual truths in an untruthful way. How could such a training issue otherwise than in the spiritual decadence of the party in general, and a stunting of the spiritual life in individuals? So that those Low-Churchmen who came to be good examples to their brethren did so really in spite of their training ; their baptismal grace remaining with them without their knowing that it was baptismal grace. Another cause of decline, ' and one inherent in the Low-Church system, was the fact that a certain small circle of doctrines was delivered as containing all which was necessary to salvation. The present writer VN^as taught, in his childhood, a catechism in which the catechist says, "You now, then, my dear child, know the chief truths of the Christian DEFECTIVE TEACHING. 375 religion." But in that catechism not onl}^ some truths were very defectivel}^ stated, but there was no mention at all of the Church or of the Sacra- ments, nor even (if our memory serves us) of the doctrine of Trinity in Unity, except as implied in the words : " I praise with all the heavenly host Thee, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." . Then the words, " necessary to salvation," in the preacher's lips, came very easily to be understood by the hearers as signifying "necessary at all," and doctrines which, however true, were deemed un- necessary to be taught, soon came to be deemed unnecessary to be believed ; from which the transition was but a natural consequence, to deem them untrue. Such doctrines were those which have respect to the Church as an organised body. In some cases, moreover, there was yet another cause at work tending to produce spiritual decline. We mean where the preacher, having some readiness of utterance, some fluency of expression, deemed it unnecessary to prepare intel- lectually for the work of teaching his flock from the pulpit, but stood up before them to speak literally extempore. Such cases, it is to be hoped, were few, but some there certainly were. And poorly ofl* indeed must those flocks have been whose spiritual shepherds put them off with so inade- quate a ministration of the one ordinance represented by them as the one needful means of grace. 376 LOW-CHURCH ASCETICISM. Bat another cause, and one which probably contributed as largely as any to producing spiritual decline, was the enforcing a kind of asceticism in rei]fard of certain thiiiixs not necessarilv sinful. Low-Church people were taught that it was a sin in the siHit of God to no to a horse-race, to see a play acted, to play a game at cards, to dance, or to be present at a ball ; with which forbidden things was added, in the teaching of some, the liearinof of a concert or of an oratorio. And we believe that the practice of such an asceticism as this would lead of necessity to decay in true practical religion. For, granting that every man has in him a certain amount of religious force (so to call it), it is evident that if any part of that force is expended in an improper way, there will be all the less remaining to be expended in ways which are right. If, for instance, lie turns his religious force to a warfare with some thinofs which are not sins in themselves, he will, we may expect, be found to allow in his practice some other things which are. And the later history of the Low- Church party afforded some striking exemplifica- tions hereof, as we shall see hereafter. Not, perhaps, the least effective cause of de- cline was the holding of positive theological error. Among the numerous negations of Protestantism, the Low-Church party held two distinct errors of a positive character : the obligation of observing the Lord's Day as a Sabbath — nay, as the Sabbath (a title very commonly given to it by Low-Church- men)— and what was commonly called the Verbal Inspiration of canonical Scripture. SABBATARIANISM. VERBAL INSPIRATION. 377 The notion about tlie Lord's Day was derived from the early Puritans. It was, that the Fourth Commandment was bindim? on Christians in tlie same way, and as fully, as any other precept in the Decalogue, save only that for " seventh day " we were to understand " first day." And such texts as Isaiah Iviii. 13,14, were to be understood in like manner. Thus all kind of work and amusement on Sunday was sinful* : the only exceptions being such occupations as were required of necessity on considerations of mercy for others, or health, or sustenance, or safety for oneself. With these exceptions, it was maintained that the duty of abstaining on one day in seven from work and amusement was of a moral character, just like the duty of honouring one's parents, or of abstaining from theft and falsehood, and therefore was of perpetual obligation ; but that the question which day was to be so observed was of a ceremonial character, and might be treated accordingly: and that it had been so treated in point of fact, the Apostles having altered the Sabbath day from the seventh day of the week to the first. The doctrine of verbal inspiration was that every word of canonical Scripture came by dicta- tion from God the Holy Ghost, and was to be regarded accordingly as if it had been spoken by God's own Voice. This doctrine also, it is probable, came from tlie Puritans ; not, indeed, formally stated by them, but held in solution as it were, tlie natural result of that Protestantism * See above, p. 25 i. 378 PRACTICAL ERRORS INVOLVED. which put the written volume of Scripture in the place of tlie word of authorit}^ spoken by living men. A curious result of holding it was the idea that in quoting Scripture language the exact words of the Authorised Version ought in all cases to be given, no matter what the connexion might be in which the quotation was made. Thus, in narrating once to an old and dear Low-Church relative how some one had expressed, in the hearing of Bishop Philpotts of Exeter, a wish that we of the Church of England had such a preacher as Spurgeon, and how the Bishop had replied, " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ass," we were corrected for misquotation, and reminded that the sacred text ran — " Nor his ass." How the holding of these two false doctrines contributed to the spiritual decay of the Low- Church party will not be very hard to see. We believe that no theological falsity can be held without detriment to the spiritual life. And the two erroneous tenets now in question formed no exceptions to this rule. The first involved a denial of the sacredness of a baptized person's whole life. The only exposition of the Fourth Commandment which the Church of England had given in her Catechism was expressed in the words, " To serve Him truly all the days of my life : " which was but in keeping with what St. Paul had written, " One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that re- gardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord ; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he PEACTICAL EKRORS INVOLVED. 379 dotli not regard it For none of us llvetli to liimself, and no man dietli to himself: for whether we live, we live unto the Lord, and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whetlier we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living." * For evident!}^ St. Paul's argument is this : " Christ has purchased to Himself, b}^ dying and rising again, our whole existence, whether spent in life or in death ; and therefore one day of your life belongs to Him as much as another." By teaching, however, that God had reserved one- seventh portion of our time above all the rest to Himself, Low-Churchmen opened the door to the inference that the remaining six-sevenths were left to us as our own ; to say nothing of the encourage- ment given to superstition, as that it was better to give alms on a Sunday than on an ordinary week-day : the day sanctifying the gift, as was once said to the present writer. As for the tenet of verbal inspiration, that did harm in two wa3^s. In the first place, it tended to jDut men on substituting the letter which killeth for the Spirit Who giveth life ; and in the next place, it involved an habitual self-deception, in proportion as the text of the New Testament was studied. What could a verbal inspirationist do with the four differing accounts given by the four Evangelists of the Title on the Cross ? What could he do with the many quotations made by Apostles * Rom. xiv. 5-9. 380 RESISTANCE TO TRUTH. from the Old Testament but which do not agree either with the Hebrew or with the Septuagint ? How Avould he explain the text " The word of the Lord endureth for ever," * in the face of such a multiplicity of various readings as the examination of MSS., versions, and quotations in early Christian writers has brought to light ? To be true to his theory in the face of these phenomena was to deal with himself systematically in a dishonest manner. It wa?, however, by the Low-Church party- conceit chiefly that the way was prepared for the operation of the last great cause of decline to be now mentioned. It is written that the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit :f that is to say, com- pelling those people to whom it comes to take one side or another — either the side of God's Spirit and God's work, or else the contrary. And what is true of the word of God generally is true of every form which that word may take: it is true of every declaration of His truth in proportion to its correctness, no matter how the declaration may be brought. And wherever the truth declared is not accepted— and still more when it is opposed, and most of all where persecution is raised against those who hold or teach it— there, we conceive, will spiritual life fail, or (maybe) perish altogether. This, we believe, began to be shown more re- markably than before, in the history of the Low- Church party, at the period to be described in our * Isa. xl. 8. 1 Pet. i. 25. t Heb. iv. 12. FREACHING UNDULY EXALTED. 381 succeeding chapters. That was a period when certain truths, all of them previously denied by the party, and most or all of them forgotten by the Anglican Church at large, began to be taught again by Anglican clergy. CHAPTER XXVIII. Peculiarities of the Low-Cliurch Party. Undue Exaltation of Preach- ing. Depreciation of Common Prayer. Ignorance of General Theology. Intellectual Stupidity. Uncharitableuess. Judging of others. Jewish Mania. Anglo-Israelitism. Ignorance of Scripture. " The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." — 2 Tim. iv. 3, 4. It may be well to notice at this point some leading traits of character shown at this time by the Low- Church party in general, other than what we have already remarked. The principal of these was an undue exaltation of the function of preaching. According to Low- Church divines, preaching was the main ordinance to which all other ordinances were but subser- vient. However highly the holy Eucharist might be exalted by them in theory, their Zuinglianism could not but forbid them to use it with more than about one-twelfth of the frequency with which they gathered congregations to hear sermons : for while there would ordinarily be, in the church of an active Low-Church priest, at least three sermons a week, there would commonly be only one cele- 382 PREACHING UNDULY EXALTED. bration of the Eucharist in the month. IIow could they be expected to make more account of that Sacrament ? According to their theology, it was no more than a peculiar kind of preaching ; and their own common sense told them that in tlie preaching line a good sermon from the pulpit was far more effective. It was the same excessive ideas of the compara- tive importance of preaching which caused the Eev. John Venn to write of his father, Henry Venn the elder, " He now saw that sinners are brought through the Gospel into a new state — a state of reconciliation to our Heavenly Father — a state of adoption into His family — a state of grace and mercy ; " * thus, in effect, putting preaching into the place of the great Sacrament of our regenera- tion. For, however true it may be (as indeed it must necessarily be) that the bringing of sinners into a new state — a state of reconciliation and adoption — is owing, indirectly, to the Gospel (for the preaching of the Gospel is the necessary pre- liminary to the acceptance of Christianity in any sense of the words, and therefore was necessarily dwelt upon by the Apostles in writing to those who had been converted to Christianity rather than grown up in it), yet the act by which in- dividual persons are brought severally into the state in question is not the preaching of the Gospel, but the administration of Baptism. As to prayers, though Low- Churchmen could hardly so reverse George Herbert's saying as to * Life of the Rev. Ilennj Venn, M.A., p. 20. COMMON PRAYER DEPRECIATED. 383 maintain that preaching is the end of praying, yet they practically inculcated a denial of his maxim — " Resort to sermons, but to prayers most." Such a resorting was sure to be stigmatised as an undue exaltation of the Liturgy. A Low-Church clergyman, on coming to a living, might keep up the daily public service if he found one already established ; but who ever heard of a Low-Church clergyman commencing a daily service where there had been none before ? He might increase the number of sermons; but if he said the Office previously to preaching, it was only because both the Act of Uniformity and public opinion in the Church generally required that on such occasions the prayers should be read. " I fear," says a cor- respondent in the Christian Observer for 1831, " it cannot be denied that the daily recurrence of the whole of our church service, morning and evening, whether it be sung or said, is not favour- able to continued and intense devotion."* That correspondent asked if this was true ? and if so, what was the explanation ? Another correspon- dent, speaking for himself, said that one cause might be the feeling of a want of fellowship among Chur€h-people on religious grounds. f It might be thought that in a party which made so much of preaching, preaching would generally, if not always, be of a peculiarly high order. Unfortunately, however, it was not so. We cannot call to mind the name of one English * Christian Observer iovlQ^^,-^. mi. ^Ib.^.QQi. 384 IGNORANCE OF THEOLOGY. Low-Churcliman of the period now under discus- sion who deserved to be mentioned as a theo- logian. Indeed, one characteristic of the Low- Church party was (as it still is) a remarkable ignorance of general theology. The case was probably an extreme one, of the old lady who read nothing save the Bible and tlie Record news- paper ; but though it may have been an extreme example, it was most certainly a real example. The party had, indeed, numbered amongst them some diligent students : such was Thomas Scott ; and Daniel Wilson, Vicar of IsHngton, and after- wards Bishop of Calcutta; and Professor Schole- field, of Cambridge ; but those were the exceptions, not the rule. We have ourselves heard, on Trinity Sunday, a sermon from a Low-Churchman from that famous passage, in St. John's First Epistle, the greater part of which is spurious ; the preacher having been, apparently, utterly unaware of the palpable spuriousness of the ground on which he was undertaking to build up doctrine. On another recurrence of the same festival we have heard another Low-Churchman, in another church, give his constresfation a taste of Sabbellianism, and evidently in utter ignorance. Even now, few, if any, Low-Churchmen would probably allow to tlie Blessed Virgin the title " Mother of God," or dream that by refusing her the title Theotokos, of which the expression " Mother of God " is intended to be a translation, they are committing themselves to the Nestorian heresy. The regeneration of the Patriarchs before the Licarnation (let alone the Ascension and the descent of the Holy Ghost) was LOW-CHURCH IGNORANCE. 385 a heresy derived from the Zuinglian Eeformers ; it was expressly asserted in the Christian Observer^* and held, we believe, by Low-Church people gene- rally. But perhaps the most striking illustration of Low-Church ignorance at the period to which we refer is afforded in the fact that Thomas Scott, in commenting on the New Testament, thought it necessary to give a series of notes telhng his readers the original Greek words whereof such and such English words were the rendering, and no more. Evidently Mr. Scott never contem- plated the likelihood of his readers, being suffi- ciently acquainted with Greek to read the New Testament ordinarilv in that lam^^uatye. Even Mr. Simeon, too, though a Fellow of King's, did not read the Greek Testament regularly in his stated devotions ; but preferred Brown's Self-Interpreting Bible.f Indeed, generally speaking, human learning (including the knowledge of the Scriptures in the original tongues) has been by Low-Churchmen actually depreciated. Thus, Henry Venn the elder speaks of " a thing so immaterial as an accurate investigation of the Hebrew text," on the ground that " all things necessary to be known are the same in every version as in the original. ";|; " Such men," says a correspondent in the Christiari Observer, " felt that to be deeply learned required an extent * Christian Observer for 1837, pp. 156, &c. t Carus's Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Charles Simeon, pp. 67, . X Life, p. 537. 26 386 LOW-CHURCH IGNORANCE, of reading and a devotion of time and thought incompatible with the very pressing practical duties of the ministry."* Cecil's views on the subject were thus expressed by himself : " If God should restore me to health, I have determined to study nothing but the Bible. Literature is inimical to spirituahty, if it be not kept under with a firm hand. A man ought to call in from every quarter whatever may assist him to understand, explain, and illustrate the Bible ; but there, in its light and life, is all that is good for man. All-important truth is there ; and I feel that no comfort enters sick curtains from any other quarter." f "With some few exceptions " [they were very few indeed] " the Evangelical clergy " (says the Eev. Daniel Wilson, son of the Bishop of Calcutta) " continued to pursue their wonted course — preaching the Gospel and feeding their flocks, and leaving polemical theology to those wdio had leisure for its pursuit." J The deficiency of Joseph Milner's reading concerning matters in his subject where special reading was required, was exposed by Dr. Maitland, in his w^ork on the Albigenses and Waldenses.§ And with this general ignorance must also be mentioned a general intellectual stupidity. Illus- trations of this have continually come under our view while we have been studying the history of • Christian Observer for 1844, p. 718. t Memoir, prefixed to Cecil's Works, p. 25. X Our Protestant Faith in Danger, p. 7, cited in Christian Observer for 1850, p. 715. § Facts and Docuinents Illustrative of the Ilistory, Doctrine, and Rites of the Ancient Albigenses and Waldenses, sec. ii. STLTIDITY AND UNCHARITABLENESS. 387 the party. To go back to Thomas Scott, the com- mentator : we wonder what estimate he could have had of his readers' common sense when he thousfht it necessary to inform them that the conduct of Euth in her visit to Boaz's threshinof-floor was not recorded for imitation ? The fact was that in the great majority of cases where a Low-Churchman studied theology diligently, or used his mind freely, he came to be a Low-Churchman no lonofer, and became either a High Churchman, like John Henry Newman, or else a Broad Churchman, like the late Professor Birks. Both in preachers and in hearers there was also, too often, a great lack of general Christian chanty. It might have been thought that a party which professed to think the Church of England justified in asserting the regeneration of every baptized person on the principle of what was called charit- able hypothesis, might have carried the same prin- ciple into their general attitude towards others who, like themselves, acknowledofed and received " One baptism for the remission of sins.'^ Far otherwise, however, was the fact. The Church of Eome, indeed, was of course deemed fair game for every member of the Anglican Communion. It was, however, reserved for the Christian Observer to censure Bishop Luscombe for merely speaking of our sister as " not only a true branch, but one of the chief branches of the great Christian family." * Indeed, the general tendency of the party was to refuse the name of Christian to all • Christian Observer for 1828, p, 585. 26—2 388 UNCHARI FABLE JUDGING. in the Church of Eno-kiucl besides tliemselves. Thus Mr. Bickersteth speaks of " Newton's Narra- tive " as being " in every Christiaiis library." * And a lay correspondent of the Christian Observer condemns the use, by preachers, of such phrases as " Our Saviour " in a mixed congregation,f ^.e.,in a congregation partly composed of Low-Church people and partly of people whose principles were not Low-Church. We have ourselves seen a pamphlet on preaching in which disapproval was expressed with reference to the practice adopted by some preachers of addressing such a congregation as " Christian brethren." This spirit could not but show itself in judging other persons. Simeon relates, as one of his early religious experiences, the opinion formed of him by a clergyman and three other persons, all, ap- parently, Low-Churchmen. " I soon dropped some expressions which conveyed the idea of my feeling myself a poor, guilty, helpless sinner : and Mr. A. was quite surprised, for he had set it down as a matter of course that I must be a staunch Pharisee ; he had, even for the whole space of time that I had been at college, noticed my solemn and reverent behaviour at St. Mary's, so different from that which is generally observed in that place, and concluded, as three of his pious friends had also done, that I was actuated by a proud Pharisaical spirit.";]; And the late Dr. Arnold, of Eugby, was thus spoken of in the * Memoirs of the Rev. John Newton, p. 7. Christian Observer for 1827, pp. 657, &c. \ Carus's Life of Simeon, pp. 22, 23. ' QUASI-JUDAISM. 38 9 Record, with reference to the doctrine of justifi- cation by faith, and his failure to profess assent thereto in proper Low-Church phraseology : " Did he, even in death, rest intelligently and clearly on that fundamental doctrine on which Luther declared the Gospel turned, and whosoever denieth wJiich is not to be accounted, in the words of Cranmer, for a Christian man ? We cannot say. It does not appear.'"* We should Hke to know what business the writer of the above passage had to judge Dr. Arnold's dying state of heart, or to pronounce any opinion at all concerning it. Our Master's precept is, "Judge not, that ye be not judged : for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." One curious trait, found, we believe, in Low- Churchmen exclusively, was, a love of Jews as Jews. Something might be said in favour of such a bias, on the ground that the Divine Source, to us, of our present life and future hope, when He took our flesh into union with Himself, took it of a Jewish maiden, and grew up and lived as a Jew among Jews : though, on the other hand, one who was imbued with the spirit of St. Paul might quote, in favour of an impartial regard for all mankind aUke, those words of the Apostle, "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh. "f But in fact, that trait whereof we speak was like the love of Abolitionists for negroes ; such as, when black-skins had risen in rebellion against white-skins, and massacred them, sought to stay the hand of justice • Record, of Feb. 3, 1845, cited in Conybeare'a Essays Ecclesiasti- c al and Social, p. 76. + 2 Cor. V. 16. 390 QUASI-JUDAISM. on the ground of colour alone : as if tlie plea urged on behalf of the negro, " Am not I a man and a brother ? " did not necessarily imply a like plea on behalf of the white man no less, when circumstances required. The advocates of the Jewish bias (so to call it) taught more or less ex- plicitly that Gentiles were spiritually inferior to Jews ; and that the position, even of baptized Gentiles was in some respects less worthy or honourable than that of baptized Jews. Thus the bias in question was connected, either as cause or as effect, with an ignoring of the Christian's present spiritual standing in Christ, and with the hope which we have with regard to the future, which hope is not earthly, but heavenly ; not a hope of being established in the world, but a hope of being established in heaven ; and of ruling the world under Christ, not from a metropolis on the earth, but from a spiritual metropolis in the heavens. The restoration of the Jews to their own land in the time of Christ's millennial reign was spoken of as if it involved some derogation from the dignity of Gentile Christians ; the consideration being allowed to slip out of sight (if, indeed, it had ever so much as occurred), that while, in that blessed time, the Jews, converted as a nation, will occupy in the Divine establishment (if one may use such a term) the position of children, the Christian Church, gathered from among Gentiles and Jews indis- criminately, and cleansed and perfected, will be occupying the position of the wife and mother ; sharing with her Divine Spouse in His glory. We recollect being once in conversation, some years QUASI-JUDAISM. 391 later, with a near and clear relative, and expressing the opinion that when Antichrist rises up, the Jewish nation generally will follow him and accept him as their Messiah ; an opinion for which we seemed to have support, not to say proof, in the Lord's words, " If another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive."* But we were reproved in warm terms for having spoken against the chosen people — that is to say, for having thrown dirt upon a Low-Church hobby. It may be mentioned, too, how a Low-Church clergyman, beneficed in the Church of England, published a pamphlet advocating revision of the Prayer Book in a Low-Church direction, and deprecating the mentioning of Jews along with Turks, infidels, and heretics, in the third collect for Good Friday ; in which pamphlet, moreover, he referred to Dr. Alexander, Anglican Bishop at Jerusalem, as being very painfully affected by that grouping.-}- Nor was it in all cases enough to exalt the Jewish race as a race, in regard of spiritual things. At a somewhat later period to that of which we are now treating, one popular writer of the Low- Church party, known by her Christian name as Charlotte Elizabeth, actually published a letter to Bishop Alexander, reminding him of his own Jewish origin, and asking why he did not, as a Jew, administer to his sons the rite of circumcision !J ♦ John V. 43. t A Letter to the Riyht Rev. the Lord Bishop of Winchester, on the Revision and Re-arrangement of the Liturgy. By the Rev. J. C. Proby, M.A., Rector of St. Peter's, Cheesebill, Winchester, p. 22. \ Israel's Ordinances, a letter to the Bishop of Jerusalem, p. 5. 392 IGNORANCE OF SCRIPTURE. This Jewish mania appears to have developed itself subsequently into that extraordinary craze known as Angio-Israelitism, which traced tlie Anoflo-Saxon race to Palestine as its true home, and some of whose partisans imagined the word *' Saxon" to be a corrupt abbreviation of " Isaac's son ; " a craze in support of which we have seen appeals made to the Book of Common Prayer, seeing that in that volume English Churchmen learned to take the Divine word as addressed to them, '^ When your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My works ; " and because it taught them to sing, in the Benedictus, " To perform the mercy Tpvovaised to our foi^efathers .... to perform the oath which He sware to our forefather Abra- ham:" and in the Magnificat, "As He promised to our forefathers." It was forgotten that St. Paul had written to the Gentile Christians of Galatia, *' If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed."* Indeed, in the case of Low-Churchmen as in the case of the Sadducees in the time of the Lord, the words had a true application, " Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures. '"\ This was felt by the son and biographer of Thomas Scott the commentator, whose words, written in or about 1822, with reference to " a thorough study of the Scriptures themselves, with the use of proper helps, but without reliance upon them," are, *' How greatly is it wanting, even among our more serious and pious clergy ! I speak with a painful sense of my own deficiencies in this respect, • Gal. iii. 29. if Matt. xxii. 29. IGNORANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 393 though without affecting to think them greater than those of many around me,"* It was admitted, about ten years later than the period now more immediately under review, that the Low-Church clergy " were not generally learned with the learning of Ammon and De Wette, or of Hengsten- berg and Tholuck."f That is, they were not learned even in the letter of Holy Scripture, or in that simple meaning thereof to the knowledge of which Hengstenberg and Tholuck brought valu- able contributions — a thing which may be said of De Wette also, in spite of his rationalism and destructive criticism, and (for aught we know) of Ammon also. No, the Low-Church party in general were disgracefully ignorant of that very volume which they professed to prize so much. One of those Low - Churchmen who read the Scriptures most, and (after a fashion) studied them most, was the Eev. Charles Bridges, Yicar of Old Newton, in Suffolk, and afterwards Eector of St. Mary's, Melcombe Eegis. Besides a commentary on the 119th Psalm, and one on the Book of Proverbs, he wrote a little book of what he called " Scriptural Studies," which consisted of a number of heads, as of sermons, each illustrating a text placed at the head of the " study," and each illus- trated, in its turn, by a number of Scripture references. One of these " studies " is on the text " The Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath,"+ and the first remark immediately following is that * Life of the Rev. Thomas Scott, p. 468. t Correspondent in the Christian Observer for 1844, p. 718. X Mark ii. 28. 394 IGNORANCE OF SCEIPTURE. " this proves tlie ordinance of tlie Sabbath to be still of evangelical as well as of legal obligation."* The fact was, that Mr. Bridges' Scripture knowledge consisted in little more than an ability to cite a text which might seem a propos to any theological matter which he might have in hand. And the greater number of Low-Church divines failed of attaining^ even to this low deo^ree of Biblical knowledge. And it is needless to say that mystical interpretations or applications, though having Apostolic authority, were treated as alto- gether beneath notice. Thus, when occasion arose for theological controversy, they found their spiritual weapons fail them, and were obliged to have recourse to the carnal "vveapons of misre- presentation, ridicule, and angry invective, as will appear more at length hereafter. CHAPTER XXIX. The Polemical Period. Keble's Assize Sermon. The Tracts for the Times. Controversy in the Christian Observer, The leaders of the Low-Church party had been mixed up with polemics from the first time that there were any Low-Church leaders at all. If, however, Low-Churchmen had entered the lists with any one up to the time whereof we now speak, it had been generally to maintain the doctrines of Calvin against those of Arminius ; and in particular to light for the doctrine of Justifica- * Scrij)tiiral Studies, Second Series, xxi. . LOW-CHURCH POLEMICS. 395 tion by faith against such as, not having them- selves any works to show which were remarkable for excellence, sought to maintain their respect- ability as divines by teaching . a doctrine of justification by works in their sermons. Or, if the opponent were a brother Low-Churchman, the bone of contention was probably some point in unfulfilled prophecy, the nature of the Millen- nium, or the question of the literal restoration of the Jewish people. Moreover, during the periods with which our narrative has hitlierto been engaged, the polemics carried on by the Low- Church party were for the most part defensive. Their aggression was on the practical heathenism Avliich prevailed in those times so largely in the world in general, and the formality which pre- vailed to a certain extent among the professedly religious. They were mainly occupied with trying to get men to believe the doctrine of grace, to accept the salvation wrought out by Christ, and to live as those should do who have received so inestimable a benefit. With them the minor question was not Protestantism v. Catholicism, but Eeligion or no Eeligion, Eeality v. Hypocrisy. Cowper's description of the ancient prude would not be felt now as a hostile thrust by any High- Church person as such. Now, however, the ques- tion was not a metaphysical one, such as how to reconcile the Divine sovereignty with human freedom, which can never be settled wdth our present mortal powers, and perhaps never by finite beings at all ; nor was it one of opinions equally tenable by persons of the same faitli ; but 396 roLicY OF Anglican rulers. it was a question regarding two rival and antago- nistic religions — the question, to wit, which should prevail to cast out the other. This fact was owing to the manner in which the Eeformation in England had been effected. The poUcy of the Protestant Government, in the times first of King Edward VI. and then of Queen Elizabeth, had been first to conciliate the Catholic party in the Church, and then to convert them to Zuinglianism. With this view, the Enghsh Liturgy was framed on Catholic lines, the truly Catholic doctrines of the Church were retained, and the old hierarchy kept up, and under the same names as in time past. Thus one could read in King Edward's First Prayer-book not only about " bishops, priests, and deacons," but also about " the mass " and " the altar." But, at the same time, as bishoprics and other Church preferments became vacant, the Government filled them with men who both disbelieved the doctrines of the Church, and did all they could to exterminate them. Thus the country, being flooded as far as might be with false teaching, was prepared in some measure for the Second Prayer-book, when that was forced upon the Church by the King and Privy Council, before the First Book had been in use five years. And the country was to be pre- pared too, had Providence permitted such a thing, for the abolishment of the Second Book in its turn, and the substitution for it of a Third Book, according to which, it is but too likely, the Church of England would have been transformed into a mere Zuinelian sect. The same policy, TWO RELIGIONS IN THE CHURCH. 397 divested of its rash haste, was continued by Elizabeth ; the doctrines of the Church finding still, for the most part, expression in the Prayer- book, but every bishop of note (and perhaps every bishop absolutely) being tainted with Zuin- glianism, or at the best with Calvinism : Bancroft being the first to whom such a reproach cannot apparently be attached. Thus from the accession of Queen Elizabeth the Church of England has entertained two religions within its pale, a Catholic religion and a Protestant religion : the Catholic religion being that of the Prayer-book, and not really disallowed by the Articles, though seemingly so in certain cases ; and the Protestant religion being that wdiicli has more frequently than not been inculcated by the rulers and those in chief power. With the rise of Laud and his party in the reign of King James I, the Catholicism of the Church of England asserted itself against the principles of Protestantism. Against it the greater part of the nation kicked, being then largely leavened with Zuinglian or Cal- vinistic teaching ; and not only kicked, but threw it off. But being at last thoroughly disgusted with the reign of Puritanism, the nation, in its joy at the restoration of the Crown and the Mitre, readmitted Catholicism, and rejected all open profession of Puritanism. But (as also we have seen) some Puritan leaven remained ; and the result was a practical compromise, which became confirmed -when the Nonjurors seceded from the Establishment, and took away with them a large proportion of Anglican Catholicism. We have 398 ANGLO-CATHOLIC EEVIVAL. seen how this comproraise became quickened into a living reUgion, through the operation, as we believe, of God the Holy Ghost ; but we are to observe that, although quickened, and for the time both active and fruitful, it was nevertheless Pro- testant in its character. And the Protestant prin- ciple was ready to come into antagonism with Cathohcism, as soon as the Divine Spirit should, in His sovereign working, revive in the Church of England the Catholic element also. Such a revival, in the opinion of one of its earliest human promoters, began on Sunday, July 1 4th, 1833, in the delivery of an assize sermon in St. Mary's Church, Oxford, by the Rev. John Keble, Fellow of Oriel College, and Professor of Poeiry in the University; the subject of the sermon being National Apostasy. In this sermon (which was from 1 Samuel xii. 23), after cautioning his hearers that as regards reward and punishment there was an analogy between His dealings- with the Jewish people in the old time and the dealings which He has with the souls of individual Christians now, the preacher proceeded to inquire what were the symptoms of national apostasy, and what were the particular duties of sincere Christians in times of such calamity. And in answer to the first question, lie put the case of a nation having acknowledged, as an essential part of its theory of government, that as a Christian nation it was also a part of Clu-ist's Church, and bound, in all its leo-islation and policy, by the fundamental rules of that Church, and afterwards deliberately throwing off the restraint thus involved, or even disavowing PREPARATION FOR IT. 399 the principle itself. And in answer to the second question, he specified the duties of intercession, remonstrance, and self-resignation to God in per- formance of all public and private duties. The ground, however, had been preparing for some time previously. The public mind had been for a Ions: time under the influence of causes which tended to win favour for the new movement, even where its true principles were not appreciated. Bishop Percy, by the publication of his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, had encoui-aged the love of whatever belonged to Old England. Sir Walter Scott had encouraged a respect for things mediseval ; and withal a dislike to the Puritan Covenanters and their ways. Wordsworth the poet had encouraged a respect for the piety of our forefathers, and taught his readers, in contem- plating their religious system, to discriminate be- tween what was praiseworthy and what was the reverse. Moreover, the Low-Church system of religion was felt to have some unrealities, some extrava- gancies, some deficiencies, and some absurdities ; and a reaction, therefore, could not but take place sooner or later. Such a religion as depreciated public prayers and private fasting ; such a worship as consisted mainly in hearing a sermon, and in which even the recital of prayers to Almighty God was done by an officiant facing the congregation ; such a memorial of the Crucifixion as consisted in the eating a morsel of bread, and tasting a cup of wine, and nothing else ; — all this was felt to be anomalous, to say the least. And therefore, if any 400 PREPARATION FOR REVIVAL. persons should rise up and teacli tliat this was not true Christianity according to the Christianity of the first ages, such teachers were sure of some who would receive their teaching with avidity. There had been preparation, too, of a more direct kind. The supernatural character of a ministry conferred in ordination through a regular succes- sion from Apostles had been taught plainly and decidedly by the Eev. William James, Fellow of Oriel College,* and also (we believe) by the Eev. Hugh James liose, of Cambridge, who had com- menced the " British Magazine " in 1832, against the prevailing Latitudinarianism, but died in 1838. Tlie Low-Churchman John Bird Sumner, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, had, by his Treatise on Apostolic Preaching, taught some Low-Churchmen (John Henry Newman among the rest) to give up Calvinism, and to embrace the doctrine of Bap- tismal Eegeneration.f Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel College, had taught Newman (and probably others) that Christian doctrine was to be learnt, in the first place, not from Scripture but from the Church ; the use of Scripture being, according to him, for the verification of doctrine learnt from the Church already. But the more immediate preparation of the general public for the Tractarian movement was done through the publication of a little volume of poems, whereof, though no name was put upon * Apologia, p. 67. t lb. p. 65. It should be added, that when the author of Apos- tolical Preaching became aware of the effect which his work was producing, he so modified the work in the second edition as not to do any more such mischief. THE CHRISTIAN YEATt. 401 the title-page or subscribed to the preface, yet the authorship was soon understood to be that of the Eev. John Keble. The work was entitled The Christian Year ; it contained a piece of poetry for every Sunday and holy day in tlie Anglican Calendar, and either based upon, or referring to, some thought sugc^ested in the Ano'lican service for the day. And the general object was to ex- hibit the soothing tendency which the Prayer Book has, and to enable the reader " to bring his own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommended and exemplified in the Prayer Book." The first edition came out in 1827 : it was very favourably reviewed in the Christian Observer for March in the following year ; the critic overlooking, apparently, the doc- trine of Baptismal Eegeneration, taught in these lines : " Where is it mothers learn their love ? In every church a fountain springs O'er which th' eternal Dove Hovers on softest wings. " What sparkles in that lucid flood Is water, by gross mortals ey'd : But seen by Faith, 'tis blood Out of a dear Friend's side. " A few calm words of faith and prayer, A few bright drops of holy dew, Shall work a wonder there Earth's charmers never knew. ****** " Blest eyes, that see the smiling gleam Upon the slumbering features glow, When the life-giving stream Touches the tender brow ! " There were some political causes, too, operating 27 402 TRACTARIAN COMMITTEE. ill the same preparatory direction. The passing of the Eeform Bill on the 7th of June, 1832, and the opening of political advantages to Protestant Dissenters, who immediately began to take advan- tage thereof, caused many to think that the Church of England was in danger ; in danger, that is, of losing her worldly prestige and her worldly en- dowments. And thus it came to pass that when Mr. Keble had preached, in St. Mary's, Oxford, that sermon to which reference, has been made, there was speedily formed in the University a small committee or quasi-committee, the object of which was to establish the Church on her true basis, i.e., on the truth of certain principles, which, being spiritual, could not be altered by the change of mere worldly circumstances. "It was resolved not to aim at the maintenance of the ' Establish- ment,' but to" advance with firmness the claims of * the Church.' " Thus commenced the movement speedily known as Tractarianism, or (from one of its chief leaders) Puseyism. But underneath there was, we believe, a proraj)ting power, whereof the op- ponents of the movement either took no account at all, or else took account only to misunder- stand it ; the power, we mean, of God the Holy Ghost Himself; of that blessed and Divine Spirit whose ofiice it is to bring to remembrance all things whatsoever the Lord hath taught and com- manded. To quote the language of Newman,* the leaders in the Tractarian movement were one • Apologia, p. 188. ITS MEMBERS AND "WORK. 403 and all, in tlieir several degrees, the organs of one sentiment which had risen up simultaneously in many places very mysteriously. The principal members of the committee or quasi-committee were, the Eev. John Keble, then serving in a parish in Gloucestershire ; Hurrell Fronde, Fellow of Oriel College, and wdio had been tutor from 1827 till 1830 ; the Eev. William Palmer, of Dublin, Fellow of Worcester College ; the Hon. and Eev. Arthur P. Perceval, Eector of East Horsley, in Surrey ; and the Eev. John Henry Newman, Fellow of Oriel College, and afterwards Vicar of St. Mary's. With them was associated in counsel the Eev. Hugh James Eose, of Cambridge, and clergyman of a parish in Suffolk. Dr. Pusey was not, Dr. Newman thinks, fully associated with the movement till 1835, when he published his Tract on Baptism. His Tract on Fasting came out in 1840. The means which this committee undertook to employ for the accomplishment of their end was the publication of a set of pamphlets entitled Tracts for the Times. Of these, the first came out in September, 1833 ; the rest appeared at various intervals of time. Number 90, the last of all, was dated, " The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, 1841." The idea originated with New- man, to whose pen, moreover, the Tracts owed tlieir actual commencement.* Various writers took part in the work ; Dr. Pusey writing eiglit Tracts, Mr. Newman eiglit, Mr. Keble four, Mr. * Apologia, p. 109. 27—2 404 TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. Bowdeii (father of Mr. J. W. Bowden) four, Mr. Isaac Williams three, Mr. Hurrell Froude three, Mr. Arthur P. Perceval three, Archdeacon Har- rison at least two, and Canon Eden, of Aberford, near Leeds, Mr. Manning (afterwards Cardinal) and Mr. Wilson, of Eowshams, each one. The line taken by the writers was distinctly Anglican, as opposed to Erastianism, Bomanism, and Pro- testant Dissent. And because it was Anglican, it was to a great extent Catholic. And because it was to a certain extent Catholic, to that extent did it necessarily oppose Protestantism, whether without the Church of England or within it. On these accounts, the Tracts, being ably written, could not but produce a great stir and a great outcry ; and, in point of fact, a great stir and a great outcry were produced. But it will be best to give here an outline of the subjects of the prin- cipal Tracts. In the first Tract it was shown that to the doctrine of Apostolic Succession the English clergy stand committed. Number 6 pointed out in general terms the present obligation of primi- tive Christian practice, and, in a kind of postscript, noted, as a sin of the Church, the neglect of weekly Communion. In Number 17, on the Ministerial Commission, the doctrine of Absolution was declared, in the terms of the Prayer-book. Number 18 treated of the benefits to be derived from the Anglican system of fasting. (This was afterwards acknowledged by E[dward] B[ouverie] P[usey] as his.) Number 25, taken from Bishop Beveridge, sets forth the necessity and advantage TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. ' 405 of Public Prayer; and Number 26, taken from tlie same author, the necessity and advantage of frequent Communion. Numbers 27 and 28 give the history of Popish Transubstantiation, from Pishop Cosin. Number 29 is entitled, "Christian Liberty ; or. Why should we belong to the Church of England? By a Layman." Number 34 treats of Eites and Customs of the Church. In Number 59 the union of Church and State is defined to consist of two things — State-Protection and State- Interference. (This was dated the Feast of St. Mark, 1834.) Number 62 (SS. Philip and James in the same year) is on the antiquity of the ancient Liturgies. Number 71 was on the Roman controversy; the point for consideration being. Why we remain separate from Eome. The object was to indicate such lines of argument as might be practically useful, especially for the unlearned. The writer pointed out that most Anglican controversialists of modern times had failed to use the best arq-u- ments ; and that our best plan in the Eoman controversy was to dwell upon practical abuses which are, in the Roman communion, not only allowed but enforced. After specif^dng several of these, he noted certain admissions which, according to him, we should do well to make, not being ourselves incapable of doing wrong or of making mistakes, any more than our op- ponents ; and concluded by recommending the study of the Fathers, and of Anglican divines of the seventeenth century, as helps to knowledge of what is true in itself. 406 TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. Number 72 consisted in a reprint of that chapter in Archbishop Usher's " Answer to a Jesuit," which treats of Prayer for the Dead ; and in which it is shown that the practice of praying for the faithful departed is not necessarily connected with the Eoman doctrine of Purgatory, and that such prac- tice had prevailed in the Church from very early times, and did not disagree with Scripture. Number 73 was against the rationalism and ■practical Socinianism of such authors as Erskine and Jacob Abbott. The object of Number 75, on the Eoman Breviary, was described in that Tract itself as being to claim for the Church of England whatever of catholicity was expressed in that for- mulary, while rejecting the corruptions. Number 84 was a collection of authorities helping to answer the c[uestion " Whether a clergyman of the Church of England be now bound to have morning and evening prayers daily in his parish church." Number 85 was on difficulties in the Scripture Proof of the doctrines of the Church. In this Tract the Protestant case is fairly stated, and it is then shown that the Protestant argument proves too much ; viz,, that outward religion is not only unnecessary, but forbidden; and the plan, followed by Protestants, of arguing from the scantiness with which certain Church doctrines are mentioned in Scripture, is turned against Protestants themselves with reference to some particular doctrines to which nevertheless Protestants attach great weight. Lecture II. (for the Tract was a series of Lectures) shows that if a Divine revelation is given, some system of faith and worship necessary to be ac- TRACTS FOR THE TI3IES. 407 cepted must be taught somewhere, either in the Bible or out of it ; and hence we cannot stop short at Protestantism. If we refuse the Amilican alterna- tive, according to which this system is to be found in the teaching of the Church, we must either become Eomanists or else deny Divine revelation altogether. Scripture implies in several places that there is such a system : such has been acknow- ledofed in the Church from the earliest times ; and that portion of it which relates to faith is of a piece with that which relates to worship and order. Lecture III. dwelt upon the unsystematic charac- ter of Scripture revelation, and pointed out the analogy herein to God's plan in creation, dispersing the various substances useful to man not after the manner of a regular system, but in various com- binations upon or in the earth. The argument in Lecture IV. is curious. It is this : There are apparent inconsistencies between one part of Scripture and another ; therefore it is not surprising if there should be apparent inconsis- tencies between the teaching of Scripture generally and that of the Church. A parallel is also drawn between the simplicity of Scripture language in describino: what all admit to be o-reat thino^s, and the simplicity of the same in describing what are deemed great things by the Church. In Lecture V. the general tone of Scripture is dwelt upon as being at first sight inconsistent with many things which nevertheless are admitted to be perfectly scriptural ; sacred history being mostly conveyed with as much apparent inconsistency between one part of Scripture and another as there 408 TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. is between Scripture and the Church in point of religious doctrine. In Lecture VI. it was remarked that if the want of method and verbal consistency in Scripture be an objection to the truth of Church doctrine, it is equally an objection to what is called " orthodox Protestantism," and to the trustworthiness of sacred narratives, and even to the Bible in general itself. And then the author of the Tract proceeded to answer the objection that Church doctrine is not taught clearly in the Fathers any more than in Scripture. No wonder, we may remark here, that Protestants were riled ; for in this same lecture it was shown that if they object to the testimony of the Fathers to the doctrines of the Priesthood and the Sacrifice, they ought for consistency's sake to object to it when given in favour of certain books both of the New Testament and of the Old. In Number 86 it is suggested that the omicsions . . . . and alterations in our own Liturgy may have been ordered by the same Spirit under whose control (or rather, we should say, prompting) the first rites of Catholic worship were ordained. We cannot accept this view : we are rather disposed to see, in the changes to which the writer of the Tract alludes, an illustration of God's word by Ezekiel, " I gave them statutes which were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live."* It will be observed that our own view does not exclude the belief of an overruling Providence, dealing with the members of the Church in mercy, • Ezek. XX. 25. TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. 409 hindering tliem from expressing God's whole truth with uniform distinctness of detail, because they had not held it arisjlit or in thorouo-h faithfulness, and so would be incurring condemnation if they were allowed to declare distinctly what they did not believe. Numbers 80 and 87 treated of reserve in com- municating religious knowledge ; Tract 80 embrac- ing Parts I. to III., and Tract 87 embracing Part IV. It was shown that the principle of such reserve is founded deep in human nature ; that the system might be traced throughout the heathen world in some shape or other, proving it (in the opinion of the writer of these two Tracts) — we should have said, rendering it probable that it is — either of Divine origin, or arising out of some common principle : that it had the authority of the Lord Himself and His Apostles, and was prac- tised both by Him and by them as a great law and rule of religious wisdom. The writer then proceeded to point out how the existence of the principle in question was shown in the disciplina arcani, and in the system of inter- preting Scripture mystically, both which things prevailed in the early Church. Unfortunately, however, the writer left his readers to infer what the disciplina arcani was. Before applying the question of reserve to " certain modern religious opinions," he laid down that the doctrine of the Cross as taught by the ancient Church was the humiliation of the natural man as leading to the living and practical sense of Christ's Atonement, and that we cannot come to 410 TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. Christ but ])y bearing tlie cross after Him. In this the writer, we conceive, erred by putting first last and last first. No doubt his language is true enouofh in a certain sense : tlie natural man is humbled in submitting to Holy Baptism ; and it is only through Baptism that we can attain to an}^ living and practical sense of the Atonement. And the bcarincf whatever difficulties a catechumen may have to undergo when seeking Christian Baptism may perhaps be termed a bearing of the cross after Christ. When, however, the writer of the Tract spoke of " self-renouncing duties of . prayer and the like " as leading to a knowledge of the secrets of Christ's Kingdom, as if that were the only sense — or, indeed, other than a very inade- quate sense — in which " by the cross of Christ we are brought to Him and led on to the knowledge of God," he wrote with what seems to us an astonishinfv ig;norance both of the Atonement itself and of that Sacrament which makes us, immediately upon its reception, partakers of Atonement bless- ings. For how is a sinful man to deny himself intelligently until his heart is being purified by the faith of the Atonement as efficacious in his own case? — by the faith (in other words) "that Christ died for me, and that through His death forgiveness of my sins has been obtained ? " The same error lies at the root of the statement •on which the writer of the Tract insists more than once, that good works make a good man : that good actions must be done before good dispositions can be produced, and that good dispositions must be produced before certain doctrines (of which the TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. 411 doctrine of the Atonement is assumed to be one) could be received. That statement is perfectly true in the sense that good works are the only- things which will warrant us in deeming another person good, or which will warrant us in thinking that we ourselves are being made good. The point, too, is unquestionable that when a man has begun to be good, the practice of good works not only tends towards making him better, but is necessary for that end. But all this was entirely beside the conclusion for which the writer of the Tract adduced it ; for his argument would require the admission that man can do some good works of himself, and otherwise than as being purified through the Atonement. And indeed, if the teach- ing in this Tract were correct, it would be open to the fatal objection that the asceticism implicitly recommended may be the greatest hindrance to Christianity : as is evidenced by the system of Buddha, which teaches the same exalted morality and the same self-denying asceticism inculcated by such Christian writers as those whose Tracts we are now noticing. In the concluding part of the Tract the writer charges full tilt at that party which taught that it was necessary " to obtrude and bring forward prominently and explicitly on all occasions the doctrine of the Atonement." " This one thing," says he, " it puts in the place of all the principles held by the Church Catholic, dropping all pro- portion of the faith. It disparages comparatively, nay, in some cases has even blasphemed, the most blessed Sacraments." (The writer might have said 412 TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. more if he had liv^ed to read of the Bordesley sacrilege, of which notice will have to be taken hereafter.) "It is very jealously afraid of Church authority, of fasting and mortification being recom- mended, of works of holiness being insisted on, of the doctrine of the universal Judgment. It is marked by an unreserved discourse on the holiest subjects. To this system all that we have said is thoroughly opposed."* His attack involved some curious positions. " The advocates of these opinions .... maintain that then only when the Holy Spirit was given did Holy Scripture set forth the Atonement with that fulness which they require." As if this alleged Low-Church point were not almost a palpable truism. " Thus have they contrived to take a position which sets aside almost the whole of Holy Writ, including the Gospels themselves, from any appeal on this subject." As if any book of the New Testament had been written before the Spirit had been given ! The writer of this Tract would set his Low- Church brethren right upon the subject. The " peculiar opinions " of that party were formed on the supposition that in order to have certain great "principles (apparently, self-renunciation and dependence on God with a view to practical holiness) instilled and thoroughly infused into one's heart, it was necessary to declare aloud to all whom we meet the Atonement made by Christ, and the mode of sanctification through the indwellinsj * Pa?e 48. TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. 413 Spirit. On that point, however, he is at issue with them. And when he is asked how then scriptural doctrine was to be held and declared, his answer is, " Surely it is our duty to bring forward ' the faith once for all delivered to the Saints ' in the fulness of that Creed into which we were baptized." As if this could be done without teachina^ both the Atonement made by Christ and also the necessity of sanctification through the indwelling Spirit ! The impression produced on our own mind through the reading of the Tract in question was that the writer, wishing on general grounds to overthrow the Low-Church theology, not only selected for his point of attack precisely those points on which Low-Churchmen were least as- sailable, but adopted, as his weapons of offence, arguments which, though sound enough in them- selves, really did not touch his adversaries at all. Who had ever denied that there was such a thing as reserve, both taught in the Scriptures and prac- tised by the Lord, and by Ilis Apostles, and by the Church from tiie beginning, until these days of printing and reading ? And who had ever denied that there were circumstances under which even those important and precious doctrines which the Tract-writer so ignorantly assailed were to be kept back ? that in regard of Christian preaching as well as in regard of other matters there is a time to keep silence as well as a time to speak, and the Christian preacher must act as David professed to have done when he sang, " I kept silence, even from good words " ? And when he spoke of the disobedience of 414 TRACTS FOE THE TIMES. ministers to their ecclesiastical superiors, of indi- viduals to their appointed ministers, and of whole bodies of Christians to the Church, as the effects of the course which he was censuring in the Low- Church party, he erred in attributing all this to the fact that Low-Church people taught the doctnne of the Atonement unreservedly ; whereas it was really owing, not to that, but to the fact that Low- Church teachers had failed to inculcate, along with it, the truths that Christian Baptism is the means whereby the benefits of the Atonement are con- veyed, and that Church Communion, involving not only habitual reception of the Lord's Flesh and Blood at the altar, but the keeping one's own place in the Body, in due subordination to those who have the rule over us under the Head, is the means by which Christians continue in the reception of the same benefits. Another unadvised attack was made by the same writer against the ordinance of preaching. Under the influence, no doubt, of a spirit of reaction from the Low-Church habit of exalting this ordinance to the depreciation of Sacraments and of Common Prayer, he spoke of preaching as what might be necessary when the Church was in a weak and languishing state (forgetting, apparently, that the existence of such a state was the reason for the publication of the Tracts), but which Scripture, to say the least, had never very much recommended. With greater force, however, did he urge, against the Low-Church system in general, how that it had substituted a system of unreality and formality, under the name of spirituality, for the system of TRACT XC. 415 Scripture and the Church ; disparaging not only the superstitious and wrong observance of sacra- mental ordinances, creeds, and prayers, but the practical use of them in general ; how that it sub- stituted, for the Sacraments, something like a meritorious act or opinion on the part of an indi- vidual: its irreverence in the use of Divine names; and its dislike of homefelt natural expressions, in which any one who is in earnest is apt to clothe his sentiments, because they break through the unreal web of the Low-Church system. And there was in the tail a double sting, the charge of being akin to Popery, and the charge of worldliness. We have carried our notice of the Tract on Ee- serve to this length, because that Tract was one of those which occasioned the loudest outcry from the Low-Church ranks. That outcry, however, was exceeded, if excess was possible, by that which rose on the publication of Tract 90. This Tract was signed J[ohn] H[enry] N[ewman], and dated on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, 1841. It dealt with the objection which it described as " often urged, and sometimes felt and granted," that there were in the Thirty-nine Articles some proposition or terms inconsistent with the Catholic Faith ; and aimed at showing the groundlessness of this objection and " of approximating towards the argumentative answer to it ; " showing that the Articles — the offspring, it was admitted, of an un- Catholic age, were nevertheless through God's good providence, not un-Catholic themselves, and might be subscribed by any who aimed at being Catholic in heart and doctrine. The drift and object of the 416 TRACT XC. Tract were tlms described in the concluding para- graph of the Tract itself : " What has lately taken place in the political world will afford an iHustra- tion in point. A French minister, desirous of war, nevertheless, as a matter of policy, draws up his state-papers in such moderate Language that his successor, who is for peace, can act up to them without compromising his own principles. The world, observing this, has considered it a circum- stance for conofratulation; as if the former minister, who acted a double part, had been caught in his own snare. It is neither decorous, nor necessary, nor altogether fair, to urge the parallel rigidly ; but it will explain what is here meant to convey. The Protestant Confession was drawn up with the purpose of including Catholics ; and Catholics now will not be excluded. What was an economy in the Eeformers is a protection to us. What would have been a perplexity to us then is a perplexity to Protestants now. We could not then have found fault with their words ; they cannot now repudiate our meaning." In one place the Protestantism of the writer went certainly too far, viz., to deny that the five lesser sacraments are " sacraments in any sense, unless the Church has the power of dispensing grace through rites of its own appointing, or is endued with the gift of blessing and hallowing the 'rites or ceremonies' which, according to the twentieth Article, it ' hath power to decree.' " The writer added, " But we may well believe that the Church has this gift." One hesitates here which to deplore most, the depreciation of the Anointing TRACT XC. 4] 7 of the Sick as if it had been an institution of mere human authority, or the ignoring of the truth that the Church CathoHc is the very body of Christ, pervaded and energised by His Spirit, insomuch that whatever is done in her or by her in accord- ance with her Divine constitution is the act of the Lord Himself. In treating of Article XXXIH., which deals with Transubstantiation, and (supplementarily) with the " Black Eubric," the writer showed that there was nothing in eitlier to interfere with the doctrine, elsewhere taught in AngHcan formularies, of a real super-local Presence in the Eucharist. In treating of Article XXXI., which teaches the One Oblation of Christ in contradistinction from the sacrifice {i.e., sacrifices, Latin sacrijicia) of Masses, he showed that that Article did not touch the Catholic doc- trine of Christ's Body and Blood spiritually pre- sented before God in the celebration of the Eucharist, in memory of the Sacrifice of the Cross. But the thrust which probably the Low-Church party felt most keenly was given in the end of a section discussing the statement made in Article XXXV., that "the Second Book of Homilies .... doth contain a godly and wholesome doctrine, . ... as doth the former Book of Homilies:" for, after sixty-seven quotations from the Homihes, came the following paragraph : — "Thus we see the authority of the Fathers, of the six first councils, and of the judgments of tlie Church generally, the holiness of the Primitive Churcli, the inspiration of the Apocrypha, the 28 418 TRACTARIAN TRINCIPLES sacramental cliaracter of marriage and other ordi- nances, tlie Eeal Presence in the Eucharist, the Church's power of excommunicating kings, the profitableness of fasting, the propitiator}^ virtue of good Avorks, the Eucharistic commemoration, and justification by inherent righteousness,* are taught in the Homilies, Let it be said again, it is not here asserted that a subscription to all and every of these quotations is involved in the subscription of an Article which does but generally approve the Homilies ; but they who insist so strongly on our Church's holding that the Bishop of Eome is Antichrist because the Homilies declare it, should recollect that there are other doctrines contained in them beside it, which they should be understood to hold, before their argument has the force of consistency." Concerning the opinions set forth in the Tracts, there was a certain amount of dissension even among the authors ; for no Tract did more than set forth the views of its own author. But these minor differences were soon overlooked in the storm which the theology of the Tracts excited wherever Low -Church opinions prevailed. The Record, indeed, had admitted five letters from Mr. Newman on the subject of Church Eeform in the matter of discipline ; and sundry things urged in the Tracts in the way of practice had been recommended at different times by one and another Low Churchman. Weekly Communion had been recommended by Mr. Eomaine (so a correspondent in the Christian * lu the reprint of the Tracts this expression was altered to — " by a righteousness [within us]." COMMENDED BY LOW-CHURCEMEN. 419 Observer believed), and by Mr. Howels.* The Editor of the periodical just named had inserted, in 1819, a letter of Dean Comber's, recommending it. Daniel Wilson, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, had spoken from the pulpit of St. Marj^'s, Islington, about leading his child " to the altar of our Eucharistic sacrifice." The fact that the Episco- pate liad been continued in succession from the Apostles had been asserted by Thomas Eobinson of Leicester, in that essay in his Christian System which had for its subject the Church of Christ. In the Christian Observer for 1824 the following occurs in an editorial note to a letter from a correspondent, nor did the editor append any word of disapproval : " There seems to have been felt a general idea of the minister's acting both as the ambassador of God and the represen- tative of the people ; standing like Moses and the Prophets of old to transmit the commands and promises of God to the people, and to utter the wants and wishes of the people to God. The reading-desks in our ancient churches had, accord- ingly, and some retain still, two fronts : the one facing the people, at which the lessons were read, the other towards the chancel, where the prayers were offered." But it was speedily felt by all the Low-Church party that the theology of the Tracts was diametrically opposed to most of that taught by them. To quote the language of a writer in the Christian Observer, it was imme- diately seen, after only two or three numbers See Christian Observer for 1844, p. 769. 28—2 420 LOW-CHURCH ATTACKS (of tlie Tracts) liad been issued, that the ground taken up " was extremely perilous." Or (as the editor remarked in 1861) "to advance the claims of the Church " rather than "to aim at the maintenance of the Establishment " was " a funda- mental error, and it led straight to popery." A remark, by the way, which is peculiarly instructive as to Low-Churcli tenets. The aforesaid writer believed that the Tracts " were first denounced at one of the early meetings of the Evangelical Brotherhood at Islington " (he probably means the institution known as the " Islington Clerical Meeting "), " by tlie Eev. Francis Goode, Lecturer of Clapham," and who on this occasion was ably supported by Professor Scholefield But not many months elapsed before every minister of the Gospel, as it was held by our Reformers," was loud in his " condemnation of this new and fearful portent." And the cry arose on all sides that the leaders of the movement were working their own way by little and little to Eomanism. In 1837 Mr. Newman was roused to reply ; and ]]e addressed a letter to the Editor of the Christian Observer, complaining of the manner in which the controversy had been carried on in that magazine. This letter the Editor did not refuse to insert ; either because he wished to show all courtesy to his adversary, and to vanquish him in fair and open battle, or else because he thought that Mr. Newman's position only needed to be stated, with an editor's commentary appended, for the religious public to judge at once who had tlie best of the controversy. And certainly, if the minds of the KEFELLED BY NEWMAX. 421 religious public iu those da^'s were constituted like the mind of him who is writing these pages, the Editor was right ; though in this case the result would not have proved to him altogether satisfac- tory, for the natural conclusion to be drawn was that the case of Christian Observer v. Newman was really the case of Words v. Weight. Mr. Newman's letter occupied about eight octavo pages of the type ordinarily used by the Christian Observer in its leading articles. To it the Editor appended notes, and notes upon his own notes, in his smallest type, and to the amount of about sixty pages. Mr. Newman wrote a second letter of about eighteen octavo pages ; this also the Editor inserted, prefixing about eleven pages of pre- liminary remarks in large and small type, and appending about twenty-eight pages of notes. Mr. Newman complained of the vagueness of the charges brought against him : that the Tract- writers were called upon to reconcile some state- ments in the Tracts with some statements in the Articles and Homilies, without specifying in any case what statements were inconsistent with one another. He complained, too, of hard words used in empty declamation: and then mentioned two tenets which the Christian Observer had con- demned, viz., that the Sacraments might possibly be of benefit to persons in a state of unconscious- ness, and that Eegeneration was a gift of the New Covenant exclusively ! Which tenets he then pro- ceeded duly to establish : the first as simply not absurd (as, it seems, the Editor of the Christian Ob- server had called it), and the second as in accord- 422 CHRISTIAN OBSERVER ance with Scripture. After this, he treated of the Homilies and Articles, and his own conscientious acceptance of them. He announced his intention of taking up, in a future letter, the subject of Justification, but did not carry his intention into execution ; " not approving " (says the Editor) " of the manner in which we have inserted his former ones." * Probably he deemed the Editor's ignorance of theology a sufficient reason for not troubling liim any more. The Editor's remarks on Mr. Newman's letters are highly instructive, as indicating the mode of argument which was thought sound and good by the more literary part of the Low-Church party. He found fault with the Tract-writers for ordering the Tracts with reference to the academical year ;f he found fault with them for adopting what argu- ments they deemed best calculated to convince the general public of the soundness of the views by them put forth. J He even went so far as to deny theh^ right to give a title to their own publications ; telling them that they had no right to expect that the title Tracts for the Times should be adopted by the public. § He found fault with them for putting Calvin and Zuingli into one and the same class with Socinians.|| He might be pardoned, indeed, for mis-stating his adversary's meaning ; ^ for the terms which Mr. Newman used were not always unexceptionable in point of clearness. But we do not remember to liave ever seen the prin- * Christian Observer for 1837, p. 358. t lb. p. 115. \ lb. p. 194, note 45. § lb. p. 115, note. II lb. p. 121. 1[ lb. pp. 146, 152, 155. REJOINS TO MR. NEWMAN. 423 ciple of the proverb " give a clog a bad name and hang him " more candidly avowed than in the following passage : " Our readers are not so ignorant as Mr. Newman alleges them to be of the system of those so-called High-Churchmen, whose arroo'ant claim of beinsj the true sons of the Church of Eno-land we do not for a moment concede ; and knowing full well the doctrinal and ecclesiastical system of those unsound Churchmen, it w-as a copious and conclusive argument in a few w^ords to say that these Tracts embody their system ; for when a category is once established, it is only ■necessary to show that a matter comes within it to determine the conclusion." * And as to the Editor's knowledge of theology and acuteness of intellect, the following choice morsel may be cited as a specimen : " Our readers will easily call to mind scores of statements to the cfTect of the following from Bishop Horsley : ' That man is justified by faith, without the works of the law, was the uniform doctrine of our first Eeformers. It is a far more ancient doctrine ; it was the doctrine of the whole college of Apostles. It is more ancient still ; it was the doctrine of the Prophets : it is older than the Prophets ; it was the relio-ion of the Patriarchs.' No sound Pro- testants ever ventured to deny this ; yet we should be o:lad to know how it can consist with the Oxford doctrine of Baptismal Justification ; for the pro- phets and patriarchs had not baptism, and yet they were justified." f This was the man, never- */i. p. 117. t 76. p. 15 J, note. 424 LYE A APOSTOLIC A tlieless, on whom Mr. Newman in his kindness spent two octavo pages in proving that the patriarchs were not regenerated ! We do not know wiiy it failed to occur to Mr. Newman to say simply, "There is only One who has ever been regenerated at all; and that is the Man Christ Jesus. He has been begotten again by the Father, being brought by the Father through death, and quickened with a new life: and there neither is nor ever has been any regeneration for any descendant of the first Adam, save through being made, in Christian Baptism, one with the Second Adam in this His regenerate state." In a review of Ltjra Apostolica, which ap- peared in the July number of the same periodical, we note some of the same characteristics. The reviewer's ignorance of theological truth leads him to draw this distinction between George Herbert and the authors of the Lijra Apostolica : "In George Herbert religion occupies decidedly the first place, and the Church the second: in the ' Lyra,' the Church is primary, and religion sub- ordinate.'' What idiot would ever think of writing such a sentence as this : "In such and such a work, science is treated as of primary importance, and the men who study it are only secondary ; in such and such another work, the men are the primary matter, and science itself only secondary " ? The drift of one piece is that the bare proclamation of the Atonement in general terms is not enough for one laden with the guilt of sin, but he needs a special application of the same in Absolution. On the author of these hues the reviewer remarks, REVIEWED. 425 " We envy not the sheep committed to his charge, if he be, as we presume, a pastor. Baptismal justification being past, the fifth of Eomans, that blessed chapter which has made peace like a river flow into the troubled souls of poor penitents, is expunged from the sacred canon." * Expunged, that is, in the reviewer's iraawination : it does not occur to him that he is himself practically ex- punging from the sacred canon both John xx. 23, f and 2 Corinthians ii. lO.J On the lines entitled " The Cross of Ciirist," prefaced by the well-known quotation from TertuUian about the abundant use of the sacred sign by the Christians of liis day, and containing these lines : " Whene'er across this sinful flesh of mine I draw the holy sign, All good thoughts stir within me, and collect Their slumbering strength divine ; Till there springs up that hope of God's elect, My faith shall ne'er be wrecked. " And who shall say, but hateful spirits around, For their brief hour unbound, Shudder to see, and wail their overthrow. While on far-heathen ground. Some lonely saint hails the fresh odour, though Its source he cannot know ? " — the reviewer remarked, " Considered as an effort of imagination, these lines are extravagant, but viewed as an exposition of truth [which they * lb. p. 468. t " Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." f "To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also ; for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ." 426 ATTACK BY BP. BAGOT obviously were not], tliey are quite monstrous."* And by way of showing us what efforts of imagina- tion are lawful, he proceeded to enumerate the evils which, in his view, would follow from holding such thoughts as those expressed in the lines just quoted. "Charm ; holy water ; aspersion thereof ; cursings by bell, book, and candle ; these are a few, and only a few, of the family of evil which would be the certain offspring of such a parentage. "f CHAPTER XXX. Polemical Period, continued. Further Opposition to tlie Tractarians and their Doctrines. The Bishop of Oxford. The Four Tutors. Bishop Sumner of "Winchester. The Rev. Hugh Sto"well. The Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Bagot) appears to have commenced the Episcopal share in the war against Tractarianism by animadverting on the " Tracts for the Times" in his charge of 1838. Mr. Newman, therefore, offered to withdraw any of those " Tracts " over which he had any control, if the Bishop desired it. To this, however, the Bishop did not then press him. Tract 90 appeared in March, 1841. Imme- diately the opposition to the "Tracts" and their authors culminated in the proceedings taken by four Oxford tutors in reference to it. These tutors were, T. T. Churton, M.A.,Yice-Principal and Tutor of Brasenose College ; H. B. Wilson, B.D., Fellow and Senior Tutor of St. John's College, and who » lb. p. 470. ■ fib. p. 471. AND THE FOUR TUTORS. 427 afterwards contributed to the notorious Essays and Reviews; John Griffiths, M.A., ISub-Warden and Tutor of Wadham College; and A. C. Tait, M.A., Fellow and Senior Tutor of Balliol College, and afterwards successively Head Master of Eugby School, Dean of Carlisle, Bishop of London, and Archbishop of Canterbury. These wrote (March 8th) to the Editor of the Tracts^ in these terms : "The Tract has, in our apprehension, a highly dangerous tendenc}^, from its suggesting tliat certain very important errors of the Church of Eome are not condemned by the Articles of the Cliurch of England; for instance, that those Articles do not contain any condemnation of the doctrines — 1. Of purgatory. 2. Of pardons. 3. Of the wor- shipping and adoration of images and relics. 4. Of the invocation of saints. 5. Of the mass ; as they are taught authoritatively by the Church of Eome ; but only of certain absurd practices and opinions, wliich intelligent Eomanists repudiate as much as we do. " In conclusion, we venture to call your atten- tion to the impropriety of such questions being treated in an anonymous publication, and to ex- press an earnest hope that you may be authorised to make known the Avriter's name. Considering how very grave and solemn the whole subject is, we cannot help thinking that both the Church and the University are entitled to ask that some person, besides the printer and publisher of the Tract, should acknowledge himself responsible." On March 15th, the Vice-Chancellor (Philip Wynter, D.D., President of St. John's College), 428 TRACT XC. CONDEMNED Heads of Houses, and Proctors resolved " that modes of interpretation such as are suggested in the said Tract, evading rather than explaining the sense of the Thirty-nine Articles, and reconciling subscription to them with the adoption of errors which they were designed to counteract, defeat the object, and are inconsistent with the due observ- ance, of the above-mentioned Statutes " — referring to Art. ni. sect. 2, tit. ix. sec. ii. § 3, sec. v. § 3. An impartial judge must needs deem this resolution to have been in itself a false libel. The University authorities might, if they saw cause, take a different view of the meaning of the Articles from the view propounded in the Tract : they might also, if they thought proper, call the argument in the Tract an evasion rather than an explanation ; and if it was so, the fault lay, not with the writer of the Tract, but with the framers of the Articles, wlio ought to have made the Articles more stringent. But to speak of the Tract as reconciling subscrip- tion to the Articles with the adoption of errors which they were designed to counteract was to speak of it as doing the very thing Avhich it did not do.* * It is remarkable how the late Canon Kingsley, who had written to his mother in 1841, concerning the Tract writers, and especially Mr. Newman, " Whether wilful or self-deceived, these men are Jesuits, taking the oath to the Articles with moral reservations which allow them to explain tliem away in senses utterly different from those of their authors" {Charles Kingsley, p. 18), wrote to the Rev. F. D. Maurice, in I860, insisting on the very principle on whicli Tract 90 was based : " You say, ' The Articles were not intended to bind men's thoughts or consciences.' Now, I can't help feeling that when they assert a proposit ion— e.^., the Trinity— they assert that that and nothing else on that matter is true, and so bind thought ; and that they require me to swear that I believe it so, and so bind my con- BP. Sumner's chaege. 429 Mr. Newman, however, without a hint of this, acknowledged, in a letter to the Vice-Chancellor, the authorship of the Tract. He had already been excluded, as far as might be, from preaching in the University pulpit.* The line taken by the Bishop of Winchester (Dr. Charles Eichard Sumner) with regard to the Tracts^ and the principles of that party v/hich derived one of its popular appellations from them, may be taken as a specimen of the line taken by their more respectable opponents. It was an entire misunderstanding of the real points at issue. The Bishop thus expressed himself, in a charge delivered in the autumn of 1841: "If a cloud be raised ao-ain around that Q-reat doctrine, whicli involves the mode in which we are ' accounted righteous before God,' if it be even called in question wliether 'the Protestant doctrine of justification' be 'a fundamental of faith,' if, instead of the satisfaction of Christ, singty and alone, as the ground of accept- ance, a certain inherent meetness of sanctification be so connected with the qualification ah extra as to confound the operation within with the work of Christ without." Also, " I cannot but fear the consequences for the character, the efficiency, and science. In tlie case where they condemn an error, it seems to me quite different. There they proscribe one form of thought, and leave all others open by implication, binding neither thought nor conscience. The Romish doctrine of Purgatory is false ; but denying that does not forbid me to believe other doctrines of Purgatory to be true, and to speculate freely on the future state. So that vs'hat you say applies clearly (to me) to the cases in whicli the Articles deny. It applies also to all cases in which the Articles do not affirm." {Ih. p. 238.) * Apologia pro T^ifa Sua, -p. 2'36. 430 BP. Sumner's charge tlie very trutli of our Church if a system of teach- ing should become popular , . . which speaks of the Sacraments, not as seals and pledges, but as instruments of salvation in a justificatory and causal sense . . . investinc^ them with a savini? intrinsic efficac}^, not distinguishable by ordinary understandings from the opus operatmn.'' Here we note an ignorance of the true relation between Sacraments and Faith ; an io^norance resulting; from unsoundness as to the objective character of grace conveyed by Sacraments. It should be noticed, too, as a mark indicative of the Bishop's unsoundness, that on this subject he departs from the teaching of the Catechism : io-norino- the fact that accordino- to that formulary^the chief of all authorities to the Cliurchman — a Sacrament is first "a means whereby we receive " the Divine grace, and only secondly "a pledge to assure us thereof:" and using a term (" seal ") which is not found, in this connection, either in the Catechism or the Thirty- nine Articles, and which, moreover, is susceptible of an heretical interpretation. So again as to the relations between the Church speaking by tradition, and that Word of God which we have written in the Bible : what an utter mis- understanding is expressed in the following passage from the same charge, wherein the Bishop declares his fear for the Church: " If we derogate from the exclusive supremacy of the word as containing all things necessary to salvation, by a phraseolog}' which, in effect, gives a co-ordinate authority to the interpretation of antiquity, instead of making the Church with our Article a witness and keeper AGAINST TRACTARIAN'SM. 431 of Holy Writ." How can there be (we ma}^ ask) an exclusive supremacy belonging to one of two things rather than to the other, when each lias its own peculiar sphere, into which the other does not come ? The Bible says. Thus and thus taught the first preachers of Christainity, nnder the in- fluence of God the Holy Ghost. The Church says, Thus and thus did I receive the revelation of God in Christ (with Whom I am one) by the same Holy Ghost. How can there be any contest here for supremacy ? That such misunderstanding was excusable we do not deny ; the Bishop of Win- chester was not a theologian himself, and his part}- has never produced a single theologian worth naming. Nay, we are not sure that it was not naturally to be expected, owing to the way in which the writers of Tracts, had expressed them- selves. How this and similar episcopal charges, with which Mr. Newman's views were now continuously attacked for the space of three years, had the effect of driving him at last out of the Church of England, and others as well — for which the Church of Eng- land, as seems to us, ought to humble herself until the Lord come — belongs more to a history of the Tractarian party than to such a work as the present. Charges, however, were not the only weapons now used by Low-Church Bishops against Tractarians. We believe it to be true that when Mr. Keble came into the diocese of Winchester as Vicar of Hursley, and thenceforward, Bishop Sumner never would license a clerg3^man to serve as curate in that parish. 432 REV. HUGH STOWELLS Another fair specimen of the line taken by respectable Low-Churclimen against Tractarianism may be mentioned in the sermons preached against it by the Eev. Hugh Stowell, Incumbent of Christ Church, Manchester, and Prebendary of Chester.* When Mr. Stowell preached the first of this series, eighteen bishops had, as he tells his flock, "felt called upon to enter their official protest more or less broadly against the *' antiquated novelties.' " He himself had a candid mind and a charitable heart ; but he did not always under- stand what his adversaries' position was, and could not, therefore, always explain it. Thus he charges them with teaching that Holy Scripture could not be authenticated except tradition established it ;f and condemns them for teaching the insufficiency of Scripture, but fails to specify that the insuffi- ciency of which he spoke was an insufficiency for salvation. He charged his opponents, too, with teaching that the writings of the primitive fathers of the Church conveyed to us Divine truths addi- tional and supplemental to the written word ;J and spoke of some remarkably clear passages from the Tracts, as "misty" in their meaning. He repre- sented the Tractarians as teacliing that the primitive ecclesiastical writers were " essential to the integrity and completeness " of the written Bible !§ In one place, where allusion is made, in the "Tracts," to the intermediate state, he speaks of * Tractarianism tested hy Kvly Scrij^ture and the Church of Eng- lund. The preface is dated September 7tli, 1845. t Tractarianism Tested, vol. i. p. 55. \ lb. p. 57. • § tt. p. 72. TRACTARIANISM TESTED. 433 the writer as if for " intermediate state " lie had written " Purgatory, as understood by Romanists." Mr. Stowell's inability to look at things from any other standpoint than his own appears from the harsh and sometimes abusive, judgment which he allows himself to pass in more than one place. When a Tract-writer is but statinu* an alternative of two evils as, in his opinion, a matter of fact which either was being realised then, or Avould be realised in time to come, Mr. Stowell represents him as if he were wishing and praying that those who refuse the one evil might fall into the other ! " This writer " (he says) " would actually fling us back upon utter scepticism, if we will not bend our neck to the yoke of ecclesiastical despotism."* And then comes a hint to his fellow-Protestants not to suffer the Tractarian clergy to carry out their Eomanising theories by interposing them- selves between the people and the Bible ; as if any Tractarian could do such a thing in the case of any individual whatever, without first convincino- that individual's private judgment !f Again: In the British Critic for April, 1842, the fundamental Tractarian tenet had been thus de- scribed : " That there is altogether sufficient evidence, INDEPENDENTLY OF THE SCRIPTURES, that the ApOStlcs taught as divine and necessary certain doctrines, and incidcated as essential certain j^ractices."" We should have deemed such a position to be one of simple fact or falsehood, on which any one might form his opinion according to the amount of his infor- mation ; but not so in Mr. Stowell's judgment. To * li. p. 94. t lb. p. 97. 29 434 - REV. HUGH STOWELL's write such a sentence as the above argued, to him, a fearful warping of the moral sense in the case of any one who had subscribed the Sixth Article !* He misunderstands (and, by consequence, mis- represents) the Tractarians as denying the possi- bility of forgiveness after Baptism, strangely citing the very words of the Tract in which that kind alone of remission is spoken of which is bestowed in Baptism. In his sermon on Justification by Faith he shows that he misunderstands the true issue again. He is usino- the word " Justification " in a narrower o sense — his adversaries are using it in a wider. And when Newman wrote, "While the received doctrine in all ages of the Church has been, that through the largeness and peculiarity of the gift of grace we can, it is the distinguishing tenet of the school of Luther that through the incurable nature of our corruption we cannot," and when Mr. Stowell spoke of that passage as unsound,f both showed themselves equally unaware that there was no contrast at all between the two things spoken of. It is most certain that througli the incurable nature of our corruption we cannot be justified in ourselves ; and it is equally certain that through the largeness and peculiarity of God's grace we both can be and are. Mr. Stowell's first mistake was in confounding between Faith and Opinion. J If this had been * lb. p. 78. t lb. vol. ii. p. 5. X An evidence of this confusion occurs in his Sermon on Baptism, wherein he speaks of "the opmions of the Church of Eng-Uuid on that subject." TKACTARIANISM TESTED. 435 "rectifiecl, there was little or nothing in liis" first sermon of this series to which an intelligent and devout Tractarian would not joyfully assent. In that sermon, too, in which he sets forth " how separatists are to be regarded," there is little or nothing to which any well -instructed Churchman would not assent ; though unfortunately Mr. Stowell did not take up the only satisfactory ground of the validity of lay-baptism, — the impos- sibility of undoing one's membership in the Catholic Church by merely joining oneself to an unauthorised religious society,-— the probability that the Lord gives His Body and Blood unawares to those recipients in whom He discerns a real faith in Himself, even where through is^norance the doctrine of the Eeal Presence is denied, and the priesthood of the Church rejected. To Galatians iii. 2* Mr. Stowell referred as prov- ing, with respect to preaching, that " through this channel, specially but not exclusively, it pleaseth God to communicate the Holy Ghost. "f And still more remarkably, he refers, for another proof of the same thing, to the text, " He therefore that minis - tereth among you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith ?"J He failed to see that if the latter text had anything to do with the way in which the Holy Ghost is ministered to individual people, it would prove that He was ministered not through preaching, but through * "This only would I learn of you. Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith ? " t Tractarianism Tested, vol. i. p. 281. \ Gal. iii. 5. 29- 2 436 REV. HUGH stowell's hearing : in other words, that when the apostle or apostoHc delegate was to minister Him, he had not to preach a sermon (and still less to perform the imposition of hands), but to hear a sermon from some one else ! We should have thought St. Paul's meaning sufficiently clear, viz., that all Christian religion, and all its manifestations, sprang originally from the fact that the Gospel had been received at the lips of preachers by believing hearers ; and that the hearing of faith was necessary in the case of all who would profit by any Christian ordinance whatever. Mr. Stowell had not considered the difference between the objective and the subjective ; a dif- ference clearly implied in more than one passage of Holy Scripture, and underlying the difference between the Tractarians and their Low-Church opponents, in so far as the tenets of each party were founded in truth. The Tractarians were on the objective side, the Low-Churchmen on the subjective. The Low-Church party in their ignorance of theology (and, we may say, of Scripture) assumed that their subjective view was contradicted by the Tractarian objectivities. The Tractarian taught that Baptism saves us: the Low-Churchman took him to mean (as perhaps in some cases he did mean, not always knowing Scripture better than the Low-Church- man), " We are saved by Baptism." The Tracta- rian taught that God's grace in Sacraments is independent of human faith : the Low-Churchman understood him as teaching that the receiving of Sacraments is profitable even though there be in TRACTARIANISM TESTED, 437 tlie recipient no faith at all. In so far, liowever, as the Low-Churchman was a Calvinist, his system was really in opposition to the Tractarian's : in his eagerness to enforce the precept, " Be ye recon- ciled to God,"* he explained away the declaration, " God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Him- S9lf."f And as the controversy went on, we shall find the Zuinglianism of the Low-Church party asserting itself as the only alternative to accepting Tractarian doctrine. Li his sermon on Apostolical Succession he shrinks from the idea of clerical powers, and pre- fers that of clerical responsibility ; and thus, after all, never once so much as touches on the real power of the Christian ministry, in the way of showing that it is spiritual, sacramental, &c. He speaks of clerical functions as implying spiritual authority, and no more. He misunderstands the Tractarians as teaching that the authority to absolve is unconditional. J In combating the Tractarian notion that the grace of Sacraments is conveyed only through episcopal ministry, he did in effect take up that very position, the unsound- ness of which he had proved. The true answer to it is that, although we are tied to ordinances, the Lord is not tied : that He can use the ministry of persons whom He has never commissioned : that He can give regeneration through lay-baptism, and His Body and Blood by the hands of a mere Zuinglian preacher. It is true, Mr. Stowell con- demns those who deny Baptism to be a means of grace, § and speaks of it himself as the consum- * 2 Cor. V. 20. t lb. 19. J Jb. p. 156. § lb. ii. p. 53. 438 REV. HUGH STOWELL's mation of our new birth. But lie empliatically denies that the ordinance itself necessarily con- tains and conveys the grace which it signifies ; and infers from the text, 1 Peter, iii. 21, that "the efficacy of the ordinance is there made to turn upon the truth and ' sincerity of the belief avouched, rather than on the due administration of the visible rite." We should have thought that the words, " Baptism doth .... save us " con- clusive as to the efficacy of the ordinance in itself, and the clauses, " not the putting away of the filth of the flesh," &c., as indicating the necessity of seeking God with a good conscience, for those who would receive and enjoy the salvation which Eaptism brings' them objectively. But not so Mr. Stowell : in the same sermon he writes thus : " If these examples — and others might be added [ivhat others ?\ — prove no more, they at least prove that Baptism was not the exclusive (ought we not rather to say, was not the ordinary ?) instrument of spiritual life ! "* and soon goes on to enunciate the tenet that the inward and spiritual grace (!) of cir- cumcision was the same as that of Baptism, and that regeneration is not peculiar to our own dis- pensation. Indeed, he actuall}^ calls circumcision " the Jewish sacrament of regeneration ! "f On the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, he quotes, for disparagement, passages from Dr. Pusey's letter which we should have thought remarkably accurate : " We believe the doctrine of our Church to be that in the Communion there is a true, real, actual though spiritual communi- * lb. p. 66. t Tb. p. 89. TKACTARIANISM TESTED. 439 cation of tlie' Body and Blood of 'Christ to tlie believer through the holy elements : " " and of this gift," Mr. Stowell continues, " though received only by the believing, we are afterwards assured that, ' It is there independently of our faith.' " " Eoirie, in this respect, had the truth, though mingled with error, and clouded and injured by it : the Zuingli-Calvinist school have forfeited it. In a word, our Church holds with Rome the reality of the communication of the Body and Blood of Christ through the holy Eucharist, but denies her carnal way of explaining it."* And he disparaged not only the Tractarians' own avowed tenets, but . even their accounts of primitive Christian doctrine, which everybody who has the slightest information on the subject knows to be strictly accurate. . He says, indeed, " A spiritual presence — a special spiritual presence — Scripture teaches, and we devoutly hold."f But " the mode of expression employed by Christ " in the Words of Institution " was," according to him, " no more than a striking way of representing the sign as the thing signified."J In criticisino; the Tractarian recommendations of fasting and the use of the sign of the Cross, he does really no more than urge his own opinion, or (may be) his own ignorance. He does not see that Tractarian language as to fasting may be understood (and, we think, was meant to be un- derstood) in what he himself would admit was a truly Evangelical sense. And the stanzas on the * Ih. pp. 153, 154. t lb. p. 162. \ lb. p. 159. 440 LOW-CHURCH ATTACKS uses of tlie sign of tlie Cross, of whicli lie says, " Such language would be simply absurd, were it not ill reality as miscliievous as it is extravagant,"* are no more than those which we quoted above. If we except Archdeacon Garbett's Bampton Lectures, and the Eev. W. Goode's treatise on The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice^ these sermons are the only work of any length, so far as we have been able to learn, in which the Tracts for the Times were attacked by Low-Churchmen ; for we do not count single sermons and pamphlets in this connection. But Number 90 was the last of the Tracts, and nothing new^ remained to be said in the way of controverting them. In general, the antaojonism of Low-Churclimen showed itself in charges whicli made up for their vagueness in their vehemence. Hugh Stowell spoke of Trac- tarianism as a " conspiracy,"f and of the Trac- tarians as those who had " combined to betray the truth for wdiich our Eeformers bled.":|; Edward Bickersteth attacked their " undue deference to human authority, especially that of the Fathers," and their " overvaluing the Christian ministry and Sacraments ;" but gave no hint as to the degree of deference which was undue, or the degree in which the ministry and Sacraments were overvalued. <§ The Editor of the Christian Observer wrote thus at the end of 1848: "There is hardly a single in- dividual in the whole party, from the highest to the lowest, that has the slightest claim to the character of a well-read theologian ; and the "'reat * lb. p. 241. See alove, p. 425. t lb. p. 289. J lb. p. 291. § Life, vol. ii. p. 80. ON TRACTARIANISM. 44 1 majority are young men of the most superficial attainments."* When we find this statement made by the Editor of the chief Low-Church literary oro'an, we are not altoo^ether surprised at what the Eev. Henry Alford is recorded to have said : " As to all the opponents of the ' Tracts ' which I have seen, their spirit is so un-Christian, their ignorance so truly barbarous, and their theological systems so discontinuous and inconsistent with themselves, that I have never been able to read many pages of their writings without indigna- tion."f CHAPTER XXXI. Polemical Period, continued, " Church Pastoral Aid Society." Colonial Church Society. Memorials about S.P.C.K. publications. Prayer for departei ones : Carisbrooke tombstone case. The Parker Society. We have abstained as yet from noticing other events which took place within the few years following the commencement of the Tracts for the Times, in order that the reader's attention might be confined for the time to the early history of that movement which the Tracts were the means of starting. We now, however, recur to the year 1835. In that year was formed the " Church Pastoral Aid Society " for providing additional clergy and lay assistants in parislies where such additional * Christian Observer for 1843, Preface. t Life, p. 133. 442 " CHURCH PASTOEAL AID SOCIETY." labourers were needed. In the " Synopsis " of the Society it was stated that when aid had been sought and granted, the parochial Minister must say how it was to be employed; that he must nominate the persons to be employed, engage them, superintend them, and control them entirely. All that the Societ}^ proposed doing was to provide for their remuneration, and, while so doing, ask for satisfactory proof of their qualifications. The Society also proposed to assist in providing Churcli- accommodation in destitute ■ parishes, " for the administration of the Word of God," no mention being made of sacraments. It is worth noticing, too, that in the questions proposed to an applicant notliim? was said about the ministration of Sacra- ments as distinct from other functions. Questions were asked as to the number of services, sermons, cottage-lectures, and Bible classes, but not as to the number of Eucharists. The Society, in fact, was a Low-Churcli Society rather than a Church Society properly so called : and in time it gave occasion for the nickname " Party Pastoral Dic- tation Society."* In the same year certain clergymen, members of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, recommended that Society to republish Fox's Acts and Monuments, and turn their attention to tracts against Popery. The memorial embodying these recommendations M^as laid before the Board at the General Meeting in November, and referred to the Tract Committee for consideration ; but the * Christian Observer for 1845, pp. 734-5. MEMORIAL TO THE S.P.C.K. 443 Tract Committee did not deem it expedient that Fox's Acts and Monuments should be repubhshed by the Society. Hereupon live Clergymen, bene- ficed in Essex, memoralised the general meeting of the Society, disputing the decisions of the Tract Committee as' calculated to hinder the Divine blessing from resting on the Society's exertions, and charging many of the Society's Tracts with " doctrinal deficiencies." Their memorial was laid before the general meeting, and referred to the Standinsf Committee, but that committee deemed the objections raised against the Society's tracts unreasonable. Then came a second memorial, in which the signators made good their charges to a certain extent ; as where a person is recommended to class, in prayer, his own true repentance along with liis blessed Saviour's merits as doing away with his own manifold folhes ; where the author of the Whole Duty of Man spoke of God's laws as enjoining " nothing but what care and attention will make easy ; " and wdiere Bishop Watson, of LlandafF, spoke of Christians as certain to procure the Divine favour if they would " endeavour to deserve it. " In the first of these passages, how- ever, the memoralists were, as seems to us, only making the writer whom they controverted an offender for a word ; and they showed, moreover, tlie deficiency of their own religious system by not mentioning Sacraments at all, save when quoting that article which defines the visible Church of Christ to be " a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacrament be duly ministered according to Christ's 444 PRAYER FOR THE ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same." In the year 1838 a case was decided in the Court of Arches which had some bearing upon Low-Church tenets, though Low-Churchmen gener- ally were content to ignore it. Following the traditions of heathenism as perpetuated by the Protestant Eeformers, Low-Church divines had taught, as a thing admitting no question, that at death the soul passes either into heaven, or into the lake of fire (commonly called " hell "). High- Churchmen were at one with them in teaching that (in the time at least which has elapsed since Our Lord's ascension into heaven) every person's probation comes to an end at death : so that if a person's heart has not in some true sense or other been turned to God while in this present mortal state, there is no possibility of his being converted afterwards. But the Tractarian divines had taught the existence of an intermediate state, in which, when a person has died in a state of salvation, his spirit may be benefitted in some way or other through the prayers of his brethren, the members of the Church still militant upon earth. This, of course, was contrary to popular Low- Cliurch notions ; and Low-Church people deemed it a sufficient disproof to deny that prayer could be of any efficacy at all for any departed person whatsoever. They thus took up, in regard of the faithful dead, the same ground which is taken up by infidels, in opposing the practice of praying for rain or for fair weather. The infidel says " It is absurd to think that vour God should alter His FAITHFUL DEPARTED. 445 arrangements of weather : the sun will shine and the rain will fall just the same, irrespectively of any prayers which you may offer for a change." The Low-Churchman said, " It is absurd to think that God should alter His deaUng with the faithful departed, or with any one of them : they will all have peaceful rest now and joyful resurrection hereafter, irrespectively of any prayers which you may offer on behalf of them." Neither party considered that the power of the Father's working without is proportioned to the prompting of the Holy Ghost within: as it is said, "Unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." None considered the force of that precept in Isaiah, " Concerning My sons and concerning the work of My hands command ye Me."* They ignored, too, in this as in so many other matters, the teaching of their own Prayer- book. The Church of England taught, and still teaches, her children to pray over the grave of every brother or sister departed in her communion, " that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of God's Holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in " His " eternal and everlasting glory. " And in {\\q Prayer of self-oblation, after Communioji, she puts these words into the mouth of the celebrant — " most humbly beseeching Thee to grant that by the merits .and death of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, and through faith in His Blood, we and all Thy whole Church * Isaiah xlv. 11. We punctuate according to the Massoretic accen- tuation, from which the Authorised Version here needlessly departs. 446 CARISBROOKE CASE. may obtain remission of onr sins, and all other benefits of His passion." With reference to the obvious meaning of which we may cite an anecdote of the late Mr. Henry Drummond. At a large party of friends assembled round that gentleman's dinner- table, he called out to Mr. McNeile, afterwards the " great and good," " I say, McNeile, do you pray for the faithful departed ? " " 0 dear no! " said Mr. McNeile. Some time later he called out again, "I say McNeile, do joii pray for the whole Catholic Church?" "0 yes!" was the reply. And later still, " I say, McNeile, are not the faithful departed a part of the Catholic Church ? " Now it so happened that in Carisbrooke church- yard, in the Isle of Wight, a tombstone had been erected by a Eomanist named Mary Woolfrey, to the memory of Joseph Woolfrey, departed ; whether her husband or not we do not know ; and tlie inscription on the tombstone contained these words, " Pray for the soul of J. Woolfrey." " It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead. 2 Mac. xii. 46." The vicar of the parish, the Eev. John Breeks, took proceedings against Mary Wool- frey for this, on the ground that the inscription (which had been put on the stone without his previous permission) implied doctrine contrary to what was allowed in the Church of England. The case was taken, by letters of request, from the diocesan court of Winchester to the court of Arches ; and Sir Herbert Jenner decided, on the 12th of December, 1838, that the inscription was not illegal, inasmuch as by no canon or authority of the Church in these realms had the practice of 'PARKER SOCIETY. 447 praying for the dead been expressly prohibited. The suit was therefore dismissed, with costs.* Towards the dose of the year 1840 was formed the Parker Society. Its objects were, first, the reprinting, without abridgment, alteration, or omission, of such of the most approved works of the early writers of the Eeformed English Church, as had been published in the period between tlie accession of King Edward VI. and the death of Queen Elizabeth ; secondly, the printing of such remains of other writers of the sixteenth century as might appear desirable (including, under both classes, some of the early English translations of the foreign reformers) ; and thirdly, the printing of some MSS. of the same authors, hitherto un- published. Thus the Society woukl seem to have been projected by way of opposition to the publish- ing of select works of the Fathers which had already begun at Oxford. The principal share in its formation must be ascribed to a Mr. George Stokes. This gentleman had laboured for many years previously in making known the works of the English Protestant Eeforiiiers through the agency of the Pieligious Tract Society ; and it was with his concurrence that certain passages from the Eeformers' writings were suppressed whicli certain members of the Eeligious Tract Society did not like — to wit, the protestations against the errors of the Anabaptists. Lord Ashley, after- wards Earl of Shaftesbury, was elected President of the Parker Society. The council included the Eev. C. Benson, Master of the Temple, the Eev. Edwaid * Ciirteis's Reports of Cases, part 4, p. 880. 448 PARKER SOCIETY. Bickerstetb, the Rev. W. H. Cox, Vice-Principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, the Rev. J. W. Cunning- ham, the Rev. Thomas Dale, Canon of St. Paul's, the Rev. Dr. Dealtry, Chancellor of the diocese of Winchester, the Rev. Thomas Hartwell Home, Canon of St. Paul's, the Rev. Dr. Mortimer, Head Master of the City of London School, the Hon. and Rev. Baptist W. Noel, who bad not then seceded from the Church of England, the Rev. James Scholefield, Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge, and the Rev. Daniel Wilson, Vicar of Islington. At tlie meeting held in 1843 seven thousand subscribers were announced. It was anticipated that the whole of the works which the Society proposed to publish would be in their subscribers' hands in about sixteen years from the commencement. The subscription was fixed at a sovereign per annum : and each subscriber was to receive a copy of every work published by the Society within the year which his subscription was to cover. Among the authors, some or all of whose works were offered to the public in pur- suance of the Society's scheme were, Archbishops Cranmer, Sandys, Parker, Grindal, Whitgift ; Bishops Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, Coverdale, Pilkington, Bale, Jewel ; Archdeacon Philpot ; Roger Hutchinson, Thomas Becon, Fulke, Tyndale, Calfhill, Bradford. The student could also read, in two of the Society's volumes, a large selection of correspondence which passed between English and foreign Protestants of the Reformation time. It is to be remarked that although it would be manifestly unfair to fix upon the Low-Church PARKER SOCIETY. 449 party in general the stigma of holding every heresy to which any authors on the Parker Society's list might have stood committed, yet where one heresy and another is taught in the plainest terms by one of these writers after another, a party of men who can speak of such writers in terms of general praise, unqualified by any repudiation of tlie heresies in question, and who can unite in re- publishing their works for the sake of spreading their theology, must be deemed to share, in general, in the heresies so put forth.* And thus the council of the Parker Society must needs be understood to have committed themselves to a general approval of the tenets maintained by those Eeformation divines whose works the Society undertook to republish. And, to cite one or two instances : Of Bishop Hooper the person employed by the Society to edit his works was an admirer. He speaks of Hooper as one of the Church's " most * " On every point connected with the doctrine and discipline of the Church the opinions of such men must be of incalculable interest. They were her defenders against external and internal assailants; they were the expounders of the truths which they had contributed to embody." This sentence is extracted from the Parker Society's eighth Annual Report, bound up with the first and second parts of Bullinger's Decades. The reader who compares the teaching of the Reformation divines (whereof a fair idea has been given in the extracts cited from them in former chapters of the present work) with that of the Book of Common Prayer — that book in the prepara- tion of which, in its original form, only two Reformation divines, Cranmer and Ridley, had a share— that book which the Reformation divines would fain have supplanted altogether by one from which all distinctively Catholic doctrines should have been purged out, will be able to judge not only how far the Parker Society were committed to the opinions of tlie Reformers, but also how far the Society's language found in the above extract was deserved. 30 450 TARKER SOCIETY. zealous and useful ministers." And the fact that this account of him was given by one of the Society's trusted editors affords a particular illustration of the general accord, in regard of opinions, between the Society and the Reformation divines. It affords, too, an illustration of the way in which party spirit blinds the eyes of those who indulge it, so that they fail to discern what is palpable to everybody else. The opinion of com- petent judges will surely be that a man whose conscience objected to the wearing of vestments required both by the Church and by the realm was not fit to occupy in either the position of a ruler. For on the one hand, if to Hooper's mind the question was merely one of putting on vest- ments of certain shapes and colours, his conduct evinced a remarkable narrowness of intellect, while, on the other hand, if the line taken by him was the outcome of a religion alien from that of the Church of England, and in following of which he would be led to aim at the entire overthrow of the Anglican Church as then subsisting, and the sub- stitution, on its ruins, of a new organisation whose religion was to be Zuinglian, he was simply a traitor to the Church, and feeling himself to be such ; what our own view of the case is, we have set forth in an earlier chapter. That the argu- ments urged by Cranmer, and others, against Hooper's scruples had even succeeded in remov- ing those scruples, Hooper's letter to Cranmer, dated February 15th, 1551,* does not to our * Printed in the Parker Society's edition'of Hooper's later writings, p. XV. PAKKER SOCIETY. 451 thinking imply by any means. The tenor of that letter is rather this : that Hooper was afraid of being thought disobedient to the Council, and therefore was content to put his scruples in his pocket, and be guided in his practice by the opinions of others. It is moreover instructive to read, in reference to the personal character and proceedings of some of the original authors, such passages as the following, in reference to Bishop Bale's havinf]^ renounced monastic vows along with monastic errors:— "It is scarcely consistent for Protestants to look otherwise than with gratitude on those who broke the bands of a tyranny so nefarious, and vindicated the Christian liberty of themselves and their brethren,"* Liberty, that is, to violate solemn vows which had been made in good faith. " Uncompromising " is the strongest term which the Parker Society's Editor had for Bale's controversial language, a few specimens of which will be found above. * Bale's Select Works, p. viii. While however we quote the passage as showing the Editor's mind, yet we must repeat that we are un- aware of the evidence that Bale had ever taken a monk's vows. 30—2 JERUSALEM BISHOPRIC. CHAPTEE XXXII. Polemical Period, contiDued. The Primates and other Bishops join Low-Cliurch Missionary Societies. Anglican bishopric at Jerusalem. Dr. Alexander. Election of Poetry Professor at Oxford. Dr. Gilbert, Bishop of Chichester. " Holy Cross " Church, Leeds. " Society for maintenance of Scriptural Principles." Dr. Ollivant^ Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Suspension of Dr. Pusey. In 1841 the joy of Low-Churchmen was great ; joy that both the English Metropolitans (Dr. Howley of Canterbury and Dr. Harcourt of York) and all those Bishops who were not ah'cady members of the " Church Missionary Society " became members both of it and of the London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews. And the mention of this last Society naturally introduces the mention of an event in which it had a special interest, and which took place in this .same year. We mean the establishment of an Anglican Bishopric at Jerusalem. The objects of this extraordinary measure appear to have been various. The promoters of the Mission to the Jews in Palestine desired that worldly protection for their converts which, it was expected, the converts would have if presided over by a clergyman in the worldly status of an AngHcan prelate. King Frederick William IV. of Prussia desired, it is believed, a valid episcopate for the Protestant establishment in his dominions, and towards such an episcopate his share in found- JERUSALEM BISBIOPKIC. 453 ing the Jerusalem bishopric might prove a step : for tlie bishop would ordain not only EngHshmen on their signing the XXXIX Articles, but also Ger- man Lutherans on their siofninjr both the Anglican Articles and the Auf^sburf? Confession. And some earnest Churchmen may have believed that the establishment of such a functionary might conduce to the greater success of their efforts for winning Jews over to Christianity. The scheme was strongly disapproved of by almost all High-Churchmen : Dr. Hook being, we believe, the only High-Churchman of note who advocated it. Those who opposed it did so on the ground that for a bishop to fulfil episcopal func- tions within the diocese of another is schismatical. It might, however, have occurred to them that, considering the relations in which the Church of England stood with respect to the Orthodox Churches of the East, the mere mission of a bishop to Jerusalem did at the worst leave things as they were, and might be the means of establishing such new relations as would lead to that healing of divisions, and that attainment of full intercommu- nion among Christians, which all intelligent Chris- tians who enter into their Lord's most earnest longing cannot but desire. Much, however, would depend upon the person who was selected for the post. It had been arranged that the Governments of England and Prussia should select alternately : and that whoever might be chosen, and who might accept the appointment, should be consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Low-Church party could not be expected to 454 BP. ALEXANDER. - view the matter as their High-Clmrcli brethren did. They did not care overmuch for the Canons of Nica^a, nor did they respect the Eastern Churches much more than the Church of Eome. And there was such an acknowledgment of foreign Protestant- ism involved in the scheme, as could not but com- mend itself to Low- Church likini^s. As Mr. Bicker- steth's biographer remarks, " the co-operation of Great Britain and Prussia, the two great Protestant kingdoms, and the brotherhood shown to the Lutheran Cliurch, the first-born of the Pieforma- tion, were highly grateful to his truly catholic spirit, which longed for closer union among all who maintained the purity and truth of the Gospel."* Moreover, as the new bishop would have to preside over Anglican congregations in Palestine, and as many of those congregations had been formed under a distinctively Low-Church Society — the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews — there would be a manifest congruity in choosing the first bishop from Low-Church ranks at least, and, if possible, on the recommendation of the said Society. The British Government selected the Eev. Michael Solomon Alexander, a converted Jew, who had undergone persecution for the sake of Christ. He had been born in Schoenlanke, in Prussian Poland, in 1799. Expecting an appointment in England as a sliochet {i.e., slaughterer of meat) and a teacher of the Talmud, he having already been employed in teaching the Talmud and the German language to his Jewish brethren in Germany, he * Birks's Memoir of the liev. E. Bickersfeth, vol. ii. p. 167. HIS CONSECRATION. 455 came to England at the age of twenty. Disap- pointed of the expected situation, he had entered the private family of a Jew as tutor; and had afterwards filled the office of Eabbi at Xorwich and Plymouth successively. At tlie latter place he was baptized ; and having settled at Dublin, and become known to the Archbishop of that See (Dr. William Magee), he was ordained by the Archbishop to the Diaconate on Trinity Sunday, 1827. He was soon afterwards advanced to the priesthood by the Bishop of Kildare (the Hon. Charles Lindsay), with the concurrence of the Archbishop ; and went, at the end of tlie year, to Dantzic, as a missionary of the liOndon Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews ; and re- turned, in 1830, to England, where he laboured for the next eleven 3^ears in the same capacity. Although however Mr. Alexander appears to have been a pious man in his way, yet he knew nothing at all of scientific Christian theology. His consecration took place in the Chapel of Lambeth Palace, on Sunday, November 7th, 1841. The Archbishop of Canterbury was assisted by the Bishops of London (Dr. Blomfield), Eochester (Dr. Murray), and New Zealand (Dr. Selwyn). The Sermon was preached by the Bishop of New Zealand, whose theology was never very definite ; and the enthusiasm, almost amounting to insanity, with which some Low-Church people regarded the event may be gathered from a passage in the Life of Mr. Bickersteth, an extract from a letter from Lord Ashley (afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury) to Mr. Bickersteth : — " Charlotte Elizabeth said to 456 POETRY PROFESSORSHIP. me on Monday : ' Yesterday the fulness of the Gentiles was completed.' Even if not so, the remark must make one reflect."* It might have been thought that a capability for writing poetry was a necessary qualification for a professorship of that art ; and, contrariwise, that Tractarian views were not a disqualification. Low-Churchmen however thought otherwise : when the Eev. Isaac Williams was a candidate for the Professorship of Poetry in the University of Oxford, in the year 1842, the Ven. James Garbett, Archdeacon of Chichester, was put up in opposition to him ; the ground of the opposition being that Mr. Williams was known to be the author of llie Cathedral. Mr. Garbett was returned by an overwhelming majority. His Bampton Lectures, published in the same year, were directed against Tractarianism. He held the Professorship till 1852. Dr. Alexander's was not the only Low-Church prom-t