L I B R A. K Y OK TItE I Theological Seminary,! PRINCETON, N J. (^Fbllb .H37 1855 " j Hare, Julius Charles, 1795- i ,S'l 185 5. ! Miscellaneous pamphlets on . . some of the leadina Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/miscellaneouspamOOhare OF JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A. ARCHDEACON OF LEWES ; RECTOR OF HERSTMONCEUS ; CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN ; AND FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAJfBRIDGE. UNIFORMLY PRINTED AND ROUND IN CLOTH. I. CHARGES TO THE CLERGY of the ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, Delivered at the Ordinary Visitations from the year 1840 to 1854, with Notes on the Principal Events affecting the Church during that period. Collected and completed. With an Introduction explanatory of his position in the Church with reference to the parties that divide it. In Three Vols. 8vo. cloth. As only a very small Edilion has been made, an early application is requested. CHARGES TO THE CLERGY of the ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, Delivered at the Ordinary Visitation.s in the years 1843 — 1845, 184C. Never before Published. With an Introduction. 8vo. cloth. " These three Charyes are included in the Collected Edition." THE WORKS OF JULIUS CHARLES HARE, B.D. III. MISCELLANEOUS PAMPHLETS On some of tlie Leading Questions agitated in the Church during the last Ten Years. 8vo. cloth, 12s. As only a very small Edition of the Collected Pamphlets has been made up, an early application is requested. IV. A Second Edition of THE VICTORY OF FAITH. 8vo. cloth, 5s. V. A Second Edition of THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER. With Notes. 8vo. cloth, 12s. TI. A Second Edition of VINDICATION OF LUTHER FROM HIS ENGLISH ASSAILANTS. Svo. cloth, 7s. THE CONTEST WITH ROME. A Charge to the Clergt of the Archdeaconry of Lewe.s, delivered at the Ordinary Visitation in 1831. With Notes especially in answer to Dr. Newman's recent Lectures. Svo. cloth, 10s. 6tZ. MISCELLANEOUS PAMPHLETS. I'BtNTED BY B. CLAY, LONDON, MACMILLAN AND CO. CAMBRIDGE. iLoildon: HELL AND DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET. Sllblin: W. ROBERTSON. ffiBfnllurgJ: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. (ffilaSSOto: JAMES MACLEHOSE. ffilfOrt: J. H. & JAS. PARKER. MISCELLANEOUS PAMPHLETS OJf SOME OI' THE LEADING QUESTIONS AGITATED IN THE CHURCH DURING THE LAST TEN YEARS. JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M A. RECTOR OP HERSTMONCEUX ; ARCHDEACON OF LEWES; CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN. M ACM ILL AN AND CO. 1855. THE UNITY OV THE CHURCH: A SER^^rON, AVITH INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON UNIFOR^riTY. 1845. CONTENTS. I. The Unity or the Church : a Sermon, with Introductory Remarks on Uniformity. 1845. II. Letter to the Dean of Chichester, on tlie Appointment of Dr. Hampden to the See of Hereford : Second Edition, with a Post- script, on Lord John Russell's Letter to the Clergy of Bedford, and in reply to Mr. Trower's Plain Kemarks. 1848. III. Thou sualt not bear False Witness auainst my Neighbour: a Letter to the Editor of the English Review : with a Letter from Professor Maurice to the Author. 1849. IV. Letter to the Hon. R. Cavendish, on the recent Judgment of the Court of Appeal, as affecting the Doctrine of the Church : Second Edition, with a Postscript. 1850. V. A Few Words on the Rejection of the Ei-iscopal Bill to Amend the Ecclesiastical Court of Appeal. 1850. VI. The Unitj of Mankind in God : a Sermon preached on Occasion of the Jubilee of the Church MLssionary Society. 1848. vn. Education the Necessity of Mankind : a Sermon preached at the Laying of a Foundation Stone for a School for the Middle Classes. 1851. PREFACE. This Sermon, with the Dedication which precedes it, has been in print this year and a half, as part of a vokime, the pubhcation of which has been delayed by a variety of causes. Its appearance by itself at present is occasioned by the advice of some friends, for whose wisdom I am bound to feel the highest reverence, and who have thought it might be of service in helping to allay the calamitous dissensions in our Church. The rock on which we are splitting now, as we have been again and again, ever since our Church asserted her national independence at the Reformation, is the notion that the only way of preserving the Unity of the Church is by enforcing a rigid Uniformity. This notion has been maintained with a singular consistency and pertinacity by the chief part of the persons who have been called to ex- ercise authority in our Church during the last three cen- turies ; and the recent agitation has shewn how widely it is spread at this day. Were a judgement formed from the opinions which have found vent on this occasion, on what- soever side, and from whatsoever position, at least among the clergy, it would seem to be held by all as an uncontro- verted and incontrovertible truth, a truth so plain and self-evident as to need no argument for its demonstration ; which in one point of view is lucky for it, as assuredly it is indemonstrable. Yet, so far is it from being a universal b IV PREFACE. truth, or even an opinion to which man is universally led by the tendencies of his nature, that the English branch of the Church since the Reformation is the one sole portion of the whole Church, which has brought this notion promi- nently forward as the regulative principle of her policy. The wiser principle of the universal Church, the principle which she has recognized speculatively, and which she has in great measure desired to realize practically, is that ex- prest in the celebrated threefold maxim, In necessariis unitas, in dubiis Ubertas, in omiiihus caritas : and this is in exact accordance with the spirit of the Apostolic Epistles, to which our rigid enforcement of uniformity is utterly re- pugnant. Even the Church of Rome, in those ages when she was most imperiously wielding her usurpt dominion over Western Christendom, being ever largely endowed with the wisdom of the serpent, — a wisdom which indeed seems almost natural to the Italian intellect, — acted far more judiciously than we have done in this respect. Though she oppressively curtailed the lihertas, which ought to have been allowed in doubtful things, she was too sa- gacious not to discern that the multitudinous combinations of the elements of human nature are not, all and each, to be shaped in a single mould, but require a multiplicity of institutions, and divers modes of training, and divers spheres to act in, if the powers dormant in them are to be drawn forth for their own good and that of the community. And with reference to our immediate subject, we are told in the Preface to our Common Prayer, that " heretofore there hath been great diversity in saying and singing in Churches within this realm ; some following Salisbury Use, some Hereford Use, and some the Use of Bangor, some of York, some of Lincoln.'" PREFACE. V It would seem owing- to that want of any distinctive re- ligious principle, and that spirit of compromise, which cha- racterize our Reformation, that, inasmuch as there was no one mighty inward power, which might have formed a living source of unity, our ecclesiastical rulers fancied them- selves compelled to impose some uniting bond from with- out. The actuating idea of our Reformation, the idea which exercised the chief influence in determining the course of events, being the nationality of our Church, and its consequent independence of all forein dominion, far more stress was laid in England, than in the other countries which vindicated their Christian liberty at the Reformation, on the union between the Church and the State. Thus the State came to act a principal part in regulating the concerns of the Church ; and the ordinary mode in which the State acts is by Law. But Law is essentially rigid and compulsory ; wherefore its appropriate office is vetative and prohibitive. This very rigidity unfits it for such delicate tasks as that of propagating and nurturing and shaping anything so tender and variable and multiform as life, above all, religious life. It should be content with its twofold work, that of repressing evil, and thereby fencing in and protecting the ground on which good is to grow. Hence, as Law makes no distinctions, and as the Liturgy was to be imposed by Law, it could not but happen, even without any excessive arbitrariness on the part of the legis- latoi-s, that the Act by which the Liturgy was imposed became an Act of Uniformity. Moreover the Government, sharing in the common proneness of mankind to invert the right order of things, and to fancy that the heart and the will are to be moulded and controlled by outward force, deemed that, if it could ensure the submission of its b 2 vi PHEFACE. subjects to one prescribed form of worship, it should there- by secure their obedience and allegiance. At all events the notion of the indis2)ensableness of Uniformity became more and more finnly establisht, until in the succeeding century it produced the most disastrous results : and yet even these did not avail to root it out of our Church, That this notion is utterly gi'oundless and delusive, I have endeavoured to shew in the Dedication prefixt to the following Sermon, not of course in the form of a syste- matic treatise, but following the line pointed out by the passage cited from the Charge of my most dear and ho- noured brother Archdeacon. The arguments brought for- ward might indeed be greatly strengthened ; and with many they might carry more weight, if they were propt ^dth a greater number of authorities : but when my cause is supported by the whole oi-der of Nature, by the whole course of History, by Bacon, and by St Paul, I will not fear to incur the charge of presumption, though a thousand or ten thousand second and third-rate men should be summoned into court against me. But though the question was discust without reference to the present disputes, it was not without a direct prac- tical object. For in the discharge of my official duties I had several times been distrest by symi>toms of a restless craving after uniformity in petty things ; and I was afraid that this craving might lead to idle and vexatious bicker- ings. It was chiefly however from among the inferior Clergy that I apprehended such evils. I could not anti- cipate, more especially after the sad consequences which had ensued from a very cautious and temperate attempt to recommend ritual uniformity, that any person invested with authority in our Church, would risk her peace by PREFACE. vii trying peremptorily to enforce what in itself is worthless, and cannot be enforced without vehement opposition. With my strong convictions on the subject, it is not to be won- dered at that the very first announcement of this effort filled me with dread, and that I exclaimed that, if it were persisted in, it would probably drive three fourths of the Diocese into the arms of Dissent : and somewhat similar views, I found, were entertained by all the most judicious pei'sons with whom I had the opportunity of conversing. Alas ! our forebodings have been too rapidly and dismally justified. An angry, jealous spirit has been called up, which it will not be easy to lay ; and among the miserable effects of this ill-fated measure, one is, that our rites and ceremonies are become a matter for ceaseless loquacious jangling with those who pour out their spleen and igno- rance and impertinence into the sink of the daily press. They are the subject of idle disputatious talk at every breakfast-table, and in every pothouse ; dissenters laugh in scornful triumph ; and what can the dutiful son of the Church of England do, but mourn ? This disastrous controversy is, for the moment at least, one of the worst checks that has befallen the Church in our times ; and it threatens to arrest the progress of the im- provements which were gradually and not slowly spreading. A cry, almost a yell, has been set up by the lovers of anile torpour, and by those who are fond of letting the dust and cobwebs, which they would sweep out of their parlours, accumulate in their pews, to the efi*ect that every change which has been made in the last ten or twenty years, must immediately be reverst, and that we must return to the decent quiet worship of the good old times. With this clamour, I trust, few will comply, none without strong Vlll I'HEFACK. justifying cause. For let us not be deluded by an empty rigmarole phrase : let us say plainly, The old times referred to, generally speaking, with regard to the mode of carrying on the vs orship in our churches, were not good, but bad. Laxity, carelessness, irregularity were lamentably prevalent in the latter half of the last and the early part of this century : and even where things were in a better case, the other offices of the Church were often scarcely esteemed as more than subordinate preludes to the sermon. I will not dwell here on this matter ; but I will add, on the strength of my own observation, confirmed by the evidence of every person with \\ hom I have spoken on the subject, that great improvements, improvements acknow- ledged to be such by all the respectable members of the congregation, have been effected in this respect in a number of parishes within the last ten or twenty years. In proof of this let me cite the following statement from the Charge which the excellent Bishop of Salisbury delivered at his Visitation in 1842, Few things that I have read of late years, bearing on the condition of our Church, have seemed to me so cheering. " In this Diocese there are now two ser- vices on the Sunday in forty-two parishes, in which there was only single duty at my last Visitation ; in sixty-five parishes, in which there was only one sermon, there are now every Sunday either two sermons, or, — what in country parishes is perhaps better, — instruction is given at one of the ser- vices catechetically, or by a lecture upon some portion of Scripture ; the sacrament of Bajitism is administered pub- licly during divine service, either always, or on certain definite occasions, in eighty-nine parishes, in which this used not to be the case ; in many parishes the Holy Com- munion is celebrated much more frequently than formerly, I'KEFACE. ix the administration of it occurring six, eight, or ten times a-year, or in many of the larger parishes, and in some even of the smaller villages, once in every month ; there is an increasing sense of the propriety of distinguishing by their proper services at least the more important seasons of pe- culiar solemnity in the Church, — Ascension Day and Ash- Wednesday I may name as instances of days till of late, strange to say, almost universally neglected, and now, I trust, in the way of being before long universally observed ; while in no inconsiderable number of parishes all the days specially appointed by the Church to be kept holy are markt by their appropriate services, and in some the full order of the Church in the daily service is maintained. I find too that in many quarters increasing efforts are being made to effect that most important as well as difficult ob- ject, the retaining the younger members of our flocks under the influence of religious instruction beyond that age, unhappily almost always a very tender age, at which they quit the daily school." The Bishop adds, " In some of the matters to which I have referred, I have been rather stating facts than giving advice ; as I much prefer that changes, which must be deemed more or less experimental, should originate from the free will of those who are con- vinced of their advantage, rather than from any suggestions given by myself. Nor indeed am I prepared in my own judgement to lay down any rule in some of these points as of universal application." And he fully acknowledges that even these " are but the forms of godliness," and that, without the spirit ^ holiness, they may be merely " the savour of death unto death." Still we may reasonably cherish a hope that, when such improvements are made, and activity of this kind is increasing, the Spirit of Grace X PREFACE. will bless the work. At all events the passage shews that, where the work of improvement is carried on in the right method, not by a summary edict, but with a considerate adaptation to the wants of each particular parish, and Avhere the alterations relate, not to frivolous externals of posture and vestment, which it is ever a stumblingblock to the pious and simplehearted to see raised into significance, but to matters of plain practical utility and expediency, such as may be recognized by the better part of the con- gregation, who always on the long run exercise the chief influence in it, a great deal may be accomplisht by quiet, unobtrusive, judicious perseverance even in the space of three years. And a like encouragement, as well as warn- ing, is held out to us by the whole history of our Church. When its rulers desire to exert their authority for the fur- therance of that which is felt to be morally and spiritually good, the hearts of men, as it were, leap up to meet them, and answer them readily and joyfully : but when the anxiety is only displayed for the upholding of outward un- meaning forms, this very anxiety gives offense, as having a savour of superstition ; and the hearts of men recoil and resist. At present a multitude of voices from all quarters are calling somewhat impatiently for a settlement of the ques- tions which are disturbing the Church. Similar demands have found utterance every now and then for some years past ; but they are now become louder and more frequent. Well, what do they mean? The unhapjiy issue of the attempts which have already been made to bring some of our minor differences to a settlement, proves that the de- manders in point of fact want to have everything settled in their own way. However much they may differ from PREFACE. XI each other, they join in this, every one desiring to have his own will, his own notions, his own fancies, set up as the law of the Church. If they can gain this one pet point, it matters not how, whether by persons possessing a rightful authority, or by persons who have none, whether by a Convocation, by a Synod of Bishops, by the Queen in Coun- cil, by an Ecclesiastical Commission, by an Act of Par- liament, or by the suffrages of the people. Even the Pope would be tolerated, if he would consent to echo the wishes of the Pope within each man's breast. But let us ask a further question. To what end are these differences to be settled ? In order that we may be at peace. Doubtless many a self-constituted legislator, when the winds are rushing along in their fury, or the waves are roaring and dashing beneath the violence of the storm, would gladly call in some charmer to lull them to rest. Many have thought that the world would be much happier and better, if the winds and waves could be husht down to the rustle and ripple produced by a lady's fan. And what would be the result ? That which is the only possible result of uni- formity, — stagnation. The storms of the winds and waters are necessary to the pui-iflcatory processes of the universe. The father of poetry has taught us, that, even though all the winds were tied up in a bag, and entrusted to the keeping of the wisest and craftiest of men, who strains all his faculties in steering the vessel with unflagging vigilance day and night, sleep will some time or other come over him by the order of nature ; and then his mischievous comrades let out the winds, which hurl the vessel away from its destined haven. It is only the aid of a higher power, that will avail motos coimponere f iictus : and for this we nmst wait patiently, each doing his duty in his XIl PREFACE. appointed station. Or, to take a page out of history, more than two Imndred years ago it pleased King Charles, act- ing by the counsel of Bishop Laud, to declare his Eoyal will, that " in these both curious and unhappy differences, which have for so many hundred years in different times and places exercised the Church of Christ, all further cu- rious search be laid aside, and these disputes shut up in God's promises, as they be generally set forth to us in the Holy Scriptures." No doubt Charles had often thought, and it is not impossible may have been reminded by Laud himself, what a wise lesson Canute set to kings, when he shewed them how powerless they are to arrest the tide, even for an inch or an instant. Yet they deemed they could arrest a fiercer tide, which had been rolling, as they confess, for many centuries, under the sway of laws no less mighty and irreversible. This proclamation was issued in 1627, with what success the history of the next thirty years proves : and such will ever be the end of attempts to settle religious controversies by the interposition of authority. One mode of settlement might indeed be beneficial, if there were any way of obtaining it, and any prospect ; a settlement I mean, which, following the example of the Apostolic Council, would give an authoritative sanction to diversities. Still better would it be, though still less to be expected, if measures could be taken for expunging that hateful clause from the Act of Unifoi-mity, by which its framers, of set purpose, drove the Puritans out of the Church. Much too were it to be wisht, that certain double forms of prayer might be introduced here and there for the relief of scrupulous consciences, painfully wounded by having to read ofiices which presuppose a totally PREFACE. xiii (lifFeient slate of discipline in the Church. But of these things there is little hope. The spirit of Catholic compre- heiijsion has seldom found a home in more than a very few hearts within our Church : the majority have mostly cared for little except maintaining their own position, in whatso- ever manner, and however numerous the multitudes they might exclude from it. I do not mean, that the removal of hindrances and obstructions would of itself bring back our brethren, who have separated from us, into the pale of the Church. The awful words of the sleepwalking Queen, Whafs done cannot be tmdone, express the curse that fol- lows every sinfol act. Though we retrace our steps, we cannot regain our former position ; for the world mean- while has been rolling onward. Nor can the manifold feelings of bitterness and animosity and pride and self-will, which are generated and fostered by habitual schism, be stifled or eradicated in a moment. If our dissenting bre- thren are to be reclaimed, it must be the work of time, and can only be accomplisht by the preaching of the Gos- pel of truth and peace, and by proving that the Spirit does indeed dwell in the Church, manifesting Himself by works of holiness and love. But the taking down of the fences which liave hitherto kept them out, so far as this may be done without injury to truth and order, is a requisite preparative for this work. From the bottom of my heart however would I deprecate any attempt to put an end to our differences by establishing a stricter uniformity. To what end indeed should we do so ? Do not our churches themselves teach us a very different lesson, if we cast our eyes around us in any part of the land i What rich varieties of form, and structure, and de- coration, do we see in them ! towers and spires, pinnacles xiv PREFACE. and parapets, from the majestic, awe-inspiring minster and cathedral, down to the little homely mother of the village, which looks like a hen gathering her chickens under her wings. Yet amid this endless variety what a suhlime unity prevails ! And who would exchange this beautiful diversity, even if it were practicable, for twelve thousand Brummagem churches, that should all lift up their heads in regimental uniformity, fac-similies one of another I Thus our churches themselves admonish us, that uniformity is not necessary to unity. Nay, even in the diversity of styles which we so often perceive in the same church, we may trace a higher unity, by which successive generations have been led to join in the same holy work. In the present day many of these churches have been greatly disfigured by the corruptions and the negligence of recent ages ; and these disfigurements it behoves us to remove, not accord- ing to any one general sweeping plan, but by enquiring in each case what is requisite to fulfill the original idea. In like manner may the abuses, which have crept in through neglect, or whatsoever cause, into the celebration of divine worship, be corrected in each particular parish, mild- ly and gradually and peacefully, under the direction and guidance of the Bishop, according* as occasion may require. And if some ritual difterences still continue, I know not why, provided they are admitted to be lawful, these should excite any squabbles or animosities, any more than such ordinary facts, as that one church has a round arch, another a pointed. Here let me be permitted to quote a passage from an unfinisht manuscript sermon of my brother's, which was preacht about a dozen years ago, and which may serve to shew how quietly and inoffensively certain ritual differences PREFACE. XV were then allowed to subsist in neighbouring churches. His voice has spoken to many hearts ; and not a few will perhaps feel a pleasure in recognizing his simple colloquial style, in the following attempt to give his congregation a notion of the manner in which the various Churches in Christendom unite to make up the Church or Kingdom of Christ. " The different Churches in the different countries of the world, to compare great things with small, are like the different parishes under one Bishop. The Bishopric of Salisbury for instance, in which we are living, reaches over the two counties of Wiltshire and Berkshire. In those two counties there are a great many parishes ; and in each parish there is a separate congregation, with a place of worship of its own. Different parishes have different customs. In one parish there is an organ perhaps ; in another there is only a village choir ; in a third there is no music at all. Again, in one parish there may be two fiiU services, in a second only one full service and prayers ; in a third there may be church only once on a Sunday. It would be easy to point out other differences, were it of any use, such as slight differences of dress, one minister wearing a hood or scarf over his surplice, and another not ; slight differences of prayers, some reading, as I do, the first prayer for the King in the Communion Service, and others reading the second ; slight differences of custom, the Com- mandments being read in one parish from the Communion Table, and in another parish from the desk. These in- stances are enough to shew, that diflferences in smaller matters do exist, and are allowed to exist, in different parishes. In all these lesser points the minister of u parish is allowed to exercise his Christian liberty ; nor can his brother minister in the next parish call him to account for so xvi PREFACE. doing. Still, with all these lesser and allowable differences in the several parishes of this Bishopric, the service on a Sunday morning' or Sunday evening is on the main the same in all. Go into what Church you please, you will have the same Psalms, the same Lessons, the same Belief, the same Col- lects ; and you will hear them following one another in the same order. Thus, with all the difterences I have been speaking of, the form of ^^■orship throughout the whole Bishopric is, to all intents and purposes, the same. And notwithstanding their several ditferences, the several pa- rishes are all united under the same head, and make one Bishopric under one Bishop." Surely this is but the picture of a family : Fades non omnibus una, Nec diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum. And supposing the great Apostle of the Gentiles had come to visit these churches, and had found these discrepancies amongst them, what, may we think, would he have done ? Would he have exclaimed that such discrepancies are scan- dalous and intolerable, that they e^dnce wilfulness and laxity and an open disregard of authority ? or would he not have lookt upon them calmly and benignly, and said. Go on, dear hretliren in Christ Jesus, heirs of the glory to which He has called you ; go on, each after his own manner, using those gifts and instruments in His service, which ye have received from the Father ; go on, growing in faith, in obedience, in love toward Him and toward each other ; and may the Spirit of Grace, and Truth, and Peace sanctify you, and all your acts and services, wholly against His coming. The question of authority has indeed been brought for- ward into painful prominence, as often before on similar occasions : yet I know not what can well be more unwise. Authority ought to act, not talk ; to be felt rather than PREFACE. xvn heard. When it begins to prate of its rights, this is the crack which announces its faU. All the generative powers of nature work silently and invisibly ; yet how wonderful and mighty are their effects ! And what is the power of authority in the Church? Moral, not physical. It lies in the tacit, half unconscious recognition of the be- nefits which it produces, of the justice and wisdom with which it is exercised. But when it meddles with petty things, laying stress upon trifles, straining at gnats, and issuing mandates about the breadth of phylacteries, the instinctive sense of propriety and right revolts against it : and if it quotes texts to challenge obedience, its opponents will call to mind that there are other texts, equally plain and impressive, enjoining him that would be chief among the ministers of the Gospel, to be the ser- vant of all, even as the Son of Man came not to he ministered to, hut to minister. This is the true foundation of the power of the Church : and when her power rests on this foundation, no man can rob her of it. O that the spirit from which such power springs, may be granted largely to the governors of our Church in this time of her need ! O that they may be en- richt with that true wisdom, that clear discernment be- tween the form which killeth and the spirit which giveth life, and tbat living insight into the all-embracing fulness and all-reconciling freedom of the Gospel, which were vouch- safed so abundantly to St Paul ! J. C. H. Conversion of St Paul, 1845. I I •TO THE VENERABLE HENRY EDWARD MANNING, ARCHDEACON OF CHICHESTER. My DEAR Friend, In dedicating this Sermon to you, I am not influenced solely by the desire of giving utterance to my esteem and affection, and of connecting my name with yours, as it has pleased God in His lovingkindness to associate us, by ordaining that we should be the two eyes of the spiritual Father of this Diocese. Both the occasion when this Sermon was preacht, and the subject treated in it, almost constrain me to inscribe it with your name. For to you, far more than to any other man, — after him who was its founder, and the instrument of this as well as of so many other blessings to his Diocese, — does our Association owe its original establishment, and whatever prosperity it may since have enjoyed. Your wisdom, under God, has been our chief guide ; your eloquence has stirred our hearts ; your loving spirit has checkt and healed the first outbreaks of anything like division. Thus since he, whom we both loved and revered as a father, was called to his reward, before our Annual Meeting was hallowed, as he had purpost that it should 2 DEDICATION. be, for the first time with a religious service, the httle offering, which would otherwise have belonged to him, falls by a sort of inheritance to you. Moreover the very subject seems to mark it as rightfully yours. Unity, the Unity of the Church, is of all things the dearest to your heart, at least only subordinate to, or rather coordinate with Truth, without which, you well know, all Unity must be fallacious. And as that which fills the heart will overflow from the lips, you yourself, several times since this Sermon was preacht, have poured out your earnest thoughts and desires for the Unity of the Church. Your sermon at the next Anniversary of our Association was devoted in great part to setting forth the spiritual principle of Unity, how it is by putting on the Mind of Christ that we shall best seek Unity and ensue it, and how our dissensions and divisions arise from our want of that mind, and from our sins against it. More recently you have made the Unity of the Church the subject of an elaborate Treatise, in which, as in all your writings, the spirit of love speaks, but in the argumenta- tive part of which, I grieve to say, there is much I am unable to go along with. A Dedication however would be a place ill-suited for discussing the differences between us : indeed to do so effectually might require a volume scarcely inferior in bulk to your own ; and the following Sermon may suggest certain points at which we diverge. In your first Charge on the other hand, where you also speak of Unity, there are half a dozen sentences on which I would crave your permission to offer some remarks. For they give a brief, summary expression to an opinion which is very dominant in these days, but which I cannot hold to be other than erroneous, and which, DEDICATION. 3 whenever it has been allowed to display itself in action, has been hurtful to all true living- Unity. In the latter part of that Charge, having spoken of the manner in which the Annual Meetings of the Clergy at Visitations may serve to produce uniformity in our practice, you proceed thus : " I am prepared to hear it said that uniformity without unity is a hollow and lifeless thing. This is granted as soon as said. But will not a thoughtfiil, much more a philosophical mind detect something trivial and unmeaning in this rhetorical way of opposing unity and uniformity, as if they were two ideas, almost two repugnant things, instead of the outward .and inward, the visible and invisible form of one and the same reality ? But even though they were things separa- ble, uniformity even without unity is at least better than discrepancy added to disunion. If we were indeed so shorn of the spirit of grace as to lack inward unity among ourselves, still there is no reason why we should inflict the visible tokens of our disunion upon the flocks committed to our charge. But after all, is it not certain that uniformity is the silent and symbolical language of unity? Is there any law in God''s works, which has not its own invariable form ? What is the variety of nature but the uniform expression of a variety of laws, not a various expression of any one law ? Do not laws of relation, and proportion, and symmetrical figure pervade all the works of God with a severe and unerring unifor- mity ? It is absolutely certain that, wheresoever there is unity in the idea, there will also be uniformity in the expression ; and in all things which have life, the converse is also true. Dissolution of parts will break up the nniforuiity of organized bodies ; but it is only after the i{ 2 4 DKDIPATION. life is flod. It will linger a while in testimony of what it was, and then dissolve into nnUtitude and variety. But there is no such thing as unity of life without a unifor- mity of structure and a harmony of operations : and in all moral action uniformity of practice is not only a symbol but a means to unity of will." Now in the first place I would beg you to consider, why is it " trivial and unmeaning'''' to speak of Unity and Uniformity as two totally distinct and separate ideas, seeing that people are so j)rone to confound them, and that such evils have resulted from the confiision. Of course, if the opposition be merely " rhetorical,'''' it may then be trivial and unmeaning. But even if uniformity were the only outward expression in which unity can manifest itself, still it is not necessarily trivial and unmeaning to urge men to meditate on the distinction betw-een the form and the spirit ; since our idolatrous fancy and under- standing are so apt to mix and mistake them, and to cleave in all things mainly, if not solely, to that which is outward. Hence those persons in all ages, who have lifted up their voices against the superstitious observance of the letter which killeth, and have called men to the reasonable worship of the lifegiving spirit, are rightly honoured among the benefactors of mankind. Nay, did not our Divine Master Himself reprove those who were scrupulous in tithing mint and anise and cummin, while they neglected judgement and mercy and faith? those who made clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within w^ere full of ravening and wickedness ? At the same time I readily allow that the antiformalists also often run into excess, forgetting that, though the empty cup is sorry refreshment, the wine without the cup would DEDICATIOINT. 5 be spilt abroad, — forgetting that, in this our state of imperfect selfcontroll, forms and ordinances imposed from without are wholesome and necessary, and that it is a higher act of freedom to submit to them than to reject them. They are too apt to fall short — who indeed does not ? — of that heavenly Wisdom, which taught, These ought ye to have done^ and not to leave the others undone. But further, I would contend that uniformity, in the sense which in these days is usually attacht to that word, is by no means necessarily or essentially the form in which unity manifests itself ; that, on the contrary, the injudicious pursuit and enforcement of uniformity have oftentimes marred unity, and must do so, from engaging- in an endless struggle to efface and destroy that diversity and variety, which God has ordained shall prevail in every part of the creation. This desire of imposing uniformity is one of the commonest errours of our weak, self- relying, narrowhearted, stilfminded nature. For it is not a desire of raising ourselves and our brethren up to some ideal standard. He who could frame such a concep- tion, would likewise discern that the only way of approxi- mating to its accomplishment is by animating men with the same principles, and stirring them to realize those principles, as best they may, according to the gifts they have received. Nor will the seeker after uniformity bo studious to conform his own conduct to that of his neighbours. Such an attempt would indeed imply an amiable humility : but it would be impracticable, since, while shaping ourselves after the model of one, we should be receding from thousands ; and it would often involve a sacrifice of honest convictions. They however who want the whole world to walk in one \vay, are sure to 6 DEDICATION. mean at boltom that this way shall be their own way. The one exemplary unit, to which men have wisht that all others should conform, has always been more or less that which occupies the largest space in our intellectual field of vision, and with the notions and feelings, the habits and circumstances of which we are the most familiar. Indeed, inasmuch as it is a point of duty to take care that what we do shall be that which our deliberate judgement deems best and fittest, a slight logical oversight will infer that the selfsame course must be best and fittest for others ; although differences of position, of relations, of education, of character, of moral and intellectual habits, give rise to endless varieties in that which is obligatory and expedient. Delusions of this kind have been a perpetual source of misconceptions, misjudgement, contemptuous and hostile feehngs, and even of overt enmity, in every region in which man has had to act : but they have been far the most hurtful in the Church ; because in questions per- taining to religion we too readily identify our will with God's will, and thus, instead of being checkt by that deference for others which practical life breeds, grow to fancy ourselves bound to carry our will into effect ; and because all constraint from without is injurious to that, which can have no true worth, except as the free and rea- sonable service of the heart and mind. In the very first age of the Church obstinate attempts were made to enforce rites and ordinances, which were outward, typical, unessen- tial, and therefore finite, mutable, and transitory. Nay, the purpose of the A^wstolic Council at Jerusalem, which in this as in other respects differed so widely from other Councils, was to put an end to dissension by sanctioning DEDICATION. 7 diversity of practice : and though two positive regulations were enacted, as expedient under the circumstances of the Church at Jerusalem, it was soon felt that these reg-ulations also were merely local and temporary ; where- fore the Church, in a wise exercise of her liberty, thought right to remit them. St Paul too had to struggle over and over against one form or other of this delusion ; and hence it is in his writings that we best learn what are the true principles of unity, and how to discriminate them from those rules of uniformity, which men are ever setting up in their stead. The former, it has often been recog- nized, are proclaimed for all ages of the Church in those sublime verses of the Epistle to the Ephesians, which are the text of this Sermon : and those verses are followed by an enumeration of the different gifts and offices be- stowed on the various members of Christ's body, which are to worlc effectually in union, so that the whole hody shall be joined together and compacted hy that which every joint siipplieth. Again, what a lesson full of heavenly wisdom does he give to the Church in the fourteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans ! a lesson which the Church has gi-ievously disregarded, and against which she has frequently sinned ; nay, which has been shamefully evaded by persons bearing rule in the Church, under the plea that it related merely to those early ages, when Christians were living in the midst of a heathen world ; as if the principles urged through that whole chapter were not of lasting obligation ; as if its precepts were anything else than a setting forth of that gentleness and forbearance and love, which ought to guide the disciples of Christ ill all their dealings with each other, so that no one may destroy or hurt any of those for whom Christ died. Or 8 DEDICATIO.V. shall we rather open the first Epistle to the Corinthians, in order to learn how there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit, and differences of administrations, hut the same Lord, and diversities of operations, hut the same God worJcing all in all? and how it is the will of God that the hody should not he one memher, hut many, each performing its part in ministering to the body, and to every other member of it ? and how a far higher wisdom is manifested in the union of all these diverse members into one body, than if the hody tvere all one memher ? I know not what words could prove more convincingly than this whole passage, that uniformity is not the essential form of unity, but that unity, according to the riches and fulness which God has been pleased to shew forth in His world, manifests itself best in diversity. Here I cannot help asking you whether there is not something slightly " rhetorical in your own antithesis, that " uniformity even w^ithout unity is at least better than discrepancy added to disunion." For, since the persons who fall under your reproof draw a broad dis- tinction between imity and uniformity, so as even to " oppose " them to each other, it seems plain they cannot be advocating " discrepancy added to disunion," but must rather be maintaining the veiy truth urged by St Paul, that unity manifests itself in diversity. And as they set the two ideas of unity and uniformity in opposi- tion, they must probably contend, — with much truth, though, it may be, with some exaggeration, — that, according to the laws of nature, of man's moral nature, as well as that of the outward world, a real living mighty unity cannot manifest itself otherwise than in diversity. This proposition would seem indeed to be directly opposed UEDICATION. 9 to yours, that " uniformity is the silent and symholical language of unity;" and still more to tliat implied in the question which follows : " What is the variety of nature but the uniform expression of a variety of laws, not a various expression of any one lawr' But as the word uniform'di/, like every other abstract term which gets into general circulation, has become somewhat ambiguous, it is possible that some part of the apparent contradiction may arise out of this ambiguity. In our popular speech, I conceive, uniformity/ means identity in outward form or act, more especially when used with reference to the Church and its services, being generally associated with the Act of Uniformity, by which that identity was enjoined ; and we use the term equally, whether the outward identity result from an identity of inward principles, or be imposed compulsorily by some external power. This however is very different from Hooker's meaning, when he says (E. P. iii. 1. 3), " The Unity of the Church of Christ consisteth in that Uniformity which all several persons thereunto belonging have, by reason of that one Lord whose servants they all profess themselves, that one Faith which they all acknowledge, that one Baptism where- with they are all initiated.'' For this uniformity of the members of Christ means their being actuated by the same formative principles, and is perfectly compatible, as Hooker contends throughout his great work, with wide diversities of civil, moral, and religious acts. Hence that which is said in behalf of uniformity in Hooker's sense of the word, is no argument in favour of that very different uniformity which has been imposed on us by the Acts of our Legislature. Both may be good ; but as logicians, in arguing for the latter, we nuist beware of using 10 DEDICATION. arg-uments which apply solely to the former. Yet the chief jjart of your arguments, so far as I can understand them, seem to relate rather to the mode of operation, than to the result produced thereby. Therefore, when you say that " the variety of nature is the imiform expression of a variety of laws," the opponent of Uniformity might rejoin. This is all I wish : let the infinite variety of human thoughts and feelings and characters find their uniform ap- propriate utterance in the same manner^ each after its hind. But the result of such a process, however harmonious it might be, whatever Unity there might be in it, would have nothing of the Uniformity which he condemns. Still I must confess myself perplext by the assertion, which, though not directly enunciated, is implied in your interrogation, that " the variety of nature is the uniform expression of a variety of laws, not a various expression of any one law." Surely the aim of Phi- losophy and Science is, and has ever been more or less consciously, to trace up those secondary laws of nature, wliich they discern in their immediate operation, to their one aboriginal source : they have rightly felt the conviction that this source must be one ; and though they have often overreacht themselves in the pursuit, they have made gTeat progress therein. According to the doctrines both of Philosophy and Science, as it seems to me, the variety of ilature is the varied expression of a few simple laws, diversified by the character and com- bination of the elements subjected to their operation. As in speech, by a few simple laws, out of a few vocal elements variously combined, we produce an almost endless variety of words, so does Nature, out of a few elements, by a few simple laws, produce an endless variety of forms DEDICATION. 11 and appearances. You maintain indeed that " it is absolutely certain that, wheresoever there is unity in the idea, there will also be uniformity in the expression." If however by uniformity you here mean sameness, I would remind you of the common remark that no two leaves on an oak are exactly alike. In the lower orders of the creation a considerable uniformity is found, in earths, in crystals ; but the higher we mount, the more it gives place to diversity. The same distinction too prevails between the different classes of the same order : firs for instance are more monotonous than deciduous trees. More- over in all classes those species, which are affected by cultivation, acquire a greater number of varieties, to which there hardly seems to be a limit ; the recent improve- ments in horticulture having shewn that in the seeds of the commonest flower an almost indefinite variability is latent, which cultivation may develope. A like law is discoverable in mankind. As man stands above the rest of the creation, there are far greater diversities of character in him, even in his rudest state, than in any other creature : in proportion as his intellectual and moral faculties are educed by cultivation, the varieties of individual character become more markt : and as you yourself have well said, in your Sermon On the Mind of Christ, when characters become perfected by putting on that mind, " they stand out with an individuality as definite and perfect as the stars of heaven." So again in the works of the human intellect, in proportion as it is more genial, more vigorous, more refined, there will be a greater variety ; while here also, when genius is extinct, when imagination is feeble, the understanding comes forward with its rules of uniformity. 12 DEDICATION. You are not old enough to remember the contest against the unities, as tliey were misnamed, and the other uniformities, which exercised such sway in literature during the last century, and which had just been driven to their last hold at the time when I began to take interest in such questions. The illustration however may be of use : for here also it was maintained that uniformity is indispensable to unity ; and the French tragic writers, belonging to a nation which has a singular faculty of degrading ideas into abstractions, deemed that in writing tragedies they must adopt the outward formal rules, which peculiar circumstances, connected with the origin of the Greek drama, imposed upon the tragedians of Athens. But Lessing, and other critics since, have shewn that this very seeking after uniformity was most inimical to unity, — that, if the great Greek poets had lived In modern Europe, the form of their compositions would have been very different, — and that there is far more real unity between the tragedies of Sliakspeare and the Greek, notwithstanding the glaring dissimilarity in their outward form. Here I may r-emark that, as Christianity has enabled man to gain a much clearer sight of the Unity which pervades all things, Shakspeare's wonderful genius, living under the influences of Christian thought, has fused elements into unity, which the Greeks would have deemed discordant. Yet the unity in him is of a deeper and higher kind. So is the unity of Christian paint- ing deeper and higher than that of Greek sculpture ; and the unity of Christian harmony than that of Greek melody ; even as the unity in the varied song of the nightingale is far more perfect than in the monotonous cry of the cuckoo ; which. In spite of its uniformity, can UKDICATION. 13 never blend into unity. Or, to take Jinotlier familiar example, there is nothing in which the dreary dulness of the last century manifests itself more than in its town- architecture, which has but one remarkable chai'acteristic, its uniformity. This thev souqlit ; and this thev attained. You may walk for miles in London, hedged in between two similar and parallel lines of straight, high, dingy brick walls, unbroken except by regular rows of oblong holes. Yet these streets never give a conception of unity comparable to that awakened by Venice and Nuremberg and the old parts of Antwerp and Bruges. On the other hand few intelligent persons will doubt which town in England does produce the grandest impression of unity, with the rich variety of its buildings, speaking of so many centuries, but harmonized by the unity of their moral and spiritual purpose, and bearing witness that generation after generation rejoiced in consecrating their choicest gifts to bring up the youth of England in the pursuit of truth and in the knowledge of God. Nay, what is that most perfect pattern of Unity, which God has vouchsafed to establish upon earth for the comfort and blessing of mankind, and which is declared to be a type of the Unity between the Church and her Lord ? It is not the union between man and man. La order that the unity may be more entire, the diversity must be greater : that which is lacking to the one, must be supplied by the other. And even among marriages those may be deemed the most perfect, not where there is the fullest uniformity and similarity, but the most harmonious contrast of characters, where each is the complement, so to say, to the other, each being according to its kind. A masculine character in the wife, an effeminate one in the 14 DEDICATION. husband, may increase uniformity, but will hardly improve unity. Wordsworth, when S2)eaking of the causes of the pleasure derived from metre, is led into a like train of illustrations. " Among the chief of these causes," he says, " is to be reckoned a principle which must be well known to those who have made any of the arts the object of accurate reflexion ; I mean the pleasure which the mind derives from the perception of similitude in dissimilitude. This principle is the great spring of the activity of our minds, and their chief feeder. From this principle the direction of the sexual appetite, and all the passions connected with it, take their origin : it is the life of our ordinary conver- sation ; and upon the accuracy with which similitude in dissimilitude, and dissimilitude in similitude are perceived, depend our taste and our moral feelings." I have only been repeating again and again what St Paul says about the unity of the body. If a body were to be made up of arms, or of legs, or of heads, or of any one member whatsoever, how inferior would it be in unity to the human form divine ! and how greatly is the unity of that form raised above that of quadrupeds by the distinction between the arras and the legs ! Yet, simple as these truths are, and plainly as they are involved in that passage of St Paul, they are entirely lost sight of by those who hunger and thirst after uniformity. You yourself too, if you had borne them in mind, would hardly have written so strongly in favour of it. Nor is that which is true of individual life less true of corporate life ; though in this instance also it is a truth that few statesmen are duly con- vinced of. For practical men, when not content with being mere practical men, but ambitious of reasoning about the work they are engaged in, will generally measure all things DEDICATION. 15 by tlio last of their understancling, the foculty whicli practical life developes the most ; while it rather stunts the imagination, which might have helpt them to conceive the manifold benefits accruing from diversities of circum- stances, of customs and manners, of ancestral institutions and feelings. Hence it comes that our political reformers are so busy in squaring and leveling all things according to some favorite rule. Their axiom is much the same as yours, that the unity of the nation is to manifest itself in the uniformity of all its parts. This was the axiom of the Jacobinical republicans ; and this was the axiom of the Jacobinical emperor. Few men in the last generation, and not many in this, could appi'eciate the truth, which Niebuhr, from his living insight into all history, discerned with such clearness, that it became one of the ruling- principles of his thoughts, — the truth which he has exprest repeatedly, and which lies at the bottom of a large part of his political reflexions, — that, " as in organic beings the most perfect life is that which animates the greatest variety of members, so among states that is the most perfect, in which a number of institutions originally distinct, being organized each after its kind into centres of national life, form a complex whole." With this truth we Englishmen ought to be familiar ; since our own constitution a few years back was, and perhaps still is, the noblest exemplification of it : yet many of the recent innovations in our legislation shew that we have no ade- quate conception of its importance. Rather are we infected with the desire of centralizing and uniforming everything. We are so intoxicated with the love of machinery, that we think mechanical action better than moral, as being surer and more punctual in its operation 16 DEDICATION. And SO indeed it is immediately : but we forget that one of the noblest features in tlie English character has arisen in great measure from that diversity of local institutions, which have awakened a higher feeling of personal re- sponsibility than is to be found in other nations. To the meditative minds of Germany on the other hand, such thoughts have become matter of ordinaiy contemplation. Thus, when looking the other day over the last edition of Nitzsches System of Christian Doctrine, a book which is quite a digest of profound thought and learning, and one of the most precious works of recent German theo- logy, I came to the following sentence in a newly added note, occasioned by Rothe's Treatise on the Church : " Every one will acknowledge without hesitation, that the highest unity, the most perfect catholicity, is that wdiich comprehends, combines, and reconciles the utmost ful- ness of diversities." He then complains that Rothe, while he assigns all the riches of variety to the Christian State, makes the Church " a present of the shadowy grandeur, but real poverty, of uniformity." which doubt- less is among the reasons why Rothe's book has found so much acceptance in England, not indeed for his political, but for his ecclesiastical views. Nitzsch further asks, " How is the idea of unity and universality best realized, by the voyage of the Romish Liturgy to Siam and Pekiu, or by the working together of the evangelical missions in all quarters of the world V This question reminds me of that dismal substitution of uniformity for unity, under which the heart and mind of man groaned and joined, when the Papacy, incapa- citated by its very position, and the assumptions in- volved therein, for recognizing any other than a formal DEDICATION. 17 unity, imposed a Liturgy in a dead language on all Christian congregations, of every nation and region be- neath its sway, issuing its despotical edict to arrest the miracle of Pentecost, and ordaining, so far as lay in its power, that men should not hear and speak of the won- derful works of God in their own tongues, being unable to appreciate the heavenly glory of that unity, when the great multitude, of all nations and Tcindreds and peoples and tongues, shall stand before the throne of the Lamb. It is a painful symptom, that such an abuse should find admfrers among the members of our Church in these days. They plead that it is an advantage for foreiners, when they go into a church in any country, to hear the same words with which they have been familiar from their child- hood. So too forsooth many a foreiner has thought it very inconvenient that he could not hear his own language spoken at inns, in the marketplace, by the peasants when he is roaming about the country, in society when he wishes to mix in it ; and he has seldom thought of asking himself whether, of the two, it would not be more reasonable that Mahomet should go to the mountain. Thus, for the sake of a few casual vagrants, the natives of every country are to be under the soul-deadening bondage of hearing words in an unknown language, and of repeating the same by rote, at the very time when the depths of their being ought to be stirred. They are to be debarred from the blessing of having their own homely words, the words which sprang up within them along with their thoughts and feelings, sancti- fied by being made the means of pouring forth their hearts before God. Is it not written, Let the children first he filled ? And who can estimate the grandeur, the depth, the expan- sive power, which our language and the German have derived c 18 DEDICATION. from the national liturgical offices, as well as from the na- tional translation of the Scriptures ? What a difFerence is there between the very word, loord^ and mot ! how far purer, less sensual, more spiritual are love and Hebe than amour and amore ! which is doubtless owing mainly to the scriptural use of those words. To a feeble imagination indeed, especially when its wings have been dipt that it may not fly beyond the purlieus of self, it will seem a grand and imposing thought, that all the nations of the earth should be uttering the selfsame words to God. But is there nothing grand and elevating in the thought, that all nations are lifting up their voices to Him, each using" its own words, the words which gush from the depths of its heart, and which are fresh with the dew of its feelings ? Is there nothing grand in the thought, that " Earth with her thousand voices praises God ?" Verily shoals of men, if they spoke their mind, would declare that Thomas Burnet's smooth flat paradisiacal earth, as smooth and flat as the sea- sand, would be far more beautiful than the present confused jumble of mountain and valley and rock and cliff and glen. And certainly the sea-sand has the advantage on the side of uniformity ; yet, unless one bring in other objects to limit it, one cannot raise it up into the idea of unity : so essential to unity is diversity. Or again what visible ob- ject can kindle the idea of unity with anything like the same power as the sight of the nightly sky, with its hosts of stars and constellations showered over it in every variety of form I Yet doubtless the uniformalist would deplore that they are not ranged in regular courses, in rows or con- centric circles, like the spangles on his drawingroom ceil- ing. He would say. Yes, the sky would be very beautiful, if I might but comb out its tresses, and put its jewels in order. DEDICATION. 19 I have written to you freely, discursively, in the tone of a private letter, rather than of an argumentative dis- cussion. For I had it on my heart to speak on this matter of uniformity, which is again much talkt of now, as is natural when an age takes a bent toward the externals of religious worship : it often comes before us in the discharge of our official duties : and unless much caution be exercised by those who are in authority, it seems likely to aggravate the divisions in the Church. Hence this passage in your Charge has been quoted and praised oftener, I believe, than any other, a fate which not seldom befalls the worst passage in a book. For if a wise man says anything which countenances and seems to give a reason for a popular errour, the holders of that errour are glad to shelter themselves under the sanction of his authority, and of whatever show of arg-ument he may bring forward in their behalf. And though you yourself, while you advocate uniformity, are animated with a true and fervent love of unity, and would never seek uniformity by any measure calculated to impair unity, yet in the generality of cases I seem to have observed, that the most clamorous and pertinacious stick- lers for uniformity are those into whose hearts the desire of unity has hardly gained an entrance, and whose religion vents itself for the most part in outward observances. Indeed how could it well be otherwise ? They who have seen the blessed vision of Unity, with the prayer of the Saviour breathing through it as the spirit of its life, and the smile of the Father beaming upon it, how can they turn from this, to dote upon anything so shadowy, so harsh, so empty as mere Uniformity ? or how can they care much about Uniformity, except so far as it is indeed V 2 20 DEDICATIOX. the expi'ession of a living love for Unity, submitting its own heart and mind to do as others do for the sake of a more entire union and communion ? At the same time, seeing that one can scarcely combat any errour, without being suspected of intending to be- come the chamjiion of its opposite, I must remark, that, while impugning the notion that imiformity is indispens- able to unity, I have not meant to say a single word in behalf of irregularity and licentiousness. It was indeed very sad a year ago to see your pious and learned fi-iend Dr Pusey urging differences of ritual practice as argu- ments against a measure designed to prepare the way, imder God's blessing, for a closer communion between our Church and that of Prussia ; for it has been constantly held by the highest authorities, that, in things ceremo- nial, gi-eat diversities may warrantably prevail between different Churches, and that these diversities should be no hindrance to communion between them. Within the pale of each national Church on the other hand it is ex- pedient and desirable, for the sake of order and discipline, that there should be a considerable similarity of practice ; and a national Litm-gy is such an inestimable benefit in many ways, that, to secure it, we should readily sacrifice whatever might be gained by a more definite expression of personal and occasional feelings. What I deprecate is the endeavour to establish uniformity for its own sake, as if uniformity in itself were a thing to be sought and admired. So far as uniformity is expedient, it is expedient from our weakness and frailty, by reason of which we cannot be left to the free utterance of our own hearts and minds ; and because the submission to certain general rules and restraints is a condition of social miion : UKDICATION. 21 moreover in divers parts of our work our power is much strengthened by our pulHug together. This tnith is urged with his usual judgment by him, who alone ought to have been termed the Chancellor of Human Nature, as well as the Chancellor of Nature, — whereas the former title has been given to a man far less deserving of it, — in his excellent little treatise On the Pacification of the Church, which, along with the other On Church Contro- versies, might be profitably studied by all parties in these days ; being rich in practical wisdom suited to all ages, but of a kind which has seldom been duly heeded, and often grossly sinned against. I will quote the closing pai'agraph of the part which speaks concerning cere- monies, as the remarks, even in their literal sense, are unfortunately not wholly inapplicable to our own time. " For the cap and surplice, since they be things in their nature indifferent, and yet by some held superstitious, and that the question is between science and conscience, it seemeth to fall within the compass of the Apostle's rule, that the stronger do descend and yield to the tveaker. It will be materially said, that the rule lioldeth between private man and private man, but not between the con- science of a private man and the order of a Church. But yet, since the question at this time is of a toleration, not by connivence, which may encourage disobedience, but by law, which may give a liberty, it is good again to be advised whether it fall not within the equity of the former rule ; the rather because the silencing of ministers by this occasion is, in this scarcity of good preachers, a punishment that lighteth upon the people, as well as upon the party. And for the subscription, it seemeth to me in the imturc of a confession, and 22 DEDICATION. therefore more proper to bind in the unity of faith, and to be urged rather for articles of doctrine, than for rites and ceremonies and points of outward government. For howsoever politic considerations and reasons of state may I'equire uniformity, yet Christian and divine grounds look chiefly upon unity." Which last sentence, among other things, may convince you that the antithesis between uni- formity and unity is not altogether trivial and unmeaning. At least Bacon was so imprest with the need of enforcing the distinction, that in his Essay On Unity in Religion he again says, " They be two things, unity and uni- formity," that is, two distinct things, which must not be confounded. Yet, even where unity of spirit, and reverent obedience to the authority of the Church, and regard to the objects of social union, will produce uniformity of action, it is of no slight importance that we should well understand why we seek that uniformity, and why it is desirable. For in all action, if we are to do right consistently, we should act intelligently, knowing what is the ground of our acting, what is to be its end, and what its measure. Thus, if it be the duty of individual Christians to submit to the authority of the Church, for the sake of edification, both their own and that of their brethren, it becomes a correlative duty in those who legislate for the Church, and who exercise authority over it, not to press on its inferior members, not to burthen their consciences with that which is unnecessary, to deal tenderly with them, as loving parents deal with their children, yea, as the Lord Himself dealt with His disciples. They should keep in mind that excellent axiom, which Bacon quotes, and which sums up the argument of the foregoing pages, DEDICATION . 23 " Differentiae rituum commendant unitatem doctrinae, the diversities of ceremonies tlo set forth the unity of doctrine."" On the other hand, if it be supposed that uniformity is to be pursued for its own sake, as a thing desirable in itself, as the only outward form of unity, without which unity cannot exist, then it will be jJursued at all costs, at all risks, in all things, small as well as great ; and the end is, as has been seen so often in the history of the Church, of the English Church more especially, that Unity is blindly and recklessly sacrificed before the cold, empty idol Uniformity. You indeed assert that there is a higher and weightier reason, which makes uniformity a main auxiliary in the development of the Christian life ; for that " in all moral action uniformity of practice is not only a symbol but a means to unity of will." Alas, my friend ! uniformity a means to unity ! Is this the lesson we learn from the history of the English Church? Is this the effect which has been produced by our own Acts of Uniformity ? those strange, anomalous Acts, which in their imperious character are almost peculiar to our Church, and which resulted from her singular position, when she found herself in a manner identified with the government of the State, and enabled to wield the authority of the State in girding herself round with penal enactments. Was it not the Act of Uniformity under Queen Elizabeth, that first gave birth to the Nonconfor- mists, as a distinct, powerful, and formidable body within the pale of our Church, gathering all those varieties of feeling and opinion, which could not reconcile themselves to its requisitions, into one mass, and setting the Con- formists and the Nonconformists in definite array against 24 DEDICATION. each other ? Many pleas may indeed be urged in excuse of the statesmen and churchmen by whom that Act was framed. The very existence of the government seemed bound up with the unity and vigour of the Re- formed Church. The fallacy of that delusion, which holds unity to be inseparable from uniformity, had not then been so thoroughly exposed, as it has since been, by the teaching of philosophy, and the still more cogent lessons of history. The sanctity of man's individual conscience had never been rightly appreciated by the secular wisdom of Rome ; which then, as ever, sought mainly for out- ward submission, and which practically sanctioned, if it did not encourage, the notion, that men might justifiably profess many things by their words and their acts, to which they found nothing answerable, and much repugnant, in their hearts and minds. For this is one of the miserable curses attacht to those who worship the idol Uniformity, that, as their aim is bent upon the form, rather than the power, of Unity, they grow to care little about the substance, provided they can get the shadow ; and thus they become little scrupulous about truth, in others, and ultimately in themselves also. Nor had men learnt as yet to estimate the consequences of that epochal act in the history of the world, when by God's gracious ordinance the leaders of the Reformation put the Bible into the hands of their countrymen in their own tongue. They saw not what a mighty step this was toward the completion of the work begun on the first day of Pentecost, how a voice was now issuing over the earth proclaiming to each individual man, that he had a reason and a conscience, and that the Eternal God had vouchsafed to make known His mysterious counsels even to him, so that he was no DEDICATION. 25 longer to receive certain portions of the word of life doled out to him by others, but was to read the whole himself, to study it, to meditate upon it, to speak of it to his family, and among his friends. Few saw either the blessedness of the power which was thus imparted to mankind, or the dangers to which, like all power, when abused, it might be perverted. In such a state of things it is not to be wondered at that the sagacious states- men and churchmen who had the most influence in the Queen's councils at the outset of her reign, or that the Queen herself, — while they were rightly persuaded that the national religion ought to be one, not only in spirit and doctrine, but to a certain extent in form also, — should have drawn their cords somewhat too tight with regard to the latter. Indeed, though more latitude might have been left open on certain subjects, which were matter of contention, the engagement that her ministers shall make use of her appointed Liturgy seems to be no more than every Church is fully entitled to demand. Moreover, bound as the Queen was to feel, and to shew that she felt, herself to be the sovereign of her whole people, it became her duty, as well as her policy, not to offend that large body in the nation who still held to the authority of Rome, by departing more than was necessary from the ancient ritual and discipline. Nor does there api)ear to have been reason at the time for apprehending that the Act would find much opposition in any other direction. Still, although this Act would seem thus far to be nearly unobjectionable, — I am not speaking of its penalties, or of its provision for com- pelling attendance at church, — we may learn from its effects what a perilous career they enter upon, who deem 26 DEDICATION. themselves called to enforce uniformity as a means to unity. It is one of the saddest spectacles in the history of the world, a spectacle at which angels may have wept, to see the unity of our Church shaken, her peace broken up for a whole century, — to see faithfiil, holy, zealous men, holding the same faith, acknowledging the same Lord, baptized by the same Spirit, earnestly desiring to serve and approach the same Eternal Father, divided for generations, and even stirred into fierce hostility against each other, by differences about a vestment or a posture. These were not indeed the sole grounds of disagreement ; but these, and such as these, were the chief grounds of contention : and had these been removed, as they easily might have been, if a few more points had been left to the discretion of the minister, according to plans brought forward several times in the course of this and the follow- ing century, the breaches on matters of greater impor- tance would have been healed, with God's blessing, by a spirit which manifested such a desire for unity, and which would have been strengthened by the might of our Lord's prayer that His disciples might partake in the perfect Unity of the Godhead. You will say perhaps, — at least other persons less mild and considerate have said, and still say, — that the men who scrupled about such things ought to have yielded their scruples to the authority of the Church. Most true, my friend ! they ought ; and the best of them probably would have done so, if they could have lookt at the matter with the philosophic calmness, which at the interval of two or three centuries costs so little effort. But these men were full of the recollections of the darkness and bondage out of which they had been delivered ; the fears of its recurrence were not idle DEDICATION. 27 fancies ; they felt they had a warfare to wage ; and what- ever seemed identified with the errours, by which the blessed truth and power of the Gospel had so long been obscured, was an abomination in their eyes. Even with- out these extraordinary circumstances, if we reflect on the almost irresistible power which inveterate associations of one sort or other exercise over every child of man, we shall not deem ourselves warranted in blaming our neigh- bours, because on certain points their associations are not so pliant as our own. These are the very cases, of which St Paul speaks : One man esteemeth one day above another ; another esteemeth every day alike. What then ? Does the Apostle, as any man would nowadays, pronounce one of these to be wrong, and the other right ? does he bid them submit their opinions to the authority of the Church, and charge the Church to settle the difference, in order that uniformity may be upheld ? What a divine sanction do his words give to the sacred liberty of con- science ! Let every man he fully persuaded in his own mind. Besides, the duty of those who are under au- thority, to obey their rulers, involves a correlative duty on the part of those who exercise authority, not to exact obedience further than is needful for the safety and well- being of the community. Indeed all governments have had a feeling of this truth ; and this is one reason why laws are mainly negative, repressing that which is evil and noxious, and leaving it to powers which speak more home to the heart and conscience, to enjoin what ought to be done. Above all should this maxim regulate the conduct of such as exercise an authority derived from Him, who would not break the bruised reed, nor quench tlie smoking flax. 28 DEDICATION. Thus it is iu the history of the English Church from 1560 to 1G62, that we are to trace the effects of the first grand experiment to employ uniformity as a means to unity. I call it the first, because, though Procrustes is renowned as an ardent uncompromising lover of uni- formity, it is not recorded that he aimed at fostering unity thereby : and that which was wholesome iu the Spartan constitution, and other like institutions, was not the uniformity, which was deadening, but the severe physical and moral training : nor was the purpose to promote unity, in which it would have signally failed, but strength, by subjecting the whole nation to the strict discipline of an army. For thus far uniformity is indeed beneficial, and almost indispensable, so far as men are to be dealt with as machines, whether in a manufactory, or on a field of battle. But the framers of our first Act of Uniformity did desire and propose to themselves to unite the whole nation, so far as they could, — at least all that part of it which had embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, — in one religion under the supremacy of the Queen. Nor had they cause to anticipate the strong opposition which they were about to excite ; whereby personally they stand exculpated. This however only shews the more convincingly how the attempt to enforce uniformity will of itself provoke division, calling out differences, which would else have subsisted amicably side by side, into definite, contentious opposition. Several of our wiser prelates indeed, when they discovei-ed the unforeseen result, did what they could by their mildness and forbearance to allay the disputes : but their success at best could not be more than partial, so long as the Act itself continued a permanent symbol of separation. Nor was the Act allowed to slumber ; it DEDICATION. 29 led to prosecutions, to penalties : and ever and anon an utterance of royal will commanded that the nation must be uniform, and must be united ; as when Queen Elizabeth wrote to Archbishop Parker, that she was " certainly deter- mined to have all such diversities, varieties, and novelties, amongst them of the clergy and her people, as bred nothing but contention, offense, and breach of common charity, and were also against the laws, good usages, and ordinances of her realm, reformed and represt, and brought to one manner of uniformity through her whole realm and domi- nion ; " or as when J ames the First at the Hampton Court Conference silenced his opponent by the clenching argu- ment, " I will have one doctrine and one discipline, one religion in substance and in ceremony ; and therefore I charge you never to speak more to that point, — how far you are bound to obey, — when the Church hath ordained it." The Queen must have known how hard it was to keep her frill, however stiffly starcht, smooth and in order for a single day : the King had ample experience of the impossibility of curbing his own words and thoughts in regard to the merest trifles : and yet they audaciously fancied they could drill every subject in their dominions into putting the same uniform on his heart and mind. Thus indulgence failed to heal the dissensions, because the ground of them could not be taken away : severity on the other hand widened and embittered them. At such a crisis two courses lie open. The chief causes of difference might have been removed : this was the course recom- mended by the wisdom of Bacon, and accorded with the spirit which animated the wisest and best men of the age, from Grindal down to Ussher. But the a'/ja'kaaTix.og, from whom we learnt so many sapient lessons in our boyhood, 30 DEDICATION. when he had been promoted to be a schoolmaster, was heard to say, / have been flogging my hoys assiduously every day the last year : yet they have not learnt anything : I must flog them twice a day next year. This happy unconscious- ness that there is any other element in teaching, beside the use of the rod, may have been peculiar to our old companion : but the process of reasoning, that, when a certain degree of severity has aggravated an evil, the severity must be redoubled to remove it, is common among all classes of men, nor least so among those who meddle in statecraft ; notwithstanding the lesson taught them by the history of Rehoboam, who lost the ten tribes by this very policy, a lesson confirmed by manifold subsequent experience. Such notions were very prevalent, when God was pleased to hasten the judgement on our Church by placing Archbishop Laud at the head of it. This prelate is the favorite hero and saint of the worshipers of uniformity; and not without a good claim to their admiration. It was said of old, that love fulfilleth the law ; but his doctrine was, that, if you make people keep the letter of the law, they will gain love. There is something marvellous in the per- tinacity with which he ever clings to the conviction, that, if the outside of the platter be cleansed, all will be right. When he was chosen Chancellor of your University, his great anxiety, evinced by reiterated earnest remonstrances, is about formalities., that is to say, the academical dress : he complains that formalities., " which are in a sort the outward and visible face of the University, are in a manner utterly decayed," and says, " If this go on, the University will lose ground every day both at home and abroad:" he charges the Heads to take care that the members of the University should " fit themselves with DEDICATION. 31 formalities fitting their degrees, that the University may have credit by looking Hke itself ; and then I dotibt not but it will be itself too. For it will not endure but to be as it seems.'''' These last words, which sum up the creed of the uniform- alists, are a curious mark of the outwardliness and super- ficiality of Laud's mind, — in his heart there was better stuff ; — which same character is betrayed by the whole tenour of his most meagre Diary, by the dreary triviality and dearth of imagination in his dreams, and by many sad testimonies in his conduct as a ruler of the Church. For how else can we conceive that an honest, conscientious man, appointed to discharge the office of a bishop in the Church of God, should never, as it would seem, have been disturbed by the thought, that it behoved him to dwell in his Diocese, stirring up the hearts of its clergy and other members by doctrine, by exhortation, by pastoral advice, strengthening the feeble, encouraging the irresolute, cheer- ing the timid and desponding, and guiding those who needed counsel ? that, though he was bishop of St David's for four years and a half, he only visited his Diocese twice during that period, for about two months each time, at a quadriennial Visitation ? that, though he was Bishop of Bath and Wells for near two years, he never set foot in his Diocese ? And what was he doing all the while ? Doubt- less, having tried to put the formalities right by his Articles at his Visitation, he trusted that everything would go right, and so thought he might employ himself in more important business as a hanger-on at Whitehall and Buckingham House. Alas, my friend, that such a man should have been selected by our modern uniformalists and ecclesiolaters, as the pattern of a churchman and a saint ! a man who, when he had carried his point of 32 DEDICATION. making Bishop Jiixou Lord High Treasurer, wrote down, in his Journal, " And note, if the Church will not hold up themselves under God, I can do no more.''^ I hardly know what words could have betrayed a grosser, shallower igno- rance of what the Church is, and wherein her power lies ; as though this were the true mode of promoting the in- crease of that Kingdom, which has been declared to be not of this world ; as though one word of faith, one deed of love, one silent prayer were not far mightier to strengthen the Church, than all the Lord-Treasurerships of all the treasures that Mammon has ever piled up in any quarter of the globe. When such a man, — I speak not of his conduct at his trial and death ; that was truly hei'oic and saintly ; but, though his end would otherwise lead us to overlook the faults of his previous life, it must not do so when that life itself is held up as a pattern for our age to learn the art of governing the Church ; — when such a man was bent to establish his views of uniformity, as the means of regenerating the Church, it cannot surprise a person, who knows anything of the strong and fervid spirits he had to contend with, that, instead of raising- the condition of the Church, he overthrew it, falling himself first, with a fortitude and meekness worthy of a high place in the army of martyrs. The Church was overthrown ; and her fall was hastened, to say the least, by the stubborn policy of her Primate ; as it was mainly occasioned from the first by her narrow- minded love of uniformity. As one proof how the very attempt to compress men's minds makes them fly asun- der in all directions, I will cite a few words from Sander- son"'s Visitation Sermon in 1641 : " I cannot dissemble my fear that it is but too true, by the proportion of DEDICATION. what we almost daily hear, or see, that, within litth^ more than tliis one twelvemonth last past, there have been more false and superstitious doctrines vented in the pulpits and presses of England, than have been, in so open and daring a manner, in the whole space of almost four- score years before, I mean since the first of Queen Eliza- beth of blessed memory." This was the immediate effect of the futile attempt to repress such opinions by force. In order that the firy spirits thus kindled should burn themselves out, the Monarchy and the Church of England were swept away ; and a free licence and scope were granted to all manner of opinions by Cromwell. Hereby men were taught " to feel the weight of too much liberty," and to long for what they had lost, for the ancient Govern- ment, for the Liturgy, for the Church. At the same time the King's Declaration of October 1660, one of the wisest state-papers ever issued, laid down principles, which, if they had been acted upon in a candid, conscientious, peace- loving spirit, would have done much for the pacification of our Church, and would have raised it to a power and dignity and efficiency far beyond what it ever has, or seems ever likely to attain. A strange voice past through Eng- land, a voice which spake of unity ; but it was soon stifled by the tumultuous cries of opposite parties clamouring in rivalry for uniformity. And ere long all hope was blasted by that second, most disastrous, most tyrannical and schis- matical Act of Uniformity ; the authors of which, it is plain, were not seeking unity, but division. With evident design its provisions were made so stringent, the declara- tion required by it was worded with such exactive pre- cision, that it was scarcely possible for an honest Presby- terian to make It : here and there one, whose habits of D 34 DEDICATION. thought ami temper had preserved him from strong o])inions, might : but for tlie great body no alternative remained, except to belie their conscience, or to cut themselves off from the national Church : and one can iiardly doubt that this must have been the purpose of the framers of the Act. The excuses which may be urged for the first Act, have no place here : and though it is often pleaded in palliation of political parties, that tlieir measui'es have been taken under the exasperation of suffering and the intoxication of victory, this would be a sorry apology for the conduct of an ecclesiastical government. No question could now be entertained about the prevalence and permanence of the scruples, which it was resolved to set at nought : they had been handed down for three generations, and had become more and more widely diffused, not among the rabble, but among men of exemplary holiness and zeal. Yet, with a full knowledge of all this, it was required that every minister, not only such as might be ordained thenceforward, but all who at that time had any benefice or promotion, should solemnly declare their " unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed in and by the Book of Common Prayer." This was enjoined, it is stated, " to the end that uniformity in the public worship of God (which is so much desired) might be speedily effected." The previous canonical declaration, that the Prayerbook " con- tains nothing contrary to the word of God," was hardly more than was implied in the engagement to make use of the Prayerbook in imblic worship. But this strait waistcoat for men's consciences could scarcely have been devised except by persons themselves of seared con- sciences and hard hearts, by persons ready to gidp down DEDICATION. 35 any o.ath, without scruijle about more or less. Verily, when I think of that calamitous and unprincipled Act, — of the men by whom it was enacted, Charles the Second, and the Aristocracy and Gentry of his reign, — of the holy men against whom it was enacted, — it seems almost like a prologue to the profligacy and infidelity which fol- lowed closely upon it. But what were its direct effects with regard to the Unity of the Church? It bore the name of Uniformity on its forehead : can there have been any who persuaded themselves that a Uniformity so en- forced could be a means to Unity ? The only Unity that could have ensued from it would have been that of a dead level : and full of woe as have been the consequences of this Act in its failure, they would have been still more terrible had it succeeded. Therefore even we, who love and revere our national Church above every earthly insti- tution, may bless God that it did not succeed. We may bless God, for that He has given such grace and power to weak, frail, human hearts, that meek and humble men, when strengthened by His Spirit, are not to be driven out of the path in which their conscience commands them to walk, by the leagued forces of King and Parliament and Convocation, by the severest penal enactments, or even by the bitter pang of having to leave their loved flocks. Yes, my friend, we may join in giving God thanks for the work He has wrought in such men, — for they arc the true salt of the earth, — even though we may deem that there was much of errour in their judgements and opinions, almost as much as in our own. Yet how grievous was the wound to the Church at the time ! how grievous is it still at this day in its enduring effects ! Some two thousand ministers, comprising the chief part, it seems scarcely 3G DEDICATIOX. questionable, of the most faithful and zealous in the land, were silenced in one day, were severed in one day from their flocks, were cast in one day out of our Church, for the sake of maintaining Uniformity. On that our English Bar- tholomew's day, the eye wandered over England, and in every fifth parish saw the people scattered abroad as sheep that had no shepherd. Fi-om that day do we date the origin of that constituted dissent and schism, which is the peculiar opprobrium and calamity of our Church, by which in almost every parish we find ourselves grievously cx'ippled in our efforts to build up our people into a holy temple acceptable to the Lord ; and which in this very year, by its frantic uprore, is rendering it impossible for our Legislature to take any efficient step toward the moral and religious education of the people, although the disclo- sure of the frightful condition of huge masses of our popu- lation seemed for a moment to have allayed the conten- tions of political parties. So terribly is the sin of our forefathers, who framed the Act of Uniformity, visited upon England at this day ; nor can any human foresight discern either how or when these evils are likely to termi- nate. Moreover, after that we had thus cast out so much faith and zeal and holiness, after that, — to use an expres- sion which has been applied less appropriately to a later event of far minor importance, — we had in this manner almost cast out the doctrine of Christ crucified from the pale of our Church, we had to travel through a century of coldness and dreariness and barrenness, of Arminianism and Pelagianisra, of Arianism aiad latent Socinianism, — all which were found compatible with outward uniformity, — before the spirit, which was then driven away, returned with anything like the same power. And the unhappy DEDICATION. 37 descendants of those who were then cast out, they too have suffered wofully for the sins of their forefathers, who in the time of their prosperity had been no less bhndly zealous in sacrificing faith and hope and love to the same all-beguihng idol, Uniformity. They have suffered in being severed from the unity of the Church and of the nation : they have suffered in that narrowmindedness, those prejudices and jealousies, which are the heirloom of all sectaries : above all, they have suffered in losing the most precious part of that sacred deposit of faith, which our Lord gave to be the riches and life of His Church unto the end of the world. Such are the lessons taught by the history of our Church concerning the efficacy of Uniformity, when enforced as a means to Unity. Nor, it seems to me, would a thought- ful, much more a philosophical mind look for any other. For unity is spiritual, pertains to the spiritual part of man, his heart, his mind, his will. Even in lower things a unity formed by aggregation, or agglomeration, or colligation, is merely factitious, like the unity of a sandheap, or of a fagot. If branches are to form a unity, they must be organized into it by a central vital principle. In children we often see how deadening an education of formalities is ; and hence does it come to pass that such a swarm of persons walk about the world, whose moral being has been stunted and almost crusht in their childhood. To such unhappy victims of uniformity, the imposition of uniformity will be tolerable, and may even seem desirable ; as is wittily signified by the fabulist, when he makes the fox who has lost his tail so urgent in pressing his brethren to pass an Act of self-mutilating Uniformity. But in proportion as a man's intellectual and moral and spiritual being have 38 DEDICATION. been cultivated jointly, in the same proportion, as I have already observed, with reference to a like remark of your own. will the true genuine individuality of his character be called forth : and though the best men will ever be ready to become all things to all, for the sake of saving some, thev who are accustomed to walk in the light of principle must needs feel a repugnance to that which is merely formal, especially when particular forms are associated with inveterate coiTuptions and abuses. Are all such men to be debarred at once from the ministry of the Church, because thev entertain conscientious scruples on certain points ac- knowledged to be indifferent I The Act of Uniformity says Yes : the spirit of true Catholic Christianity says, A'o. The Church that does so exclude them, maims herself, by forfeiting the serNnces of numbers who would have served her faithfully : many of these, feeling an inward call to the ministrv. which they cannot follow within the pale of the Church, join the ranks of schism : and while the Act of Uniformity thus casts out many of the best fish from the net, all the bad. all the careless, all the imscrupulous, all the unprincipled may abide in it unmolested. .The age which enacted this rigid ecclesiastical uniformity, was ad- dicted, as might be imagined, to the practice of xmiform- alizing all things. It tried to uniformalize men's heads by dressing them out in fuUbottomed wigs. It tried to uni- formalize trees by cutting them into regular shapes. It could not bear the free growth and luxuriance of nature. Yet even trees, if they have any life, disregard the Act of Uniformity, and branch forth according to their kinds, so that the shears have constant work to clip their excres- cences ; and none submit quietly except the dead. What then is to be the symbol of the imity of a national DEDICATION. 39 Church 'i On this head I feel sure of havhig your cordial concurrence ; and to you, as to me, it cannot but be a satisfaction, that on this head we have the authority of that great teacher, whom we both admire and honour, and to whom we both thankfully acknowledge the deepest intellectual obligations. Coleridge, in his Notes on Bax- ter's Life of himself, which are rich in valuable remarks on ecclesiastical matters, speaks of a Liturgy as the only means whereby the unity of doctrine and worship requisite in a national Church can be effectually and beneficially secured. A Liturgy does this, because it is not an out- ward bond, — so far as it is turned into such, its beneficial operation is frustrated, — but because it addresses itself im- mediately to the heart and mind in the moments of their highest exaltation, and awakens and bears aloft the slum- bering spirit, — because by means of it we are knit toge- ther into one body in the presence of God, joining in pouring forth the same prayers, one with another and one for another, the same confession of sin, the same suppli- cations for mercy and grace, the same thanksgivings and hymns of praise. But how, it may be askt, can a Liturgy be upheld, unless there be uniformity in its ob- servance '{ That it may subsist for centuries, and be a great blessing to a nation, with something far short of absolute uniformity, is sufficiently proved by the history of our own Church since the Reformation : for in spite of Acts of Parliament, which aimed at moral impossibilities, it is notorious that diversities of practice in sundry respects have prevailed. In essentials indeed, in all that pertains to the foundations of the Christian faith, a diffierence may involve a severance from the body of the Church, or at all events rightfully exclude a man from the office of 40 DEDICATION. teaching therein. But it is well known that, on the prin- cipal points of doctrine, the original Nonconformists, and the bulk of those who have been called the Orthodox Dissenters, have readily assented to the tenets of our Articles, and to the spirit of the chief part of our Liturgy. The differences and controversies have almost all been on secondary points, and for the main part with regard to /natters acknowledged to be indifferent. Yet, as the conferences on these questions were conducted on the general assumption that uniformity was indispensable, they were utterly useless. The dominant party brought for- ward what they deemed, and what commonly were, suffi- cient arguments^ to justify the establisht practice ; and then they thought they had done all they were called ujjon to do. Few things are sadder than the records of those con- ferences. They display learning, ingenuity, logical and sophistical dexterity, but hardly a gleam of Christian spirit, of that gentleness, meekness, forbearance, or of that desire for peace and unity, which ought to have presided at them. Hence the remonstrants were dismist uncon- vinced, and rather confirmed than shaken in their oppo- sition. Whereas, if the right order had not been inverted, — if the parties in the confei-ence had set before their minds that their aim should be to cherish unity, instead of enforcing uniformity, — if they had rightly understood that the blessing of a Liturgy is not, that it makes the whole congregation repeat the same words, and go through the same postures and gestures, but that it touches their hearts with the same live coal from the altar, and unites them in the consciousness of the same need, the same weakness, the same frailty, in the same cry for mercy and help, in the assurance of the same gracious deliverance. DEDICATION. 41 and in the same song's of thankfulness and praise, — surely it would have been recognized that the primary ought not to be sacrificed to the secondary, the essential to the indifferent ; it would have been felt that whatever tended to disturb and mar this heavenly unity ought to be done away. The question would no longer have been, can we find a sufficient authority in antiquity, or in the reason of things, to justify this practice I but, is this practice of such paramount importance, so intimately bound up with the life of Christian truth, that we must rather cast our brethren out of the Church, than allow them to remain in the Church, if they will not conform to it ? Had there been anything like such a hearty desire to remove the stumblingblocks, the chief part of them would have been removed. I do not mean that the Nonconformists ought to have been allowed to remodel the Prayerbook at will, or to expunge or alter any parts of it that were dear to the rest of the Church. But how easy would it have been to have inti'oduced a few more double forms, leaving it to the discretion of the minister to choose which he preferred ! In fact this very course, which otherwise would doubtless be branded as a device of modern liber- alism, is -pointed out ex])licitly in the King's admirable Declaration above referred to. Some may fancy that such diversities of practice between neighbouring parishes would have led to disputes ; and you yourself seem to favour such a notion, when you say that, "if we lack inward unity among ourselves, still there is no reason why we should inflict the visible tokens of our disunion upon the flocks committed to our charge." For my own part however, I am persuaded that, were it not for the meddling cravers after uniformity, our flocks would pay little heed to such 42 DEDICATION. diversities of practice, at least if we are careful to feed them with that which is more substantial. You probably remember J eremy Taylor's excellent remarks on a kindred subject at the beginning of his Liberty of P ropliesylnrj : still you will not forbid my quoting words so full of mild wisdom, written in a spirit so congenial to your own. " We see that in many things, and those of great concern- ment, men allow to themselves and to each other a liberty of disagreeing, and no hurt neither. If diversity of opi- nions were of itself the cause of mischiefs, it would be so ever ; but that we see it is not. For there are disputes in Christendom concerning matters of greater concernment than most of those opinions that distinguish sects and make factions ; and yet, because men are permitted to differ in those great matters, such evils are not consequent to such differences, as are to the uncharitable managing of smaller and more inconsiderable questions. It is of greater con- sequence to believe right in the question of the validity or invalidity of a deathbed repentance, than to believe aright in the question of purgatory ; and the consequences of the doctrine of predetermination are of deeper and more ma- terial consideration, than the products of the belief of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of private masses : and yet these great concernments, where a liberty of prophesying in these questions hath been permitted, have made no distinct communion, no sects of Christians ; and the others have ; and so have these too in those places where they have peremptorily been determined on either side. Since then, if men are quiet and charitable in some disagreeings, that then and there the inconvenience ceases ; if they were so in all others, where lawfully they might, — and they may in most, — Christendom should be no longer rent in pieces. IJEUICATION. but would be redintegrated in a new Pentecost." These words apply with still greater force to such matters as are merely ceremonial ; with regard to which, disputes so readily flare up, because the grounds of them strike upon the senses and cannot be overlookt, and because all manner of persons are hence easily led to take part in them. And surely we might learn this lesson at least from the discrepancies in the Gospels, that differences of the letter are immaterial when the spirit is one. Even in the two records of the Lord's Prayer, brief as it is, there are diversities : for the Spirit of God is more careful to guide the thoughts of the heart, than the words of the lips. I know, they who desire to act in the manner here re- commended, are sure to be met with those stupid and mis- chievous saws, that one concession brings on another, and that, when you have once begun to give way and to change, you can never tell where you will be able to stop. Harmless as these sayings may seem in their utter fiituity, it is difficult to estimate the mass of injury they have done to mankind. By means of them pride and indo- lence and obstinacy have bolstered themselves up in their favorite system of inertness, gaining the too ready concur- rence of the timid and feebleminded good. Nor have these sayings, when listened to, ever failed to justify themselves. For they withhold men from conceding, until the conces- sion is extorted from them : and then it is yielded grudg- ingly, reluctantly ; it does not come as an act of grace, and thus carries no grace to the receivers ; who, irritated by long contention, and having learnt their own strength from the constraint they have exercised over their ad- versaries, have been prepared to crave for more, and 44 DEDICATION. emboldened to insist upon it. Surely a wise man will say, If a concession ought to he made, let me make it forthwith, and thus gain that only real strength loMch arises from being in the right. Then, should a concession which ought not to he made, he demanded of me, the very strength accruing to me from this act will hetter enahle me to refuse it. 0 that people could be brought to believe that right is always might, and that wrong is always weakness ! In the remarks which I have allowed myself to make on the Acts of Uniformity, you may perhaps think I have been proceeding on a misconception of your meaning ; for that you never intended to express, nor do your words imply, any approval of a compulsory uniformity, as a means to unity, but merely of such a uniformity as shall result from the voluntary sacrifice of individual prejudices and predilections, out of deference to authority, and from the desire of peace and concord. I know it, my friend : the kindness of your heart would shrink from penalties to enforce uniformity, while your conviction of the spiritual character of Christian truth would discern that such measures are repugnant to the Gospel, and no less in- efficient for producing their designed effect, than the chains of the demoniac among the tombs were to restore him to his right mind. Still the Acts of Uni- formity, as appears on the face of them, with all their disastrous eifects, were founded in great measure on the very opinion which you have been maintaining, that uni- formity is indispensable to unity, and a means to it. And though it is a happy privilege of the meek and pious, that errours of human opinion, however firinly held by them intellectually, will be counteracted and neutralized by the higher wisdom of the heart, yet in DEniCATION. 45 ordinary minds such errours beget restless wishes to realize false ideals ; and when a man of arbitrary temper, like Laud, is invested with authority, they lead him, if they fall in with the bent of his mind, to work much mischief. Hence it seems to me that no slight service would be rendered to the Church, if any one could help toward setting men's minds right on the relation between unity and uniformity, and toward exploding the noxious errour that uniformity is indispensable to unity. For though the abovementioned illustrations of the mischiefs which this errour has caused, are taken from bygone ages of our Church, the need of the warning which they hold out is not gone by. At this day far too many persons are harassing themselves and their neighbours through their anxiety to establish a strict uniformity : too many are magnifying rites and ceremonies, vestments and pos- tures, as if these were the essentials of Christian wor- ship, and as if the peace of the Church might be com- promised for the sake of attaining to uniformity in such things. At this day how few understand and recognize the great truth enunciated in the words quoted above, that differentiae rituum commendant unitatem doctrinae ! Yes, my friend, let us seek unity with all our heart and soul, but not by the way of uniformity, which will never lead to it, but will waste our time by throwing up trippingstones at every other step. Let us rather seek it by those spiritual means which our Lord gave to His Church, by doing what in us lies to draw our brethren more and more to the one Faith in the one Lord thi-ough the one Spirit, whereby alone can any be brought to the one God and Father of all. Let us seek it, as our beloved father. Bishop Otter, sought it, by endeavouring 46 DEDICATION. to inspire others with the same love which filled his own breast. The blessings which sprang from his brief episco- pate may convince us, if we needed a fresh proof, that this is the true way to seek unity, the more excellent way, which has too commonly been abandoned for the barren, unprofitable way of uniformity. From him, our beloved father, as I bid you fare- well, my thoughts turn to another dear Friend, who has in like manner been taken from us to his reward. He too had the true principle of unity in his heart, the love of God, manifesting itself in overflowing love to man. God has taken him from us to a world where all his yearnings after love and unity will be satis- fied ; but to us, to this Diocese, the loss is a heavy one ; few could be so heavy. At our public Meetings, at which, in this divided and distracted state of our Church, dis- cordant opinions and feelings will sometimes find utterance, it was ever his wont to call us away from these points of contention, and to pour a reconciling spirit over the whole ; wherefore, whenever I had auA thing to do with the arrangement of such jSIeetings, I endeavoured to man- age that our departed friend should close the discussion. For his Christian sincerity and earnestness and love, and his entire freedom from party-spirit, his ready recognition of every spark of divine grace, under whatever form it might shew itself, were known and appreciated by all ; and every asperity of feeling was straightway dispelled, as soon as Robert Anderson began to speak. By the following Sermon I am especially reminded of him in more ways than one : for he, in his usual affectionate manner, proposed at our Anniversary Meeting that I should be requested to print it ; and since then, with that DEDICATION. 47 gentle playfulness which so well became him, he has several times rallied me for my long delay. Moreover, when I came down from the pulpit, he was the first person who spoke to me ; and as his heart was ever longing after that blessed Communion whereby the faithful become one with each other in their Lord, he exclaimed with reference to the wish I had exprest, " 0 wTiy are we not gouifj now to kneel hefore that tahle, and partake one with another of the blessed Body and Blood of the Saviour V Such recollections become precious, when they belong to one, who, we may feel a confident trust, has entered into the perfect Communion of the Saints in the presence of the Lord. To Bishop Shuttleworth we owe it that the next Anni- versary of our Association was no longer destitute of its crowning blessing : and I trust that every fresh Anniver- sary will in like manner renew and strengthen the holy bond of brotherhood among the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese. In this wish and prayer, you, my dear Friend, I know, will join from the bottom of your soul. And now let me crave your forgiveness for this long, and, I fear, wholly unprecedented Dedication ; in which, you will pro- bably say, with one of your placid smiles, I have been quite acting up to my principles, and shewing a grand disdain for everything like uniformity. ^Vhen I began, I thought a few pages would hold all I had to say ; but the deep interest of the subject has led me on : and how many things still remain unsaid, which, it seems to me, might serve to elucidate and establish the propositions I have been attempting to maintain ! I have exprest many differences from the opinions you have given ut- terance to in your Charge ; yet I believe the real 48 DEDICATION. difference between us is far less tlian it would seem. At all events I trust in God that, so long- as we are permitted to live and work together, we shall also be permitted to shew practically, that unity may exist without uniformity, and that the diversities of opinion and feeling, which on many subjects prevail between us, will in no wise impair the unity of affection by which we are bound to each other, or our unity of action in the service which we owe to the Church and her Lord. If I may without presump- tion apply words, which were spoken of wiser and holier men, may the surviver of us be enabled to say, as Arch- bishop Bramhall said of himself and Ussher, who in like manner differed from him on sundry points of opinion and feeling; "I praise God that we were like the candles in the Levitical temple, looking one toward another, and both toward the stem. We had no contention among us, but who should hate contention most, and pursue the peace of the Church with swiftest paces." Your affectionate friend, J. C. Hare. Whitmonda}-, 1843. 4.9 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. Ephesians iv. 4, 5, 6. There is one Body, .and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God .and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. The desire of unity is inherent in man. It pervades all the expressions, all the modifications of his being, and may in a manner be termed an elementary principle of his nature. It lies, very often without his being con- scious of it, at the bottom of all the workings of his mind, which is ever seeking, in one way or other, to infuse unity into the objects of its contemplation, to bring them under one head, to arrange them under one law, to find out some analogy, some relation, some likeness and harmony amongst them. Hence it manifests itself more or less in the whole structure of language, in the speech of the rudest tribes, as well as of the most refined. For the whole of language, even among the rudest tribes, is made up of general terms ; that is, of words which do not merely stand for one single act or object, but are common to seve- ral, and which always imply certain processes whereby the mind has exerted its unifying power in classing a number under one head. Every one who has watcht the deve- lopment of the minds of children, must have noticed how rapid and powerful this unifying spirit is in them, E 50 THE I'NITY OF THE CHURCH. how eagerly they exercise their childish royalty in hring- ing things together in new associations and combinations. On the other hand the faculty of detecting differences is less vivid in them. As that does not spring from an in- ward principle, but is rather forced upon the mind by the observation of outward objects, it requires the train- ing and disciphne of experience, and thus belongs to the wisdom of practical life, beyond which few are allowed to soar. Nevertheless in this, as in so many other re- spects, the highest wisdom returns to that, which had been the instinctive utterance of childhood ; and while the efforts of all Science are to discover and demonstrate the unity of the laws of nature, the might of Poetry is dis- played in investing all things with a unity of feeling, and Philosophy is ever yearning and seeking after the one allpervading principle of the universe. That this desire of beholding unity in all things arises from that unity of consciousness, in which man was made, and in which his Maker mirrored His own unity, cannot well be doubted. But while we have this principle of unity within us, we are set in the midst of a world, in which everything, when we first look out over it, seems to jar and war against all unity, a world which at first sight may seem to be just emerging or subsiding out of Chaos. The character of the outward world, as it presents itself to our senses, is not unity, but multitude. It rushes upon us wave after wave, with a confused noise of many waters, entering into our minds by every inlet, taking possession of us, and almost overwhelming us. Its name is Legion. We try to bind it ; but it bursts our chains. We strive with all the craft of our understanding, we send out the whole host of our faculties, to reduce it to unity : THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 51 for a while it seems to submit ; we flatter ourselves that our object is effected : when anon we perceive that a thread in our network has sHpt, whereby the whole un- ravels, and all the treasures, which we deemed secured in it, ai-e scattered abroad. The principle, I said, which leads and compells us to seek for unity in all the objects of our contemplation, notwithstanding the diversity and multiplicity and con- trariety wherewith they assail us, is the unity of our con- sciousness, in which our Divine Maker mirrored the unity of His own being. Accordingly it is only so far as we retain this true unity in ourselves, that we can succeed in discovering a living unity without us. That there must be an essential unity pervading all God^s works, is implied indeed in the very fact of their being His works. Even in man's works, in the works of the same man, there is a unity, whereby they reveal the mind they spring from ; though, as in all men there is more or less of dis- order and distraction, the harmony in all has been marred and is incomplete. In a far higher degree then must there be a unity running through all the works of Him who is essentially and entirely and indivisibly and eternally One. But this true unity we cannot make out, unless we gain sight of its principle, unless we have hold of the only clue with the aid of which we can explore the multitudinous chambers in the endless labyrinth of the universe, — unless we can trace back the countless streams of life to their one primary source in the Wisdom and Goodness of their Author. Cut off from this source, they seem unconnected, vagrant, often opposite. Hence there are two main causes, through the combined operation of which we are apt to miss unity ; and no man has ever E 2 52 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. lived, over M'liom these two causes have not both of them continually exercised more or less sway. Both of them are the results of that separation from God, of that depra- vation of the Divine Idea in man, which took place at the Fall ; unless it would be more correct to say that they are both parts of that very act through which man fell. The first of these two causes lies in that departure and . estrangement from God, whereby man has set up his own will in the place of God's will, his own wisdom in place of God's wisdom, and has sought in his own understanding for the key to the mysteries of the universe, instead of endeavouring to ascertain the mind of God by a patient and diligent examination of the various manifestations wherein that mind is revealed. Thus man quitted the true centre of truth, and took his stand at a false centre, even his own individual self, and so, looking from that false centre, saw everything distorted, disproportioned, out of place, and in confusion. This proneness to take a false centre, — to set up ourselves as the centre of all things, round which all things are to revolve, to which all things are to be subordinate, and for the sake of which all things were made, — is so strong in our fallen nature, that in no respect can it be overcome, unless by laborious and long- continued experience and reflexion. The most conspi- cuous example of this propensity, which the history of human knowledge presents, is the well-known one of the Ptolemaic system of the universe ; M'liich, starting from the self-centring notion, that this earth, the habitation of man, must needs be the centre of the heavenly sphere, — a notion universal and almost indelible, — endeavoured with singular ingenuity to account for all the phenomena of THE UNITY OF THK CHURCH. 53 the heavens on this erroneous hypothesis. In this case however the fallacy is one, which the nature of our con- sciousness and that of our perceptive organs force upon us. It is one common to all mankind, resulting inevitably from their position and constitution ; and since it is but slightly connected with the will, or referable to any moral obliquity, no mischief of importance has accrued from it. Indeed the theory founded thereon enabled men to gain divers correct glimpses of the true unity of the world. Of a far worse character are the errours arising, not from a false position common to all mankind, but from that which is peculiar and individual, — the errours mixt up with individual partialities or antipathies, springing from national or local prejudices, from those of a class, of a form of government, of a sect. In all these and sundry other ways, man has ever been apt to make himself the centre of all things, to make the accidents of his own condition the canon of right and wrong, so that whatever agrees Avith his own circumstances is to be admired and ap- proved, whatever differs from them is to be reprobated and condemned. Our own form of government, we assume and proclaim, is the only good form of government ; our own laws are the only wise laws ; our own creed is the only true creed ; and whatever differs from it is not only false intellectually, but implies a vicious and degraded state of mind. Nay, even the caprices of our manners, and the very fashions of our dress, we magnify, so as to look with displeasure on everything that does not accord with them. In these feelings and thoughts, as in all that are widely diffused, there is an element of truth ; else they could not have gained their currency : in all coin, however mixt with alloy, there is a portion of the 54 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. genuine metal. It is right and fitting that we should prize and love and be thankful for the manifold blessings with which the goodness of God has surrounded us in this world. It is right and fitting that we should love our country, our home, the home of our fathers, the laws and institutions under which they and we have grown up, the Church in which God has placed us, with all its rites and ordinances. We should love these blessings thank- fully, faithfully, fervently, devotedly, so as to count it an honour and privilege if we are permitted to offer up any sacrifice, even that of our lives, in defending and preserv- ing them. Allowably too may we tal'e pleasure in the stones of our country, and favour the dust thereof. That which is Avrong and blameworthy and injurious, is not our love and admiration for our own country, but our dislike and reprobation of other countries, not that which is positive in our feelings, but that which is negative and exclusiA^e, not our attachment to that which we know, but our con- tempt for that of which we are ignorant. It is, that our light, after the manner of earthly lights, only sets forth and glorifies itself, and the objects immediately around, throwing the distance into thicker darkness, instead of being ditfusive, like heavenly lights, and iriadiating all things. Nor is this negative portion of our feelings at all requisite, as some may narrowmindedly suppose, for the support of the positive. Even if we wanted a crutch to lean on, we should, not strengthen our footing by using our crutch as a club to strike with. The fact is, this tendency to despise that which we have not, does not proceed from any genuine, deep, reverent love for that which we have : love envieth not, vatmteth not itself, is not easily puffed tip. The spirit I have been speaking of is THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH, 55 much more nearly akin to that vanity and self-importance, which identifies all its circumstances with itself, and hence regards every deviation from those circumstances as a personal affront and offense. If we English are so noto- rious among the nations of Europe for our insolent bearing toward foreiners, surely we are no less notorious for our political squabbles and animosities, for our religious feuds and antipathies, and for a general spirit of dissatisfaction at home. Whereas, if our love were rightly principled, and referred its objects to their true source, it would likewise observe its due proportions. While we loved God as the Author and Giver of all our blessings, and were especially thankful to him for all those gifts, which He has poured out so bountifully upon us, and which so far exceed our deserts, we should bear in mind that God has other crear tures beside ourselves, whom He likewise loves, and like- wise vouchsafes to bless. We should bear in mind that His power of blessing is not stinted, like that of the patriarch, who had only one blessing to give ; but that His are manifold, yea, without number and end, infinite as His own infinite Wisdom and Goodness ; and that, pre- cious and dear as are those which He bestows upon us, those which He bestows upon others are likewise precious as coming from Him, and dear to the persons to whom He gives them. This then is one of the main causes of errour, spreading far and wide, through every region of thought and action, — of errour, whereby we entirely miss the harmony and unity of truth, and become involved in endless controver- sies and contradictions. We have strayed away from the One Divine Universal Centre, and have set up a multitude of arbitrary fictitious centres in its stead ; so that each 56 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. people has its own centre, each class has its own centre, each party and sect has its own centre, nay, each indi- vidual man has his o"mi centre ; and that is himself. Hence, inasmuch as we all look out from a different point of view, and yet are persuaded that our point of view is the centre of the universe, we all see all things differently : each people has its own system of truth ; each class and party and sect has its own system of truth ; each individual man has his own system of truth. This too each will maintain, with pen and sword, or, it may be, with anathemas and mitos da fe, to he the only true system, and that all others are false and counterfeit. Hereby we all fail of attaining to any right principle of unity. Instead of sailing out, as we might do under the guidance of the heavens, with one consent from all parts of the earth on the same great voyage of discovery after truth, we are broken up and scattered hither and thither, with no other help to steer through the darkness, than the reflexion of our own sternlights in the waters. The very faculties of our minds, which were given to us in divers proportions and combinations, to the end that each might bear its appropriate part in the one great work, being infected with the selfish taint, become propagaters of division, while they contend and jangle with each other for the supremacy. The poet asserts that the imagina- tion is tlie one ennobling faculty in man, and so loses the substantial ground of reality, and bewilders himself among the clouds. The philosopher worships what he calls reason, and entangles himself in the mazes of formal abstractions. The man of the world can recognize no truth except in the practical understanding dealing with the objects of sense, and tlius run round a ring in THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 57 the dreary sandy wilderness of utilitarianism, until at length he sinks down exhausted in seme epicurean oasis. Thus we are come to the second great destroyer of unity, and cause of division. The first is our setting up ourselves, our own will, our own fancies, our own notions, as the centre of the universe, instead of the will and mind of God. The second is our having given up our hearts to the creature, instead of the Creator, our having set our affections on earthly things, which are number- less, vague, fleeting, mob-like, and having drawn them away from heavenly things, which roll in imperturbable unison around the eternal throne. When we changed the glory of the incorruptible God into images made like to corruptible man, and to birds and fourfooted beasts and creeping things, then we lost the source, the prin- ciple, the very idea of unity : and as our desires attacht themselves to these things, and our lusts laid hold on them, and our covetousness and ambition tried to seize larger and larger masses of them, they became the occa- sions of perpetual contention and strife ; whence every man's hand and every man's heart was set against his neighbour. Nor is this division and contrariety merely a division and contrariety between man and man : a like division and contrariety and struggle is found in the heart and soul of each man. When we fell away from God, our hearts and souls were crackt and rent in twain by the violence of the fall. Hence, when we look into ourselves, instead of concord and unity, we see the dark chasm of sin cleaving the soul asunder ; and whithersoever we look out of ourselves, we see the reflexion of it stretching across both earth iuhI heaven. Sin, the universal solvent, 58 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. breaks up the heart and the mind into a multitude of insulated faculties and feelings ; and since its first essen- tial act was the rejection of law, — which is the outward bond, as love is the inward principle, of all union, — it can behold nothing but isolation and desolation around it. Nay, in its audacity it even dared to dissolve the unity of the Divine Idea into a multitude of fictitious deities, deeming nothing too base, nothing too foul, nothing too depraved, to be seated on a throne in the heavens. Thus man was lured and dragged so far away from the only true principle of unity, that he plunged into all the extra- vagances and all the abominations of Polytheism. Or, if some more thoughtful men, meditating on the traces of unity still left in their own minds, became desirous of seeing a counterpart of that unity in the outward world, they forgot what had marred that unity; they forgot that evil of every kind is utterly incompatible with unity, and destructive of it ; and so, in shrinking from the fantas- tical and revolting absurdities of Polytheism, they fell back into the dead blank of Pantheism. By these two causes, which pervade and taint all the workings of our fallen being, the desire of unity, which is inherent in man according to the idea of his nature, is thwarted and hindered from realizing itself either in thought or in action. When God said. The Lord thy God is one God, the true principle of all unity was proclaimed to mankind : but from this unity man had turned away, when he gave himself up to the love and worship of self, and to the love and worship of the creature. There is still indeed a principle of unity in our understanding, the part of our nature which has suffered the least from the Fall ; and by this principle, as we have seen already. THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 69 its movements, whether conscioiasly or unconsciously, are swayed and regulated : but all manner of principles of division sprout out of our will, and our ill-governed affections and passions. These, if they were allowed to run riot, would tear the world to tatters ; and only by a hard, persevering struggle has the principle of unity been able from the beginning to keep these principles of division in check. It has united men into families : it has united families into nations ; it has organized nations into a kind of unity under the authority of one ruling head : it has tried to bind the tumultuous wills and pas- sions of the multitude bv the chains of law. The history of these struggles with their various vicissitudes forms the history of the world. The only unity however, that man could attain to in this way, is the negative, outward, abstract, formal unity of the understanding, which masses its objects together by overlooking or repressing what- ever individualizes and would keep them apart, — the unity of unicity and of uniformity, — not the unity which dis- cerns the divine central principle in them, and is no way embarrast by the endless variety of its manifestations, but rather rejoices therein, even as we rejoice when we look at the infinite diversity of the constellations in . the one starry sky. In families indeed, where the spirit of love has always found the freest play, some approximations have from time to time been made to this higher unity, recognizing the individuality of each several member : but in states almost the only object of governments has been to repress that which would violate unity ; and Law has mostly recognized that its office is purely negative, and that its appropriate voice is Thou shalt not. When it has aimed at anything beyond this, when it has attempted by human 60 THE UNITY OF THE CHUKCH. means to build a tower the top of which should reach to heaven, and which should be a positive centre of union for mankind, the result has proved that it was passing out of its sphere : the band, which was strained too far, has burst ; and, instead of unity, there has issued from the attempt multiplied and widened division. These two causes of division, by which the Spirit of Evil contrived to mar the divine unity of the universe, so far as man has power to do so, — selfwill and the lust of the creature, — have been busy ever since the Fall at .their Satanic work, breeding and fostering division and strife ; and they are scarcely less busy or less powerful in these days than in the worst times of old. That the selfish principle is still dismally active, we see by divisions even in that Church, which was meant by God to be the reuniter and harmonizer of the world ; w^e see it by all manner of divisions in the State, by divisions in every parish, and almost in every household. Everywhere we find an exaggerated estimate of each man's peculiar habits and usages and opinions, and a grievous want of defer- ence and forbearance toward others, an utter want of that reverence which every man has a right to claim for such doctrines, and feelings as are sacred in the eyes of his conscience. All men are convinced that they are tho- roughly right, even in the notions and views which they have taken up the most lightly and unreflectingly ; and they have just force of logic to draw the inference, which they deem inevitable, that everybody who differs fi-om them must be wrong. Nor is the solvent, insulating power of that delusion, by which man gave up his heart and soul to the things of this world, less powerful or less effica- cious than in former ages. Still too it produces the same THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 61 fruits, — on the one side Polytheism, or the idolatrous worship of the creature, and of everything about it that fascinates and intoxicates the senses, only stript of that imaginative halo which in some measure elevated the Polytheism of old, — and on the other side Pantheism, with its fatal denial of moral responsibility, its obliteration of the distinction between right and wrong, and its blind prostration before every phantom of power. More espe- cially has this been manifested in the leveling, anarchal spirit, which has been so overweening in the last and in this generation. For Jacobinism is the form which Pan- theism naturally takes in political life, when it is not re- strained by those feelings and principles of a higher origin, which its more enlightened advocates practically recognize, even while they speculatively reject them. In the civil state, as in the universe, it is anarchal ; and having cast away all moral distinctions, and the only true principles of law and order, it would also destroy all civil distinctions, and everything that bears witness to law and order, and to the permanence of rights, in the constitution of society. Surely every one who hears me must be aware in what terrible forms these aboriginal deadly heresies are still shewing themselves, even in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, even in England, which deems itself the favorite seat of all practical wisdom and moral truth. Now with regard to both these causes we have seen, that the primary reason why they have hindered man from attaining to unity is, that, when he gave himself up to their influence, he abandoned the only true Principle of Unity, and fell away from that Centre, whence alone all things can be seen working together and at one. Thus, whithersoever we look abroad over the earth, if we look 62 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. only with the eyes of our natural understanding, we behold nothing like unity and concord, but variety, diversity, mul- tiplicity, contrariety, discord. And if we look into our- selves, into our own hearts and minds, at the utmost we see a crowd of reluctant faculties, bound together in some few men by the iron hoops of a stern will, but much oftener scattered about, and running confusedly to and fro. What then are we to do, in order that we may fulfill our inherent desire of unity ? whither are we to go, that we may find a true principle of unity I how are the dashing waves of the world to be quelled and husht ? how are the clashing elements of human nature to be harmonized and set at one I To these questions there is only one answer ; and that is to be found in those words of the Apostle, which I read to you at the beginning of this Sermon : There is one Body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one Hope of your calling : one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. As it was in falling away from God that man lost the principle of unity, so it could only be through his being brought back to God, that that principle could be revived within him. He needed to be reconciled to God : he needed to be set at one with God, or atoned. He needed, as we have seen, a twofold atonement : for, as his separa- tion from God had been followed by division within himself, he needed at the same time to be set at one with God, and to be set at one within himself. The manner in which this great work was to be effected, the only way in which it ever was or ever can be effected, is set before us in these words of St Paul. What sublime and wonderful words they are ! The Apostle lookt out over the face of the THE UNITY OF THE CHUKCH. 63 earth ; and what did he see ? Nation warring against nation, faction against faction, school against school, man against man, struggling passions, battling interests, plots, snai-es, fi-aud, rapacious avarice, insatiable ambition, with the Roman empire waving its sword over the heads of mankind, and awing them into servile torpour, while volup- tuousness had relaxt all the traditionary bonds of virtue and moral obligation, so that human nature seemed to be almost crumbling to atoms, or floating like ragged scum on the surface of hell. Even among his own countrymen there were endless dissensions, unceasing feuds. Countless swarms of bodies met the eye; but no spirit breathed life into them. Everything like a spirit that had animated the nations in earlier ages, and infused some sort of unity into them, had fled away. And yet the Apostle, casting his glance over the world, seeing what was not to be seen, and feeling an undoubting assurance of that of which no token appeared, dared to say, There is one Body, and one Sjjirit. For though these words were addrest primarily to the Christian converts at Ephesus, to certify them that they had been called to a participation in this one Body and this one Spirit, it cannot well be questioned that he, to whom, above all the Apostles, was vouchsafed the glorious vision of the reception and indwelling of the nations in the Body of Christ, — he whose special mission it was to declare that the wall of partition had been taken away, and that there should no longer be Jew or Greek, circumcision or un- circumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, male or female, — that is, that no distinction of nationality, of cus- toms or rites, of civilization, of social condition, or of sex, should in any way obstruct the perfect union and unity of those among whom these distinctions subsisted, — so that, 64 THE UNITY or THE CHURCH. notwithstanding these distinctions, Christ shouhl be all, and in all, and that through His indwelling they should all be one, — it cannot be questioned that here also the Apostle of the Gentiles was contemplating the reception of all man- kind into the one holy Body of Christ. This is the one Body he speaks of : he saw that Christ's Church was to be one Body ; and it was to be one Body, because it was to be animated by one Spirit : for thus alone do the mate- rial elements of our fleshly bodies become one, through the one living s\m-it that animates and pervades and organizes them ; and when that living spirit has past away, they moulder into dust. But Christ's Church was indeed to be one Body, because it was to be animated by one Spirit, even the Holy Sjiirit of God, whom the Father sent down from heaven to dwell for ever in the hearts of all such as believe in His Onlybegotten Son. This too is the one hope of our calling, the sanctifying presence of the one Spirit, obtained for us by the merits and intercession of the Eternal Son. Such, the Apostle saw, was to be the perfect unity of the Church, according to the will of God, who from the beginning purpost to shew forth His own Unity, no less than His own fulness, in the whole created universe. The Church was to be one Body, and one Spirit, one Body animated by the one Spirit of God, according to the one blessed Hope whereunto it had been called, by Him who became incarnate to this end, that all mankind might gather around His all-atoning Cross. We were to be re- stored to the Unity, which we had forsaken and forfeited. We were to be brought back to the One Eternal Principle of Unity, who is above all, and through all, and who also purpost to be in us all. This however could not be done THE UNITY OF TII H CHURCH. 65 immediately. We liad turned away from God ; we had hidden ourselves from Him ; and when He called to us, we fled and hid ourselves more and more in the deep, sunless, pathless forest of the world ; we hid ourselves in the groves of an idolatrous Polytheism. To the Jews indeed God had revealed Himself in His Unity. Hear^ 0 Israel, He had declared, the Lord thy God is one Lord. He had declared also, what followed of necessity from this His eternal Unity, that we, His reasonable creatures, being endowed with the faculty of knowing Him, were bound to love our one God tcith all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. But this we could not do with the simi)li- city and integrity of unbroken innocence : we could not do it even with the entireness with which a child gives its heart to its parents. For we had given up our hearts to the things of this world ; and the world had fixt its fangs into them ; and we could not free them, except by tearing them away ; nor could this be done without blood. Hence the Jews could only approach God through the Law, every command of which was designed, as it were, to free men's hearts from the fangs of the world, to loosen one of the nails whereby man was fastened to the cross of this world. Moreover, as man's departure from the one God was caused by his giving up his heart to the things of this world, God ordained that men should bring offerings of the things of this world to Him, both as an acknowledgement that He was the Lord of the whole material world, no less than of man- kind, and as a token that they were bound and were willing to make sacrifice of the things of this world, whereby they had been withdrawn from their communion with the one God, in order that they might be received again into that communion And as every act of obedience to the La\v was 66 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. a biudiug and resigning of selfwill, and every offering was a giving up of the things of this world, so these latter sacrifices further shewed that the former in themselves were incomplete, and required a higher pm'ificatory and sanctificatory power to make up for their deficiencies. They declared that man's obedience by itself could never take away sin ; and while his reason and conscience pro- nounced that the higher could never be purified and sanc- tified by the lower, and accordingly that the blood of bulls and rams could not take away sin, they were a witness to him that he needed a purification and sanctifieation beyond himself, and carried his thoughts and hopes and desires onward to the ftilfilment of that which they typified and foreshewed. Thus the one God could not be approacht by the Jews, except through the works of the Law, and through typical sacrifices ; and therefore He further declared Himself to be a Consuming Fire. For by the works of the Law no man can approach to God : no man could do so then ; no man can do so now. If any man fancies he can approach to God by the works of the Law, the Law is still like the flaming sword of the Cherubim, turning every way, and keeping the way of the Tree of Life. The action of law, as law, is outward, and, if it produces any manner of unity, can only effect this forcibly, by destroying what resists it, and fiising things into one mass. Nor can any man really approach to God by means of types and ordinances, or anything symbolical ; he could not then, — nor can he now, — unless he has already been brought nigh to God by the Spirit, enabling him to look through that outward veil, which has ever been so apt to arrest his sight, and to jire- vent his discerning what lies beyond and behind it. And THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 67 thus it came to pass here again, that men lost sight of the Divine Principle of Unity in the multiplicity of commands and observances : here again they turned from the worship of the Creator to the idolatry of the creature, from the reverent, self-sacrificing service of the Lawgiver to the dis- putatious, self-justifying observance of particular ordinances and ceremonies. For there is but one way in which we can really be brought back to the One God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and who dwells in all His servants ; and that way is through the one Lord who has reconciled us to God, — through the one Faith in Him, whereby we receive Him into us, — and through the one Baptism, whereby we are purged from those sins which keep us away from Him, and are made partakers of the gift of the one sanctifying indwelling Spirit. Through Christ, and through Him alone, we have power given to us to approach to the one God and Father of all. He is the Fulfilment of the Law, so that the Law shall no longer keep us away from God, entangled in its meshes. He is likewise the Fulfilment of the types and rites, so that, after we have beheld His glory, we can no longer be deluded by phantoms and shadows into mistaking them for realities. When He was lifted up on high. He was to draw all men to Him, teaching them by the lesson of His cross, that they were to draw nigh to God, not by this work or that work, not by the sacrifice of this thing or that thing, — for that all partial obedience and service left them in their state of disunion and separation, — but by the entire sacrifice and resignation of their whole being to the will of God. In Him, the one Lord, the invisible Godhead dwelt visibly upon earth : in Him, the second Adam, the divine image was renewed, to be communicated F 2 68 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. to the fallen race sprung from the first Adam. In Him, the one Head, and through Him, the Church becomes one Body, and receives the one Spirit to abide in it. And how are we made partakers of the Unity which Christ came to bring back to us ? By Faith ; by the one Faith, whereby we receive Him into our hearts as our Saviour, as our Mediator, as our Atonement, as the one In- carnate God, through whom our human nature is restored to its communion with the divine ; by that Faith, which, according to our Lord's last command, was to precede the baptismal purification and renewal of the believer. But while we continue under the dominion of sin, and under the condemnation incurred by it, Faith is almost powerless. The moment the eyes of Faith are unsealed, it recognizes its own blindness and feebleness : its first utterance is, Help my unbelief. Therefore, in order to vivify our Faith, our one Lord instituted His one Baptism, the Baptism in the name of the one undivided Trinity, wherein by one Spirit we are all baptized into one Body. Thus, being led by our one Lord, and united to Him by one Faith, and incorporated into His Body by one Baptism, we are enabled to approach to the one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all. These then, we are authorized to declare, are the essen- tial, indispensable principles of Unity in that Body of Christ, which is ordained to embrace all nations and kindreds and languages. And the Unity thus infused into us is to be maintained by that Communion in the Body of Christ, wherein, as the Bread is one, we, being many, become one Body. Without these there can be no unity. Without THE I'NITY OF THE CHURCH. 69 these we cannot be reunited to God ; and therefore we cannot have any stable principle of unity, powerful enough to calm and harmonize the discordant elements of our nature, and to sway the course of our lives among the manifold forces which would drive us this way and that. But when we are brought nigh to God in this manner, we are no longer left to the various precepts of the Law, which merely teach us to coast the skirts of the land of Duty. The one principle of Love, which alone fulfills the Law, and which spreads and branches out through our whole being, as the living source of a diviner law, is revealed to us ; and under its calm and mighty imjiulses we may sail across the wide ocean, and circumnavigate the* globe. These are the living principles of unity in the Church, whereby the Church is made one with her Lord : these are the primary pervading principles of that unity ; and beside these there are no other such. Other ordinances and insti- tutions may be valuable in a secondary and instrumental manner, for the sake of preserving the vinity of the Church unimpaired in the midst of an unfriendly and often hostile world, — with a view to the transmission of the one Faith and the one Baptism in their uncorrupted purity from generation to generation, — or in order to the maintenance of order and discipline. But these primary essential prin- ciples of unity are to be kept studiously distinct from whatever is secondary and accidental, however important and valuable as an accident. From all such things the principles enumerated by the Apostle are to be carefully distinguisht, — the one Faith, and the one Baptism, whereby we become members of the one Body of our one Lord, 70 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. animated by the one Spirit of promise, and thus are brought home and reconciled to the one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in us all. Nor is this caution superfluous. For as through the whole history of man prior to the birth of Christ we find a universal proneness to substitute the idolatry of the crea- ture for the worship of the Creator, — a proneness betray- ing its carnal origin by its readiness and zeal in prostrating itself before objects physically the meanest and morally the most corrupt, — in like manner since the birth of Christ, and the setting up of His Church as the antagonist of the world, that Church has in all ages been grievously troubled and disordered by a similar proneness to look at the out- ward instead of the inward, to set up the secondary on a level with, if not above, the primary, and to cling more tenaciously and passionately to the formal than to the spiri- tual. This was the case from the very first : the Jews wisht to Judaize the whole Church : so in after times did the Eomans wish to Romanize it : much reason therefore have we to beware lest we be infected with a desire of Anglicizing the whole Church, lest we be reluctant to recognize and acknowledge the Church of the Lord, unless her whole stature and gait anil garb be exactly the same as we ourselves are familiar with. The contest against this narrow selfish spirit within the Church was a main part of the mission assigned to the great Apostle of the Grentiles : and from him may we best learn to discriminate between those institutions and ordinances which may vary with time and place and national habits and condition, and those principles which are set before us in the text, and without which none can truly be members of the one Body, or animated by the one Spirit. THE UNITY OP THE CHUKCH. 71 The time will not allow me to enforce these remarks by the citation of particular instances, in which false condi- tions of unity have been set up as indispensable in the Churcli, and which might need some investigation to ex- plain their fallacy, and to trace their mischievous effects. I can do no more than refer to that one instance, which has been the most conspicuous and the most calamitous. And surely you will already have anticipated me in cast- ing your minds back on that period of many centuries, during which the Church of Christ was not content with her one Lord, and her one Faith, and her one Baptism, but, having almost let slip that one Faith in her one invi- sible Lord, deemed it requisite to have a visible Head, and set up her one Bishop in the same category with her one Lord. Alas, too, we know that this dismal errour is still holding captive a very large part of Christendom, be- numbing the spirit, as its natural consequence, with a load of ceremonial and ritual observances, and strengthening the carnal tendency to elevate the outward and visible above the inward and invisible. And though the blessed Reforma- tion was sent by God to redeem the Church from this ido- latry, the propensities by which it had been corrupted, were not eradicated thereby, but have shot up from time to time, admouishing us that it is absolutely necessary, so long as we continue in our earthly tabernacle, that we should watch and pray diligently and assiduously against all idola- tries, whether of the flesh or of the carnal understanding. So momentous is that lesson, with which the beloved dis- ciple closes his Epistle, a lesson which at first we might incline to think belonged solely to long extinct ages, but which, foreseeing what an ever-sprouting crop of idolatries would in all ages contend with the love of Christ, and try 72 THE UNITY 01' THE CHURCH. to supplant it in the hearts of His pi-ofessiug followers, he bequeathed with the emphasis of last words to the Church, Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Assuredly too we have great need of this lesson in our days, — no age ever had greater, — although by different classes it is needed in different, and almost opposite directions. For while the world is rioting unrestrainedly in numberless kinds of idolatry, — in the idolatry of the flesh, in the idol- atry of Mammon, in the idolatry of machinery, in the idolatry of power, in the idolatry of the gifts of the under- standing, and of the works of the understanding, in the idol- atry of luxury and ease and comfort, and in every other form of the idolatry of self, — at the same time, in order to counteract these grosser worldly idolatries, which have been sprouting up in these latter years no less rankly than the giants were fabled of old to have sprung out of the first teeming throes of the elements, it has been ordained that we should return, after a long period of indifference and laxity, to a higher appreciation of whatever is valuable and venerable in the institutions and ordinances of the Church. Hence we are again exposed to a danger, which is more formidable to the Church than all the idolatries of the world, because it paralyses the arm wherewith we are to combat and cast down those idolatries, — the danger of cherishing new or antiquated foi-ms of idolatry within cm- own bosom ; the more so as the very impetus of a rebound is apt to carry people into an opposite excess ; while they seem to themselves to be merely discharging a debt, in fondling and exaggerating what has been unduly neglected and depreciated. Thus we are especially likely to revive the old errour of placing other conditions of unity on a par with the apostolic principles, the one Faith and THE UNITY OK THE CHURCH. 73 the one Baptism, whereby, through the power of the one Spirit, we are incorporated into the one Body of Christ, and reconciled by Him to the one God and Father of all. For still the selfish spirit is at work, and as busy as ever. The self-glorifying negative spirit, which magnifies all the circumstances of its own condition, and despises and con- demns whatever differs from them, is quite as active in this generation, as in the most narrowminded of those that have past away ; and in no country does it exercise a greater sway than in England. We are still very apt to believe that God made and redeemed the world for us only, not for us along with the rest of His Church, but merely for us, and for those who agree with us, so far as they do agree with us. Still in the stiffness of our minds we find it hard to conceive how unity can mean anything but unicity ; whereas the higher idea of unity is that which is identical with universality or catholicity. The one Church, which is the one Body animated by the one Spirit, is the universal catholic Church, comprising all who are united to Christ by the one Faith in Him, and the one Baptism ordained by Him ; even as the One God and Fa- ther of all, who is above all, is also through all, and in us all. We know how it ever has been, and still is a great stumblingblock to the understanding to recognize the mys- terious union of the Trinity in the Unity of the Godhead. The understanding can comprehend one, as a unit stand- ing by itself, but not as unity embracing the fulness of all things ; whereas the' unity of the Church is a divine unity, the unity of infinite fulness. Therefore St Paul, after the verses in which he speaks of the unity of the Church, and of the principles and conditions of that unity, goes on to declare, that this unity of the Church implies a diversity 74 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. of gifts : But to each one of us is aiven (trace accordinn to the mmsure in which Christ gives it. And then, having set forth the great power and glory of Him from whom these manifold gifts come, how they came from Him who had ascended up on high, and led captivity captive, and who thereby shewed that He had previously come from the place whither He reascended, far ahove all heavens, that He might fill all things, St Paul goes on to enumerate some of the gifts which He had given to His Church : He gave some to he ajyostles, — and some, prophets, — and some, evan- gelists,— and some, pastors and teachers, — for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the Itody o f Christ, until tee all come to the unity of the faith and the Jcnoicledge of the Son of God, to perfect manhood, to the state when Christ shall he fully formed in our hearts. In selecting this subject, brethren, as one wliich would be appropriate for this occasion of our solemn meeting, I was chiefly influenced by the reflexion that the purpose for which this meeting is assembled, the purpose for which our Association was originally establisht, was to realize, and in some measure to fulfill that unity, to which the Church of Christ is called, that unity which, so far as the Church is indeed the Body of Christ, must needs be one of its chief characteristics. The bands of that unity had been sadly relaxt. Slender evidence was to be seen in our Church, during the last century, of the one Body that it ought to have been, — still slenderer of the one Spirit that ought to have animated it. For why ! it held but loosely to the one Faith : it had many faiths, if that word would admit of plurality : each man had his own faith, more or less remote from that which unites the Body of Christ to its Head, a faith iu many lords, of whom Christ might be *■ THE UNITY 01' THE CHURCH. 75 one, and perhaps nominally the chief. Hence men, having lost the one centre of unity and of union, sought to unite around other centres of their own devising. Many asserted that interest was the only true centre of human nature, that it was the living centre of every man's heart, and that a clever conjuror might make it a centre whereby nations also might be held together. Others brought forward some fantastical or fanatical maxim as a principle of union. In- stead of clustering round centres of love, people coagulated round centres of hatred. Their watchword was Death to all toho will not join us. Of these conspiracies and combi- nations there were many at the close of the last century ; and the same combining spirit is wofully active in this land now. Men combine to carry some scheme of their own, to realize some notion, to enforce some union. They are rightly convinced that strength lies in union ; but not knowing the only living principles of union, they fail of attaining to it. So too must all fail, so must the state- craftsmen of our days fail, who deem they can hold men together by the ties of interest. The principles and feelings which united men in days of old, patriotism, loyalty, the love of freedom, were living principles, and had a power over the heart and soul : they gave men a centre out of themselves, and attacht them thereto. Thus they had force to suppress and almost extinguish lesser personal motives, and to make men encounter hardships, submit to sacrifices, exercise selfdenial. But interest has no power to awaken any heroic feeling : it can extract no sacrifices, no selfdenial ; or, if it does, they are a mere mockery. Therefore the attempt, which is accounted the consummation of modern wisdom, to render a people obe- dient to the laws by convincing them that it is their 7(i THE UXITA' OF THE CHURCH. interest to be so, is like binding tbe strong man with withes, which anon he starts up and rends asunder. Most thankful indeed should we be that this is so, — that interest has not the power to curb man's will, and to tame his passions, — that his nature, in spite of its corruption, is still too noble to sink quietly into siich abject bondage. We should give God thanks that no earthly motive can bind men lastingly together, and that selfishness cannot do otherwise than sever them, from the first in heart and spirit, and sooner or later in act also : for terrible would be the power of evil, if it did not thus contain the germs of its own dissolution. We should give God thanks that it is impossible for men to be cemented in a lasting in- dissoluble union by any feebler power than the Love which proceeds from Him, and which the One Spirit infuses into the One Body of Christ. But while men are combining on all sides for Avorldly, and not seldom for plainly evil and lawless purposes, the Church also has been reminded of her own unity, has been roused out of her languid torpour, has been bracing her limbs anew, and gathering her members together. As her principle is unity, her form ought to be union ; and it is only by and through the union of her members that her great ends can be accomplisht, this union itself being one of the first and greatest, as is proved by the earnest desire for it exprest in her Lord's last prayer. Hence in the early ages of the Church, when the One Spirit was poured out with that abundance which was indispensable for the work of establishing her foundations, men were so entirely delivered from their inborn selfishness, that they laid their possessions at the feet of the Apostles, deeming the whole of their substance a slight return for I THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 77 the priceless blessings which they had received. And the multitude of them that believed, the Evangelist tells us, were of one heart and one soul ; neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possest was his own ; but they had all things common. And continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their meat loitli gladness and singleness of heart. In this simple account we see what perfect unity the love of Christ ought to produce in His disciples, and how this unity ought to manifest itself, by the removal and giving up of everything whereby men in their natural state are kept asunder. Now it is as an attempt to renew something like this feeling of unity in the One Body of Christ, to revive a faint and distant likeness of this union, that we rejoice and are thankful for the establishment of our Association. It is merely a beginning, a first attempt, a very remote approximation, but still it is an attempt to lead the members of our Church in this Diocese, all her members, lay as well as clerical, to feel that they are indeed members of the One Body of Christ, to lead them to feel that, as such, it behoves them to help and minister to each other, that, as such, they ought not to live to themselves, but to each other and to God. The spirit of Charity, as manifesting itself in noble woi-ks to the glory of God, and in a largehearted bounty to the poor, had waxt faint in the land. The spirit of Mammon had become so powerful, and had wrestled so mightily and craftily against it, and had assailed it with such an ever-increasing swarm of luxuries and vanities, that Charity was hardly able to lift up its head. Even the rich, if they gave a few shillings now and then in casual alms, and subscribed their yearly guinea to one or two 78 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. beneficent institutions, deemed that they had fulfilled their duty. And are there not many who think so still I arc there not many who even fall short of this 1 Meanwhile few had a notion that it behoved them to relieve any other than the grosser physical wants of their neighbours : moral and spiritual wants were scarcely taken count of by the great majority of those to whose stewardship the riches of England had been committed. And the pious men, who effected so much in the latter part of the last, and at the beginning of this century, for the revival of a higher spiritual life in England, as their views of religion revolved almost entirely about the wants and hopes of the individual soul, and as they found little answerable to their own feelings in the main body of our Church, although they were zealous, as every true Christian must be, to promote charitable works, were thus led by circum- stances, as well as by the peculiar character of their religion, to form societies composed of unconnected indi- viduals, who took an interest in the furtherance of god- liness, from all parts of the country. But as these societies emanated from persons invested with no ecclesiastical authority, they could not be connected with our ecclesi- astical organization : nor could they take advantage of the means afforded by our ecclesiastical system for bring- ing home the duties of Christian liberality to every mem- ber of the English Church. Now this is the end which our Association is designed to accomplish. It addresses itself to the whole body of the Church in this Diocese : it desires to embrace every member of the Church, all who have anything to give for the promotion of God's glory in the well-being of His people, and all who have any spiritual want to be relieved. Its object, according to THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 79 the purpose of its pious and benevolent founder, is to remind us that the members of Christ have not merely bodies, but souls also, to be taken care of, souls to be trained from their childhood in the knowledge and love of God, souls to be fed with the bread of life, when they come to maturity. It admonishes us of these wants, and tells us that it is a momentous part of our duty, and that we ought to esteem it a blessed part of our Christian privileges, to contribute of our substance, so that Christ's poor may not perish for lack of those blessings which He came to give them. Toward the accomplishment of these works something- has been done already ; a beginning has been made ; and therefore we rejoice. But we trust that it is only a beginning ; or our joy will be turned into sorrow. We trust that we are to mount from strength to sti'ength ; else we shall sink from strength to weakness. Every undertaking has a period of bloom in its spring ; the novelty awakens an interest ; the energy of the founder imparts itself to those around him. But the novelty passes away, and with it the excitement ; the energy, which was mei-ely caught from the reflexion of another's, fades : and unless there is some higher principle to uphold it, the undertaking gradually and not slowly decays. There- fore are we met together in the house of God today, to confess the one Faith, whereby we are united to our one Lord, and to seek access through Him to the One God and Father of all. As by the One Baptism we have been incorporated into the One Body of Christ, we are assem- bled to profess ourselves members of that One Body, and to pray for a more plenteous outpouring of the One Spirit upon ourselves and upon the whole Church, so that we 80 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. may iiuleed be living members of Christ's Body, knit to- gether by love, and ministering to each other in low- hness and joy. We are assembled together after the example of the first Christians, who continued daily loith one accord in the temple : and would it not be well that we should follow their example still further, by breaking bread, so that we might be strengthened for our work of charity by the spiritual nourishment of the Body and Blood of the Saviour ? As there is no perfect union without communion, would it not be well that, on this only occasion when the whole Diocese is gathered together in the presence of its spiritual Father, for works of charity and for the edifying of the Church, we should perfect our feeling of unity by Communion at the Table of the Lord ! Moreover, if we are indeed One Body, if we desire and trust that One Spirit is animating us, if we have set One Hope of our calling before us, what manner of men ought we to be in all our dealings with each other ? How ought we to speak of each other? How ought we to think of each other? Brethren, I beseech you, pon- der this thought. If we are indeed One Body in Christ, and animated by the One Holy Spirit of God, ought we not likewise to be of one heart and of one soul and of one mind ! And yet there are dissensions and divisions amongst us ; and yet there are parties in the Church. Contradictory as the words are, there are parties in that Church, which calls itself, and ought to be, the One Body of Christ. Consider what it is, when there are divisions in the body, when limb is torn from limb, when a gash is hewn across the trunk. Does not the body perish ? So too must it be, after a kind at least, with the Church. THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 83 A divided Church cannot be the One Body, cannot be animated by the One Spirit of Christ. It may indeed happen that a wound will at times prove salutary to a diseased body : the morbid humours may gather in it, and escape through it. But the wound must not continue to fester, or the body dies. When the Church was grown torpid, the revival of animation might unavoidably be accompanied by some convulsive throes : it might again be necessary, as of old, that He who came to send peace, should begin by sending a sword : but His desire and purpose was to send peace. Though the tumultuous tossing and raging of the waves is better than stagnation, that tossing also is only to be for a time. The Sun of Righteousness cannot be mirrored in that tossing : He can only be mirrored in the calm and peace of the waters. Let us then earnestly seek peace through Him, the peace which He alone can give, the peace which proceeds from His righteousness, which is given to all such as are made partakers of His righteousness, the peace which sets us at one with the One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all ; which peace if we have, we must needs be at peace also with each other. To Him, in the Unity of the eternal Trinity, be glory in the Church throughout all ages, in earth and in heaven, world without end. The line of argument in the early part of this Sermon is very like that pursued by Mr Gladstone in the second chapter of his work On the State in Us relations with the Church, §§ 13 — 18 ; and several of the illustrations are the same. Indeed when I was reading the last edition of Mr Gladstone's book, after my Sermon had been printed, I was so struck by the similarity, that I fancied some unconscious reminiscence of his argument must have been working in my mind : nor was I convinced of the contrary, until I found that the passage referred to is not in Mr Gladstone's first edition, and that my Sermon had been preacht before the publication of his fourth edition. This may serve as a warning against the common proneness to bring forward charges of plagiarism. Numberless similar instances might be produced from writers of the same school in every age of literature ; and though my mind has in many respects been trained in a different school from Mr Gladstone's, I believe he would join me in acknowledging the highest obligations to Coleridge, as one of our chief masters of thought. A LETTER TO THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER THE APPOINTMENT OF DR HAMPDEN TO THE SEE OF HEREFORD. A LETTER TO THE VERY REVEREND THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER, ON THE AGITATION EXCITED BY THE APPOINTMENT OF DR HAMPDEN TO THE SEE OF HEREFORD. BY JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A. ARCHDEACON OF LEWES. SECOND EDITION, WITH A POSTSCRIPT, ON LORD JOHN Russell's letter to the clergy of Bedford, AND IN REPLY TO MR TROWER'S PLAIN REMARKS, LONDON: JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, WEST STRAND : SOLD BY MACMILLAN, CAMBRIDGE. 1848. London : Printed by S. & J. Bentlet, Wilson, and Flet, Ban(?or House, Sliop Lane. TO THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER. My dear Dean, You wrote to me a fortnight ago, to inform me of certain measures which the Chapter of Chichester were about to take with the view of endeavouring to avert the appointment of Dr Hampden to the See of Hereford ; and you seemed to wish that I should propose some simi- lar measure to the Clergy in the Archdeaconry of Lewes. When we met two days after in the Convocation, you spoke to me on the same subject. My answer was, that, having never read any of Dr Hampden's writings, I should feel it my duty beforehand to examine them, especially his Barapton Lectures, which are the main ground of the charges brought against him, in order to make out whether they do indeed contain sufficient reason for doing, what, at all events, must imply a grave condemnation of a per- son who had for eleven years filled the first theological chair in one of our Universities. Since then I have re- turned a like answer to similar applications, which have been addrest to me by clergymen in this Archdeaconry. To my surprise, my answer has seemed in some cases to surprise the applicants. Yet what other answer could a person return, who had any sense of the solemn respon- sibility incurred by such a proceeding, and knew that he B 2 was called to do justly, and to love mercy, in all the rela- tions of life, Avhether private or public ? Even after the sad experience which half a century has yielded me, of the manner in which men's actions are swayed, not by conscientious principles, but mostly by prejudices taken up almost at hazard, it has astonisht me to see how thou- sands,— I am afraid I do not exaggerate, — invested with the ministry of the Gospel, the ministry of love and reconciliation, have on this occasion rusht forward with blind, reckless impetuosity, to do what they could to con- demn and crush a brother. Surely in such a matter we ought to act cautiously, deliberately, reluctantly. We ought to be slow in admitting a conviction, which brands a brother as a heretic, instead of running forward with breathless haste to embrace it. I have been told indeed, that the addresses and re- monstrances and protests of the Clergy do not involve a positive condemnation of Dr Hampden, but merely call for an enquiry to ascertain the real tendency of his writ- ings, and that such a demand is amply warranted by the condemnation he has twice received from a majority of the Convocation at Oxford. This however is far from ade- quately expressing the bent of that spirit, which is now agitating our Church, and leading so many of our brethren into courses almost unprecedented ; while dark threats are thrown out of ulterior, still more violent proceedings. The very demand for an enquiry in such a case, and such a tone, almost presumes a condemnation. Nor does it seem to me at all becoming our clerkly character, to pin our faith blindly to the tail of any extraneous decision, least of all to that of such a body as the Convocation of Oxford. For how many of the four hundred and seventy- four judges who assembled to condemn Dr Hampden in 1836, can we believe to have come with any competent 3 knowledge of the subject matter on wliicli they were about to pi'onounce ? Would it not be a large allow- ance to assume that one in ten did so ? that one in ten had examined Dr Hampden's writings with that careful, candid, impartial scrutiny, which ought to precede a judicial verdict ? that one in ten knew much more of Dr Hampden than what he had gathered from the extracts selected, in whatsoever manner, by some of his most zea- lous opponents ? Yet what but shame would be the doom of a judge in any legal court, who should give sentence on a single ex parte statement of the cause ? What then can we say of those who think fit to follow at the heels of such ill-qualified judges, except that they are the blind following the blind, and thus cannot by any possi- bility go right ? This conclusion seems to result of neces- sity from the constitution of such a court as the Convo- cation of Oxford, when it assumes the right of condemn- ing persons as heretics. And he who has observed the occurrences at that University during the last fifteen years, must have perceived that they are markt, not only by the violence, but no less by the variableness and waywardness, which are the characteristics of a popular tribunal. They who ostracize Themistocles one year, are ready to ostracize Aristides the next. The only way to prevent such alter- nations, such changeful gusts of party-feeling, whicli are nowhere more unbecoming, nay, scandalous and mis- chievous, than on the judgement-seat, is, that all judicial questions, above all, questions so difficult and compli- cated as those of heresy, requiring so much historical re- search, so much philosophical and theological knowledge, and such an impartial weighing of every word in its con- nexion, not only with the immediate context, but also with the general purport of a work, should be tried before a special court, properly constituted for the purpose, B 2 4 where thej mav be certain of meeting with a calm, deliberate, full investigation. And here it is natural to ask, why, if Dr Hampden's heresies are so manifest, as the}' must needs be deemed by those who are passing such a summary condemnation on him, why has the charge of heresy never been brought against him before the proper Ecclesiastical Court? Why has he been allowed to discharge his office for eleven years, inoculating our students of di^-inity with his heretical doctrines, when his opponents, who burn with such zeal for the preservation of orthodoxy, might at any time, if their charges were legally tenable, have ensured his condemnation and con- sequent deprivation ? This can hardl}- have arisen from any over-indulgent forbearance on their part, but seems to imply, that, however confident they were in their asser- tions, they had a strong suspicion that they should fail in making out a case against him. Nor, for my own part, do I understand why such a course should not be adopted now. If Dr Hampden has indeed been guilty of heresy, let him be proceeded against accord- ing to the regular forms of our Ecclesiastical Law. This is a simple and easy course, honest and straightforward ; and we may feel sure that Dr Hampden would not attempt to baffle such proceedings by mere technical objections. It would greatly add to his peace of mind, if the question were thus set at rest. But I cannot see why the whole Church should be convulst from the Land's End to New- castle, why every minister in every parish should be dis- turbed in the quiet discharge of his pastoral duties, in order to call upon the Crown to institute such an enquiry. Is it wisht that Dr Hampden shovJd indict himself for heresy ? or is the Crown to do so ? But the Crown, by the very act of its appointment, has declared that it does not believe him to be chargeable with any such offense. 6 The task of indicting him should surely fall on tlioyo who do believe him guilty, not on those who do not. On the grounds above stated, I felt that I could not ex- onerate myself from my own personal responsibility in this matter, by throwing it off upon the decision of the Univer- sity of Oxford. Moreover, if we call to mind when that decision was first past, and what was the state of feeling in our Church, especially among the Clergy, at that time, — how, for several years after the conflicts of the Reform Bill, political party-spirit seemed to sway all minds, to the casting overboard of candour and discretion, until it was gradually superseded by ecclesiastical and theological party-spirit, — how almost everybody was so agitated and warpt by political and ecclesiastical anxieties, by fears, first of the overthrow of the Constitution, and then of the overthrow of the Church, as to be almost in- capacitated for a calm estimate of the theological opin- ions held by a 25olitical and ecclesiastical opponent, — when we call to mind that he, whose name now stands higher perhaps in the esteem and admiration and rever- ence of England, than any other man of our generation, my dear and magnanimous friend Dr Arnold, was in those days a butt for all manner of scurrilous reproach, poured out upon him by none so profusely as by his clerical bre- thren,— when we call to mind, I say, what injustice was committed by the same class of persons at the selfsame time in the case of Dr Arnold, it cannot be invidious to think that the verdict which was then past on a friend of Dr Arnold's, may now need revision. At all events, even without these special grounds for distrust, when eleven years so eventful in our Church, eleven years which have wrought such changes in the opinions of so many among our brethren, have elapst since Dr Hampden's condemnation, — seeing moreover that he 6 himself during that period has not let his pen lie dry, but has exprest his views again and again on several of the main points of Christian doctrine, — common fairness re- quires, that, before we renew the condemnation of what he preacht in the year 1832, we should take some account of the writings on the same or cognate subjects which he has publisht since. Or, when everything else has changed, are we determined that our passions, our animosities, our bitterness, our jealousies, our suspicions shall remain un- changed and unchangeable ? Can we allow no appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober, even after eleven years ? These various reasons led me to say that I must pause to examine into the matter, before I could take any step condemnatory of Dr Hampden's appointment. In deplor- ing that appointment, I entirely concurred with you, add- ing that you could not deplore it, you could not condemn it, more than I did, as a most injudicious measure on the part of the Minister by whom he was appointed, — as a wanton outrage to the feelings, prejudices they might be, but still strong and earnest feelings, of a large body of the Church, especially of the Clergy, — as an act which would infallibly arouse vehement opposition, and break up the peace of the Church, at a time when we were hoping for something like a lull, alter the storms of the late years, and which, in the present state of morbid excitement, might even be pleaded by many as an excuse for ruiming into the Romish Schism. On these grounds I would have im- plored the Minister, on niy knees, if it could have been of any avail, to recall what seemed to me an act of folly almost amounting to madness, of which I have never been able to learn the slightest explanation or defense. Greatly too should I have rejoiced to hear that Dr Hampden had declined an office, whereby it was plain that he nmst give such offense to so many of his brethren, coming among 7 them as an object of general suspicion and aversion, in- stead of being regarded, as a bishop ought to be, with confidence and love. By so doing he would best have consulted his own honour, and would probably have turned the current of opinion in his favour. But, however strongly I regretted and condemned the ap- pointment on these grounds, these are not grounds to warrant a public protest against him. They might warrant a private remonstrance on the part of those who have the means of making one; but a public protest could only pro- ceed on the plea that he has been guilty of heresy. This guilt however I could not assume, unless on the verdict of a competent tribunal, without a careful searching and sifting of his writings. Even as a private clergyman, I should not hold myself justified in doing so ; for even a private clergyman cannot divest himself of his individual responsibility in such an act. If a private clergyman urges that he has not the leisure, or the theological learning, requisite for such en- quiries ; Be it so, I would answer ; but then your course is plain and straiyhtfonvard : yon have pronounced yourself disqualified for taking part in this controversy : and you may he thankful that you have so valid a reason for re- fraining from it. O that our clergy did indeed feel the awful weight of this obligation ! How would it narrow the range of our theological disputes ! how much more easily and speedily might they be settled ! at all events, how little in comparison would tlie peace of the Church be disturbed ! if we all scrupulously abstained from en- gaging in them, unless we had carefully and conscien- tiously taken pains to fit ourselves with the knowledge requisite for understanding their various bearings. Even as a private clergyman, I say, I should have held it incum- bent on me to ascertain Dr Hampden's demerits, before I 8 proceeded to condemn him ; and I should not have said so much on this point, which might have been deemed, and ought to be self-evident, unless I had known of such a multitude of persons acting in utter disregard of the rule just laid down. But of course, in my position, where I was not only to express my own individual opinion, but to call on a large body of my brethren to adopt it, and take a deliberate public act in conformity to it, I should have deserved that the condemnation of Dr Hampden should recoil on my own head, if I had acted hastily and inconsiderately. It is true, a Paper was laid on the table at the meeting of Convocation, and distributed to several of the members, which profest to give a series of propositions out of Dr Hampden's writings ; and we were called vipon in the Lower House to make some kind of remonstrance against his appointment to the episcopate, on the strength of these extracts. Of them I shall have to speak anon. But you, I believe, concurred with me in thinking that it was unbecoming the dignity of Convocation, and that it would only have shewn our unfitness for the functions of a deliberative assembly, if we had come to any resolution founded on mere rumour of what had taken place at Oxford, or on such a series of extracts set before us by an individual member of our body. You coincided with me, I believe, in holding that the only course which it would have behoved us to take, if we had been permitted to act, would have been to appoint a Committee specially charged to examine into Dr Hampden's writings, and to report to us thereon. Knowing, as every one must who is at all acquainted with the history of any literary, above all, of theological controvei'sies, how easy it is for an ardent advocate to wrest the words of his opponent into meaning something very different from, and almost 9 opposite to, what their writer intended them to mean, — nay, knowing how very difficult, how almost impossible it is for a person, under a strong religious bias, not grievously to misrepresent his adversary, — knowing this from general history, and, as I have had more than one painful occasion of knowing it, from my own personal experience of the shifts and tricks to which the very best men will have recourse in such warfare, — I could not attach much importance to the series of extracts placed in our hands. For might we not constrain the Bible itself to inculcate atheism, by taking four words out of the first verse of the fifty-third Psalm, and command us to sin, by separating the first three words from the last two in our Lord's in- junction to the woman taken in adultery ? Alas! this is scarcely an exaggeration of what may often be seen in theological polemics. In order to enter upon the investigation which was thus imposed upon me, I desired my bookseller to send me Dr Hampden's theological publications ; but some accidental delays prevented my receiving them till ten days after our conversation on the subject; and thus I have been com- pelled to defer informing you of the conclusion I have been led to. Had that conclusion prompted me to act as you appeared to wish, my act would have been the most appropriate answer. But, inasmuch as I have been brought to a totally opposite result, I feel a kind of obligation to tell you why I cannot concur in the proceeding which you recommended ; and since that result is in like manner re- pugnant to the spirit by which so many of our brethren are agitated, with very little, and often, I am afraid, with no cognisance of any reasonable ground for their agitation, it seems to me advisable to send you my answer in this public form. Nay, a necessity seems to be laid upon me to do what I can, if I can do anything, to dispell these 10 clouds of gloomy suspicion and restless irritation, which are darkening our Church. Most fortunate too do I count it, that, in so doing, I have the pri^-ilege of address- ing a person for whom I entertain, as all who know you must, such sincere esteem and regard. For thus, I trust, I mav be enabled, under God's help, to repress those intemperances of feeling and expression, into which controversy so readily lapses. Now one of the impressions which have been produced on me by Dr Hampden's Bampton Lectures, is thankful- ness for ha'i'ing become acquainted with a work so learned and thoughtful, and so favorably distinguisht both in these respects, and by its philosophical candour and sobriety, from the bulk of our recent theological literature. I do not mean that I agree with him on all points. Our minds have been trained in very different schools ; and so our judgements often differ on questions of philosophy and taste, and even of theolog}-. This however is not the matter before us. Heretics, 3 0U may remind me, have not sel- dom been learned and thoughtful. On the other hand the utmost diversity of opinion in the region of philoso- phy or taste supplies no ground for a charge of heresy ; and there may be wide theological divergences without overleaping the bounds of orthodoxy. The question how- ever which concerns us at present is. Has not Dr Hamp- den promulgated opinions which do overleap those bounds, and which are at variance with the Creeds and Articles of our Church ? In a word, is there no heresy in Dr Hamp- den's writings ? To such a question it is not easy to reply with an absolute negative. It would be a long and laborious task to hunt out every inkhng of a heresy through ever)- clause of every sentence, in a long, learned, and argumentative volume. For most persons it would be a wholesomer occupation to hunt out the heresies that lurk 11 within their own breast, and to exterminate them : and several of Dr Hampden's most pertinacious adversaries would be far more profitably employed, if, instead of trying to pull out, or rather, to thrust in the motes in his eye, they were to set about casting the beams out of their own eyes. The business of the counsel for the defendant is not to shew that his client has never been guilty of any offense, but to rebut those with which he is charged : and this, as to the main part of the charges which have come under my notice on the present occasion, will not be diffi- cult : they will fall before us like a row of card soldiers. But before I enter upon them, let me premise a couple of remarks, which will shew how easy it was for many of his expressions to be misunderstood and misrepresented, while they will also shew how unfit the main part of his condemners are for passing sentence upon him. A very small portion, I believe, of these condemners has any correct notion of the nature and purport of the work which they are so eager to condemn. It is a historical, more than a dogmatical work, a work of historical and philosophical criticism applied to an important period in the development of Christian Theology, professing in its title to consider the Scholastic Philosophy in its relation to Christian Theology, that is, to point out how that Philosophy, which exercised such power in the Church for several centuries, modified the development of our Tiieology, how it led to the con- struction of systems, in which at one time one doctrine, at another time another doctrine, was wrought out with great subtilty into all its logical consequences, and how the traces of this Philosophy, even after it has so long been exploded, arc still discernible in our symbolical books, especially in their terminology. To this latter point he often turns, taking a particular interest, as men of phi- losophical habits of thought arc wont to do, in tracing the 12 coinage of obsolete systems in the language of after gene- rations. As to every reflecting mind it is pleasant to re- cognise relics of the Astrology of the middle ages in such words as jovial, meiTur'tal, saturnine, so Dr Hampden will often stop to point out how still in our theological language we use the words of the Schoolmen, even when the notions implied in those words have long been abandoned. As he says, in the Introduction to the Second Edition of his Lectures (p. xxili.), his discussions "have to do, not with any explanations of the Christian verities or doc- trines, as such, — as they exist, — as they are revealed, — but with the language and forms of expression in which they are conveyed in theological systems." Further, Dr Hampden is led by his subject to consider the effects which the love of system-making has produced on Theology ; and he has a strong conviction of the evils it has wrought : nor can an intelligent student of the history of Theology well arrive at any other conclusion. The same conviction has been exprest strongly and repeat- edly, in two of the most precious works of our age, the Aids to Reflexion, and the Kingdom of Christ. Coleridge has shewn how the love of system-making has given rise to inextricable controversies concerning Free-will and Necessity, Predestination and Election, in which spiritual realities are denied, because logical consequences have been drawn from them which contradict one another: and Dr Hampden enters into a like discussion, and also shews how consequences deduced from the abstract notion of Unity lie at the bottom of all the Anti-Trinitarian heresies, from Arius down to Priestley. In fact, this is one side of the great truth whereby Bacon regenerated Physical Science, and corresponds in great measure with the work which Socrates and Plato wrought in Greek Philosophy. It may be that Dr Hampden, according to the wont of 13 all men, philosophers as well as others, may sometimes exaggerate the importance of his favorite proposition, and may push it too far. Still he is no way insensible to the utility and the necessity of sound logic, to coun- teract the mischiefs of unsound. Thus, he says, in his Introduction (p. Ixv.), that Athanasius "admits that Scripture intimations of the truth would be better, as being more accurate ; but that the versatility of the Arian party had obliged the bishops assembled at Nice to set forth more plainly such expressions as subverted the heretical impiety. In the same way I hold that the technical language of Theology has been both useful and necessary for maintaining the truth ; whilst I point out its human origin, and connexion with the reasonings of ancient philosophy. Indeed I have said, and still think, that there is an advantage in the use of this technical language over the actual words of Scripture, for stating points of doctrine : since we can modify it as we please, and limit it accurately to the meaning we wish to express." In consequence of his strong sense of the evils pro- duced by logic in its uncontrolled exercise on theological questions, we often find Dr Hampden urging that the only sure ground to stand on is the Facts declared in Scripture. This expression is liable to misconstruc- tion, and, I believe, is one of the chief causes of the sus- picion he has incurred. For if hy facts he had meant the mere outward occurrences narrated in the Bible, his theo- logy might readily have coincided with the baldest Unita- rianism. In preaching to a common congregation indeed, it would have been very injudicious to use such a term in any other than its ordinary sense. But, as he was preach- ing to the University of Oxford, he thought he might assume, that, notwithstanding their adherence to the 14 philosophy of Aristotle, they would understand the Baconian use of the word, which the context in several passages plainly sets forth ; as, where he says (p. 150), tliat the discussions he had been engaged in " evidence the reality of those sacred Facts of Divine Providence, which we com- prehensively denote by the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity." From this and many other passages, it is clear that he used the word as he interprets it in his Introduction (p. xl.). " To persons who have thoroughly entered into the spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, it wovild be un- necessary to explain what I mean by this term. Such persons would know that this term is not to be restrict- ed to mere events or occurrences, or what may be called historical or singular facts, but denotes whatever is, Universal as well as Particular Truths, whether founded on Experience, or on the authority of Divine Revelation, and that it is opposed to Theory or Hypothesis. Thus the Divinity of our Lord is a Fact : His Consubstantiality with the Father and the Holy Spirit, His Atonement, His Mediation, His distinct Personality, His perpetual pre- sence with His Church, His future Advent to judge the world, the Communion of Saints, the Corruption of our Nature, the Efficacy of Divine Grace, the Acceptableness of Works wrought through Faith, the Necessity of Repent- ance,— though stated in abstract terms, — are all Facts in God's spiritual kingdom, revealed to us through Christ. So I might proceed to enumerate, one after the other, all the Christian verities. But these instances may shew that it is not merely such Truths as our Lord's Birth, and Crucifixion, and Resurrection, and Ascension, and the Mi- racles which He wrought, and the Descent of the Holy Ghost, or the Call of Abraham, and the Thunders of Sinai, and the Dedication of the Temple, that come under the appellation of Facts, in the philosophical sense of that 16 term. — Nothing was further from my thoughts than to say that Christianity is made up wholly of mere Events, and has no Doctrinal Truths in it." In the next para- graphs Dr Hampden proceeds to vindicate his use of the word Fact ; and in a note to his Inaugural Lecture he supports it by a quotation from Butler's Aiialogy. Of course I cannot enter into a discussion on this and the other points which I shall have to bring forward. To do so would swell out this Letter into a thick volume. My purpose is merely to shew what Dr Hampden reall}' meant, and that his meaning, however it has been misinterpreted, is not heretical. Here, in order to meet the charges against him, it becomes desirable to know what they really are. This knowledge, I believe, one might vainly seek from nine- tenths of the persons so forward in condemning him, who seem to think that the best way of proving their ortho- doxy is to rush blindfold to hunt down a heretic. Thus one man calls him a Socinian, another an Arian, a third a Sabellian, — accusations which, like the monsters in a drop of water, destroy one another, and which the fore- going extracts, I trust, go far to disprove. To come to something more definite, let us take the Paper which was put into our hands at the meeting of Convocation. It is the only distinct embodiment of the charges against him which has fallen under my notice on this occasion ; and, as it has been revived, after lying dormant for more than eleven years, one is led to suppose that it must possess a more than ordinary vitality. Of what kind that vitality is, we shall see soon. For vitality is not always a proof of inherent worth. The poet has told us: "Ah, sir, the good die first; And they, whose hearts are dry as summer dust, Burn to the socket." That Paper consists of three parts. The first is the reprint 16 of a Declaration made by Resident Members of the Convo- cation of Oxford, in March, 1836. This is followed by a statement of certain reasons for its republication. And then comes a series of Propositions purporting to be taken from Dr Hampden's works, to establish the charges of heresy. On each of these parts I shall have to speak in succession. The Declaration sets forth certain strong objections to the appointment of Dr Hampden as Professor of Divinity. I have no wish to meddle with the controversies of that period; but he who has republisht and circulated it now, and who distributed it the other ,day among the members of Convocation, in order to excite them to some kind of remonstrance against Dr Hampden's appointment to the episcopate, has thereby made himself responsible for its veracity. Now in this Declaration, after some general terms of condemnation, it is said : " We cannot allow any explanations of insulated passages or particular words to be valid in excuse against the positive language, the systematic reasonings, and the depreciating tone, with which, in Dr Hampden's works, the Articles of our Church are described as mere human speculations, the relics of a false and exploded philosophy, full at once of error and mischief." Here one can hardly help smiling, when one calls to mind how strangely the theological weathercock has veered round at Oxford, since the oppo- nents of Dr Hampden were so zealous in asserting the honour of the Thirty- nine Articles. Many who pointed due East then, even, it may be, the very writer of this Declaration, have long been pointing due West. But, passing over this, we may easily be convinced, by an ex- amination of Dr Hampden's writings, that the assertions here made against him are untrue. He does not de- scribe the Articles of our Church, " in a depreciating tone, as mere human speculations, the relics of a false and 17 exploded philosophy." Human speculations of course they are, so far as they are merely deduced from Scripture by the processes of human reasoning ; nor have I heard of any one who has claimed a higher origin for them, even at Oxford. Though they may have been called the Palla- dium of our Church, no legend of their having fallen down from heaven has come to my ears. But it is not the Articles of our Church, that Dr Hampden describes as the relics of a false and exploded philosophy : those terms are only applied by him to certain parts of the technical language in which they are exprest. In the Intro- duction already referred to, which naturally gives a more expKcit account of the author's views on the points urged against him, and which, though it was not publisht till after the original Declaration, ought to have been ex- amined by a person taking upon himself to revive it, Dr Hampden says : " As for explaining away language, that we have solemnly adopted, and still retain, I consider such a proceeding as dishonest. And, so far from condemn- ing [these statements of Christian truths], I conceive the adoption of them by the Church as fully defensible. I believe that the leaders of the Church did well, and could do no otherwise, at the time when they sanctioned the introduction of our present Theological Language ; acting to the best of their judgement for the Church, in its capacity of keeper of Holy Writ and Judge of Con- troversy. I would even go so far as to say, tiiat, whilst theological terms are essentially mutable, and therefore ought to be altered, should circumstances require it, yet, what the ancient rhetorician observes of them is true, as a general rule; ilia mutari vetat Keligio ; et consecratis utendum est." Should any simple reader be startled by this assertion, that " theological terms are essentially mutable," in its application to the Creeds of the Church, I would c 18 beg him to call to mind how greatly the three Catholic Creeds differ, not indeed in doctrine, but in their mode of stating their doctrine, and how, in the middle of her second millennary, it became necessaiy for the Church, wherever she desired to return to primitive purity of doctrine, to draw up new and more explicit Confessions of Faith. To the same effect, in the latter part of his eighth Lec- ture, where Dr Hampden speaks expressly on this subject, he says : " Dogmas of theology then, as such, are human authorities. But do I mean to say by this that they are unimportant in religion ? — I wish rather to establish their importance and proper truth, as distinct from the honour and verity of the simple Divine word. We have seen how doctrines gradually assume their form by the successive impressions of controversy. The Facts of Scripture remain the same through all ages, — not so the theories raised upon them. They have floated on the stream of speculation. One heresiarch after another has proposed his modification. — In such a state of things it was impos- sible for the Scriptural theologian — to refrain from mingling in the conflict of argument. Orthodoxy was forced to speak the Divine Truth in the terms of heretical sj^ectda- tion ; if it were only to guard against the novelties which the heretic had introduced. It was the necessity of the case that compelled the orthodox, as themselves freely admit, to employ a phraseology by which, as experience proves, the naked Truth of God has been overborne r.nd obscured. Such being the origin of a Dogmatic Theology, it follows that its proper truth consists in its being a collection of negations ; — of negations, I mean, of all ideas imported into religion, beyond the express sanction of Revelation. Supposing that there had been no theories proposed on the truths of Christianity ; were the Bible, or rather the Divine Facts which it reveals, at once ushered 19 into our notice without our knowing that various wild notions, both concerning God and human nature, had been raised upon the sacred truths, no one, I conceive, would wish to see those Facts reduced to tlie precision and num- ber of Articles, any more than he now thinks of reducing any other history to such a form. We should rather re- sist any such attempt as futile, if not as profane ; or, how- ever judiciously such a selection might be made, we should undoubtedly prefer the living records of the Divine agency, to the dry and uninteresting abstracts of human com- pilers and expositors. But, when theoretic views are known to have been held and propagated, when the world has been familiarized to the language of these specula- tions, and the truth of God is liable to corruption from them, then it is that forms of exclusion become necessary, and theory must be retorted by theory. This very occa- sion however of the introduction of theory into religion suggests the limitation of it. It must be strictly confined to the exclusion and rejection of all extraneous notions from the subjects of the sacred volumes. Theory, thus regulated, constitutes a true and valuable philosophy, not of Christianity, properly so called, but of human Chris- tianity, of Christianity in the world, as it has been acted on by the force of the human intellect. Tliis is the view which I take, not only of our Articles at large, but, in par- ticular, of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds. — If it be ad- mitted that the notions on which their several expressions are founded are both unphilosopJiical and unscriptural, it must be remembered that they do not impress those notions on the faith of the Christian, as matters of affirmative belief; they only use the terms of ancient theories of philosopliy , theories current in the schools at the time they were written, to exclude others more obviously injurious to the simplicity of the faith. The speculative language of these c 2 20 Creeds— was admitted into tlie Church of England, as es- tablisht by the Reformers, before the period when the genius of Bacon exposed the emptiness of the system, which the Schools had palmed upon the world as the only instrument for the discovery of all truth. — The minds of men would be fully pre-occupied with the notions of matter, audi form, and suhstaiice, ixnA accident : and when such notions had produced misconception of the sacred truth, it would be a necessary expedient to correct that misconception by a less exceptionable employment of them." Dr Hampden then goes on to give the reasons why he thinks that the occasion for Articles will probably never cease (pp. 375 — 380). In this passage there is some questionable matter, especially about the real value of Dogmatical Theology ; but no one acquainted with tlie his- tory of Theology will controvert the statement here given of the origin of the definitions contained in our Creeds and Articles, though its application to the Nicene Creed is very narrow ; and the whole passage shews that it is the terminology of those documents that the author speaks of as the relics of a false and exploded philosophy. In the next paragraph but one of the Declaration it is said : "We now solemnly protest against principles which impugn and injure the Word of God as a revealed Rule of Faith and Practice, in its sense and use, its power and per- fection." Verily this does bespeak no ordinary effrontery, to bring forward an accusation of this kind against a divine, the object of whose writings is to assert the exclusive honour of the Scriptures, as the sole infallible depository of Divine Truth. This is implied in the whole passage I have just quoted, and runs through the entire work. Thus, when speaking, in the Introduction, of what he calls the universal Facts of Christianity, the author says (p. xliii) : " Let there be but the evidence that God has spoken it ; and 21 the thing said is as i-eal as if it had been the object of our experience. Christ's Intercession with the Father, for ex- ample, though it is going on at this moment, and will go on until the consummation of all things, is a certain Fact ; we see not its beginning, or its end, or its process. But God's Word has declared that it is so ; and this is enough. We may call it therefore, in the strictest sense, a revealed Fact. Again, that God worketli in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure, or that we have no power of ourselves to do any good thing without His preventing and co- operating Grace, this is a revealed fact, a truth of God's invisible kingdom, ever in course of accomplishment, ever being realized. That our Lord is both Perfect God and Perfect Man, in one Person, or, as it is technically ex- prest, the doctrine of the Hypostatic Union, is in like manner a fact of the Gospel." Here we see moreover that, though the author elsewhere says, that the terms, preventing and co-operating Grace, and the Hypostatic Union, are derived from the notions of an exploded philosophy, he no way purposes thereby to question or disparage the truths involved in them. Besides, in his Inaugural Lecture (p. 15), where he speaks of " the authorities and the course of religious study to which his whole theological instruction will have reference," he says : " Let me then at once state, that I purpose leading my hearers to the Scriptures themselves, as the sole supreme Authority of all revealed Truth. When I see in the Bible itself, how exclusively it reserves to itself the right of declaring the truth of God, — when I find it asserting its own sufficiency and certainty in making us wise unto salvation, — when I observe our Lord Himself citing the Scriptures of the Old Testament as de- cisive authorities. His Apostles also appealing to them, the primitive converts commended for their zeal in searching 22 the Scriptures, ovir Lord again characterizing them as tes- tifying of Him, St Paul approving Timothy for having known the Scriptures from a child, — looking to these facts, and to the practice also of the early Church, in all its controversies, of deciding by the testimony of the writ- ten word, I cannot admit any other authority, as approach- ing at all to the weight and sanctity of the Evidence of Scripture. I should feel myself untrue to the great prin- ciple of Protestantism, which broke the seals of the Bible, and opened wide its pages to the reading of every Christ- ian man ; I should feel myself also untrue to the teaching of the Church of England, which so strongly declares that Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salva- tion ; — if, I say, with these strong assertions of the para- mount authority of the Bible, I should receive any other authority as a legitimate source of Divine truth, I should convict myself of deserting the cause of Protestantism, and of our own Church, no less than the cause of the Bible itself. I shall be imperatively called upon by my duty therefore, in this chair of Theology, to lead the student to be diligent in prayer, and in reading of the Holy Scripture, and especially to employ his mind in such studies as help to the knowledge of the same. It will be my pride to train him to be mighty in the Scriptures, so that he may at his command draw forth by God's blessing ' the waters out of these living wells.' — At all times it becomes us to entertain a holy jealousy of encroachment on the supre- macy of Scripture ; so apt is human reason, under some form or other, to lift itself up to a usurped importance, and to derogate from the exclusive sanctity of the Divine Word. We ought therefore to watch with anxious care, above all things, that precious deposit of the oracles of God, especially committed to our veneration and care. — It is only in subordination, in humble and devout 23 subordination, to the Divine Word itself, that the Church has received its sacred commission. The word only which the Scripture puts into its mouth, can the Church utter as the word of Divine Revelation. To the Law and to the Testimony is its appeal. To the caviler and objector its only answer is, It is written." Now this Lecture was deli- vered just a week after the date of the Declaration. It was publisht immediately, and circulated rapidly, so that it soon reach t a fourth edition. Yet the Declaration, which charges Dr Hampden with principles impugning and injuring the word of God as a revealed rule of faith and practice, does not appear to have been modified, but doubtless received many signatures of persons who went and voted in Convocation against him on this ground. And now, after eleven years, during which, so far at least as we can form any judgement from his subse- quent writings, he has been discharging his office accord- ing to the rules he had here laid down for himself, this accusation, which from the first was utterly groundless, which was in direct contradiction to the whole spirit of his Bampton Lectures, is brought forward again, without a word of explanation, or limitation, or even an additional argument in support of it. Clamour on the part of the accusers. Ignorance on that of their hearers, — in which it is to be hoped that the accusers themselves have no small share, — these are the powers relied on to bar his way to the Episcopate, the two uncouth, unwieldy giants that throw their clubs across his path. In the second part of the Paper which I am examining, there is little to detain us. After speaking, in temperate terms, of the reasons for reviving the attack on Dr Hamp- den, the writer says : " For this purpose some of the passages in Dr Hampden's works, on which his disqualifi- cation rests, are here reprinted from the Report of tlie 24 Committee appointed to select them. It is not denied that extracts alone will not always afford a just estimate of a whole work ; but the necessity of resorting to them is unavoidable ; nor is there any reason to suppose that those now given are otherwise than fairly quoted; while by affixing to them their respective references, the opportu- nity is afforded to the reader to judge for himself by referring to the works in question. The point to be borne in mind is, that the opinions professed in these pas- sages have never been recalled, nor the positions main- tained in them abandoned." In these sentences there are two points that I will just notice. First, the %\Titer says, that " there is no reason to sup- pose the extracts given are otherwise than fairly quoted." So reckless is party-spirit in these days, that a person will bring forward the gravest accusations against a divine, who has filled, and has been selected to fill, such high offices in the Church, before a solemn assembly, and will call on that assembly to act upon them, without taking the trouble to examine whether the passages which he ad- duces as the grounds of them are correct ; and this too, after it was notorious that the accuracy of the quotations made by Dr Hampden's adversaries in 1836 had been denied, and after their inaccuracy had been exposed by ISIi- Hull, in a pamphlet written with his unvarying con- scientious love of truth. The writer does indeed say, that the references will enable his readers to verify the ex- tracts : but how many of his readers did he expect to take this trouble, when he himself did not ? Nay, how many would even have the means of doing so ? Is it become a valid excuse for uttering a falsehood, according to our modern casuistry, that the hearer, by due enquiry-, may disprove it ? In the next place, when it is said that Dr Hampden has 25 never recalled his opinions, it should at least have been added, that he has disclaimed the opinions imputed to him. He could not recant opinions, which, in the Introduction to the second edition of his Lectures, he denied having ever held. Even Papal infallibility is esteemed by the sober members of the Romish Church, to extend merely to doc- trine, not to fact. When it condemns a doctrine, it cannot err. But on the question whether the doctrine condemned is held by such or such a man, it is liable to human falli- bility. And after the slovenly manner in which the accusation against Dr Hampden had been conducted, there was little reason for him to suppose that his adversaries understood his meaning better than he did himself. The very calmness and mildness of his vindication is a strong presumption in its favour, especially when we consider the provocations he had received ; and though it has been asserted that the Introduction is inconsistent with the Lec- tures, no intelligent and candid person, I think, can read it, without a conviction that the whole line of thought is precisely the same ; though of course it brings out parti- cular points, the points which had been misunderstood, and which required explanation, more prominently and explicitly. Moreover, in his Inaugural Lecture, after declaring his be- lief in the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, he adds (p. 8): '* To this sublime confession I have solemnly and devoutly been pledged in infancy by the fostering care of the Church; and to the same in the mature age of reflexion I have as solemnly and devoutly set my hand ; and I reverentially appeal to the Searcher of hearts, as a witness, that I have never for one moment swerved from this true faith of the Gospel, but that the more I have enquired into Scripture, — the more conversant I have become with theological anti- quity,— the more I have laboured to know of the doctrine 2G whether it be of God, by improvmg in doing tlie will of God, — the more I have been convinced that the Trinita- rian doctrine profest by our Church is the true one, that it cannot be denied without expunging the Scriptures themselves, and unlearning every lesson which inspired Prophets and Evangelists and Preachers have taught us. In what I have ever written, or said, or thought, on theo- logical subjects, I have constantly had this deep con- viction of the sacred Truth present to my mind. Whether I have been engaged in speculative discussion, or in practi- cal teaching, I have had in view to bring it home to the understanding, so far as such a mystery could be brought home to the understanding, free from glosses and miscon- structions, and to the heart in all its winning persuasive- ness to holiness and divine consolation. I will not pretend always to have stated my conviction in the fullest, clearest manner, so as to have avoided all possibility of misinter- pretation. I will not claim to have been invariably accu- rate in the use of words, or to have anticipated every possible objection that could be raised against particular modes of statement. Nor again can I presume that I have always made my practical aim so distinct and so direct to the heart, as invariably to have hit the object in view. — Especially too where a recondite track of observation is pursued, where the meaning of controversial statements is to be disentangled, and the thread of obsolete speculations and reasonings to be recovered, there will in all proba- bility be an opening for misunderstanding on the part of others, on whom the light of his researches falls but dimly amidst the surrounding shadows. Still, if there is a real desire on the part of the teacher to inculcate the truth, there must be a natural interpretation of my words consistent with such desire, and distinct from the peiTerse sense which has been drawn from them. If then I am candidly judged 27 by this my real intention, it will be found that in no- thing have I departed from the true Catholic faith of the Trinity, but that, on the contrary, I have made it my ground-plan of theological instruction throughout, the fundamental true assumption on which my argument pro- ceeds in every theological discussion. And now, as The- ological Professor, can I have any other object proposed to me, but to guard this sacred deposit with all fidelity and diligence ? May God forbid that anything I may say or do in the discharge of this trust, should have any other effect, but to strengthen and extend the know- ledge of the Revelation of God through Jesus Christ, the mystery of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, one God blessed for evermore." This is not strictly a recantation indeed ; because Dr Hampden was not conscious of having anything to recant. But the best, and only really valuable recantation is the confession of the truth. When St Paul preacht the faith, which aforetime he had laboured to destroy, there was no need of any further recantation in words. Even if Dr Hampden had been led fifteen years ago by his specula- tive tendencies into certain erroneous refinements con- cerning the nicer points of doctrine, this should hardly be visited upon him as a grave offense now, provided all his more recent writings have been orthodox. But he says, " The truths, which you conceive me to have imjiugned, I hold, and have ever held, with all my heart and mind. I have endeavoured to make them the principles and groundwork of all my teaching. In following them out in a curious historical and theological enquiry, I may sometimes have exprest myself inaccurately, often ob- scurely, and thus have afforded room for misinterpreta- tions. These however are questions which can only be brought to an issue by a learned and precise discussion. 28 If I have said anything contrary to these truths, it was equally contrary to the purpose of niy soul. The truths themselves I held then, I hold now, and, so help me God, will hold to my life's end." What kind of recantation do his enemies want, if they will not be satisfied with this ? Do they want him to stand in a wliite sheet, or to kneel before them and kiss their toes ? And what example have they set him in this matter ? Has one of the false- hoods which have been uttered against him, been re- tracted ? Have they not been repeated again and again ? and are they not called up now as bitter and as fierce as ever? But it is time to enter into a more specific examination of these charges. That I may do so as thoroughly as I can, I will here insert the whole series of Propositions, which form the third part of the Paper laid before us, numbering them for the facility of reference. They are entitled " Propositions maintained in Dr Hampden's Work." 1. Dialectical Science . . . established that peculiar phraseology which we now use, in speaking of the Sacred Trinity as Three Persons and One God.— p. 130. 2. The whole discussion [on the Blessed Trinity] was fundamentally dialectical. — p. 104. 3. No one can pretend to that exactness of thought on the subject of the Holy Trinity, on which our technical language is based. — p. 150. 4. Revelation teaches us only, that God has manifested Himself relatively to us, as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. — Sup. 5. Unitarians, in that they acknowledge the great fundamental facts of the Bible, do not really differ in religion from other Christians. — Observ. pp. 20, 21. 6. There is much of the language of Platonism in the speculation on the Generation of the Son, and the Procession of the Holy Spirit. — p. 117. 7. The orthodox language, declaring the Son " begotten before all worlds 2D of one substance (sic) with the Father," was settled by a philosophy, wherein the principles of different sciences were confotinded. — p. 137. 8. The divine part of Christianity is its facts: the received statements of doctrines are only episodic additions, some out of infinite theories which may be raised on the texts of Scripture. — p. 390. 9. The application of the term punishment to the sacrifice of our Saviour belongs to the Aristotelic philosophy. — p. 250. 10. The bane of tliis philosophj/ of expiation was, that it depressed the power of man too low. — p. 253. 11. Christ is emphatically said to be our Atonement, not that we may attribute to God any change of purpose towards man by what Christ has done, but that we may know (sic) that we have passed from the death of sin to the life of righteousness by Him (sic). — lb. 12. "Atonement," in its true practical sense, expresses the fact, that we cannot be at peace without some consciousness of Atonement made, not that God may forgive us, but that we may forgive ourselves. — p. 252. 13. Our Saviour's mode of speaking, that virtue had gone out of Him, is characteristic of the prevalent idea, concerning the operation of Divine Influence, as of something passing from one body to another. — p. 315. 14. Our Saviour, in accompanying His miracles with significant actions, condescended to the prejudices of His followers, who believed that His word or His touch acted after the manner of secret agents in nature. — pp. 314, 315. 16. Tlie imperfection of the writers [of Scripture] may accidentally infuse alloy into the character of the truths concerning God. — Observ. p. 15. (First Edit.) 16. We are not to take the words or propositions written bi/ the inspired writers as the substance of tlie revelation, instead of looking to the authen- ticated dealings of God in the world. — Observ. p. 14, (First Edit.) 17. A reception of the Scripture, not simply as the livmg word of God, but as containing the sacred propositions of inspired wisdom, is an improperly directed veneration. — B. L. p. 91. 18. A participation of Deity, or an actual Deification of our nature, is the fundamental idea of the operation of Grace according to the School- men, and is a pantheistic notion, — Coinp. Qeias Koifai/ol (pvtrews- 2 Pet. i. 4.— B. L. p. 197. 19. The notions on wliich the several expressions of the Articles at large, and in particular of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, are founded, are both unphilosophical and unscrijjtural, belong to ancient theories of 30 philosophy, and are only less obviously injurious to the simplicity of the Faith than those which they exclude. — p. 378. 20. The speculative language of these Creeds was admitted into the Church of England, as established by the Reformers, before the genius of Bacon exposed the emptiness of the system, which the Schools had palmed upon the world, as the only instrument for the discovery of all truth.— lb. 21. The Nicene and Athauasian Creeds involve scholastic speculations. — p. 544. 22. All opinion, as sitch, is involuntary in its nature. It is onlv a fallacy, to invest dissent* in religion with the awe of the objects about which it is conversant. — Obs. p. 5. 23. The Orthodox ought to have contented themselves with the name of Original Sin, to designate the moraX fact of the tendency (sic) to sin, in human nature. — p. 224. 24. The Pelagians asserted that the first sin was hurtful to the human race, not by /»ro/)aga Trep p-el^ov dyaOov iariv avrov aTraWayrjvat kukov tov ^eyiajov aXkov aTraWd^ai, ovBey yap olf^at ToaovTOV KaKov etvat dvOpoiirco, oaov 86^a '\lrev8rj<; irepl wv Tvy^dv^L vvv rjfi'iv 6 X0709 wv. At the same time I would exhort Mr Trower, if he desires not to be found wanting in this time of trial, to refrain most sedu- lously from everything like a vague, indefinite insinuation against a brother. It is like inflicting a wound in the dark, or behind one's back, when one cannot meet or parry it. Against a definite charge one may defend oneself; or, if it be wellgrounded, it may be a help to self-knowledge and correction. But an insinuation is purely mischievous, to him against whom it is brought, to all who allow their confidence in a bi'other to be disturbed by it, and above all to him who brings it. As to being an unsafe guide, I desire not to be a guide to any one, beyond those who are especially committed to my charge, except by helping him to guide himself, by helping him, if I may, to love the truth, and to seek it for himself, through a diligent and faithful exercise of the faculties with which God has sup- plied him, and at the sources which God has opened to him. When one wishes to deliver others from servile submission to any earthly authorit}', it would be a flagrant inconsistency to set up oneself as a guide. If St Paul said, Who is Paul? and who is Aj)ollos? what does it behove 126 lis to say, but that we are nothing, except instruments in God's hands, whom He employs in the work of His Gospel, according as it seems good to Him ? In a Postscript to his Remarks, Mr Trower finds fault with the Bishop of Oxford for withdrawing the suit against Dr Hampden in the Court of Arches. On this question I am not called to enter. But since Mr Trower (in p. 64), " begs my especial attention " to certain distinctions, which he taxes his ingenuity to establish between the Bishop of Oxford's sentence and mine, I cannot conclude without observing that, in spite of these distinctions, his judgement is essentially the same. To make out these discrepancies Mr Trower urges that, " notwithstanding my admissions, I have pronounced the completest, most honorable acquit- tal ;" leaving out of sight, according to his wont, that, in saying this, I spoke (p. 60) " so far as regards the heresies imputed to Dr Hampden, and supposing that the Propo- sitions are the strongest evidence that can be adduced." On the other hand it is true that the Bishop of Oxford lays a good deal of stress ou certain concessions, which he conceives Dr Hampden to have made, which, however, if we sift them, we plainly see, amount to nothing. Sitting in some measure as a judge on the question, he expresses himself judicially, with divers limitations. Still hfe declares the Bampton Lectures to be pretty nearly what I have throughout described them, " a thoughtful and able history of the formation of dogmatic terminology, not a studied depreciation of authorized dogmatic language, still less any conscious denial of admitted dogmatic truth." If he com- plains of an overstatement of favorite views, I had used nearly the same words. If he ascribes the misjudgement of the work to obscui-ity of diction," and similar defects, it is to be remembered that he. had to apologize, not only for his own misjudgement, under the influence of which he 127 had so long acted, but for that of many of his friends ; while, as I had not been mixt up in the previous con- troversy, I had nothing to retract, and perhaps, from a longer familiarity with the obscurities of language and the tangled reasonings, which are so common in philosophical and theological treatises, was not equally disturbed by them. A reader of Nitzsch and Daub, of Kant and Hegel, will not be so easily offended by the obscurities of Dr Hampden, but will try to pierce through them for the sake of getting to his real meaning. Here at length I may take leave of Mr Trower. To some readers it may seem that I have spent far too many words on a Pamphlet, which, unless I have grossly mis- represented it, cannot be of much real weight. But, as a drowning man will catch at a straw, so there are some among Dr Hampden's adversaries, who, seeing their cause slipping away from under their feet, will even catch at such arguments as those here adduced. In the present state of feeling too, if any objections are left unnoticed as undeserving of a serious refutation, it is assumed that they are admitted, as I have already experienced in this case. For, after having exposed the fallaciousness of four or five-and-thirty out of the forty-two Propositions, I past over the remainder, partly from weariness at the pain- ful task, and partly /rom thinking that every intelligent reader would perceive how the explanations of the other passages objected to would apply to the rest. Neverthe- less some persons have thought fit to ensconce themselves behind these. This, though I have not thought it neces- sary to return and dislodge them, has rendered me fuller and more minute than I should else have been in replying to Mr Trower. Nor shall I deem my words wasted, if they can avail to clear up any doubts in a single mind among the thousands that have been disturbed by this 128 calamitous agitation. The enemy, we have already seen, is on the alert, and will try, secretly and openly, to take advantage of this occasion for drawing weak and wavering minds from their allegiance to our Church. This from the first was one of my chief reasons for deploring Dr Hamp- den's appointment. The Minister tells us that his intention was to strengthen the Protestant cause in our Church ; but I am afraid, hardly any measure he could have adopted, would have tended so greatly to strengthen our opponents. Our endeavours ought to be to confirm the waverers, those who are weak in the faith, and not to involve them in doubtful disputations : but the effect of this appoint- ment is to repell them, and to entangle them in manifold perplexities. With a view to such persons more especially have I written in this Postscript, from a strong desire to help, if I may, in dispelling the delusions by which so many minds have been irritated and troubled, and to con- vince them that our beloved Church is not undergoing the oppression and disgrace, as her enemies are ready to cry out, of having a heretical Bishop forced upon her by an arbitrary exercise of the civil supremacy, but that the new Bishop has been greatly misrepresented and calumniated, and holds, and, so far as we have means of judging, has ever held and taught the true Christian faith, as defined by the Creeds and Articles of our Church. On the many difficult and distressing ecclesiastical ques- tions which have arisen out of this controversy, I abstain from speaking. It would require far more knowledge than I possess, to speak on them to any purpose. Let us wait quietly for the decision of the Law. Should that.be injurious to the Church, let us seek to have the law amend- ed in a constitutional manner. Our strength, now as ever, lies in patience, not in clamour or turbulence. Let us stand at our post, and not quit it. Let us close our ears 129 against all allurements to desert it. Let us look with con- fidence to God, and also with confidence, not with jealous suspicions, to those whom He has set over us. Even as a matter of policy, confidence is strength, and will conciliate the powers that be, while jealousy and suspicion must needs alienate them. And the Epistle for the week teaches us how that which is the course of policy, is also the course of duty. February 2d, 1848. Since writing the above, I have seen tlie Christian Obsen'er for the month of January ; and, having stated that almost every one I know of who has taken the pains to examine Dr Hampden's writings fairly and attentively, has been led to form a favorable judgement on the question of his orthodoxy, I feel bound to men- tion that the writer of the remarks upon him in that Journal, though evidently desirous to do him justice, and reluctant to condemn him, " regrets" that he cannot pronounce the charges of heterodoxy groundless. I would fain hope that the impartial writer of those observations, should he read the foregoing explanations of Dr Hampden's opinions, will find many of his objections removed : and if he will look over the last two chapters of // EDUCATION THE NECESSITY OF MANKIND. we may indeed have a considerable supciiority : but in comparison witli Him who is the Truth, our purest truth becomes deceitfuhiess and hypocrisy. Still, when we contrast the English as a body with that which is concurrently reported of our fellow-subjects on the other side of St George's Channel, while we cannot but perceive that there is a vast difference, we are led to infer that this difference is not unconnected with that between the forms of Christianity which prevail in the two countries: for, I believe, no such difference is found in the north of Ireland. Nor is it difficult to discern why this should be so. For while our Reformed Church calls upon us, in accordance with the practice of our Lord Himself and of His Apostles, to believe the truth, to believe that which the word of God declares to be the truth, to believe it because it is true, and to search and ascertain that it is so, the Church of Rome, on the contrary, commands her votaries to believe whatever she tells them, to believe it implicitly, without enquiry, without hesitation, on the sole ground that she bids them believe it: and she reprobates and peremptorily condemns every attempt to make out whether it is indeed true. Now he who brings himself thus to believe, or rather to make believe that he believes, without dis- cerning any correspondence between the articles of his belief and the convictions of his reason, will naturally lose all conception of truth, as a thing certain, and worthy to be the object of pursuit through life and through death. Truth, in his eyes, becomes dependent on the dictum of a man, whom in the bottom of his heart he knows to be fallible, even as he knows him to be liable to all manner of sin, not excepting the EDUCATION THE NECESSITY OF MANKIND. 25 basest or the most atrocious, but who, he is told by his priest, is infallible, and whom therefore, under terrour of excommunication, he declares to be so. Now when this gross and flagrant imposture is placed at the root of his belief, the rest must needs partake more or less of its rottenness. There is an affinity too between the search after speculative truth, and the practical reverence for moral truth. Honesty, integrity, sincerity, singlemindedness are equally indispensable for both ; and if they are not cultivated with reference to the former end, they will be at a disadvantage with reference to the latter. Moreover truth in the heart and the mind is the correlative to that great primary doctrine, by the as- sertion of which the usurpation of Rome was cast down at the Reformation, that we are justified by faith, — that is, not by vporks, which, every man's heart must tell him, are so often factitious and delusive, but by a true, Uving, spiritual apprehension of Christ, the Eternal Son of God, as our Divine Mediator and Peace- maker, and of the Father, to whom we are brought nigh by Him. When we are rooted and grounded in this faith, we take our stand, as it were, in the sun, in the centre and fountain of light and truth ; and we see all things in this pure light : we see the light of truth shining upon them. It is a significant fact, that some of the recent deserters from our Church have been fond of depreciating this virtue of Truth, as merely Pagan and rationalistic. They could hardly have given a more awful witness of the manner in which they have yielded themselves up to believe a lie, or rather a system and network of lies. They could hardly have shewn more 26 EDUCATION THE NECESSITY OF MANKIND. forcibly how incompatible their new belief, — for faith I will not call it, — is with truth and the love of it. This therefore is another quality which ought to be cultivated with special care and diligence in these schools. We know that in the Anti-Reformation, by which Loyola and his disciples attempted to counteract the Reformation, the love of Truth has been studiously represt. Every notion was to be drawn, not from the thing itself, not from the object of that notion, but from authority. To question that authority, to seek after truth as independent of it, became a mortal sin. Let us take this example as a warning. Let us endeavour to cultivate the love of truth, of truth intellectual, and of truth moral, in every possible way. Let us set it before the mind as the one object of our intellectual life, as the one ground and safeguard of our moral life. In the Middle Classes this is especially needful in these times, because the thirst after gain, and the spirit of competition, which have lately been corrupting the trade of England, have beguiled so many of our tradesmen, whose character for honorable dealing formerly stood so high, into all manner of fraudulent tricks. Unless this spirit be checkt, unless these frauds be represt, the glory of England will wane and pass away. Let us bring up our sons as young plants, in the lively conviction that they are under the naked eye of heaven, and that God sees all their actions, and hears all their words, and reads all their thoughts ; and they may be led hereby to seek earnestly after the inestimable grace of Truth. Thus, if the aim of this School be to cultivate the moral graces in its pupils, especially those graces which I EDUCATION THE NECESSITY OF MANKIND. 27 are the most congenial to our English nature, such as manliness or courage, and truth, — if it tries to hring them up as dutiful, loving members both of our Reformed Church and of our free State, — it will assuredly, — through God's help we may say, assuredly, — become a priceless blessing to England ; and our next business will then be to render it the parent of like institutions in other parts of the land. Hereby too, while our sons grow up as plants, in loving fellowship, under the eye of Heaven, to form a loyal, dutiful, happy nation, we may further hope that through God's grace they may also be enabled to grow up in all things into Him who is the Head, even Christ the Lord, the Eternal, Onlybegotten Son of the Father. THE END. Lately puhlisht : THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER : Second Edition : 1850. THE VICTORY OF FAITH : Second Edition : 1847. SERMONS PREACHT IN HERSTMONCEUX CHURCH: 1841. „ „ „ Second Volume : 1849. THE BETTER PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH : a Cliarge delivered at the Visitation in 1840, with Notes. PRIVILEGES IMPLY DUTIES: a Charge delivered at the Visitation in 1841, with Notes. THE MEANS OF UNITY : a Charge delivered at the Visitation in 1842, with Notes, especially on the Anglican Bishopric at Jerusalem, and on the Need of an Ecclesiastical Synod. THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH IN TIMES OF TRIAL: a Charge delivered at the Visitation in 1848, with Notes, especially on the Controversy touching the Management of Schools, and on the Jewish Question. THE TRUE REMEDY FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE : a Charge delivered at the Visitation in 1849, with Notes, especially on the Educational, Matrimonial, and Baptismal Questions. THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH : a Sermon, with Introductory Remarks on Uniformity; 1845. THE UNITY OF MANKIND IN GOD : a Sermon preacht on occasion of the Jubilee of the Church Missionary Society : 1848. LETTER TO THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER, on the Appointment of Dr Hampden to the Sec of Hereford : Second Edition, with a Postscript, on Lord John Russell's Letter to the Clergy of Bedford, and in reply to Mr Trower's Plain Remarks : 1848. THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOUR : a Letter to the Editor of the English Review : with a Letter from Professor Maurice to the Author : 1849. LETTER TO THE HON. R. CAVENDISH, on the recent Judgement of the Court of Appeal, as affecting the Doctrine of tlie Church : Second Edition, with a Postscript : 1850. A FEW WORDS ON THE REJECTION OF THE EPISCOPAL BILL TO AMEND THE ECCLESIASTICAL COURT OF APPEAL: 1850. PORTIONS OF THE PSALMS IN ENGLISH VERSE, selected for Public Worship : 1839. GUESSES AT TRUTH, by Two Brothers : First Series, Fourth Edition, revised: 1851. Ditto Second Series, Second Edition, with large Additions : 1848. Prepar ing for Publication : THE CONTEST WITH ROME: a Charge delivered at the Visitation in 1851, with Notes. A VINDICATION OF LUTHER AGAINST HIS RECENT ENGLISH ASSAILANTS: Second Edition, reprinted from the Notes to the Mission of the Comforter, revised, with Notes. THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH :— ROMANIZING FALLA- CIES:—THE ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE: Three Charges delivered at the Visitations in 1843, 1845, 1846, with Notes. NOTES TO THE VICTORY OF FAITH. SERMONS PREACHT ON PARTICULAR OCCASIONS : Second Edition, with Notes. GUESSES AT TRUTH, by Two Brothers : Third Series, enlarged. LONDON; rrinte-l l>y Samuel Bentlky and Co., Bangor House, Shoe Lane.