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 PASTORAL LETTER 
 
 THE CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE 
 PROVINCE OF YORK. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, 
 
 PRIJIATE OP ENGLAND AND METROPOLITAN. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1864.
 
 lOVDOS : rnlKTED BY -WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORP PTRKI T, 
 AND CnAniNG CUOSS.
 
 TO THE CLERGY AND. LAITY OF THE 
 PROVINCE OF YORK. 
 
 Brethren, 
 
 The result of the proceedings before the 
 Privy Council, in the two cases of the Bishop of 
 Salisbury v. Williams and Fendall v. Wilson, has 
 caused great perplexity and dismay throughout the 
 Church. The numerous addresses and letters which 
 have reached me, inviting an expression of opinion 
 upon the great questions supposed to be involved, 
 seem to compel me to some public and general reply, 
 in order to remove misapprehensions, and to reassure, 
 it may be, the minds of some, who have admitted, in 
 their first alarm, the notion that the Church of Eng- 
 land is falling away from the true faith. 
 
 My position, as a member of the Privy Council, 
 necessarily limits me in discussing what is inaccu- 
 rately called the Jiidgment. I do not indeed admit 
 the doctrine which has been advanced, that the Clergy 
 in general are forbidden by the Oath of Supremacy 
 to discuss the reasons of the Committee of Privy 
 Council for the advice it has tendered to the Crown. 
 Those who take this view are perhaps unaware that 
 the Judgment (so-called) which has excited so much 
 discussion, is an entirely different document from the 
 Report to the Crown, upon which the real Judgment 
 is founded ; that the so-called Judgment is a state- 
 
 b2
 
 ( 4 ) 
 
 ment for the guidance of the suitors and the pubhc 
 of the grounds upon which the advice to the Crown 
 will be based, which statement never reaches the 
 Crown at all ; and that the Eeport to the Crown 
 happily omits the grounds of the advice, and confines 
 itself to advising briefly what the Judgment should 
 be.* By this course the great inconvenience is 
 prevented that reasons which must of necessity be 
 closely and freely criticised in arguing new cases as 
 they arise, would appear as part of the Judgment of 
 the Queen, and that the mind of the Advocate would 
 thus be divided between his respect for the Sovereign 
 and his duty to his client. The Clergy are happily 
 
 * The Report and Judgment in one of the Cases is annexed : — 
 '* ' Now the Lords of the Committee having, in ohedience to your 
 Majesty's said Order in Council, taken the said Petition into consideration, 
 and read the proceedings transmitted from the Court below, and 'on three 
 former days heard the said Appellant and his Proctor and Counsel, and 
 a Proctor for the Respondent, and having maturely deliberated, have this 
 day agreed humbly to report to your Majesty their opinion in favour of the 
 Appeal and Complaint of the said Reverend Rowland Williams that the 
 Decree or Sentence appealed from ought to be reversed ; that the Articles 
 given in in the said Cause in the Court below by the Proctor of the 
 said Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Salisbury, and which wei-c by 
 the said Judge admitted as reformed, ought to be rejected ; and that the 
 said Reverend Rowland Williams, clerk, the Appellant, ought to be 
 dismissed from the Decree or Citation against him issued under seal of the 
 Court below pursuant to the Letters of Request, in virtue of which the said 
 Cause was promoted, and from all further observance of justice in the 
 said Cause ; and, further, that the said Right Reverend the Lord Bishop 
 of Salisbury, the Respondent, ought to be condemned in the costs incurred 
 by the said Appellant in the said Cause of Appeal, but that no order ought 
 to be made in regard to the costs incurred on either side in the said Cause 
 in the Court below.' 
 
 " Her Majesty, having taken the said Report into consideration, was 
 pleased, by and with the advice of her Privy Council, to approve thereof, 
 and of what is therein recommended, and to order, as it is hereby ordered, 
 that the same be duly and punctually observed, complied with, and carried 
 into execution. Whereof all persons whom it may concern are to take 
 notice, and govern themselves accordingly."
 
 ( 5 ) 
 
 not placed under that intolerable restraint, that a 
 number of theological statements, drawn up in fact 
 by a Committee with a majority of eminent laymen, 
 and partly repudiated by two out of the three pro- 
 fessed theologians that compose the minority, are re- 
 moved from the sphere of theological discussion and 
 placed under the protection of the Oath of Supremacy. 
 If a Committee of the Privy Council of the Queen 
 imj)arts to the suitors and to the public the grounds 
 of the advice it means to tender, the public and the 
 suitors will form an opinion as to whether Her 
 Majesty is likely to be rightly or wrongly advised. 
 And whilst the Oath of Supremacy binds us to regard 
 the Judgment of the Crown as final and decisive 
 between the parties, it does not impose on the Clergy 
 the distasteful duty of imputing to the Crown pro- 
 positions or reasoning which their own studies 
 enable them to recognise as defective, which may 
 happen to be corrected in some future case, which 
 emanate not from the Crown but from responsible 
 servants of Her Majesty, and which are not even 
 submitted to the Crown after being delivered to the 
 public. 
 
 But the liberty which I thus claim for the Clergy 
 and for all others, I can only exercise with those 
 restrictions which attach to a member of the Court. 
 I cannot reopen the whole case and compare the 
 Judgment with the pleadings and with the facts in 
 evidence. I shall pass no opinion on the Judgment 
 of the Arches Court, which has now been reviewed by 
 the Privy Council. But in the discharge of my spi- 
 ritual office I am bound to speak upon those theolo-
 
 ( i; ) 
 
 gical topics as to which the niinds of Christian people 
 are from any cause disquieted, and to point out what 
 is the effect of the " Judgment " upon the position 
 of the Church. 
 
 It is importanj: to observe that a much wider scope 
 is attributed to the " Judgment " than it claims for 
 itself. The course of proceeding in the Court of 
 Arches recognises a twofold right of appeal. Either 
 party may appeal, either on the admission of the 
 articles of charge or on the judgment being pro- 
 nounced. An appeal at the former of these two 
 stages would have raised the question. What passages 
 in the " Essays " impugned are heretical ? An appeal 
 at the latter stage is confined to the much narrower 
 question, Do certain quoted passages deserve, as here- 
 tical, the penalty decreed by the Court below ? Now 
 the appeal to the Privy Council was in this narrower 
 form ; it was an appeal against the judgment of the 
 Court of Arches, and not against its order for the 
 reformation of the articles of charge. It was an 
 appeal against the penalty, and not an appeal upon 
 the whole merits of the cases. If the Judge of the 
 Court of Arches was wrong in admitting or rejecting 
 any passages as heretical, either party could have 
 appealed, and so the opinion of the Privy Council 
 would have been obtained as to the wdiole case, as to 
 what passages in the whole Essay were, and what were 
 not, at variance with our articles and formularies. If 
 the promoter thought that after the large changes 
 directed by the Judge to be made in the articles of 
 charge the quotations still admitted would give a 
 wrong idea of the unsound teaching of the defendant,
 
 ( 7 ) 
 
 he might have had his remedy with the Court above, 
 and might have there resisted the omissions and 
 alterations ordered by the Judge of the Arches. But 
 in each case the promoter waived that right of appeal ; 
 and neither case came to the Court above until the 
 later stage — the appeal against the punishment, 
 
 I purposely refrain from expressing any opinion as 
 to the judgment of the Court below, because this is 
 beyond the limit I have imposed on myself. I only 
 say that, whatever may be thought of that judgment 
 upon the admission of the articles, the promoters 
 rested content with it, and thus narrowed the ground 
 which the Committee of Council were permitted to 
 travel over. And it follows that the Committee of 
 Council has pronounced no opinion whatever upon 
 the " Essays " of the two defendants, but only upon 
 some detached fragments of them. 
 
 Nor can it be regarded as an injury to the faith of 
 the Church that the Committee of Council has imposed 
 on itself the strictest bounds in dealing with these 
 fragments. " The accuser is, for the purpose of the 
 charge, confined to the passages which are included 
 and set out in the Articles as the matter of the accu- 
 sation ; but it is competent to the accused party to 
 explain from the rest of his work the sense or mean- 
 ing of any passage or word that is challenged by the 
 accuser." We may infer from these words that the 
 Court will not have regard to any other portion of 
 the work in which the passages occur ; but that if the 
 accused resorts to other parts of his work to explain 
 away the accusation, the accuser may follow him into 
 the same ground to refute the explanation. But if
 
 ( 8 ) 
 
 after the parties have been heard, without having 
 travelled beyond the passage, a doubt shall exist in 
 the mind of the Court whether the passage in ques- 
 tion be heretical, or be devoid of all sense and 
 meaning, the Court is not to cast even a glance into 
 the rest of the work in order to clothe it Avith mean- 
 ing ; but is bomid, if it be not clearly heretical in 
 itself, rather to consider it as unmeaning altogether. 
 This strict rule may narrow the functions of the Court 
 unduly, and may be at variance with the practice 
 of other Courts in the analogous case of a libel ; but 
 there is no peril to the faith of the Church where a 
 passage escapes censm-e because the Court caimot see 
 its meaning, and declines to seek assistance elsewhere. 
 
 These remarks seem necessary, because, in spite of 
 the explicit disclaimer in the " Judgment," many per- 
 sist in treating it as an examination and acquittal of 
 the whole work called " Essays and Reviews." 
 
 There are only two points in the " Judgment " to 
 which these remarks do not apply, and about which 
 after all these limitations the mind of the Chm'ch is 
 reasonably disquieted. I mean the inspiration and 
 authority of Holy Scriptm^e, and the eternity of the 
 punishment of the wicked. 
 
 Upon the former of these points, the authority of 
 Scripture, I must not shrink from saying that a doc- 
 trine as to Holy Scriptm-e has found some counten- 
 ance from the " Judgment," which no article or 
 formulary of any Chm-ch whatever has before 
 adopted, namely : That the Bible is called the Word 
 of God, not because it is, but because it contains the 
 Word of God.
 
 ( 9 ) 
 
 One of the Appellants maintains that the title 
 " Word of God " cannot properly be applied to the 
 whole Bible by Protestants, because it is not so 
 applied in the Bible itself, and Protestants own no 
 other authority than the Bible. He thinks that the 
 doctrine of the Church on this subject is to be sought 
 for in the Sixth Article, which he terms the " pivot 
 article," and this doctrine he thus expresses : " The 
 Word of God is contained in Scripture, whence it 
 does not follow that it is co-extensive with it." 
 
 The other Appellant maintains, in two passages 
 that are certainly not free from obscurity, that the 
 Bible is the production of devout human beings, 
 which other devout human beings are entitled to 
 criticise freely; that seeing the Prayer Book speaks 
 of the Church as inspired, we ought not to shrink 
 from attributing inspiration to " true hearts " in all 
 ages merely because they are fallible, but we ought 
 rather to reduce our theory of the inspiration of 
 prophets and apostles to the same level, and confess 
 that those " Israelites of old " might be fallible also, 
 and that the inspiration which guided the writers of 
 the Bible is the same in kind as that which Luther 
 and Milton and other good men have at different 
 times enjoyed. 
 
 Obscure as the words of this writer are, I assume 
 that they have a meaning, and this is the only mean- 
 ing which I am able to attach to them. 
 
 One Appellant then maintains that the Bible is not 
 the Word of God, and the other that it is the word 
 of devout men. These two doctrines are oj^posed 
 not merely to one or more statements of our Church, 
 
 B 3
 
 ( 10 ) 
 
 but to those statements which are the very foundation 
 of its teaching. 
 
 The doctrine of the Church on this subject is set 
 forth in the 6th and 20th Articles principally, but 
 several other Articles contain expressions bearing on 
 the subject, as the 19th, 21st, 22nd, 24th, and 26th. 
 Not one of these Articles is directed against those 
 who deny the authority of Scripture, but the doctrine 
 is gathered from the expressions used about the Bible 
 in guarding against errors of a different kind. 
 
 The 6th Article is directed against those who hold 
 that traditions are necessary besides Scripture. The 
 word " containeth " does not imjoly that any part of 
 Scripture is less inspired, less canonical than another ; 
 the assertion is that all things necessary to salvation 
 are found in Holy Scripture. They are contained, 
 but not as the less in the greater, not as one part in 
 a whole, but as all the parts together are contained 
 in the whole which they constitute. The latter part 
 of the Article enumerating the Books of Scripture 
 introduces the well-known distinction between canoni- 
 cal and apocryphal books. It has been argued that 
 there are two senses of the word canonical, but this 
 is not admissible. I do not believe that that sense 
 of canonical, as " admitted into a list or index of 
 works to be used in public worship," was in the mind 
 of those who drew up the Articles at all. It origi- 
 nated, I think, with Semler in Germany, but it is 
 now quite exploded, even among those who more or 
 less follow Semler 's opinions. There is every reason 
 to think, and no reason on the other side, that in the 
 Article the word canonical has its proper historical
 
 ( n ) 
 
 meaning. Originally the canon was the rule of faith 
 in the Church ; then as Holy Scri^Dture came every- 
 where to be accepted as the rule of faith, the Bible 
 was called " the canon of Holy Scriptures " by 
 Ohrysostom, " the canonical Scriptures " by Origen, 
 " canonized books " by Chrysostom, always with the 
 sense that, as divine writings, they were the norm 
 and rule of the faith. The word canonical means in the 
 6th Article " belonging to the rule of faith." Books 
 could not be canonical, could not guide and regulate 
 and determine the faith, unless they were divine. 
 
 The Bible is termed the Word of God in the 19th, 
 20th, 22nd, and 24th Articles. None of these 
 Articles was drawn up with reference to those 
 who deny divine authority to the Bible ; but this 
 error, though not present to the mind of the framers 
 of the Articles, receives indirectly a sufficient refuta- 
 tion from the passages that can be cited. 
 
 In Article 22 Scripture and the Word of God are 
 treated as interchangeable terms. 
 
 In Article 20 a very important statement occurs : 
 " And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain 
 anything that is contrary to God's Word \vritten, 
 neither may it so expound one place of Scripture that 
 it be repugnant to another." Here Holy Scripture 
 is made the judge of controversies, or rather, as it 
 has been said, the yoice of the judge ; and a limit is 
 put to the right of interpreting a passage "accord- 
 ing to the mind of the Church " claimed by some 
 Romish writers, by the rule that one place of Scrip- 
 ture is not to be interpreted against another. Nothing 
 can more clearly show the sense which the Church
 
 ( 12 ) 
 
 puts upon the phrase " Word of God." If no text 
 is to be interpreted against another, this must be 
 because all the Bible is regarded as divine and 
 canonical. 
 
 Besides these passages, there is the question put to 
 every one to be ordained Deacon : " Do you un- 
 feignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the 
 Old and New Testament ? " with the answer, " I do 
 believe them." * 
 
 How stands the case, then, with the Appellants ? 
 One of them has afiQrmed that the Bible cannot pro- 
 perly be called by us the Word of God, though it is 
 so called in the 20th and other Articles ; and has 
 maintained that the Word of God is something con- 
 tained in Scripture but not co-extensive mth it, which 
 is contrary to the 6th and 20th Articles, and to the 
 profession of unfeigned belief in all the Canonical 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, made by 
 every one who is ordained Deacon. 
 
 * Were it necessary to show that other Protestant communities have spoken 
 of the Bible as the Word of God, the task would be easy. In the Preface to 
 the Augsburg Confession (p. 6) the teaching of the Eeformers is described as 
 drawn " ex Scripturis Sanctis et puro verbo Dei,'' the two expressions 
 being synonymous. In the 'Apology for the Confession' (p, 48) the 
 adversaries of the Lutherans are described as condemning doctrines in 
 defiance of the Scripture of the Holy Spirit (" contra manifestam Scripturam 
 Spiritus Sancti"). In the Smalcaldic Articles (p. 308) it is written, " We 
 liave another nde, namely, that the Word of God may establish Articles 
 of Faith, and no one besides, not even an angel." And these Articles 
 (pp. 331-333) describe a class of enthusiasts who profess that " they have 
 the Spirit before the Word and without the Word, and therefore judge, 
 and turn, and twist the Scripture, or the vocal Word " [elsewhere " the 
 external Word "] " at their pleasure." In the ' Formula Concordiai ' Luther 
 is described as laying down clearly this difference between Divine and 
 human writings, " Solas videlicet Sacras literas pro imica regula et noima 
 omnium dogmatum cognoscendas." All th(!fee passages will be foimd iu 
 Franckc's ' Libri Symbolici Eccl. Luther.'
 
 ( 13 ) 
 
 The other Appellant contends that the Bible is the 
 production of devout human beings, which other 
 devout human beings may freely criticise ; that the 
 inspiration which guided it is the same in kind as 
 that which Luther and Milton and other good men 
 have at different times enjoyed. This is in contra- 
 diction of the 6th Article, which attributes canonical 
 authority to the books of Holy Writ; to the 20th 
 Article, which forbids the Church to ordain anything 
 contrary to God's word written, or to expound one 
 place of Scripture so that it be repugnant to another. 
 The infallibility of Scripture is here plainly taught : 
 the Appellant advisedly contends for the fallibility. 
 
 I had no doubt that both Appellants were clearly 
 shown, even under the narrow rule laid down by 
 the Committee of Council, to have broken the law of 
 the Church, and to have advisedly taught what was 
 contrary to the doctrines of the Church in her 
 articles and formularies. Being unable to concur 
 in the advice to be given to the Crown, the two 
 Primates recorded their dissent from this portion of 
 the judgment. 
 
 It is almost superfluous to observe that this is no 
 question of terms but of doctrine, and that it is not a 
 question of one doctrine but of the doctrine on which 
 all the other doctrines of the Church of England rest. 
 It is a question of the binding authority of Holy 
 Scripture. In pronoiuicing the Bible to be the 
 Word of God, in taking from all Deacons a pledge 
 of belief as to all the books of the Bible, in call- 
 ing the books of the Old and New Testaments 
 canonical, in declaring that Holy Scripture con-
 
 ( 14 ) 
 
 tains all things necessary to salvation, in prohibiting 
 inconsistent or contrary interpretations of Scripture, 
 the Church of England expresses with sufficient 
 clearness that God has spoken to His people the word 
 of His will so that all can understand it and use it 
 for their guidance, that the Bible is this word, and 
 that its teaching, which cannot contradict itself, is 
 the law, or norm, or canon, by which the Church is 
 bound. The Church has laid down no theory of 
 inspiration ; she has always had in her bosom 
 teachers of at least two different theories. But she 
 does lay down that the declarations of Scripture are 
 intelligible, are self-consistent, are of supreme au- 
 thority. If the Bible is not the Word of God, but 
 contains the Word of God as the greater contains 
 the less, every one of these predicates falls to the 
 ground. There is no touchstone which shall test for 
 us whether a given passage is part of the Word of 
 God or of the word of man therewith entangled ; and 
 so we can no longer depend on understanding the 
 will of God from the Bible. Passages may admit of 
 a contrary interpretation if some are and some are 
 not of divine origin ; and therefore the Bible would 
 cease to be self-consistent. And that book can no 
 longer be of supreme authority in controversies of 
 faith ; we should either be without an authority, from 
 our inability to discern and disentangle the divine 
 and human portions, or the supreme authority would 
 be that power which claimed to teach us what was 
 divine and what was human. 
 
 Thus far as to the statements of one Appellant. 
 Those of the other tend as directlv towards the same
 
 ( IS ) 
 
 result. If those " Israelites of old," whom we term 
 prophets and apostles, are fallible writers, and their 
 works to be classed only with devout human compo- 
 sitions, we have no right to expect from them a clear, 
 or an uniformly consistent, or an authoritative de- 
 cision. 
 
 What then are we to teach ? Where is " the very 
 lively Word of God, the special food of man's soul, 
 that all Christian persons are bound to embrace, 
 believe, and follow, if they look to be saved ? " * 
 The Church of England answers that the Bible is 
 that Word. The new doctrine seems to leave us 
 without an answer. 
 
 And whilst I have exactly adhered to the rule laid 
 down by the legal members of the Committee that 
 the passages inculpated were to be interpreted by 
 themselves, and that the Court could not seek for 
 itself any illustration of them even from the writer's 
 own words in the same Essay, I must point out the 
 serious consequences of deciding theological doc- 
 trines upon such a basis, both as regards the suitors, 
 and as regards the Church. 
 
 As regards the suitors, these proceedings are 
 highly penal, and penalties almost always involve 
 questions of degree. When a writer denies that the 
 whole Bible is the Word of God, the statement is in 
 terms contradictory to those of our Church. But as 
 to the punishment, it makes the greatest difference 
 — the difference between a venial want of caution 
 in the use of words, and a highly culpable error — 
 whether the writer means to exclude on critical 
 
 * Injunctious of King Edward VI. 
 *
 
 ( H) ) 
 
 gToiinds a few verses wliicli ought not to be con- 
 sidered parts of the Bible, or wishes to shut out all 
 miracle, and all prediction, and much of the sacred 
 history. Now in one of the cases before us a writer 
 has asserted that no one can call the Bible the Word 
 of God, and has then proceeded to show with suffi- 
 cient openness many special places of Scripture to 
 which his principle applies. The passage is one 
 continuous whole, and cannot be divided with justice 
 to the author's meaning. If an author states a 
 general principle and thinks fit to add the particulars 
 to which it applies, he has a right to ask that both the 
 one and the other shall be looked on as essential to 
 his argument. The Committee of Council by its rule 
 is precluded from looking at any thing which the 
 Court below has struck out ; the Court below has 
 struck out all examples taken from Holy Scripture ; 
 so that the universal proposition is stated, but the 
 examples which show the amount of its application 
 are all excluded. 
 
 It is obvious to answer that the Appellant has 
 been acquitted, and so needs not complain. But there 
 are two parties to a suit. The Promoter has thought 
 it right to obtain the opinion of the Courts upon this 
 passage. The Court of Arches decides that half of 
 it must be struck out, and that the remaining half is 
 highly penal. The Privy Council determines that 
 the remaining half is not penal at all ; but guards 
 itself against any decision, except as to that half. 
 Neither tribunal will have anything to do with the 
 whole passage. The Promoter is unable to read it 
 except as a whole, — perhaps could not foresee that it
 
 ( 17 ) 
 
 would be read otherwise. The Promoter gets no 
 substantial answer, but pays the costs. 
 
 As regards the Church, which has all along 
 watched these cases with great anxiety, the results 
 of the operation of this rule are equally unsatis- 
 factory. The Promoter had at least the choice of 
 two appeals ; the Church could only wait. The 
 Church expected an interpretation of the law upon 
 this passage from the proper Courts. The result of 
 the whole proceeding is that it receives an opinion 
 upon half the passage : upon the abstract assertion 
 and not upon the concrete illustrations of it. Nay, 
 what is more surprising, the author's own examples 
 being lost in the Court below, fresh ones are sup- 
 plied him, and the sense of the passage is thus com- 
 pletely transformed. The Council tries the question 
 whether it is heretical to " affirm that any part of 
 the canonical books of the Old or New Testament, 
 upon any subject whatever, however unconnected ivith 
 religious faith or moral duty, was not written under 
 the inspiration of the Holy Spirit ? " Are we then 
 to infer from the acquittal that the author's own 
 examples, " the nature of angels, the reality of 
 demoniacal possession, the personality of Satan, and 
 the miixiculous particulars of many events,'' are deter- 
 mined by the Committee to be " matters unconnected 
 with religious faith or moral duty ?" By no means. 
 The Court below has deprived the Committee of the 
 benefit of the author's own examples ; and they have 
 applied his principles to particulars of their own, to 
 " matters unconnected with religious faith and moral 
 duty." For no other reader, beyond the doors of the
 
 ( 18 ) 
 
 Council Chamber, can this half passage be said to 
 have any existence. No other reader will stop in 
 the middle of the page lest he should see how the 
 author developes his own meaning. No other reader 
 would discard the author's own examples and put in 
 others of his own. What must be the result ? The 
 Council speaks of one thing, and the author perhaps 
 of another; but the words of the Coimcil will be 
 applied to the passage as it stands, which alone has 
 any existence as a ground for the charge. 
 
 Unlearned persons know but two ways of dealing 
 with an incomplete statement ; it may either be left 
 unexplained as incomplete, or the author's own words 
 may be called in to complete it. 
 
 The charge against one Appellant on the subject 
 of Eternal Punishment did not seem to me to be 
 sustained. On the one hand the Church in adopting 
 the word everlasting to express the word that may 
 also be rendered eternal, has cut off, for all purposes 
 of law, some metaphysical speculations to which the 
 original word has been subjected. Everlasting must 
 mean lasting for ever, never coming to an end. The 
 Church of England believes in a life that lasts for 
 ever for the good, and in an everlasting punishment 
 of the wicked. 
 
 But on the other hand, the Appellant explained to 
 the Court that the " all " of whom he predicated 
 salvation at the last, did not include all men with- 
 out exception ; that he divided men into three classes 
 — the utterly reprobate, the good, and a middle class 
 of undeveloped or " germinal souls ;" and that it was 
 this middle class, whose characters at the hour of
 
 ( 19 ) 
 
 death did not mark them either as good or bad, of 
 whom he hoped that they might hereafter be developed 
 into something higher, and might be made fit for 
 the bosom of the Father. Although this was not a 
 formal retractation of anything he had advanced, 
 yet as the words employed would bear that construc- 
 tion, with a little allowance for incautious writing, 
 it did not seem to be right to inflict a heavy penalty 
 for maintaining that all would be saved, in the face 
 of a declaration that he meant " all the good and all 
 the undeveloped," to the exclusion of the reprobate. 
 The charge fell to the ground if the writer's own 
 explanation was to be taken. 
 
 . It must be remembered that our duty was to deal 
 with advised teaching contrary to the articles and 
 formularies. 
 
 As the Appellant did not directly impugn the for- 
 mularies where they speak of this subject ; as he 
 expressed no more than a hope or wish ; above all, 
 as he insisted that his words had been overstrained 
 beyond their meaning, I felt justified in agreeing in 
 the opinion that he had not been guilty of advised 
 teaching that had incurred the penalty awarded by 
 the Court below. 
 
 The " Judgment " omits the consideration that had 
 most weight with me, namely, the author's own ex- 
 planation of his words, and, therefore, I could not 
 adopt all its expressions. Let me, however, point out 
 to some who have considered them as equivalent to an 
 admission that " the Church of England has left the 
 eternity of punishment an open question," that this 
 is by no means the construction that can be i'airl}'
 
 ( 20 ) 
 
 put upon them : " We do not find in the formularies to 
 which this article refers any such distinct declaration 
 of our Church upon the subject, as to condemn as i^enal 
 the expression of a hope by a clergyman that even the 
 ultimate pardon of the wicked who are condemned in 
 the Day of Judgment may be consistent with the 
 will of Almighty God." Our Church should not be 
 too ready to make a hope or wish the ground of a 
 criminal proceeding ; but it does not follow that the 
 hope or wish is in conformity to the teaching of the 
 Church because it is left to reason and argument 
 and is not punished. 
 
 The doctrine of a terminable punishment for the 
 wicked finds no countenance whatever from Holy 
 Scripture. Those who have maintained it can do no 
 more than suggest plausible explanations of texts that 
 make against them ; even they must admit that there 
 is not one passage of Scripture that clearly authorises 
 the hope of miiversal salvation. On the other hand 
 the declarations that the punishment of the wicked 
 is eternal are many, and those most clear and em- 
 phatic. Eternal death put into antithesis with eternal 
 life ; eternal chains ; the wrath of God abiding on a 
 man so that he shall never see life ; the worm that 
 never dieth ; can all these be explained away ? Even 
 if they could, not one of them promises salvation for 
 the simier once condemned. If they were not con- 
 clusive for everlastingness, they would not be in favour 
 of the salvation of the wicked at the last. On the other 
 hand, the doctrine that the wicked are punished for 
 ever would be gathered not from these express texts 
 alone, but from the whole tenor of Scripture, which
 
 ( 21 ) 
 
 speaks of this life as our probation and of the next as 
 our reward, which represents the judgment as final ; 
 which is utterly silent as to any economy of probation 
 after death. I beseech my brethren of the clergy to 
 beware of exceeding or departing from the statements 
 of Scripture upon this awful subject. We are in the 
 hands of a just God, who has revealed in Holy Writ 
 His w^ay of dealing with His creatures so far as we 
 need to know it for a guide to our faith and a motive 
 to practical duties. Let us rest in that revelation. 
 The certain consequence of attempting to make 
 another doctrine, not in Scripture, of death and 
 judgment, heaven and hell, will be to disturb the 
 faith of our people in the plain declarations of the 
 Bible, and to give them instead some fine-spun meta- 
 physical view of evil, which their practical sense 
 will soon detect as unwarranted by the voice of 
 inspiration. I do not impute to this Appellant the 
 intention to leave his people without definite belief 
 in the future state. But if we destroy where we 
 cannot rebuild, this will be the consequence. If the 
 Bible statements be removed, who will pretend to 
 interpret for us the secret things that lie behind the 
 grave ? The new speculation that some one gives 
 us instead, may satisfy its author, may be honestly 
 deemed by him an act of service to the Most High. 
 But the strength of sin no cords of man's invention 
 can bind ; the wicked will break through such 
 theories, as the strong man brake the green withes, 
 " as a thread of. tow is broken when it toucheth the 
 fire," and sinners, bound now neither by Scripture 
 nor by the weak cords of man's spinning, will
 
 ( 22 ) 
 
 draw their own conclusion, " We shall not snrely 
 die." 
 
 I have now touched upon the two great questions 
 which have troubled men's minds : the authority of 
 the Bible, and the punishment of the impenitent 
 sinner. It would be vain to deny that this trouble 
 of the Church has a real foundation. And yet, my 
 brethren, there is no reason for immoderate fear. 
 The Church of England depends for her teaching not 
 upon prosecutions and decisions of Courts, but upon 
 the solemn undertaking, freely made by her minis- 
 ters, that they will teach the people according to her 
 articles and formularies. In her articles the para- 
 mount authority of Holy Writ is to my mind suffi- 
 ciently established. The Clergy will not subscribe 
 the articles and teach out of the Prayer Book, with- 
 out feeling and declaring to the people that the Bible 
 is for us the law of the Church and the voice of God. 
 From our northern province not one single case of 
 doctrine has gone up to the Court of Appeal since 
 that Court received its present constitution. It may 
 be, that many now fear that the advice given to 
 the Queen might not in some future case be in har- 
 mony with the conclusions of the great mass of the 
 Clergy. Still it is not to be thought that our teachers 
 have up to this time been kept straight by the fear 
 of a tribunal, which in fact we have never used. If 
 one of us should be tempted to err from the faith, 
 more powerful than such a fear will be the common 
 sense of his people, who with the- Bible in their 
 hands, and the Prayer Book that acknowledges the 
 Bible, will refuse to be led off' from its plain state-
 
 ( 23 ) 
 
 ments ; more powerful will be the voice of his own 
 conscience that tells him what he has freely under- 
 taken to teach, and how far he may depart from it 
 without ceasing to be a teacher in a Church that is 
 founded on the Bible. The Church of England 
 knows little of courts and prosecutions ; and her 
 stability and soundness in the faith rest upon a 
 different and a far surer guarantee. 
 
 May our present perplexity make the ministers 
 more zealous in teaching the pure Word of God, and 
 the people more ready to hear and obey the same 
 Word. Already great zeal for this precious heritage 
 of the Church has been called forth. And though 
 clouds and darkness are round us, they do not wholly 
 obscure the wider horizon ; and we know 'that He 
 who has brought the pure Gospel to us in safety 
 through past ages of trouble, is able to preserve it 
 to us for the time to come. 
 
 (Signed) W. EBOR : 
 
 Primate op England and Metropolitan. 
 
 April, 1864.
 
 LONnOX: 
 
 ritlNTED BI V. ILUAM CLOWES ANT) SONS, STAJIFORD STREET, 
 AKD CHARIKG CROSS.
 
 *>
 
 V^i}^:i^<^^ 
 
 
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