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 WHY SHOULD THE BISHOPS CONTINUE TO 
 SIT IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS ?
 
 WHY SHOULD THE BISHOPS 
 
 CONTINUE TO SIT 
 
 HOUSE OF LORDS? 
 
 GEORGE ANTHONY DENISON, M.A., 
 
 VICAR OF EAST bRENT. 
 
 2tf)irti Ittiitton. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOSEPH MASTERS ALDEHSGATE STREET, 
 
 AND NEW BOND STREET.
 
 lonbon: 
 
 printkd bv joseph masters, 
 
 ai.uersgate street.
 
 WHY SHOULD THE BISHOPS CONTINUE TO 
 SIT IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS ? 
 
 I WISH to state in the outset the principle upon which, after 
 long deliberation, I have decided to publish the following pages. 
 
 I believe it to be a sin to. desert the communion of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 I believe it to be hardly less a sin to abide in the communion 
 of the Church of England, and not to labour earnestly, syste- 
 matically, vigorously, steadily, for the removal of those causes, 
 which make the message with which she is charged from God 
 to be little realized even by great numbers of her clergy, and 
 therefore to be little understood, welcomed, and appreciated by 
 large masses of her people. I can as little understand an 
 acquiescence in the wrongs, or a connivance at the unrealities 
 of the Church of England, as I can understand an acceptance 
 of the corruptions of the Church of Rome, the wanderings of 
 Dissent, or the negations of the State. 
 
 I believe that to be inert and indifferent now, not to affirm 
 and maintain and realize for ourselves and for others, as best we 
 may, the essence of the Church of England as a living branch 
 of the Church Catholic, is, more than ever, to be parties to a 
 surrender of her heritage, and to betray souls to Rome or to 
 Dissent, or, what is even far worse and full of consequences more 
 deadly, to the indifferentism of the State. 
 
 For the State is labouring to establish amongst us, in the 
 place of the Catholic Faith, what is after all, when stripped of 
 the disguises of a spurious charity, only a form of natural reli- 
 gion, because the State has persuaded itself that this is what is 
 most applicable to the circumstances of a divided people. The 
 
 B
 
 eternal verities of tlic Catholic Faith are subordinated to, and 
 their value is tested by, political and social considerations. 
 
 It may be that the English nation has so dealt with the 
 Chuucii of Christ that these things cannot now be otherwise 
 than they are. It may be that the return of the people, as a 
 people, to the fold of the Church is no longer possible. 
 
 If it be so, here is a most awful warning that we " hold fast 
 that we have," and " strengthen the things that are ready to 
 die." But if the return be still possible, here is a most glorious 
 encouragement to each and all of us to be " faithful unto death." 
 
 In a time of almost unexampled peril, unexampled because 
 THE TEMPTATION of the time is a new ten\ptation, powerful in 
 its subtlety, as well as in its strength, plausible and insidious 
 in no common measure — for men are told now for the tirst time 
 in the history of the Church of Christ, and told by authority, 
 ecclesiastical and civil, that they need not concern themselves for 
 the Faith of the Church, because their own individual acceptance 
 and teaching of what that Faith is, is uncontrolled — in a time 
 when authority is thus ministering to, instead of regulating, 
 man's pride of reason, and the disposition of "the natural man" 
 to exercise an individual and independent judgment even in 
 respect of the Catholic Faith, the corporate voice of the Church 
 is silenced by an abuse of power. 
 
 It is one of the warnings of the time that, even under cir- 
 cumstances like these, men sound in the Faith are found not 
 simply to stand aloof from, but to complain of, that irregular 
 action which has been resorted to under the pressure of an over- ^ 
 
 whelming necessity. It is said, and said truly, that the vocation 
 of the Clergy is in their parishes, and that they are to look to 
 the corporate voice of the Church for the defence of the Faith, 
 and for those measures which concern the Church's general wel- 
 fare. But the Church of England has no corporate voice. It is 
 State policy to prevent the expression of the mind of the Church, 
 because State usurpation could not co-exist together with it. 
 
 Are Churchmen then to look to the Bishops ? Alas ! alas ! 
 who shall be found to say that, as matter of fact, the Bishops of 
 the Church of England do defend the Faith, or that they provide 
 and secure measures for her general welfare ? 
 
 The question which forms the title of these pages is one which^"^"'%
 
 is beinf^- asked upon all sides unreservedly by very many who a 
 few years ago would have shrunk from the expression of it and 
 even from the thought. 
 
 It is a question which has lung been asked by many who have 
 persuaded themselves that it is for the good of Christ's religion 
 that THE Church of England should be made weak and brough 
 low. 
 
 It is a question which is asked now by many who have no 
 desire nearer to their heart than that the Church of England 
 should be made strong; " a city set on a hill^' to be "the light 
 of the world." These have no thought of deserting her com- 
 munion and of seeking " rest " in Rome. They believe, and 
 they trust to die in the belief, that the Church of England has 
 given her of God all that makes the essence of a Chuich ; they 
 believe that she has a great mission to fulfil in these islands 
 and throughout the world ; they confess, sorrowfully, and with 
 pangs of self-reproach, that she is not fulfilling it. 
 
 They see that some have deserted her communion because 
 they have persuaded themselves that the essence of the Church 
 cannot be found in the Church of England, mistaking it would 
 seem, the accidents, for the essence, of the Church; they are 
 pressed in spirit to use every exertion to prevent the further 
 growth of so unhappy a delusion. They cannot rest under the 
 heavy burden of their convictions that there is much in the pre- 
 sent position and circumstances and prospects of the Church of 
 England very favourable to its growth ; they cannot rest under 
 the heavy burden of their fears that, hitherto, the dangers, the 
 necessities, the opportunities, the means of improvement, the dis- 
 eases and the remedies — in one word, the trial of the Church of 
 England is little realized by her own children. 
 
 They fear for the Church, they fear for themselves, lest they 
 should be found wanting; they dare not conceal or dissemble 
 what presses upon their souls day and night ; the time is gone by 
 when Churchmen can afibrd to keep silence touching those 
 many bars and hindrances to the vigorous and healthful action 
 of the Church which cross her ])ath at every step ; some of them 
 cast in from without by the hands of her avowed enemies, others 
 and those far the worst, interposed from within by false or 
 timid friends, or again by those of whom it is hard to say whe- 
 
 B 2
 
 tlicr they be iViciuls or foes, who cannot or will not, distingnish 
 between the essence — the Church — and the accident — the Esta- 
 blishment. 
 
 First on the list ol" such hindrances I'rom within appear to be 
 the seats of the Bishops in the House of Lords. 
 
 Wherefore, with many others, I ask the question, Why should 
 the Bishops continue to sit in the House of Lords ? 
 
 My object is, if possible, to elicit the formal discussion of this 
 question : it will be something to have procured an argumenta- 
 tive statement of what is to be said in favour of the position of 
 the Bishops as Peers of Parliament ; of the advantages derived, 
 or supposed to be derived, of the duties fulfilled, or supposed to 
 be fultilled, by the ])rescnce of the Bishops in the House of 
 Lords. My business is to set down the disadvantages accruing 
 and the duties interfered with thereby ; for myself, I confess 
 that after the best consideration I have been able to give, T can- 
 not discover the good which counterbalances the evil, or even 
 tends to diminish its heavy weight. 
 
 I am well aware of the obloquy I must incur, but I do not 
 hesitate to declare that the position of the Bishops, as Peers of 
 Parliament, appears to me to be, in these days, incapable of de- 
 fence ; and since it is too obvious to require formal proof, that, 
 as one of the primary accidents of the Church of England, that 
 position cannot have only a negative character, it will follow, 
 that, if it cannot be defended, it must be not simply, negatively 
 useless, but positively injurious both to Church and State. 
 
 This then is the conclusion which I propose to establish. The 
 main propositions to be proved are in brief : 
 
 L That the Church of England, as a Church, has only a 
 limited hold upon her members, whether clergy or peojile. 
 
 IL That her principal hold upon her members depends partly 
 upon a false view of her office and essential character, and partly 
 uj)on her accidents. 
 
 in. That the position of the clergy being, in many respects, 
 secular and unreal, is one principal hindrance to the more just 
 and extended ajjpreciation of the office and essential character 
 of the Church. 
 
 IV. That in particular, the position of the Bishops as Peers 
 of Parliament is secular and unreal.
 
 If these propositions can be established, as I believe they may 
 be without much difficulty, it will at least follow that a strong 
 argument will have been adduced why the Bishops of the Church 
 of England should not continue to sit in the House of Lords ; 
 an argument which, if it be valid, no considerations can suffice to 
 set aside or countervail, because the Church's weakness is our 
 principal evil, the Church's strength and efficiency our greatest 
 good. 
 
 It is not meant that the mere fact of the Bishops ceasing to 
 be Peers of Parliament will avail to convert the position of tlie 
 Church of England from one of weakness into one of strength, 
 but that that position cannot, humanly speaking, be made to be 
 a strong position so long as the Bishops continue to be Peers of 
 Parliament. 
 
 Proposition 1. 
 
 That the Church of England as a Church has only a limited 
 hold upon her members, whether clergy or people. 
 
 Such a confession is, it will be said, humiliating and dangerous. 
 I allow that it is humiliating ; the danger I believe to lie not in 
 the making, but in the withholding it. 
 
 The Church of England has a hold upon members of her 
 communion, but not as a Church ; not, that is, as being in 
 these islands, the Body which, according to Christ's ordinance, 
 has committed unto it, 
 
 I. The Apostolical succession of the ministry ; 
 
 II. The Holy Sacraments; 
 
 The clergy having divine authority to '' minister the doctrine 
 and Sacraments and the discipline of Christ;" the laity having 
 the privilege of being brought, together with their clergy, into 
 Christ's true fold, and of being preserved within it continually. 
 
 For the Apostolical succession of the ministry and the Holy 
 Sacraments are the great gifts of God to His Church ; they are 
 the essence of a Church ; all other things are only the accidents 
 of a Church. But it is not as possessing these gifts that the 
 Church of England has any extended hold upon members of her 
 communion. 
 
 Her hold upon then) has its source and its strength, such as 
 this is and long has been, in things of a very different stamp 
 and value from the stamp and value of these great gifts of God.
 
 6 
 
 I. It is as the supposed authorized depositary ol' what is 
 called " the right of private judgment," which has usuri)ed the 
 place of the true deposit committed to the Reformed Church of 
 England — the protest against Romish corruptions and Puritan 
 innovations — it is in virtue of this, her supposed character, that 
 the Church of England has her principal religious hold upon the 
 members of her communion ; and so it happens that those arc 
 often loudest in professing their attachment to her — to her doc- 
 trine and her discipline — who deny the Apostolical succession 
 and degrade the Sacraments. 
 
 II. It is as " the Establishment." 
 
 1. As possessing a "great stake" in the country, and as 
 having rights interwoven in sundry ways, convenient and incon- 
 venient, with the general rights of property, 
 
 2. As supplying in her holy orders a position of respectability 
 and influence. 
 
 3. As supplying in every parish at least one person who is 
 bound to see to the externals of religious worship, the education 
 of the young, and the necessities of the poor. 
 
 4. As having many historical and constitutional I'ecollections, 
 however vague and ill defined and inconsistent with existing 
 facts, and as identified with feelings of national pride and inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 It is in virtue principally of these things that the Church of 
 England in the XlXth century has her hold upon the members 
 of her communion. 
 
 Now no one of these things sepai'ately, or all of them put 
 together, however good some of them may be in themselves, are 
 any part of the essence of the Church ; they might, each and all 
 of them, disappear to-morrow, and the Church would remain 
 just the same, with the Apostolical succession of the ministry and 
 with the Holy Sacraments ; with her clergy and with her people ; 
 with all those, that is, who would be found faithful to her when 
 all worldly inducements to belong to her communion had been 
 done away. 
 
 I fancy I hear the sneering laugh of the adversary implying 
 that in that case the clergy and the people of the Church of 
 England would be few. It uiight be so. I trust I shall not 
 utiend in saying, that if the trial were to come iwiv it might not
 
 improbably be so ; tliat if we were at this time thrown nakedly 
 upon our faith in the Apostohcal succession of the ministry and 
 in the Holy Sacraments, we might not improbably be found to 
 be few; my own argument goes to this very point. It is just 
 because it seems that God^s mercy is giving us a breathing time 
 wherein to prepare and discipline ourselves, that so, if it be 
 God's will that we must make our choice between the essence 
 and the accidents of the Church, neither clergy nor people 
 may be few, it is just because of this that it becomes us to 
 labour to know all our weakness, its causes and its remedies ; 
 and I will add that, whether so extreme a trial is about presently 
 to come upon us or no, such knowledge must be had, ay, and 
 it must be acted upon, and that without loss of time. The 
 Church of England is weak through her clergy and her people ; 
 AS A Church she has only a. limited hold either upon clergy 
 or people ; wherefore she does not, and so long as this is so, she 
 cannot, discharge her office according to God's ordinance, and 
 yet, if she do not discharge her office, what shall be the end ? 
 She is pressed by Rome ; she is pressed by Dissent ; to neither 
 one nor the other does she offer any steady and consistent oppo- 
 sition ; neither in the presence of one or of the other does she 
 bear herself as a Church ; for Rome she has hard names — for 
 Dissent she has compromises. Hard names will not beat back 
 the Church of Rome, neither will persecution, nor " vexation ;" 
 nothing can avail to do this but the superior holiness of the 
 Church of England, superior diligence, earnestness, self-denial, 
 grasp and realisation of the Truth, and readiness to sacrifice all 
 for the Truth's sake. Compromise is not charity ; conciliation 
 at the expense of the Truth is not charity ; joint action, which 
 only becomes possible by the surrender of eternal principles, is 
 not charity. 
 
 She is pressed by the indifferentism — the natural religion — of 
 the State, by latitudinarianism, and by infidelity in all their phases. 
 
 She is threatened by the advocates of what is called " the 
 Church of the future;" touching which nothing is certainly 
 known, except that it bears no resemblance to " the Church of 
 the past." 
 
 She is pressed by the millions of her own people calling upon 
 her for the bread of life.
 
 This is her case from without, and fVoiii within. Alas, how 
 feeble and inconsistent is the resistance she is offering to the 
 assaults of the adversary ! how tardy and insufficient is the 
 answer she is making to the cry of her own people ! 
 
 The Church of England appears scarcely to appreciate and to 
 realize the fact, that her position within the four seas is still as 
 completely and emphatically a missionary position as is to be 
 found in the world. For, to put aside for a moment, the start- 
 ling truth, that there are large masses of formal heathenism in 
 the midst of her, how much is there to be done to evangelize 
 our nominal Christianity. Now to labour unceasingly for this, 
 is surely as plainly the inissiun of the Church as to preach to 
 the heathen soul that " there is none other name under heaven 
 given unto men, in whom and through whom we may receive 
 health and salvation, but only the name of our Lord Jesus 
 Chkist.^^ 
 
 Men will doubtless differ as to the degree in which these 
 several things are true ; but if any one denies the main facts 
 as above stated, with that man I have no argument. 
 
 I proceed to prove what I have asserted. 
 
 1st. That AS A Churcu, the Church of England has only a 
 limited hold upon her clergy and her people. 
 
 2nd. That her principal hold upon them depends partly upon 
 a false view of her office and essential character, and partly 
 upon her accidents. 
 
 If the first of these propositions can be established, the 
 second will, I suppose, be not disputed. The argument is ex- 
 haustive, and of the nature of a ddcmma. It is a fact, that 
 the Church of England has a hold upon her clergy and upon 
 her people. Now this hold must be had either as a Church, 
 or NOT as a Church, but as something less than a Church, or 
 even oj)posed to the idea of " a Church," i.e. as an imperfect 
 form of Christianity, and as a national institution for the 
 maintenance of religion. If then I can show that as a 
 Church — i.e. as the Body which in these islands has com- 
 mitted unto it the Apostolical Succession of the ministry and 
 the Holy Sacraments — her hold is very limited, it will follow 
 that that hold exists mainly in virtue of some supposed cha- 
 racter which is less than the character of a Church, or
 
 eveu opposed to tlic idea of a Church, and iu virtue of " the 
 Estabhshment." 
 
 Now it is obvious to remark in the outset, the close con- 
 nexion which has ever subsisted between the doctrine of the 
 Apostolical Succession of the ministry and the doctrine of the 
 Sacraments. It was to be expected that this would be so, seeing 
 that these two gifts make up the essence of the Church, and 
 all evidence proves it to be so as matter of fact. For fifteen 
 centuries, the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession of the 
 ministry was, so to speak, unquestioned ; that is, those who 
 professed the religion of Christ throughout the world, " taught 
 no other doctrine.'^ The corruptions and abuses of the Church 
 of Rome, forced upon a large portion of the Western Church 
 the necessity of refusing to defer any longer to the authority 
 of the Pope in matters of faith, and the XVIth century is the 
 era of the Reformation. 
 
 The price paid for the Reformation has been a heavy one, 
 eveu in England. I am not saying that it has been too heavy : 
 no price could have been too heavy to pay for a return to the 
 doctrine and discipline of the Church primitive. And this is 
 what was intended to be secured, and what was judged to have 
 been secured, and what was secured, so far as it could be by 
 the letter and the spirit of formularies, in the Reformed Church 
 of England ; but elsewhere it was not secured, and the action 
 of those bodies of Christians who, like the Church of England, 
 threw off the yoke of Rome, but who did not, like the Church 
 of England, preserve so much of the doctrine and the order of 
 the Church of Rome, as was agreeable to the doctrine and the 
 order of the Church primitive, has been in many cases fatal 
 to themselves, and has, throughout, been very disastrous to us. 
 Their rejection of the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession 
 has made them to be no " Churches :" it has issued, in not 
 a few instances, in Socinianism : it has been attended, as it 
 began, with all manner of heresies touching the Holy Sacra- 
 ments; and in both these respects, the contagion has spread 
 beyond themselves, and has very widely and deeply infected the 
 Church of England. The link of the Reformation has- been 
 stronger than the link of the " one Faith." There have been 
 other co-operating causes in the national character and institu- 
 tions of the English people, and in the close connexion between
 
 10 
 
 Church and State ; and so it is that the Church of England 
 })resents at this day the astounding spectacle of a Church claim- 
 ing to exercise, in virtue of her Apostolical character, a godly 
 discipline, and yet incapable of exercising it in any efficient 
 measure ; holding definitely and distinctly the whole Truth, and 
 no more than the whole Truth, and yet wearing many aspects in- 
 compatible, not with the Truth itself but, with the realization 
 of the Truth. She claims to hold, and she does hold, the doc- 
 trine of the Apostolical Succession of the ministry, and the 
 doctrine of the Holy Sacraments; but it is rather as abstrac- 
 tions than as living realities that either one or the other is 
 maintained and enforced in the practice of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 This is the price which has been paid for our Reformation : 
 a heavy price, but not too heavy, because it can be redeemed, if 
 God icill. 
 
 After the lapse of three centuries, and under circumstances 
 of extreme peril, the mischief is displaying itself in an aggra- 
 vated shape, — in that shape which I have endeavoured to 
 express in the proposition, that as a Church, i.e. as the Body, 
 to which in these islands is committed the Apostolical Succes- 
 sion of the ministry and the Holy Sacraments, the Church of 
 England has only a limited hold upon the members of her 
 Communion. 
 
 Now, whatever might have been urged against this proposition 
 a few years ago, it seems impossible, after the experience of the 
 last five years, to maintain the negative of it. If it had been 
 only that the first Minister of the Crown had set up a claim 
 to control absolutely the appointment to bishoprics, this of 
 itself would have sufficed to suggest and prove, that in a coun- 
 try where such a claim could be so much as made at all, the 
 relations of the State to the Church, ay, and more than this, 
 the relations of the members of the Church to the Church, must 
 be of a very curious and anomalous description. Biit when 
 the claim is not only made, but fails to elicit any strong oppo- 
 sition, or even remonstrance, and proceeds to establish itself, if 
 not legally, yet absolutely, then the conclusion is irresistible, 
 that neither clergy nor people realize the principles involved 
 in the appointment of their Bishops. 
 
 It is true, that no usurpation of the Church's rights u\ the
 
 11 
 
 appointment of her Bishops invahdates "the Succession." But 
 we are not concerned with mere vaUdity ; our question is, 
 whether clergy and laity realize the doctrine of the Succession, 
 whether, i.e. they deal with it as matter of faith, and not as an 
 abstraction. Now if members of the Church of England be- 
 lieved as matter of faith that their Bishops are the successors 
 of the Apostles, and, as such, administrators of the Apostolic 
 office, they could not stand by and witness with apathetic in- 
 difference, any act, or series of acts, tending directly and power- 
 fully to the disparagement of that belief, and to the investing 
 it with an unreal character. But it is surely impossible to 
 predicate any such proposition, either of the clergy, or the 
 laity, of a Church which acquiesced, and in great part more 
 than acquiesced, in the claim advanced in 1847 by the Prime 
 Minister of the Crown, and gave little countenance and but 
 feeble and scanty support to those who stood forward at that 
 time to defend the Faith. 
 
 Again, it is involved in the doctrine of the Apostolical Suc- 
 cession, that the Bishops of a Church in synod assembled, are 
 the judges of doctrine; the sole judges of the character, and ex- 
 tent, and effect of statements of doctrine put forth by clergy or 
 people, whether i.e. these be such as to disqualify the one from 
 the cure of souls, or to debar the other from the j)rivileges of 
 Communion. Now it is impossible but that occasions for the 
 exercise of this function of the Episcopate must arise frequently. 
 But in England, the civil power not only interposes to prevent 
 its exercise, but proceeds to substitute a tribunal of its own in 
 the place of God's ordinance : under the plea of guarding " civil 
 rights " — which term, by a cui'ious confusion of thought, is 
 taken to be synonymous, in the case of the clergy, with " the 
 temporalities of a benefice " — the civil power sets aside alto- 
 gether the judgment of the spiritualty in matters of doctrine. 
 
 But it is not only with the judicial function of the synod of 
 the Church, but also with its deliberative function, that the civil 
 power interferes in such sort as to prohibit the exercise of either 
 one or the other ; so that the Church, which, in virtue of the 
 Apostolical Succession of her ministry, has an inherent and in- 
 alienable right to the free use of her synodical power, is debarred 
 from all such use, to the great injury both of her doctrine and
 
 12 
 
 her discipline, and to the manifest depreciation of her whole 
 character as a living branch of the Church Catholic. 
 
 Now it is here again, as in the case of the appointment of the 
 Bishops ; the simple fact of the existence of the prohibition is 
 sufficient to show that the relations of the State of England to 
 the Church of England, as also the relations of the members of 
 the Church to the Church, are of a very curious and anomalous 
 description. But when we take into account the additional 
 fact, that such prohibition fails to elicit any strong and united 
 expression of remonstrance, and to stimulate to any systematic 
 and steady exertion for the recovery of powers, without the free 
 use of which the Church cannot discharge her office, the con- 
 clusion is, as in the other case, irresistible, that neither clergy 
 nor people realise the necessity of restoring the synodical action 
 of the Church. 
 
 Now belief in the necessity of such synodical action cannot be 
 separated from belief in the doctrine of the Apostolical succession ; 
 wherefore it follows again that the members of the Church of 
 England do not realise the doctrine of the Apostolical succession. 
 
 I might appeal to the individual consciousness and to the in- 
 dividual experience of the members of the Church in corrobora- 
 tion of this conclusion, and I might put many questions which 
 it would be hard to answer, except so as to prove its substantial 
 truth. I cannot however think that it is necessary, and I willingly 
 forbear. But, to pass by all evidence of a private character, 
 how strangely and with what deep and solemn warning does the 
 evidence of public events accumulate. 
 
 Close upon the proof of my proposition supplied by the at- 
 tempt to lower the episcopal office into a mere function of the 
 State, by the resistance to the claim for a revival of the synodical 
 powers of the Church, and by the manner in which members of 
 the Church have received and submitted to both the assault and 
 the refusal, follows the history of the " Papal aggression,'' and 
 of the bearing of the Church of England under a new trial. 
 
 Now the act of the Popedom has been aimed directly and dis- 
 tinctly at the Apostolical succession of the Church of England. 
 It is upon the denial of the fact of her succession that the Roman 
 Catholic hierarchy is established. It is true that that is no new 
 denial. Rome never changes, except by way of developement,
 
 13 
 
 and slic is asserting now nothing but what she has asserted 
 always. But still the establishment of the Roman Catholic 
 Bishops throughout England has brought her claim home to our 
 doors in a very startling shape. There is a practical character about 
 the assault which might have been expected to make an impression 
 upon the English mind ; and it has made an impi-ession ; but of 
 what kind ? Is there anything in it, so to speak, corresponding to 
 the real character of the assault ? I say there is not. There may 
 have been here and there something of the kind, but it has been 
 overwhelmed and lost in a mass of declamation, for it is absurd 
 to call it reasoning, of a very different character : Church and 
 State, popular Protestantism, right of private judgment, indepen- 
 dence of the nation, dignity of the Crown, supremacy of the 
 Crown, insolence of the Pope, arrogance of the Cardinal, effron- 
 tery of the Roman Catholic Bishops, ingratitude of the Roman 
 Catholics : these are the materials out of which the declamation 
 has been framed which has made an impression upon the English 
 mind ; and as Bishops and clergy, to say nothing of all classes of 
 Dissent, have dealt very largely and indiscriminately in the 
 article manufactured out of these materials, it cannot justly be 
 matter of surprise that the laity should have done so too. 
 
 But granting for a moment that all these things are true, what 
 has any one of them separately, or all of them put together, to do 
 with the real matter in dispute between the Churches ? They have 
 nothing to do with it. Some of them indeed have no existence 
 in reference to the matter in dispute. What, e.g., has the supre- 
 macy of the Crown in causes ecclesiastical to do with Roman 
 Catholics, who deny and repudiate that supremacy, even in the 
 qualified sense in which the Church of England admits it? 
 in what way has the dignity of the Crown or the independence 
 of the nation been touched or compromised ? The charge, 
 when taken in connection with the facts of the case, is simply 
 ridiculous. Rome has made no assault upon the dignity of the 
 Crown of England or upon the independence of the nation, but 
 she has made a direct home assault upon the essence of the 
 Church of England, upon the succession of her ministry, and 
 therefore upon her power of administering the Sacraments. 
 
 Who has met that assault ? Has our Episcopate, have our 
 Bishops in their several dioceses, have our clergy, have our peo-
 
 14 
 
 pie ? I say nothing of Parliament ; Parliament has disqualified 
 itself from maintaining or defending the Church of England as 
 A CiiUKCH, and it would be well, for the credit of Parliament, if 
 it were possible to expunge from its records, and from the 
 memory of mankind, the evidence of the mass of contradictions 
 and unrealities into which the unexampled recklessness of a 
 prime minister, and his eager desire to seize hold of every 
 opportunity for breaking down the Catholicity of the Church 
 of England, have betrayed both Houses of Parliament. Some 
 laws become obsolete from lapse of time and change of cir- 
 cumstances ; it has been reserved for Lord John Russell to 
 be responsible for the passing of a law, which it has cost a 
 session and all the little power he once possessed of govern- 
 ing the country to make, and which is obsolete from the first 
 moment that it becomes law. His other achievement in this 
 matter is this : that while he has not succeeded in breaking 
 down the Catholicity of the Church of England, a thing which re- 
 quires other strength and other hands, and which can only be done 
 finally and efi"ectually //'om ivithin, he has dealt her another heavy 
 blow and great discouragement by tempting her to place her 
 defence upon a false issue, and to lose sight of her true position 
 as a Church of Christ in the contemplation of her accidental 
 position as the national Establishment. Of all ways of crippling 
 and weakening the Church of England and of exposing and per- 
 petuating her weakness, I know of no one so certain and so 
 effectual as the way of defending her by act of Parliament. 
 
 How will it redeem the answer which must be given to the 
 questions I have asked above, to point to some scattered examples 
 in which it has been shown that the essential character of the 
 struggle between the Churches has been realized ? The great 
 fact remains, that the clergy and people of the Church of Eng- 
 land have presented to the world the astounding spectacle of a 
 branch of the Church Catholic attempting to defend itself against 
 the schismatical assault of another branch by arguments drawn 
 almost exclusively from the secular accidents of their Church, 
 and not satisfied with this, have not hesitated very generally to 
 unite with, or at least to welcome the co-operation of those 
 who deny the essence of the Church of England as absolutely 
 as Rome denies it — though the denial proceeds upon other as-
 
 15 
 
 sumptions than those of Rome — nay of many who reject the great 
 eternal verities which the Church of Rome holds in common 
 with the Church of England. 
 
 It is hard to conceive any course more inconsistent with the 
 position of members of a branch of the Church Catholic, or more 
 injurious to the truth of that position, as stamping upon it a 
 secular and unreal character. 
 
 Once more then I say, that the conclusion is irresistible, that as 
 a general fact, neither the clergy nor the people of the Church 
 of England realize the doctrine of the Apostolical succession. 
 It presents itself as an abstraction, it is not matter of faith. To 
 defend it at all even here and there by a stray resolution or 
 declaration is an uncommon act — something which exposes the 
 defender to the imputation of singularity, and what is called in 
 the jargon of the day " extreme opinions." To sacrifice any- 
 thing in its defence is not, it would seem, expected amongst us, 
 of any member of the Church of England. 
 
 Alas for the condition to which we are come ; alas that we 
 should live and die in the delusion that doctrines, which are no 
 realities, are doctrines still. 
 
 I pass on to the consideration of our case in respect of the 
 other part of the essence of the Church — the Holy Sacra- 
 ments. 
 
 I understand the doctrine of the Sacraments to be this. 
 
 I. That man is " made a member of Christ, the child of 
 God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," in and by 
 holy Baptism. 
 
 II. That man " made a member of Christ, the child of God, 
 and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," in and by Holy 
 Baptism, is renewed from time to time in Holy Communion. 
 
 III. That "a death unto sin, and a new birth unto right- 
 eousness" is given to every adult and every infant in and by 
 the outward visible sign or form in Baptism, " water, in the 
 Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 IV. That the gift may be received, in the case of adults, 
 worthily or unworthilj^, but that it is always received. 
 
 V. That the Body and Blood of Christ arc given to every 
 one who receives the Sacramental Bread and Wine.
 
 16 
 
 VI. That the gift may be rkceived worthily or unworthily, 
 but that it is always received. 
 
 I say THE doctrine of the Sacraments, because that doc- 
 trine is one. It is not uncommon, in the vagueness of our 
 theology, to hear it spoken or treated of as twofold, and even 
 separable. But surely what is true of holy Baptism, and what 
 is true of holy Communion, arc but partsof the same doctrine. 
 Man born into the world a member of the old creation, is born 
 again a member of the new creation — " born of water and of 
 the Spirit" — in and by holy Baptism: and the principle of the 
 life in Christ thus imparted to man in and by holy Baptism, is 
 renewed and carried on unto such perfection as is attainable in 
 this life, in and by holy Communion. There is nothing twofold, 
 much less separable, here. 
 
 Now if the doctrine be one, it will follow that the acceptance 
 of it must be one — truth of belief is not divisible. Wherefore to 
 make it correct to say of any one that he holds the doctrine 
 OF the Sacraments, it must appear that he is of sound belief 
 alike in respect of holy Baptism and holy Communion ; i.e. that 
 he holds alike Regeneration in holy Baptism, and the real 
 presence in holy Communion. And fui'ther, that there is no 
 room for a sound belief in Regeneration in holy Baptism 
 without a sound belief in the real presence in holy Com- 
 munion, and vice versa. 
 
 In like manner, any flaw in our belief respecting Regenera- 
 tion in holy Baptism is fatal to our claim to hold that belief in 
 reality. Now such a flaw is the drawing any distinction in 
 respect of the Sacrament, between adult and infant Baptism, as 
 if there could be two Baptisms and not one. I say, "in respect 
 of the Sacrament," because the Sacrament, and man's accep- 
 tance of the Sacrament, arc different things; an infant cannot 
 accept holy Baptism unworthily, an adult may ; but what God 
 has seen fit to bestow in and by the outward sign, it is impos- 
 sible for any man to say he has not received when that outward 
 sign has passed upon him ; and in like manner of holy Com- 
 munion ; a man who receives the Sacramental Bread and Wine 
 receives the Body and Blood of Christ; worthily it may be, 
 unworthily it may be ; but it is impossible, under any circum- 
 stances, ibr him to say that he has not received it ; and what he
 
 17 
 
 receives worthily or unworthily is in all cases the same thing ; in 
 all cases "the inward part or thing signitied," "the Body and 
 Blood of Christ." If it were not so, then in the case of one 
 receiving unworthily there would be no Sacrament. 
 
 This, however, is not the place for going in detail into the 
 theological proof of what I have here advanced. Tf the state- 
 ment of the Doctrine of the Sacraments I have here made 
 is controverted, I shall be prepared to argue the case, but at 
 present it is not necessary. 
 
 The point with which I am immediately concerned, is whether 
 the Church of England has any but a limited hold either upon 
 her clergy or her people in respect of the second part of the 
 essence of the Church, the Holy Sacraments. 
 
 The proof of the negative of this question is not far to seek. 
 
 Some two years ago, a Priest of the Church of England was 
 presented by the Lord Chancellor to a benefice with cure of souls, 
 in the diocese of Exeter. 
 
 The Priest so presented, maintained and published a doctrine 
 in respect of Holy Baptism, which has nothing in common with 
 the Doctrine of the Sacraments. 
 
 The Bishop of Exeter refused to institute ; his refusal was 
 confirmed, upon appeal, by the decision of the Court of Arches ; 
 but the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council reversed that 
 decision, and sanctioned the heresy. 
 
 The two Archbishops approved of the reversal, and the Priest 
 came into possession of the benefice with cure of souls. 
 
 Now what has the Church of England done, out of the 
 Diocese of Exeter, cither by her clergy or her people, to clear 
 herself from the charge of being committed to an approval of 
 hei-esy ? What has the Church of England done, cither by her 
 clergy or by her people, to show that she does not hold what Mr. 
 Gorham holds ? 
 
 Alas, she has done what, when compared with her means of 
 resistance, her Episcopate, her numbers of clergy and laity, and 
 above all, with the magnitude of the trust committed unto her, 
 becomes so minute and insignificant, that it can hardly be de- 
 tected by the most microscopic eye. 
 
 The Archbishops being approvers of the heresy, help from that 
 
 c
 
 18 
 
 quarter is neither to be cxjH-ctcd nor desired ; bcr Bishops, with 
 two exceptions, virtually abdicate their office ; the decision of the 
 Judicial Committee is stated by the Prime Minister in the 
 House of Comiiions to have given very general satisfaction, and 
 the statement is received with cheers and is not disputed. The 
 people are quiescent or rather acquiescent. The Bishops look 
 coldly on ; the Universities find in the corporate apathy and in- 
 difference of the Bishops an excuse and a justification of their 
 own ; after great exertions, and a long delay, it is possible, 
 and only possible, to get together a meeting of some two thou- 
 sand clergy and laity in London, at which one Bishop only 
 is present. The signatures appended to the documents adopted 
 by that meeting, are something above three thousand, though I 
 believe that copies were carefully forwarded to every Clergyman 
 in England and Wales. The declaration of that one Bishop, 
 issued under his seal to all his clergy, some addresses of clergy, 
 a few meetings here and there, some pamphlets, articles in news- 
 papers, advertisements of resolutions, and other things of this 
 description, complete the amount of the efforts made by the 
 Church of England, out of the Diocese of Exeter, to maintain 
 THE DocTKiNE OF THE Sacraments : for the "opinion" of 
 Bishops not set forth in any authoritative form, can only be 
 regarded as the opinion of any other individual. 
 
 Such is the amount of the efforts made on the part of the 
 Church of England to rescue her from the imputation that, as 
 a body, she is prepared to subordinate the maintenance of the 
 truth to political or social considerations. 
 
 But, as if exhausted by the effort, our scanty energies had 
 sunk into something very like apathetic indifference, when they 
 were crushed altogether by the dead weight, not of the Papal 
 aggression but, of the means employed to resist it. 
 
 Meantime, what is called the great world, that part of it even 
 which claims to belong to the Church of England, goes on just 
 as before, just as if nothing had happened to disturb the se- 
 renity of its self-contentment, its appetite for enjoyment and its 
 devotion to business, without troubling or concerning itself with 
 the matter in controversy except as a personal dispute, and a 
 struggle for power, or as a temporary excitement, or at best, as
 
 19 
 
 an abstraction, a thing remote from and unconnected with the 
 practice of a Christian life. 
 
 And yet the matter in controversy is the outwork of the 
 Incarnation, 
 
 I believe myself to have proved Propositions I. and II. I 
 believe myself to have shown sufficiently that, in respect of the 
 Apostolical Succession, and in respect of the Holy Sacraments, 
 THE Church of England has only a limited hold upon her clergy 
 and her people; that the doctrine of the Succession is not 
 generally accepted, and in many cases, where accepted, scarcely 
 realized, and that the doctrine of the Sacraments is in the same 
 predicament : the evidence in both cases has been drawn from 
 the scanty and paltry and desultory efforts made to uphold and 
 vindicate the Faith. 
 
 I have shown further, that the resistance which real assaults, 
 from within and from without, upon the essence of the Church, 
 have failed to awaken, a supposed assault from without upon her 
 accidents has sufficed to create. 
 
 Now it is no question whether these circumstances of the 
 Church of England be not full of evil and danger and distress, 
 with more of darkness in them than light. Such things as these 
 have always been true of the Church of Christ since the days 
 of the Apostles, and it may be even then, and doubtless will 
 continue to be true of her unto the end. This then would be 
 conceded, but the concession would not satisfy. Vague gene- 
 ralities cannot avail to still the heart in the presence of definite 
 and special danger, and the danger is not only definite and 
 special, it is personal to each one of us, and the alarm which 
 presses upon any mind, which meditates upon the signs of the 
 times, is enhanced by this thought : so long indeed as the Church 
 of England shall not consent to expunge from her formularies 
 any part of the record of the truth, we may trust that she will 
 not be removed from her place ; but what is to be said of us, 
 her children, if, while the record of that truth remains unim- 
 paired, we deal with it, or with any part of it, as an abstraction 
 and an unreality ? Are we not, in that case, self-condemned ? 
 Are we not doing what in us lies to prepare the way for the 
 removal of our Church from among the number of the CiiuiicnEs 
 of Christ ':* 
 
 c 2
 
 20 
 
 And if these thoughts shouhl press heavily upon us all who 
 have been baptized in the Church of England, most of all should 
 they press upon the Bishops and the clergy, to whose especial 
 keeping the truth has been consigned; niostof all arc theBishops 
 and the clergy bound to look very narrowly and very warily into 
 the causes which interfere with the faithful guardianship of the 
 TRUTH for themselves and for the people. 
 
 The danger of the Church of England is a real danger : the 
 assaults of her adversaries are realities : their several positions 
 are realities. 
 
 Is our apprehension of the danger, — I am speaking now of 
 the Bishops and clergy — is our apprehension of the danger a 
 reality, is our defence a reality, is our position a reality ? Not, 
 I say, the position of the Church of England, but our position 
 relatively to the Church of England, is this a reality ? 
 
 If our apprehension of the danger and our defence be realities, 
 how is it that neither in Parliament nor out of Parliament are 
 there evidences of the fact ? 
 
 Rome denies our succession, and therein our authority to ad- 
 minister the holy Sacraments ; in theory and in practice she 
 denies it. Dissent denies that there is such a thing as a 
 succession. The State brings it into contempt. 
 
 Do we maintain it, either against Rome or against Dissent, or 
 against the State, as a thing real, practical, vital ? 
 
 The position of Rome is a real position, all her corruptions 
 of THE TRUTH caunot get rid of this fact. Dissent is real, in that 
 it stands simply and absolutely upon the unrestricted use of 
 private judgment in the interpretation of Scripture, and will 
 have no interference with its idol. Even State indifferentism 
 has a creed, and omits no means of disseminating its creed. 
 
 The advocates of " the Church of the Future" appear to pro- 
 pose to themselves, by way of preparing the world for the recep- 
 tion of their system, to unsettle men's faith, and labour very ener- 
 getically and consistently in furtherance of that laudable object. 
 
 Latitudinarianism enthrones subjective truth, and sneers at 
 the notion of truth objective, external to, and independent of, 
 man's judgment. 
 
 All these several enemies of the Church of England have a 
 real position; it is a reality either of affirmation or negation, but
 
 21 
 
 with all it is a reality ; a definite status, and energy, zeal, activity, 
 all alike uncompromising, in maintaining and enlarging it. 
 
 And now what is the position of the Bishops and the clergy 
 of THE Church of England as the authorised teachers of the peo- 
 ple and ministers of the holy Sacraments ? What is the reality 
 which they oppose to the realities of the adversary ? 
 
 It is an inquiry which will not bear evasion. Men's minds 
 are stirred in a w^onderful way, and everything appears to 
 indicate the near approach of a great moral and religious con- 
 vulsion. 
 
 Now most of us have been educated to believe something, 
 without any very definite conception of what it is. Most of us 
 have not been taught, or sent to teach others, that this some- 
 thing is CERTAIN TRUTH. Thosc of US who have been taught this 
 find ourselves now in this position ; that we are told by authority 
 that the contradictory of what we have been taught to hold our- 
 selves, and have been sent to teach others as certain truth, 
 may be equally true. 
 
 It is no wonder that many minds should begin to doubt 
 whetherthere is any certain truth at all in the Church of Eng- 
 land, and that others should rush at all hazards to seek for it, 
 where, however it have been overlaid with corruptions, and so 
 defaced, the fact of its existence has never yet been called in 
 question. 
 
 For men will have objective truth. They will have realities 
 of one kind or another. The mind which thinks at all about 
 the truth cannot subsist long upon what, when it comes to be 
 tested, is found to have about it nothing positive, nothing more 
 substantial, than the feeble and empty results of every individual's 
 private judgment. 
 
 Wherefore men, who have any notion of a Church at all, look 
 to the Bishops and the Clergy — as the authorized expounders of 
 Holy Scripture and the Creeds, and as ministers of the Sacra- 
 ments — for something upon which they can rely ; not as blindly 
 submitting their reason to the control and guidance of the 
 Bishops and Clergy, but as expecting to receive at their hands 
 that which it is their office to deliver in the Church's behalf, 
 that certain truth, — "the Faith once delivered to the saints," 
 for which, if need be, they ought to be prepared to die.
 
 22 
 
 They look to tlie Bishops and the Clergy to have tliis truth 
 plainly stated to them, in all its Icngtii and breadth ; stated un- 
 hesitatingly as a thing which the Bishops and Clergy have them- 
 selves received of thf Church, and have it in charge to deliver 
 and expound to the people in virtue of their sacred office. They 
 expect to have thk truth proved to them by certain warrant of 
 Holy Scripture, and instanced and illustrated throughout by the 
 tradition and the practice of the universal Church, and those 
 who think deeply, cannot put out of sight that this tradition and 
 practice of the universal Church is the ground whereupon 
 they receive the particular books of Scripture, as making up con- 
 jointly God's Book ; wherefore they require to be very closely 
 and accurately informed what that tradition and practice has 
 ever been. 
 
 Further, they look to the Bishops and the Clergy to be living 
 examples of belief that what they teach is a reality, and necessary 
 to salvation. 
 
 Men look to the Bishops and the Clergy for these things, and 
 they have a plain right to expect to have them at their hands, 
 not at the hands of all equally or alike, not at the hands of 
 any perfectly, but generally, prevailingly, as at the hands of the 
 authorized expounders and ministers of a great system, which 
 while it shares in the imperfection of all things in which man is 
 an agent, does yet provide the way of peace on earth and the 
 preparation for heaven. 
 
 But the people of the Church of England do not, undoubt- 
 edly,/n<f these things at the hands of their Bishops and Clergy, 
 as they might find them, and as, if God will, they will find 
 them more and more, if only the Clergy of all orders and 
 degrees will more truly and generally realize their position, 
 and distinguish more carefully between its essence and its 
 accidents. 
 
 The vague and unsatisfactory relations of members of the 
 Church of England to the Church are, naturally, most easily 
 observed and traced in the case of the Bishops and the Clergy. 
 Their position has been the effect of many concurient causes, 
 which, in one degree or another, have affected the whole people, 
 and as was to be expected, that position has rc-acted very power- 
 fully upon the spiritual condition of the whole people.
 
 23 
 
 But there are some important particulars in which the posi- 
 tion of the Bishops and the Clergy stands out in very bold and 
 startling relief. 
 
 That holy orders should be regarded amongst us principally as 
 one of the professions, i.e., as one of those means whereby men 
 of a certain position by education or otherwise may gain a liveli- 
 hood, and attain, in various degrees, to influence and power; this 
 notion of itself has much more in it that savours of the secular 
 than of the religious element. It is true that " they which 
 preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel," but the same au- 
 thority would be sought in vain for the claims of the Clergy to 
 possess, as individuals, great temporal wealth drawn from the 
 general resources of the Church ; or, again, to jiossess influence 
 or power derived mainly from the fact of their possessing it. 
 
 The truth of all positions is doubtless relative, in a measure, to 
 times and circumstances, and the Clergy of a Church ought not 
 to be placed in a position which does not bear a just proportion 
 to the position of others who ai'e not of the Clergy, but who are 
 in a situation analogous to that of the Clergy ; any excess above 
 that proportion is an evil, is in many ways a most serious hin- 
 drance in the way of the due discharge of the office of the 
 Churchy and tends powerfully to wealien it in the affections of 
 the people. 
 
 But this is by the way, for I am not concerned now with the 
 question of the professional endowments of the clergy. It is, 
 however, obvious to notice, that it is as one of the professions 
 that holy orders are principally regarded, and I am content for 
 my present purpose to advert to some curious facts in connexion 
 with this aspect of the case — these facts are : — 
 
 1. That there is a much smaller amount of professional train- 
 ing for holy orders, than for any other profession. 
 
 2. That, such as that amount of training is, it is far more 
 calculated to prepare men for occupying a certain outward posi- 
 tion in a highly civilized country, than to prepare them to do 
 the especial work of their profession, and to discharge the duties 
 of its inner life ; those duties which are set forth by the Church 
 herself so carefully, and with so great distinctness, and particu- 
 larity in her ordination offices. It is the secular position, the 
 position of a gentleman, that which is common to holy orders
 
 2-4 
 
 with all other professions; it is this position that our training, 
 such as it is, ai)])ears to have primarily in view. The position of 
 a minister of the ^^'ord and Sacraments, and the means of ex- 
 ercising duly its j)eculiar functions ; these things appear, so to 
 speak, to be left to take care of themselves. 
 
 It would not indeed be true to say of the great majority of 
 those who are admitted to holy orders, many of whom become 
 very speedily responsible as Incumbents, and others at once as 
 Curates in sole charge, for the cure of souls, that they have 
 any professional training at all. In some few dioceses, a six- 
 months' notice is required of all candidates, principally with the 
 view of giving some little time for study and preparation for the 
 due discharge of the most weighty and solemn duties that can 
 devolve upon man ; my own experience of the working of this 
 regulation in the diocese of Bath and Wells, where it has been 
 in operation more than five years, is that it is considered as a 
 hardship rather than as a salutary provision ; and even if all were 
 attained that is intended and aimed at by the regulation, what 
 does it amount to ? I have often felt that a six-months^ notice 
 becomes almost a mockery, if it is taken, as I suppose it must 
 be, to indicate that a man who has received what is called a 
 general education, may in six months be prepared, and prepare 
 himself, very satisfactorily for the real and eflScient discharge of 
 all the duties of a minister of the Word and Sacraments. 
 
 I am not saying that men at an early age should be re- 
 quired to be deep theologians, or even well versed in parochial 
 care; these things must come afterwards with patieiit study 
 and riper years ; but I am saying that what men know of 
 their Bible and of the Book of Common Prayer and administra- 
 tion of the Sacraments, and of the general history, constitution, 
 and requirements of their Church, they should at least know 
 clearly, definitely, distinctly, in the several measures and de- 
 grees which Gou vouchsafes. How are men to teach others that, 
 upon which they have very scanty information, and of which 
 they have no fixed and certain asmrance themselves ? How are 
 they to be prepared to take upon themselves the holy orders of 
 a Church, without knowing exactly and particularly what that 
 Church holds as a branch of the Catholic Church of 
 Christ.
 
 25 
 
 I look back with shame and self-reproach to my own ordination 
 in respect of these things, and having had much to do, of late 
 years, with the examination of candidates for holy orders, I am 
 unable to bear witness to any eflfectual improvement : nor indeed 
 at present do I see my way to any future improvement, the whole 
 system is in fault, and only tends to reproduce and perpetuate 
 the unreality under which we labour and suffer now. 
 
 I am stating the case generally — for there will of course be ex- 
 ceptions — when I say that the young clergy of the Church of Eng- 
 land do not know what that is which they are sent to teach ; with 
 the method and manner of teaching anything they are little ac- 
 quainted, much less with the method and manner of catechising, 
 the most difficult, as the most necessary, kind of Church teach- 
 ing, or with the intricacies and difficulties of the parochial 
 charge ; and when the scanty means of knowing these things, 
 supplied to their hands, and their own temptation in being well 
 aware of the sort of probation and trial to which they will be 
 subjected in their examinations, are taken into account, it is not 
 wonderful that such should be the fact. 
 
 The thought suggests itself, and it is a very painful one, and 
 full of cause for alarm and deep distress, that training and pre- 
 paration for holy orders of this meagre and unreal description 
 could hardly exist among a people whose religion was not of a 
 vague and uncertain character ; that it is a natural result of 
 such a fact, and must react powerfully in perpetuating and en- 
 larging the sphere of its existence, seems abundantly evident ; 
 for the present, however, I wish to deal with this result rather 
 as a cause than as an effect, and to note some of its immediate 
 and necessary consequences. These appear to be — 
 
 1. That men neglect or discharge in a desultory and ineffi- 
 cient manner those peculiar duties which they have been so 
 little and so ill prepared to undertake. 
 
 2. That having once passed their examinations, and having 
 learnt from authority how little either of learning or general 
 information upon the nature of the duties they propose to dis- 
 charge, and upon the manner and method of discharging them, 
 is required to this end, and having a certain routine of outward 
 duties to occupy a portion of their time, they are tempted to 
 accept this as the amount of what they are called to do ; and
 
 26 
 
 having little professional knowledge to begin with, the acqui- 
 sition of more becomes so irksome that it is, very commonly, 
 given up altogether. 
 
 3. That thus there is found from first to last a want of defi- 
 niteness and reality about the teaching and about the general 
 ministrations of the clergy of the Church of England. 
 
 4. That, in the absence of steady occupation strictly connected 
 with their calling, a good deal of unemployed time is thrown 
 upon the hands of the clergy, and is filled with other occupations, 
 innocent in themselves, but having no necessary or even inti- 
 mate connection with their proper business. It is curious to 
 remark that no profession appears to have so much time at its 
 command for the general business or amusements of life as the pro- 
 fession of holy orders in the Church of England. 
 
 It follows that in the position of the clergy as existing, and 
 as presented to the world, the secular element predominates, and 
 that an unreal character pervades the whole, both in respect 
 of what is taught or done, and the manner in which it is taught 
 or done. 
 
 To the poor, the clergyman of the Church of England is 
 known partly as a teacher of religion and a reliever of distress ; 
 but principally as a gentleman. To the not poor, he is known 
 almost exclusively as one of themselves by position or education, 
 and as charged with the outward administration of the offices of 
 reli""iou ; by both one and the other it appears to be held to be 
 a question of much graver importance, what is his style and 
 manner of preaching sermons, than what he believes, or in what 
 way he discharges any other function of his office. 
 
 But with regard even to the composing and the preaching of 
 sermons, the Clergy of the Church of England have, so to 
 speak, no training : both for the matter and the manner of their 
 preaching they are left almost exclusively to themselves, and the 
 natural and necessary result is that, as a general rule, they are 
 in both respects, lamentably deficient. 
 
 Meantime, while the Clergyman is thus ill-trained and ill- 
 prepared for the " proper work " of his caUing, the schoolmaster 
 is assuming a position in our parishes altogether new ; and the 
 contrast between the realities of his preparation for his work, 
 and of his work itself, and the unrealities of the preparation
 
 27 
 
 and the work of tlie Clergyman is every day being painfully and 
 injuriously forced uj)on the notice of the people. The remedy 
 for this evil state of things is not to lower the schoolmaster, but 
 to raise the Clergyman ; at present there is some considerable 
 danger of their relative positions to the people being in great 
 measure transposed. 
 
 From among the members of a clergy whose position involves 
 so much of what is secular and unreal, and which must therefore 
 react strongly upon the mind of the people, and tend power- 
 fully to fix a character of unreality upon the whole Church, the 
 Church of England receives her Bishops. 
 
 Now if the manner of our Bishops^ appointment were not fact, 
 it would be scarcely credible ; let us hope that the time is near 
 at hand when so great a reproach upon the character of a 
 Church of Christ, as is entailed by every fresh instance of that 
 manner of appointment, will only be matter of history, and when 
 its results will have passed into a warning, that the Church of 
 England never allow herself to be so betrayed again, not simply 
 into an abdication, but into a mockery, of her office and com- 
 mission received of God. 
 
 It is commonly said in England that anomalies are as nothing 
 if they " work well ;" and the remark may be true enough as 
 applied to society and politics ; but as applied to religion, and 
 all questions connected therewith, it is alike presumptuous and 
 false. 
 
 Members of the Church of England are very generally cog- 
 nizant of the fact, that when any Priest is nominated to the 
 office of a Bishop, nominalhj by the Sovereign, as the temporal 
 governor of the Church, but really by the Prime Minister of the 
 day, who may, or may not, represent in such matters even so 
 much as the will of a majority in the House of Commons, the 
 Dean and Chapter of the See are required, under heavy penal- 
 ties, to proceed, within a limited time,* to elect the Pi'iest so 
 nominated. 
 
 The members of the Church are also now cognizant of the 
 fact, that whatever objection may be taken, on the part of the 
 members of the Church, in this land of "civil and religious 
 
 * Twenty days. 1h Henry VIII. cap. 20.
 
 28 
 
 liberty," to the nominee of the crown, on the ground of lieresy, 
 or unsound doctrine, or moral, or other Canonical disqualifica 
 tion, the crown refuses to permit any question to be raised 
 touching its own absolute power and authority in this matter. 
 
 But the members of the Church are not generally cognizant 
 of the fact that the Deans and Chapters electing preface 
 every such compulsoi'y election of a Bishop by solemn prayer 
 and invocation of the Holy Ghost to guide them to a right 
 choice.* 
 
 I doubt whether the whole history of the Church supply any 
 worse example, not simply of abdication of the Church's office, 
 but of mockery of the privileges vouchsafed to her of God. 
 
 Is the Church of England prepared to abandon her prayer 
 and invocation of the Holy Ghost in the election of her Bishops? 
 that would be a reality, though a fatal one. Is she prepared to 
 contest the preposterous claim of the Prime Minister, or even of 
 the Crown, to insist upon the absolute and indefeasible election 
 of the nominee under all circumstances whatsoever ; that again 
 would be a reality ; one that might, doubtless, bring with it 
 much temporal suffering, but which w^ould confess and affirm 
 the truth that God is to be obeyed rather than man at whatever 
 cost. 
 
 Is the Church of England content to abide in her present 
 position in respect of the appointment of her Bishops ? then is 
 she content with an unreality in religion, and does not shrink 
 from a perpetual mockery of God. 
 
 Here then is the first step towards the position of a Bishop 
 in the Church of England ; does it augur well of what is to 
 come? 
 
 The Bishop is nominated, elected, confirmed, consecrated. 
 Alas ! must not even the last of these share in the character of 
 its antecedents? God's mercy preserves the succession. Man 
 labours, for his own selfish ends, to make it an object of ridicule 
 and contempt. 
 
 Now the primary accident of the position of the Bishop, thus 
 established in his See, is his seat in the House of Lords, a thing 
 whatever it may be in theory, in practice purely secular. 
 
 I do not enter into what is called, vaguely enough, the con- 
 * See Appendu.
 
 39 
 
 stitutional question of the position of the Bishops as Peers of 
 Parliament. I profess myself unable to apprehend what " the 
 British Constitution " may be, except as a phantom which 
 perpetually eludes the grasp of the understanding. It seems 
 to me a matter of infinitely small importance, whether the 
 Bishops sit in the House of Lords as Barons or as Bishops. I 
 deny, however, that they sit there in any sense, as representa- 
 tives of THE Church. 
 
 The question which presses, and which is of much greater 
 consequence than a hundred of what are called constitutional 
 questions — the meaning of which term I leave to others to 
 ascertain — is a practical question, and must, very shortly, receive 
 a practical answer. 
 
 Do the Bishops sit in the House of Lords to the great discredit 
 and weakening and depreciation of the Church of England ? 
 
 I say " yes." If the negative of my affirmation can be proved, 
 let it be proved. 
 
 I proceed to prove the affirmative. 
 
 I. The seat in the House of Lords, creating a vote in support of 
 the Government of the day, is the principal element in determin- 
 ing the appointment of a Bishop. The character thus stamped 
 upon a Bishop from the outset — that character in which he is most 
 obviously presented to the eye of the people, is that of a political 
 partizan. How truly this character is assigned by general con- 
 sent may be easily ascertained by a reference to the division 
 lists of any session of Parliament. 
 
 But Government is bold in the consciousness of innocence, 
 and denies that appointments of Bishops arc made upon grounds 
 of support of their secular policy. Will Government deny that 
 these appointments are made upon grounds of support of their 
 ecclesiastical policy; and is not the connection between the two 
 a close and necessary connection ? Will Government deny that 
 these appointments are made upon grounds of private friendship 
 or family connection, when the prospect of such support is sup- 
 posed to be ascertained, but not utlierwise ? 
 
 At this day the conflict between the Church of England, 
 and the Government of England is, whether the Church of Eng- 
 land shall be Latitudinarian or Catholic — a " Church of the 
 Future," or a " Church of the Primitive and the Past." Will
 
 80 
 
 Government deny that they make all their Bishops with the view 
 to the exercise of their vote and influence and power in favour 
 of the Latitudinarian ])rinciple ? If Government do deny it, 
 what is the value of the denial in the face of facts ? 
 
 The appointment of Bishops, thus made with reference to 
 Parliamentary support, is full of injury to the Church as stamp- 
 ing upon the Episcopate a secular character. But the mischief 
 is much wider and deeper even than this. 
 
 1. The fact of the presence of the Bishops in the House 
 of Lords, is very commonly urged as a justification for with- 
 holding from the Church the free exercise of her synodical 
 j)owers, on the plea that the Church is already, through her 
 Bishops, represented in Parliament. It is curious and in- 
 structive to observe how little men are ashamed to ignore the 
 facts of history, and to employ the flimsiest and most irrelevant 
 statements by way of arguments, when they have also the strong 
 arm of power to compel their reception, if not as convincing, yet 
 as all that they choose to give. 
 
 The Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England 
 number twenty-six in a house of some three hundred and fifty 
 members. The method and manner of their appointment makes 
 them to be of necessity a disunited and discordant body. Not 
 elected by the Church or for the Church, they do not and cannot 
 represent the Church, even supposing that such representative 
 function were the true account of thtir presence in Parliament, 
 which it is not. 
 
 2. Another evil of the same class is this : that so long as the 
 Bishops are appointed by the prime minister, and appointed 
 with a view to Parliamentary support, i.e., so long as they con- 
 tinue to sit in the House of Lords, no real effort will be made 
 by the Church of England to augment the number of her 
 Episcopate, however greatly some dioceses may require such 
 augmentation. Churchmen are very justly and reasonably 
 afraid of multiplying weapons in the hands of a prime minister, 
 to be used according to his will and pleasure, for the discourage- 
 ment of Church principles. 
 
 II. There is yet another class of evils equally great and more 
 immediately practical. 
 
 1. The position of Bishops as Peers of Parliament goes a long
 
 31 
 
 way to establish a barrier of etiquette and restraint between the 
 Bishops and the clergy, which is, curiously enough, far more 
 apparent in the case of holy orders than in that of any other 
 profession. I need not waste words and the reader's time to 
 prove that such etiquette and restraint, with its results, is alto- 
 gether wrong, damaging on both sides, and in many ways 
 generally injurious to the Church. 
 
 2. The absence of the Bishops from their dioceses during 
 many months of the year is an enormous evil, for there are 
 no suffragans, as there might be in every diocese, to take charge 
 of its spiritual government in the absence of the chief Bishop of 
 the See. Now when Bishops have no longer any reason for 
 corning to London as Peers of Parliament, their incomes might, 
 at the next avoidance of each see, be still further reduced, and 
 the fund accruing from such reduction applied to the payment of 
 suffragan Bishops, to be appointed under the act 26 Henry Vlll. 
 cap. 14, when any emergency called for such appointment. All 
 I would contend for here is, that any such reduction be made 
 by authority of Convocation, and submitted to Parliament for 
 ratification that it may become law. 
 
 But indeed if there were no occasion, or a rare one only, for 
 the absence of a Bishop from his diocese, I am persuaded that 
 much less would need to be said about any general increase of 
 the Episcopate. There are doubtless some dioceses where this 
 increase is imperatively called for, but these are the exception. 
 The increased facilities for transacting business supplied by the 
 improved methods of communication, whether personal or by 
 letter, and the general efficiency of archdeacons and rural deans 
 are not, I think, sufficiently taken into account. My own belief 
 is, that if a Bishop were, as a general rule, always in his diocese, 
 he would be able by the help of these things to do all the busi- 
 ness of it efficiently, to hold parochial, and not district, Confir- 
 mations, to become personally acquainted with all his clergy, 
 and be personally the e7r/crH07roj of every parish. As it is, it 
 seems to be taken for granted that such multiplied Confirma- 
 tions, and such personal acquaintance and inspection are im- 
 possible. I dare say they may be, but why ? because for some- 
 thing like a third of the year the Bishops are in London : for 
 what adequate purpose it is hard to say.
 
 32 
 
 In providing that the Bishops should be always, as a general 
 rule, in their dioceses, and no part of the year in London for 
 purposes of Parliament, care should be taken not to convert 
 them, as has been the case in some instances of late years, into 
 country gentlemen. A Bishop^s home ought suuely to be close 
 to his cathedral church, and the continual presence of the Bishop 
 in the centre of his diocese, actively concerned with the busi- 
 ness of the diocese, would tend powerfully to infuse that vitality 
 and practical usefulness into the Dean and Chapter of the 
 cathedral, in which these dignitaries are at present somewhat 
 deficient. 
 
 3. Again, the non-residence of the Bishops, is a plea and 
 excuse for the non-residence of the clergy, and superinduces a 
 general cai'elessness. 
 
 4. The style of life which arises out of an intermingling with 
 the " great world " and its pursuits in London, is again a plea 
 and an excuse for an imitation of it by the clergy, and so there 
 is, throughout, an under-current always setting in towards the 
 metropolis, and towards that unreal and secular life which is no- 
 where exhibited under an aspect so insidious and seductive. 
 Compromise of the truth may be found everywhere ; the pre- 
 vailing strength of purely worldly considerations may be found 
 everywhere ; but it is in London, and in the immediate presence 
 of the combinations of political party, that such things appear to 
 pervade and leaven a man's whole nature, and almost to succeed 
 in obliterating the traces of that moral courage which is neces- 
 sary to straightforward and honest action. 
 
 The case of the National Society supplies an apt and painful 
 illustration of my meaning : four years of contest have left the 
 great educational society of the Church, the prey, and almost 
 the slave, of the Committee of Council on Education ; four 
 weeks would have sufficed to gain redress of every grievance, if 
 the Bishops had not been Peers of Parliament, and the absolute 
 creations of the civil power. Under similar circumstances, I 
 believe the fate of the other Church societies will be the same. 
 
 The National Society may yet be rescued ; but if this is to 
 be done, there must be a good deal more of moral courage, and 
 a good deal less of vacillation and infirmity of ])urpose, than 
 was exhibited at the late Annual Meeting. If Churchmen will
 
 33 
 
 neither labour themselves, in any public way, to uphold the 
 cause of Church Education, nor support steadily and consistently 
 those who do, the end is close at hand and easy to see. 
 
 The result of the Annual Meeting was the effect of an or- 
 ganized assault upon " Church principles," conceived and 
 executed after the manner of 1850-51, backed by an appeal 
 from a high quarter pressed upon the meeting with combined 
 skill and irregularity. Now the real account of that appeal is 
 siiiiply this — that while it professed to ask the Meeting to leave 
 things alone, in effect it asked the meeting to abandon the 
 position affirmed by previous Annual Meetings of the Society — 
 and succeeded. 
 
 Meantime that the general position of the Committee of the 
 Society is unreal, is evidenced in the fact that their proposal to 
 raise a sum of about £40,000 for a Training School has been 
 met after many months by contributions not exceeding, I am 
 informed, j67000. The course of the Committee of the Society 
 — and after the experience of the late Annual Meeting, I fear 
 it must be said, the course of the Society itself — is neither 
 " high " enough to satisfy the " High Church," nor " low " 
 enough to satisfy the " Low Church ;" as for those who are 
 neither " high " nor " low," i.e. who do not greatly concern 
 themselves, either one way or the other, about certainty of doc- 
 trine, these are not commonly the men who give money. 
 
 It is sad to think, that the Episcopate of the Church of Eng- 
 land should be so constituted and so circumstanced, and exposed 
 by its secular position to so great temptations, that it is not 
 only by what the Bishops do not do, but also by what they do, 
 in their collective capacity, that the unreality, which is our great 
 disease, is extended and encouraged. 
 
 Last year they refused, after deliberation, to make any decla- 
 ration touching Holy Baptism. I will not enlarge here upon 
 all the evil consequences of this refusal. I will only say so 
 «inuch as this ; that I believe, and I know that my belief in the 
 matter is not singular, that a declaration touching Holy Baptism 
 made by the great body of the Bishops in the early part of last 
 year, would have availed to give confidence and support to many 
 a mind, which, in the absence of any such declaration, has
 
 34 
 
 allowed itself to be shaken in its faithfulness, and has finally 
 deserted the Church of England. 
 
 This year they have issued a paper signed by twenty-three of 
 their number, upon which I have four things to say. 
 
 1. That it states in paragraph 1, as the cause of the distress 
 of the Church of England, that which is not the cause, but only 
 an accident of the cause. It states that the distress has arisen 
 on account of rubrical observances. Now there is surely very 
 little depth of observation here ; rubrical observance is only a 
 sign or mark of doctrine ; and the distress has been and is, that 
 THE Doctrine of the Apostolical Succession and of the 
 Holy Sacraments has been and is denied, and attempted to 
 be brought low, and the conflict has arisen, and will continue to 
 arise, out of the determination that it shall not be brought low ; 
 this paragraph then of the Bishops' paper appears to be superfi- 
 cial and unreal. 
 
 2. Paragraph II., in drawing a distinction between rubri- 
 cal observance and things essential, seems to impute to those, 
 who, for doctrine and discipline's sake, hold fast by the rubrics, 
 that they are prepared to sacrifice things inward and spiritual to 
 things outward and formal; now, even if such imputation had 
 been founded, it ought not to have been made, because imputa- 
 tions ought never to be made ; but surely the Bishops must be 
 well aware that there is no foundation for it — that it states an 
 unreality. 
 
 3. A subsequent paragraph intimates that the Bishops in their 
 several dioceses are not simply the proper referees touching ru- 
 brical observances in the first instance, but that their decision is 
 THE LAW. Here again is an unreality. 
 
 4. The whole paper bears evident marks of a desire to " sa- 
 tisfy the public " in the direction indicated by the Durham letter, 
 and a few days previous to the Durham letter, by the charge of 
 the Bishop of London. Now we possess an Archdeacon amongst 
 us who appears to think that to " satisfy the public," is a 
 Churchman's first object. I think so too, provided always, that 
 the appetite of the public is for the truth, but not otherwise — 
 to attempt to " satisfy the public " with anything less than the 
 truth is an unreality and a delusion. 
 
 I will conclude my summary of the unrealities and anomalies
 
 35 
 
 of the position of the Bishops and Clergy of the Chureh of Eng- 
 land with this question, How is it that it is so easy for men 
 unsound in the Faith to gain admission to holy orders ? How 
 is it that sometimes men sound in the Faith find such admission 
 difficult ? 
 
 I have endeavoured to state the principal mischiefs which ap- 
 pear to me to flow from the position of the Bishops as Peers of 
 Parliament ; if I have omitted any one of importance, the omission 
 will doubtless be supplied by other hands. 
 
 Mine is no assault upon individuals, but upon a vicious sys- 
 tem ; much less am 1 imputing to the Bishops, that they are 
 responsible for the existence of the system : whether they may 
 not justly be held responsible for its continued existence is 
 another matter. 
 
 My assault is upon a great collection of unrealities, supplying 
 a perpetual stimulus to other unrealities throughout the Church, 
 and ending in the large predominance of the secular life. The 
 people are keenly alive to these things ; they look with distaste 
 and distrust upon the presence of the Bishops in Parliament, 
 and upon their residence in London ; they see and hear a good 
 deal of the last, they know little of the first, except by a speech 
 now and then in the House of Lords upon some Church or other 
 question, and the unreality of the position is much aggravated 
 thereby, because men are disposed to believe that something is 
 being done for the Church, when in fact nothing is being done 
 for the Church. 
 
 I believe myself to have proved Propositions IIL and IV. I 
 believe myself to have proved that the position of the Bishops 
 and Clergy of the Church of England is in many respects secular 
 and unreal, and that, in particular, the position of the Bishops 
 as Peers of Parliament is secular and unreal. I conclude that it 
 will not be disputed that such a position of Bishops and Clergy 
 is a very powerful hindrance to the more just and extended 
 appreciation of the office and essential character of the Church ; 
 
 AND THAT SUCH POSITION OUGHT TO BE REFORMED. 
 
 It will be well if the reformation proceed from within ; if it be 
 forced upon us from without, it will go far to impair our means 
 of usefulness, and will leave us moreover in all the bitterness of 
 self-reproach. The movement of men's minds ni and out of
 
 36 
 
 Pailiamciit, and the near prospect of such " reformation '^ from 
 without arc abundantly evident ; but Parliament is not, and 
 cannot be, the place from whence shall come the true amendment 
 and the fresh and vigorous life of the Church of England. 
 
 On the nights of July 21, 22, 1851, the House of Commons 
 was occupied with the question whether a Jew could sit and 
 vote in a legislature which admits freely the Quaker and the 
 Socinian. The House of Lords was occupied with a bill of pains 
 and penalties upon the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, 
 a retrograde movement from the position of religious liberty sup- 
 posed to have been ascertained in 1827 — 1829 ; a movement 
 which, if it were not the fact that the law which it has produced 
 must be obsolete immediately upon its enactment, would be the 
 first note of preparation for a religious war. 
 
 In both cases I conceive the object in view to be the main- 
 tenance OF THE Establishment, for it seems impossible to 
 conceive that any one should seriously be persuaded that the 
 Church of England is to be upheld, or benefited in any way, by 
 such measures as these. What can be a greater and more mis- 
 chievous delusion than to acquiesce in a nominal Christianity ? 
 How can it advantage the Church of England that the Roman 
 Catholics should be persecuted, or, if the Solicitor-general 
 pleases, " vexed " — in respect of the full and free developeraent 
 of their religious system — by Act of Parliament ? 
 
 Now it cannot be matter of surprise that a legislature, which 
 has long ago deliberately placed itself in a false position, and 
 discarded " Church principles " in favour of " civil and religious 
 liberty," but which nevertheless will not allow this account of 
 the ease, and clings to the delusion that the relations of the 
 Church to the State and of the State to the Church, remain 
 much as they were before, should find itself in perpetual difficulty 
 whenever it attempts to deal with such religious or quasi-reli- 
 gious questions as rash and injudicious members of either house 
 may press upon its notice ; but it is wonderful, notwithstanding 
 all our experience, and not a little alarming and significant, that 
 Churchmen in and out of Parliament should share so extensively 
 m the delusion, and think that the position of the Church of 
 England can be strengthened, or so much as maintained, by Act 
 of Parliament.
 
 37 
 
 The Church of England, if she be wise, wants no defence at 
 the hands of a legislature which is not her own, she invokes no 
 such assistance against all her many foes. She wants nothing 
 but that the legislature should untie her /tanefe, and leave her/ree 
 to fight her own battle in the strength of God. 
 
 That true son of the Church, whether Bishop, or Peer, or re- 
 presentative of the people, who shall gain freedom for the 
 Church of Eugland, " to do the work proper unto her," in the 
 full and free exercise of her synodical power for the regulation 
 of all her internal concerns, whether of doctrine or discipline, or 
 the increase and endowment of the several orders of her Clergy ; 
 who shall persuade the civil power not to usurp the functions of 
 the spiritualty either in respect of the appointment of Bishops, 
 or judgment of doctrine, or education, or discipline ; who shall 
 persuade the Episcopate that the House of Lords is no longer 
 their fitting place; who shall abolish the levying of Church 
 rates upon all who shall register themselves as joined members 
 of any dissenting body, or as of the Roman Catholic Commu- 
 nion ; who shall remove, so far as it may be done by law, 
 other causes of just offence between the several religious bodies 
 which compose the nation — that man will do more to build up 
 THE Church in the hearts of men, and to make us a happy 
 people, acknowledging " One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism," 
 and "endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit, in the 
 bond of peace," than the framer of a hundred laws professing to 
 uphold, but, in fact, degrading and secularizing and stultifying, 
 the Church.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 In the declaration touching holy Baptism lately made by the Synod of tlie 
 diocese of Exeter, the language employed appears, in one particular of 
 great importance, to be susceptible of an interpretation very remote, I am 
 persuaded, from the mind of the Synod. I allude to the words in brackets 
 in Clause I. " [and, being adults, with fit qualifications]." 
 
 The clause, including these words, may be understood to say that the 
 Baptism of an adult is hypothetical, and contingent upon his qualifications — 
 that while infant Baptism is unconditional, adult Baptism is conditional, 
 and thus be understood to promulge, in some sense, the doctrine of two 
 Baptisms, and not one. 
 
 I can fully understand and appreciate the anxiety of the Synod to guard 
 itself against the being supposed to declare that Baptism saves, ex opere 
 operaio, an adult receiving it unworthily. But I venture to submit that 
 what the clause seems to say is, not that an adult receiving Baptism un- 
 worthily is not saved therein, and thereby, ex opere operate, but, that such 
 adult HAS NOT RECEIVED THE GIFT of the inward and spiritual grace 
 of holy Baptism, i.e. that in his case there has been no Sacrament. 
 
 And yet, as he has clearly been baptized, it follows that there would 
 appear to be in the words an affirmation, in some sense, however uninten- 
 tional, of two Baptisms, and not one. 
 
 Declaration — Clause I. 
 
 " Acknowledging ' one Baptism for the remission of sins,' we hold as of 
 faith that all persons duly baptized (and being adults, with fit qualifica- 
 tions), are not only baptized once for all, but also are baptized with the 
 one true baptism of Him who 'baptizeth with the Holy Ghost,' and who, 
 thus making us to ' be born again of water and the Spirit,' delivers us 
 thereby from the guilt and bondage of all our sins, of original and past sin 
 absolutely and at once, of sins committed after Baptism conditionally, when 
 with hearty repentance and true faith we turn unto God." 
 
 Address from a Dean and Chapter to a Bishop Elect, 
 
 " To the Rev. , your humble and devoted the Doan and Chapter of 
 
 the Cathedral Church of , in the Diocese of , send greeting. 
 
 " We, the said Dean and Chapter, do humbly certify to you that the 
 
 e])iscopal See of , being vacant by the death of , we, the sai«l 
 
 Dean and Chapter did, on , the — day of instant, with all due
 
 40 
 
 reverence receive his Majesty's Patent of Conge d'Elire, or Royal Licence, 
 untler the Great Seal of Great Britain, for electing to us another Bishop 
 and Pastor, and also his Mnjesty's Letter Recommendatory, under his 
 Royal Signet to us the said Dean and Cha|)ter directed. And then and 
 there, aceording to the teuor of the aforesaid Licence, we did agree to pro- 
 ceed to the election of a future Bishop of the Church aforesaid, as aforesaid 
 \acant, and for that purpose did cause all and singular of the Canons and 
 Prebendaries of the same Church, and others having or pretending to have 
 any right or interest in that behalf, to be cited to appear on this — day 
 of — — , to give their consent and voices respectively : which said — day 
 
 of being come, and Prayers to Almighty God before all things being 
 
 humbly offered up, we the said Dean and Chapter, capitularly assembled in 
 the said Cathedral Church, and making a full Chapter, <lid there, by virtue 
 of his Majesty's Royal Licence, and according to the Statutes and Ecclesi- 
 astical Laivs of the famous Kingdom of Great Britain, canonicatly proceed 
 to the election aforesaid, in the manner and form following : (to wit) — 
 
 " First, after mature and serious consideration had between ourselves con- 
 cerning a FIT PERSON, in that behalf to be elected, {saving to ourselves all 
 the privileges that ought to be saved with regard to the said election, as well 
 by the laws of this our famous kingdom of Great Britain, as by the ancient 
 and laudable customs of your said Cathedral Church,) we did at length agree 
 to give out" votes for you, being nominated and recommended to us by his 
 ]Majesty's said Letter Recommendatory, as a person endued with virtue, 
 learning, wisdom, and other good gifts, and by virtue of his Majesty's said 
 Licence and Letter Recommendatory, with our whole assent and consent, 
 no one contradicting, we did elect yon Bishop and Pastor of the said 
 Cathedral Church : which said election of you as is aforesaid made, we 
 immediately published to the clergy and people then and there present in 
 the public and usual place, and all and singular other things of right or by 
 custom in that behalf necessary, we have caused to be done and despatched 
 in the presence of a Registrar or Public Notary, and other credible wit- 
 nesses, as by Act or Public Instruments, which upon the whole election 
 aforesaid, we have taken care to make more plainly appear, all and singular 
 which things, according to the Statutes of this United Kingdom of Great 
 Britain and Ireland in that behalf provided, were duly had and made, as 
 we have signified to our said Sovereign Lord the King by other Letters 
 certificatory of the day of the date of these Presents, sealed with our 
 Common Seal. 
 
 " The same like by these our Letters, sealed with our Common Seal, we 
 do signify to you, and we earnestly desire you to give your assent and 
 consi'nt to such election so made of you as aforesaid. 
 
 "In testimony whereof, &c." 
 
 lOSKPH MASTKHS, rillNTRII, At.URnSOATK STKBKT, LONDON
 
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