^■M 
 
 •v. 
 
 • .• 
 
 
 
 r<iX '¥'^•*7m■ 
 
 • 
 
 
 ■ - ■ 
 
 
 i-^ 
 
 
 / ~
 
 -1 
 
 LI B R.ARY 
 
 OF THL 
 
 UN IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 \ 
 
 \
 
 h 
 
 i^latn max^i xq pain people 
 
 ON 
 
 THE PRESENT 
 
 DISSENSIONS IN THE CHURCH, 
 
 LONDON: 
 JAMES BURNS, 17, PORTMAN STREET, 
 
 PORTMAN SQUARE. 
 
 1842. 
 [Price '2d., or 14.?. per 100.]
 
 PLAIN WOEDS, &c. 
 
 Just before our Blessed Saviour was betrayed into the hands of 
 wicked men, He took occasion to comfort His disciples, whose minds 
 it seems were troubled by approaching evils, and He said on that 
 awful occasion : " Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you : 
 not as the world giveth give I unto you." And then, after speaking 
 these and many other cheering words, which are written in the 
 fourteenth and following chapters of St. John's Gospel, " He lifted 
 up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, I pray that all which shall 
 believe on Me through the word of them whom I have sent into the 
 world may be one — that the world may believe that Thou hast sent 
 Me." And the Apostle " which wrote these things," and who has been 
 always called the Apostle of love, (St. John,) when he was so old and 
 feeble that he could say nothing else, used, we are told, to get himself 
 carried into the church, and preached no other sermon to the people 
 than, "Little children, love one another." It is quite clear then 
 that peace, imity, and love, are essentials of the gospel ; where these 
 are not, you may safely say, that " if any man seem to be religious, 
 and bridleth not his tongue, this man's religion is vain." Jam. i. 26. 
 Now I am going to apply this to the state of things in which we find 
 ourselves just now. 
 
 I suppose that the very simplest person among us knows very well 
 that there are many things said and done about religion and the 
 Church, and in their name, which are altogether inconsistent with 
 peace ; and the angry tone in which they are said seems to show pretty 
 clearly that such as use these hard words cannot bear much love 
 towards those whom they treat so unkindly, and that they have for- 
 gotten our Lord's last prayer for unit)', and St. John's touching sermon, 
 and indeed the subject of his Epistles also. And yet men are not alto- 
 gether to be blamed for speaking strongly, when they feel strongly. 
 ^^ First pure, then peaceable," Jam. iii. 17, is the character of that 
 church which is militant here below, I would rather say that they are 
 blamable in the first instance for not giving themselves sufiicient leisure 
 to understand the bearings of many very important theological points, 
 none of them without its own peculiar difficulty, than for warning 
 against error where they honestly believe it to exist. It is their false 
 estimate of the Church, not their intentions towards it, of which 
 I must complain, "\^'^len I say this, I only mean that I can to a certain 
 extent sympathize with the alarms of some who seem to think we are all 
 iust going "to turn papists," to use words which, I dare say, you have 
 often heard lately, and I can make some allowance for warm expres- 
 sions produced under such circumstances. I do not defend — indeed, 
 I must earnestly protest against— the fierce, schismatical, irritating, 
 and, one must say it, most unchristian language and spirit which we hear 
 and see in print daily. The most vulgar devices are adopted to 
 prejudice uninformed minds against the ministers of their own 
 parishes, who are labouring faithfully and with much self-denial in
 
 3 
 
 all M'orldly tilings among them ; handbills, full of incomplete passages, 
 and garbled, unfair, and false quotations from writings/^ -which, to 
 say the least, require the patient study of the context even to under- 
 stand them, are scattered with the most reckless disregard of the 
 characters or religious training of those into whose hands they may 
 fall ; people of the lower classes, who perhaps never set foot in a 
 church, and who are actually ignorant of the contents of the Prayer- 
 book, are addressed by clergymen in violent after-dinner speeches, 
 when their worst passions are excited by the necessary evils atten- 
 dant upon such worldly meetings, and these clergymen think it 
 right to use such opportunities for the purpose of nicknaming their 
 brethren, and for the sake of a laugh pollute themselves by using the 
 most profane and unchristian language;! the daily newspapers, and 
 the worst part of them, are made the vehicle of poisoning and pre- 
 judicing weak and unstable minds ; public meetings are held inmau)- 
 parts of the country for the sole purpose of exciting popular hatred, 
 not only against certain views, but against individuals who are sup- 
 posed to hold them, and these misrepresentations both of doctrine and 
 practice are addressed to those who, from education and other causes, 
 are not only incapable of forming opinions upon the points at issue, 
 but of testing the truth of the assertions which they hear respecting 
 them ; and last of all, the pulpit of one of the largest churches in this 
 very city [London] Is made the vehicle of advice to the laity to 
 " desert the churches, and no longer to recognise the ministry," f of 
 those whose only fault is a faithful adherence to the spirit and the 
 letter of those formularies which they have solemnly sworn before 
 God to obey and to teach. The storm of calumny and misrepresen- 
 tation is now at its height ; and I am using the words of one whose 
 station privileges him, and such as him alone, to pronounce judgment 
 upon these matters, when I ask — 
 
 " What can have been more lamentable than the tone, which 
 (of course I am speaking generally) has been adopted by those who 
 have set themselves (I hope conscientiously) to oppose the opinions 
 in question? What can be more offensive to christian charity, than 
 to hear men of blameless lives held up to public execration in the 
 newspapers of the day, as ' a synagogue of Satan,' and branded as 
 • heretics' by persons, "who yet hold back the grounds on which they 
 make their charges ? Above all, — and I cannot notice without grave 
 reprehension the conduct of these individuals, — what can be more 
 offensive than to see clergymen, ministers of the gospel of peace, so 
 far forgetting themselves, their duties, and their position, as to appear 
 at public meetings as speakers, or in the daily journals as cor- 
 respondents, whose tone is rather that of personal opposition, than of 
 grave objection to error, and who thereby almost compel us to think, 
 that they are lamentably deficient in that spirit which is ' pure, and 
 peaceable, and gentle, , and easy to ba entreated, full of mercy and 
 good fruits,' — 'thinking no evil,' — 'rejoicing not in iniquity, but 
 rejoicing in the truth ?' I would that such could see themselves as 
 they appear to others, and could think of themselves as all good 
 
 * This charge could easily be proved, were this the place to do so. Sullice it to 
 warn my readers against believing what they read in such publications, without 
 examining for themselves the books which they profess to quote from. Great 
 names in the religious world are not always a sufficient guarantee for fair statt- 
 ments. 
 
 t Mr. Close's Speech at the tradesmen's dinner in Cheltenham. 
 
 t Mr. Noel's Sermon at St. Clement Danes.
 
 men, of whatever party, must think of them. I would that they 
 would reflect with whom they are leaguing themselves, and whether 
 some of those with whom they act are not men whose hearts' desire 
 and ulterior object is the total destruction of our National Church ? 
 And more than this,— I would that they should learn a lesson from 
 the men whose doctrines they repudiate, and whose persons they so 
 bitterly assail. Whatever may have been the errors, whether of 
 doctrine or of judgment, (and of these I am not at present speaking,) 
 of which the authors of the Tracts for the Times have been guilty, 
 I will say this for them, that the moderation and forbearance they 
 have shown under insults the most galling and provoking that can be 
 imagined, has been exemplary ; and I am glad to availmyself of this 
 public opportunity of expressing my admiration of the meek and 
 christian spirit they have invariably shown, — not rendering railing 
 for railing, and never tempted, by the frequent ignorance, and often 
 immeasurable inferiority, of many of their adversaries, to retoi't upon 
 them." — Bishop of Oxford's Charge, 1842, pp. 13 — 15. 
 
 When such things are of daily occurrence, when a clergyman cannot 
 faithfully, and in obedience to his oaths, follow out the directions of 
 the Prayer-book, which he has sworn to obey, without being calum- 
 niated, and even persecuted, it is time to speak out; and it is well 
 that you should be plainly warned against being deceived by this 
 coarse and unchristian, I had almost said, antichristian warfare, and 
 against being led away by "calumnies and misrepresentations of 
 the most wanton and cruel description, and by attacks from the dissent- 
 ing, democratic, and infidel portions of the public press, clothed in 
 language which I will not trust myself to characterise, but which, 
 for the sake of our common humanity, (I say nothing of christian 
 charity,) it behoves us, as with one voice, to reprobate and condemn," 
 Ibid. p. 10 ; lest giving heed to such pernicious advice, you be tempted 
 to "make shipwreck of your faith;" and, by fomenting these 
 divisions, you lacerate and tear " the Church, which is His body," 
 Eph. i. 23, most sacred and most inviolable. It would be at least 
 more prudent for all, in whatever station and calling, and it is most 
 necessary for those whose duty is " to receive with meekness the 
 engrafted word," JamA. 21, to do as one of great prudence advised 
 in a matter, which being one of God's truth, it seems not improper 
 to adduce, that is, " to let these men alone : for if this counsel or 
 this work be of men, it will come to nought ; but if it be of God, ye 
 cannot overthrow it ; lest haply ye be found even to fight against 
 God:* Acts V. 38, 39. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances you of the laity would enjoy the 
 privilege of serving God in quiet, under the guidance and teaching of 
 the Church ; but now that there is an unhappy necessity for making 
 an appeal to you on behalf of those of the Clergy who desire to act 
 up to their ordination vows, it may be permitted to point out, what 
 is too little known, 
 
 I. The state of things which gave rise to the religious movement 
 which is now so clamorously opposed. 
 
 II. The leading principles of this movement, distinguishing care- 
 fully main principles, from details which are more or less doubtful ; and 
 
 lil. The real grounds of those who are the leaders in this 
 unhallowed warfare upon their brethren. 
 
 It will be seen, of course, that I am writing for churchmen ; 
 and if I could select my readers, I would say that I address more
 
 particularly those gentle souls (and there are many such) who are 
 distressed and harassed by the din of arms, -which is ringing within 
 and around our spiritual home; for those who "seek peace and ensue 
 it ;" I'or those who, though they might make up their minds to the 
 "fightings without," are sorely perplexed by the "fears within," 
 '2 Cor. vii. 5 ; who feel their own weakness ; and who look for some- 
 thing which shall guide them in the midst of the conflicting opinions 
 and angry controversies of the day. 
 
 I. It may be a difficult thing to carry our minds ten years back ; 
 but it is very necessary to do this. In this world we know little of 
 ourselves but by this comparison of one state with another. To know 
 the guilt of after years we must realize the purity of " our first estate :" 
 and rightly to estimate the progress of penitence, we must recall the 
 state of sin. It is a painful retrospect, but we cannot look back at the 
 years 1832 and 183o without feelings of awe, like those of men who in 
 the morning return to the daylight view of some precipice which they 
 have passed unwittingly, though safely, in the night. The fever of 
 licentious principles, not in politics alone, but in every institution, 
 Avas running riot in the land. I am now adverting to matters of 
 history, not to mere party squabbles. By a most tyrannical act cf 
 violence on the part of the State, ten bishoprics of the Empire were 
 suppressed by one stroke of oppression, which amounted to sacrilege. 
 The highest functionary of the government significantly told the 
 remaining prelates to set "their houses in order," and declared that 
 " in this free country he did not like to use the term monarchy." The 
 constitution both in State and in Church was recking to its very base : 
 the mob burned to the ground no small portion of one of the largest 
 cities in the kingdom : before this it had been declared unsafe for the 
 sovereign even to enter his own metropolis : and, on the other hand, 
 the wildest schemes for destroying the very essence of the Church, 
 under the pretence of improving its efficiency, were put forward, 
 under influential auspices : the Prayer-book, during this tornado of 
 violence, was to be altered to suit the caprice of every sectarian and 
 heretic: in a word, England was verging towards apostasy. It was 
 openly proclaimed that the Church, Christ's " kingdom which was not 
 of this world," Juhn xviii. 3G, might be tampered m ith at the caprice 
 of any set of rulers, whom the law no longer required to be even 
 Christians : it Avas to be " one sect among many ;" with no other 
 claims upon the souls of men than the accident that it had been 
 established : it was henceforth to be the creature of suflferance, 
 like a I'olice Ofiice or a Court of Review. That it was God's own 
 institution ; that its ministers were His representatives ; that its 
 sacraments and ordinances were the sole means of the conveyance 
 and continuance of salvation to the individual soul ; that it had 
 " authority in controversies of faith ;" that it was " a witness and 
 keeper of holy writ ;" that it had duties of intercession, and the 
 privileges of life eternal, and the gift of perpetuity ; all this was 
 but little heard. Nor was this a mere summer storm ; it was 
 the bursting of clouds which had been overspreading the heavens 
 for more than a century. I am not now disposed to enter into 
 the causes, but I will, as briefly as I can, remind you of the 
 results, of this faithlessness — to use a mild term — of the Church to 
 her principles. And when I speak of the Church, remember that 
 the laiti/ are the Church just os much as Vie clerrjy : the blame, 
 whatever it tvas, attached to the full as much to the people as to the 
 
 "b 2
 
 6 
 
 priest. An active ministry may under God produce a righteous 
 laity; but a christian people, alive to their high privileges in the 
 gospel, Avill demand them from the most supine clergy. But we need 
 not pause on the question of blame ; our business now is with facts. 
 
 Suppose, if you can, one who only knew the Church of England 
 from its character on paper, — one who in foreign lands, if you please, 
 had mastered the view which it gives of itself in the Prayer-book, — 
 what would he reasonably expect to have found ? AVhy, if words have 
 any meaning, " the order for Morning and Evening Prayer daily to 
 be said throughout the year," must have led him to expect that our 
 churches would be open more than once everyday. Where so great care 
 was taken to give the children their portion of meat in due season, that 
 " the most part of the Old Testament was to be read every year once — 
 the New Testament was to be read over orderly every year thrice — 
 the Psalter was to be read through once every month ;" he might well 
 expect something more than twice 52 chapters of holy Scripture 
 Avhere the Church had ordered twice 36.5. But so it was : " Mattins 
 and Evensong daily throughout the year :" so said the Church on 
 paper: it is too painful to ask, what was — alas ! that we must say it, 
 what is — her practice? Xorwas this matter of the daily service only 
 a pretty theory ; it is a matter upon record, (see Paterson's Pietas 
 Londinensis) that in London alone, in the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, in seventy churches and chapels the sacrifice of prayer and 
 praise was offered daily ; in forty -three of these twice every day; in 
 six, three times a day ; and in five, four times a day. This general 
 disregard of the directions contained in the first page of the Prayer- 
 book would be to such a stranger as I have imagined, a most startling 
 proof of our falling short in holy things of the actual requirements 
 of our Church. 
 
 Again, he would have found in this same Prayer-book minute 
 directions about fasts and festivals — a plain order to celebrate baptisms 
 at the font during divine service — to catechize children publicly — 
 to use the offertory every Sunday after the sermon — suggestions for 
 very frequent participation in the "'Holy Mysteries :" he would have 
 found, in short, the Church entering into every possible relation of 
 human life — pervading and sanctifying all worldly things, melting 
 and moulding, and transforming earth to heaven— leading our sinful 
 nature to God in infancy — training our renewed and better state in 
 childhood — strengthening our youth — feeding our manhood — com- 
 forting our old age — committing our bodies to the grave in the hope of 
 a blessed resurrection — ministering alike to our joys and sorrows — 
 and, above ail, preaching her daily warnings of penitence and faith 
 in the words of holy Scripture. Surely he might fairly have 
 reckoned to see some of this most heavenly form : but what would 
 he have found ? Children baptized in their fathers' dining-rooms — (a 
 few years back this was considei*ed the only respectable thing,) cate- 
 chizing entirely neglected — the holy order of Confirmation treated 
 only as an occasion for a secular holiday — the beautiful prayer for the 
 Church militant banished— such part of the weekly communion ofiice 
 as was retained, read from the desk instead of the altar, at least in 
 country churches — the offertory never made — the communion admi- 
 nistered thrice a year, in perhaps the majority of our parishes — a popu- 
 lation more than heathen, eating out the very heart of religion in all 
 our great towns— no new churches rising to speak of God, even in 
 acres of new buildings — swarms of souls annually sent to our colonies
 
 Avithout a church or a clergyman, or a school, or one visible sisrn or 
 token of Christianity, to greet them in the great desert — a desert to 
 the spirit alike and to the body; in short, he would have found a 
 Church without means of extension abroad or at home — without 
 prayers — without discipline — without order — the proprieties of awful 
 reverence neglected all but universally — a Church, 1 say, oppressed 
 by the IState — scorned by its enemies — suspected by its sons. 
 
 And if this was the external aspect of the Church in the way of 
 her public services and organization, if this was all her care for 
 man's salvation, how was she fulfilling her other great duty of 
 furthering God's glory? How had she "kept that good thing 
 committed to her," 1 Tim. vi. 20, the treasure of apostolic doc- 
 trine ? 
 
 The limits which I must prescribe myself, prevent me from enter- 
 ing, as 1 could wish, into this extensive field, so I will content myself 
 with examining our past faithfulness to the very fundamentals of 
 Christian truth, and I will now call your attention to two articles 
 of the Nicene Creed : they shall be these — 
 
 " I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins." 
 
 " I believe one catholic and apostolic Church." 
 
 1. How has our Church taught the doctrine of Christian baptism? 
 The very first instruction which is put into our hands, the Church 
 Catechism, bids every child speak of his baptism wherein he was 
 made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the 
 kingdom of heaven : he thanks God that he has called him into this 
 state of salvation : he prays for grace to continue in it : he speaks of 
 the inward and spiritual grace of baptism, as a death unto sin and a 
 new birth imto righteousness : for being by nature born in sin and the 
 children of wrath, we are hereby, /. c. by baptism, made the children 
 of grace. In administering this sacrament, the Church quotes oixr 
 Lord's words to Nicodemus, " None can enter into the kingdom of God, 
 except he be regenerate, and born anew of water and the Holy Ghost," 
 John iii. 5 ; it goes on to pray that God will give the child now 
 to be baptized that thing which by nature he cannot have, that he 
 may be received into Christ's holy church, and be made a lively 
 member of the same — that he may be delivered from God's wrath, 
 and that he may enjoy the everlasting benediction of His heavenly 
 washing. Openly does the Church declare her belief, in the 
 case of every child brought to the font, that God will favourably 
 receive him ; that He will embrace him with the arms of His 
 mercy; that He will give unto him the blessing of everlasting 
 life, and make him partaker of His everlasting kingdom ; and 
 lastly, she prays that God will sanctify that water, then and there 
 present, to the mystical washing away of sin, and that the child 
 to be baptized in that water so blessed, may receive the fulness 
 of His grace, and ever remain in the number of His faithful and 
 elect children. After the administration of the sacrament, the 
 Church declares that the child is regenerate and grafted into the 
 body of Christ's church, and then joyfully goes on to give hearty 
 thanks to our most Merciful Father, that it hath pleased Him to 
 regenerate this infant with His Holy Spirit, to receive him for His 
 own child by adoption, and to incorporate him into His holy church ; 
 and speaks of every child so baptized, as now dead unto sin and 
 living unto righteousness : as buried with Christ in His death, and 
 now made partaker of the death of God's Son.
 
 He who runs may read this. Before baptism, we pray that the 
 child may have certain blessings — forgiveness of sins; entrance into 
 the church ; the new birth in Christ : adoption and election into the 
 number of God's children ; and actual salvation' by sharing in the 
 benefits of our Saviour's death : after baptism, we thank God that 
 the child has gained all these things which we have prayed 
 for. 
 
 So, again, in the Order for Confirmation, the Church speaks of God 
 as having " vouchsafed to regenerate these His servants by water and 
 the Holy Ghost, and having given unto them forgiveness of sins : " 
 and in the Collect for Christmas-day, speaks of us as "being regene- 
 rate and made God's children by adoption and grace." The articles, 
 homilies, and published opinions of those who compiled the Prayer- 
 book, run the same way ; but I prefer confining myself to the 
 Prayer-book itself, which is in every body's hands. 
 
 But it will be said, " Possibly all this may have another meaning ; 
 when the Church seems to say that all children are regenerate in 
 baptism, it may only mean that it is hoped that they nmy be at some 
 future time regenerate : the Church speaks in general terms, and 
 uses the language of charity." To this, it may serve as a sufficient 
 answer, that the worst opponents of the Church, who overthrew it in 
 the Great Kebellion, (I am alluding to the Puritans) never interpreted 
 the words of the Church in this way : the very objection which they 
 made to the Church was, that the words actually did teach baptismal 
 regeneration, were intended to teach it, and could teach nothing else. 
 And if it should be thought useless to quote the recorded opinions of 
 all our great divines, who understood the language of the Church in 
 this, the only possible sense, I will produce a most unexceptionable 
 witness as to the sense of the baptismal and other services, in one 
 who, it is well known, hates the Church with more virulence than most 
 other dissenters. Mr. Binney says, (Clerical Nonconformity, p. 34.) 
 
 " The fact assumed and affirmed in the language of the Church is 
 this, — that God has regenerated the child with His Holy Spirit, has 
 given him spiritual regeneration. This wovild appear to be regarded 
 as occurring in connexion with the application of the outward sign : 
 for previous to that, the blessing is spoken of as not possessed : 
 immediately after, it is affirmed to have descended. In this brief 
 interval, the greatest conceivable change has taken place in the 
 spiritual condition of an immortal mind ; the moment before the 
 application of the mystic element, the child is in that state in which 
 the article declares that it deserved ' God's wrath and damnation,' — 
 the moment after, he is another being — has another nature. In 
 consistency with this, the other parts of the Prayer-book are con- 
 structed, the Catechism and the Order for Confirmation. The words 
 in the baptismal service seem to me to mean just what they say — 
 a clergyman must assert to God that every infant baptized by his 
 hands, has been regenerated with the Holy Ghost. There is nothing 
 hesitating, hypothetic, or equivocal about it. It is not merely the 
 affirmation of an outward ceremonial change, but of a real and 
 spiritual operation on the soul. / believe that these words cannot be 
 made, by any fair and equitable means, to utter any thing else than 
 their obvious sense." 
 
 Of course, this person does not hold the doctrine of baptismal 
 regeneration — he condemns it altogether ; but he is a very fair witness 
 of what the Church holds : and remember that the question now is
 
 not whether this doctrine is true, but v. hether the Church in her 
 Prayer-book teaches it ; and this I shall have to apply presently.* 
 
 2. The second article of the Creed on ■which I proposed to 
 examine the theoretical teaching of the Church, was that of the 
 Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. 
 
 Again, what says the Prayer-book ? " The visible church of 
 Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the sacraments 
 are duly administered according to Christ's ordinance," Art xix. 
 ** It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public 
 preaching, or ministering the sacraments, before he be lawfut/t/ 
 railed and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge 
 Jawfulhj called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by 
 men wlio have public authority given unto them in the congregation, 
 to call and send ministers into the Lord's vineyard," Art. xxiii. 
 And in the Ordination Service we read, "It is evident unto all 
 men diligently reading the holy iScriptures and ancient authors, 
 that from the Apostles' time there have been three ordei's of 
 ministers ia Christ's Church — Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. 
 No man shall be accounted or taken to be a lawful Bishop, 
 Priest, or Deacon, or suffered to execute any of the said functions, 
 except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted thereunto accord- 
 ing to the form hereafter following, or hath had formerly episcopal 
 consecration or ordination." And in the service itself, the bishop lays 
 his hands on the head of the person to be ordained, and says : "Keceive 
 the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of 
 God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our ha7ids." It might 
 have seemed, then, to one who had but the Prayer-book to guide him 
 as to what our Church holds, that the Church is a congregation where 
 sacraments ixre duly administered. Sacraments are duly administered 
 only by those who are lawfully called to administer them. They only 
 are lawfully called to administer them who have received episcopal 
 ordination. Now there is another step to take : we have traced 
 the sacriiments to the lawful minister, and the lawful minister 
 to the bishop, but how comes the bishop to hold this power 
 alone? From whence does he derive his prerogative of conferring 
 valid ordination ? 
 
 Before our blessed Lord and Saviour quitted the scene of His 
 earthly ministry. He said — not to all the disciples, but to the eleven, 
 *' All power is given unto ]\Ie in heaven and earth — Go ye therefore, 
 and teach [or make disciples of] all nations, baptizing them in the 
 name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching 
 them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo ! 
 
 • It is obvious thit the limits of this tract prevent such enlargiiifr upon tliese 
 5^reat turnin,' points as would be desirable: i)ut for those who are disposed to 
 pursue the subject furtlier, I would reconinieiid a little tract, " Uajitismal llepe- 
 ueration, a Doctrine of the Church of Knplaiid," and the Extracts from Hooker 
 appended to his Life, (I8.no. 18-12,) in connexion with this section; "The Church 
 of Christ," extracted from Mr. Palmer's f,'reat work, and "The Church Visible 
 and Invisible," as illustrating the next position ; and, with reference to the wholf 
 subject under discussion, Mr. Perceval's " Vindication of tiie Princijiles of the 
 Autliors of tlie Tracts for the Times," and his " Colh-ction of Papers," from which 
 [ have more than one ' quoted ; Mr Churton's " Letters of a Reformed Catholic;" 
 Dr. Hook's "Church Dictionary;" Mr Gresley's "Bernard Le.sli.-;" and Mr. Wat- 
 son's "Letter to the Laity." '1 he testimony of these writers is adduced because it 
 is independent. And I once for all acknowledge my oblijjation to them, aid many 
 others, for much of the substance of what I have collected, with the desire to be 
 useful rather than oriiriiial.
 
 10 
 
 I am -with yoa alway, even unto the end of the world," Mail. 
 xxviii. 18. Now whatever this commission, and authority, and 
 discipling was, it is quite clear that it was something addressed to 
 the Apostles alone, and something, moreover, into which they could 
 associate others : for the very first thing which they did was to 
 choose St. Matthias into the place vacated by the traitor Judas, 
 " to take part of this ministry cnid apostleship" Acts i. Whatever 
 the office was, it is also clear that it was to be perpetual ; our Saviour's 
 presence was promised to it, and to it alone — " Lo ! I am with you 
 always.'" He could not be with the Apostles " always, even unto the 
 end of the world," for they all were in course of time to receive 
 heavenly crowns by martyrdom : therefore the promise was to the 
 office, and not to the person. And so we find the Apostles placing 
 others, such as Timothy and Titus, in their own places; giving 
 them directions to ordain faithful men, who should be able to 
 ordain others just as they had been ordained themselves. And such 
 was the fact, the commission has been thus handed down by bishops 
 ordaining bishops in unbroken succession unto this very day. 
 Every lawful minister derives his commission from the bishop, and 
 the bishop from the bishop, till we come to the Apostle ; and the 
 Apostle from Christ. Break but one link in this chain of gold ; 
 strike out but a stone in this spiritual arch ; and what is the result 7 
 We derive grace from one who never received it himself : we trace 
 ourselves back to one who had never the gift to bestow.* 
 
 For fifteen hundred years after Christ Jesus ascended into glory, 
 this holy order of bishops remained unimpugned. Churches might 
 differ not only in language and in country, biit in rites, in observ- 
 ances, in traditions, in ceremonies, in interpretations, and almost in 
 doctrine, but never in this : all had bishops : the very heretics 
 claimed to have bishops: they tried to trace their lineage to 
 the Apostles through bishops. Lose what they might, scorn what 
 they dared, reject what they pleased, they never scorned and 
 rejected the order of bishops. Be the government of the state 
 what it might, monarchy or republic, under the temporal rule of one, 
 or of few, or of the many, the spiritual government was the same : 
 bishops ruled the Church. Was the age polished or rude, lettered or 
 ignorant ? bishops dispensed the word of truth. AYas the Church 
 groaning under persecution ? bishops were the first to welcome 
 the lion, the axe, or the stake. Was she breaking forth on the right 
 hand and on the left? bishops suggested, controlled, directed, every 
 movement in weal and in woe, in suffering or in peace. The very 
 fact of the continuance of this Sacred Rule, is the stamp of Heaven 
 
 * Nor must it be forgr.tten that as three bishops concur in the consecration of 
 every now bishop, not only are the chances a!:;ainst a break increased almost in- 
 finitely, and this in a calculation to be made according to the known laws of 
 numbers, but in the case of every new bishop three streams combine, each in 
 themselves the agprregate of three, increised at every ascending step, also in triple 
 proportion. The wise man tells lis, "a threefold cord is not quickly broken," 
 Eccl. iv. 12: but the apostolical succession is a threefold cord, in Avhich every 
 thread is composed of three strands, and each of these of three others, almost infi- 
 nitesimally. Thus, suppose that the consecration of anyone bishop were objected 
 against, v.hat is to make this consecration faulty? Not that he was consecrated 
 by one unlawful bishop, but that he was consecrated by three unlawful bishops. 
 And what is to make the consecration of all these three bishops bad? That each of 
 them was consecrated by three other equally unlawful bishops. So that, ancetidlng 
 but three steps, we must suppose, to invalidate the succession in one instance, 
 thirty-nine false consecrations ; a number to be increased to an enormous amount 
 at the next step.
 
 11 
 
 upon it : the fulfilment of the sure word of prophecy fixes the 
 meaning of the promise. 
 
 Now I would not wish to become an accuser of the brethren ; 
 God forbid ; but I do say — and nearly ail of you can bear personal 
 testimony to the truth of Avhat I say — that ten years ago this 
 doctrine of the divine authority*" of the Christian ^Ministry and the 
 Apostolical Succession of bishops was scarcely ever urged as the 
 great claim of the Church upon the obedience and love of the laity. 
 I do not say that it -was lost, — the lamp of truth was never ex- 
 tinguished, — but did it " shine before men ?" There were then, as 
 in every period of the history of our Church, those who never 
 scrupled to avow their commission, but in the majority it was far 
 different ; although the last generation might have profited by the 
 memorable words of Bishop llorsley, 1799. "For those who have 
 been nurtured in the bosom of the Church, and liave gained admis- 
 sion to the ministry, if from a mere compliance with the humour 
 of the age, or ambitious of the fame of liberality of sentiment, (for 
 under that specious name a profane indifi'erence is made to pass for 
 an accomplishment.) they affect to join in the disavowal of the 
 authority which they share, or are silent when the validity of their 
 divine commission is called in question : for any, I hope they are 
 few, who hide this v.eakness of faith, this poverty of religious prin- 
 ciple, under the attire of a gown and cassock, they are, in my esti- 
 mation, little better than infidels in masquerade." 
 
 Eut this was exactly the state of the case with this doctrine of 
 the Apostolic Church. I say nothing at present of the doctrine 
 of " the one baptism for the remission of sins," for it is noto- 
 rious that this is still vehemently denied — is it not most certain 
 that, before the great i*eligious movement which is now so much 
 spoken against, the Church did not avow her heavenly descent ? 
 And what was the consequence ? Why, as the Church never taught 
 its apostolical commission, what Avonder was it that the people 
 treated the Church as though it had none : as thoiigh it were but an 
 institution of earth — an instrument and ci-eature of the State, whose 
 system and ritual and officers were to be changed, just as the world 
 chose to consider that the order of things within the pale of a " mere 
 establishment " was working well or ill ? The state of things Avas 
 what I have attempted to describe in externals ; and in doctrine, 
 especially on the head to which 1 have alluded, if a whole generation 
 was allowed to grow up ignorant of the grace which they had 
 received, what wonder if they were content to remain in sin, never 
 hearing either the nature of baptism, or the danger of sinning 
 against its grace ? So low were popular notions about the washing 
 of regeneration, the baptism which " doth also now save us.' 
 1 Pet. iii. 21, that we constantly used to hear Holy Communion 
 spoken of as 'the Sacrament,' as though baptism were none at ail. 
 Its nature was explained away in the manner in which I have 
 indicated — the very services in the I'rayer-book were altered and 
 mangled to suit their view, by those who at their ordination professed 
 to give their linfeigned assent and consent to it : the daily service was 
 all but extinct, the observance of Saints' days and the holy season of 
 
 * The Church certainly tcaclies that Episcopary is of Divine institution, and 
 not a mere ccciesiaslical arrangement :— " Almi;?lity God, Who of thy Divine pru- 
 ridence hast appointed divers Orders in Thy Church," &c. — Second Coiled for the 
 Ember Wee/cs. 
 
 B 3
 
 12 
 
 Lent was almost confined to a few old people : even the Wednesda}' 
 and Friday service was becoming every year rarer : the Athanasiau 
 Creed was habitually disused : even the otlier creeds were altered 
 to suit prevailing opinions : long extempore prayers and unautho- 
 rized hymns appeared in too many places : the office for the Visitation 
 of the Sick was superseded by private manuals : the Marriage 
 Service was curtailed to half its length : one sentence of the Exhorta- 
 tion to the Holy Communion was all that was ever heard : the sole 
 standard of acceptableness being, who could most nearly adapt the 
 services and teaching of the Church to the taste of dissenters. 
 " Time was," we are told by the same Mr. Binney, alluding to this 
 very period, '' when evangelical clergymen recognised, or were thought 
 to recognise, Presbyterian, Independent, or other ministers as 
 ministers of Christ ; to admit that the Episcopal was not the exclusive 
 and only chui'ch; to reject the notion of priesthood under the 
 christian dispensation, except as applying literally to Christ, and 
 figuratively to the entire body of the faithful ; and to deny that 
 regeneration by tlie Holy Ghost could in any sense be considered 
 as effected through baptism," p. 51. I believe that this is a pretty 
 fair estimate of the general doctrine and discipline of the Church 
 ten years ago. The results were ominous : of the bishoprics, some 
 were suppressed and the rest threatened, as I have said ; and why not, 
 if they were but a mere human contrivance ? The Church was to be 
 levelled ; and why not ? If she had abandoned the high character 
 which she assumed in her Prayer-book, fraternizing with all sects, 
 and suiting her language to theirs, v>as it not fair that she should 
 fae reduced to or.e herself? 
 
 You will observe, that I am not here attempting to prove that the 
 Prayer-book is right in all its doctrines and practices, — we have the 
 sitrongest grounds for knowing that it is ; but for the present I am 
 assuming this, — I am now only showing that this same Prayer-book 
 contains certain things ; certain orders and certain truths : anybody 
 may judge whether they are there or not. A man must be morally 
 dishonest to sav that they are not there ; and I am reminding von 
 that ton years ago they were neglected: and why am I taking all 
 this trouble ? Of course you see ; because my object is to show that it 
 is not only wicked, but foolish to call men unfaithful to the Church, 
 whose sole accusation is that they carry out all the rules of the Church. 
 To recall the Church to her own principles, avowed in her own for- 
 inularies — to set her right in the eyes of strangers — to make her 
 practice accord with her theory — this might be very troublesome 
 and very strange, but it was not dishonest. Suppression — com- 
 promise — silence — reluctance to avow a real character, these had 
 their day, and the results were what we have seen ; it was now 
 time to see what could be done if the Church openly proclaimed in 
 tlie eyes of all men, to foes alike and to friends, -what she was — Whose 
 •she Mas — what she had to give, and to whom and by Whom it was 
 #aid, " He that heareth you heareth Me ; and he that despiseth you 
 despiseth Me ; and he that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent 
 Me." Luke x. Ifi. 
 
 II. Tliis state of things must needs have been at the very worst 
 before we could seek the right remedy ; it was only after experiencing 
 the "mighty famine." and the nothingness of the husks, that "we 
 came to ourselves;" and if in such things, as surely is the case, 
 it be permitted to avow God's guidance, the very unexpectedness
 
 13 
 
 of the rise, or rather revival of truth, is His mark upon if. " The 
 wind bloweth v^here it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, 
 hut canst not tell whence it cometh." Jolm iii. 8. Suddenly, 
 "almost at the same moment," in different minds, here and there, 
 it seems to have suggested itself to many earnest men to "betake 
 themselves to their ancient ]\Iother," (see FercevaVs Papers,) to see — 
 I speak in plain language— whether the Church had ever yet had 
 iair play, and room to bring out its full character and energies ; 
 because if hitherto it had been cramped, fettered, silenced, stinted, 
 it seemed clear that the experiment, so to say, of doing our 
 I^ord's work had never yet had a chance. A voice seemed to sweep 
 throughout the length and breadth of England — a mighty voice, 
 stirring up the secret depths of men's hearts, recalling ancient truths, 
 suggesting half-forgotten duties, telling of unknown and neglected 
 privileges, inspiring confidence, promising the sti'ength of heaven : 
 " Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion, put on thy beautiful 
 garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city : for henceforth there shall no 
 more come to thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. — Shake 
 thyself from the dust ; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem ; loose thyself 
 from the bands of thy neck, O captivedaughter of Zion." Isaiah Iii. 
 
 It may, I think, be readily understood how far this movement in 
 the Church was nvu; from what I have already said. It may have 
 appeared new in the then state of things. We all know that we may 
 become so habituated to error, that truth itself comes to us, not only 
 as a strange, but as a false thing. The question is, are these principles, 
 which ten years ago it was sought to revive, the principles of the Church, 
 or are they not .^ I have above shown that there were certain principles 
 in the Prayer-book.* I have reminded you what the state and prospects 
 of the Church were at that time ; and I have attributed this miserable 
 condition to our abandonment of these very same principles: to 
 recall them to men's minds must of course have startled the popular 
 religious feeling. And I express neither surprise nor blame at it. 
 For the most part, the world does not think — it takes practices, 
 habits, modes of thought, feeling and teaching, as it finds them ; 
 and where the change, as in the whole cast of religion in a whole 
 (^hurch, is very gradual, and the silent result of many years' sink- 
 ing, rather than of one direct act of convulsion, to recur to an old 
 principle practically amounted to the same thing as the introduction 
 of one altogether new. 
 
 What were these principles, really old, but seemingly new? 
 To describe this in the most general terms, one might say, the 
 object of the movement was to rouse the Church to selt-knowledge, 
 to force our Holy Mother, so to speak, to a consciousness and 
 to an open avowal of her gifts, and heavenly calling, and heavenly 
 privileges, which she had allowed to sleep; and in order that she 
 might completely fulfil the great ends for which she had been 
 instituted by her Divine Head, to act up to her real, however for- 
 gotten, character. And the means to this end were the revival of 
 .such truths as these: the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession, as 
 pledging Christ's presence in His Church; and from hence, as far as 
 the individual soul was concerned, the certainty of receiving in this 
 Church tlie true sacraments of salvation, true sacraments being those 
 
 * And it should not be forgotten, that such principles, however at times prac- 
 tically neplected, have been constantly Milnessed to by all the great divines of the 
 English Church.
 
 14 
 
 which are '• duly admuiistered" by " lawful ministers," such sacra- 
 ments being " not bare signs" of things absent, but the " means 
 whereby we receive," in the one " a death unto sin and a new birth 
 unto righteousness," and in the other, " the body and blood of Christ, 
 which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in 
 the Lord's Supper ;" and that the Church had " authority in contro- 
 versies of faith," had the power to " decree," to " teach," to " excom- 
 municate," (I quote the very words of the Articles,) and did not give 
 every individual preacher, much less every individual Christian, per- 
 mission to take down his Bible and make out from it his own scheme 
 of doctrine, or system of church government, or interpretation of Scrip- 
 ture, but in the case of all her authorized ministers required them 
 ^^firat to take care that they taught nothing in their sermons to be 
 held by the people as a matter of religion but what was agreeable to 
 the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and which the Catholic 
 Fathers and ancient bishops had collected from that same doctrine." 
 {Canon, 1571) ; and in the case of all others, that " whosoever would 
 be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic 
 faith ; and that if any man do not keep this faith whole and imdefited. 
 without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." 
 
 It was to recall these truths, both in the minds of the teachers and 
 of the taught, that The Tracts for the Times were undertaken. Tracts 
 for the Times, remember : times in which, to use the words of the 
 authors of these now well-known papers, "the neglect of the daily ser- 
 vice, the desecration of festivals, the eucharist scantily administered, 
 insubordination permitted in all ranks of thg Church, orders and 
 offices imperfectly developed, the want of societies for particular 
 religious objects, and the like deficiencies, lead the feverish mind, 
 desirous of a vent to its feelings, and a stricter rule of life, to the 
 secular religious communities, to prayer and Bible meetings, and 
 ill-advised institutions and societies, on the one hand, — on the other, 
 to the solemn and captivating services by which popery gains its 
 proselytes. — The Church of Christ was intended to cope with human 
 nature in all its forms ; and surely the gifts vouchsafed it are adequate 
 for that gracious purpose. There are zealous sons and servants of 
 her English branch who see with soi'row that she is defrauded of her 
 full usefulness — they consider that the revival of this portion of 
 truth, [viz. the doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church,] is especially 
 adapted to break up existing parties in the Church, and to form 
 instead a bond of union among all who love the Lord Jesus in sin- 
 cerity ; they believe that nothing but these neglected doctrines, 
 faithfully preached, will repress that extension of popery, for which 
 the ever multiplying divisions of the religious world are too clearly pre- 
 paring the way." — Advertisement to Tracts for the Tiines,yo\. 1. pp. iv. v. 
 
 Now with what fairness can it be said that a design of this sort 
 was unfaithfiil to the English Chui'ch ? If some had strayed, and 
 more were straying towards Rome because our services had been 
 conducted and our doctrines taught in a cold, repulsive way, was it 
 traitorous to the Church, or unkind to her children, to show that 
 her real character was warm, open, and generous, addressed to the 
 heart as well as to the understanding? Was it to befriend popery to 
 show that we retained nearly all that was good in Eome* — her pri- 
 
 • As this phrase, " nearly all," miorht lead to misapprehension, I -would adopt 
 tliis exi.h'i.i'ion, — thoutjh " the Reformers were but Irdil, fallible men, compassed 
 about Yilti\ many infirmities, sometimes halting between two opinions, aiid some-
 
 15 
 
 mitive character, her antiquity, her authority, her frequent prayers, 
 her solemn services, her zeal for the great cardinal doctrines of the 
 Gospel — while we protested against her corrupt additions to, and in 
 practice, her blasphemous substitutions for, the Christian faith ? Or, 
 on the other hand, was it to impair the efficiency of the Church, that 
 these writers sought to show to those who loved prayer, and were 
 seeking it elsewhere, that hers was not a once-a-week profession of 
 the gospel ; that she had a holy discipline ; that her standard of 
 personal religion was nothing short of "perfection ;" that she was not 
 content with a mere meagre conformity, but, by preaching a more 
 earnest and consistent walk, and by displaying the rich inheritance 
 of grace with which Christians are privileged in the kingdom of 
 heaven, that she required not the form only, but the power, of 
 godliness ? To substitute the daily service of the Church for imau- 
 thorized pi'ayer-meetings ; to call men to accept the communion of 
 saints, and spiritual fellowship with heaven itself, for self-consti- 
 tuted societies; to replace the conventional rhapsodies of zeal without 
 judgment, and religious affection without awe, by those blessed 
 hymns in which we join the lauds of angels and archangels ; to 
 teach men that they were wonderfully born by God's free mercy 
 into a kingdom not of this earth, in which "by grace they were saved, 
 and that not of themselves" {Eplt. ii. 8';) in which their sins were 
 washed away by " the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better 
 things than that of Abel," (Hcb. xii. 24 :) that they had already 
 come " to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly 
 Jerusalem," (Heb, xii. 22 ;) that they were called to such nearness 
 of adoption in Christ, that they were invited "to the banquet of that 
 most heavenly food," so " to eat the flesh of God's dear Son, Jesus 
 Christ, and to drink His blood, that their sinful bodies might be made 
 clean by His body, and their souls washed through His most precious 
 blood, that they might evermore dwell in Him, and He in them :"' 
 was all this to preach a low or unspiritual view of the gospel? 
 AVhen Eome was detaching some valued members because she 
 brought against us the uncontradicted charge of irreverence, cold- 
 ness, and identity with the foreign reformed bodies, was it not fight- 
 ing at an advantage to show that our services were devotional, if 
 fairly and honestly carried out, and that our reformation challenged 
 the title of primitive purity in doctrine in which their church was so 
 miserably deficient? And again, as to dissenters, was it not to take 
 a position which they could never turn, to prove not only that they 
 had incurred the sin of schism in separating from the one hodij, but 
 that they had quitted the Church to find elsewhere what they were 
 actually leaving behind them, viz. that strictness and spirituality 
 which it required but a warmer and higher tone of practical instruc- 
 tion to bring out from our own formularies, where, however concealed 
 during a century of coldness and neglect, they had always existed ? 
 
 The principle, however, which may be fixed upon as the character- 
 times of course errinc ill judgment, still we are their debtors to an inralculabk- 
 amount, and if perhaps ice have lost some little thromjli tliem, or rather in spite oj 
 their wishes to thr contranj, wo have lost far less than our sins deserve ; we have 
 even now, through their instrumentality, more blcssinjrs within our reacli than 
 we care to avail ourselves of; and if we were not deficient in humility we should 
 be so £?rateful for what they have done, that we might almost perhaps begin to 
 hope, that in His good time, God would make up to us what we have hitherto 
 been without."— JBisAop of Oxford's Charge.
 
 16 
 
 istic mark of that revival of Church feelings which I have attempted 
 to describe, that is, if one view may be set forth more prominently 
 than others, seems to be this : that we are bound to submit our own 
 views and theories about the gospel to the declared teaching of the 
 Church. The popular language which prevailed before this change 
 of which I am speaking, both out of the Church, (it is the very 
 foundation of dissent,) and in it, was, that religion was such a very 
 awful thing that it was very wrong for one man or for one set of men 
 to dictate to others about it : that it was so difScult to arrive at the 
 truth where there were so many disputes and controversies about 
 almost every point, that it was the safest course to do one's best to 
 arrive at the truth, to read the Bible, and then to join that deno- 
 mination whose views seemed to the inquirer most likely to be 
 true : or, again, that it was so easy to arrive at saving truth, that 
 no guide and teacher was required to show the "way to heaven. 
 I may have expressed it familiarly ; but this is what it came to. 
 Differences in doctrine were not to be regarded as essential : if a 
 Papist thought transubstautiation was to be found in Scripture ; if an 
 Independent so read the Bible that he thought bishops unscriptural ; 
 if a Baptist (so called) could find nothing about infant-baptism ; if a 
 Wesleyan read plainly his notion of sensible conversions in the same 
 book; or finally, if the Socinian could find no authority for the 
 doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the Atonement, in the 
 Bible ; what was to be said to all these sects ? In point of fact, 
 nothing icas said to them : or at the best, a Churchman of ten years 
 back could seldom get much farther with a dissenter, than, " WeU, 
 I am very sorry that we cannot see the gospel imder the same view, 
 but I hope that we shall all meet in heaven : we shall not be 
 separated for mere differences of opinion : one of us must be wrong ; 
 it may be you, or it may be I; but God is norespecter of persons; and 
 after all, a good life is the main thing, and since there is no way of 
 settling these disputes, they cannot be of much importance in the 
 long run." This was once said pretty generally ; sometimes we hear 
 it said now, and it used to be called very liberal and charitable, 
 especially in those days when it was the fashion to sink all dif- 
 ferences. I am afraid that such texts as these were sunk at the same 
 time: — "They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fel- 
 lowship." Acts ii. 42. " It was needful for me to write unto you, and 
 exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was 
 once delivered to the saints." Jude 3. " If there come any unto 
 you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, 
 neither bid him God speed ; for he that biddeth him God speed is 
 partaker of his evil deeds." 2 John 10, 11. "I beseech you, brethren, 
 mark them which cause divisions and offences, contrary to the 
 doctrine which we have learned: and avoid them." JRom. xvi. 17. 
 " If any man preach any other gospel unto you than ye have re- 
 ceived.'let liim be accursed." Gnl. i. 8. "A man that is an heretic, 
 after the first and second admonition reject ; knowing that he that is 
 such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself." Tit. iii. 
 10, 11. Most certainly, if these were not the words of God's most 
 blessed Bible, they would be called illiberal and uncharitable. 
 
 The form which the " mystery of iniquity" took in the years just 
 passing away, was this very license of opinion in holy things : it 
 amounted to that indifference about Christian doctrine which was 
 not very far from an open denial of the faith, for the religion which
 
 17 
 
 has a hundred meanings differs but little fioni tha.t which has none. 
 <Jq tlie one hand, the Ciiurcli does not seem to have felt that one of 
 its duties was to be a ■witness and champion of tlie faith : and on the 
 other, it never occurred" to men that it was not likely that God, the 
 God of all mercy, would ever have given us his gospel, belief in 
 which Jle required under so awful a curse as to say, " He that be- 
 lievethnot shall be damned," {Mark xvi. 16,) and yet that He should 
 have left us all along with no means of discovering among a thousand 
 views and denominations, interpretations and sects, which was right, 
 and that too in a matter of such extreme peril and need that personal 
 salvation depends upon it. 
 
 For all this miserable uncertainty, what is called '■ the right of 
 private judgment"' is no remedy; nay, it seems to recognise and 
 delight rather in this confusion of doctrines, however opposed to the 
 scriptural injunction, "There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye 
 are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faitli." Eph. iv. 
 •i, .5. Whei'e every one claimed the truth, and none could prove the 
 truth, it seemed doubtful whether it Avas to be said that all were 
 equally right, or all were equally wrong. As I said before, this was 
 the same thing as to deny the Christian faith, for a revelation with 
 no meaning is the same as no revelation at all. Nor did it help the 
 matter to say, that Scripture was finally to decide all differences : 
 this only removes the dispute another step; for when we go to Scrip- 
 ture, the question remains, how are we to interpret it? The very 
 point in dispute is the interpretation of Scripture. The matter is as 
 far off settlement as ever : it is very easy to quote the Bible ; but 
 unless we can fix upon a judge of its meaning, two parties may quote 
 texts against each other without conviction on either side. 
 
 Under a painful and increasing conviction of these multiplied 
 embarrassments, and the evil of such disunion even in the most sacred 
 doctrines of the faith, the v,riters of the Tracts for the Times took 
 tho bold ground of an appeal to the voice of the Church in all ages. 
 It was not to supersede the use of the Scriptures — it was not even to 
 establish tradition as the " rule of faith" separate from the written 
 word ; it Mas not to give undue authority to individual ministers, — 
 that they had recourse to antiquity ; but it Avas to settle the 
 sense of the Scriptures, it was to arrive at the meaning of what 
 every body quoted in his own sense, and to prove his own point. 
 Nor was there anything new in this : as 1 have shown before, it 
 was what the Church prescribed in her canon of 1571. I will give 
 you an instance, and many such might be i)roduced. One of the 
 first reformers who suffered death for his opinions, at his examination, 
 was asked, "I pray you, by whom will you be judged in matters of 
 controversy which happen daily?" l*hilpot replied, " Ijy the -word 
 of God; for Christ saitli in St. John, the word that He spake shall be 
 judge in the latter day." He was then asked, " What if you take 
 the word one way, and I another way, who shall judge then ?" ]lis 
 reply was most remarkably clear on the present point, " The 
 primitive Church.''^ 
 
 One thing, however, I may observe upon this head — the authority,! 
 mean, of tht'Chui'ch in settling the sense of Scripture on controverted 
 subjects — which is, that you may think it very cuml)rous, and one 
 which requires more learning and leisure than falls to the lot of 
 the majority of persons, and hence you may be disposed to be pre- 
 judiced against it. Certainly it does contrast strongly with the fatal
 
 18 
 
 facility of that other rule, Avhich dispenses -with Christ's presence 
 in His Church in its diffused capacity, makes every man his own 
 hope, and every woman and child their own infallible interpreters of 
 Christian truth. But it is not in its length, or in the time which it 
 demands, so much as the temper of mind which it involves, that the 
 Chui'ch's demand of submitting private judgment to be controlled by 
 her teaching, is so distasteful to the mere carnal mind. Not only 
 is such unlimited private judgment calculated to cut all questions very 
 short, but it is A-ery pleasant and seductive. It is a comfortable thing 
 enough to feel that we want no helps further than our own heads — 
 no guides with demands more stringent than our own wishes and 
 tastes : whereas the Church's principle of authority to which I have 
 alluded, requires obedience and a teachable mind, a gentle temper, 
 and a submissive and quiet spirit. But do not be frightened at 
 being told that in searching into antiquit)- you will only find Fathers 
 against Fathers, and Councils against Councils ; it is not in their 
 disagreement, but in their agreement, that we have recourse to the 
 ancient Church : the road for all pi'actical ends is neither long nor 
 tedious ; it is short and well beaten. This appeal to antiquity is 
 already made for yoiir use; it is to those creeds and formularies 
 which have been in use in the Church from the very first. You 
 have not to find the path, but to follow it; you have only to keep 
 what you liave already received, and in what you have been, from 
 your youth up, instructed. The Prayer-book interprets Scripture : 
 and in following the teaching of the Prayer-book, j-ou " stand in the 
 old paths ;" for the warrant by w^hich we know that the Prayer- 
 book is right, is, that we have in it that one Voice which in all 
 ages has met and confuted every successive form of false doctrine, 
 whenever and wherever it arose. 
 
 Now it was in reviving these principles, which are emphatically 
 Church principles — such principles, I mean, as the apostolical com- 
 mission — the value of the Sacraments — the authority of the Church 
 in questions of faith — the obedience due to the Prayer-book — a 
 higher value set upon the means of grace, especially that of daily 
 prayer in the communion of the Church — an increased reverence 
 for holy things, persons, seasons, and places — and the inculca- 
 tion of a more spiritual tone of personal, or, as it was called, 
 "vital" Christianity — that the Tracts for the Times did so much 
 service. In enforcing these truths, it may be that things were 
 sometimes said in a way calculated to give offence. In time, or 
 in manner, or even in matter, much that has been piit forth may 
 have been injudicious. It may be, again, that in process of time, 
 other matters come to be mixed up Avith these great principles — 
 matters open to serious doubt, and which, at all events, do not 
 stand on the same ground of authority. Harsh words were used 
 towards the Reformers of our Church — men to whom we owe a 
 great debt of gratitude in rescuing us from positive and un- 
 doubted evils of very serious magnitude. Some again, from their 
 strong feeling of the evils of separation, and the low state of our own 
 Church, have been disposed to look to the fair side of Pome ; and 
 this with apparent forgetfulness of her many and very grievous sins, 
 and her harsh oppression and tyranny of all other Christian Churches, 
 Some of the statements of these writers, or of their younger followers, 
 might be crude, or doubtful, or erroneous. But granting all this, 
 ought it, in common fairness, to be alleged as fatal to all the
 
 19 
 
 writings of those, whose principles were such as I have drawn out ? 
 Is it fair— is it honest — is it christian, to condemn in one violent 
 and sweeping censure, and that of the bitterest kind, not only these 
 writers themselves, hut all clergymen in no way connected with 
 them, but who are said to hold principles in common with these 
 writers, yet who in their ministrations, both public and private, 
 have cautiously avoided all such doubtful and alarming topics ; 
 who have done nothing, said nothing, revived nothing, but that 
 for which they had the Prayer-book — the Prayer-book of that 
 Church at whose altars they serve, and which they had sworn before 
 God and his servant to obey and to teach, for their warrant and 
 authority, and who in their teaching have followed in the path of the 
 great lights of the Church in former days. Hooker, Hammond, "Wilson, 
 Home, &c. ? What is it to me, or to many others, if this or that person 
 has said wrong things, so that I have not repeated them ? What is 
 it to me if some put forth objectionable books of devotion, so that I 
 do not approve or recommend you to use them ? — How does it affect 
 my teaching, or tell against my judgment and usefulness, to quote 
 another's rashness, indiscretion, or even apostasy ? What is it, I say, 
 to you, whose calling is to live up to your Prayer-books, because you 
 are told by somebody that others, you know not who, but certainly not 
 those ministers who have the care of your souls, are supposed, whether 
 justly or not, to seek after a pattern even beyond that of the same 
 Prayer-book ? It seems part of God's mysterious law always to permit 
 some portion of evil to be mixed up with the inculcation of all truth, 
 haply to keep us humble and self-distrusting ; but docs thispistlfy us 
 while shrinkiyig from error to give up the truth ofu-hich it is the abuse '^ 
 I am speaking now very plainly ; but it is a matter of life and 
 death to you, one upon which your souls may be perilled;— I say, 
 if you are tempted to break the unity of the Church, and to refuse 
 the means of grace at the hands of those set over you in the 
 Lord, tfhich you have been publicly urged to do, though the main 
 sin attaches to those who slander the brethren, and mislead you by 
 instilling unfounded suspicions into your minds, still you may be 
 partakers in their sins. To "bear false witness against their neigh- 
 bour " is their crime — your sin, if you give heed to them : that is, if 
 you be of those " many who shall follow their pernicious ways, by 
 reason of whom the word of truth shall be evil spoken of," (2 Pet. ii. 2,) 
 — it will be reckoned among those " works of the flesh," the "hatred, 
 variance, wrath, strife, and such like, of the which I tell you before, 
 as I have also told you in time past, that they who do such things 
 shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Gal. \. 20, 21. 
 
 As I have entered largely upon the state of things which preceded 
 and gave rise to this movement, it will be only fair to both to examine 
 its results. " By their fruits ye shall know them," Matt. vii. 20, 
 I hope may, without irreverence, be applied to this revival of the 
 distinctive principles of the Church. It was at the very crisis of our 
 fate that the call to union in behalf of the Church was made ; and 
 never, as we have seen, was more pressing need. " The plague was 
 begun among the people," when " Aaron ran, and put on incense, 
 and made an atonement for the people. And he stood between 
 the dead and the living ; and the plague was stayed." IVumb. xviii. 
 47, 48. The very first result of the determination on the part of 
 those clergymen who originated the Tracts for the Times was " the 
 address to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1833, expressive of
 
 20 
 
 obedience to the constitution of the Church, signed by about 7,000 of 
 the Clergy ; and the lay declaration of attachment to the Church, 
 signed by upwards of 230,000 heads of families. From -which two 
 events we may date the commencement of the turn of the tide which 
 had threatened to overthrow our Church and our religion." Perce- 
 vats Collection of Papers, p. 12.* And from that day to this the tide 
 has swept on, advancing in spite of every check. The very enemies 
 <)f the Church confess that she was never so strong in herself, nor in 
 the affections of the people. But for all these things let us give God 
 the glory, who has used instruments feeble, and in themselves frail, 
 and without His grace and strengthening aid, useless. We hear now 
 of no proposed alterations in the Liturgy ; instead of suppressing 
 Bishoprics, we are multiplying them in every colony ; we are at- 
 tempting to repair every breach ; we are building churches by hun- 
 dreds ; we are increasing our clergj" at home and abroad ; we are 
 extending our missions, and consolidating them ; the old motto of the 
 Church, "Nothing without the Bishop," once more is our watchword : 
 we are reducing our irregular efforts under one uniform system — 
 that of the Church : we have thrown ourselves into full communion 
 with the sister-church of Scotland, and the daughter-church of 
 America ; we are beginning to feel, not only the blessedness of unity, 
 but the narrowness of our hitherto confined ecclesiastical relations ; 
 a prospect is at least opened of communications with the great Eastern 
 Church, and its ninety millions of souls, to say nothing of a desire to 
 communicate the blessings we enjoy to other imperfect religious com- 
 munities ; the daily service is revived ; the offertory is restored ; our 
 public worship is conducted with a life and warmth hitherto unknown ; 
 the want of discipline is felt ; charitable schemes of the largest kind 
 are at once ventured upon in something like apostolic faith ; the Prayer- 
 book is reverenced, and, comparing present things with past, it is 
 in many cases lived up to and obeyed. In a word, the Church is 
 nnder stood : it is but a small thing, but very significant, that her 
 ancient surname. Catholic, which once was weakly and generally 
 surrendered to the communion of Rome, (in this country at least 
 schismatical,) is appropriated and boldly proclaimed. 
 
 And one should seem unthankful to Him who breathed upon 
 "the dry bones," were it not to be allowed that much of this 
 our improved state is to be attributed to that fearless inculcation of 
 those well-timed principles, which, in certain quarters, meet with so 
 much obloquy. I adopt the words of one, who himself is called upon 
 to censure some portions of the teaching of the writers of the Tracts 
 for the Times: — " If those publications served the purpose of a 
 rallying cry to the friends of the Church ; if they have availed, 
 directly or indirectly, to satisfy men that the Church in these king- 
 doms is not a creature of the State, professing merely a negation of 
 certain errors, to be changed or modified to suit the spirit of the age ; 
 but that it is a divinely constituted society, with a divinely com- 
 missioned government, having fixed and heaven-descended princi- 
 ples, which, being founded on immutable truth, can endure neither 
 mutilation nor compromise, but must be defended and abided by in 
 time, by those who would secure in Christ the reward of eternity ; 
 
 « One of the chief promoters of this step, and among the first to suggest the 
 rieed of recurring to the old principles of the Church, was the late Mr. Hugh James 
 Hose, one never suspected of disaffection, nay notorious for his loyalty to our own 
 National Branch of the Catholic Body.
 
 21 
 
 and in defence of which, if need be, all suffering must be undergone; 
 — if. I sav, those publications have at all availed, and in proportion 
 as they have availed, under God, to impress this view of sacred 
 things on men's minds, and so to secure to those who come after us, 
 unimpaired, those blessings which have been transmitted to us, 
 they have answered the object of those who promoted the under- 
 taking ; who will count so great a blessing cheaply purchased at the 
 cost of the temporary misrepresentation, obloquy, and reproach, 
 which it has been their lot to bear in the prosecution of this good 
 design." PcrcevaVs Collection of Papers, p. 13. This is certainly 
 no exaggerated statement of the blessings, which, under God, we 
 are at this moment, as Churchmen, enjoying from the revival of 
 true Church principles ; and it behoves all Christian men to pause 
 before they condemn by wholesale those who have been raised up, 
 in at least a very considerable degree, to do all this good service to 
 Christian Truth. 
 
 III. Let us now consider the real grounds of the leaders in the 
 attack upon these principles. 
 
 One can very well understand, in common things, a case of this 
 kind. Two men have one object in view ; with the very best inten- 
 tions to attain the same end, they adopt means diametrically opposed 
 to each other ; and if, as time goes on, the one notoriousl}' fails to 
 gain such object, and the other as signally succeeds, it is very usual, 
 I do not say that it is proper, that the one who fails begins to look 
 with a very prejudiced eye at his successful competitor, especially 
 when the result shows which was right. Apply this case. The 
 party in the Church who had got the reputation of a monopoly of 
 religion in this country, and who took to themselves, by a someMhat 
 rash appropriation, the merit of being the only "Evangelical" 
 teachers, had helped to bring, or at least had failed to prevent 
 the Church being brought, to that degraded position which we 
 have seen. You may, perhaps, hear it said, that the revival of 
 which I have spoken is to be attributed to them, and not to those 
 knoo-n as "the Oxford School ;" and that, had things gone on in the 
 way they were advancing in 1830, the whole land would have been 
 converted by this time. Certainly this requires a little more proof 
 than mere assertion on their part. Facts seem to show that just 
 the opposite result would have taken place. So completely were 
 the leading members of the religious world (so called) identifying 
 themselves at that day with dissenters; meeting them on the same 
 platform and in the same committees ; carefully, as in the case of the 
 IJible Society, avoiding all avowal of the peculiar doctrine of the 
 Church, even that of the most adorable Trinity ; recognising the 
 ministry of dissenters ; permitting, nay, courting, their assistance in 
 the direction of their parishes; — so generally had the same party lost 
 sight of the doctrine of regeneration in baptism, the very spirit and 
 essence of the whole teaching of the Church ; — so low were tlieir views 
 of the other sacrament, and so systematically had they disparaged 
 the intercessory office of the Church in public prayer, to the undue 
 exaltation of preaching, and that preaching too of the most meagre 
 kind, in which not only was obedience to the Church never urged as 
 a duty, but the doctrine of justification by faith, true and scriptural 
 as it is, was so taupht, that practically it obscured the equally true 
 and equally scriptural doctrines of daily obedience and repentance, a 
 continual holy life, the danger of sinning against grace, and judgment
 
 22 
 
 according to -works ; and yet more, that it amounted, in fact, very 
 nearly to the Calvinistic notion of irresponsible conversion, and that 
 most pernicious antinomian error which required only a fancied act 
 of belief to entitle even the worst sinner, at any moment, even on 
 a death-bed, to make sure of heaven ; — so widely spread were these 
 errors, both in doctrine and practice, and that too in an age luxurious 
 and self-indulgent and licentious, both in morals and feeling, beyond 
 all previous example, that it is not too much to say, that, had the 
 principles of those in the Church, who now are most violent in their 
 opposition to the present movement, remained without a check in the 
 opposite direction, we should by this time have so deeply committed 
 ourselves to latitudinariau views, that we should have lost the 
 very character of a Church. It will go far, then, towards accounting 
 for their recent virulence to remark, that their present attitude is 
 that of men who, having occupied a false position, and wanting in 
 moral courage to avow their error, are galled into sullenness and 
 ill-temper with those who succeed, when they have themselves 
 failed. 
 
 And yet, let us acknowledge the service which, in their day, these 
 men, or rather their predecessors, rendered to the cause of divine 
 truth. From causes into which this is not the place to enter, a 
 blight had come over the whole of the Church, not in England alone, 
 but in all Christian lands ; a low tone of doctrine had been succeeded 
 by its inevitable result, a low standard of piety. Heresy had forced 
 itself into the highest places of our own Church during the last 
 century. Bishop Hoadley's doctrines, in 1713, differed little from 
 Socinianism ; Bishop Clayton openly advocated the removal of the 
 Nicene and Athanasian creeds in 1756 ; and a few years afterwards, 
 Archdeacon Blackburne wrote against all confessions of faith and forms 
 of doctrine. An address put forth by certain Socinians, dated June, 
 of the present year, says, that their "tenets are the results, in modern 
 times, of fidelity to the following principles — the duty of free inquiry, 
 the right of private judgment, and the sufficiency of Scripture, unsup- 
 ported by creeds, confessions of faith, or religious articles ; " and 
 boastingly adds, that "nearly every congregation of Presbyterian 
 foundation in England has arrived at the same views, through 
 adoption of the same principles." Our own Church, in which the 
 very same principles were once, and are still to some extent, advo- 
 cated, was on the high road to Socinianism. Geneva and Germany 
 had Ijeen so thoroughly saturated with the same poison, arising 
 solely from this rejection of authority in the Church, that there 
 was scarcely a pulpit in those lands, the original seat of the Reforma- 
 tion, in which the name of Christ was preached. 
 
 We were ourselves treading the same fatal path, when the school 
 of Cecil, Simeon, Venn, and the INIilners, arose ; and up to a certain 
 point they did God's work in restoring our almost effaced note of 
 holiness. But their restoration of the Church was not based upon 
 the true foundation of continuance, i.e. sound doctrine, and by ad- 
 mitting the fatal principle of the sole sufficiency of Scripture, 
 unregulated by the teaching of the Church, (and you have seen 
 that this is the avowed essence of Socinianism,) they were committed 
 to that deterioration of doctrine which the history of the Church 
 in all ages shows to be the inevitable tendency of this principle. 
 Their attempted revival was not a building upon the old foun- 
 dations : they took their theology not from our elder saints and
 
 23 
 
 doctors, already alluded to, but from the puritan Mriters, whose doc- 
 trines, that of regeneration especially, are identical with their own. 
 The present revival has all the good of the old evangelical leaders, 
 without their dissenting bias, and their doctrinal deficiencies. We 
 may safely put it to the right feeling of English Churchmen, whe- 
 ther a body of teaching, based, as the present is, upon the doctrines 
 of Hooker, Andrewes, Pearson, and Bull, and whether a practical 
 system exemplified in such saints as Hammond, Herbert, Kettlewell, 
 and AVilson, who are now held up as our examples in daily life, can 
 be unfaithful to the true character of the English Church ? Far 
 would I be from detracting, even in thought, from the personal piety 
 of the old "Evangelical" leaders, but when men arose, their equals 
 in earnestness, zeal, and sanctity, and their superiors in knowledge, 
 the party in question set themselves against the present movement, 
 because based on the opposite principle of Church authority. Hence, 
 as I have said, their disappointment, — one might almost say, their 
 petulant hostility, amounting, in many eases, to personal rancour, to 
 estimate which, at its right value, this tract is intended. 
 
 For to what other motive than what has been suggested can we 
 attribute tlie fact, that their influential newspaper organs actually 
 write against the daily service and other appointments of the Church, 
 such as fasting, Sec, and that some are found to stigmatize the 
 present movement as a " device of Satan," and " the forerunner of 
 Antichrist.^" or again, that a dissenting publisher is found to print a 
 paper called " Thoughts for the Times," in which baptismal regenera- 
 tion is termed a popish superstition, and the apostolical commission 
 treated as a folly ? Since this is written by a dergipnan, one Mr. 
 Cams Wilson, you can easily estimate his fidelity to his ordination 
 vow, "with all faithful diligence to banish and drive away all erroneous 
 doctrines ;" and you can understand his consistency three times a week 
 to pray against '" all false doctrine, heresy, and schism," in a Church 
 whose canons are, " Whosoever shall hereafter separate themselves 
 from the communion of saints, as it is approved by the Ajjostles'Kules, 
 in the Church of England, and combine themselves together in a new 
 brotherhood, let them be excommunicated :" " AVhosoever shall 
 hereafter affirm or maintain that there are within this realm other 
 meetings, assemblies, or congregations, than such as by the laws of 
 this land are held, which may rightly challenge to themselves the 
 name of true and lawful churches, let him be excommunicated :" 
 and yet with all this to ask, " What could have become of us but 
 for the labours of dissenters ?" That is to say, that it Mas a great 
 blessing for the Church to introduce separation from the Church, 
 false doctrine, heresy, and schism, into half the parishes of the 
 kingdom! I ask, with all honest indignation, is this the man to 
 scatter his " thoughts" bj- thousands, with the assistance of his 
 dissenting publisher, and to pretend to instruct you what is the 
 doctrine of the Church of England? 
 
 Will you then be misled by such persons? The proof is in 
 your own hands. It is not clearer that the sun shines at noonday, 
 than that the office of baptism contains the doctrine of baptismal 
 regeneration. It is downright dishonesty, as you must see, to deny 
 it ; and yet your appointed pastors, who know that it is in the 
 Prayer-book, who teach it because it is there, and whose only fault 
 is fidelity to their commission to teach it, are to be stigmatized as 
 Papists or Puseyites I
 
 24 
 
 I am not tlic apologist for all that has been said by the authors of 
 the Tracts for the Times. I have not sufficient learning or leisure 
 to decide upon the truth of all their opinions, neither have you, "whom 
 I am addressing; and I am quite sure that many of the expressions 
 of their followers are highly improper ; but with all this, their 7nain 
 principles are the principles of the Church of England, and there is 
 sufficient honesty, sufficient clear-headedness, — in plain English, suf- 
 ficient common sense, sufficient love of fair play, to give them their 
 due meed of praise. The Book of Common Prayer is the standard 
 by which those ministers of the Church who are nicknamed Pusey ites* 
 demand to be ti-ied on all material points ; as to details, let us give 
 this or that writer the right to say what he thinks, and where they 
 are wrong, let them be condemned by the competent authorities. You 
 are not bound to follow such writers further than the Prayer-book 
 authorizes you ; but you are bound to adhere to your clergymen, who 
 only teach the doctrine of the Church ; and I take the liberty to say. 
 that men ivho in practical matters daily disobey the express commands 
 of the Prayer-hook in almost every one of its rubrics, are not very icell 
 qualified to be your guides as to its meaning, and are not quite in a safe: 
 position to abuse their brethren ivho do obey it. 
 
 With one plain piece of advice I conclude, — 7-ead the Prayer-hook 
 through from end to end; it is not a A^ery large book; read it all. 
 calendar, rubrics, and every thing, and then see who are the Church's 
 most faithful and most obedient sons ! Tiie whole case may be rested 
 upon this simple appeal. To get up a storm of clamour, misrepre- 
 sentation, and abuse, is comparatively easy, however sinful. I only 
 earnestly pray that without a fair and candid examination, — and that 
 which I have suggested is neither long nor laborious, — such of you 
 as may have been perplexed by " the present distress" will not be 
 led away by popular fallacies, only because they are forward and 
 noisy. I will conclude with the words of one of these writers, who, 
 in times less painful than these, and in answer to charges perhaps 
 less violent and personal than are put into your hands daily, some 
 years since felt constrained to sa}% — 
 
 " We are told of writers, [and it may now be added preachers,] 
 ' relying on the authority of the darkest ages of popery,' of their 
 advocating the ' bathos in theology, an absurdity not worthy to be 
 gravely replied to,' of their ' irrational fanaticism,' ' intellectual 
 driveling,' of their writing 'like the most ignorant popish fanatic,' of 
 their reviving the ' figments of the darkest ages of papal superstition,' 
 
 * This term of reproach is disused by all who have any regard to decency : one 
 Bishop has felt himself called upon publicly to forbid it. It is in every way sin- 
 gularly inapplicable, for Dr. Pusey was no party to the original movement. It is 
 intended to represent those to whom it is applied as a sect, just as we say Arians, 
 Swedenborgians, ar.d Wesleyans. But these parry names succeed only in one oi" 
 two ways : first, when the party themselves adopt it, as the Wesleyans have done, 
 which is, of course, a plain admission that they arc a mere sect; or, secondly, when 
 common consent fixes its applicability ,— and, in the present case, it is equally 
 hopeless to stigmatize the Catholics as Puseyites, as it was when the Arians, 
 1,500 years ago, tried to call them Athanasians. Dirt may be well aimed, but it 
 depends not upon those who throw it, but upon that at which it is thrown, whether 
 it will stick. The words of the Bishop of Down and Connor are not more severe 
 than just. "It is an act of grievous injury to a distinguished individual [Dr. 
 Pusey] to brand the opinions in question, and the maintenance of tliem, witli 
 appellations derived from his name; appellations, which in point of fact are not 
 correctly attributed, the fitness of which he has distinctly disclaimed, and the 
 imposition of which he feels to be injurious to himself, hoiuever the discredit man 
 properly attach to such as employ the appellations, rather than to him."
 
 25 
 
 ' some of the most vain and baleful absurdities of popery,' [to 
 which might now be joined the ' follies, and worse than follies, of 
 false members of the Church of England,' 'the very essence of 
 popery,' ' dead formalism,' ' corruption of the gospel,' ' soul-destroying 
 doctrines,' 'essentially popery, it bears upon it the mark of the 
 beast.'] Brave words, surely ! "Well and good ; take your fill of 
 them, since you choose them for your portion. It does but make 
 our spirits rise cheerily and hopefully thus to be encountered. Never 
 were such words on one side, but deeds were on the other. We know 
 our place and our fortunes ; to give a witness and to be condemned, 
 to be ill-used and to succeed. Such is the law which God has 
 annexed to the promulgation of the truth ; its preachers suffer, but 
 its cause prevails. Be it so. Joyfully will we consent to this com- 
 pact; and the more you attack us personally, the more, for the very 
 omen's sake, will we exult in it." 
 
 Let us pray : 
 God, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we especially 
 pray for the good estate of the Catholic Church, that it may be so 
 guided and governed by Thy good Spirit, that all who profess and 
 call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold 
 the faith in unifi/ of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness 
 of life. And this we beg for Jesus Christ His sake. Amen. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 As it has been boldly asserted that "all the Bishops" are opposed to the prin- 
 ciples, the rise and prosress or which has been detailed in the fore;?oiiig pages, it 
 seems only rif,'ht to produce a counter statement ; and in making such it must be 
 borne in mind tliat the authority of the venerated prelates is not claimed for (nor 
 is this publication intended to vindicate) all the details of the Tracts for the Times, 
 and kindred publications : very far from it ; but only for their sanction of the 
 essential Church principles which are now so clamorously assailed. And it is 
 comforting to find that we can select such testimonies from the Rulers of every 
 branch of the Church in communion with ourselves ; viz. from the Uishops of 
 England, Ireland, Scotland, and America. 
 
 Bishop of Oxford. Charge, 18^2. P. 19. 
 
 •' That, in spite of these faults, the Tracts for the Times have, from their com- 
 mencement, exerted a beneficial influence amonj? us in many respects, must. 
 I should think,— even their enemies being their judges. — be admitted. Their eflcct 
 even upon tho-e who arenot in communion with our Church, — the Dissenters and 
 Romanists, — has not been immaterial ; and within the Church it is impossible to 
 mark the revival of Church i)rincip'.es which has taken place among us, the 
 increasing desire for unity, &c &:c.— it is impossible, I say, to see these things, 
 and their growth within the last ten years, and not acknowledge that, under 
 God, the authors of the Tracts have been the humble instruments of at least 
 bringing them before men's minds, and of exhibiting in their own lives their prac- 
 tical fruits." 
 
 Ibid. p. 31. " As for those, the success of whose system would be to drive 
 their brethren into secession, it seems to me that they little know of what spirit
 
 26 
 
 they are. It cannot be well to condemn rashly and rancoroiisly what has been 
 held, in whole or in part, by such men as Bull, and Beveridge, and Andrewes, 
 and Hooker, and Taylor, and Jackson, and a host besides of those who, in their 
 day, were, and are still, the soundest divines of the Church of England." 
 
 Bishop of Exeter. Chanje, 1842. 
 
 His Lordship " thanked God that it had been permitted them to aspire to a 
 higher and a-s^ider sphere of action, cheered on and stimulated in their ministration 
 by the increased and increasing sympathy of the people ; by the zealous, and 
 active, and intelligent co-operation of the most eminent of all orders of men 
 around them ; and by the manifold indications which were afforded them of a 
 yearning after a deeper insight into the true way of salvation ; into the nature, 
 the blessings, and the privileges of the Holy Catholic Church — the true ark of 
 deliverance — the mystical body of the blessed Son of God. 
 
 " The result of the unauthorized teaching [of the authors of the Tracts for the 
 Times] had, upon the whole, he firmly believed, been highly useful, not only to 
 the cause of sacred learning, but to that of true religion. In spite of the clamour 
 witli which they had been assailed — although their publications contained some 
 things which he believed to be errors of doctrine — although in other respects, he 
 disapproved of their recommendations in matters of practice — and, although the 
 manner in which they had put forward their opinions was often injudicious — still 
 he did not scruple to repeat what he had said three years ago. that the Church 
 was largely indebted to the authors of these Tracts. They had contributed largely 
 to the revival of a zealous spirit of inquiry into the doctrines of the primitive 
 fathers — those surest commentators on the Sacred Scriptures — and into the true 
 principles of the Christian Church. On one point they had effected great good : he 
 alluded to the stimulus which they had given to a life of prayer and systematic 
 piety, which should realise the requirements of those holy men vrho had compiled 
 the Liturgy, which, with the Rubrics, were framed, not for one day in the week 
 only, but for every day. 
 
 " There was one other point, for which he considered those writers were 
 equally entitled to their thanks, namely, for the zealous and effective manner in 
 which they had explained and enforced the great evangelical truth that the true 
 Christian life is not an individual but a corporate life — that we are all members 
 of one body, of which our Lord Jesus Christ is the Head, and therefore ' mem- 
 bers one of another.' 
 
 " It was no mean praise of the Tract writers that they had contributed to pro- 
 mote, extend, and enforce a practical sense of this duty of the Church, and in 
 like manner by their writings to enforce the efficacy of the Sacraments ; and the 
 importance of their labours in these respects might be estimated from the vehe- 
 mence with which they had been assailed. Some of their opponents had not 
 only forgotten the dictates of Christian charity, but, in some respects, seemed to 
 have lost sight of the doctrines of the Church herself. Thus, one of the most 
 eminent of them had not scrupled to deny that Baptism concurred towards 
 Justification ; and alleged that no consistent member of the Church of England 
 could maintain that it did, although he himself, whenever he repeated the 
 Apostles' Creed, acknowledged ' one Baptism ;' although the 27th Article declared 
 Baptism to be ' a sign of regeneration, or new birth, wherebj", as by an instru- 
 ment, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church ;' although 
 the Homily of Salvation, expressly referred to in the 11th Article, uses the word 
 'baptized' as synonymous with 'justified;' and eilthough the Homily of the 
 Sacraments asserted the same doctrine in equally explicit terms. Another writer, 
 in enumerating what he calls the 'fearful errors' of the Tracts, not only numbers 
 among them the doctrine of the Real Presence, explained as these writers 
 explain it, but actually designates in the same way the doctrine of the commu- 
 nication of the Saviour's body and blood in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper ; 
 thus seemingly forgetting that the words which he thus impugns, as teaching a 
 fearful error, are a transcript from an epistle of Saint Paul.' 
 
 Bishop of Dowx and Connor. Charge, 1842. 
 
 " The Tracts for the Times were undertaken with good and laudable motives, 
 in many particulars they were directed to valuable ends, in some cases^they liave 
 been productive of important benefit.'
 
 27 
 
 Ibid. " It is abundantly plain that we, the ministers of the Church, are pledged 
 to maintain the ministerial office in its threefold division, as transmitted from 
 Apostolical origin by the imposition of Episcopal hands, to be necessary to the 
 constitution of a true and lawful member of the Church, and to the due preach- 
 ing of God's word, and ministration of His sacraments." 
 
 Ibid. " Every reference, in every formulary of the Church, where notice is taken 
 of regeneration, speaks of it as the spiritual grace of holy Baptism." 
 
 And in fifteen instances the Bishop shows that objections to the Apostolical 
 commission; the use of forms of prayer; fasting; the observance of Saints' 
 days ; the Apocrypha ; the Burial service ; chanting the Psalms ; the use of the 
 surplice (which the Bishop desires his Clergy to preach in); turning from the 
 people in prayer, &:c. are puritanical; and he concludes by speaking of "the 
 wilfulness of the sons of the Church, who adopt these puritanical objections." 
 
 Bishop of Edinburgh. Charge, 1842. 
 
 After the clearest testimony to the great Church principles, this prelate 
 proceeds — 
 
 " No English theologian, or, to speak more plainly, no Oxford Tractarian, so 
 puts the Church in the place of Christ as to believe that the Church purchased 
 his redemption ; or that the Church hears and answers his prayers, &c. Such a 
 charge is not true against any body of English theologians." 
 
 Ibid. " The principle of Low Churchmen is to consider personal religion and 
 divine grace as acts immediate between God and the soul of each believer. On 
 the other hand, it is the characteristic belief of High Churchmen, that God has 
 appointed under Christ one great channel, the Church, through which solely His 
 grace may with full assurance be expected to flow. 'J here can be no doubt that 
 the Scottish Episcopal Church has, during its whole existence, been charac- 
 teristically High Church; and it is my conviction that it would, to a certain 
 extent, depart from the truth as it is in Jesus, if it were to change this its cha- 
 racter."— Pp. 31, 32. 
 
 Ibid. " So far as the choice of terms goes. Catholic is better fitted to designate 
 our religion than Protestant. Protestant is manifestly a negation; and to talk of 
 Protestant doctrines, is to use words to which no precise ideas are attached." — 
 P. 35. 
 
 Jbid. " Let us ask how it appears that the great Head of the Church gave to 
 the anonymous editors of newspapers and magazines, or even to the public, for 
 whom they profess to act, any authority to examine and judge the religious 
 opinions of the faithful?"—?. 34. 
 
 Bishop of Glasgow. Charge, 1842. 
 
 The bishop, after tracing the history of the declension of sound doctrine in the 
 Church of England, as has been attempted in the preceding tract, continues, (p. 17,) 
 '• We escaped the malign influence. In Scotland, belief in the holy Catholic 
 Church has not only be>;n professed, together with the other Articles of the Creed, 
 but the institution itself has been venerated as that ( rdinance of God, by which, and 
 through which, the means of grace are conveyed to the faithful, and perpetuated 
 from age to age for the ultimate welfare of the whole human race. To revive 
 such teaching was not needed here. As to the doctrines which have been revived 
 in the south, considered simply as principles of the doctrine of Christ, I find not 
 that they liave been condemned i>y any who, by learning and research, have quali- 
 fied themselves to pronounce a judgment." — P. 19. 
 
 Bishop of New Jersey. 
 
 " But some will surely think, that Oxford has within it elements, that must 
 divide and rend the Church; and ask, in hunest eariic.-tness, is there not serious 
 danger from tliat controversy? Yes: just as much as from the breeze, that stirs 
 the stagnant waters of the pool; or shakes, before their time, tlie dead leaves 
 
 from the trees upon the hill A year, or two, or three, will place it with the 
 
 things that were, so far as its peculiarities are concerned. But, the appeal mr.de, 
 when wicked hands were laid upon the Church, to the princples of Churchmen ; 
 the assertion of the Church's character and rights, as indepi-ndent of, and far 
 above, the State; the summons to the ancient faith, the ancient discipline, the
 
 2S 
 
 ancient worship; the impulse given, in every quarter of the Church, to ancient 
 piety, and ancient holiness, and ancient charity, — these will remain, as blessings 
 to mankind, when every name that has been mixed up in this strife of tongues 
 shall be forgotten." — Bp. Doane's "Impressions of the Church of England." 1S42. 
 "Look to the long-continued destitution of the Church, of that E])iscopacy, 
 which is her living bond of union with Christ ; the channel in which the grace 
 has been transmitted, through the hands of the Apostles, which lends their virtue 
 to her Sacraments, and gives to penitent and faithful hearts assurance of accept- 
 ance and saf\'ation, through the purchase of the blessed Cross : apart from which, 
 it could have no connexion with the Apostles, and could claim no promise made 
 to them." — From a Sermon, " The Bush that burned tvith Fire. Burlington. 1841." 
 
 From the Churchman, June 11, 1842. Edited by the Rev. Samuel Seabury, D.D. 
 under the general direction and supervision of the 
 
 Bishop of New York. 
 
 " The visibility of the Catholic Church of Christ ; the perpetuity of the Chris- 
 tian priesthood; a settled and immutable faith, which has an objective reality 
 independent of individual consciousness, which is always one and the same, and 
 is to be taught to all men on the authority of the word of God, and not left to be 
 guessed and reasoned out of the Bible byever3-man for himself ; the regeneration 
 of men by baptism or initiation into the Church of Christ, on the profession of 
 this our immutable faith ; the necessity of a good life, as the fruit of faith, in order 
 to our final justification ; the niurture of the divine life, which is a life of penitence 
 and faith, by the Eucharist, in connexion with the doctrines of Christ, and the 
 Apostolical Succession as the root of the whole; this, in the language of English 
 Low-Churchmen, is — Popery. 
 
 '• The Church of England is now — as she has ever been, — the bulwark of the 
 Reformation ; agreeing with Rome in all the immutable principles of the Church 
 of Christ, (else were she herself no branch of that Church,) in the visibility of the 
 Church Catholic, in baptismal regeneration, in a dogmatic faith, in the divine 
 authority and perpetuity of the priesthood, in life-giving and life-sustaining sacra- 
 ments, through the energy of the Word £ind Spirit of God ; but diflFcring from her 
 (else were she not reformed) in having renounced the trade of indulgences, the 
 fable of purgator3% &c. &c. JVith these views, we count the renewed clamour 
 about the semi-Popery and Popery of ' Oxfordism' to be mere vociferation." 
 
 It does not seem out of place to adduce, even in this reverend company, the 
 name of one dear to all true English hearts, whose witness is most unexcep- 
 tionable as that of a layman and of a by-stander, whose sole interest can be to vin- 
 dicate that sound truth to which he has dedicated a long and beautiful life, 
 
 William Wordsworth. 
 
 " It would be ungenerous not to advert to the religious movement that has 
 made itself felt, more or less strongly, throughout the English Church ; a move- 
 ment that takes for its first principle, a devout deference to the voice of Christian 
 antiquity. It is not my office to pass judgment on questions of theological 
 detail ; but my own repugnance to the spirit and system of Romanism has been 
 so repeatedly, and, I trust, feelingly expressed, that I shall not be suspected of 
 a leaning that way. if I do not join in the grave charge, thrown out, perhaps, in 
 the heat of controversy, against the learned and pious men to whose labours I 
 allude. I speak apart from controversy ; but with strong faith in the moral 
 temper vhich could elevate the present by doing reverence to the past, I would 
 draw cheerful auguries for the English Church from this movement, as likely to 
 restore among us a tone of piety, more earnest and real than that produced by 
 the mere formalities of the understanding, refusing, in a degree which I cannot 
 but lament, that its own temijer and judgment shall be controlled ty those of 
 antiquity." — Poems of Early and Late Years, 1842, p. 402. 
 
 R. ClAY, PRINTJiR. BREAD STREET UILL.
 
 
 • (< -i 
 
 f~Ws