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 L I E) RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VERS ITY 
 
 or ILLl NOIS
 
 THE 
 
 EEAL CAUSES 
 
 OF 
 
 THE PAPAL AGGRBSSIOr 
 
 CONSIDERED; 
 
 IN A STATEMENT RESPECTFULLY PRESENTED TO THE LORD 
 BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL, BY CERTAIN OF HIS 
 CLERGY, IN LENT, 1851. 
 
 "Rejoice not against me, Online enemy : when I fall, I shall arise : when 
 I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a hght imto me. I will bear the indig- 
 nation of the Lord, because I have sinned against Him, until He plead my 
 cause, and execute judgment for nic."— MiC. vii. 8, 9. 
 
 OXFORD AND LONDON : 
 JOHN HENRY PARKER.
 
 OXFORD : 
 miNTEB BY I. SHKIMPTON.
 
 TO THE RIGHT REV. JAMES HENRY BY DIVINE 
 PERMISSION LORD BISHOP OE GLOUCESTER 
 AND BRISTOL. 
 
 May it please your Lordship, 
 
 We, the undersigned clergy under your Lord- 
 ship's jurisdiction, having drawn up and sub- 
 scribed, for the satisfaction of our own con- 
 sciences, and as an humble effort towards the de- 
 liverance of the church of England, a statement 
 of some of the evils under which she now suffers, 
 and which to our minds account for the high 
 and arrogant hopes entertained by the see of 
 Rome, desire to lay the said statement, with all 
 dutiful respect, before your Lordship. 
 
 We have nothing at present to solicit but your 
 fatherly sympathy ; nor do we even expect any 
 reply from your Lordship ; all that w^e desire is 
 to entreat your careful consideration of the facts 
 herein set forth, facts which do not, as it appears 
 to us, admit of any question or doubt. 
 
 For reasons of prudence and charity, it has 
 been thought advisable that not more than a 
 definite number of signatures should be attached
 
 to this our statement ; nor do we know whether 
 it will meet with the approbation of many or of 
 few of our brethren. 
 
 We remain, always, 
 
 Your Lordship's dutiful sons and servants 
 in Christ, 
 
 Lent, 1851. 
 
 [Signed hy those of the clergy whose names were affixed 
 to the Statement.'] 
 
 u,uc
 
 THE REAL CAUSES OF "THE PAPAL 
 AGGRESSION." 
 
 The attention of the people of this countrj^ has 
 for some time past been directed to the Bull, 
 wherein the Pope has suddenly taken upon 
 himself to divide England and Wales into new 
 dioceses, over which he has set bishops of his 
 own appointment. 
 
 We, the undersigned clerg}^men of the church 
 of England, desire to lay before our spiritual fa- 
 ther, and our brethren both of the clergy and 
 laity, our view of some real causes of this move- 
 ment of the church of Rome, many of which are 
 deep and of long standing ; and in so doing, we 
 shall endeavour to render our statement as brief 
 as the largeness and extreme importance of the 
 subjects on which we have to touch, will permit. 
 
 We would observe in the first place, that the 
 change in the Papal system in England amounts 
 to this : 
 
 The bishop of Rome is not now, as heretofore, 
 making a temporary pro^dsion for the spiritual 
 oversight of those who, cleaving to him, separate 
 themselves from the church of England, but he
 
 is now founding among us a new church, or at 
 least a new hierarchy, of his own creation. It 
 would appear therefore, not that he is sanguine 
 of the reunion of the existing church of England 
 with his own see, (for in that view it would have 
 been his natural course to continue this tempo- 
 rary provision,) but rather he believes that the 
 national hierarchy and parochial system have so 
 far lost their hold on the affections and the reve- 
 rence of the country, that he may reasonably 
 hope to attach our people to this new church 
 which he is now setting up amongst us. 
 
 It cannot then be supposed that the late seces- 
 sions to Rome, and the Romish tendencies still 
 discernible in some few individuals of the clergy, 
 and of the higher ranks of the laity, can account 
 for this view which the Pope appears to take 
 of our condition, nor for the measures he has in 
 consequence adopted. 
 
 Neither again can these things be accounted 
 for by the change made in the law in the year 
 1829, nor even by the systematic favour shewn 
 by successive governments to the Roman church 
 in Ireland and in the colonies, (although this last 
 fact may well have led the Pope to expect no 
 more at most than a languid and simulated resist- 
 ance on the part of the civil government ;) still 
 none of these things could at all account for the 
 fact of his regarding the English hierarchy as on 
 the verge of extinction, or at least as inoperative
 
 on the great ' masses' of the nation, and all but 
 ignored by them. 
 
 No class of persons, however prepossessed 
 against our church, could take such a view of 
 her actual position, unless it had been in some 
 measure true that our episcopate and parochial 
 clergy have in fact lost that hold on the affec- 
 tions and respect of the people which they ought 
 to have and which they once possessed. 
 
 And while we admit it to be highly probable 
 that this unhappy change in the feelings of the 
 people towards the bishops and clergy may partly 
 arise from the general decay of the principles of 
 religious reverence and respect for superiors, we 
 feel it our duty openly to confess that the blame 
 rests principally with ourselves, the parochial 
 clergy, and with our rulers spiritual and tem- 
 poral. 
 
 We have to confess and deplore the existence 
 among ourselves, the parochial clergy of the 
 church of England, during almost a century and 
 a half, of a lamentable degree of indifference to 
 the sacred trust committed to us, in respect both 
 of the presei-vation of the Faith in its integrity, 
 and of the salvation of the souls committed to 
 our charge, the purchase of Christ's Blood. 
 
 Church preferment has been too much looked 
 upon by us as little more than a means of ob- 
 taining a comfortable livelihood. Simoniacal
 
 8 
 
 transactions of various kinds have been in con- 
 sequence very common amongst us, and we fear 
 that they still continue to be practised often in 
 indirect ways, and sometimes even openly and 
 notoriously. The property of the church has 
 been regarded rather as a freehold for life, than 
 as a maintenance allowed by God to those who 
 devote themselves to the service of His Church ; 
 and the sacred ministry itself has been looked 
 upon as no more than one of the "professions," 
 out of which persons of a certain education and 
 position in society have to make their choice, for 
 occupation and maintenance. This secular spirit 
 has begotten amongst us a sinful fear of man, 
 shewn both towards individuals possessed of 
 wealth and power, at whose vices or heresies we 
 have been found too ready to connive, and still 
 more towards large bodies of people, to whose ex- 
 cited passions and strong will the clergy have too 
 often yielded, as necessarily paramount to all law. 
 We are convinced also that we are to blame 
 for too great laxity in giving letters testimo- 
 nial whether to candidates for orders, presentees 
 to benefices, or persons nominated to curacies ; 
 in consequence of which very unworthy persons 
 have found and do still find but little difficulty 
 in obtaining ordination or appointment to the 
 cure of souls. Hence it is that in many cases 
 the pastoral charge is grievously neglected, and 
 too much of the time which " so weighty a work"
 
 demands, is occupied by worldly amusements or 
 business, to the dishonour of the church, and 
 " the hurt and hindrance" of many souls. 
 
 And although these evils have been, we are 
 thankful to say, in some degree mitigated of late 
 years, yet there remain still hundreds of thousands 
 of souls, some whole parishes, (and in certain 
 cases amply endowed parishes,) left as sheep 
 without a shepherd, tempting, almost craving the 
 intrusion of the Romish or Protestant dissenter. 
 
 One obvious cause for this sad state of things 
 is the decay of ecclesiastical discipline, even of that 
 part of it which relates to the control exercised 
 over the teaching and the moral conduct of the 
 parochial clergy ; which decay is traceable (as it 
 appears to us) mainly to the want of synodical 
 action in the church. The only efforts that have 
 been made from time to time for the partial 
 restoration of discipline have consisted in drawing 
 up occasionally acts of Parliament for the correc- 
 tion of clerks ; which acts being mostly prepared 
 by individual bishops with a view" of accommo- 
 dating them to the mind of secular legislators, 
 and being often tampered with in their progi-ess 
 through the Houses of Parliament, have proved 
 in the result grievously ineffective, or even in 
 some instances have increased the evil they were 
 intended to remedy. 
 
 At any rate it is well known that any attempt 
 on the part of a bishop to punish one of his
 
 10 
 
 clergy for viciousness of life the most scandalous 
 and notorious, is attended with very great diffi- 
 culty, expense, and uncertainty ; while we fear it 
 is only too certain that to deprive an incumbent 
 for false doctrine, however gross and palpable his 
 guilt might be, would be quite hopeless, unless his 
 error should happen to be of a kind against which 
 popular feeling is excited ; since the court of ap- 
 peal as at present constituted takes little interest 
 in theological truth, and is far more concerned in 
 the question whether their sentence is or is not 
 likely to be acceptable with the people at large^. 
 
 Another fruitfal source of weakness and dis- 
 union is the want of a systematic and distinctive 
 education for the clergy. Owing to this, we have 
 to deplore a gi'eat want of theological learning : 
 
 a Here we desire to refer to the recorde d convictions of a 
 statesman of eminence, the right honourable W. E. Gladstone ; 
 who in his letter to the bishop of London on the subject of 
 the late Gorham judgment observes in reference to the bill 
 which the House of Lords rejected last session, though re- 
 commended by a great majority of the episcopate ; 
 
 " None can resist the principle of your" (the bishop of 
 London's) " proposal, who admit that the Church has a sphere 
 " of proper jurisdiction at all, or any duty beyond that of 
 "taking the rule of her doctrine and her practice from the 
 " lips of Ministers or Parliaments." 
 
 Surely, if such be the conviction forced upon the mind of 
 a layman, a statesman, whose attachment both to our church 
 and to the principle of her union with the state has been 
 undoubted ; in what light must her enemies regard the present 
 position of the church of England, and the subjection in which 
 she is held by the civil power }
 
 11 
 
 the teaching in many of our churches is defective, 
 faUing lamentably short of the standard set us in 
 the Articles, Homilies, and Prayer-book, (espe- 
 cially in the Catechism,) and of the rule of doc- 
 trine supplied us by " Catholic fathers and ancient 
 bishops." A very small proportion of our people, 
 we fear, are at all carefully instructed even in the 
 great and distinctive doctrines of the Christian 
 Faith, such as that of the Holy Trinity, and the 
 Incarnation and Mediatorial Acts of the Son of 
 God. 
 
 In some churches the Creed of St. Athana- 
 sius is seldom or never heard, and in many more 
 we fear that sermons follow the Nicene Creed 
 which can scarcely be reconciled with the plain 
 statements of doctrine contained in that Creed. 
 
 It is not too much to say that in many of our 
 churches Divine Service has become a mere formal 
 act, which both clergy and laity are content to 
 perform as seldom as may be, and then to hurry 
 it over, or to go through it with a careless 
 and even contemptuous disregard for the injunc- 
 tions of our ritual, and sometimes even of the 
 common principles of decency and order. This 
 iiTCverent formalism has we believe tended more 
 than any thing to beget in the minds of the 
 people a contempt for the clergy, for the Prayer- 
 book, and we must add, even for God's Word 
 and Sacraments. 
 
 This is surely matter for humiliation and re-
 
 12 
 
 pentance, and the late contemptuous intrusion of 
 our enemies ought to move us all to a careful 
 amendment. May our merciful God grant us 
 this amendment before it is too late ! 
 
 And we who have ventured to subscribe our 
 names to this declaration deeply feel, and here 
 desire to acknowledge unreservedly before our 
 bishop and the whole Church, for ourselves in 
 particular, that we, at least, have great need of 
 this amendment, as having been in our own per- 
 sons partakers of these sins and negligences. For 
 who can look back upon the time he has spent 
 in the work of the ministry, without perceiving 
 that his own deficiency in zeal and self-devotion, 
 in watchfulness and personal holiness, and even 
 in heedful obedience to the Church, has greatly 
 tended to lower the authority of her ministry in 
 the minds of her people, to weaken her influence 
 in the conversion of souls, and to open the door 
 not only to Romanism and other forms of error, 
 but even to profaneness, unbelief, and ungodli- 
 ness of life ? 
 
 When from the parochial clergy we turn to 
 the CATHEDRALS, wc scc iustitutious whose value 
 to the church might be indeed inestimable. For 
 they might supply us with schools of theology for 
 training up future ministers ; they might enable 
 and encourage us to pursue one harmonious 
 method in the management of our parochial
 
 13 
 
 schools, whether for the middle or for the lower 
 classes ; but especially they might furnish the 
 whole diocese with a standard of orthodox 
 preaching, and a model for the celebration of 
 Divine Service. 
 
 But which of these ends can we say has been 
 attained ? The daily Service has indeed been kept 
 up in the cathedrals during the time when in 
 parochial churches it had become nearly extinct ; 
 and this is undoubtedly a cause for thankfulness. 
 
 But it is matter of notoriety that the deans and 
 canons are often grievously negligent even in 
 their own personal attendance at the week-day 
 services, leaving them to subordinate ministers ; 
 and so far from taking pains to maintain the 
 decency and the beauty of the choral Sei'vice, 
 they are sometimes found forward to repress any 
 attempt that is made to restore it to its ancient 
 efficiency. 
 
 It is not difficult to account for the existence 
 of these evils ; the deaneries and a large propor- 
 tion of canonries (being in the gift of the govern- 
 ment of the day) are generally bestowed wath a 
 view to parliamentary or political interest ; some- 
 times as a reward for classical learning, or scien- 
 tific discoveries ; but always, as we may say, 
 without any consideration whatever of the fitness 
 of the person appointed for the sjjecial duties 
 which he has to perform ; a mode of acting on the 
 part of our rulers which would not be tolerated in
 
 14 
 
 any department of state whether miHtary or civil ; 
 but which has been for years habitually followed 
 in the dispensing of cathedral preferment. 
 
 In consequence, instead of being councils for 
 the bishops, and models for the parochial clergy, 
 the deans and chapters stand in a position dis- 
 jointed both fi'om the one and the other, imped- 
 ing rather than assisting them in their work. To 
 see such noble, such glorious institutions made 
 useless, and even a dishonour to the church, this 
 is of itself a temptation to the intruder. 
 
 We must seem to him, to be giving up some of 
 our chief advantages, nay turning them into an 
 expensive and useless machine, a disgrace and a 
 clog to us *". 
 
 *" In a letter from the right honourable Sidney Herbert to 
 the late dean of Salisbury may be found the impression natu- 
 rally made on the mind of a zealous, faithful and intelligent 
 layman of the church of England by the present state of our 
 cathedral establishments. 
 
 We extract from it only two sentences. 
 
 " How much of the present diversity of doctrine would have 
 " been avoided, had there been in every diocese real centres of 
 " learning and authority at which the parochial clergy would 
 " have themselves been trained, and to whom in after life, habit 
 " would have taught them to defer ! To the insufficiency of the 
 " episcopate, and the inefficiency of the chapters may be attri- 
 " buted in no slight degree those divisions, often upon the most 
 " ordinary matters of form, which have been not only an injury 
 " to the church but a scandal to religion." 
 
 "They (the chapter clergy) saunter about their cathedral 
 " closes, a spectacle, which delights the eyes of every enemy 
 " to the church, and aiFords a point and an epigram for every 
 " attack on her discipline."
 
 15 
 
 When from the whole body of inferior clergy, 
 we proceed to the Bishops, to those who sit in 
 the seats of the Apostles, we have first to thank 
 God for various instances of single-hearted gene- 
 rosity and fatherly kindness in many members 
 of the episcopal body, and in him in particular, 
 under whom God's Providence has placed us. We 
 have to acknowledge with gratitude the assistance 
 and guidance which the bishops have afforded to 
 the efforts lately made to increase the number of 
 churches, schools, and parochial clergy, so as to 
 make them in some degree more adequate to the 
 wants of a rapidly increasing population. 
 
 At the same time we are bound to confess 
 there is much truth in the sneer of a well-known 
 liberal historian, that if our episcopate were de- 
 stroyed, the mass of the people in the country 
 would scarcely be conscious of its disappearance. 
 One reason for this is that the number of the 
 bishops is wholly inadequate ; so that their per- 
 sonal visitation of the parishes under their charge, 
 which the due exercise of the episcopal function 
 plainly requires, has become in a great measure 
 impracticable. And it should be observed that 
 the late changes in the arrangement of dioceses, 
 though they have made the evil less enormous 
 in some parts of the country, have nevertheless 
 had the effect of diffusing that evil over the whole 
 kingdom. 
 
 And yet churchmen dare not ask for an in-
 
 16 
 
 crease in the episcopate, because they feel and 
 know that the absolute nomination to this most 
 sacred office in the Church is more or less in the 
 hands of those who are hostile alike to her faith, 
 and to her discipline. 
 
 The evil of government appointments to the 
 episccptd office has of late years been greatly 
 aggravated : 
 
 First, because not only the election but the 
 confirmation of bishops is now authoritatively 
 treated as a delusive ceremony, " a sham," and 
 " a shadow^" 
 
 And secondly, because the tradition of an ha- 
 bitual deference to the opinion and wishes of the 
 church at large '^, which had been more or less 
 maintained throughout the reign of George III., 
 and even to the end of the Duke of Wellington's 
 administration, has been gradually set aside ; in- 
 deed the fact that a man is obnoxious to church- 
 men in general has now become a motive for se- 
 lecting him to fill the office of a bishop. In one 
 or two deplorable cases it is hardly possible to 
 believe there was any other. 
 
 Under these circumstances great evils have 
 naturally arisen from the want of confidence be- 
 tween many of the bishops and their clergy ; 
 while from the middle classes and from Christ's 
 poor the overseers of His flock are so utterly 
 
 " Jebb's " Report of the case of Dr. Hampden," pp. 384 — 7. 
 See British Magazine, vol. xi. p. 139. et seq.
 
 17 
 
 separated, that their very existence has really in 
 many instances become a matter of faith. 
 
 A large proportion of the bishops are living at 
 a distance from their cathedrals and their cathe- 
 dral cities, mixing almost exclusively with per- 
 sons of rank or wealth, overwhelmed with secular 
 business, spending a considerable part of the year 
 out of their dioceses in attendance at the House 
 of Lords ; and while theu' work is at times more 
 than human strength can well bear, it is only a 
 part of it that really relates to the cure of souls 
 under their charge. 
 
 Confirmation is not much more frequent now 
 than as required by the canon of 1603 ; though 
 the population is probably at least four times as 
 great, and in consequence a large proportion of 
 the professed members of our church are never 
 admitted to an ordinance which is numbered by 
 the Apostle among the fundamentals of Chris- 
 tianity ^ ; and some of the Confirmations are 
 necessarily so crowded, so disorderly, and so 
 hurried, that there must be much in them to 
 pain all reverent minds, and to give great offence 
 (as we fear) to Almighty God. 
 
 The Visitations have lost almost every thing 
 that used to give them a religious character. 
 Presentments for heinous and notorious sins are 
 rarely made or enquired after ; the bishop and 
 clergy meet and separate without partaking of 
 ' Heb. vi. 1.
 
 18 
 
 that spiritual Food which should be the great 
 bond of union ; in the sermons and charges very 
 seldom do we find any reproof of popular errors 
 or prevailing vices ; though bitter and uncharit- 
 able language is too often used in assailing what- 
 ever is opposed to the favourite opinions of the 
 day. 
 
 Of the candidates for holy orders, bishops in 
 the present day can have but little or no personal 
 knowledge. In but few cases they venture to 
 reject for false doctrine, unless it be also un- 
 popular. Indeed, if any bishop attempts to 
 maintain the due standard of orthodoxy, those 
 who are refused ordination by him, will seek and 
 obtain it at the hands of other prelates ; so that 
 we fear that it would not be found difficult for 
 any heretic, who w^as not absolutely a Socinian, to 
 obtain ordination in our church in these days. 
 
 Another evil, the notoriety of which must 
 have given great encouragement to our adver- 
 saries, is to be found in the lamentable divisions 
 in our episcopate. 
 
 We need but advert to the fact that when a 
 bishop ventured to require of one of his clergy 
 before institution to a bsnefice, a simple and 
 real acceptance of the doctrine contained in the 
 Nicene Creed and in the Prayer-book, the suf- 
 fragan found himself in the result compelled to 
 renounce communion with his metropolitan ; and 
 the church of England is thus placed, by an act
 
 19 
 
 of her own Primate, in a condition unparalleled 
 in her history for more than 600 years. 
 
 One evil effect of this disjointed state of the 
 episcopate is that in different dioceses wholly 
 different interpretations of the rubric are enforced 
 by the bishops; or rather, while in some few a 
 conscientious observance of the rules of the 
 Prayer-book is encouraged, in others the clergy 
 are not only permitted, but in some cases en- 
 joined to disregard at one time the written in- 
 junctions, at another the immemorial usages of 
 our church. For some of our bishops, we grieve 
 to obsei've, assume to themselves not merely the 
 right of interpretation in doubtful cases, (which 
 the Church does really allow them,) but a power 
 to set aside her undoubted rules on grounds of 
 expediency ; so that instead of ' ' the whole realm 
 having but one use," we are in danger of having 
 as many rituals as dioceses, while in each parti- 
 cular diocese the ritual will be made to vary 
 from time to time according to the private judg- 
 ment or will of each successive bishop ; unless 
 indeed an entire laxity and indifference to the 
 order of public w orship should be brought in and 
 prevail, as the only escape left from these con- 
 fusions and difficulties. 
 
 However, when we look to the motives which 
 the ministers of the crown for some years past are 
 known to have had in view in the selection of 
 bishops, and in the virtual suppression of the
 
 20 
 
 church's voice both in their election and their 
 confirmation ; when we recollect that we have 
 seen a bishop who was neither lawfully elected 
 nor canonically confirmed, consecrated by the 
 present archbishop of Canterbury on the express 
 ground (for so it was, with good reason, gene- 
 rally understood) that he must consecrate whom- 
 soever the government of the day should appoint ; 
 we feel that we have great reason for thankful- 
 ness to Almighty God, who in His mercy to us 
 has yet ordered that many of our bishops should 
 be earnest and zealous in advancing, according to 
 their views, the welfare of the souls under their 
 charge, and that a few yet remain desirous to 
 preserve the ancient faith and discipline of the 
 Church. 
 
 On the whole, then, it can be no matter of 
 wonder that the Pope should think that the hour 
 has arrived for him to plant his standard again in 
 this country with good hope of success, when he 
 sees the church of England (the only body that 
 can ofier to his claims a resistance founded alike on 
 ancient possession, and a more real adherence to 
 Scripture and to antiquity) in the relentless grasp 
 of a latitudinarian government ; having bishops 
 forced upon her, whose doctrine she is bound to 
 "hateV — deprived of all power of defining what 
 
 I 1 Rev. ii. 6.
 
 21 
 
 the teaching of her own ministers ought to be, 
 — having the children of the poor, the lambs of 
 Christ, so far as is possible, taken from her to 
 be brought up in an indiiference to religious 
 truth, — debarred from the exercise of that spiri- 
 tual discipline, which she herself declares to be 
 essential to her well-being, — not allowed to 
 withhold her sacred ordinances, no, not even the 
 communion of her Lord's Body and Blood (except 
 under severe penalties) even from the notorious 
 profligate or the avowed unbeliever ; — and lastly 
 forbidden, (in spite of the royal promise prefixed 
 to the articles,) to make any attempt in convo- 
 cation to settle the differences that distract her, 
 to remove the evils that oppress her, to reaffirm 
 the articles of the Christian faith which have 
 been impugned, or even to complain of the 
 grievances under which she labours. 
 
 It appears to us no more than natural that 
 Rome, seeing our church thus held in chains and 
 prevented from putting forth the energy which 
 God hath given her, should think that her own 
 time is come, when she may step in and usurp 
 that office, (which the state so far as it can, is for- 
 bidding the church of England to fulfil,) namely, 
 to be the witness and depository of God's truth, 
 and the guide of souls to their eternal rest. 
 
 In conclusion we desire solemnly and distinctly 
 to declare that while thus deploring the evils that
 
 22 
 
 exist in our own church,' we have no wish to ex- 
 aggerate them, or to forget that other churches 
 are suffering under other and greater evils. 
 
 We beheve that the church of England has 
 neither added to the truth of God, nor taken 
 from it ; and that if she were but allowed to carry 
 out the principles of her formularies, she would 
 present to the world, a real (though it may be an 
 imperfect) likeness of the Primitive Church, as it 
 first rose into life at the descent of the Holy 
 Ghost ; a more real likeness of it, we would ven- 
 ture to affirm, than (with one exception^) any 
 church now existing on earth. 
 
 How deplorable then, that she should be thus 
 held in fetters, while an alien and corrupt com- 
 munion is thereby enabled to occupy her rightful 
 heritage ! the Roman church resolutely and suc- 
 cessfully maintaining her freedom in all essentials 
 both of doctrine and discipline, — that fi^eedom 
 which is withheld indeed from the church of Eng- 
 land alone, whilst the wildest forms of heresy, 
 and even scepticism and atheism, are allowed to 
 spread themselves without restraint throughout 
 the land. 
 
 If there be any of our brethren, whether of 
 the clergy or laity, with whom our voice has 
 
 s Bishop Horsley's saying is well known, ' that if St. Paul 
 were on earth, he would doubtless prefer the Scotch church to 
 all other.'
 
 23 
 
 any influence, we would solemnly entreat them 
 to be instant in prayers day and night for the 
 emancipation of the church ; and careful to 
 search out, and repent of those sins which have 
 moved Almighty God to inflict upon us a mark 
 of His displeasure, so grievous, and so fearfully 
 degi'ading, as the tyranny which now oppresses 
 us. And in these things we trust even those 
 amongst us who appear to differ one from another 
 may find a bond of union. For whilst we sorrow- 
 fully confess that our dissensions, on some matters 
 and in some cases, touch the very substance and 
 vitals of the faith, we thankfully declare our belief 
 that there is much misunderstanding amongst 
 churchmen with respect to each other's views 
 and language, which dispassionate explanation 
 and charitable intercourse might remove. At any 
 rate we are sure that earnest unceasing prayer, 
 and real amendment of life and heart, will, by 
 God's blessing, engender in us such a true, deep- 
 rooted, and loving zeal for the purity and in- 
 tegrity of our Faith, as will bring us in His good 
 time to truth, to unity, and to freedom. And 
 then we need fear no " aggression" from any 
 
 QUARTER. 
 
 \Here foUotoed the signatures of twenty-four of the 
 clergi/.']
 
 OXFORD : 
 PRINTED BY I. SHKIMPTON. 
 
 ^