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 7 
 
 CHARGE 
 
 CLERGY OF THE DIOCESE OF BANGOR, 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE MONTH OF 
 
 SEPTEMBER, 1843. 
 
 CHRISTOPHER, LORD BISHOP OF BANGOR. 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR J. G. F. & J. RIVINGTON, 
 
 ST. Paul's church yard, 
 
 AND WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL. 
 
 1843.
 
 LONDON : 
 OILI'.F.KT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTKRS, 
 
 ST. John's square
 
 CLERGY OF THF] DIOCESE OF BANGOR, 
 
 THIS CHARGE, 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THEIR REQUEST, 
 
 IS DEDICATED, 
 
 BY 
 
 THEIR AFFECTIONATE FRIEND AND BROTHER, 
 
 C. BANGOR.
 
 UIUC 
 
 '-'kr^^^
 
 CHARGE, 
 
 My Reverend Brethren, 
 
 It has pleased a gracious Providence to permit 
 me to undertake a fifth visitation of this Diocese. 
 It is always with satisfaction, tempered with strong 
 feelings of responsibility, and a consciousness of my 
 own defects, that I see the Clergy assembled around 
 me on these occasions. Such feelings naturally in- 
 crease upon us as we advance onward in life, espe- 
 cially when, as is the case with myself, we have 
 measured W'hat the Psalmist calls the days of our 
 years ^ Considerable changes have taken place in 
 our body, not only since my primary visitation in 
 1831, but during the three years that have passed 
 away since I last met you. Even within a few 
 months some of our brethren have been cut off in 
 the prime of life. And if we are still spared, and 
 
 ' Psalm xc. 10.
 
 6 
 
 blessed with health and strength, and faculties of 
 body and mind undecayed, it is our duty to devote 
 the remainder of our days to His service, who has 
 thus spared and blessed us, in the faithful discharge 
 of those obligations which we have contracted to 
 Him, and to His Church, who is " the Shepherd and 
 Bishop of our souls." 
 
 The question which has occasioned much interest 
 in the northern Counties of the Principality, and has 
 been regarded with no little sympathy by numerous 
 friends of our Church in the English Dioceses ; the 
 repeal, I mean, of the law which has provided for 
 the union of the Sees of St. Asaph and Bangor, 
 still continues in suspense. It has been opposed, as 
 you are aware, in influential quaiters, where it was 
 hoped that it might have been favourably entertained. 
 But though I would by no means encourage very 
 sanguine expectations, I will not despair of the ulti- 
 mate success of your appeals to the justice and good 
 feelings of the Government and Legislature. In the 
 mean while an Act has passed for regulating the 
 Cathedrals of Wales, which will, I am disposed to 
 believe, prove satisfactory. It provides that there 
 shall be in each of our Cathedrals four Canonries, 
 two of which are to be annexed to Archdeaconries : 
 and that a house shall be built for the accommoda- 
 tion of the Canons during the time of their residence. 
 This scheme is free from those strong and well- 
 founded objections, which were entertained to the 
 plan proposed in the Report of the Commissioners of
 
 Ecclesiastical inquiry. Some time must probably 
 pass before this Act can be brought into full opera- 
 tion, especially as regards the payment of Canons 
 Residentiary, and the erection of a residence house. 
 An immediate advantage arising from the passing of 
 it is, that our Dioceses will now be placed on the 
 same footiniif with those of Eno^land and South 
 Wales in the distribution of the funds for the 
 augmentation of poor benefices, which are at the 
 disposal of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. 
 
 The Societies in immediate connexion with our 
 Church are carrying on their operations, as far as 
 their resources will permit, with zeal and success, 
 and are fully entitled to your support and co-opera- 
 tion. You are so well acquainted with the consti- 
 tution and objects of these Societies, and the nature 
 and extent of their exertions, that I need not take 
 up your time in enlarging on them. I must how- 
 ever again congratulate you on the benefits which 
 have resulted from the establishment of our Diocesan 
 Society for building and repairing Churches. It has 
 given an impulse to the desire that has been long 
 felt, to improve the condition of our Parish Churches 
 and Chapels, and to render them more worthy of the 
 purposes to which they are dedicated. Much has 
 been done and is doing in this branch of improve- 
 ment, though much more, it must be confessed, 
 still remains to be done. 
 
 I have to regret that the great w^ork of educa- 
 tion, conducted on the j^rinciples of our Church ; of
 
 8 
 
 religious and useful education, I may add, in all forms 
 and phases has not made such advances in this 
 Diocese as we anxiously desire. In some places our 
 National Schools have been conducted with activity 
 and success. But I fear that in our country Parishes 
 the education of the children of the poor is carried on 
 in a very imperfect manner, and in many places, as 
 far as daily schools are concerned, has not even been 
 attempted. I know the difficulties with which the 
 Clergy have to contend in their endeavours to create 
 Parochial Schools ; and how often they are prevented 
 from carrying their wishes into execution, either by 
 the poverty of the parishioners, or by the little im- 
 portance which they attach to education, and what is 
 its natural consequence, their backwardness to con- 
 tribute to the support of useful and efficient schools. 
 It is to be regretted that the landed proprietors do 
 not take a warmer and more general interest in this 
 cause. To provide for the moral and religious edu- 
 cation of those classes of the community, whose 
 labours minister to their opulence, appears to be an 
 unquestionable and obvious duty. And even if they 
 are not swayed by a sense of duty, or by sympathy 
 and Christian love, their own interest might point 
 out to them the advantages that would accrue from 
 having their lands cultivated by a peasantry, trained 
 to orderly habits, and brought up in the nurture and 
 admonition of the Lord. Even where there are schools 
 in Parishes of this description, they are, generally 
 speaking, very imperfectly conducted, from the want
 
 9 
 
 of adequate funds to remunerate a better educated 
 and more efficient class of Masters. The impulse, 
 however, which has been given within the last few 
 years to the progress of education, not only in the 
 poorer, but in the middling classes, will, we may 
 hope, be gradually communicated to these distant 
 quarters of our Island ; and I am satisfied that, as far 
 as circumstances will permit, the Clergy are, and 
 always will be, anxious to promote the establishment 
 and success of these laudable Institutions. Without 
 calling in question the advantages which have at- 
 tended on Sunday schools, it is evident that a system 
 of education confined within such narrow limits of 
 time, and conducted, as is commonly the case, by 
 persons of little knowledge, and little skill in the 
 art of teaching, must be exceedingly scanty and de- 
 fective. 
 
 The state of the children employed in mines and 
 factories, and especially their lamentable want of 
 moral and religious instruction, has of late years 
 attracted much attention and sympathy. The provi- 
 sions of an Act of Parliament intended to secure to 
 the poor children in the factories some sort of educa- 
 tion having been much and generally evaded, a bill 
 was brought into the House of Commons in the course 
 of the last Session, one object of which was to render 
 those provisions more stringent, and to establish a 
 system of education suited to the exigence of the 
 case, in those neglected regions. I will not dwell 
 upon the extraordinary movement by which that
 
 10 
 
 measure was defeated, nor on the strange misrepre- 
 sentations which led many of our neighbours to join 
 in that outcry. When they were told that the real 
 object of the educational clauses of this bill was to 
 shut up the schools conducted by Methodists and 
 Dissenters, and to compel the children of the poor, 
 both in the factories and elsewhere, to attend the 
 schools of the Established Church, though we may 
 feel some surprise at their credulity, we cannot 
 wonder at their opposition to a measure which, as 
 they were led to believe, aimed a blow at those 
 liberties, which Dissenters of every denomination had 
 long enjoyed. But though I have no doubt that, 
 had this bill passed, the Clergy of those districts 
 would have lent their aid in carrying its provisions 
 into effect, the clauses in question were by no means 
 in accordance with their views, nor with the system 
 followed in our National Schools : nor, however anx- 
 ious they have always been to promote the moral 
 and religious training of these poor and neglected 
 children, had they any share, to the best of my 
 knowledge and belief, in advising or constructing 
 this misrepresented measure. 
 
 But while we regret the miscarriage of this plan, 
 not as having originated with ourselves, or as being 
 in unison with our own views, but as having been 
 calculated with all its defects to apply some remedy 
 to a moral disease of no little virulence, it is satis- 
 factory to know that exertions are making to supply 
 in some degree the failure of the government measure.
 
 n 
 
 Considerable funds have been already raised, and, as 
 we hope, will go on increasing, for the establishment 
 of schools in connexion with the National Society, 
 and under the superintendence of the Parochial 
 Clergy, in our manufacturing and mining districts. 
 These voluntary exertions (if exertions springing 
 from obedience to God's will, and the binding obliga- 
 tions of Christian love may be called voluntary) 
 will, we trust, under the Divine blessing, be success- 
 ful in accomplishing some part, at least, of their 
 object; and will help to stem that torrent of im- 
 morality and irreligion which must necessarily come 
 down with increasing force and impetuosity, if the 
 rising generations are left unheeded and uninstructed, 
 in ignorance of God and His ways, and of their own 
 duties and responsibilities. 
 
 Of the present state of our Church in the Diocese, 
 or of any strong signs of a returning attachment to 
 it, I cannot speak with satisfaction. There has 
 been a considerable increase of Meeting-houses 
 belonging to Sectaries of different denominations, 
 and it would seem to be a standing rule of these 
 societies, that wherever one sect has established 
 itself, another shall break ground, and endeavour 
 to form a rival establishment. Meeting-houses are 
 often built, not because the neighbourhood contains 
 members of the sect by which they are erected, but 
 with the hope of forming congregations, and making 
 proselytes. As population advances, and collections 
 of houses are built. Meeting-houses almost invariably
 
 12 
 
 spring up, and we know with what ease, and on what 
 terms funds are procured for raising those cheap and 
 homely buildings. These are things which give much 
 pain to those who know, that in the will of God, 
 and the design of our blessed Master, the Church is 
 a city that is at unity in itself, a spiritual body, in 
 which there ought to be no schism, no divisions in 
 the public worship of God, no differences of faith 
 or practice, no breaches of Christian fellowship and 
 union. 
 
 I find in some of the returns which you have 
 lately made to me, two reasons assigned for the 
 appearance of an increase of alienation from our 
 Catholic and Apostolic communion. The one is the 
 ferment which has been occasioned by those clauses 
 of the Factory Bill on which I have already touched. 
 The other, a notion which has been instilled into the 
 minds of the people, that a large portion of our 
 clergy have adopted opinions at variance with the 
 principles of the Reformation, and are rapidly falhng 
 back into the worst errors of the Papists. Of these 
 opinions I shall speak presently. But though the 
 minds of ignorant and credulous persons may be led 
 astray by these representations, I feel confident that 
 you, my reverend brethren, do not partake of what I 
 will venture to call such groundless apprehensions. 
 Whatever may be the errors and extravagancies of 
 some individuals, our Church will remain grounded 
 and settled in the faith ; she will maintain her prin- 
 ciples unshaken, and will not suffer herself " to be 
 
 8
 
 13 
 
 entangled again with the yoke of bondageS" from 
 which a merciful Providence has made her free. 
 
 Convinced then as we are of the soundness of our 
 Church's doctrine, and of the Apostolical form of 
 her Polity, and being persuaded that she will never 
 shrink from her professions and engagements, we 
 look forward with hope, and trust to a time when 
 our Christian brethren, who are now, more or less, 
 estranged from her, will take refuge in her bosom 
 from fluctuations of opinions, and the conflicts of 
 rival parties; when "the mountain of the Lord's 
 house," humbled, as it may now seem to be, in these 
 regions " shall be established on the top of the moun- 
 tains, and exalted above the hills, and all our people 
 shall flow into it \" 
 
 Though this, however, is a hope, which God's 
 promises to His Church may well justify us in encou- 
 raging, it is a state of things which even the youngest 
 of you, my reverend brethren, cannot expect to 
 witness. Yet you must do your best to hasten this 
 consummation, and to subserve the designs of God's 
 providence by zeal and earnestness in religion, a 
 faithful discharge of your pastoral duties and obliga- 
 tions, a blameless conversation, and a pure and holy 
 life. For every neglect of duty, and not only the 
 taint, but even the suspicion of immorality, is a 
 drawback on ministerial usefulness, and a hindrance 
 of the means by which God accomplishes His ends, 
 and promotes the safety and welfare of His Church. 
 
 - Gal. V. 1. * Isaiah ii. 2.
 
 14 
 
 We cannot, however, set forward this unity, nor 
 hope to revive an attachment to the teaching and 
 services of the Church, unless we are at unity in 
 ourselves, and hold fast with one mind and consent 
 the form of doctrine delivered to us, the rules and 
 orders of our Church, that government which we 
 believe to be Apostolical, and the principles of that 
 Reformation which was, as we are persuaded, a great 
 and blessed work of Divine Providence. If we sepa- 
 rate ourselves into parties, and give ourselves party 
 names and distinctions, or call our brethren by names 
 which they disclaim and repudiate, we shall be bad 
 advocates of Christian unity. If among the signs of 
 the times, we see or apprehend fresh excitements, 
 or new causes of division in our own body, we must 
 endeavour, as far as we can, without compromising 
 the truth, or swerving from our principles, to bring 
 the conflicting parties to a better understanding ; 
 and should we be constrained to censure or con- 
 demn, we must " let our moderation," our gentleness, 
 and charitable consideration for the errors and infir- 
 mities of our brethren, "be known unto all men'." 
 
 My Reverend Brethren, though I have not accus- 
 tomed myself in my triennial addresses to you, to 
 enter largely into theological controversies ; indeed, 
 had I been ever so much disposed to do so, the 
 important matters to which I have been compelled 
 to draw your attention, would have precluded me 
 
 * Phil. iv. 5. TO £7ri£tk£c hfjuor.
 
 15 
 
 from embarking at any leng-th in such discussions ; 
 the state of excitement to which the writings and 
 opinions usually called Tractarian, have given occa- 
 sion, and the notice that has been taken of them 
 by several of my Right Reverend brethren, seem to 
 require that I should not omit all mention of these 
 subjects of debate and disagreement. These discus- 
 sions have caused much uneasiness to reflecting 
 Churchmen, and lovers of moderate counsels, not 
 only because they give our adversaries an occasion of 
 misrepresenting and speaking evil of us, nor only 
 because they have given birth to divisions among 
 those who are servants of the same Lord, and minis- 
 ters at the same altar, but because those divisions 
 have encouraged a tone of feeling and language not 
 well calculated to strengthen that bond of i)eace, 
 and to promote that unity of the Spirit with which 
 we, who are ambassadors for Christ, should keep the 
 faith, and hold fast that good thing that has been 
 committed to us. 
 
 In the early stages of what has been since called 
 this religious movement, there were, I believe, few 
 members of our Church, of moderate views, and 
 attached to no party interests, who did not look 
 with some degree of favour on these writings. They 
 gave prominence to those sound Ecclesiastical princi- 
 ples, which, though they had never been lost sight 
 of, and had been advocated down to the time when 
 these tracts made their appearance by writers of 
 eminence, (note A. Appendix,) had nevertheless been
 
 16 
 
 very generally overlooked, and had lost much of their 
 influence. The nature, I mean, and constitution of 
 the Christian Church ; the origin and descent of the 
 Christian ministry, tracing backward its commission 
 in a direct line to the Apostles of Christ, and through 
 them to Christ Himself; and the efficacy of the 
 Sacraments, not as signs merely, but as eiFectual 
 signs, channels or conveyances, of that grace which 
 they symbolize. They endeavoured to impress on 
 the minds of Theological students the importance of 
 Ecclesiastical history, and the writings of the early 
 Christians, as sources of information well calculated, 
 on grounds of reason and approved criticism, to assist 
 them in ascertaining the sense of those passages of 
 Scripture, which have given most occasion to debates 
 and differences of opinion: the very mode, be it 
 remembered, which our Reformers adopted, when 
 they drew the line between the primitive doctrine 
 and discipline of the Catholic Church, and the errors 
 and corruptions of the Church of Rome. They drew 
 the attention of the clergy to some laws and regu- 
 lations of our ovm Church, which had too generally 
 fallen into disuse and neglect. At the same time, 
 their writings manifested an earnest desire to raise 
 the standard of holiness, and to lead men to a safer 
 and more scriptural method of ascertaining their own 
 spiritual state and prospects, than that which had 
 obtained, and still, I fear, continues to obtain much 
 currency and popularity. 
 
 There were, indeed, intermixed with these just
 
 17 
 
 views and sound prirciples, passages to be found, 
 even in their early writings, liable to strong excep- 
 tions, and statements which they who looked with 
 favour on their publications, were willing to hope 
 would be revised and corrected. In this expectation 
 they have been disappointed, and prominence has 
 been given to those objectionable points, which it 
 was hoped might, on fuller consideration, have been 
 modified or retracted. (Note B, Appendix.) 
 
 In forming therefore a judgment of the merits 
 and demerits of these writers, we must not condemn 
 them indiscriminately, nor join in those harsh and 
 ill-advised general censures, which have been so 
 lavishly bestowed on them. Many, I fear, of those 
 who have spoken of them and their tenets in the 
 most bitter terms, have known little of their writings 
 beyond what they have collected from hearsay, or at 
 second hand, and from very questionable authority ; 
 the authority, for instance, of anonymous pamphlets, 
 and newspapers, and publications of that description, 
 in which much fairness of discussion is not to be 
 expected, and where religious controversies are often 
 handled in the spirit of political partisanship. Nor 
 can it be denied, that the learning, and piety, and 
 irreproachable character of the individuals, who are 
 best known as the writers of these Tracts, entitle 
 them to much respect and forbearance. Perhaps, 
 indeed, the wrong direction which their opinions 
 have taken, may be owing in some measure to the 
 nature of the opposition which they have encoun- 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 tered. For experience proves, that men are apt 
 to be confirmed in their prejudices and ways of 
 thinking, however erroneous they may be, when 
 their opponents treat them with unfairness and 
 unkindness, and under the plea of zeal divest 
 themselves of Christian condescension and charity. 
 
 But after making every allowance for the upright- 
 ness and good intentions of the writers, the sound- 
 ness and orthodoxy of many of the principles which 
 they have advocated, and the advantages which 
 have resulted from their labours, it must be con- 
 fessed that their opinions have in many respects 
 taken a wrong direction, and assumed an exag- 
 gerated, and therefore an erroneous form ; and that 
 much of what they have written is, under the most 
 favourable construction, liable to just exceptions and 
 censure. In an address of this kind, I cannot, of 
 course, enter into an analysis of their writings and 
 opinions ; but must content myself with animad- 
 verting on a few of those leading features of their 
 Theological school (if I may so express myself,) which 
 seem to me to be exceedingly objectionable. 
 
 In the first place they appear to have thrown (the 
 phrase is, I believe, their own) themselves into a 
 system, or, I should rather say, have been following 
 the phantom of a system, which they call Catholic, 
 and hold up to admiration as something infinitely 
 superior to the imperfect and lifeless Catholicism of 
 our own Church. For I cannot discover that they 
 have any clear or definite notion of the system which
 
 19 
 
 they admire, or have drawn any precise line between 
 Catholic truths and traditions, and Uncatholic errors 
 and corruptions of doctrine and discipline. We must 
 not, however, suffer ourselves to be led astray by the 
 cloudy grandeur of this or any system. We, at least, 
 who have neither leisure nor opportunities for fol- 
 lowing it out in detail, and tracing it upward to its 
 sources, shall content ourselves with regarding that 
 branch of the Church Catholic and Apostolic to 
 which our services are devoted, as the representative 
 of Catholic truth and the Catholic system ; as hold- 
 ing those doctrines and possessing that form of go- 
 vernment which the whole Church of Christ, dis- 
 persed throughout the world, held and possessed in 
 her best and purest ages. And we shall not allow 
 ourselves to admire or long after any tenets or prac- 
 tices which our Church has rejected as superstitious, 
 or laid aside as unnecessary, under the imposing 
 name of parts of the great Catholic system. 
 
 The next point to which I will advert is the use 
 which they make of the Fathers (as they are usually 
 called) ; the Christian writers, that is, of the earlier 
 ages of the Church, whose writings have been handed 
 down to us. (Note C, Appendix.) I have mentioned 
 with approbation their endeavours to direct the atten- 
 tion of Theological students to these sources of infor- 
 mation, and the advantages which may be expected 
 to arise from this course of study. But we shall err 
 widely in another direction if, as seems to be the 
 case with these writers, we consider their decisions 
 
 b2
 
 20 
 
 as authoritative, and throw ourselves upon them with 
 unqualified deference and submission. Their works 
 should be examined by the same rules of judgment 
 by which we examine those of later Divines, or of 
 authors in other departments of literature. We owe 
 them great respect as witnesses of the prevailing 
 opinions and practices of their own times, and of 
 what the Church Catholic then taught and received. 
 But we must not look on them as men exempt from 
 the bias of human passions and infirmities, nor as 
 infallible judges of controversies. It must be remem- 
 bered, too, that the farther the streams flow off from 
 the fountain-head, the less pure and wholesome they 
 become : that the seeds of many of the worst cor- 
 ruptions of doctrine and ceremonies which have de- 
 faced the beauty and comeliness of the Church were 
 already sown in the days of some of the most re- 
 nowned of these Fathers ; and that several of those 
 gross errors which were abandoned and expunged by 
 our Church at the era of the Reformation, had their 
 origin in the glowing rhetoric and exaggerated lan- 
 guage of these pious writers. Hence the attempt 
 that has been made to recommend to our notice and 
 sympathy the applauses which they bestow on celi- 
 bacy, ascetism, and the monastic life, and their vene- 
 ration for relics ; and the approach, at least, to ap- 
 probation with which their prayers for the dead, and 
 the invocation of the saints which they practised and 
 encouraged, have been spoken of by the writers of 
 these tracts and their followers, appear to me inju-
 
 'Jl 
 
 dicious and offensive. On the same ground, I am 
 bound to express my disapprobation of the course 
 which has been sometimes pursued of accumulating 
 and giving prominence to those rhetorical amplifica- 
 tions which are often found in the writings of the 
 Fathers, when they speak of the real presence of 
 Christ in the Eucharist. (Note D, Appendix.) For 
 though these passages may admit of what I would 
 venture to call a Catholic interpretation, a sense, I 
 mean, consistent with the doctrine and practice of 
 the Universal Church before these modes of expres- 
 sion came into vogue, still it can scarcely be doubted 
 that those gross corruptions of the truth, the doc- 
 trine of the corporal presence, of transubstantiation, 
 of the sacrifice in the mass for the dead and the 
 living, and the whole train of superstitious opinions 
 and practices which have been grounded on it, ori- 
 ginated in these rhetorical exaggerations. And it is 
 to be feared that young and inexperienced minds, 
 when such passages are brought as it were to a focus, 
 and made to act upon them without relief or expla- 
 nation, if they are not perverted and misled, will, at 
 all events, be thrown into a state of doubt and per- 
 plexity, and will learn to look vvith coldness and 
 dissatisfaction on the more sober and well weighed 
 statements of their own Church. 
 
 But the writers of this school have exposed them- 
 .selves to very grave reprehensions, by endeavouring 
 to soften down and extenuate those errors and cor- 
 ruptions of the Church of Rome, which our own
 
 9-^ 
 
 Church, and the other reformed Churches, have un- 
 equivocally condemned. A remarkable specimen of 
 this unhappy bias, and of a misapplication of talents 
 and ingenuity, and skilfulness in controversial tac- 
 tics, is to be found in the last number of the Tracts 
 for the Times. In that Tract, among other objec- 
 tionable positions, incompatible, as it would seem, 
 with those principles of the Reformation which our 
 Church has embraced, an attempt has been made to 
 show that " the Romish doctrine," condemned in our 
 twenty-second Article of religion, " concerning pur- 
 gatory, pardons, worshipping, and adoration, as well 
 of images as of relics, as also invocation of the 
 saints," is not the doctrine publicly professed by the 
 Church of Rome, and ultimately sanctioned by the 
 decrees of the Council of Trent, but certain super- 
 stitious practices and opinions, which, though tole- 
 rated and winked at by that Church, form no part of 
 its system. The inference drawn from these state- 
 ments appears to be, that, I will not say Protestants 
 (for this is a term which these writers have of late 
 taken great pains to obelize and repudiate), but 
 members of the Church of England, may safely hold 
 this doctrine, as it is authoritatively taught by the 
 Church of Rome, without contravening the doctrine 
 of our own Church, or offending against the spirit of 
 this Article of religion. Now no one who is ac- 
 quainted with the history of those times, can doubt 
 that it was the intention of the Reformers to con- 
 demn unreservedly these doctrines, as they were held
 
 23 
 
 and acted upon in the Church of Rome at the time 
 when God's providence called them to their great 
 and necessary work : nor can it be doubted that it 
 was the object of that Council to give sanction and 
 fresh authority to the doctrine which she had taught, 
 and which had been rejected and condemned by the 
 Reformers. That Council may have condemned a 
 few gross and glaring indecencies connected with 
 these matters, but it not only left the doctrines them- 
 selves, the principles on which they were grounded, 
 and the practices to which they necessarily led, un- 
 touched, but they were converted into articles of 
 faith, and added to the ancient creed of the Church 
 Catholic and Apostolic. 
 
 It has been urged that the line of argument pur- 
 sued in this Tract, and the sense there affixed to the 
 several articles of our Church brought under review, 
 were intended to confirm in their attachment to the 
 Church of England certain persons whose minds 
 were going astray in the direction of Rome. But I 
 feel convinced that the tendency of this Tract is to 
 draw such minds still nearer to Rome, by palliating 
 the evils of her doctrine and practice, and cutting 
 from under our feet that ground of necessity, and of 
 an imperious sense of obligation, on which our 
 Reformation is based. (Note E, Appendix.) 
 
 But while the writers of this school have been 
 taking pains to soften down the corruptions, and to 
 throw a veil over the tyranny and usurpations of the 
 Romish Church, it has been a part of their system.
 
 24 
 
 in its more advanced stages, to depreciate not only 
 the Reformation in general, but the Reformation of 
 our own branch of the Church Catholic ; and to treat, 
 what we have been accustomed to consider a signal 
 work of God's good providence, as a misfortune or a 
 calamity. The principles of the Reformation have 
 been arraigned as unsound, if not schismatical, and 
 the characters and conduct of some of those great 
 Prelates and Divines, who had a leading share in this 
 great work, have been assailed in harsh and unbe- 
 coming terms. They have done much, likewise, to 
 set ardent and inexperienced minds adrift in pursuit 
 of an unity that is utterly unattainable, while the 
 Church of Rome continues what she is, and the 
 Church of England remains true to her principles. 
 While we maintain, to a certain extent, an union 
 with that Church, in the fundamental truths, I mean, 
 of Christianity, as expressed in our Creeds, and de- 
 fined by the four first general councils, we can have 
 no communion with her in her errors and corrup- 
 tions, nor in her superstitious and (for such they are 
 to us) idolatrous practices. We cannot purchase 
 unity at the expense of acknowledging Rome to be 
 the mother and mistress of all Churches, and her 
 bishop to be the centre of unity, and the Vicar of 
 Christ, having authority over His whole Church, and 
 entitled to the deference and obedience of all Chris- 
 tians. (Note F, Appendix.) 
 
 Another point to which I must draw your atten- 
 tion, is the habit which they have contracted of
 
 25 
 
 speaking of Protestantism in terms of almost unmea- 
 sured obloquy, as a system inconsistent, as they seem 
 to think, with Evangelical truth and Apostolical 
 Polity. Without adverting to the occasion on which 
 this word was first adopted as a symbol of a religious 
 party, we know that those Churches which withdrew 
 themselves from the obedience and renounced the 
 errors of the Church of Rome in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, have been called by the common name of Pro- 
 testant, and that the members of those Churches have 
 been called Protestants. But whatever differences 
 may have existed between these Churches in other 
 matters, they all maintained with earnestness and 
 unanimity the fundamental principles of Christian 
 doctrine, and, as far as these principles are concerned, 
 to be a Protestant was to be an orthodox Christian. 
 Hence we find those eminent Divines of the seven- 
 teenth century, with whom these writers seem will- 
 ing to identify themselves, professing to be, and glo- 
 rying in the name of Protestants. If some of those 
 who call themselves Protestants have since fallen 
 into heterodox, or latitudinarian, or rationalistic opi- 
 nions, or if some Protestants have carried to an 
 unwarrantable length the principle of private judg- 
 ment in opposition to the authoritative teaching of 
 the Church, their errors, however much we may 
 lament them, are no impeachment of Protestantism 
 itself, nor any proof of the unsoundness of the posi- 
 tions on which it made its stand against papal per- 
 version. Into whatever excesses some persons or
 
 26 
 
 sects calling themselves Protestant may have been 
 hurried, we shall not on that account consent to 
 unprotestantize our Church either in substance or in 
 name, no more than we will consent to disavow 
 being Catholic Christians because Rome claims for 
 herself an exclusive right to Catholicity, and invests 
 her corrupt doctrines and practices with that vene- 
 rable title. 
 
 There are other matters in the writings that have 
 emanated from this school to which I might have 
 directed your attention ; but I must content myself 
 with animadverting thus briefly on what seem to 
 me to be some of the most objectionable peculia- 
 rities of their teaching. Whatever opinions you 
 may have formed on the general merits or demerits 
 of these publications, I am willing to persuade my- 
 self that you will go along with me in the observa- 
 tions which I have made on them. I feel confident 
 that you will look to your own Church as a faithful 
 representative of the Catholic system ; and to her 
 authoritative teaching as a standard of Catholic 
 truth : that while you yield a just and reasonable 
 deference to the remains of Christian antiquity, you 
 will examine the writings of the Fathers, or the 
 statements which are laid before you as containing 
 the substance of what they believed and taught, by 
 the light of Scriptural truth, and weigh them in the 
 balance of a sound and judicious criticism : and that 
 you will look with suspicion on all attempts that 
 may be made to palliate and excuse the real errors
 
 •27 
 
 and corruptions, the arrogant claims, and supersti- 
 tious usages of the Church of Rome ; and to depre- 
 ciate that Reformation which we acknowledge to be 
 God's work, and a blessing for which we cannot be 
 too thankful. While you lament that so large a 
 portion of the Christian world, whether we look to 
 the eastern or the western Churches, should adhere to 
 opinions and practices with which you can hold no 
 communion, you will not allow your minds to be turned 
 adrift after a theoretical unity, which, in the present 
 state of those Churches, is impracticable. You will 
 pray, as your Church teaches you, for the revival of 
 that unity which Christ designed to be the badge of 
 His disciples; but you will not sacrifice substantial 
 truth to an unreal unity. 
 
 But while you feel no sympathy with the erro- 
 neous views and opinions which have emanated from 
 this school of Theology, you will be equally on your 
 guard against the latitudinarian practices and opi- 
 nions which they have opposed with earnestness and 
 success. You will not rank among the errors of 
 Tractarianism a strong attachment to the polity and 
 orders of your own Church, as a faithful representa- 
 tive of the Church Catholic and Apostolic ; a vene- 
 ration for her liturgy, and attention to her forms, and 
 ceremonies, and directions ; a just sense of the dig- 
 nity and efficacy of the Sacraments ; and a convic- 
 tion that preaching is not the only means of grace, 
 nor hearing sermons the main part of religion. 
 Whilst you acknowledge the necessity of the in-
 
 28 
 
 structions of the pulpit, and assign to them their 
 due weight and importance, you will consider com- 
 munion in sacraments and prayers, and the worship 
 of God in spirit and in truth, as the chief and most 
 urgent business of our Christian assemblies. You 
 will not brand with this name a strong persuasion of 
 the dangers and mischiefs of schism, nor of the in- 
 jurious consequences of the misuse of the right inhe- 
 rent in our nature ; of which no man can in reality 
 divest himself; the right, I mean, of private judg- 
 ment in questions of religion, and the concerns of 
 the soul. 
 
 At the same time, I feel confident that you will 
 not commit yourselves to the harsh language and 
 uncharitable tone of censure with which these writers 
 have been sometimes visited ; nor will you impeach 
 their motives nor speak disrespectfully of their per- 
 sons. However widely they may have departed from 
 the straight path, we need not call the uprightness 
 of their intentions in question. Much, for instance, 
 as I disapprove of the mode of reasoning employed 
 in the 90th "Tract for the Times ;" the attempting, 
 I mean, to explain away facts and statements, the 
 meaning of which is sufficiently clear and intelligible, 
 by ingenious arguments and evasive distinctions, I 
 cannot charge the writer with bad faith or dishonest 
 evasion. Unfortunately it is a mode of reasoning which 
 men deeply embarked in controversy are but too ready 
 to adopt ; of which specimens may be found in the 
 writinirs of eminent divines : and to which some of
 
 29 
 
 those who in this case have used the strongest terms 
 of disapprobation, have, perhaps, in other cases, un- 
 consciously, as I am ready to believe, resorted. (Note 
 G, Appendix.) 
 
 I do not, I confess, look on this movement with 
 the same apprehension and alarm, with which many 
 persons for whom I have great respect seem to 
 reofard it. Amonof those who have on the whole 
 looked on these writers with some sort of favour, 
 their publications have been received with very dif- 
 ferent degrees of approbation. Few men, I believe, 
 of judgment and experience have gone all lengths 
 with them, and thrown themselves unreservedly into 
 their system. — It is not surprising that many young 
 men should have been dazzled by their talents, or 
 led to a more unqualified admiration of their opi- 
 nions by their earnestness in religion and exemplary 
 lives. But it is to be hoped that years and expe- 
 rience, and that more sober and practical view of 
 Christian truth which will attend on the exercise of 
 their pastoral functions, collision with other minds, 
 and an acquaintance with the sentiments of other 
 men, will weaken these early impressions, and cor- 
 rect any wrong direction that may have been given 
 to their views of religion. And I am willing to per- 
 suade myself that, under the blessing of that Pro- 
 vidence which has watched over and preserved this 
 favoured branch of Christ's Holy Catholic Church, 
 and rescued it both from perils and persecutions, 
 and, as we humbly trust, from the more fatal evils of
 
 30 
 
 supineness and security, the effects of any erroneous 
 and exaggerated opinions, or any disorderly prac- 
 tices to which they may have given occasion, will 
 soon pass away ; while the sounder and more Catholic 
 principles, to which these publications have attracted 
 attention, continue to act permanently and effici- 
 ently. 
 
 My Reverend Brethren, — While I thus remind 
 you, in the remarks which I have made on the writ- 
 ings of this school, of the duty of a conscientious 
 adherence to the principles, and to the rules and 
 regulations of our Church, I am compelled to ex- 
 press a fear that in some, I trust a very few cases, 
 within this Diocese (I am of course speaking of those 
 to whom these principles ought to be dear, and these 
 laws binding), those principles have sometimes been 
 thrown into the back-ground, and those laws and 
 regulations overlooked. I have on former occasions 
 spoken of certain irregularities in the performance of 
 the public services of the Church, in full confidence 
 that they would be remedied. But I have since 
 heard that considerable portions of those services, 
 of the morning service especially, are sometimes 
 omitted. On the reasons which may be assigned 
 for such omissions I will not dilate. Whether they 
 have taken place because where a Clergyman has to 
 officiate in more than one church, the services tread 
 closely one upon the other, or in order that longer 
 time may be allowed for the Sermon, or from a wish 
 to fall in with the tastes of the congregation, they
 
 31 
 
 are equally inadmissible. Such practices are un- 
 known, as far as my experience goes, in the English 
 Dioceses ; they are offences against decency and good 
 order ; they scandalize the friends of the Church, 
 and brino' discredit on the Church itself. These 
 practices, if they exist, must be discontinued, and 
 such arrangements made for the discharge of those 
 public duties as shall cut off the plea of necessity. 
 
 Another statement has been made which, I trust, 
 is not correct — that there are Clergymen who do not 
 scruple attendance at Dissenting places of worship, 
 thus giving their sanction to opinions that are, T 
 fear, too commonly held, that there is no difference 
 between the Church and the Meeting-house, and 
 that there is no such sin as schism. But if there 
 are any of the Clergy who allow themselves this 
 liberty, they may be sure that, while they give offence 
 to the sound part of their own Church and to 
 thoughtful Christians of all denominations, they will 
 not secure the good-will of those whom they expect 
 to conciliate by this show of liberality. 
 
 I have been compelled to make these remarks, 
 because, as you are aware, statements to this effect 
 have been publicly made, and have not, as far as I 
 know, been sufficiently contradicted. (Note H, Ap- 
 pendix.) But as I feel convinced that such cases 
 of irregularity are few, so I trust that wherever 
 they have occurred they will be at once and alto- 
 gether abandoned. 
 
 There are other topics to which, if the time had
 
 32 
 
 permitted, I might have entreated your attention. 
 But as I have already made a large demand upon 
 your patience, I will now take my leave of you, 
 praying both for you and for myself to the Fountain 
 of all goodness, that we may have grace to strive 
 together with one mind for the faith of the Gospel, 
 to set forward among a Christian people, and to 
 exhibit in ourselves, quietness, peace, and love, the 
 unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, a wise and 
 seasonable moderation, a regard for our personal and 
 professional character, and a just sense of the im- 
 portance of our Ministry, as messengers, stewards, 
 and watchmen of the Lord : keeping that which is 
 committed to our trust, and striving, under all cir- 
 cumstances that may befall us, through good report 
 and evil report, whether we fail of success in the 
 business to which we are called, or see the fruit of 
 our travails, to do the work of Evangelists, and 
 Pastors, and Teachers, and to make full proof of our 
 Ministry.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note A. — Page 15. 
 
 The statements of these questions contained in the earlier 
 publications of the writers of the Tracts, and the arguments 
 employed in support of them, are the same as those used 
 from the time of the Reformation by the eminent persons 
 who have been looked up to as the most learned and 
 orthodox of our Anglican Divines. Many persons who 
 have taken part in these controversies have treated the 
 opinions of the Tract writers on these questions as novel- 
 ties or popish errors. On the other hand, some of their 
 encomiasts have spoken of them as truths which had been 
 forgotten and lost to the Church till they were rescued 
 from oblivion by the writers of the Tracts. It may be 
 allowed that they were kept much in the back-ground, 
 and that many members of our Church seemed disposed 
 to surrender them altogether ; but they never ceased to be 
 held and avowed by a large body of both the Clergy and 
 Laity of the Church of England. In illustration of this 
 fact, we need only refer to the writings of Archdeacon 
 Daubeny, and Mr. Jones of Nayland, whose works on 
 the Church were widely circulated, and received with great 
 approbation. The little tract of the last-named writer, 
 called " A Catechism of the Church," contains in a small 
 
 c
 
 34 
 
 compass most of the arguments used by the writers of the 
 Tracts when handUng these questions. 
 
 But if it is absurd to call these doctrines forgotten 
 truths, it is not less so to call them novelties or popish 
 errors. However widely we may differ from the Church 
 of Rome in matters of detail connected with these ques- 
 tions, she agrees with us in the main principles which we 
 advocate, because they are co-existent with the Church 
 itself, — that the Church is a spiritual and visible body, 
 founded by Christ for the maintenance and propagation of 
 the truth, and the salvation of mankind ; that in subordi- 
 nation to Christ it has been placed under rulers of its own, 
 deriving their commission and authority in succession from 
 the Apostles ; that it has power to decree rites and cere- 
 monies, and authority in controversies of faith (a power 
 which our own Church professes to exercise under certain 
 limitations) ; and that sacraments are not merely signs, 
 but efficacious signs of grace; signs, that is, which in a 
 subordinate and instrumental manner effect that which 
 they symbolize. But these opinions (if opinions they may 
 be called) are not Popish, but Christian, coeval with the 
 Church, and either implied in its very existence, or 
 grounded on authority of Scripture. 
 
 Note B. — Page 17. 
 
 I quote a few objectionable passages from the early pub- 
 lications of these writers. 
 
 Tract V. page 2. 
 
 The Clergy are called " a body of men having a commis- 
 sion from Christ Himself to admit us into his fold, and to
 
 35 
 
 nourish us in the same, not only with the pure word of 
 his pure doctrine, but ivith the spiritual nourishment of his 
 most blessed body and bloods 
 
 This is a sample of the disposition of these writers to 
 over-rate the dignity of the sacerdotal office, and espe- 
 cially to ascribe to the Clergy a kind of mysterious and 
 supernatural power in the administration of the Lord's 
 Supper. None but Christ Himself can nourish us with 
 his body and blood. The Clergy have a dispensation or 
 stewardship (oiKovojutav) committed to them. As the 
 Steward of the household dispensed to the servants of the 
 family that food which, when taken and received by them, 
 became, through the operation of divine providence, the 
 nourishment of their bodies, so the Lord's Stewards dis- 
 pense to the members of his Church those consecrated 
 elements of bread and wine which, when taken and re- 
 ceived by the faithful, become to them the body and blood 
 of Christ, and the nourishment of their souls. 
 
 Tract V. page 2. 
 
 " No command of an earthly king, no ordinance of an 
 earthly legislator, could invest with power over the gifts of 
 the Holy Ghost. For such we may well term the power duly 
 to administer the sacraments which Christ has ordained." 
 
 This, again, appears to me unwarrantable language. We 
 have authority given us by Christ to preach the word and 
 minister the sacraments, and we believe that the grace of 
 the Holy Spirit attends upon these ordinances. But we 
 have no power over the gifts of the Holy Ghost : that 
 power is his own, and He reserves it to Himself, dividing 
 to every man severally as He wills. 
 
 Tract VIL page 2. 
 " It is not merely because Episcopacy is a better or 
 
 C2
 
 36 
 
 more scriptural form than Presbyterianism (true as this 
 may be in itself), that EpiscopaHans are right and Presby- 
 terians wrong ; but because Presbyterians have assumed a 
 power which never belonged to them. They have pre- 
 sumed to exercise a power of ordination, and to perpetuate 
 a succession, not having received a commission to do so." 
 
 This passage appears peremptorily to deny the validity 
 of the Orders, Sacraments, &c. of the reformed Churches 
 that have been deprived of the benefit of Episcopacy. 
 But our Divines, who have attached a high importance to 
 the Apostolical succession of the ministry, have been ac- 
 customed (with a few exceptions, perhaps) to make allow- 
 ance for the circumstances in which those Churches were 
 placed, and have expressed a conviction that, however im- 
 perfect their form of Ecclesiastical Polity, they were not 
 excluded from the pale of the Universal Church, nor de- 
 prived of the benefits of Christian Orders and Sacraments. 
 
 It must be observed, that in another Tract the view 
 of this question usually taken by our standard Divines is 
 maintained. The passage to which I allude occurs toward 
 the close of the 15th Tract, and advocates the more chari- 
 table opinion with reference to the case of Luther and the 
 Lutheran Churches. 
 
 Tract X. page 1. 
 
 "Then you will honour us with a purer honour than 
 you do now, as those who are entrusted with the keys of 
 heaven and hell, entrusted with the awful and mysterious 
 power of making the bread and wine Christ's body and 
 blood." 
 
 It is needless to remark on the absurd exaggerations of 
 this passage, or the resemblance of the pretensions which it 
 puts forward to the claims and corruptions of the Church 
 of Rome. It is not improbable that similar language may
 
 37 
 
 be found in the writings of the Fathers. But when their 
 rhetorical hyperboles have been converted into doctrines 
 or supposed matters of fact, they can no longer be em- 
 ployed without hazard. 
 
 Tract XXXII. — Standing Ordinances of Religion. 
 
 " Had we been left to conjecture, we might have sup- 
 posed that in the more perfect and spiritual system the 
 gifts of grace would rather have been attached to certain 
 high moral performances : whereas they are deposited in 
 mere positive ordinances, as if to warn us against dropping 
 the ceremonial of Christianity." 
 
 We believe that the gifts of grace attend upon and 
 accompany these ordinances, but to say that they are depo- 
 sited in them, is highly injudicious and improper. The 
 words seem likewise to imply, what I am convinced was 
 not the intention of the writer, that these gifts are con- 
 fined exclusively to positive ordinances, and that they 
 depend in no degree on the moral qualifications of those 
 who partake of them. 
 
 Tract XXXYlll.— Via Media. 
 
 " I receive the Church as a messenger from Christ, 
 rich in treasures, old and new, and with the accumulated 
 wealth of ages.^' 
 
 By treasures old and new, and the accumulated wealth 
 of ages, are probably meant the doctrines and ceremonies 
 of the Church, the decrees of Councils, and the writings 
 of Divines, from the age of the Apostles to the present 
 time. But in dealing wath this accumulated wealth, we 
 must be careful to separate between the fine gold of the 
 sanctuary, and the baser metal with which it has been 
 adulterated. We must remember that an alloy of error
 
 38 
 
 soon deteriorated the purer doctrine and practice of the 
 primitive Christians; and that during many ages these 
 corruptions and perversions of the truth accumulated in 
 an enormous degree. We must not suffer ourselves to 
 be betrayed into an admiration of these errors, either by the 
 high reputation of those who have countenanced them, or 
 by any abstract notions which we may conceive of the 
 unchangeable and unabated purity and perfection of the 
 Church itself. 
 
 NoTK C— Page 19. 
 
 There are many passages in these Tracts in which the 
 consent of antiquity seems to be almost elevated into a 
 rule of faith, and Scripture and Catholic tradition to be 
 placed in this respect on a par. I am far from wishing to 
 charge the writers with holding these opinions, but their 
 language certainly is open to this construction. 
 
 The 85th Tract, for instance, goes not merely to esta- 
 blish the credit of the Fathers as trustworthy witnesses, 
 but to place their authority almost on an equal footing 
 with that of the Scriptures. For it is contended that 
 the Scriptures are liable to the same objections as those 
 brought against the writings of the Fathers; and that 
 calling in question any part of what is styled the Catholic 
 system, is a sign of the same sceptical turn of mind as 
 that which cavils at parts of Scripture. Following out 
 this line of argument, they consider prayers for the dead, 
 and commemorations of the dead, as standing on the same 
 authority with Episcopacy, Infant Baptism, the religious 
 observance of the Lord's day, &c. These, however, ulti- 
 mately rest on the authority of Scripture : and the history 
 of the Church, embodied in the writings of the ancient
 
 39 
 
 Christians, explains, expands, and illustrates the hints, 
 allusions, and indirect information which Scripture con- 
 veys to us. But we reject prayers for the dead, and the 
 commemorations of the dead, as usages which have no 
 warrant of Scripture. 
 
 The rule which they allege as marking out the limits of 
 Catholic consent and tradition, and determining what is 
 and what is not to be received as conclusive and authori- 
 tative (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus), 
 though a good measure of probability and moral certainty, 
 must be adopted with allowances and limitations. In the 
 strictest sense of its terms, it may be doubted whether it 
 will apply to any of the cases to which it is supposed to 
 extend. It is necessarily limited to Catholic and Orthodox 
 Christians, who lived in the communion of the Church. 
 But the nearer approach can be made to this standard, 
 the greater presumption there is of the Apostolical autho- 
 rity of the rite or custom, or interpretation of Scripture, 
 to which it is applied. And there are many cases in which 
 this presumption amounts to a moral certainty. Those 
 usages and opinions, however, which the writers of the 
 Tracts seem to regard as Catholic, because sanctioned by 
 the Fathers of the fourth and fifth, and in some cases, 
 perhaps, of the third century, are by no means borne out 
 by this standard. For though they may have been 
 received during that period in all parts of the Christian 
 world (ubique), there is no proof that they were received 
 by all Catholic Christians (ab omnibus), much less can it 
 be shown that they had been received without interrup- 
 tion (semper) from the first times of Christianity. 
 
 Waterland, in his treatise on the Importance of the Doc- 
 trine of the Trinity, has treated the subject of the use 
 and value of Ecclesiastical Antiquity (in controversies of 
 faith particularly) with his usual judgment and modera-
 
 40 
 
 tion, in opposition both to the view taken of it by some 
 advocates of the Church of Rome^ and to the latitudinarian 
 notions of his Arian opponents. His statements may be 
 compared with advantage with those of the writers of the 
 Tracts, or with an article on Dr. Pusey's Sermon in a late 
 number of the British Critic. His learned editor, the 
 late Bishop Van Mildert, after enumerating the principal 
 advantages to be derived from Ecclesiastical Antiquity, 
 concludes in the following words, quoted in the Catena 
 Patrum, No. 3, Tract LXXVIIL— 
 
 " It is, therefore, with no common reverence that these 
 authorities are to be regarded : nor can we detract from 
 their just pretensions without hazard to some of the main 
 foundations of our faith. Nevertheless, we do not claim 
 for them any infallibility, any commission to make farther 
 revelations of the Divine will, or any absolute authority as 
 Scripture interpreters. The appeal lies from them, as 
 from all other religious instructors, to the word itself, 
 which was no less their rule of faith then than it is ours ;" 
 and he shows on what ground the authority of the early 
 Christian writers depends — " the ordinary principles (i. e.) 
 of criticism and evidence." 
 
 Note D.— Page 2] . 
 
 The writers of these Tracts have spoken, to say the least, 
 in very unguarded language, and not, I think, in accordance 
 with our Churches view of these mysterious subjects, of 
 the Eucharistic sacrifice, the real presence of Christ in the 
 Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the change which 
 there takes place in the elements. 
 
 We maintain that bread and wine, consecrated and set 
 apart for this purpose, are a medium or channel (though
 
 41 
 
 not the only channel) through which we are made par- 
 takers of our Lord's passion and death. The bread and 
 wine, set apart for this service, may be called a sacri- 
 fice, for the same reason that alms, prayers and thanks- 
 givings, and ourselves, our souls and bodies, are sacrifices ; 
 because they are something offered and presented to God. 
 But we do not hold that any material substance, any thing 
 that is the object of our bodily senses, forms a necessary 
 element of the true, proper, and Christian sacrifice. 
 
 In the writings of the ancient Christians there are many 
 highly figurative expressions relating to this head of doc- 
 trine, as well as to the presence of Christ and of his flesh 
 and blood in this sacrament. But the terms which they 
 use show that they excluded fi-om this notion of a sacrifice 
 every thing material and corporeal. They contrast the 
 bloodless and reasonable sacrifices {avaif.iaKTovg koX XoyiKag 
 Bvaiag) with the bloody and material sacrifices of Jews and 
 Pagans. The Eucharistic sacrifice is, as the word implies, 
 a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving : and if it is called a 
 sacrifice in another sense, approaching in appearance more 
 nearly to the original signification of the word Ovaia [Ovu), 
 macto), a passage of Chrysostom expounds the real mean- 
 ing of this phraseology, 
 
 "Qo-TTfo ovv TToWaypv Trpocr^EpojUEvoc %v aCona iari kol 
 ov TToXXa atofxara, ovrio koX juia Bvaia. 'O ao\iepivg 
 ■flfiiov eKsivog lariv' 6 Tr/v Qvaiav rriv Kadaipovaav r)/j.ag 
 7rpo(T£VtyK<jJv. 'Eicefvrjv Trpo<J(pepofxev kol vvv rrjv totb irpoa- 
 tvtyBdaav^ rriv avaXtoTov. Tovto tig ava^vi]<JLV jivirat 
 Tov Tore ytvojiivov. Tovto yap iroieiTi, (jytjaiv, elg rriv 
 i/iriv avafxvr]cnv. Ovk aXArjv dvaiav, KaOajrep 6 ap)(^L£pevg 
 Tore, aXXa Trjv avrriv iroiovfizv' fiaWov Se avafxvr\aiv epya- 
 ^ofieOa dvaiag. — Chrysostom. Homilia 17, in Hebraeos. 
 Vol. iv. p. 523, ed. Saville. 
 
 In the last words of this passage, Chrysostom explains
 
 42 
 
 the meaning of the expressions he had been using, viz. of 
 Christ being often offered up by us, of our offering up 
 continually the same unconsumed and unconsumable 
 sacrifice which was once made ; rather, he says, i. e. to 
 speak more properly, what we offer is the memorial or 
 commemoration of that sacrifice, avd/ivriaig, that which 
 suggests to our minds something that has heretofore taken 
 place. 
 
 This is the way in which our Reformers speak of it, as 
 an example (or copy), a commemoration, or a representa- 
 tion of Christ's death : and this is without question the 
 proper and only correct meaning of the phrase, " a repre- 
 sentative sacrifice:" not that we offer up Christ Himself, 
 his actual flesh and blood, as the Church of Rome teaches. 
 
 Thus the Eucharistic sacrifice is called irvevnariKr} Bvaia, 
 ayia, ^wottojoc koi dvaiuaKTog — voti]t{]. Thus the word 
 dvcriaaTi'tpiov, which in the Epistle to the Hebrews signifies 
 either Christ Himself, or an heavenly and spiritual, con- 
 trasted with a material altar, in the writings of the Fa- 
 thers, and in the common language of the Church, denotes 
 the Lord's table ; not because it is an altar in the same 
 sense in which the word was used by Jews and Pagans, 
 but because bloodless, intellectual, and spiritual sacrifices 
 are there offered to God. But the false doctrine of the 
 Roman Church, that in the Mass Christ is offered up to 
 God for the dead and the living, sprung from the indis- 
 creet and unguarded uses of these ways of speaking, and 
 the notion which they engendered, that the sacrifice cele- 
 brated at the Christian altar was something more than a 
 sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, or a commemoration 
 and symbolic representation of our Lord's sacrifice. 
 
 There are, likewise, in the writings of the Fathers ex- 
 pressions which seem to imply not only a spiritual and 
 heavenly, but a material and corporeal presence of Christ
 
 43 
 
 in this sacrament, and some change effected in the sub- 
 stance and qualities of the elements by their consecra- 
 tion. Nor can it be denied that some of our own Divines 
 have expressed themselves in language of the same cora- 
 p exion. Thorndike, for instance, as quoted by Dr. Pusey 
 (Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 56), says, " It is by no means to be 
 denied that the elements are really changed, translated, 
 turned, and converted into the body and blood of Christ." 
 These expressions may admit of a favourable construction, 
 or may be resolved into rhetorical exaggeration. Yet it 
 cannot be denied, that the doctrine of transubstantiation, 
 and of the corporeal presence of Christ in or under the spe- 
 cies of bread and wine, has sprung out of this phraseology. 
 
 But to string together phrases such as these, and ob- 
 trude them on young minds in all their nakedness, without 
 such explanations as may neutralize the ill effects which 
 they are calculated to produce, especially when such minds 
 have been misdirected, and are in a state of ferment and 
 excitement, appears to be an unwise, I may add, a dan- 
 gerous course of proceeding. 
 
 These elements become the body and blood of Christ, 
 which are verily and indeed taken by the faithful in the 
 Lord's Supper, in a spiritual and heavenly manner, in the 
 divine construction, and in saving virtue and efficacy. But 
 we have no reason to think that any other change takes 
 place in the elements themselves, except that they acquire 
 a relative holiness, and are separated from all common 
 and profane uses by their consecration, in the same way 
 that temples made with hands acquire a relative holiness, 
 by being consecrated to God's service. 
 
 The doctrine of our own Church in this matter is laid 
 down in the declaration annexed to the Communion 
 service. 
 
 " It is hereby declared, that thereby " (e. e. by kneeling
 
 44 
 
 at the communion table,) "no adoration is intended, or 
 ought to be done, either unto the sacramental bread or 
 wine, there bodily received, or unto any corporeal presence 
 of Christ's natural flesh and blood. For the sacramental 
 bread and wine remain still in their very natural sub- 
 stances, and therefore may not be adored, for that were 
 idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians ; and the 
 natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ are in 
 heaven, it being contrary to the truth of Christ's natural 
 body, to be at one time in more places than one." 
 
 Note E.— Page 23. 
 
 The same attempt to distinguish between the Romish 
 doctrine condemned by our Articles, and the doctrine 
 propounded and decreed by the Council of Trent, occurs 
 in various passages of this Tract ; and sundry distinctions 
 are laid down with a view of eluding the critical and 
 historical meaning of the Articles, and giving them what 
 the writer is pleased to call a Catholic interpretation. 
 This line of argument is applied to the 21st, 25th, 28th, 
 31st, and 37th Articles, and embraces points in contro- 
 versy with the Church of Rome, on which the opinion of 
 our own Church seems to be most clearly and authori- 
 tatively laid down. 
 
 But this is not the earliest Tract in which we meet with 
 this disposition to palliate the errors and corruptions of 
 the Church of Rome. It shows itself particularly in the 
 71st Tract, " On the Controversy with the Romanists." 
 In this tract, the Clergy, to whom it is addressed, are 
 recommended not to consider the doctrine of Transubstan- 
 tiation, and the authority of the Bishop of Rome, as ques-
 
 45 
 
 tions which ought to be handled in their controversy 
 with that Church. They are told, that any attempt to 
 expose the absurdity and profaneness of that scholastic 
 doctrine is likely to terminate in irreverence and ration- 
 alism; and that the distinction between that deference 
 w hich Catholic antiquity paid to the Bishop of Rome, and 
 that spiritual jurisdiction which he claims, is not intelli- 
 gible to the great bulk of readers. The distinction insisted. 
 on in the 90th Tract, between the Romish doctrine and 
 the decrees of the Council of Trent, is here likewise 
 brought forward. And though the writer's object is to 
 show that the formal document ought to be interpreted 
 by the realized form, there is a manifest desire to palliate, 
 certainly no disposition to condemn, some of the doctrines, 
 as they are defined by the Council. For instance (page 
 17), "The Tridentine decree declares, that it is good and 
 useful suppliantly to invoke the saints, and that the 
 images of Christ, and the blessed Virgin, and the other 
 saints, should receive due honour and veneration : words 
 which themselves go to the very verge of what could be 
 received hy cautious Christians, though possibly admitting 
 of an honest interpretation." 
 
 But while the writers have taken much pains to palliate 
 the errors and corruptions of that Church, and to repre- 
 sent it as possessing good qualities and good gifts, in 
 which we are lamentably deficient, many of their later 
 writings seem designed to produce dissatisfaction with the 
 state of our own Church, and with the principles and 
 consequences of the Reformation. This spirit pervades 
 the Tract which I have been noticing, in which the defects 
 of our own Church are pointed out, and dwelt on at least 
 as forcibly as those of the Church of Rome. It represents 
 us as standing on low ground, and remaining in the 
 Church, not because we think our Church a purer and
 
 46 
 
 better Church than that of Rome, but simply because we 
 are in it. It speaks " of refined and affectionate minds, 
 who, disappointed in finding full matter for their devo- 
 tional feelings in the English system, as at present con- 
 ducted, betake them, through human frailty, to Rome," 
 with a view, perhaps, of enlarging the sphere of their 
 devotions by invocations of the saints and the Virgin 
 Mary. It speaks of the tyranny of aliens over our Church, 
 and of its accidental connexion with Protestant persua- 
 sions, of its embracing a narrow portion of the Catholic 
 territory, and being surrounded by political influences of 
 a highly malignant character. It represents it as an 
 afflicted Church, and a Church in captivity. It complains 
 of omissions, and of the doctrine of the Eucharist having 
 been obscured by the interpolations of Bucer. In fact, a 
 large portion of this Tract, which professes to point out 
 the true method of conducting our controversy with the 
 Church of Rome, is taken up in palliating its errors, and 
 exposing the defects, real or imaginary, of our own 
 Church. 
 
 But the writers of the Tracts soon manifested some 
 disposition to represent the Church of England as in a 
 state of captivity, and of slavish subjection to the state. 
 In the second Tract, the union of certain Sees in Ireland, 
 by an Act of the Legislature, is described as a sinful 
 aggression on the rights of the Church. To that measure 
 I was opposed, as inexpedient and unjust, and calculated 
 to inflict an irreparable injury on the Protestant Church 
 in that part of the kingdom. But I do not consider it as 
 an assumption of power, which no other authority but that 
 of the Church could lawfully exercise. For when the State 
 unites itself with the Church, and in return for the benefits 
 which it derives from it, takes it under its protection, and 
 guarantees its temporalities and external privileges, the
 
 47 
 
 Church necessarily surrenders some part of its independ- 
 ence, and becomes so far subject to the civil power. 
 Thus, though the state cannot confer either orders or 
 spiritual jurisdiction, it may determine within what terri- 
 torial limits that jurisdiction shall be exercised, and may 
 erect or endow new, or consolidate ancient Dioceses. 
 
 In the case, for instance, of the Dioceses of St. Asaph 
 and Bangor, I do not protest against their union as 
 unlawful, and an encroachment on the abstract rights of 
 the Church, but as unnecessary, inexpedient, and unjust, 
 as injurious to the Church's spiritual interests, and offen- 
 sive to the feelings of its members. At the same time I 
 regret that the Church should be in a manner compelled 
 to avail itself of the assistance of the Legislature in cases, 
 those of discipline especially, which evidently belong to its 
 own jurisdiction. 
 
 There are many passages in these writings which have 
 a similar tendency to produce a spirit of discontent and 
 dissatisfaction with the state and prospects of our Church. 
 I would particularly advert to the 86th Tract, entitled, 
 '^ Indications of a superintending Providence in the 
 preservation of the Prayer Book, and the changes which 
 it has undergone." 
 
 One main object of this Tract is to show, that the 
 changes made in the Liturgy at the Reformation, indicate 
 its providential adaptation to the state of servitude to 
 which the Church had been reduced by that event : being 
 characterized by a tone of sadness and humiliation suitable 
 to those who have fallen away from the inheritance and 
 privileges of sons. The introduction, for example, of the 
 General Confession, at the beginning of our daily services, 
 and of the Decalogue in the Communion service, instead 
 of being considered as eminently suitable to the condition 
 of our human nature at all times, and under all circum-
 
 48 
 
 stances, is represented as a sign of our Church's bondage. 
 The same gloomy spirit is displayed in attempting to 
 explain other changes made in the Liturgy during that 
 period, on the same principle. The conclusion to which 
 the Tract invites us, as it would seem, to arrive is, that 
 Providence has in this way made our Church the unwit- 
 ting instrument of confessing her own sinfulness and 
 guilt in separating herself from the communion of the 
 Church of Rome, and effecting this change in concert with 
 the civil power. 
 
 For a further specimen of this tone and feeling, I refer 
 to the introduction to the 90th Tract. 
 
 " It is a very serious truth, that persons and bodies 
 who put themselves into a disadvantageous state, cannot 
 at their pleasure extricate themselves from it. They are 
 unworthy of it; they are in prison, and Christ is the 
 keeper." — p. 3, 
 
 " Till her members are stirred up to this religious course 
 let the Church be still ; let her be content to be in bondage ; 
 let her work in chains ; let her submit to her imperfections 
 as a punishment; let her go on teaching with the stam- 
 mering lips of ambiguous formularies, and inconsistent 
 precedents, and principles but partially developed. We 
 are not better than our fathers : let us bear to be what 
 Hammond was, or Andrews, or Hooker: let us not faint 
 under that body of death which they bore about in patience, 
 nor shrink from the penalty of the sins which they inherited 
 from the age before them." — p. 4. 
 
 Note F. — Page 24. 
 
 Some symptoms of this disposition to depreciate and 
 disclaim Protestantism, as a bond of union between our-
 
 49 
 
 selves and other reformed Churches, may be found in Tract 
 38, entitled Via Media. But it is more openly manifested 
 in Tract 71, p. 32, where the running title is " The English 
 Church a Reformed not a Protestant Church." We are 
 told that " the English Church, as such, is not Protestant, 
 only politically, that is externally, or so far as it has been 
 made an establishment, and subjected to national and 
 foreign influence. It claims to be merely reformed, and 
 not Protestant, and to repudiate any fellowship with the 
 mixed multitudes which crowd together under a mere 
 political banner, whether at home or abroad." And an 
 endeavour is made to prove this to be the fact, by a re- 
 ference to what passed in the Houses of Convocation in the 
 reign of William III. 
 
 This assumption, that our union with the foreign reformed 
 Churches under the common denomination of Protestants, 
 was a political and not a religious union, appears to me to 
 be groundless. Differing as they did on many points, it 
 was the common rejection of the errors and corruptions 
 and usurped authority of the Papacy, and the common 
 profession of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, 
 which connected our Church with the foreign reformed 
 Churches under the common name of Protestant. This 
 religious union gave occasion certainly to a political union 
 between the states professing Protestantism, in self-defence, 
 and in opposition to the leagues that were formed for its 
 extirpation: though on both sides the religious bond of 
 union was often broken by political considerations. Without 
 entering into the merits of the question discussed in Con- 
 vocation, the amended address still regards our own as a 
 Protestant Church, and the cause of the Protestant religion 
 as a common cause, when it speaks of " securing the in- 
 terests of the Protestant religion in all other Protestant 
 Churches."
 
 50 
 
 Subsequently the writers of this school have been in the 
 habit not only of disclaiming the term Protestant, and dis- 
 avowing all sympathy vrith Protestantism, but of taking it 
 up as a term of reproach. It is, if I remember rightly, in 
 a Periodical supposed to be a sort of organ of the party, that 
 the intention of unprotestantizing the Church of England 
 is openly avowed. 
 
 With the mixed multitudes crowded under political 
 banners, of whom the writer speaks, we certainly have no 
 sympathy : nor are we offering any apology for those who 
 have separated themselves from the Communion of our 
 own Apostolical and reformed Church. But with the 
 other reformed Churches, so far as they adhere to the faith 
 which they then professed, we have the same religious, not 
 political connexion which united us in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries under the common denomination of 
 Protestants. 
 
 Note G.— Page 28. 
 
 Omitting all mention of Hoadly and Clark, and the 
 writers of their school, I would refer to a Divine of much 
 higher rank and reputation : I mean the eminently pious, 
 learned, and eloquent Bishop Taylor. In the sixth chapter 
 of his Unum Necessarium, and in some appendices to that 
 treatise, he labours wdth much ingenuity and eloquence 
 to evade and explain away that doctrine of Original Sin 
 which has been almost universally received by the Churches. 
 The shocking exaggerations of this mysterious truth, which 
 were then popular, acting upon the warm feelings of a tender 
 and charitable heart, led him to soften down and explain 
 away the passages of Scripture on which this truth is prin- 
 cipally grounded, and the language of our ninth Article.
 
 51 
 
 But there can be no doubt that that pious and exemplary 
 Prelate believed that he had made good what he was 
 endeavouring to prove. 
 
 Under this head I am compelled to take notice of the 
 attempts that have been made to explain away those parts 
 of our Articles and Liturgy which convey to us the 
 Church's view of the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. 
 These attempts appear to me to be not less at variance 
 with the plain and literal construction of those Articles 
 and services, and with their critical and historical interpre- 
 tation, than those of the writers of the Tracts on which I 
 have been animadverting. As the one party explains our 
 Articles on what they are pleased to call Catholic prin- 
 ciples, so the other seems to interpret them on what they 
 probably deem to be Protestant principles. 
 
 I w^ill here transcribe from a work of my own, first 
 pubhshed in 1822, some observations not less suitable, as 
 I conceive, to the present time, — 
 
 " If the Ministers of our Church should propagate from 
 the pulpit opinions widely different from those which they 
 teach when they are ministering the Sacrament of Bap- 
 tism, let them consider what confusion they will produce 
 in the minds of their hearers, what distrust in themselves, 
 or in the Church whose ministers they are. But what is 
 perhaps still worse, the desire to reconcile these services to 
 doctrines at variance with them, will tend to impair the 
 sincerity and simplicity of their own minds, and to give 
 them a taste for that unnatural and artificial mode of 
 interpretation, to which an attachment to preconceived 
 opinions too frequently gives entertainment. We are told 
 that these services make use of a general phraseology, or 
 of hypothetical language, and expressions of hope and 
 charity. But plain sense, sober criticism, and historical 
 research, refute these artificial attempts to affix to them a
 
 52 
 
 meaning very different from that which they bear at first 
 sight, and foreign from the views and principles on which 
 they were originally constructed. Our Liturgy speaks a 
 plain, simple, and ingenuous language, ^ adapted to popular 
 comprehension and instruction,^ and the means to which 
 system has had recourse, to wrest it from its genuine and 
 native meaning, may act as beacons and warnings to the 
 inexperienced, and teach them that it is a dangerous expe- 
 rirftent to tamper with their literal construction." — General 
 View of the Doctrine of Regeneration in Baptism, c. vii. 
 p. 108, ed. Ed. 
 
 Note H. Page 31. 
 
 I alllude to a tract published in 1842, and called, Wliat 
 says the Church? by a Welsh Recto?'; written, as is well 
 known, by a Clergyman of the Diocese, whom it has 
 pleased God to remove out of this world in the prime of 
 life. 
 
 In this tract, among other questions which the writer 
 has put to his brethren of the Clergy, are these : — 
 
 " Have all so complied with the Church's regulations as 
 to omit no part of the Morning or Evening Service, either 
 to relieve themselves or to conciliate others ? Have none 
 been found to sanction, by their presence, sectarian meet- 
 ing-houses ? " 
 
 The writer, doubtless, could, from his own knowledge of 
 facts, anticipate the answers that must be given to these 
 questions. 
 
 Gilbert & Rivington, Printers, St. John's Square, London
 
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