Specimens Mhg5fc isle. Sp3 SPECIMENS THEOLOGICAL TEACHING CERTAIN MEMBERS THE CORPUS COMMITTEE AT OXFORD. ' PROFESSING THEMSELVES TO BE WISE.' LONDON: B. FELLOWES, LUDGATE STREET. 1836. LONDON : R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD-STREET-HILL, DOCTORS' COMMONS. SPECIMENS, fyc. 8cc. The extracts given in the following pages are so unlike what we are accustomed to read in the works of Protestant writers, and so like, on the other hand, what is found in those of Roman Catholics, that it may naturally be asked whether it is seriously meant by the compiler of them to impute Popish error to their authors. Such then is not his intention. It is probable their object in inditing such passages has been to resist Ultra-Protestant principles. Per haps they have even persuaded themselves that they were most effectually resisting the encroach ments of the Church of Rome by reviving a more loyal and respectful veneration for the Church and the sacraments, and primitive antiquity. But how- fiver laudable their profession and design, — is their a2 judgment to be trusted ? Have they been duly cautious ? Are they safe guides to a Protestant public ? Is an author to be censured as undervaluing antiquity, or the sacraments, or the authority of the Church, by such writers as these ? Does it follow that he must be heterodox, because he does not agree with them and their teaching ? And yet these are the persons who are endeavouring to give the law of orthodoxy to the University ! These are the persons, who, on the strength of their au thority, invite the country clergy, by pamphlets and circulars, to a general rising in support of their peculiar views ; who have been exerting every nerve to carry, by numbers and clamour, a vote of condemnation on the opinions of a writer who differs from them. These are the persons who would shut up all free discussion and inquiry in the placets of a majority affirming their decrees ! Such a pro ceeding, indeed, may be yery consistent conduct in such persons. No doubt, it may be " painful" to them : no doubt, they may apprehend " danger." But the question recurs — are these persons to be trusted ? Are they judicious? Are they safe guides 1 I.- — On the Omissions of the Church of England. " How miserably contrasted are we with the One Holy Apostolic Church of old, which, ' serving with one consent,' spoke ' a pure language ! ' And now that Rome has added, and we have omitted, in the catalogue of sacred doctrines, what is left to us but to turn our eyes sorrowfully and reverently to those ancient times, and with Bishop Ken, make it our profession to live and ' die in the faith of the Catholic Church, before the division of the East and West ? ' " — Tracts for the Times, Vo\. II.— Records of the Church, No. 25, p. 11. Note. What, then, have we " omitted in the catalogue of sacred doctrines 1" Will the following passage supply an answer ? " For example, would not most men maintain, on the first view of the subject, that to administer the Lord's Supper to infants, or to the dying and insensible, however consistently pious and believing in their past lives, was a superstition ? — and yet both practices have the sanction of primitive usage." — Tracts, Vol. II. Advertisement, p. vi. Or are prayers for the dead improperly omitted in our liturgies ? or does our communion service stop short of the truth ? For, " All the ancient liturgies now existing, or which can be proved ever to have existed, .... contain a prayer (which has been excluded from the English Ritual) ' for the rest and peace of all those who have departed this life in God's faith and fear.' " And again — " On a comparison of the different forms of oblation and consecration, it will be seen that in each of the four original liturgies, the Eucharist is regarded as a mystery and as a sacrifice." E.g. in " The Roman Form, translated from a missal now in use in the Church of Rome. — ' We offer unto thy 6 glorious Majesty, of thine own gifts and presents, a pure Host, a holy Host, an immaculate Host,' &c." " The Oriental Form. — ' We sinners offer unto thee, O Lord, this tremendous and unbloody sacrifice,' &c." " The Egyptian Form. — ' Sanctify and thoroughly consecrate them : making the bread the body, and the cup the blood,' &c." " The Gallican Form. — * Sanctify these Hosts, &c. . . . that they may confer eternal life and an everlasting kingdom on us who are going to eat and drink of them in the trans formation of- the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, thine only-begotten Son.' " " Such is the view taken of the consecration and oblation of the eucharist, in the four independent Christian liturgies. It is well worth the consideration of such Protestant bodies as have rejected the ancient forms. " Further information may be found respecting these remarkable documents in the valuable works, already quoted, of Dr. Brett and Mr. Palmer. It is, however, much to be wished, that correct editions of the original documents were in the hands of every one. It may perhaps be said, without exaggeration, that next to the Holy Scriptures they possess the greatest claim on our veneration and study." — Tracts, Vol. II. No. 63, pp. 7, 9—16. But that some have already profited by the study of these remarkable documents may sufficiently appear by the following passage : — "Then you will honour us [the 'inferior ministers,' as distinguished from the bishops, 'the representatives of Christ,'] with a purer honour than you do now ; namely, as those who are entrusted with the keys.of heaven arid hell, as the heralds of mercy, as the denouncers of woe to wicked men, as entrusted with the awful and mysterious gift of making the bread and wine Christ's body and blood." — Tracts, Vol. I. No. 10, p. 4. II. — Contemplative Character of Christian Doctrine asserted. What, again, shall we think of persons as judges of others, who regard some of the Christian doc trines as fitted rather for contemplative minds than for the vulgar ? "It has been fashionable then, for instance, to insist upon the practical character of Christianity, the influential nature of its doctrines, the persuasiveness of its motives, &c. This does not necessarily involve the disbelief of such parts as are not obviously practical ; but it tends directly thereto. Such doctrines become a burthen unto man, so soon as he sets himself to form a system into which they refuse to be brought : he cannot any longer maintain them, without violence, on the same ground whereupon he defends the rest. Then he strains some truths, or rather degrades them, (as when the divinity of our Lord is insisted upon, only, as heightening the greatness of our redemption,) and so virtually obliterates whatever of that truth cannot be compressed within the compass of this so-called practical application : other truths, which belong to reverential con templation rather, and are not fitted for every-day impulse upon a mixed multitude, are rudely laid aside, as abstract or unpractical." — Pusey s Theol. Statements, &c. pp.xv. xvi. Or take another writer, who slides almost into the language of Epicurean theology : — " And since this everlasting and unchangeable quiescence is the simplest and truest notion we can obtain of the Deity, 8 it seems to follow that, strictly speaking, all those so-called economies or dispensations, which display his character in action, are but condescensions to the infirmity and pecu liarity of our minds, shadowy representations of realities which are incomprehensible to creatures such as ourselves, who estimate every thing by the rule of association and arrangement, by the notion of a purpose and plan, object and means, parts and whole." — Newman's Avians, p. 83. Or take the following, which inculcates a reser vation of Christian truths: — " If the early Church regarded the very knowledge of the truth as a fearful privilege, much more did it regard that truth itself as glorious and awful; and scarcely conversing about it to her children, shrunk from the impiety of sub jecting it to the hard gaze of the multitude Then, they would scarcely express in writing, what is now not only preached to the mixed crowds who frequent our churches, but circulated in print among all ranks and classes of the unclean and the profane, and pressed upon all who choose to purchase it This is the apology which the author of the present work, as far as it is worth while to notice himself, offers to all sober-minded and zealous Christians, for venturing to exhibit publicly the great evangelical doctrines, not indeed in the medium of controversy or proof, (which would be a still more humili ating office,) but in an historical and explanatory form. And he earnestly trusts, that, while doing so, he may be betrayed into no familiarity or extravagance of expression, cautiously lowering the truth, and (as it were) wrapping it in reverend language, and so depositing it in its due resting place, which is the Christian's heart ; guiltless of those un utterable profanations with which a scrutinizing infidelity wounds and lacerates it." — Newman's Avium, pp.150 — 152. Ill — The Scriptures. " No prophet ends his subject : his brethren after him renew, enlarge, transfigure, or reconstruct it ; so that the Bible, though various in its parts, forms a whole, grounded on a few distinct doctrinal principles discernible throughout it; and is in consequence, though intelligible in its general drift, yet obscure in its text ; and even tempts the student to a lax and disrespectful interpretation of it." — Ibid. pp. 64, 65. " Moreover, Scripture assigns the same uses to this allegorical style, which were contemplated by the Fathers, when they made it subservient to the disciplina arcani; viz. those of trying the earnestness and patience of inquirers, discriminating between the proud and the humble, and conveying instruction to believers, and that in the most permanently impressive manner, without the world's catching its meaning. Our Lord's remarks on the design of his own parables is a sufficient evidence of this intention. " Thus there seemed every encouragement, from the structure of the sacred volume, from the apparent causes which led to that structure, and from the purposes to which it was applied by its divine Author, to induce the Alex andrians to use its text as the instrument of an allegorical teaching." — Newmans Arians, pp. 65, 66. "The whole Bible is, like the whole of nature, one great parable." — Sewell's Thoughts on Subscription, p. 24. " Our animal frames are sufficiently multifarious in their uses. But compared with the Bible they are simplicity itself. " To fulfil all these various purposes, the whole structure of the Bible is built upon contradictions."— Ibid. p. 26. " Here, again, is strikingly instanced the unfitness of books, compared with private communication, for the pur- 10 poses of religious instruction ; levelling the distinctions of mind and temper by the formality of the written character, and conveying each kind of knowledge the less perfectly, in proportion as it is of a moral nature, and requires to be treated with delicacy and discrimination." — Newman's Avians, p. 152. Scripture accordingly would appear to be a less perfect vehicle of Truth than oral Tradition. " And thus much on the importance of Creeds to tran quillize the mind; the text of Scripture being addressed principally to the affections, and though definite according to the criterion of practical influence, vague and incomplete in the judgment of the intellect. "Nor, in the next place, is an assent to the text of Scrip ture sufficient for the purposes of Christian fellowship. As the sacred text was not intended to satisfy! the intellect, neither was it given as a test of the religious temper which it forms, and of which it is an expression." — Ibid. pp. 161,162. IV. — Tradition. "In corroboration of this remark, let it be observed, that there seems to have been in the Church a traditionary explanation of these historical types, derived from the Apostles, but kept among the secret doctrines, as being dangerous to the majority of hearers ; and certainly St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, affords us an instance of such a tradition, both as existing and as secret, (even though it be shown to be of Jewish origin,) when first checking himself and questioning his brethren's faith, he communi cates, not without hesitation, the evangelical scope of the account of Melchisedec, as introduced into the book of Genesis." — Newman's Avians, pp. 68, 69. 11 " In what sense can it be said, that there is any connexion between Paganism and Christianity so real as to warrant the preacher of the latter to conciliate idolaters by allusion to it? St. Paul evidently connects the true religion with the existing systems which he laboured to supplant in Acts xvii. and his example is a sufficient guide to missionaries now, and a full justification of the line of conduct pursued by the Alexandrians, in the instances similar to it ; but are we able to account for his conduct, and ascertain the principle by which it was regulated ? I think we can ; and the exhibition of it will set before the reader another doctrine of the Alexandrian school, which it is much to our purpose to understand, and which I shall call the divinity of Tradi tionary Religion." — Ibid. pp. 87, 88. " This vague and unconnected family of religious truths, originally from God, but sojourning without the sanction of miracle, or a definite home, as pilgrims up and down the world, and discernible and separable from the corrupt legends with which they are mixed, by the spiritual mind alone, may be called the dispensation of Paganism, after the example of the learned father already appealed to.* " — Ibid. p. 89. " I have already observed, that the knowledge of the Christian mysteries was, in those times, accounted as a pvivilege, to be eagerly coveted. It was not likely, then, that reception of them would be accounted a test; which implies a concession on the part on the recipient, not an advantage. The idea of disbelieving, or criticising the great doctrines of the faith, from the nature of the case, would scarcely occur to the primitive Christians. These doctrines were the subject of an Apostolical Tradition ; they " * Clement says, ri\v (/>iKoao(j> lav"EXXriatv ola&aOqKjj votKilav hSvadat, vnofiadpav ovaav rrjc Kara Xpiorov