Hampden

Mhg5G> H28G

THE
HAMPDEN QUESTION
REVIVED BY THE
HEBDOMADAL BOARD.

The University being now called upon to rescind
the formal censure passed on Dr. Hampden in the
year 1836, it is respectfully suggested to Members
of Convocation —
1 . That such a rescindment can only be made on
one of two grounds ; either that Dr. Hampden has
cleared himself from the original charge, or that
the University has changed its opinion, and now
regards with indifference those very unsound views
for which it condemned him. The former point,
if it is to be proved, must be proved out of
publications that have come from Dr. Hampden's
pen since the Censure, principally his Inaugural
Lecture, and his Preface to the second Edition
of the Bampton Lectures. Those publications
neither retract or explain any one of his
opinions. If they are not themselves charge
able with definite points of unsoundness, their
simply negative character does not clear or tend to
clear his former writings. It was open to Dr.
Hampden at the time of the Censure, it has been
open to him ever since, to meet the charges brought

against him by positive counter-statements. He
has not done that, and therefore it remains with
the University to consider whether unsound doc
trines are retracted because they are not repeated;
whether mere passiveness is undoing, and mere
silence is unsaying ; whether the absence of fresh
matter of objection disproves the existence of the
old, and whether censures become unjust, and
charges are falsified, simply by the lapse ef time.
After this consideration, the University may deter
mine what ground of reason, justice, or common
sense, there is for the removal of a sentence, the
matter of offence confessedly remaining in statu quo.
Surely it is evident that by such a step the Uni
versity stultifies itself, and impeaches and degrades
its own authority ; inasmuch as it either does an act
from which it can give no reason at all ; or, it gives
a reason, and that is, that it no longer retains but
abandons its objections to the principles contained
in Dr. Hampden's writings.
2. It may be said that the University has already
committed itself in principle to the repeal of the
Censure, by its acceptance of the late Statute relat
ing to the new Professorships ; one clause of which
gives into the hands of the Professors of Divinity
the yearly examination of theological students. It
may be said, that the Regius Professor is made,
ex officio, one of this Board ; that Dr. Hampden
is actually Regius Professor ; that therefore Dr.
Hampden is acknowledged a fit person to be eri-

trusted with a theological office, that therefore he
is not liable to theological censure, and that there
fore the actual censure of 1836 is virtually removed.
But this reasoning, farfetched as it would be, even
supposing it held, is destroyed by a fallacy at the
very outset. The Convocation which passed the
late Statute did not legislate about Dr. Hampden,
but about the Regius Professor of Divinity; it did
not regard the individual, but the office. Certain
regulations were made affecting all the four Divinity
Professorships ; the Regius Professorship, as one of
these four, came under these regulations ; it came
under them purely in the abstract character of the
office, entirely distinct from the accidental holder
of it pro tempore. To say that Convocation, be
cause it established this whole arrangement as a
general act of legislation, was therefore committed
in principle to one merely accidental, oblique,
temporary consequence of it, is indeed a somewhat
narrow and illiberal way of arguing. How could
the University establish any plan or scheme, pro
fessorial or any other, except by looking to the
general, the official, not to the accidental, or the
personal? Would it not have been absurd to have
left the Regius Professorship out of the scheme
altogether, because Dr. Hampden was the acci
dental holder of it ? And if so, how could Convoca
tion commit itself by passing the measure in this
general form ? Certainly many persons voted against
it, and very naturally, on this very ground ; not

however because the Statute as such committed
them in favour of Dr. Hampden, but because
they mistrusted the animus in which it was brought
forward, and thought that it might be made to bear
that interpretation. With their suspicions it would
have been inconsistent in them to have supported
it. But as Members of Convocation are we bound
to suspect the intentions of the Heads of Houses ?
Certainly not : though the advantage, which has
been taken in the present instance of a successful
step, proves the policy and the propriety of oc
casionally so doing. Those who support a general
Statute upon general grounds, and trust to the
authority that proposed it for correcting any mere
casual temporary anomaly it may contain, may be
charged with over-confidence, but not with incon
sistency : and if that authority turns round and
says, You ought to have understood us, you ought
to have suspected our intentions, you ought to have
seen that the Statute was directed at the Censure,
this was its meaning, you accepted it, and therefore
you stand committed to it : of this species of argu
ment it is sufficient to say, that it exhibits a good
deal more sharpness and dexterity, than sound or
correct reasoning. To pass a general Statute,
which happens obliquely, and quite apart from its
object, to include some objectionable point, and to
pass a particular one, which has for its very object
the formal establishment of that point, are obviously
two different things : and Convocation, because it

has done one, is not at all committed to the other.
What would have been said, had a formal and
combined opposition been made to the Statute
upon these personal grounds ? What reflections
would have been passed upon the folly and the
sin of ripping up old grievances, upon the illibe-
rality of rejecting a whole Statute, because it
happened to contain one particular objectionable
point, which was only there because it was impos
sible to prevent it being there ; upon the incon-
siderateness of demanding from the Hebdomadal
Board a fresh, obtrusive, and gratuitous censure
of one of their own Body, a censure which had
nothing to do with the Statute itself, and was
absolutely uncalled for. In this way it was
that Convocation was compelled either to accept
the whole Statute, or to raise an opposition
which would carry the prima facie appearance
a most invidious, a most ill-natured, and a
most factious movement. Meantime throughout
the whole transaction no mention was made, not a
hint or whisper dropped on the part of its proposers,
that the measure had any reference to Dr. Hampden
individually, or was to be interpreted in the most
distant way as interfering with the Censure upon
him. And accordingly under the protection of this
silence and non-appearance of design on the one side,
and of the difficulties and odium to be encountered
on the other, the Statute was brought forward and
passed : and the very next step is to introduce a

formal express Statute for the repeal of the Censure,
as if this were the natural and legitimate consequence
and developement of the previous one.
3. The ground of objection then, as far as we
have gone, to the repeal of the Censure is simply
this, that the University {though she has not yet)
will certainly by such an act stultify itself, and do
what it cannot reasonably explain. Of the two
alternatives however mentioned at the outset, the
last, and more fearful, though at the same time the
more consistent one, remains to be noticed. It is
still open to the repealers of the Censure to justify
their logic at the expense of their creed; to say in
the name of the University, We have altered our
mind on theological subjects since that time ; the
Censure was a, mistake to begin with, and the sooner
we blot it out of our registers the better. It is
still open to the University to take its place, though
somewhat late, in the march of intellect, to say
that the Statute of 1836 was a remnant of an old
system, which it is now time to throw off, — a
system which imposed the shackles of a definite and
a responsible creed on the freedom of the human
mind, that she purposes now entering on a new
course, intends to give up the principle of ortho
doxy, to look upon differences of " theological
opinion" with calmness and impartiality, and to
ally herself in spirit and system with her compre
hensive and enlightened sisters of Germany. It is
still open to the University to repent of her severity,

and to save Dr. Hampden the trouble of recanting
by recanting herself. All this is still open to the
University to adopt and proclaim to the world :
but is it to be believed that she will allow herself
to be thus undone, to be betrayed into such a
miserable, deplorable, suicidal course ? Will she,
after bearing testimony so long for orthodoxy, now
at last voluntarily descend from that lofty position
to which the suffrages of the world have elevated
her, and grovel in the dust with earthly, sensual,
cold, and lifeless systems of secularized and latitu-
dinarian religion? Was the Censure of 1836,
passed with a depth and intensity of feeling which
astonished the whole nation, the last flicker of the
expiring flame; and will she formally and solemnly
confess that that Statute of Censure was her
last, her very last, act of Churchmanship, her last,
her very last, farewell to orthodoxy? It is impossible
that she will — Nondvm, may we say, Nondvm
actum est de Academid.
Oxford, May 26, 184*2.

BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.

\