fs^I.

WORDS OF COUNSEL

" For MYSELF I WILL SAY OPENLY THAT I COULD NOT
HAVE ENDURED TO HAVE BEEN THE BISHOP OF
A PARTY, WHEN GOD'S PROVIDENCE HAD CALLED
ME TO BE THE BISHOP OF A DIOCESE." Charge, 1869.

WORDS OF COUNSEL
ON SOIME OF THE
CHIEF DIFFICULTIES OF THE DAY,
BEQUEATHED TO THE CHURCH IN
THE WRITINGS OF

SAMUEL WILBERFORCE,
LATE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER;

COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY
THOMAS VINCENT FOSBERY, M.A.
HON. CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP ; SOMETIME
VICAR OF ST. GILES', READING.

JAMES PARKER AND CO.
1875-

PREFACE.

npHE title-page explains, perhaps with
sufficient clearness, the limits within
which I have striven to confine this Col
lection. It is put forward in the hope that the
words of one so loved and honoured, who
has passed from amongst us, may help to
calm the waters now so troubled and hinder
some of the divisions which now threaten us.
Of the vast regions of thought traversed
by that master mind, far the largest tracts
are here unnoted. Nor are any of those
subjects admitted, of temporary or merely
local interest, with which necessarily the
Bishop had to deal in his charges and ad
dresses. No trace, therefore, appears here
of that marvellous organization, due to him,
by the aid of which he ruled this diocese
for nearly a quarter of a century; nor of
that, in another and still larger diocese,

VI PREFACE.
which in later years had learned to yield
itself gladly to his rule, before he was
taken away from us all. Neither are those
matters introduced which have already burnt
themselves out, so to speak, and now lie
in ashes. Thank God it is no longer
needful to tell of churches, all over the
country, fallen or falling into decay and di
lapidation "^ ; nor would it profit to re-open
questions which have been long since, for
good or for evil, decided.
It is, then, on those important topics to
which our attention is so forcibly drawn at
the present time, and on those exclusively,
that I have sought to give the Bishop's
mind, as revealed in his published works ;
but this is so done that wherever he found
it needful, as time went on, to limit and
qualify, or, on the other hand, to strengthen
" Yet I cannot forbear placing in an Appendix, one
or two of those graphic descriptions which aroused the
country to a sense of this scandal ; in order that our
children may know what it was that their fathers ac
tually beheld with their own eyes, and may gratefully
recognise the marvellous changes which have been since
brought about. See page 430.

PREFACE. VII
and expand his judgments on any matter,
his former and his later opinions are both
given. How little they varied through the
long course of his ministerial life this book
will shew.
The learned and elaborate arguments by
which some of his conclusions were sup
ported, as, for example, in the instance of
" Obedience to Ordinary," are, for want of
space, necessarily curtailed or omitted ; but
the conclusions themselves, however arrived
at, will always be found here.
The matters thus treated of are so va
rious as almost to defy classification. It
has seemed to me best, therefore, to let
them follow one another in chronological
order, except where it was necessary to
place two or more under one and the same
heading. Indeed, this arrangement best
gives the history of the mind from which
they proceeded.
Certain subjects are here very prominent,
because the Bishop judged it right and
needful to give them this prominence.
Other subjects, also of great interest, are

vm PREFACE.
passed over by him more lightly, and there
fore occupy here a smaller space. On these
proportions, as indeed on the subjects them
selves, I offer no opinion.
That which I proposed to do, I have
done, however imperfectly, to the best of
my ability. I have made no abstracts nor
attempted any abbreviations, but have given
the very words which have come to us from
him whom we have lost, and I can only fur
ther humbly pray God to accompany them
with His blessing. T. V. FOSBERY.
Hillside, Bracknell, Berks.,
Epiphany, 1875.

CONTENTS.

I.
On the Due Reception of the Christian
Mysteries.
From University Sermons, First Series, 1838, No. III.

II.
The true Remedy for Division.
From a Charge delivered in 1840.
Page 17.
III.
Seasons of Turbulence, of Unbelief and Misbelief.
From a Charge delivered in 1842.
Page 32.
IV.
"The Form and Body of Christian Truth our
Safeguard from Errors on each side."
From a Charge delivered in 1843.
Page 45.

X CONTENTS. V.
Whither our unhappy Divisions are leading Men.
From a Charge delivered in 1 844.
Page 55.
VI.
Restless Disquietude the Temper of the Day.
From Sermons preached before the Queen, 1844,
No. XVII.
Page 68.
VII.
Use and Misuse of Symbols.
From a Charge delivered in 1845.
Page 79.
VIII.
Condition of a People "highly taught, but
religiously uneducated."
From Occasional Sermons, preached in 1847, No. V.,
published in 1854.
Page 89.
IX.
Division the Fruit of Self-will.
From Occasional Sermons, preached in 1848, No. II.,
published in 1854.
Page 92.

CONTENTS. XI
X.
Peril of Worldliness in the Clergy.
From a Charge delivered in 1848.
Page 94.
XI.
Retrograde Religion.
From Inaugural Address delivered in 1848.
Page 102.
XII.
Insufficiency of bare Intellectual Enlighten
ment.
From a Sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, 1849.
Page 113.
XIII.
On the Need of Dogmatic Teaching.
From a Sermon preached in 1850.
Page 118.
XIV.
"The Strife with Romanism."
From a Charge delivered in 1851 ; and University Sermons,
Second Series, 1855, No. VII.
Page 126.
XV.
"The Strife with Infidelity."
From a Charge delivered in 1851.
Page 183.

xii CONTENTS. XVI.
The Apostolical Episcopate.
From a Sermon preached at Lambeth, in 1853.
Page 196.
XVII.
The Church's Teaching on the Holy Eucharist.
From a Charge delivered in 1854; and University Sermons,
Second Series, 1855, No. IX.
Page 206.
XVIII.
Recent Outcries against Preaching, and how to
meet them.
From Charges delivered in 1857 and i860; Addresses to
Candidates for Ordination, delivered between
1846 and i860, published in i860 ; and
a Charge delivered in 1863.
Page 219.
XIX.
Results of Ministerial Indiscretions.
From Addresses to Candidates for Ordination,
publishied in i860.
Page 235.
XX.
Modes of dealing with the Strange Doctrines
OF the Sects, &c.
From Addresses to Candidates for Ordination,
published in i86o.
Page 237.

CONTENTS. xiii
XXI.
Use AND Misuse of Confession.
From Addresses to Candidates for Ordination, published
in i860 ; and University Sermons, Second Series,
1855, No. IX.
Page 24ij.
• XXII.
On averting Groundless Suspicions.
From Addresses to Candidates for Ordination,
published in i860.
Page 254.
XXIII.
On maintaining Peace in Troublous Times.
From Addresses to Candidates for Ordination,
published in i860.
Page 257.
XXIV.
Obedience to th£ Bishop, &c.
From Addresses to Candidates for Ordination,
published in i860.
Page 272.
XXV.
Some Dangers attending Revision.
From a Charge delivered in i860.
Page 280.

xiv CONTENTS. XXVI.
Protest against Evening Communion.
From Charges delivered in i860 and 1866.
Page 287.
XXVII.
Ritual, its Value, its Limitations, and its Excesses.
From Charges delivered in 1869 and 1866.
Page 296.
XXVIII.
Character and Causes of Modern Infidelity.
From a Charge delivered in 1863.
Page 35S-
XXIX.
On the Re-union of Christendom.
From a Charge delivered in 1866.
Page 381.
XXX.
On the English Reformation.
From Essays in the "Quarterly Review," Vol. II.,
published in 1868.
Page 394

CONTENTS. XV
XXXI.
"The Earthly Side of Heavenly Things."
From University Sermons, Third Series,
1863 to 1870, No. III.
Page 411.
XXXII.
" Sensuous Religiousness."
From University Sermons, Third Series,
1863 to 1870, No. VII.
Page 413.
XXXIII.
" The Real Talisman against Unbelief."
From University Sermons, Third Series,
1863—70, Nos. I., VIL, XI.
Page 417.

Note. — To preserve the chronological order, No. XXVIII.
should have preceded XXVII., and the two divisions of
No. XXVII. should have changed places ; but the error
was not discovered till too late for correction.

I.
ON THE DUE RECEPTION OF THE
CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES.
T T will be strictly in the spirit of this day's
¦^ services' to inquire with some little particu
larity into the temper of mind in which the consi
deration of such high truths should be approached,
as well as the most natural means of acquiring
and preserving it.
On the very threshold of such an inquiry, we
are met by the caution which checked the curiosity
of Moses. The vision of the Angel of the Lord
in the bush burning but unconsumed, stirred up
within his heart the desire of searching further into
the wonder which had startled him : " I will now
turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush
is not burned," (Exod. v. 3). So ever speaks
with its first impulse the curiosity of man ; which
would subject the wonders of the nature and the
presence of his God to that scrutiny of the intel
lectual powers by which he is accustomed to ex
amine the creation round him. But this purpose
is at once interrupted, and the announcement of
God's presence is followed by the caution, " Draw
" Preached on Trinity Sunday.
B

2 ON THE DUE RECEPTION OF
not nigh hither : put off thy shoes from off thy
feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy
ground," (v. 5) ; teaching him, that reverence and
adoration, rather than the sharpness of observing
scrutiny, were the attributes with which it became
the creature to enter his Creator's presence.
Here, then, is an intimation, that clearness of
intellect is not that upon which mainly depends
the right perception of God's revelation of Himself.
And this same truth we shall find repeatedly
recurring in the sacred pages. To pass at once to
the Christian revelation and the teaching of our
Lord, how manifestly is the same lesson to be
found in His declaration, that "Whosoever shall
not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child,
he shall not enter therein!" (Luke xviii. 17).
With all those faculties for comprehension which
depend upon the perfection of the intellectual
powers, a little child is evidently unsupplied.
What, therefore, can prove more clearly than such
a declaration, that moral fitness, rather than sub
tilty of intellect, is needed for receiving rightly
this revelation of Himself.
This, indeed, is but what we might reasonably
expect ; for as the Christian revelation, by its own
profession, is not a mere intellectual abstraction,
but in its nature and foundations is essentially
moral, the evidence on which it rests cannot, as in
abstract science, be addressed purely to the intel-

THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES. 3
leet. To receive it rightly, the will must assent
to it no less than the understanding. By no other
solution can we account for the wholly opposite
conclusions, even upon fundamental points, at
which we see men of the highest reasoning powers
arrive. For as, in all matters of necessary truth,
right reasoning from the same premises must lead
to the same conclusions ; and as we see men,
whose powers of reasoning are above all question,
come here to opposite conclusions ; we must sup
pose, either that something more than intellectual
power is needful to lead them right, or that there
is in this subject-matter no such thing as abstract
truth, but that to every separate mind ' that which
seems so to itself is true. But as this supposition
is destructive of the very notion 'of revelation,
which requires that the doctrines it teaches should
be received as facts, true in themselves, inde
pendently of all opinions, it only remains, that
men's various conclusions must be the result of
some moral causes separate from their mere intel
lectual powers.
And if from this general view of the discrepan
cies of belief, we turn to the examination of a single
instance, we shall find new light thrown upon the
subject. No one, perhaps, has thought at all steadily of
any of these mysteries of revelation, without being,
in some measure, troubled by the manifest difficul-

4 ON THE DUE RECEPTION OF
ties with which they are beset. Sometimes it is
directly in the very article of belief; and "How
can it be.'" is the spontaneous language of the
mind ; that is, the difficulty of the subject sug
gests to us a temptation to deem it impossible.
At another time the temptation takes another
shape. The words we have been taught to use,
and to which our lips and ears have long grown
familiar, sound new and strange to us : we doubt
whether we have not used them always hitherto
idly, and without attaching any meaning to them ;
that i.s, we are tempted to deem of religious truth
as an unreality : we can scarcely persuade our
selves that it has ever been to us more than
a sound of words ; and then the air of unreality
soon creeps over the whole. Or, again, perhaps
the temptation has arisen from what seem to us
to be the necessary consequences of that which
we are called on to believe : some train of thought
leads us on, before we are aware, to something
which follows from it, and which is in itself evi
dently absurd, or irreverent, or, in some way, un
becoming the dignity of heavenly truth ; that is,
we are here tempted to speculate and rationalise
on that which belongs to the province of faith,
rather than the reasoning faculty. Now, to one
who has cultivated with any care an habitual re
verence for holy things, the very glancing of such
thoughts over the mind gives deep and instant

THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES. 5
pain : an overpowering sense of its own weakness
accompanies their entrance ; a doubtfulness about
all its conclusions ; an almost instinctive dread of
whither it may be led on ; a sense of the letting
go of the only anchor of the mind, and of a float
ing off upon the restless ocean of uncertainty and
doubt : the feelings and the reason seem at war,
and the mind is very much in the condition of
an ingenuous child, who has been puzzled and
distressed by the results of some reasoning to
which it knows of no reply, and yet against which
its filial reverence instinctively rebels. And if, at
this moment, this pain, which is indeed an inti
mation of the will of God, be duly attended to,
the immediate impulse of the heart is to cry out
to Him for help; to cast itself upon its habitual
persuasion of the love and power of God, as on
realities of which, without reasoning, it is con
vinced by the very necessity of its own nature ;
and in the darkness of its confused searchings
after truth, to say, " that I know not, teach Thou
me:'' and then the next step is to practise what
it does know, acting on the promise, " If any man
will do My will, he shall know of the doctrine."
And then the effect of this conduct must evidently
be to form a habit of shrinking from doubt and
speculation ; and in the same degree to nourish
and increase a reverent and affectionate belief in
what is revealed : and this not from the power

6 ON THE DUE RECEPTION OF
or subtilty of the intellect, but from the moral
qualifications of the soul for receiving God's re
velation of Himself.
But now take the opposite case ; that of one
who had not been so carefully shielded from irre
verence of thought ; who had been accustomed
to think and to speak of holy things with levity,
or even to suppose them to be fit subjects for
the exercise of great intellectual subtilty, and
for our natural powers of argument and dfecovery.
The entrance of sceptical or irreverent thoughts
could clearly give no instant pain to one who
belonged to the first of these two classes ; because
his mind has become accustomed to the sight of
holy things mixed up with low and unworthy
thoughts, and there is nothing, therefore, to shock
him in such an association: moral evil, that is
to say, has robbed him of the first safeguard of
his faith, and made him less fit for receiving the
discovery of heavenly mysteries. And so too in
the second case : when doubts or difficulties cross
this man's mind, instead of crying out to God
for light, in the darkness which is beginning to
overshadow his soul, he at once sets his own in
tellect to work : no humbling sense of its miser
able weakness drives him instinctively to seek
a better strength: in vain is there a Father's
hand stretched out to succour him: self-confi
dence knows not that its steps are stumbling.

THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES. 7
"Ye will not come unto me that ye may have
life." He begins, therefore, to reason ; and in
so doing, he unawares encourages his danger :
his temptation, in truth, is to speculate, where
he ought to believe; and, in his ignorance, he
sets himself to speculation, in order that he may
believe more rightly : he becomes, therefore, of
course, bolder and bolder in speculation ; the
motes multiply before his eyes, and cloud over
more and more the obscured vision of God's
truth. While he thinks, perhaps, that he is loving
truth above all things, and seeking for it most
eagerly, he is, in fact, loving his own delusions ;
a passion for speculation and argument is lead
ing him captive where it will : he thinks that he
is sacrificing all for the faith ; he is, indeed, sacri
ficing all for his own besetting sin : and so the
hardened heretic, cast out of the communion of
the Church, and giving up, it may be, worldly
advancement, because he will adhere to his own
speculations, though he appears a much more in
teresting object, because he seems in one light
to be suffering for his love of truth, is, indeed,
making the very same sacrifice, on the very same
ground, as he who, for the grosser baits of animal
indulgence, brings upon himself the same suffer
ings : he is, in truth, sacrificing all at the shrine
of his besetting sin ; a sin too, which, though
decked out with the seeming glory of a spurious

8 ON THE DUE RECEPTION OF
martyrdom, is, when we look more closely, an
exact copy of that which we may reasonably
class as the greatest of offences, "the very snare
of Satan ;" for it is an instance of a reasonable
creature falling from his God, not by fleshly temp
tation, but by intellectual and spiritual revolt. . . .
The presence of doubts is not, indeed, always
in itself a proof of any irreverence of soul : some
times they are permitted to harass the faithful
man as a trial of his faith ; and when they come
thus, and not as the fruits of irreverence or negli
gence, it is often against the most valuable minds
that they are aimed. The armory of Satan is
rifled to furnish weapons of offence wherewith to
injure those who are proof against his commoner
assaults. From this danger no one is absolutely
safe. There seems clearly to be an intimation
in the Gospel, that our blessed Lord Himself,
when He bore our feeble humanity, was tempted
by the suggestion of doubts from the enemy with
out, though no possible taint of evil, either from
the imagination, understanding, or will, ever visited
His soul ; for to Him it was whispered from
without, "If Thou be the Son of God," to in
sinuate, if it were possible, into that most true-
loyal soul some mistrusting doubtfulness of His
Almighty Father. The suggestion, therefore, of
doubts to the mind, does not necessarily suppose
the presence of sin ; it does unquestionably sup-

THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES. 9
pose the presence of danger, and therefore is
a call for greater watchfulness, for a more diligent
guard over the first tendencies of thought towards
irreverent speculation ; that the fiery brands may
be quenched or thrown back before they have
kindled so much as a spark within. Whilst irre
verence and doubt are the objects ofyour greatest
fear ; whilst you would gladly retain a child-like
and unquestioning reverence, by abasing, if need
were, your understanding, rather than gain any
knowledge at the hazard of your reverence ; you
are doubtless in God's hand, and therefore safe.
Yet, as He works by means, and as this danger
evidently threatens you, guard against it with
a vigilant providence ; fly from doubts, rather
than enter into conflict with them, remembering
that " he who will fight the devil at his own
weapon must not wonder if he find him an over
match ''." Fly, therefore, rather than contend ;
fly to known truths ; shelter yourselves, above all,
under the shadow of His love and power, who is,
in compassion. Father of your spirit, and yet is
the Lord God Almighty : begin to act upon the
truth you do know, and your darkness shall be
turned into light. " Who is among you that fear
eth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His ser
vant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light >
^ South.

IO ON THE DUE RECEPTION OF
let him trust in the Name of the Lord, and stay
upon his God." (Isa. 1. 10.)
To these means must be added further, as per
haps the greatest instrument of all for preserving
the unsullied clearness of a reverent faith, that
we be deep and constant students of God's holy
word. We know, indeed, and feel the blessing
and advantage of symbols, formularies, and arti
cles ; of the whole amount of uninspired trans
mitted teaching, with which God's providence has
enriched His Church. We doubt not, that in the
consent of Christendom we can read the working
of God's Spirit on the souls of His children ;
even as we can trace the passage of the wind of
heaven by the rufiling of the waters underneath
its breath : and for these great helps towards the
due comprehension of revealed truth we heartily
thank God, using them carefully, and with reve
rence of spirit ; not thanklessly and rudely throw
ing aside any help (least of all so great an one),
where we are so weak, and where we so greatly
need great strength. But still, with another spirit,
and with far higher reverence, we turn to Holy
Scripture : here are no weary searchings of the
soul, amidst the waywardness of individual fancy,
for that track of consent, which, when close to us,
shews often so faintly as to be almost lost, al
though on the whole the eye can run along its
course ; but all is sure. It is not grains and

THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES. , II
dust that we collect, golden indeed, and precious
enough to repay the toil of washing, and sifting,
and testing, and collecting, though still but grains
and dust ; it is rich and solid veins of ore, which
grow under our hands. Now, the bearing of this
difference on the formation of a reverential habit
of receiving truth, is most direct. This unques
tioning submission to a heavenly guide is the
very temper which we need ; and to no other
teaching but that of inspiration can we thus abso
lutely yield up ourselves. Nowhere but where
we know that every word is necessarily true, can
we wholly abandon the spirit of questioning what
we are taught, and with all our souls ask only
what we are to learn. Nor need it be concealed,
that this caution becomes only the more requisite
at any time when- the spirit of theological re
search has been happily aroused, and men have
been sent from the slight and unsatisfying pretti
ness of the moderns, to the more solid and severe
thoughts of earlier times. The energy and whole
some zeal for learning, which then succeeds to
the listlessness of a superficial season, leads men
into new danger. Holy Scripture they seem to
know, because they are familiar with its words ;
and it appears, therefore, as if other studies
yielded more return to the inquirer. There is
, more to satisfy a restless curiosity ; there are more
apparent, superficial gains ; and so there is great

12 ON THE DUE RECEPTION OF
danger, lest, unawares, and whilst their language
changes not, men's secret estimate of things should
change ; lest, practically speaking. Holy Scripture
be less valued, in point of fact, its pages be less
searched ; and man's authority and secondary
fountains be mainly employed to quench that
thirst of the spirit which should be slaked only
at the living waters of God's word.
This is no slight danger; great is the injury
which may accrue from it to our belief. First,
as you have seen, in its necessary effect upon
our power of simply apprehending truth, without
the presence of a questioning spirit ; but not this
only, — it affects too our system of belief, as well
as our powers of believing. We do not, indeed,
as the Romanist declares, set men down unaided
to draw out from Holy Scriptures for themselves
a system of belief, although we may not doubt
but that from them alone, if no more were given,
men might learn aptly, by the secret teaching of
the blessed Spirit, all truth needful for salvation :
but more has been given ; and what God has
given, we dare not to slight. Our creeds, and
all the transmitted judgments of the Church, are
most precious aids ; and, with the previous teach
ing of these stored in their minds, we send men
to the Scriptures, not to discover, by a curious
scrutiny or new inspiration, truths hitherto un
known, but that they may learn indeed, and with

THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES. 1 3
a spiritual knowledge, truths old to the Church,
but, in this sort, new to them. We would im
press upon you, that the teaching of articles and
schemes of faith is, by the necessity of the case,
dogmatical and cold — addressed to the under
standing more than to the heart; and that the
belief which you will gain from learning Chris
tianity from them is, therefore, wholly another
thing from that which will possess their souls who
patiently and earnestly explore the Word of God.
No truth is written in broader characters in every
page of past Church history. Many are the here
sies which have sprung from a learned pride ;
from ignorance alone scarcely perhaps a single one,
— none, certainly, from ignorant humility. The
only theological knowledge which has saved men
from heresy has been this knowledge of God's
word. So, indeed, it must be ; the sands of a
faith adopted thus mainly by the intellect must
be ever shifting ; they want the compacting prin
ciple of moral obligation. It is when the objec
tive truths which creeds and articles record in
naked propositions become subjective in our
minds, by being inixed up and united with the
daily upgrowth of our moral being, that our souls
are truly estabhshed in the Christian verities. . . .
We call on men, indeed, to mortify their thirst
for knowledge ; to abase their pride of reasoning ;
to become as little children : we meet the young

14 ON THE DUE RECEPTION OF
man glorying in his untamed powers of imagina
tion, and we meet the wise man glorying in his
patient strength and subtilty of reason ; and we
tell them, that they must be content to part with
those most valued attributes, and receive Christ's
teaching as a little child. And these are great
requirements. But our rewards are not less than
our demands. We can promise, in Christ's Name,
to those who will venture on His word, the secure
possession of that which reason promises in vain.
They who at His call are willing to choose the
path of a humble ignorance, shall find it turn
into the way of surest knowledge. Though they
sacrifice some apparent boldness or subtilty of
intellect, though they, sparkle less with the out
ward dazzle of an assumed philosophy, yet even
their natural capacities will be increased and
perfected. The patience and docility which such
self-discipline engenders; the quiet brightness of
mind which follows the clearing off of the mists
of disfiguring passions— these are great aids even
to the natural faculties. The m'ind which has
been most deeply steeped in the morning dews
of devotional exercises, will ever bear, with the
most maintained freshness, the parching heats of
deep and various study.
And if this be true as to objects of mere in
tellectual apprehension ; if, with regard to them,
the boldness of self-confidence, and the promises

THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES. 1$
of an unpurged reason, are uncertain and deceit
ful, how abundantly more true is it, if we take
into our reckoning the best and greatest objects
which can occupy the human mind, and the widest
and most lasting period for its active exercise !
for these are closed for ever against all, save
those who will enter on the search through the
narrow portal of such a teachable submission.
Even here on earth, what are all the specu
lations of the reason, or the secrets of science,
to that knowledge of the Creator of all things,
which the humble and the contrite gain .' Wise,
indeed, even for this life, was the resolution —
" Credo, ut intelligam." Faith demands the sub
mission, but it insures the perfection of the reason ;
it has a peculiar insight granted it into the high
est and the deepest things : " Ssepe amor intrat,
ubi cognitio foris stat "." And if, from this world,
where the mischance of a moment, the burning
of a fever or the wasting of an ague, may rob us,
unwarned, of all our most valued stores ; if, from
this short and uncertain condition, we carry on our
feckoning into the eternal world, all comparison
is at an end. "Blessed," then, indeed, "are the
pure in heart ; for they shall see God," (Matt.
v. 8) : words for which our poor conceptions here
can furnish no fit interpretation ; but which sug
gest to us, certainly, the highest satisfaction of
' Gerson.

1 6 ON THE DUE RECEPTION OF, &C.
our intellectual as of our moral faculties ; the
full fruition of those longings which God has
planted in our nature, and which here below can
never be completely met ; — words which plainly
teach us, that the meek docility and child-like
purity which Christ requires in His disciples, will
be, beyond all measure, overpaid, when, before
the throne of light, " we shall see no more through
a glass darkly, but face to face ; " when " we
shall no more know in part, but even as we are
known," (i Cor. xiii. 12).

II.
THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION.
IN union must be our strength ; and between
men engaged in action, there cannot long be
union without concert. Perhaps one of the main
causes of want of strength within the Church of
England, at this time, is the want of concert, com
bination, and therefore of strict union between
her clergy. We act separately in our parishes —
we grow to act as units on society : the man,
therefore, and not the system, is brought to bear
upon the various hindrances we meet with. Mean
while, the necessary love of our own plans — peculiar
modes of viewing truth — the apparently paramount
importance of that part of the truth which we are
most apt to contemplate ; all this tends to de-
velope a selfish standard, to lower our estimate
of unity, and to sever us from our brethren. Then
come suspicious thoughts of all who do but ex
press the same truth in different modes of speech ;
then shyness of combined action, which is soon
observed, imitated, and exaggerated by our flocks ;
and so the compact phalanx of the Church, which
in her union would be " terrible as an army with
banners," is broken up into a mixed and disor-
C

1 8 THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION.
dered multitude, and is in danger of becoming the
helpless prey of the first vigorous and combined
assault of her beleaguering enemies. . . .
Besides the matters brought before us by re
cent or by pending legislation, there are other and
more general interests which at this time it es
pecially behoves the clergy of this land to have
considered carefully ; for we cannot hide from
ourselves the fact, that the peace of society around
us is threatened by especial perils — perils which
it is peculiarly our province to allay. To main
tain, indeed, the peace and order of society is not
our highest aim. It is not because we are the
safest and the cheapest instruments for support
ing civil government, and thereby the peace and
happiness of social life, that we claim the attention
of mankind ; we act under a far higher authority ;
and we aim at far nobler objects than such views
can contemplate ; and in this day we have especial
need to enforce this truth upon the worshippers
of mere expediency around us. Yet are we bound
to " seek the peace of the city where we dwell ;"
to act in the spirit of that prayer in which we ask
" that the course of this world may be so peace
ably ordered by God's good providence, that His
Church may joyfully serve Him in all godly quiet
ness." Nor is it of little moment that we know
and claim our true possession of that only power
which can still these rising tempests ; for the bring-

THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION. 1 9
ing out of this truth is, in great part, the very dis
cipline which these times need. Always, indeed,
as now, selfishness and ungoverned passion have
been at the root of national as well as individual
suffering ; but these evils, instead of lurking in the
dark as heretofore, have of late formed themselves
into avowed systems, wherein they have dared to
walk openly abroad, and promise new life and en
joyment to their miserable victims.
With this truth, therefore, we must meet them.
We must shew men that all the social peace and
order around them are themselves but one fruit
of Christianity ; that the prevalent trust in the
power of civilisation is but an empty delusion —
a mere trusting in a word ; for that civilisation is
but the calm which results from the living energy
of Christianity. So much, indeed, the very leaders
of disorder might have taught men, for they know
that their only hope of overthrowing, or, as they
vainly term it, remodelling, the social system, is
by first removing Christianity. Yet still, the long-
continued prosperity of this land, its mechanical
powers and its intellectual activity, and, in one
view and in some measure, the general prevalence
of a certain respect for religion in the abstract, as
separate from what are thought the dogmas of
peculiar creeds, — all of these make it of the ut
most moment that this truth be again and again
brought forward. And to prove it is not difficult ;

20 THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION.
the proof is written large on every page of history,
where, in the long-run, the welfare or the sufferings
of any people are seen to be nothing else than the
true transcript of their moral and religious state.
This is not the place for the details of such an
argument ; for shewing that the Christian Church
has been everywhere the true parent of national
existence ; that she it was who, when the old
Roman empire broke up, more even through in
ternal corruption than external violence, gathered
into unity and national life the various savage
hordes whom the great tempest of the world had
driven within the reach of her calm and ennobling
influence. All this might easily be shewn, as it
has been most ably shewn by one " whom national
character and leading pursuits could not have pre
disposed to such opinions. But it is of great mo
ment that we bring this truth continually forward ;
that we possess, as far as may be, the minds of
men with the conviction of its certainty ; that we
lead them to see, that there where God's ark is
most reverently enshrined will be the largest mea
sures of prosperity and peace.
It is of great moment for ourselves also, my
reverend brethren, that we realise this conviction ;
that we look on the holy things in which we mi
nister as being in very deed our nation's safeguard.
Such a persuasion will lead us to take not only
" Mens. Guizot.

THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION. 21
a faithful, but a thoughtful and reasonable view
of all the troubled and changing scene around us.
Without this, while, through God's blessing on our
labours, we may do good to individuals, we shall
never call out the dormant powers with which the
whole system of the Church is really instinct for
the healing of our age. It is of no use to rail
against the spirit of the times in which God has
cast our lot : our business is to mould and sanctify
it ; and this we may do, if we bring the influence
of the Church to bear upon it. For, even in its
worst forms, we may commonly find that what is
called the spirit of the age rests upon some real
want of man and society — upon some want which
the Church can and ought to satisfy, and which is
turned to evil through the absence of this its law
ful satisfaction.
Thus, for instance, at this moment two causes
mainly lie at the root of all those convulsions by
which the peace and order of society are threat
ened — the unequal distribution of property, and
thSS' want of a common bond of unity. Now both
of these undoubtedly are the result of a highly
unnatural and, in many respects, diseased state of
society ; and the craving for their redress is not
in itself evil. It becomes evil only when it seeks
the mocking, selfish world as its redressor ; instead
of seeking, as it ought to, the power of Christ's
Church.

22 THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION.
For, take for a moment the second of these
causes : is it not true that there is a great and
widening separation in this land between the va
rious classes of society, and even between man
and man ? Thus the bonds which of old held the
high and low of English society together are melt
ing away. Where, for instance, amongst our vast
manufacturing population, are the old bonds of
mutual affection and respect — of natural care on
the one side, and generous trust upon the other —
by which the peasantry and gentry were united ?
And this poison cannot be anywhere present in
the circulation of the body politic, without reach
ing, more or less, to every part — it creeps on to
the trading classes, to the shopkeeping classes,
and thence even to rural districts. This change
is passing upon the very conditions of social life
in England ; and at the same moment, and from
the action of the same causes, the straiter bonds
of family life and subjection are wearing out ;
children are becoming more independent, and
brethren therefore more disunited. And yet men
are so constituted as to crave after union and co
operation : in the bitterness of spirit, therefore,
which waits on this increasing separation, they
look around for some new bonds which may re
place the old. It seems to them that religion
has been hitherto one of their dividers ; for they
have known her only in the multitude of sects ;

THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION. 23
and so they turn from her, and vainly hope to
find in common interests, and the jugglery of sen
sual promises, a cement strong enough to hold
together their pretended social system. Now,
how are such men to be met .' Not by railing
against their desire of combination, for this rests
on a true longing of man's heart — it is the cry of
their souls against the misery around them ; but
by shewing them that the Church is this healer
of division ; that in her unity, and in it alone,
the selfish, jarring hearts of men may be indeed
charmed to concord. My reverend brethren, there
is at this moment a special call upon us to believe
and act upon this truth ; to proclaim it fearlessly,
that division is not of Christ ; to teach in all our
parishes, and carry out the truth in all our plans,
that in the Church is the secret of unity for which
men's hearts are thirsting. What were it not to
do for England, to bring these healing powers
to bear upon our torn and disaffected multitudes ;
to bring our great cities, with all their busy
swarming life, to bow down in the fellowship of
a true faith before the altar of a common Re
deemer. And so of the other great cause of separation.
No reasonable man can doubt that the idolatry
of property is, at this time, one of our prime na
tional sins. And has not God so ordered things,
that rich and mighty nations, when they do be-

24 THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION.
come entangled in this idol-worship, shall become
also His avengers on themselves ; that the care
less, selfish rich shall become the prey of the un
trained, violent needy; that the feebleness of all
human institutions, when they rest not upon God's
word, shall, sooner or more late, be thoroughly
proclaimed by all the horrors and agonies which
wait on civil strife ?
And what is the only redressor of this evil .'
Not the somewhat unpalatable truths of political
economy, nor" the iron sinews of a proclaimed ne
cessity, which must always sound as a taunt in
the sufferer's ear. When did these ever allay
such tumults .¦¦ No, my reverend brethren, Christ's
Church, and it alone, can heal these evils. She
who can stand between these two classes ; who
can bind both in a common unity ; who can teach
the rich man that all he has are talents; that
man must hang on man ; that the sin, ay, and
the robbery, begins with him, if he uses for him
self what was but lent to him to use for others ;
who can tell the poor man that he is God's pen
sioner, and the rich that he is God's almoner ;
who can shew to the one the fearful danger of
wealth, and to the other the dignity and blessed
ness of Christian poverty ; who can teach both
that it is " God who hath tempered the body to
gether, having given more abundant honour to
that part which lacked, that there should be no

THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION. 2$
schism in the body, but that the members should
have the same care one for another ^."
This work, my reverend brethren, we must do,
or our land is lost. I will not scrqple to say, that
I believe we have not done it hitherto enough.
We have not enough enforced upon the rich the
conditions upon which they hold their riches. We
have allowed small alms to multiply ; we have
not claimed, and therefore not received, those full
offerings with which the Church ought to equalise
the inequalities of poverty and wealth. Hence
have sprung many of our troubles ; we have our
selves, in the minds of the ignorant, become iden
tified with the idol-worshippers of property, be
cause we have not openly rebuked them. Yet
here, too, our nation's hope is in our efforts.
Even as a mere political institution, the English
clergy, standing as they do between all ranks,
binding together in the equality of the common
priesthood the sons of the highest noble and of
the meanest peasant, have an equalising power
which no other body can have. But this is far
from all. When we stand up in the truth and
reality of Christ's Gospel, we wield "the powers
of the world to come." We can, in our Master's
name, rebuke Satan, and cast him out. Only let
us go in faith and in humility about our task, and
we must prosper. Opportunities are everywhere
'' I Cor. xii. 24, 25.

26 THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION.
around us. We may lay the foundation with the
young ; by educating children not in the frothy
showiness of superficial attainments, nor in the
fickle fervour of excited religious sympathies, but
in the deep and ennobling truths of God's word ;
in the certain training of His Church ; by working
principles into their hearts, and habits into their
lives : — we may go on to their elders ; we may
charm to rest their angry passions with the blessed
message of the everlasting Gospel ; and teach them
to turn their eyes aside from an irritating gaze
upon the sufferings of this life, by teaching them
indeed to know and prize their place within the
Church amongst the saints of God.
A great work doubtless, my reverend brethren,
is before us. Let us, therefore, be men of labour ;
seen and known in a perpetual ministry as the
messengers of peace. We need for its fulfilment
an earnest faith and great and constant self-denial.
Let us, then, for the sake of others, as well as of
ourselves, be men of holiness. Let us seek for the
rich indwelling of the Spirit of all grace. For
without this all our labours are in vain ; our cost
liest efforts are an empty stage-show — there is no
life in them, and in performance they must fail,
as lacking reality and truth. Above all, let us be
men of prayer — of prayer for ourselves, as those
who, beyond all others, need wisdom, strength,
and mercy; wisdom to thread harmlessly our

THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION. 27
often doubtful way; strength to bear a burden
always too heavy for us ; mercy, for, more than
others, and in greater things, we oftener fail ; of
prayer for others, for we are appointed to be in
tercessors, and where we can do no more, we can
always pray, and prayer cannot be in vain. In
one word, "seeing we have this ministry, as we
have received mercy, let us faint not "."
1840.

It can only be by earnest self-denial that, in
God's strength, and through the Gospel of His
Son, we can hope to prosper in our work. A list
less, ordinary, decent service will not do what we
are earnestly called upon to do. We must be
" the salt " of our land, if we would see it kept in
these last days from the foulest corruption. We
must set ourselves by example, more even than
by preaching, against the peculiar dangers of our
age. WTiat the great character of those dangers
is, it is not difficult to read. The vast gro\\1:h and
accumulation of our riches, the abundant means
of sensual and lower gratification hereby provided
for us, the discoveries of man's power over the
resources of nature, all these have tended, and
still tend, to make us a luxurious, a selfish, and
so a low-minded people. Hence it is that the
' 2 Cor. X. 1.

28 THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION.
bonds which bind our several classes into one are
already loosened and yet more dissolving. Hence
it is that bands of children, who might grow up
to be our Church's and our country's strength, are
daily sacrificed, both soul and body, in the vast
idol temple of our manufacturing greatness ; hence
are all the plague-spots on the surface of society,
which mark too surely the deadly plague which
rages in her veins.
No other power than that in the strength of
which we minister can save our land. So much
even they confess who the least think of making
any such confession. The new plans, now cur
rent, for regenerating society are, in their veriest
empty graspings after the shadows of combination
and a spiritual link between man and man, a con
fession of the want of some religious element, and
an attempt to supply it. They are a testimony
against the heartless, sensual matter-worship of
the day. They are the inarticulate cravings of
speechless organs after that which the Church, and
the Church only, in the true strength and presence
of Christ, in the fulness of the Spirit, and so in
the perfectness of mutual communion and of a
chastened self-denial, can give to them. And
this, my reverend brethren, it is ours to minister
to this ¦ great people ; to convey this truth and
life in our several spheres to all the remotest
veins and pulses of our social body. What man-

THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION. 29
ner of men ought we to be ! How deeply should
we have drunk of these truths ; how should our
very spirits have imbibed their power and fresh
ness ; how should our lives testify against the low-
minded self-indulgence of a sensual age !
We have the more need to remind ourselves of
this, because the peculiar character of our position
predisposes us, if but for a moment we lose sight
of our high spiritual vocation, to sink into the
decent lovers of a life of ease. Sheltered from
the rudest blasts of public life ; compelled by the
proprieties of our position to curb the extrava
gance of the more violent passions ; endued more
or less with some literary tastes, and softened by
the balmy air of domestic happiness, we are more
than other men in danger of becoming worshippers
of ease and comfort.
None of these things, indeed, need betray us :
only let us, in God's strength, keep steadfast
guard against them. The time has been, ere
now, when the men of our order bore without
flinching the bitterest blasts of open trial. The
Marian persecution fell upon a married clergy;
and it was often noted that they whose houses
were stored the most richly with domestic bless
ings walked with the steadiest footsteps to the
scaffold or the stake. Let us shew ourselves their
sons in more than name and natural succession.
Let us practise ourselves in the Church's discipline,

30 THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION.
in her fastings, her prayers, her continual service ;
in her deadness to the worid ; in her true spiritual
life to Christ. Let us lay a firm hold upon things
unseen, that we may be ready to endure '' as seeing
things that are invisible." Let us ever bow our
neck to the yoke of our Lord ; let us rest all on
Him and on our personal union with Him ; claim
ing by faith for ourselves our true place in Christ's
redeemed body ; claiming it for our flocks, and
teaching them to claim it for themselves ; casting
off the sloth and softness of a merely natural life ;
being, if need be, " men of contention to the whole
earth ;" that so of God's mercy we may, if it be
given us, heal our people's sore ; or at the least
save alive amongst us the holy seed for whose
sake God may yet spare our land. Every other
mark, my reverend brethren, of Christ's true Church
we have upon us : a true succession, which of God's
goodness was never broken ; order which none can
dispute, mission which none can question, His word
in its integrity. His sacraments in their purity ; —
add to these the outward gifts of learning, and
station, and influence, and competence, at least,
if not of wealth ; only let there be seen upon us
.more abundantly the deep broad stamp of a self-
denying holiness ; that countersign of God's true
choice, that impress of the cross of Jesus ; and of
His great mercy, through the presence of His
Holy Spirit, our labours shall bring forth their fruit

THE TRUE REMEDY FOR DIVISION. 3 1
a thousand fold. The word we speak shall be as
a sharp sword, reaching even to the souls of men,
and our intercessions shall open the windows of
the heavens, and bring down a gracious rain upon
the parched and waiting heritage.

III.
SEASONS OF TURBULENCE, OF UNBELIEF
AND MISBELIEF.
NEVER, surely, was there a time when the
hearty, earnest efforts of all who fear God
and love their country were more loudly called
for. The recent disturbances in one part of our
land [1842]; the threatening aspect of society
even now in others ; the want of employment,
the stagnation of trade ; and yet more by far, as
indicating a deeper root of evil, the widely-spread
endeavours, for the vilest purposes of gain, to
poison the minds of the great mass of our work
ing population ; the want of coherence, and af
fection, and trust, between the various classes of
society ; our dissent, our distrust, our internal va
riance in the deepest things which stir the souls
of men : — these are most alarming symptoms of
our social as well as moral state. Surely they do
declare that God has a controversy with us ; that
He is stirring us as a nation with these warnings
of adversity, that we may repent and turn to Him
before it be too late.
It is, then, a time in which all who fear Him
should be watching and labouring earnestly ; but

SEASONS OF TURBULENCE, &C. 33
chiefly, my reverend brethren, should we who keep
God's watch upon the battlements of our land,
chiefly should we, at such a time, be earnestly
awake. All things round us call us to be ready :
great powers, for good or evil, are struggling
around us, as in a confused uncertain birth, and
upon our faithfulness the issue in great measure
must depend. It is no escape from this truth to
allege, that so it has ever seemed to each succeed
ing generation in its turn ; that seen near at hand
the features of each present danger have always
worn the most appalling aspect; that the NOW
has always seemed uncertain, always been fading
into the coming, always threatening the endurance
of all things ; that dangers have ever been around
Christ's Church ; that always it has seemed she
must be swept away by the great earth-flood, and
that with her all social peace and order would be
utterly obliterated. No doubt this is true, for
such is the law of our being : " The judge standeth
behind the door." Ever since He left this earth
who ascended from the hill at Bethany, He has
been returning — some glow has ever rested on the
eastern skies. But it is no less true, that as the
time of His sure coming draweth nigh, these signs
of His approach wax clearer and more definite.
The gleaming streaks of a coming morning mount
up the skies ; the voices which usher in its pre
sence are multiplying round us ; the hum, and
D

34 SEASONS OF TURBULENCE,
the crowd, and the tread of an awakening world
rise in full tide upon the watcher's ears ; all things
that are, are shaken, holding themselves in an
eager readiness for the r.ew order of the coming
day. It is ours to prepare all things for this issue :
whether He come speedily, or yet delay His com
ing, to do as our forefathers in the faith have done
before us ; to heal society round us ; to prepare
it for the unknown path on which it must enter ;
for the changes through which it must pass.
For such changes are inevitable. All national
life is ever drifting on in a mighty current, which
the strongest hand cannot for an instant stay.
Each succeeding generation sees round it a new
scene of circumstance and being. We sweep past
the roots of mighty mountains, of which the dis
tant tops were but just visible to long-sighted men
amongst our fathers. New interests spring up ;
new combinations arrange themselves, and gather
into solid strength. The whole face of society
becomes altered round men unawares : they en
deavour to act upon their old rules, and find, with
surprise, from the unexpected issue, how mighty
a transformation had passed upon all around them
whilst they dreamed not of it. And it is one in
evitable condition of all such changes, that they
stamp more and more deeply upon every usage
of society the brand and impress of selfishness,
unless Christianity is ever present and ever active

OF UNBELIEF AND MISBELIEF. 35
to redress the evil. And by redressing this, she
becomes the great preserver of Christian nations,
saving them from that destruction to which the
mere natural upgrowth of institutions amongst
fallen men inevitably tends. For that selfishness,
which is always intertwining its poisonous presence
with all human institutions, is a stifling, a corrupt
ing, and a disjointing thing ; it debases all na
tional character in a thousand ways, and dissolves
the very inner spirit which pervaded and held
together the outer framework of society ; and it
is the very attribute of Christianity to strive from
the first against this selfishness. And hence is
there ever in the Church of Christ the truest
power of prophecy, whereby she still interprets
to men the ambiguous letters of present things,
which the " fingers of a hand " still trace upon
their walls, and which, when read out, are the
surest presage of the coming future. Thus it is
that by an heavenly instinct, proportioned ex
actly to her faith and purity, she has ever met,
and ever prevented, throughout Christendom, the
emergent wants of society, which, if they are not
thus met, are sure to break forth in those fearful
convulsions which suddenly upheave and desolate
the whole surface of political and social life.
And this inner power it is ours, my reverend
brethren, to call into action. Not by becoming
politicians — God forbid that we should so quit

2,6 SEASONS OF TURBULENCE,
our proper calling! — but by cleaving closely to
that calling ; by walking more with Him " whom
the worid seeth not ;" by being men of a deeper
piety, of more earnest prayer, of a keener insight
into God's living word, and so into the hidden
law of all things ; by searching our own hearts,
and thus knowing the hearts of our brethren ;, by
being so dead to the world, that her sorceries
cannot pass on us ; and, therefore, that, seeing
through her empty juggleries, we may proclaim
to men where they may indeed find the great
truths for which their thirsty spirits are vainly
seeking amongst her delusions.
Thus whilst we labour each one with our own
charge, we may be really the healers of our land,
and its great protectors from social disorganisa
tion. For all wide-spread popular troubles and
general discontents do indeed point at some great
social want or evil. It is therefore a short-sighted
policy which would merely stifle this voice of com
plaint; rather should its accents, broken often and
inarticulate as they needs must be, guide us to the
redressing of the evil which they indicate. And
for this we must trace it to its first principle. And
here we need a higher wisdom than mere earthly
policy can furnish. The moral faults of this age
become, by the living inwrought principle of re
tribution, the social and political plagues of the
next. These, therefore, Christianity discovers and

OF UNBELIEF AND MISBELIEF. 37
heals at the fountain-head. The merely worldly
politician finds the sullen storm brooding over
him in its blackness, and, with his best expedients,
knows not how to turn aside its violence; break
it must : but the Church, if she exist in her purity
and her vigour, will have drawn off upon the moun
tain's brow, in fertilising showers, the mists and
vapours which would otherwise have gathered into
the depth of the thunder-cloud.
Thus it is, no doubt, with us at this time. The
evils which threaten us now are most plainly the
outgrown sins of the coldness of heart of the pre
ceding century. What is Chartism, in all its va
riety of forms, but the headstrong violence of men
intrusted for the first time with some measure
of political power, and who, whilst groaning under
the sufferings which are more or less necessarily
connected with the unequal distribution of wealth,
have been taught to believe it possible by merely
earthly machinery to redress this manifold evil .'
Whence, then, does this spring but from the sin
which suffered whole classes of our countrymen
to grow up without the influence of Christian truth,
ignorant of their true redressor, and therefore easily
befooled by the emptiest promise of deliverance
from any quarter? Instead, therefore, of indulg
ing angry feelings against these our brethren, our
souls should yearn over them as men we have
neglected hitherto; whose errors are our own re-

38 SEASONS OF TURBULENCE,
proaeh ; to whom we owe a vast debt of Christian
sympathy and love ; who are only dangerous, be
cause their deepest plagues have been left by us
unhealed. . . .
And, in like manner, what are those other forms
of evil which we have seen gathered into the com
mon head of Socialism, but the outgrown religious
dissent of the preceding generation.? What are
they, but the moral history of those who have run
through all sects, until, in the vexation of their
weary spirits, they believe that all religion is sect
arian ; and who, therefore, having given up with
Christianity the first principles which hold together
family and social life, are now groping blindly
after an impossible unity amidst the pollutions of
a low and selfish sensuality ? What then, again,
is this, but the fruit of that practical unbelief,
which did, in the last generation, drive whole
masses of our countrymen to seek amongst dis
senters from our national communion, that reality
and earnestness of personal piety, of which, alas,
so little trace was visible in the Church, which
alone can be their true and lasting home. Here
again the sins of that age are become the scourges
of this.
And what may be before us God knows ; but
thus much is certain : with us, of His goodness,
are still those healing powers, and that forecasting
instinct, which alone can save this people from

OF UNBELIEF AND MISBELIEF. 39
civil and social misery. Let it be our part, my
reverend brethren, faithfully and earnestly, in our
own spheres, to bring them to bear upon society
around us. Let us believe in the true life of that
heavenly system of which we are the ordained
ministers ; let us act as those to whom is indeed
committed a " dispensation of the grace of God ;"
not going back to dead forms of bygone times,
as if they were the life which, it may be, did once
act through them ; nor striving to force all things
into channels through which in their season they
have flowed, and which they now have left ; but
believing in the reality of the spiritual powers with
which we are armed ; believing in the true pre
sence of Christ with us, and therefore bending all
our strength, not to revive old customs, but to
quicken spiritual life within our Church and na
tion. If we dd this faithfully, we need not look
back wistfully to older and it may be worn-out
forms, and weep as if with them all life was de
parted from us. The same power which did then
penetrate and quicken the earthly element around
it, will enable us too, in our day, to fill with hea
venly life every form of outer things by which we
are surrounded on all sides. The Church has,
through God's help, been giving clear proofs of
its true being amonst us ; yea, by every blessed
mark of inner life, He in whom is all her strength
has graciously declared His presence with us. By

40 SEASONS OF TURBULENCE,
the quickening of holiness within her borders ; by
the spreading of her arms abroad ; by the restored
affection of her children ; by her increased colonial
episcopate ; by all of these and by many more
encouragements, our Lord is bidding us arise in
His might and do the work which He has set
before us. . . .
Still, whilst I thankfully acknowledge our in
creased union, there is much left for us to do, if
we would really be at one. There must be amongst
us much cultivation of personal intercourse, much
readiness to bear, for the sake ofthe common bond,
with the varieties which must spring from the ne
cessary variations of individual character. Above
all, there must of course be a hearty adoption of
the doctrines and a steady observance of the prac
tices of our Church. Personal impressions must
not lead us to tamper with this truth, or to humour
that article. We must not venture at our own
will to omit this sentence from the service, or ac
commodate that feature of our apostolical com
munion to the inclination of sectarians around us.
We must neither ape the formalities of Rome, nor
diminish one jot of our firm belief in the true
grace of Christ's holy sacraments. We must be
honest Church-of-England men in our belief and
in our practice.
Suffer me, my reverend brethren, to add, that
if united action be indeed a thing of moment, it

OF UNBELIEF AND MISBELIEF. 4 1
becomes us especially to guard against the intro
duction of new causes of disunion, which may add
fearful bitterness to those which, alas, before ex
isted, and widen breaches which we fondly hoped
were closing up. Of these, there must be always
danger proportioned to the vigorous acting of re
ligious feeling. For, unless the individual will, so
quickened, is at the same time softened and re
strained by a deep humility, it will ever be break
ing forth into some peculiarity of tenet or some
eccentricity of conduct ; and these will soon be
come, even in the best men, new causes of ruinous
disunion in the Church. That such dangers now
beset us, I am sadly and unwillingly convinced.
Surely it must be so, if there has been amongst
us a tendency to introduce into our sacred offices
peculiar customs, uncommanded in our rubrics,
unsanctioned by our fathers, unpractised by our
brethren in the Church. Such conduct must, of
necessity, put unity in peril. For if they be points
of moment, then, with no commission to warrant
our so doing, we gravely censure others : if they
be trifles, then, for the sake of trifles, we wantonly
disturb the Church's peace, and provoke a mis
chievous reaction. And if, at the same moment,
there is seen an inclination to depreciate all that
is peculiarly Anglican ; to exalt what, to say the
least, borders upon those impurities of faith and
practice, which, through God's grace, and in the

42 SEASONS OF TURBULENCE,
strength of their manly Saxon hearts, our fore
fathers cast off, — then is our danger greater still.
But it is greatest, my reverend brethren, if there
be growing up on any side a hankering after those
corruptions of the faith which issued of old in the
papacy itself ; a longing for a visible personal cen
tre of union as the condition of the unity of Chris
tendom ; a shrinking from the simple boldness of
statement, which marks the declaration of the
Gospel of God's grace throughout the inspired
epistles ; a tendency to confound that faith, which
alone justifies, with the crowning grace of charity,
in the burning brightness of which faith should
issue ; if there be a studious inculcation of that
which, in this most mistaken sense, some unhappily
have learned to speak of as " the great doctrine of
justification by works ;" if there be, lastly, a dis-
proportioned care for the outer parts of our re
ligion, combined with any inclination to depreciate
its individual spiritual life in every heart in which
it dwells ; — surely, if there be but a suspicion of
these things,— there is ground for watchful caution
upon our parts : a caution which should act, not
in leading us to reject what we suppose are the
peculiar views of others ; (for all mere negative
religion is a poor thing at the best ;) still less in
making us willing to suspect, with party readiness,
those who differ from us, or to impute to them
lightly, with party bitterness, such fearful errors ;

OF UNBELIEF AND MISBELIEF, 43
but in leading us to embrace for ourselves, with
a more earnest hold, and to exhibit to others, in
a sharper outline, that positive and substantial
form and body of Christian truth which will be
our safeguard from errors on each side, and which,
of God's mercy, is so well set forth in our own
articles and liturgy.
Marked, indeed, was the training by which the
holy men who have left to us this precious legacy
were fitted for their work ; bitter was the struggle
through which they for themselves discovered their
deliverance from "the body of this death;" scorch
ing were the fires of personal suffering through
which they were brought out into the large room
which we, of God's goodness, have so peacefully
inherited ; and thus was there a broad impress of
reality stamped upon their views of doctrine ;
whilst, by God's special mercy, they were kept
clear from material error, on the one side, by their
acquaintance with Puritan excesses, as, on the
other, by their knowledge of the deep corruptions
of the Papacy. With them, my reverend brethren,
let us hold fast, with thankful hearts, the clear,
simple, well-marked character of old Church-of-
England piety. Yes, my reverend brethren, may
this, through God's grace, be wrought deeply into
each one of us ; may we ourselves be indeed dwelt
in by His grace; may we be men of earnest prayer,
men of a large and unsuspected charity to all; may

44 SEASONS OF TURBULENCE, &C.
the cross of Christ be every thing to us our
selves ; may we bear stamped upon our lives the
marks of a holy, courageous, humble, self-denying
faith ; that, having borne meekly His blessed
yoke for our hour of service, we too, being washed
in His precious blood, may enter into His rest,
and be found indeed amongst His saints at His
coming. 1842.

IV.
"THE FORM AND BODY OF CHRISTIAN
TRUTH OUR SAFEGUARD FROM
ERRORS ON EACH SIDE."
IT must, I think, be plain to every thinking
man that we are not given over; nay, that
God has a great work in the midst of us. The
revival of truer and more spiritual views as to
the character of Christ's kingdom upon earth, the
increased value for the sacraments as means of
grace and of communion with Him, the common
ness of larger and more self-denying gifts, are ma
nifest symptoms of good. Never, in spite of all
our dangers and divisions, had the Church a more
evident vitality within our land than now. Never
had it a stronger hold on the affections of the
great mass of well-disposed men in this nation ;
never before has it spread itself throughout our
colonies abroad with so just and well-ordered
an increase; never was it so largely gathering
in to God the abundance of the heathen ; and
why should we doubt that, as its life becomes
more vigorous, it will still develope fresh resources
wherewith to meet the fearful and aggravated
wants of our social state .' The details of such

46 THE FORM AND BODY OF
measures time and experience will suggest. They
will form, as do all the works of God, slowly,
yet with a sure progress, like the ever-growing
grottoes in the depth of ocean ; they must be
put forth from our improved habits, not be sud
denly created by the ingenuity of speculation,
in the hope that our habits will grow up to them.
We need not perplex ourselves concerning them.
If only we are following peace with all men,
if only we are earnestly and humbly forming in
ourselves and in those round us the true lines of
Christian character, we are, however unconsciously,
helping on these blessed developments. And
how great a load of guilt will rest on us, if, on
the other hand, we do any thing to check this
growth of life ; if, by indolence and worldliness,
or a low standard, or unreality, we oppress and
benumb the Church around us ; if, by holding or
spreading erroneous doctrine, we defile its purity I
And that such dangers are around us, which
of us can doubt ? To me, my reverend brethren,
I confess they seem so -evident, as, by that law
which makes all men watchers when the common
weal is put in peril, to call even from such as
I am for an earnest word of caution. I speak
not merely of that trifling spirit which here and
there seems to delight in assuming (as far as it
can venture) the worn-out garb of departed super
stition ; for, bad as this is, there are, I fear.

CHRISTIAN TRUTH OUR SAFEGUARD, &c. 47
amongst us signs of yet deeper evil. Thoughts
and words, strange hitherto to our ears, and
seemingly disloyal to the Church wherein we
were baptized, to her martyrs and confessors, and
to her most explicit declarations on the most mo
mentous subjects, — these have found of late some
utterance and currency amongst us ; such sounds
have been heard from the lips of those whom
at this time we can ill spare, when self-devotion,
and courage, and all high gifts, are so greatly
needed by us for our common work. It were
unjust to them to suppose that such things
could be spoken by such men without some real
meaning. It can hardly be, for example, but
that the complaints we hear of the coldness of
our eucharistic services must spring from some
secret craving after those notions of a change in
the elements, or an expiatory sacrifice, which are
so carefully excluded from our liturgy. Again, the
distaste for all which bears the name of Protestant,
and the yearning after all things Romish, must
surely be the fruit of having, in some measure,
learned with Rome to account the Church the
substitute for an absent Lord, and not the body,
in whose ordinances He Himself is present with
every believer in His Name.
From which first error many others follow.
For, first, the Church separated from her Head
is practically substituted for Him ; and then sue-

48 THE FORM AND BODY OF
ceed longings for an earthly head and visible
centre of her unity ; a confounding of her living
powers with the forms they once created ; over
valuation of bare external uniformity ; deprecia
tion of all national communions, our own amongst
the number ; material, and therefore low, notions
of both the sacraments ; darkness as to the great
truth that man is righteous before God only in
virtue of union with his righteous Lord ; a be
lief that the Church, instead of growing day by
day in knowledge of the revelation given to her
once for all, may develope for herself new doc
trine, and so put aside the plain letter of God's
Word. And thus the purity of the faith is lost.
Let us see to it, my reverend brethren, as in
God's sight, that we hold fast ourselves, and hand
on unimpaired those great truths of "justifica
tion only through the merits of our Saviour Christ
by faith in Him "," of free pardon through His
blood, of the new life of each believing soul in
Him, in defence of which our fathers in this Eng
lish Church were well content to die.
It is, I believe, quite true that to some such
dangers all times of religious zeal and fervency
have been exposed. When the sap is strong, and
the inner life abundant, direct growth is often
times attended by something of irregularity and
excrescence. But though these wait upon luxu-
" Article on Justification.

CHRISTIAN TRUTH OUR SAFEGUARD, &C. 49
riant life, they must not be mistaken for it. They
are not its true development. Rather do they
waste its powers ; and if they proceed to an un
checked height, threaten its existence. We dare
not therefore suffer them amongst us, as though
they were parts of that fuller religious life of
which they are at once the accompaniment and
the hindrance. But what then, my reverend bre
thren, shall we do .-"
Trifle with error we may not — nay, we dare
not, in such extremity, be silent. We dare not
put in peril our own faith, nor the faith of our
brethren ; dare not be untrue to that sure dis
pensation of the Spirit which the Lord has com
mitted to us in this Church. We may not en
danger that rich inheritance which God has given
us in the true affection of so many manly hearts.
Yet God forbid that we should widen this
breach which we lament, or drive from us, by
harsh words and uncharitable judgments, those
whom we long to keep as brethren. Rather let
us strive to win them back to a hearty fellow
ship in Christ's Gospel, by every act and argu
ment of truth and love. It may be that some
coldness of ours, some formality, some dogma
tism, some want of sympathy, has first driven
them astray. Let us seek, then, to undo our
evil. Let us have a firmer faith in the truth of
our own position. Let us call out of it, for our-
E

50 THE FORM AND BODY OF
selves, all its hidden strength. Let us cleave
closely to Christ our Lord in the communion,
and according to the plain teaching of the Church
of England ; endeavouring, through God's grace,
to exhibit her true temper in ourselves. Such
a spirit of dutiful affection will best fit us to
develope all her latent powers ; to aid in per
fecting her system, and removing from it all
blemishes and imperfections. And in this spirit
is the great secret of success in dealing with all
our separated brethren ; not with those only who
thus lean to Rome, but with those also who are
joined to any of the sects. We must win them
back to that full inheritance of blessing from
which, as we believe, they now exclude them
selves, not by dry, cold, dogmatic arguments ;
not by confuting them with mere essays upon
the threefold ministry, and high claims of autho
rity for ourselves, — but by living amongst them
in the spirit and power of Christ's true Apostles.
Zeal, earnestness, self-denial, deadness to the
world, active charity, hearty devotions, patient
endurance, unshaken courage, love to God, and
brotherly kindness towards men, — these are the
best arguments with which we can unlock the
closed or closing hearts of our brethren. And we
have a sure standing-ground for these exertions.
Most true it is that we are placed midway be
tween the Roman communion and the multitude

CHRISTIAN TRUTH OUR SAFEGUARD, S:c SI
of tlie sects. But we are not tlierefore a faint
and ill-defined middle, a mere compound of ne
gations on this side and on that. Far from it.
Ours is, in the truest sense, a positive position.
We maintain, on tlie one hand, tlie ever-renewed
myster}- of tlie individual spiritual life in everj-
faitliful child of God. Armed u-itli tlie ^^•ord of
trutli, we deal with tlie conscience of each one
as if he were alone in the world ; teacliing him
tlie niairvel of his own consciousness and responsi
bility, tlie wonder of his own redemption and
renewal ; passing o\"er to none else, neither priest,
nor form, nor system, tlie charge of that hidden
life which he must lead by faitli in Christ, his
true Head, for the lie£ding of his conscience and
the sanctif\-ing of his soul. And }-et witli tliis,
on the otlier hand, we maintain the existence
of a true spiritual kingdom in tlie Church of
Christ ; a kingdom into whicli baptism is tlie
appointed entrance ; a kingdom not of signs and
shadows, but of reality and grace ; a kingdom
which is full of Him, in which He rules, not, as
some absent prince, b\" power deputed to vice
gerents, but as ever truly present witli it — as
go\-eming through its rulers, as teaching and
blessing through us its ordained ministers — as
indeed giving to the faitliful His quickening and
sa\ang Spirit, through the holy sacraments and
means of grace.

52 THE FORM AND BODY OF
This twofold witness we must bear, my reverend
brethren, in our several parishes ; yet not so
much by strength of words as by might of deed.
Men will learn from our lives lessons which we
shall in vain strive to teach them by our exhor
tations ; they will catch the tone of our daily
conversation with quicker ears than those with
which they listen to our sermons. We must be
FELT by them to be men of God, felt to have
an Apostolic commission. This in our rural dis
tricts, this in our crowded centres of population,
is to be our hold on those around us. We must
be felt to be men of another stamp from those
of this world ; to have more self - government,
greater habits of devotion, purer aims than other
men. Our words must not be repetitions of the
thoughts of others, uttered by us as conventional
proprieties, or unmeaning charms : they must be
the fruit of struggles in the closet, and conflicts
with the enemy. We must not be content with
waging a seeming war against bygone evils : we
must be felt to be striving against the present
and the dominant forms of unrighteousness. We
must be the poor man's friend and advocate, the
rich man's adviser and reprover. We must re
buke the chilling, cramping, debasing trade-spirit
of the present day by the visible nobleness of
a willing self-sacrifice. We must be felt to be
true men, really serving God and our neighbours.

CHRISTIAN TRUTH OUR SAFEGUARD, &C. 53
And for this, brethren, we must be dwelt in by
the Spirit ; we must bear the cross of our Master
stamped on our hearts ; we must be men of much
secret prayer, of many private communings with
God. And if this be our character, in some
way or other He will, in us ourselves, and by
us in this nation, make His kingdom strong and
glorious. Marvellously, and contrary to all expectation,
has that kingdom heretofore shaped itself by the
power of His indwelling Spirit. They who were
God's chiefest instruments in spreading and main
taining it, they too, even from the beginning,
often knew not how it, would grow under their
hands. They aimed at one result, and another
followed ; they meant to secure one issue, and
another stood complete before them. So it was
even from the very first. How obscurely did
the sons of Zebedee dream of that kingdom the
chief places whereof they coveted ! And ever
since, their favoured expectations, plans, and de
sires, have clouded the future even from the
saints. This has been the law. But no less has
it been always true, that they who wrought in
faith and patience, have entered on their labours.
They have always done something. A mightier
hand than theirs has carried on the work ; a wiser
counsel has shaped for them the unlooked-for
issue. And so it shall be for us. We cannot see

54 THE FORM AND BODY OF, &C.
whither the mighty stream is bearing us ; we can
not see the plan upon which we are labouring ;
we cannot understand how this kingdom is to put
forth its hidden strength and gather all things
into itself. Yet let us believe and work. Let
us have a true faith in His presence, who is its
life. Let us work as those who know that in this
presence is their strength. We have light enough
for this, and why should we want more ? We
have evils to resist, blessings to impart ; and in
Him we have strength with which to resist and
to impart them. Only let us keep faithfully to
our appointed work, and He will bless our la
bours here, and, of His undeserved mercy, ac
knowledge us as His in the blessed day of His
appearing. 1843.

V.
"WHITHER OUR UNHAPPY DIVISIONS
ARE LEADING MEN."
'nr^HERE is Christian zeal enough in England
-L to supply the funds we need for the edu
cation of our people, for building and endowing
churches, for carrying out the Gospel to our
colonies ; — we might be blessed at home, and
'honoured abroad in this great work, far above
other people, if our separation and disunion did
not so often mar our zeal. This is not the time
or place for tracing out in detail the history, or
allotting the blame of these divisions. Their
original, I think, might easily be traced to the
rising up of true hearts against the spiritual
tyranny of Papal Rome, and the guilt of their
after growth and increase might, alas ! be shared
amongst us all. But on this detail I do not
enter here. I speak of them now only as a fact ;
and through us, as a weakening and dishonour
ing fact to Christendom, and especially to Pro
testant Christendom at large. — They are more
over full of peril, both for our Church and nation.
Of the greatness of that peril, history records
for our instruction more than one undoubted in
stance. The Eastern Roman Empire fell not

56 WHITHER OUR UNHAPPY DIVISIONS
until internal division gave to external violence
a strength which could not be resisted : and its
inner weakness of division was the fruit of that
which is our own plague — of religious separation.
Whilst the enemy thundered at his gates, the
Greek, forgetful of his common country, gave all
his mind and strength to the gaining of internal
triumphs in the conflicts and questions of his sec
tional divisions. All social, civil, nay, even com
mercial life had been pervaded by this captious
separating spirit ; until its fretting tooth had eaten
out amongst them all national unity and life.
How far, and in some respects how increasingly,
this evil has spread, and spreads amongst us, which
of us, my reverend brethren, knows not .''
From this we must strive for deliverance, if we
would indeed be the channel for conveying to
our people the full stream of God's gracious pur
poses of mercy : a divided people cannot long
continue great ; and here it seems to me, that we,
my reverend brethren, have a special duty. We,
above all men, must seek to preserve and spread
around us this great gift of unity. Much depends
upon us. If we maintain the truth itself, in a
narrow, uncharitable, party spirit, how greatly
must the guilt of other men's separation rest on
us ! There is such a thing as defending Christ's
Church, and Christ's truth, as if it was our party.
And grievously will this injure ourselves and

ARE LEADING MEN. 57
others. Such a temper is fearfully inconsistent,
in ourselves, with true humility, and faith, and
love ; and it is eminently repulsive to others.
Many are the separations which have been caused
by the exclusive bigotry with which men have
endeavoured to maintain what seemed to them
the welfare of the Church. If we would win
men back to her, we must first be large in charity,
full in forbearance, ready to welcome all ; to re
ceive them that are weak in the faith, and not
to doubtful disputations. We must feel that true
unity is one of Christ's best gifts, to those who
wait on Him ; that no merely human agency,
and no external machinery, can possibly secure it ;
that it must be the work of that one Spirit which
only can " make men to be indeed of one mind
in an house ;" we must truly feel that division
is our sin, and our shame ; we must weep for it
in private, watch against it in our own hearts,
and then bear meekly, but firmly, our testimony
against it to others. We must not make war on
those who differ from us, like angry strivers of
the world, but endeavour, only with gentleness
and peace, to shew forth our own truth, acting
wherever it is possible together, and praying al
ways that God may knit again the rents which
men have made, and give in His good time one
heart to our divided people.
And if this must be our conduct and life to

58 WHITHER OUR UNHAPPY DIVISIONS
those without, amongst ourselves, above all, we
should cultivate a loving unity. We should make
for each other the largest allowances, and be
severe only to ourselves. Whilst we maintain,
as in God's sight, our own view of His truth,
simply and earnestly, we should ever be ready
to give others credit for a like sincerity of pur
pose, and seek for union with them by being
brought together into clearer and simpler views
of the one truth revealed to us by God, through
Jesus Christ, — yea, by drawing each one nearer
to Him our Lord. How can we gather in our
brethren of the separation, if we be not ourselves
united ? " How can a divided house but fall ?"
And yet, my reverend brethren, in this crisis
of our nation, and trial of our Church, the sounds
of disunion, hitherto unheard, of which I last year
had to speak, have even gathered strength. The
new evil of secession from our own ranks to those
of the Papacy, has shewn itself in more than
one instance. And who can over-estimate the
evil consequences to us, as a Church, which are
involved in the rising of such a spirit ? Plain
indications have distinctly marked, almost from
the beginning of this century, the new flow of
opinion on all questions which concern religious
truth. Little less distinct has been the direc
tion which its more recent course has taken.
From the first, there has spread widely amongst

ARE LEADING MEN. 59
us a powerful reaction against the unfaithful
apathy of the preceding century. The last few
years have been distinguished by a strong desire
to restore and carry out what, for brevity, we
may describe as Church principles and institutions.
Of this last movement it has been usual to speak
as if it had been the work of certain ascertained
hands ; but for its true cause we must, I believe,
look far beyond any such narrow view. They
with whose names, for reproach or honour, many
have identified the change we all perceive, have,
I believe, but modified and marred its action,
whilst, like the rest, they were themselves un
consciously borne on by a far wider and more
general movement, which may be traced through
all the Protestant states of continental Europe,
and even through the various branches of the
Papal communion. The causes of this tide lie
deep in the nature of man and of society, which
is at all times in a ceaseless ebb and flow, pass
ing from the vindication of some great principle
to its extravagant perversion from truth ; that is,
to its congenial error.
For so it was with us ; out of the deadness of
the eighteenth century, our fathers were allowed
to rouse the slumbering spiritual life of England ;
and faithfully amidst obloquy and scorn they did
their work. The great doctrines of God's grace
— the very sound of which had almost passed

6o WHITHER OUR UNHAPPY DIVISIONS
away — were heard again on every side. The
work of God in the soul of the behever was again
declared and vindicated. The access of every
faithful soul to Christ, as its true life, was simply
and earnestly declared. To us it was given, in
our day, to enter into and to perfect their labours ;
to bear our especial witness for the common,
as they had borne theirs for the individual, life
of Christian souls ; to gather into the full unity
of the Church the living energy which they had
been permitted to arouse ; to heal divisions ; to
join together bone to bone, and sinew to sinew,
by prophesying to them in the word of God.
Hence the rise of a new reaction ; and that
such a work has been going on amongst us to
a great extent, that it has of late, by certain
hands, been wasted and disfigured, which of us
can doubt .' I need not stay here to trace its
better progress ; it more concerns us to observe,
with care and sorrow, how it has been turned to
evil. It has, then, led some to the denial of
our old truths, not to adding to them their per
fection and completion ; to casting thanklessly
away God's gifts, not to enshrining them in fresher
gains ; to going back to old superstitions, not to
opening for us freer and wider realms of truth.
It is taking a few back openly to Rome and its
corruptions ; it is darkening and debasing the
faith of others. And yet further, for the mass

ARE LEADING MEN. 6l
it is, we fear, preparing the beginning of another
and most dangerous reaction. He must surely
have dull or inattentive eyes who sees not many
symptoms of the turning of that tide which has
lately set so strongly with our Church, and for
those great truths of doctrine and order of which,
through God's good providence, she has long been
the appointed keeper. There is rising amongst
our laity an angry, irritable temper, as to holy
offices and institutions, than which none can be
more fraught with danger to the truth of God
amongst us, and to our common Church. Let
us beware, my reverend brethren, how we stir
it up. Evil as it is in itself, and springing, in
some instances at least, from ignorance or yet
more unworthy causes, it is, we cannot doubt,
in others based upon a righteous resolution of
resisting the return of ancient errors, the loss of
precious spiritual blessings, the darkening of the
light of Christ to set up in its stead the earthly
fires of priestcraft and superstition. And if this
be its source, it is plain that it can be met suc
cessfully, not by violence and angry blame, not by
an obstinate adherence to things in themselves
utterly immaterial, but which are now most un
happily identified with real evils ; but only by
love and gentleness ; by the union of undoubted
faithfulness to Christ's pure word and doctrine,
with a yielding gentleness towards opposers in all
lesser matters.

62 WHITHER OUR UNHAPPY DIVISIONS
For these, my reverend brethren, I firmly be
lieve it is not yet too late. They may, under
God's blessing, stay the rising of those waters
Avhich otherwise would, in their headlong violence,
devastate our land : they rnay preserve unshaken
— they may, where there unhappily is need, yet
give us back — the confiding, trusting love of a
religious laity ; they may, of God's mercy, even
knit again in one our broken and divided people.
And of those whose errors and love of ex
tremes have so manifestly caused, or endangered,
this perilous reaction, and who now profess openly
their sympathy with Rome, and not with Eng
land, how, my reverend brethren, shall we speak .-'
Surely they are to be spoken of amongst us
even weeping ! For how few soever out of our
whole body may be tempted to join that cor
rupted Church,, (and I believe they will be found
very few,) surely in them it implies a fearful work
ing of the spirit of falsehood. The causes which
at first severed our Church from Rome remain
unremoved. Those dangerous corruptions of the
highest truths which forced our reformers to come
out from her as for their lives, continue still within
her, and disfigure her communion ; and however,
therefore, we may deem in the judgment of a
large charity of those to whom the faith of Christ
has never otherwise been known ; who from the
first have learned its glorious truths amidst these
clinging mists of the earth, what can we think

ARE. LEADING MEN. 63
of those who, being placed by God's good pro
vidence within this branch of His holy Church,
and having come within it to a full maturity of
years and judgment, now go over from their ear
lier light to the blindness and darkness of these
self-chosen errors .'' Surely whatever may be their
attainments or their zeal, we must think and
speak of them as of men given over to a great
delusion. Nor is it difficult to trace the course of such
a temptation, — or the fall of such unhappy per
sons. At first, probably, they had a clear view
of the evil of these pernicious errors, but certain
other features of the Roman system possessed
attractions for them. And if on these their minds
were let to dwell, what was this in truth but
dallying with temptation ; what but tempting
God to leave them to the darkness of their own
spirits. And what must be the course of those
who thus run into temptation ? Day by day they
feel less repugnance to these perversions of God's
truths ; by a general law of His righteous moral
government, the mind will soon begin to love the
errors which it wilfully endures ; for one after
another glosses are discovered, and palliations
urged, — the worship of the Virgin, we are told,
is, after all, but reverence for the mother of the
incarnate Son of God ; the dogma of transub
stantiation is but a declaration that "the body

64 WHITHER OUR UNHAPPY DIVISIONS
and the blood of Christ are verily and indeed
taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's
Supper;" the delusive mystification of justifica
tion by works, is but the necessity of sanctifica
tion ; and so the conscience is lulled to sleep, and
the moral sense perverted, until all power of per
ceiving truth is lost, and error is deliberately
chosen. Surely the rule of self - suspicion and
watchfulness should dictate to any one whose
mind was even moved upon these points, the
bounden duty of keeping at the greatest distance
possible from the opportunity of such delusion ;
of remembering honestly the deep pollutions of
faith and practice of which Rome has plainly been
convicted. From the first, let such an one re
member that he who chooses her system must
choose it altogether. She well knows how to lure
on her victims ; and promises them therefore as
their bait, glosses and relaxations, doctrines modi
fied, and practices reformed ; but once let them
join themselves to her, and they will find that in
all essential points she is what she ever was ; and
that they too, like the rest, must be bound by
all the decrees of the Council of Trent, and be
lieve all the Creed of Pius IV. *
" It may be useful to reprint here from the Creed of Pope
Pius IV. (promulgated in the year 1 564, the year after the close of
the Council of Trent, as "containing the principal points of Catholic
belief") those passages which especially concern the points of dif
ference between Rome and England. After detailing the funda-

ARE LEADING MEN. 65
As bearing upon this subject, I would say one
word on a custom growing up in some quarters,
of adopting without suspicion, for private use, the
standard works, original or adapted, of Roman
mental points of the one faith, and the Roman doctrine of the
seven sacraments "necessary for salvation," it continues, "I em
brace and receive all and every one of the things which have been
defined and declared in the Holy Council of Trent concerning
original sin and justification.
" I profess, likewise, that in the mass there is offered to God
a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the
dead ; and that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there
is truly, really, and substantially the body and blood, together with
the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, &c. . . .
' ' I constantly believe that there is a Purgatory ; and that the
souls therein detained are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.
" Likewise that the saints reigning together with Christ are to be
honoured and invocated, and that they offer prayers to God for us,
and that their relics are to be had in veneration.
"I most firmly assert, that the images of Christ, ofthe Mother
of God ever Virgin, and also of other saints, ought to be had and
retained, and that due honour and veneration is to be given them.
" I also affirm that the Power of Indulgences was left by Christ
in the Church, and that the use of them is most wholesome to
Christian people.
"I acknowledge the Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church
for the Mother and Mistress of all Churches ; and I promise true
obedience to the Bishop of Rome, successor to St. Peter, Prince of
the Apostles, and vicar of Jesus Christ.
"I likewise undoubtedly receive and profess all other things
delivered, opened, and declared by the sacred canons and general
councils, and particularly by the Holy Council of Trent. And
I condemn, reject, and anathematize all things contrary thereto, &c.
"I, N. N., do at this present freely profess and sincerely hold
this true Catholic faith, without which no one can be saved : and
I promise most constantly to retain and confess the same, entire
and unviolated, with God's assistance, to the end of my life."
F

66 WHITHER OUR UNHAPPY DIVISIONS
Catholic devotion. To many minds, such a cus
tom cannot fail of proving a great snare. Un
acquainted as they are with the details of our
protest against Rome, they place themselves in
certain peril when they thus unawares expose
their spirits, in the unguarded attitude of worship
and devotion, to the alluring errors of what is in
truth a most cunningly -devised and well-com
pacted system. And even if their faith be not
directly shaken, it by no means follows that they
have received no injury. To say nothing now of
worse injuries — of a drawing back to notions of
the worthiness of our good works, almsgivings,
and penance ; of the co-operation of our tears
with the once-offered blood of the One only Sacri
fice ; of the sacramental merit of our sufferings,
and such other fearful substitutions of man's
righteousness, for that of Christ our Lord ; — to
say nothing of these deep Pelagian errors *, which
have always infected Rome, and which, by con
sequence at least, deny the one foundation ", there
is a tone of morbid feeling which pervades these
writers, which to many minds is most ensnaring,
whilst it would prove a poor substitute for the
I* For painful and abundant proofs of the degree to which the
worst of these delusions may be found in recent publications pro
fessing to come forth from, the midst of our Reformed Commu
nion, see an Article on the Lives of Enghsh Saints, in the "British
Magazine" for November 1843.
•= Vide Hooker's Sermon on Justification, § 32.

ARE LEADING MEN, 6j
tone of real and manly devotion which to so high
a degree marks the character of what has been
well named (by the late Bishop Jebb*) our "home
spun divinity." To keep afar from such delusions
is our only safety. For the tempted, now as
always, a life of labour and a life of prayer, are
the appointed safeguards ; in a humble use of the
devotions of our own Church, and in a diligent
partaking in her works of love, we need not doubt
that God will meet with us and bless us, as He
met of old our fathers in the faith, and brought
them to the safe end of all their labours and
temptations. ^ Charge of 1823.
1844.

VI.
RESTLESS DISQUIETUDE THE TEMPER
OF THE DAY.
" Hold thee still in the Lord, and abide patiently
upon Him''
*' I ^HE words themselves suggest the true mean-
-¦- ing of holding ourselves still in God. For
the word ' still ' is not the adverb ' still,' meaning
no more than " hold thee YET in God — in spite of
appearances and trials go on holding to God ;" it
is the adjective 'still,' and means, "hold thee in
stillness upon God ;" and it implies, therefore,
that we are to possess that quality of mind which
is the opposite of restlessness ; and that this rest
is to be based upon confidence in God. Now our
two-fold nature makes this needful for us as to
two different subjects ; as to things temporal and
things spiritual. As to both of these we are to
be still in God ; as to both we are to be free from
restlessness. And this restlessness has a two-fold
root of bitterness, which trust in God must ex
tirpate. It springs from dissatisfaction with the
present, or from anxiety about the future. There
is a deep melancholy in the heart of every man,
bound up in the very bundle of his life, which,
like the breath of myrrh, is ever ready to spread

RESTLESS DISQUIETUDE, &c. 69
itself, by a secret influence, over all his being ; and
in spirits of the deepest tone there is the most of
this, for this is the greatness of the soul reaching
after its true portion : and this may at any time
make all the life of any man restless and sad, un
less he learns indeed to lean his soul upon God ;
to believe that He is near us, that He is Truth,
is Love, and is ours through Christ Jesus. And
as we dwell always on the brink of these dark and
mighty waters, so any great grief may at any time
break up their bitter fountains, till they overwhelm
us, unless we are built upon this sure rock, of con
fidence in God. Hence we see many men always
dissatisfied, always restless, always craving, always
miserable. And in mere life there is enough to
breed this temper in all men. But this is the be
liever's talisman ; this is the Christian man's safe
guard : " Hold thee still in the Lord ;" still this
restlessness by the power of His Name.
In common life this must be our rest ; and in
great sorrow too. Then also must we be still in
Him ; not, indeed, by striving unnaturally not to
feel sorrow ; but by our taking the sorrow from
Him. We are not to let its flood, at the highest
of its swelling, sweep us from this sure anchorage.
We are to submit ourselves, not to the sorrow,
but to Him ; to seek, not for the frozen numbness
of the stoic, — for this is most unhke the temper of
the Christian man, who is kept tender in heart

^^kijW*^

70 RESTLESS DISQUIETUDE
and lively in affection by his faith itself, and who
therefore will, in one way, suffer more acutely
than he can whose heart has been made callous
by selfishness, — but for the faithful submission
of the child to the trusted discipline of a loving
Wisdom, which cannot wound us but for our
truer healing.
Here is the cure for that restlessness which
springs from dissatisfaction with the present ; and
here also is the cure for that which arises from
anxiety about the future. For, in this case also,
the Christian's trust is not in the future, but in
God. It is not that he has persuaded himself that
all will always go with him just as he chooses ;
that he shall succeed in all things ; that life will
be to him all sunshine ; that all things will come
to him as he would have them, and stay with him
as he would keep them : this is trusting in the
future, not in God ; this is being sanguine, not
being trustful ; this leads to men being full of
schemes, and wishes, and earthly hopes, and am
bitious desires, and then of restless fears and sour
disappointments; not to their being still. The
root of stillness is trust in God ; it consists in
looking-on as httle as may be into that future,
in looking always to God ; and so quieting, with
the blessed thought of Him, the anxious spirit
within us, which otherwise must tremble at the
edge of that misty to-come, wherein are floating

THE TEMPER OF THE DAY. 7 1
obscurely, for the eye of every man who peers into
it, forms of loss and sorrow insupportable.
Such, then, is this grace as to things temporal :
it is true submission to God in the present, true
trust in Him for the future.
And in things spiritual it is very much the same.
Here, too, it is freedom from restlessness. It is
the committing the care of our more anxious spi
ritual being to Him. It is the very opposite of
self-trust — of the busy, bustling, restless religion
of self-righteous men ; which, whether it builds
upon acts or upon impulses, does truly build on
ourselves, and not on God. From which, their
common root of self-confidence, it follows that
there is a close alliance between those two false
schemes of the spiritual life which, at first sight,
seem the most widely opposite, — the life of the
mere formalist, and the life of him who is en
grossed in a heart-eating searching into his own
passing frames and feelings. For each builds his
spiritual life on himself: neither is still in God.
The whole soul of one is stayed upon his outward
acts of religion, their decency, their regularity,
their number; and of the other, on his inward
emotions, their vehemence, their volume, and their
multitude. The opposite of both is the true trust
of the child of God, by which he commits to the
promised faithfulness of God all this mighty work
of his salvation : waiting on Him in prayer, in

72 RESTLESS DISQUIETUDE
sacraments, and in self-denial, because through
these things He works, in Whom is His creatures'
trust. Such in things spiritual is true stillness in God.
And acquaintance with this may lead us on to
still higher truths. It may teach us how closely
connected with true religion is a certain silence of
spirit ; how blessed are meditation, and stillness,
and waiting upon God, and a hushed and bowed
temper of soul ; how much is to be learned in
sorrow, and in separation, and in secret musings,
and in being alone with God ; how great a gift
is a weaned, self-restrained heart. For here we
in some degree master that great truth, that the
work of our sanctification is indeed God's work in
us ; and that without His working all our acts
are vain and fruitless. It is not in our mere doing
this or that, but in being visited, being stamped,
wherein lies, after all, the mystery and the power
of the new life. It is the having a hand laid
on us whose impress shall remain ; the bearing
a burden ; the " being wrought " unto a certain
temper ; which is indeed being " a new man in
Christ Jesus," and bearing here that character
which shall shine hereafter as the sun in the king
dom of God.
And this is, perhaps, that feature of religion
which, for many reasons, is the most seldom to
be met with at the present day. From many

THE TEMPER OF THE DAY. 73
causes, from the temper of the day, and from the
temper of our nation, the being busy is most na
tural to us ; and so, even in our religion, we bring
out the part connected with ourselves and our
own actions, until we make it one-sided, and for
get that, after all, to be silent before God, to real
ize our personal reconciliation with Him through
the blood of atonement, to walk in His Spirit, to
spend our lives as His obedient, trusting children,
— this is, to each one of us, the essence of Chris
tianity. And if this is what is meant by this precept, we
may easily see next the blessedness of truly obey
ing it.
First, as it relates to things temporal ; surely in
obeying it is the only peace for any one of us.
Whether it be for the present or for the future,
where else is peace .-' In the most prosperous pre
sent, what peace can there be without this confi
dence in God ? Is there, indeed, any thing upon
which the spirit can rest in the harassing and noisy
clatter of the greatest success ; in its engrossing,
dizzying dream ; in its difficult and doubtful hold
of things which we feel are every day more un
certain, and yet more essential to our happiness .-•
And if this is true as to the fairest present pro
sperity, much more is it as to disappointments and
sorrows. And who knows not these ? Where do
they not intrude and darken the bright sunshine

74 RESTLESS DISQUIETUDE
over us .' Or if they have not yet come to us, have
not the shadows of their approaching presence
often fallen on our spirits, and chilled suddenly
their summer gladness .' Where, then, for the pre
sent or for the future, is peace, but in the portion
of submission } There can be none without it. So
long as to any one of us, be he rich or poor, life
is still a game of chance ; so long as he is staking
his being for any hazard, be it, in the eyes of men,
for great stakes or for small, there can be no peace :
there will be excitement ; there may be a turbulent
joy now and then ; and there is sure to be enough
of disappointment ; there may perhaps be madness
in the end, but there cannot be rest. It is indeed
a sight to make a thinking man weep at any time,
to look round him anywhere, and see how Satan
and the world are befooling souls for which Christ
died, and which might find rest in Him. There is
no true peace but in being still in God ; in always
committing all to Him. And they drink the deep
est of those refreshing waters who have so far
mastered this truth, that He is all to them ; that
to live is to serve Him. There is a true finding
of the life in thus losing it. There is an unspeak
able peace in looking for nothing but our daily
task, and our portion of His cross between this
day and the appointed time, when we shall fall
asleep in Him.
And as this is the secret of peace for this world.

THE TEMPER OF THE DAY. 75
SO is it for that deeper life of the spirit which we
are leading. There is an unspeakable blessedness
in knowing that we are in His hands ; that He
¦who created us, that He who redeemed us, that
He who, sanctifieth us, is indeed ours in the cove
nant of His everlasting love. There is a true rest
in resigning ourselves to be taught ; in yielding
ourselves to the leading of His Spirit ; in coming
to prayer, and to worship, and to holy communion,
and to the daily duties of our station, not as if,
through these things, we were to work ourselves up
to great attainments, but as that course in which
He for Christ's sake will meet us, and work upon
us, and lift us up, even to Himself.
And in such a faithful quietness there is this
further blessing, that in it we do become trans
formed, and 'oear God's impress. The still waters
are those which reflect in an unbroken image the
clear face of the heaven over them : if you do but
trouble those waters, the image is broken ; if you
stir them greatly, it is gone : and to bear His
image we too must be still. And hence it follows,
that in this stillness is the secret of spiritual growth
— of a true progress in the things of God. All
self-development is the opposite of true growth ;
all restlessness of mind must check and interrupt
it. Yea, and all growth is silent. It is not in the
lorldly storm, or in the over-mastering hurricane
that Nature puts forth her powers of growth and
increase. It is amidst the drenching dews, in the

76 RESTLESS DISQUIETUDE
Still dawning of the springtime, that the leaf un
folds itself, and the tender shoot steals upwards.
And these works of nature are all symbols of the
inner growth. In times of quietness the heart un
folds itself before God. If you would grow in
grace, enter into thy closet and shut-to thy door
upon the world ; upon that world which gets the
closest to thee, and haunts thee so familiarly ; shut
it most of all upon thy busy unresting self, and
then God shall speak to thee. It may be He will
commune with thee as He has never done before,
and reveal unto thee the secret of His presence.
How silent, surely, is an angel's heart when God
is nigh ; how is self hushed there ; how, as some
earthly vapour by the sun, is every power of his
mighty being drawn up into adoration !
And this truly is to know Him ; not as an ab
straction, but as One who careth for us, who is
nigh to us, to whom we may draw nigh ; and, as
such, to pour out our hearts before Him ; to be
silent in His presence ; to be still ; to adore ; to be
drawn out of self ; out of the earthliness, and the
noise, and the dimness of self- worship, and to be with
God ; yea, indeed, to "hold ourselves still in Him."
And do we ask, brethren, how we are to grow in
this great grace ; how this spirit of quietness is to
be breathed over these restless hearts ; how we are
to be still in God .' Let me, in conclusion, suggest
one or two practical thoughts for you to carry out
at leisure and into practice.

THE TEMPER OF THE DAY. "jy
And, first, need I say, that such growth must be
the work of His grace. That it is not natural to
us ; that nothing is, indeed, less natural ; that to
do, or rather, to try to do, and first to fail, and
then to fret, that this is natural to us. To be still
in Him is not natural to fallen man ; no, it is
Christ forming in us. It is the Spirit brooding
over our hearts ; renewing them, calming, cooling,
purifying them. It is this only which can still
them. He who spake to the mounting waves of
the sea, and lo, there was a great calm I He must
speak if we are to be at peace. He must reveal
unto us. Himself and the Father, if we would be
still in God. But as this is most true, so does it
follow, that we must use the means He has ap
pointed, if we would gain from Him so great
a blessing. " Draw nigh to God, and He will
draw nigh to you." This must be our rule. Draw
nigh to Him in His Word, in its promises, and in
its examples : study these : let their hidden life
come out in your life : there is a secret power in
them. Insensibly we shall find that those words
of promise still our spirits. With troubles, and
vexations, and anxieties will rise upon our souls
like an angel's breath, some word of heavenly
strength ; some testimony of His care, of His love,
of His faithfulness. The harmonies of the world of
truth will answer to every touch of natural sorrow.
Draw nigh to Him in prayer and in praise ; these
are acts of faith ; acts of quietness ; they have even

78 RESTLESS DISQUIETUDE, &C.
a direct effect upon our minds ; and He hears, and
receives, and answers them. Draw nigh to Him
in holy communion, for then He conveys Himself
to us in ways we know not. With all His we are
drawn into the mysterious fellowship of His body ;
and the secrets of His presence are revealed to us.
In such a course we shall find stillness : we know
not the work which is passing on us ; but we are
being transformed : we, with all His saints, in our
day of trial, are under the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land.
Once more, in all these acts, whether of prayer,
or praise, or communion, or self-renunciation — Seek
after God. " Hold thee still IN GoD ;" this is tjie
rule : this must give its tone to our religion. It is
not mere self-renunciation that we need. It is not
after any mere independent quietness which we are
to strive ; it is after God, and quietness in Him.
Fix your heart on Him, and it will be at rest.
Draw near to Him, in the covenant of His Son's
blood : to Him as The Loving, The True, The
Great : as Love, as Truth, as Holiness, as Power,
gathered into one adorable Person ; one real Being ;
and that Being your portion, your friend, your rest ;
for "this is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."
1844.

VII.
USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS.
THAT which, for the most part, has disturbed
the Church of late, has been the attempt to
revive the use of certain forms practised (nay, it
may be even enjoined) of old, but grown amongst
ourselves into common if not universal desue
tude : and it may not, therefore, be in vain to
endeavour to obtain some general principles as
to the value and employment of such outward
symbols. Antecedently then to all experience it might
even be surmised, that the development of outward
forms and symbols through which the Church's
inner life should act, would be confined to cer
tain, and those comparatively early periods of
her history. For such a law we may clearly
trace in all the natural development of that visible
world around us, which is but a set of types of
the higher spiritual creation. In the lowest class
of inorganic matter, it is but at one period of its
being, that the new and thenceforth permanent
forms of crystallization and arrangement are as
sumed. In vegetable life it is at its early period
that the tree or plant casts forth its being into

8o USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS.
certain shapes and substance ; a process which it
never afterwards repeats. The same rule clearly
marks the upgrowth and development of every
tribe of animals ; and to ascend one step higher,
the history of mind bears ample traces of the
same law. It is, for example, only up to a cer
tain period in a nation's being, that it freely
forms the language which is the outward vehicle
and symbol of its thoughts. So, therefore, even
before experience, we might reasonably gather,
would it be with the Church. She, too, would
early form her greatest and most lasting external
framework ; she would, for a period only of her
being, cast forth, with an easy and spontaneous
growth, the outward symbols of her inward life.
To endeavour, therefore, when a long quiescence
has marked the cessation of such powers, to stimu
late afresh and reproduce their conscious action
would manifest as little wisdom as to desire to
witness in the full-grown oak the plastic powers
which had once developed from an acorn all its
giant limbs.
And if we turn from speculation to history,
such a view certainly finds great support in it.
It will furnish us with some other facts which
strongly confirm our past conclusion.
We find, then, the Early Church developing
naturally its invisible vitality in certain outward
forms and symbols. These when examined closely

USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS. 8 1
prove to be singularly simple and full of hfe ;
to be fit for all times and countries ; to point
all attention from themselves to the truths of
which they are the shadow. They seem of them
selves to proclaim, even aloud, that they were
the offspring of a vigorous, healthy, loving, be
lieving age, when, — not without the direct guiding
of the One Spirit, — true faith and hearty love,
breathed out their own power into such holy
forms. But as the Church lives on, the growth
of outward symbols still continues ; and as they
multiply, a general change comes over them ; still
for a season they proceed from loving hearts, and
from imaginative spirits, stirred to their lowest
depths by the breath of mighty truths ; but they
are less simple ; less meet for universal adapta
tion ; fitting rather certain persons, certain modes
of life, or certain nations, than man in his sim
plicity. Yet another change may in a while be
felt : error has in many matters mingled with the
truth ; and soon the outward symbol bears the
stamp of this mingled parentage — nay, in very
many symbols, the shadows of the error mark the
fixed external portrait more deeply than the lines
of truth. This age is to be known by the abund
ance and the splendour of its outward symbols ;
by their tendency to set forth themselves rather
than the truths for which they ought to witness ;
to draw to themselves admiring eyes, even from
G

82 USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS.
the very truths of which they still profess to
speak. They become indeed idols, (etSwXa) in
stead of media for revealing God. Full of peril
is such a time ; when holy aspirations are so
wedded to the earth ; fuller still is that which
follows ; for error, ever productive after its kind,
here by the doubtful symbol propagates itself, and
men are drawn away from Christ by that which
professes to declare Him.
But to this period succeeds another which con
tents itself with maintaining and employing these
creations of preceding ages. And this it may do
until all is lost ; until the Divine Gift of the liv
ing Spirit is overlaid by these cumbrous embodi
ments of mingled truth and error ; until formality
and utter death settle over all things. Or it may
be, that at such a time, God's great mercy raises
up some champions of His truth who shall boldly
break in upon the charmed circle, dissolve at
once the foul enchantment, and restore all the
misshaped and monstrous images around them to
the simplicity of their primeval forms.
And what, after such a time, is the attempt
to re-create the outward forms of earlier, and it
may be, darker days ? What is it in any case
but ignorantly to go against the universal law
of being ; and if it be, to bring back forms which
have been at once the consequence and cause of
former wanderings, what can it imply but even,

USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS. 83
beyond ignorance itself, either a faithless spirit
or a love of error ? Love of error plainly will
account for such a course. For they to whom
are dear the falsehoods which have mingled with
the truth to breed this progeny of outward sym
bols, will long even instinctively for the form in
which they trace with fond remembrance the
working of the error. They may even desire its
re -establishment with the conscious purpose of
giving currency anew to what we deem idle and
detected superstition. But besides the love of
error, mere faithlessness may lead men to the
same end. Its bewildered instincts may conclude,
that not in the inner life of Christianity, but in
this its outward and not unsullied garb was that
which purified the hearts and nerved the arm of
true and godly men of old. But a true faith and
right reason will alike resist such vanity, and
boldly put it down. And such, my reverend bre
thren, should, I believe, at this day be especially
our course. At the reformation of religion our
forefathers threw off a multitude of such outward
forms, some the produce of error almost un
mingled with the truth ; some the symbols doubt
less, at their first production, of love and faith,
but which, having since become the withered
leaves of a dead formality, they freely shed
amongst the searching winds of truth which
waited on their healthier season. These, the

84 USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS.
lovers of error might wish, instinctively or with
the secret purpose of securing it, to see restored.
In their restoration faithless hearts may believe
would lie the secret of restored love and zeal.
But let us resist both these delusions. We can
not without far greater guilt than theirs endeavour
to revive errors which grew up as parasites with
their better life, but from which we have of God's
mercy been delivered. We cannot without far
greater peril return to the old forms in which
these errors lie enshrined ; for it may be that the
earnest and vigorous piety of those whom we
admire endured, even unharmed, those outward
rites which to our feebler or less healthy souls
would be absolutely fatal. We are not so faith
less as to think that in them lay the power and
life of Christ's eternal Gospel ; that in them was
the working of the ever- blessed Spirit. To en
deavour to obtain the intense devotion, the large
and self-denying charity of an earlier age, by
the revival of its perished and exhausted forms,
is to seek for its essential properties in that which
is its most external concurrent accident ; it is to
hope to win again the simplicity of natural in
fancy by adopting its tottering steps or imitating
its lisping tongue.
And here, as always, true faith and right reason
do really go together ; for such a course is just
as unwise as it is, unfaithful. Our lot is cast in

USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS. 85
a day eminently practical, energetically busy : in
such a day it must happen, as in ours undoubtedly
it has happened, that the mere antiquity of rites
and customs constitutes their weakness rather
than their strength. In such a time, the merely
old is rather suspected than revered : the antique
grows into the antic ; it has probably out-lived
its use and meaning ; is a dead thing, which it
would be better to clear away rather than con
tinue. This is the first thought which its hoary
years excite in many minds ; and, in such a day,
what can be more impolitic than even to seem to
cling to old forms, merely because they are old .-"
What more fatal than to endeavour to ex
hume them from the dust of their oblivion, as if
we believed that the true life was in them .'
Surely, all will point at such, as vain seekers of
the living amongst the dead. If, indeed, our
Church have life ; if the Holy One be with us ;
if our commission be from Him ; if not of man's
devising, nor of man's imparting, but from Christ
Himself descends to us this office ofthe ministry;
if the Lord be amongst us, in Him be our con
fidence, and by living deeds, such as befit men
of God, let us make manifest His presence. If it
be not so with us ; if our Church be but an aggre
gation of the worn-out forms of a dead piety, let
our hands be the first to sweep it away.
And if these things be so, my reverend bre-

86 USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS.
thren, we shall have plain, for ourselves, both the
rule by which to act, and the spirit in which to
administer our rule. Our rule must be, the faith
ful observance of that which is ordered for us by
competent authority ; not by obsolete injunction,
wherewith, as with " bread dry and mouldy, and
shoes and garments clouted and old," a dissem
bling novelty would often hide its character ; but
by the living administered prescription of those
who, for this very purpose, are set over us in the
Lord : and that, thank God, for us, in this Eng
lish Church, is the ancient rule, of rites and
ceremonies, few, simple, and expressive ; such as
speak little of themselves, and, with a clearness
scarcely to be mistaken, of Him by whose in
spiration they were taught, and of whose presence
with us they bear no ambiguous witness. This,
too, will be the spirit in which we administer our
rule: a spirit which discerns Him through these
outer things ; which ever fears to lose sight of
Him in them. For even of the best and holiest,
— of those which He has Himself directly ap
pointed for us, — of the two sacraments of His
Church, — even of them we shall feel, that there
may, through the weakness of our faith, be this
abuse, that we should rest in them, and not,
through them, seek after Him who is our soul's
only portion ; and so that even they should to us
become poison instead of food ; bars to keep

USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS. 8?
us from Him, and not instruments to bring us
to Him.
In this cautious, watchful, but most truly faith
ful spirit, all our ministry, my reverend brethren,
must be conducted. For thus shall we best main
tain our own faith, and thus best uphold His Holy
Church committed to our care. We must be
lieve that our unseen Lord is with us ; that our
office is of Him ; that in us, too, are the gifts of
the Holy Ghost ; that we are His Apostles : we
must see that this is our mission — ^by His own
strength, in His own words, with His own signs,
to make Him known to men ; to gather all into
His blessed fold. This will lead us, not to waste
our time in fruitless frivolities, but, as dying men
amongst the dying, to watch for souls ; to prefer
the things that are excellent ; the inner to the
outer ; the substance to the shell : this will even
give its true value to the outer form, and enable
us, with manly simplicity and firm determination,
to maintain it too, in its proper place, if it be
licentiously assailed ; this will give us strength,
in true faith, to gather in the world's wandering
multitudes : this will guide us in the paths of
wisdom, as to our brethren of the separation ;
they will feel that we have, indeed, a life of God
within us ; that we do desire their salvation, not
merely their addition to our ranks ; that we want
to bless their souls with the full power of Christ,

88 USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS.
not to confute their teaching with the cunning
jangling of the schools : this will lead us, before
all things, to preach to our people Christ, our
Lord and theirs, dying and risen, as their only
hope : this will make us shew them the necessity
of their individual conversion by the power of the
Holy Ghost ; — the means, measures, and end of His
work in their sanctification ; and the true provision
made for this in the Church of the Redeemed :
this will keep our own Christian life strong and
vigorous : it will, of God's mercy, enable us to
breathe it into those around us : it will make
us, my reverend brethren, true blessings to the
Church here, and living pillars in the temple of
our God hereafter : whither may He, in His good
time, bring us all, for Jesus Christ's sake, our only
Lord and Saviour.
1845.

VIII.
CONDITION OF A PEOPLE "HIGHLY
TAUGHT, BUT RELIGIOUSLY
UNEDUCATED."
A GREAT temptation is now before us. as
-^^- a nation ; we are offered the enlightenment of
our multitudes, the quickening of the minds of all
this swarming people, the diffusion of knowledge
and intelligence ; and with it, as the boast is, the
increase of national resources and of national power.
But upon what condition .' On none but this^ — that
as the diversity of sects makes it impossible na
tionally to teach religion, we should leave this
to the care of others, and nationally educate with
out attempting to teach it. But, brethren, if chil
dren are indeed beings under a moral Governor —
if there be a God, to serve whom through Christ
is their life's business — if there be a Holy Ghost,
who can and will train and fit them for His service
— if in holy baptism we may surely commit them
to His training, and in the bosom of the Church
secure for them His continual presence — what else
is this passing by of Him, but yielding to a new
form of that old fraud, " All this will I give thee,
if thou wilt worship me.'" So, doubtless, it is,
brethren, and such it must prove. If as a people

go' CONDITIONS OF A PEOPLE &.C.
we yet have faith to put aside the bait. He will
be with us, without whom none can prosper. If
we yield, the stern reproof of God's moral govern
ment must withstand us upon our wilful way.
Many nations have trodden that path before us,
and their example may instruct us. One by one
have they fallen, and their carcasses lie in dishonour
upon the earth which once bowed down before
them. For that moral retribution, which here
cannot always be traced in the minuteness of in
dividual cases, is plain and evident in the broad
strokes, wherein the treatment of a nation is de
picted. All the history of the world is but a com
ment upon that one declaration — " Righteousness
exalteth a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any
people." We can easily trace its course, brethren.
An absolutely untaught people are a people of
savages — a horde, a tribe, but never a nation ;
for there is among them none of the coherence
which binds a nation into unity. But an instructed
people may be worse. Merely to stimulate their
intellects, to give them a smattering of knowledge
and of science (and you cannot give the mass more
than a smattering), without giving them any deeper
and more real training, is to spoil every one of
them for their proper worldly duties ; it is to make
them vain, idle, discontented, cunning, and low-
hearted ; and the spread of this distemper will just
as soon make itself felt in the body politic, as the
spread of evil humours will in the body physical.

CONDITIONS OF A PEOPLE &.C. 9 1
Idleness and dissatisfaction amongst the multitude,
low trickery and cunning amongst the higher
classes, and a mean cowardice alternating with
a waspish incivility amongst all classes — these are
the inevitable features of a people highly taught, but
religiously uneducated ; and these are the causes
as well as the tokens of a nation's fall ; these are
the instruments, just as much as they are the signs
of vengeance. Far other is the Church's training.
She sets each one in his place as to this world
— gives each the principle, the rule, and the habit
of active and obedient service in that place, because
she enables him to serve God in that place ; she
makes the servant active and faithful, and the
master gentle and forbearing, because each serves
a Master in heaven. She only, therefore, can truly
raise the tone of society ; and that, I repeat, not
because her system is better than other human
systems, but because it is God's system, and God
works with it — because the Holy Spirit deigns
thus to work upon the hearts of men, giving high
principles, forming holy habits in its various mem
bers, and so making a people truly great, and
in the end truly prosperous upon the earth ; and
that for this single reason, that the kingdoms of
this world are NOT committed to Satan, but that
God is yet the ruler of His own earth.
1847.

IX.
DIVISION THE FRUIT OF SELF-WILL.
THE essential quahty of all sin is self-will and
self- worship ; and self-will separates every
reasonable soul in which it reigns from the holy
brotherhood, who love, as their first law of being,
to do the Will of the All-Holy One. My brethren,
let us learn to-day something, at least, of this
great truth ; let us see it in the Church around us.
There also all self-will is THE cause of division ;
there union with Christ is THE law of internal
union. For the Church is His Body, and it is
as we claim for ourselves in act and deed, and
thought and feehng, union with Him, that we
are held close to its unity. Let us endeavour
to see this practically ; not to think of the Church
as an abstraction, but as His Body, and evermore
to see Him in it ; to see His presence and sure
working in the sacraments of Plis grace ; His glory
in worship ; a drawing together in Him in united
services ; His indwelling in the Communion of
His saints ; to see that division is indeed a rending
of His Body, that it is the fruit of self-will ; to see
that we may be drawn on to the most fearful
divisions, under the very pretence of yielding to

DIVISION THE FRUIT OF SELF-WILL. 93
conscience and following His leading, if once we
allow self-will to mingle with our religion. For
manifold and most ensnaring are its delusions.
We seem, it may be, to be giving up all for Christ,
when we are indeed giving up much, in order to
keep that which is dearest of all to fallen man,
our own self-will ; and so we are being led far
from Him, and becoming an offence to His people,
whilst we dream of following most closely after
Him. Above all, let each one seek more earnestly
for the reality of personal union with Him ; let
us pray Him to work His work within us ; let
us see that in nothing we interrupt His working.
, Let us seek to be stamped with His Image, to
be anointed with His Spirit, to be transformed
to His will, that so we may more and more be
drawn into unity with His Body mystical, and
find our place prepared for us in that "general
assembly and Church of the first-born, whose
names are written in Heaven."

X.
PERIL OF WORLDLINESS IN THE CLERGY.
AVAST amount of influence, for good or for
evil, is continually acting on our people in
the character which we exhibit to them. With
out referring to the highest cause, to that abun
dant gift of God's Holy Spirit, which is poured
upon a faithful Ministry, there is even a natural
tendency to the reproduction of the pastor's cha
racter amongst his flock. In church, in our fami
lies, in the field, in our recreations, their eyes are
on us ; and if devotion, and kindly purity, and
self-restraint, and high aims, and humility, and
a mortified spirit, are, under the working of God's
grace, caught, though it be slowly, by one and
another, from the living pattern of their pastor's
conduct, the opposites of all these are most readily
and surely copied out in those, whose natural cor
ruption makes any excuse for a low standard in
the religious life, far too certainly welcome. This
principle applies, my reverend brethren, to a mul
titude of details, to which I here would only pass
ingly allude ; speaking as to wise men, who will
judge what I say.
For this, in my judgment, will restrain our re-

PERIL OF WORLDLINESS IN THE CLERGY. 95
creations far within the utmost limit of a possible
lawfulness. I see not, I confess, how the frequent
ing the sports of the field, or the public amuse
ments of the world, are in us to be reconciled
with its requirements. An evident addiction to
these must lead our flocks to believe, that, after
all, we are but more decent men of this world.
The separated character of Christ's ambassador
must be perilled, if not lost, in their frequenter :
the ministry of the word must be proportionably
injured in its character : and we shall have in
curred the guilt of putting a stumbling-block in
the way of souls, for whose salvation we were set
by Christ to watch. Whether or no the effect of
such allowances can be distinctly traced in every
separate parish, it may be most plainly read in
the lowered spiritual tone which overspreads those
districts, in which an addiction to such amuse
ments pervades the body of the Clergy. And
surely it is even natural that so it should be.
The stricken patient would not willingly send, in
his extremity, for the physician of the body, who
was best known to him as the keenest sportsman ;
because an instinctive feeling would suggest to
him the apprehension, that that man's heart was
not thoroughly in his profession. How can we
doubt, but that in the far more delicate processes
of spiritual sickness, the anxious conscience or
the burdened spirit would shrink away from one

96 PERIL OF WORLDLINESS
whose tastes led him rather to those amusements
of which I have spoken, than to the house of
public intercession, or the privacy of secret com
muning with God .' Even for the lower order of
the ministry it was the rule, laid down by St. Paul,
speaking, let us' remember, under the direct in
spiration of God the Holy Ghost, " Likewise also
must the deacons be grave." How shall the in
tricacies of the wounded heart be bared to him
who has never known his own heart's plague ?
How shall he direct the penitence, or guide the
return of another, who has never wept beneath
the cross, or cast there his own burden, or been
himself guided by the Spirit into the paths of
a contrite peace .'
Nor, my reverend brethren, can I be content
to leave this subject wholly upon this its lowest
ground. It is not merely on account of the esti
mate which will be formed of us by our people,
that in conformity with the injunctions of the
Canons of the Church I would urge upon you
such abstinence ; but for our own sakes also. No
one can over-estimate the aid which may be
administered to our own weakness by the constant
observance of a prescribed external law of self-
restraint. This is why the Church in all times of
her purity, and why our own Church by direct
command, has constantly enforced upon us the
wearing a peculiar dress ; not of course because

IN THE CLERGY. 97
there is any sanctity in one dress rather than an
other, but that by this observance we should be
subjected to an external rule, which should always
remind us of our separated character. And of
how much greater moment is it, my reverend
brethren, that our minds' and spirits should be-
always subjected to an unseen but present rule, of
which that outer garb is but the forecast shadow.
With the existence of such an inward rule of self-
collectedness and self-restraint, it can hardly be
but that the amusements to which I refer must
interfere. They tend to break down a man's own
estimate of his separated character : their bustle,
their action, the company to which they lead, the
trains of thought which they suggest, all tend to
interfere with that composed, musing, meditative,
self-conversing temper, which, through God's grace,
is drawn up most easily into the higher exercises
of devotion. And if this be so, the narrowest
charge will be, in its measure, incompatible with
the amusements I would have you renounce. For
he whose charge is small, has only the more time
for prayer and meditation ; for seeking to have
ripened in him all the graces of a saintly cha
racter ; for the work of intercession, for winning
for the Church the great blessings which flow, on
all around him, from every one whom God has
indeed stamped deeply with the image of His dear
Son, and anointed largely with the unction of the
II

98 PERIL OF WORLDLINESS
Holy One : and thus, in the unity of the Church,
he who is called to less engrossing labour amongst
souls, is enabled by giving up more time and
strength to prayer and praise, to contribute just
as truly his appointed part towards that common
life, wherewith the whole body of the faithful live
before God.
And if this be true of the pastor of the few
sheep, it is a truth even more important still for
him upon whom presses the heavy burden of
many souls. For how can he hope to discharge
aright his trust, except by having its requirements
much and often on his mind .¦' How,, without
much prayer, and an inner spring of devoted earn
estness, can he bear up under his burden .' How
surely, without these, will he turn to self-cheating
expedients to relieve himself of its weight ; look
ing off from his failures and difficulties, — shutting
his eyes to the evils of his parish, — and soon
putting unreal hopes, or dreamy expectations, in
the room of a course of vigorous, hearty, unsparing
labour ! How, indeed, — whether his charge be less
or greater, — unless he sees often before his eyes,
in secret meditation, the pattern of his Master's
sufferings. His cross and Passion, His agony and
bloody sweat, His mockings and revilings, — how
shall any man be nerved to bear, unmoved, the
opposition, and gainsaying, and hardness, and im
penitence of those who will not be won ; the

IN THE CLERGY. 99
shame of a despised testimony, the reproach of
Christ's cross .' How, unless he retires often from
the sights and sounds of this world, and sets him
self in thought before the great white throne, shall
he escape the delusions of the pleasures, ease, and
honours of this present time ? How, unless his own
soul be quickened, raised, and softened by the full
love of a penitent, shall he testify to others at
once of the terrors of the Lord, and of the love
of Christ .¦¦
In a multitude of ways will such a character as
this stamp itself upon a ministry. Such a pastor
will know, by often musing on them, the defi
ciencies of himself and of his parish. He will
know who do not, as well as who do, come to
church ; and when there, join in the prayers and
praises of God's house, and kneel meekly down
for the food of the Holy Communion. His list
of communicants (which I cannot too earnestly
urge each one of you to- keep) will bring before
him, after every celebration, the absence of one
and another of his charge. This will lead to the
pastoral visit of inquiry, of instruction, of warning,
or of consolation ; and these will soon acquaint
him accurately with the state and difficulties of
the individual members of his flock. This ac
quaintance, again, will give a point and particu
larity to his sermons ; this will enable him simply
to bring out in them, as he has himself learned it.

IOO PERIL OF WORLDLINESS
the power of Christ's cross and of Christ's resur
rection, in connexion with his people's wants, sins,
and temptations ; as though he were indeed speak
ing in earnest to others of what he knows of their
living efficacy. This will make his sermons ut
terly unlike the moral essays under which a con
gregation slumber soundly, or hungrily disperse, to
seek in other pastures what their own shepherd
cannot furnish ; and so the efficiency of the minis
try will, under the blessing of God, be to a great
degree the coming out of the character of the
pastor. And this, after all, is the great truth we need
to remember. We want for the ministry of our
parishes earnest spiritual men, men of prayer, men
of faith, men of God ; men who can " speak that
they do know, and testify that they have seen ;''
men who can witness to others of the salvation
they have found themselves ; who can speak of
Christ as having known Christ ; who can declare
the Spirit's power, because He has wrought upon
themselves ; to whom the Church of the redeemed
is not a name or an abstraction, but the living
company of Christ's saints, amongst whom He
lives and walks, who is their soul's desire and
happiness ; men to whom the doctrine of the sacra
ments is not a ground for wrangling, or a cold
hard formulary of orthodoxy, but a discipline and
fount of life. And for this, above all other needs,

IN THE CLERGY. 101
a holy, devout, faithful life is needful in our
selves ; that in all our treatment of others we may
be real ; that we may be clear of the awful guilt
of using the Name of Christ, and the mysteries
of His Gospel, as mere matters of professional
routine ; or by a still more subtle delusion of the
enemy, as instruments for obtaining for ourselves
power over the minds of other men ; but that we
may indeed desire and advance their salvation.
And without the reality of personal religion in
ourselves, how can we hope to do anything effec
tual for them .' A bad man cannot be a good
minister of Christ to others. They soon see
through any unreality in us ; they feel it in the
pithless sermons, the dull moralities, or the mere
sapless statements of doctrine without the life of
personal experience, in which it vents itself ; they
feel it in the substitution of a chilling pity for
a lively sympathy in our treatment of them ; they
feel the effect of our losing our perception of the
mystery of each regenerate life which is committed
to our tending ; of our forgetting that in each one
is all the mystery of God's warfare with evil ;
of a will to be healed ; a soul to be saved. They
feel, in one word, that we are becoming the ven
dors of a charm, instead of being prophets with
a message.

XI.
RETROGRADE RELIGION.
IN our parish churches there are (speaking
generally) far the most abundant remains of
old times which our land possesses : and in many
instances they bear, wrought into their very fabrics,
(like the flood-marks of by-gone inundations,)
the traces of two great and separate currents of
thought and action which have swept past them.
They speak of a long papal supremacy and of
a short puritan dominion. Comparing together
many of our churches, and gathering into one
view the information to be gleaned from a multi
tude of individual instances, we may re-construct
from them the history of each of these periods.
We may trace first, by no doubtful signs, that
gradual upgrowth of superstition which had before
our Reformation almost obscured amongst us the
light of Christ's truth.
Our earliest churches are, manifestly, bi\ildings
separated in idea and use from all profane and
common purposes. Whatever skill of design or
execution was possessed by those who built them,
it was freely spent in the process of their erection.
But they had little ornament besides the simple

RETROGRADE RELIGION. 103
comeliness which was the result of good design,
enduring materials, and careful execution. They
bespeak their own intention. They were meant
to be the common homes of the religious acts and
sympathies of the members of Christ's body who
lived under their shadow : they were gathering
places for united worship, for Christian instruc
tion, for receiving the young into the Christian
community, for the due performance of the holy
rites whereby the life of adults was sanctified and
blessed, for laying the earthly remains of the saints
to rest with words of peace and prayer until the
resurrection morning. These purposes are stamped
upon our earliest churches. But far different from
this simplicity of object is the record which they
bear in after time. The long receding chancels,
separated from the withdrawn nave and transepts
by screens of curious work, speak of the growing
separation from the laity of the ordained witnesses
of the resurrection, as they passed from being
the appointed ministers of Christ amongst their
brethren, into a sacerdotal class, who undertook
for them the performance of a vicarious religion.
The remains of many a rood-loft speak of the
coming in of image worship to mar the spiritual
worshipper's approach to God ; and remind us
of the crowd of intercessors who from the blessed
Virgin down to every chosen saint were fondly
and too often blasphemously interposed between

104 RETROGRADE RELIGION.
the sinful soul and its one only Advocate with
the everlasting Father. The high altar with its
train of subsidiary shrines, each with its own
piscina and its abundant decorations, speak of the
perversion of the blessed Sacrament of the Eu
charist into a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins
of the quick and the dead, with the blasphemous
conceit of transubstantiation by which it was up
held, the denial of the cup of blessing to the laity
by which it was accompanied, and the pernicious
doctrines of masses, purgatory, and indulgences,
to which more or less directly it gave birth. The
hagioscope is a plain witness against a system,
which substituted the gazing on the religious acts
of separated priests for a living individual faith with
its simple approach for itself through the blood of
sprinkling, and a feeding for itself upon that bread
which came down from heaven. The confessional
(if indeed there are remains of it within our
churches) reminds us of that fearful system of
enforced auricular confession under which the en
feebling and too often polluting practice of abso
lute spiritual direction superseded the quickening,
purifying rule of a conscience purged from dead
works to serve the living God : while the grotesque
representations which are still sometimes disclosed
upon the ancient walls, are records of a day of
darkness when idle legends had been made to
supersede in the instruction of the people the

RETROGRADE RELIGION. 105
inculcation of those blessed pages of God's word
which give light and understanding unto the
simple. Yet these evils grew not up in a night ;
their progress to maturity reaches over a period
which must be measured against many successive
generations ; here, then, is an instance of the special
teaching which may be furnished by a true study
of antiquity. For here we may see to what the
first unsuspected inventions of a superstitious
temper may at last conduct us ; and as we trace
with curious diligence in our own churches the
remains of this age of superstition, and learn
to understand the various uses of that upon which
we have looked hitherto with the mere mute gaze
of unintelligent carelessness, we should be led
at once to direct and conscious thankfulness to
God for our deliverance from such a night of error,
and to a careful vigilance against the first begin
nings of a temper which has shewn itself already
to be so fertile in producing evil.
Not less explicit are the warnings left upon our
fabrics by the cold, rude, irreverend hand of Puritan
desecration. They are indeed far fewer to enume
rate because they are marked by privations, not
additions ; by the breaking down of carved work
with axes and hammers, with an indiscriminating
violence which equally assailed the instruments
of mischievous superstition and the seemly aids
of a devout piety. Puritanism was the natural

I06 RETROGRADE RELIGION.
revulsion of the mind which the Reformation had
set free, and which (as was too natural to fallen
humanity) swung on the rebound from popish
superstition into that dogmatizing irreverence which
is the first stage of unbelief The wanton defacing
of the pious works of other times, and all the
internal transformation of many of our churches
from houses for united worship into something
little different from capacious lecture-rooms, bears
a painful witness of the early flight of devout
reverence for God, and of a faithful recognition
of His presence amongst men, and so in its truest
and highest sense of the spiritual character of the
Church. Here then, too, our warnings are plain.
We see that for man's composite nature of spirit,
soul, and body, rites and a worship are required,
in which all of these shall be engaged. Such
a worship we find established in primitive Chris
tianity holding fast to order, discipline, and creeds.
Instead of it we find the Puritan establishing
a merely intellectual worship, or as he would term
it, one purely intelligent and spiritual, and free
from the mysticism of sacramental influences. But
when we come to trace the course of this system,
we find that it soon ran into the boldest irreligion
and the wildest scepticism. And so our double
lesson is complete. Rome debased the truth of
Christianity by sehsual admixture, Puritanism de
stroyed its vital power by subliming it into a mere

RETROGRADE RELIGION. 107
abstraction of the human intellect. The issue of
doth delusions is before us ; against the first
beginnings of the one and of the other the study
of antiquity should place us on our guard.
But the study of ancient times, if it is thus to
profit us, must be careful and exact. It is only
by reproducing the old life before our eyes in
its minuteness and detail that we can learn these
lessons from it. To see what were indeed the
workings of the spirit of evil, and so to be on our
guard against its delusions, we must not have
general abstractions before our eyes, but the living,
feeling, thinking, acting men, whom it betrayed
of old, with all the multiplied details of their daily
individual life. And to this it is which Archseology
as distinct from history specially applies itself.
Therefore does it pore patiently over inscriptions,
and laboriously decipher legends, and scrupulously
gather up the traditionary lore of various neigh
bourhoods, in order that it may reproduce the
life of those old days ; giving us not mere cata
logues of names or records of great acts, but the
complete picture of the earlier day with its filling
in of light and shadow, and its play of human
motive, action, and character; that we may see
how men triumphed and were vanquished then,
by seeing how they lived, and felt, and were
tempted ; and acted, yielded or resisted ; and so
may place ourselves with our circumstances

I08 RETROGRADE RELIGION.
amongst the workings of the powers who aided
or misled them, and see to what we may trust
and what we must resist, and how we may con
front their opposition.
Here then are the uses of that which, if it be
not followed for such a purpose, is at best but
a harmless recreation, and may soon degenerate
into busy and engrossing trifling. But on the
other hand, it is not to be denied that to such
a study of antiquity certain dangers are attached,
and of them the Archaeologist should be conscious,
that against them he may be upon his guard.
Now the master danger from which all others
spring is this ; lest the lover of antiquity should
be tempted rather to seek to go back into that
old time, than to let its curious lights cast their
beams upon the present ; lest he should forget
that the life only of that old time was what gave
it worth, and that his object should be to strengthen
the life of this present time ; lest • whilst gazing
affectionately upon the outward trapping of cir
cumstance, (which is of moment only as it wit
nesses of life within,) he should grow to value
for themselves those outward things, and seek to
reproduce them upon this living world.
For even if those early accidents were altogether
harmless, the attempt to reproduce them would
be not a little mischie'vous. It would turn prac
tical nien into busy triflers ; it would make them

RETROGRADE RELIGION. 1 09
poor mimes of the departed ; dressed- up antics
in an unreal show. In artistical, in literary, in
scientific, in political, in social, in religious life,
it must be so. The very reptile does not seek
to re-occupy its sloughed and cast-off skin. And
man cannot return to the dressings and outer
habits of another stage and era of his being. His
life will not flow backward. That which was its
natural outward circumstance and manifestation of
old amongst our fathers, is not so now amongst us
their children : to strive to reproduce that instead
of striving to perfect our own life, would be to seek
to dress up young May in the russet hues and
decaying leaves of the departed autumn, or to
make the old man young by dressing him in
the clothes of his boyhood. It would be to deny
to life that first great quality of continual pro
gression, so well pointed out by our great English
philosopher when he says, "Antiquity deserveth
that reverence that men should make a stand
thereupon, and discover what is the best way ;
but when the discovery is well taken, then to make
progression ^." The painter who, instead of seek
ing in his own day to be filled with the spirit
which made the masters of his art great, contents
himself with reproducing their manifestation of
life, degenerates into the servile copier. The
architect who, instead of forming his own taste
by a wide and careful study of the best models,
" Advancement of Learning, book i.

IIO RETROGRADE RELIGION.
and then trusting himself to the inventions of
his own attempered genius, does but put together
remembered shreds of ancient work, will give us
instead of a living whole, a patchwork collection
of dead bones. In politics, he who in his fondness
for every feature of the past would reverse the
onward progress of all times, becomes a mere ob
struction over which the wheels of business roll
with crushing weight and somewhat disturbed
motion ; in religion, he who goes back with fan
tastic fondness to the' accidental garb in which
of old she robed herself, can hardly fail of being
lost in frivolity or formalism. In truth the at
tempt to go back is a virtual denial of the con
tinuance and reality of life ; it is a surmise that
it was not in life that the old strength lay, but
in the outward form, and that if we would now
set up again out of the dust in which it has
been decently interred that antique form, we too
should have from it that strength which we never
can have whilst we seek for it in anything short
of the energy of life.
But if the attempt to reproduce the merely
harmless past is thus mischievous, far greater are
the evils which from another cause too often wait
on such a reproduction. For that which is by
such a process ushered into a re-birth, is quite
as often the fault and error as the harmless out
ward form of the departed time.
And this is a fatal treason against truth and

RETROGRADE RELIGION. Ill
life in all their multiform and exuberant blessed
ness. To go back to earlier faults is for a man
to add consciously to the natural evil of maturity
the follies and the vice which he outgrew in youth.
It is to read backward all the writings of God's
providence. For to speak again in the words of
Lord Bacon, " Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi.
These times are the ancient times when the world
is ancient, and not those which we account an
cient ordine retrograde, by a computation back
ward from ourselves ^."
Such conduct has moreover this aggravation, that
whereas those before us fell into errors, not seeing
plainly that the path by which they went astray
was indeed another than the true path, or what
was its appointed end, we must err in spite of
the warning of their fall, and with a careless walk
ripened into perverse wilfulness.
This is the very fault which has been deemed
to bring the guilt of heresy on those who, in de
fining matters of the faith, have adopted, after
experience had shewn its danger, language which
before its erroneous tendency was known, had been
Innocently used. Yet that such a danger does
beset such pursuits as ours, not speculation only,
but experience proves. Men may, for example,
become so enamoured of the antiquity they study,
that they may desire to restore the very words
'' Advancement of Learning, book i.

112 RETROGRADE RELIGION.
and customs, out of which, as we know by sad
experience, the evils of the papal system were
formerly developed.
Against such a danger, then, let us be on our
guard ; let all our studies of antiquity be so con
ducted that they may never lead us to tamper
for an instant with that which drew on heretofore
such fatal darkness ; let us look at these records
of past superstition, not with the craving interest
with which Israel was forbidden to enquire into
the heathen worship round her, but as men lately
bewildered in a forest or lost in some oppressive
fog, look back upon the frowning outline or the
curtained veil from which they have passed so
recently to light and freedom, thanking God for
their deliverance, and humbled that they do not
better use their blessed freedom.

xn.
INSUFFICIENCY OF BARE INTELLECTUAL
ENLIGHTENMENT.
WHEN Christ stands to listen to our prayer,
and says to us, as He said to the blind man
of old, at whose crying He had stayed His steps,
"What wouldst thou have Me to do .-"' we must
answer, " Lord, that my eyes might be opened."
But then, further, that which we thus seek for our
selves we must apply to others. We must seek to
enlighten their souls by bringing them to Him,
that He may teach them ; and then by setting
them in the light of His presence. How infinitely
foolish is any other course ! How surely will mere
intellectual instruction only raise unreal phantoms,
which will mock and delude the dimness of man's
eyesight ! How surely all experience, down to that
of yesterday, establishes this truth !
What has mere intellectual training ever done
for raising humanity, or that aggregate of indi
vidual humanity which we impersonate in a na
tion ? What did it do for Athens of old ? What
has it done, even within this last year, for our con
tinental neighbours .' Surely in this thought there
is a deep lesson of political wisdom, which it well
I

114 INSUFFICIENCY OF BARE
becomes those to gather whose duty it is to ad
minister a nation's resources. But, to leave this
untouched, how great a lesson is this for the Church
of Christ ! She, too, is continually tempted by the
spirit of the worid to substitute SOMETHING else
for the work of bringing souls to Christ for heal
ing, or setting His truth before them for their
light. Of old she was specially tempted to set
externals, forms, images, representations, before the
common eye of the multitude ; the opportunity of
obtaining earthly power, before the ambitious ; and
the curious speculations of a subtle casuistry, be
fore the intellectual. This was the deceit to which
the Church yielded when she becatne the slave of
Papal superstition ; and even as she yielded to this
temptation, how thick did the darkness grow again !
how again did it cloud from men's eyes, first the
knowledge of God, then of himself, and then of
nature ! Now this woe is past. But it is only to
give way to another, and to what may be a still
fiercer, woe. For now plainly the temptation to
the Church is to substitute for her message the
message of a bare, intellectual enlightenment.
Now she is under the most specious pretences in
vited to believe that she is not to do her work, by
bringing souls to Christ, that He may touch their
eyes, and raise before them His light, — being cer
tain that, in doing this faithfully, she will most
surely fit them to bear all other light, and lay all

INTELLECTUAL ENLIGHTENMENT. IIS
other light before them ; but that she may do a
great deal without this, as a preparation for it, and
then as a substitute in its stead. This is, and must
be, a special temptation incident to such an age
as ours. The wide spread of superficial know
ledge, the vast impulse and peculiar character
given to those mixed pursuits of science and ma
terial convenience, for which our times are so pre
eminently remarkable, must engender a spirit which
is peculiarly exposed to such temptations. Against
them, therefore, as our own danger, we should be
specially on our guard. We know what will be
the course of such a delusion. We have been en
abled through God's aid, in times past, to effect
through the Church of this land a mighty en
lightenment of its people. Surely all who will
with any fairness weigh the facts of the case must
be forced to allow, that, amidst much darkness and
much ignorance on many subjects on which we
wish to see them well-informed, it has been by
spreading more or less, through the more than
ten thousand parishes of our land, some know
ledge and revelation of Christ, that the character
they bear has been hitherto impressed upon our
people. And so far as this has been done, it has
been effected by simply acting on our own special
mission ; — by ministering God's truth, God's word^
the sacraments of God's grace, God's ordinances
to our people, and so meeting man's twofold sins
by Christ's twofold remedy. It has been by no

1X6 INSUFFICIENCY OF BARE
mere teaching even of truth itself, as if it was
a science or a philosophy to be received into the
understanding, but by bringing them before a per
sonal Saviour, that He might heal them. And if
we act thus, there is no degree of after enlighten
ment which may not be a blessing to them. Mere
knowledge, indeed, puffeth up. It is power ; but
it may be an evil power, — evil for its possessor,
evil for society. It is those only who sit at the
feet of Christ, and hear His word, to whom know
ledge is an unmixed good. To such an one all
science is a duteous handmaid, not a seducing
spirit. The knowledge, for instance, of what we
call natural history, is not for him the graving of
idol shapes upon the wall, but the gathering of
God's creation around him, as they stood round
Adam when, in the fulness of created knowledge,
he gave their fitting names to every kind.
He who knows God will know enough of his
own ignorance not to be elated, enough of the
emptiness of all outer things not to be drawn down
to them. He will begin to comprehend his own
place in God's world, and meekly and earnestly to
set about his own task, even as unto the Lord, and
not to men. But if we substitute for this our high
vocation of bringing souls to Christ, any other
course of action, it can only lead to the light that
is in us being darkness ; and then how thick will
be that darkness I Surely all around us at this mo
ment should impress this lesson on us. How out

INTELLECTUAL ENLIGHTENMENT. II7
of the very heart and centre of merely earthly,
sensuous, intellectual civilisation, in the great na
tion which is our nearest neighbour, have there
arisen, within our own hearing voices, of con
fusion and bitterness which seem to threaten an
absolute return to uncivilised barbarism itself.
What fierce, senseless, convulsive strivings have
been agitating that highly taught, but signally
unchristian, population I And so, surely, it must
be if the Church of Christ forget her own vocation
amongst us. It is Christianity which has softened,
moulded, restrained, and elevated our naturally
active, vigorous, and enterprising race. Upon Chris
tian truth are laid all the foundations of our so
cial state. It is by the up-growth amongst us of
multitudes whom God's truth has never reached,
that our social security is threatened. Man with
out God's restraining grace, and the light of Christ's
truth, is, and soon will shew himself to be, fiercer,
craftier, and more selfish than the beasts of the
wilderness. Amongst such, how is society possi
ble ? Our hope as a nation is in our Christianity,
for an earnest, definite faith in the word, work,
grace, cross, and Person of Christ. Let His
Church, according to her mission, set these plainly
forth before the eyes of our people ; and amidst
the shaking of the nations, we all, undeserving as
we are, may yet of God's mercy be preserved.
1849.

XIII.
"THE NEED OF DOGMATIC TEACHING."
WHAT is dogma.? Plainly the great facts
of the spiritual world, which are made
known to us in the Christian revelation, embodied
in words which express them accurately. What
the highest mathematical and scientific formula
are to their separate sciences, — the records in
a brief summary of the long conclusions of a mul
titude of experiments or problems, — these are the
dogma of our faith in the realm of revelation.
They are points gained ; points of light, illumi
nating and enlarging all knowledge ; gifts to the
intellect, like the gift of the sun and moon and
stars in the heavens ; not restriction upon its
action, but the gathering of it up into new and
ever-welling fountains of fresh life and vigour ;
restrictions only as a truth gained is a restriction
upon error and an opener of the way to all other
truth, which but from its vantage ground could
never have been reached.
These facts are pre-eminently the declarations
of God ; of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost ; first, as those blessed Persons exist

"THE NEED OF DOGMATIC TEACHING." II9
in the unity of the divine blessedness irrespective
of any derived creation ; and next, in the relation
of that ineffable existence to man, as his Creator,
his Redeemer, and his Sanctifier. Cast your eye
for a moment on the Doxology, the shortest of
all our creeds, or on the Apostles' or Nicene, each
a brief compendium of all Christian dogma, and
what else is it than such a declaration of God ;
a true and simple theology ? " I believe in God
the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."
Here is the Father in Himself, the Fans et Origo
Deitatis. The eternal, immutable, necessary Will
from whose Love streamed forth a derived rea
sonable creation ; for Whom, and to Whom, and
from Whom, and by Whom are all things, whe
ther they be in heaven, or on earth, or under the
earth. And so it continues, "and in Jesus Christ His
Son our Lord ; " and then, after this. His eternal
relation to the Father, and His Lordship over
all creation follows ; then His Incarnation, His
Life, His Death, His Atonement, His Ascension,
His Mediatorial Throne. And then we declare
the eternal Godhead and- true personality of the
third divine Person. His relation from eternity
to' the Father and to the Son ; His relation to us
with whom He condescends to dwell ; and there
fore the existence of a holy, undivided Church ;
of true means of grace ; of living sacraments ;

I20 "THE NEED OF DOGMATIC TEACHING."
and so, as the gracious end of all to us, of " a life
everlasting." Here are the creeds, the sure records of facts
in the mighty spirit-world, from which we may
proceed with sobriety and modesty to other dis
coveries concerning God and ourselves. This is
dogmatic teaching, not a set of speculations, like
the tentative reachings forth of a bold and ambi
tious philosophy ; not a number of refinements,
like the subtle mind-play of the metaphysician
or the casuist ; not even in themselves appeals
to feeling, though the root of all true and deep
feeling ; but a declaring of God. From which
declaring of God all else may follow ; intellectual
advancement, moral obligation, the renewing of
the affections, when their truest object is set before
them. And yet these are but the inevitable con
sequences, they are not the essence of dogma ;
that rises into an atmosphere high above all these.
For dogma are the peaks of the everlasting hills
from which the streams descend which water the
earth ; they are the facts of eternity ; they are
the record of the revelation of God.
If this is dogma it need not take many words
to set forth the necessity there is for Christian
preaching being its distinct announcement. J'or
what else does man indeed want, save God .'
Who else, what else, but his Creator, who created
him in His own image, can ever satisfy the needs

"THE NEED OF DOGMATIC TEACHING." 121
of one originally made so great as to be able to
commune with God.' To declare God to such
a being, to make him know his God as God has
revealed Himself to him, to bring that revelation
home to his spirit — this is the highest of all ne
cessities. The fulfilment of this need is what we
mean when we say that our preaching must de
clare dogma. How otherwise are the people to
know the full revelation of God ? For it is not
only that they are naturally ignorant, and so
need original instruction, but also that through
the evil effects of the fall they are naturally prone
to error in their conceptions of God, and heresies
are the proper outbreak of this hereditary taint ;
and though circumstances may determine the par
ticular time at which particular errors have arisen,
(just as the state of the natural atmosphere pre
disposes men to one form of complaint rather
than to another,) yet the root of the error is in
fallen man and not in circumstance. Hence those
erroneous conceptions concerning God, which from
time to time have broken forth into distinct here
sies, are always in some shape or other haunting
the souls of our people, and are ready, like long-
buried seeds when the primseval forest is cut
down, to spring up again with a new growth after
the sleep of centuries. Now dogma are the em
bodied contradictions of such errors. The differ
ent clauses of the creeds have taken their par-

122' "THE NEED OF DOGMATIC TEACHING.
ticular shape and wording, as being the most
emphatic denials which could be framed of such
heretical glosses. Every statement of an ancient
creed is a battle-ground whereon was fought by
our fathers one of the master fights which se
cured to their children their inheritance of liberty
and truth.
Therefore our teaching must embody all dogma,
if every heresy, held consciously or implicitly,
is to be kept out. All teaching short of this
is poverty-stricken, and insufficient for its end.
Partial statements, the perpetual dwelling on one
set of views, the' dire repetition of the Shibboleths
of a party, all labour under this deep condemna
tion. Even the very greatest and most blessed
of all separate truths may be thus exclusively
dwelt upon until it obscures the light of heaven.
The very master doctrine of all for us sinners, the
blessed Atonement, may thus be mis-employed.
The light of heaven is the pure, clear, all illumi
nating white light which is the result of mingling
in their due proportions all the different pencils
of the prismatic colours ; any one ray taken by
itself, even the violet ray of beauty, will disfigure
instead of declaring the landscape whicli the hand
of God has fashioned in its glory.
This, then, (I.) being the declaring dogma, and
this (II.) the necessity of doing so, one thing yet
remains for us most briefly, for so it must be,

"THE NEED OF DOGMATIC TEACHING." I23
to glance at, and that is (III.) how we are to do it.
The first of all rules for which is doubtless this,
that we have our own souls full of them. There
is, in this matter, the greatest of all differences
between accurate rote - learning and deep soul-
possessing. If we would be full, and so powerful
teachers, we must not hold these truths as formu
laries, but the formularies as truths. We must
live them before we formulize them ; our own
spiritual life must be the holding of the truth
which the formulary embodies. This was the
history of the ancient champions of the faith.
St. Athanase fought not for the dogma of the
6/Moovaia, but for that living faith in the true God
head of his Lord which, the utterance of the
formulary fixed and made secure. And there is
in our souls, under the breath of the Holy Ghost,
a like power of receiving into themselves all the
dogma of the faith, so that they shall live again
in us. This first, and then,
II. Our teaching must impart them not as
forms to be learned but as a Hfe to be received
by living souls. This will keep us from cramped
statements, from being narrowed up into the ri
gidity of a form ; it will greatly guard us against
the besetting peril of self-assertion. It is the
expression of the difference in the teacher of being
a dogmatizer or an imparter of dogma. And so
all may be summed in a few propositions of most

124 "THE NEED OF DOGMATIC TEACHING."
strictly practical advice. If you would preach
dogma not dogmatically, but fully, lovingly, con
vincingly, —
I. Pray them. Turn them, that is, perpetually
in your own use into supphcations, giving of
thanks, and acts of adoration. This is in accord
ance with the great wisdom of the Church in
weaving dogma into doxology, and then breaking
away from the saying of Psalms and the offering
of petitions, ever and anon, as by some sudden as
piration, into her grand ascriptions of glory to the
Triune God. This is a step even above constant
prayer for light and teaching, which should ever
more be uttered by every heart which longs to
dwell in the light of God's presence. "Lord,
shew me Thy glory, and it sufficeth me."
2. If you would indeed preach dogma effec
tively, LIVE them. Offer up your daily acts, espe
cially the acts of your ministry, by the Spirit,
through the Son, to the Father. Let these mighty
mysteries thus interpenetrate and impregnate your
ordinary life.
3. Study them deeply. First by diHgence,
and, as far as may be, reading. Go over the old
battle-field, till the marshalling of the squadrons,
and the posts of the combat, are familiar to you ;
till you see why and how each point was con
tested ; and how far the great result embodied
that for which saints contended, and by which

"THE NEED OF DOGMATIC TEACHING." 125
the truth was preserved. And then, when study
and diligence have mastered all this, let medita
tion make the truths your own. Go apart into
the mountain, even in this busy age, and rest
awhile. ... It is really fatal to suppose that with
out all this care you can enter into these profound
mysteries. Easily enough you may learn the
catch-words, but you will lose the mysteries.
... A formulary rested in as a formulary, is
indeed the letter which killeth. But a formulary
devoutly dwelt upon as the expression of a living
truth will, in God's hands, impregnate you with
life and truth.
4. Apply these dogma diligently to living men.
Go down again, after your study and your medi
tation, from the silent mountain height with its
still cloud-canopy to the busy plain below ; there,
in the throng you will meet with the sick, the
tempted, the strivers, the demoniac. Go, and in
the Name of Christ rebuke the still haunting
devils ; go, and calm the aching heart ; go, and
heal the sick in their tossing agony ; go, with the
words of power and the presence of majesty ; go,
as a real man to the real struggle, and your God
shall go with you, and the might of His arm shall
give you the victory.
1850.

XIV.
"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
WE have, I think, manifestly before us at this
time a strife of even more than ordinary
severity, with Romanism on the one hand, and
with Infidelity on the other. And how are we to
resist them ? I may say briefly by adhering faith
fully and heartily, with all love and gentleness,
but still without compromise or concession, in
spirit, word, and act, to the doctrinal statem.ents
and formularies, and to that whole system which
our own Church has prescribed to, and provided
for us, as drawn from and consistent with God's
holy word, as it was received and interpreted by
the Primitive Church, before those corruptions had
overspread her, from which it pleased God to de
liver our fathers at the Reformation of religion in
this land.
But to make this consideration of our dangers
really practical, suffer me to enter into a few de
tails with regard to each of them. And, first, as
to the assaults of Romanism. I entertain no ap
prehension of any large defection of our people
to that corrupt Church. The prevailing temper
of the present day appears to me hostile to its

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 1 27
pretensions, and proof against its efforts. I be
lieve that the power of the Roman Church over
her own adherents is shaken to the centre, and
rapidly decaying in countries in which she is still
nominally dominant. And I have no expectation
of seeing the people of this land, who have been
always singularly impatient of such claims, bow
again beneath her ancient and rejected yoke. The
Romanist emissaries may do something amongst
those teeming multitudes of our great towns,
amongst which, with her usual subtlety, Rome is
making her main effort, amongst which the other
sects so languidly subsist, and which the Church
can scarcely reach ; but I cannot believe that she
has the slightest chance of ever winning back the
great mass of our people to superstitions they de
test, impostures which their fathers detected, and
corruptions in no degree allied to their present
temptations. But though I cannot apprehend any
danger of this kind, yet there is a strife at this
time, sharp as well as inevitable, between us and
Rome. Though she can do nothing against the
masses of our army, she has seduced several of
their leaders ; and amongst them some, who have
left behind them no superiors in powers of intel
lect, or in devotion of soul to the cause of God.
This, then, is the warfare we have here to wage ;
and you will, I trust, suffer me, without attempt
ing the difficult, and so often uncharitable, work,

128 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
of endeavouring to unravel the perplexities of in
dividual temptation, or accounting for individual
falls, to mark what seem to me to have been some
of the chief means by which, in these instances,
Roman artifice has triumphed, and how we may
best guard against it for the future'.
First, then, I may say generally, that I believe
that, in the greater number of these cases, the ear
liest approaches of the enemy have been through
the feelings, and not through the understanding.
Argument has come to the support of feelings
already perverted ; not the feelings followed the
slow convictions of the intellect. Now, if this be
so, it follows of course that what is needed for safety
is not so much new argument ", as a conscientious
guard over the feelings. This danger is not only
most insidious, but it is also multiform in its ap
proach ; and yet there is one almost universal law
by which it acts. It begins by undervaluing the
palpable corruptions of the Papacy. Every one
of these, in ritual, in morals, and in doctrine, is of
course a perversion of a truth ; and an ingenious
mind may follow up the corruption till it joins the
truth, and so until its evil can be explained away.
" Though, if new argument be required, it seems to me to be
supplied in the calm, concise, and complete refutation of that
master error of Rome, the claim of Papal Supremacy which has
been recently published amongst ourselves by Professor Hussey,
entitled "The Rise ofthe Papal Power."

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 129
There is, I believe, no more safety for him who
has reached this point. He may be kept with us
for a time by the hesitating conviction that ours
is a true branch of the Church, and that it is not
lawful for him to quit it ; but he will at once be
gin to unsettle others, and with an ordinarily con
stituted mind, he will sooner or later fall himself.
Rome has too many attractions to allow of safety
to her opponents in so neutral a position. One
will be overcome by a longing for visible unity,
and her vaunt, and appearance of possessing it.
Another, whose whole soul is occupied with the
trembling desire to be certainly safe for eternity,
will be forced over the border by the very libe
rality of our judgment as to the possible salvation
of members of a community less pure than our
own, contrasted with Rome's bold denunciation of
eternal death to all not in communion with her
self The fatal, but undoubted ease, administered
to irritable consciences by the strong opiates of
her system of Auricular Confession and Absolu
tion, will betray a third. A fourth may fall be
fore the deceitful halo of holiness which invests
her religious vows, orders, and mortifications of
the body ; whilst lighter minds may be led astray
by that which is not more substantial than the
incense of her altars and the decorations of her
priests. And then, when the triumph has been
otherwise accomplished, it is easy to adduce argu-
K

130 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
ments to justify a change. Against these seduc
tions, the natural and most effectual guard is to
be found in keeping, from the first, clearly and
distinctly before the eyes, those great corruptions
of Rome, which, sooner or later, all who join her
must adopt, against which our Church originally
protested, and against which her Formularies and
Articles continually warn us. And he that would
conscientiously resist this danger, must beware of
tampering with the temptation in any form. I can
not doubt that many of those who have been re
cently perverted have fallen by a want of watch
fulness on this point, not only in themselves, but
also, I am bound to add, in their spiritual guides.
Thus, for example, there has been of late, in
my judgment, in some of our leading writers on
these subjects, an unwillingness to condemn Ro
man errors in distinct language ; an inclination to
speak of these erroneous statements as concern
ing subjects so mysterious in their nature, that it
was safer and more reverential to say nothing
concerning them ; — modes of treating them ut
terly unlike the tone of our Articles, and of our
great divines, and very dangerous to the flock.
Thus, again, forms and modes of expression
which, however originally orthodox, have in the
course of time become absolutely identified with
leading Roman corruptions, have been freely used,
without any strong accompanying protest against

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 13 1
the popish perversion to which they had been sub
jected ; whilst their use has been justified against
the objections of others, by the quotation from the
fathers of the very passages which are commonly
used by Romish writers to justify their errors, and
which, when taken out of their context, seem to
the reader who knows no more, directly to favour
that corrupted form of faith.
Again, I believe that the use of Roman Catholic
books of devotion exposes men grievously to this
danger. The errors of that faith are here pre
sented to our people in the most alluring form,
and in their own most unguarded moments. Their
souls are melted in devout contemplation, or
warmed in the earnestness of praise and prayer,
and they receive readily, and at unawares, what,
as their minds cool down, becomes an abiding
impress. Nor are the mass of what are called
adapted devotions, in my judgment, free from
this danger. Even if all direct statements of Ro
man error were rigorously excluded from them,
there is a tone about those which have of late
been introduced amongst us, alien from that of
the Enghsh Church ; alien, therefore, as we be
lieve, from that of Holy Scripture, and which
does by degrees wean the mind from the earnest
sobriety of our own Prayer-book, and lead it to
long for something more stimulating and sensuous,
and so prepare it to yield to the voice of the

132 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
tempter. But this is far from all. I am bound
to say, that, so far as I am able to judge, in those
adapted works, which have, from the high cha
racter of their editor, had far the largest circula
tion, not only has language been preserved alien
from that of the sober teaching of the Church of
England, and in harmony only with the half-
amatory devotions in which Rome so largely
abounds **, but, even the direct corruptions of the
papacy have not always been successfully ex
cluded; rather, both by what has been preserved
in the text, and what has been suggested (though
intended doubtless as an antidote) in the notes,
many of its errors seem to me to be excused, and
presented in the most favourable colours to minds
rendered unsuspicious of the danger by the pro
fessed adaptation of these works to the tone of
their own Church ". It is accordingly my full
conviction, that the circulation and use of these
works, many of which were originally composed
and circulated purposely to counteract the Re
formation, has had, and still has, a most danger
ous influence in this direction. Against the use
of these, then, I would guard all whom my voice
can reach, as a dangerous tampering with Romish
error, and a slighting of our own Church, which
in her Prayer-book, and through her great divines,
has provided us with so large a body of devo-
i- See Appendix L = See Appendix II.

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 133
tions, scriptural in their doctrine, primitive in their
form, and in their tone maintaining that earnest
sobriety and reverence to which the untainted
minds of English Churchmen have been hitherto
accustomed. Again, the same great evil has, I think, been
promoted sometimes by allowing, sometimes by
encouraging, novel approximations of our customs,
observances, and language to those of Rome.
I will here name three only, by way of example.
Nothing then, I think, can be plainer, than that
adoration is practically paid by many who worship
in the Roman communion to the consecrated ele
ments in the Holy Eucharist, and that, specially to
guard against this danger, all approach to such ado
ration is pointedly condemned by our own Church.
» Now I cannot but think that such expressions as
" the adoring Christ under the form of bread and
wine," " the adorable Sacrament," and the like, tend
to encourage such superstitious veneration. Such
expressions, I believe, are not to be found amongst
any of our great divines. Compare with them, to
mark the difference, the. guarded words of Bishop
Andrewes, in a passage where, if anywhere, from
the nature of his argument, such expressions would
be found. For in it he is maintaining against
Cardinal Bellarmine the great truth, that, though
we do not adore the Sacrament itself, we do, in
that Holy Sacrament, adore Christ. Having then

134 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM.''
shewn before, that, by the elevation of the Host
in the service of the Mass, the common people, at
least, were led practically to adore the sacramental
elements, he thus declares and vindicates our
belief and practice *. " In his words the adoration
of the Sacrament, the Cardinal stumbles shamefully
at the very threshold. The adoration, says he, (7/
the Sacrament, that is, of Christ the Lord in the
Sacrament, present in a wonderful but true m.an-
ner. — But stay. Who hath granted him that
that is — of the Sacrament that is of Christ in
the Sacrament .' Yea, Christ Himself, the reality
(res) of the Sacrament, is in, and with, beyond,
and without the Sacrament, everywhere, alway to
be adored. It is prescribed to us, that Christ,
truly present in the Eucharist, is truly to be adored
as the reality of the Sacrament; yet not the Sacra
ment, the earthly part as Irenseus, the visible as
Augustin, terms it. But we, too, adore the flesh
of Christ in the mysteries, yet not that which,
but Him who, is worshipped on the altar. Nor
do we eat the flesh before we adore with St. Au
gustin ; and yet we by no means adore the Sacra
ment.'' Here the eye of faith is led from the
Sacrament to the unseen Lord, with whom it is the
instrument of our communion. But in the words,
"the adorable Sacrament," adoration, instead of
^ Ad Cardinalis Bellarmini Apologiam Responsio, cap. viii.
§ 195-

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 135
being lifted up to Him, is drawn down to it. Ac
cordingly, none, I think, can of late have escaped,
in their administration of the Holy Communion,
having their attention drawn, amongst those who
have been the subjects of such teaching, to in
stances of an unusual prostration in posture which
bears an alarming resemblance to this forbidden
adoration. No one, I think, can doubt, that such
customs do act back again upon those who prac
tise them, and by degrees prepare them for that
Communion in which such actions are encouraged.
For those who practise them amongst ourselves
must feel that they are really alien to the whole
teaching and system of the Church of which they
are members ; and thus in some is formed a habit
of unreality, which greatly threatens to destroy
all honesty and straightforwardness of character ;
whilst in more vigorous minds it leads first to
discontent with their present position, and then
to their seeking for another where they can do,
and speak, with openness, and unreserve, what
with us they can practise only under a reserved
and sometimes clandestine constraint.
The second point which I will name to illustrate
my meaning, is the introduction of the rosary,
as an aid to devotion into some adapted books
of prayer. For though, as it is alleged, its use
is generally discountenanced, yet that any pro
vision for its employment should be made, seems

136 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
to me no slight evil. For it is most closely con
nected with two leading errors of Rome: with
the one, indeed, accidentally, namely, the worship
of the Virgin Mary ; but inseparably with the
other. For the mechanical facility which it affords
for numbering the prayers which have been re
peated, would be wholly useless, unless the blessed
effects of prayer were supposed to depend, not
upon its believing earnestness, but in some de
gree, at least, upon the mere frequency of its me
chanical repetition ".
The last point I will name is one of greater im
portance, and to which I would earnestly request
your attention. It is the attempt made, as it
seems to me, in some quarters, to favour the in
troduction into our pastoral ministry of that sys
tem of auricular confession and private absolution
which, by disavowing the supremacy, and in prac
tice destroying the healthy action, of the con
science has, perhaps more than any other single
feature of their system, lowered the moral and
religious tone of the Roman Communion ^. It
' See Appendix III.
' I cannot forbear calling the attention of those who -will take the
trouble to read them, to some remarks of one of the most devout
and esteemed of living German Romanists upon the evils of that
system as it actually exists amongst them. Such a. view from -
within their own body is most valuable evidence, and may, under
God's blessing, tend to reconcile some who have desired to use such
an instrument of ministerial service to its absence in our Church.
See Appendix IV.

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 1 37
is well that we should have a distinct idea of the
difference upon this point between ourselves and
Rome. And to see this clearly, we must notice
first, the wide difference of intention which regu
lates the employment of acts common to us both.
The Church of Rome, then, desires that every
soul should be under the direction of some priest.
She considers implicit obedience to this direc
tion the safest spiritual condition ; and hence, the
government of the soul by the individual con
science, is, with her, practically superseded by
the direction of a spiritual guide. Confession is,
with her, an instrument for establishing and main
taining this relation-; and, accordingly, she en
courages and, as far as she can, enforces upon
all her members, habitual private confession to
a priest. She treats this as the normal state of
all Christians ; and to effect her purpose she re
quires the practice of confession before receiving
the Holy Communion. Whether the individual
desire it or no, it is prescribed for him. He must
from time to time open his soul in confession to
some priest, and receive absolution. To perfect
this system, these acts are exalted into a sacra
ment ; and one great part of the training of the
Roman priest, is that whole course of instruction
which is to equip him for the confessional, by
fitting him to put questions calculated to draw
from reluctant souls the confession of their most

138 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
secret sins of act, desire, or thought. This is
briefly the Roman system ; and its practical evils,
its violation of the sanctity and supremacy of
conscience, the hypocrisy it engenders, and the
priestcraft it supports, were well known to the
Fathers of the Reformation. Against this, as
neither scriptural in doctrine, primitive in practice,
nor tending to spiritual edification, they plainly
protested. Between this system and that of the Church
of England the difference is clear. She would
have the instructed conscience of each one, under
the ordinary ministry of the Word, direct his
own spiritual life. She knows that no soul can
hand over to another its own fearful gift of indi
vidual responsibility. She uses, therefore, every
part of the ministry not to supersede, but to
awaken, quicken, restore, strengthen and direct
that internal supremacy of the individual con
science which she believes to be the voice of God
in man. To bring men to a state in which the
healthy conscience shall thus bear rule, and to
keep them in it, she sets before her pastors as the
object for which they, under the guidance and
aid of God the Holy Ghost, are dihgently to
labour. She therefore, of course, would desire
that her ministers should, with this aim, and not
to become their spiritual directors, search and try
the consciences of those committed to their over-

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 139
sight. A cold, languid ministry, which deals in
generalities, and never enters into the particulars
of men's spiritual state ; which reaches no secret
sins, removes no secret doubts, heals no secret
sores ; which does not apply the love of Christ,
and the powers of the world to come, closely to
the separate souls committed to it, this far too
common, because easy, but this most unfruitful,
ministry is altogether alien from her whole mind.
Her Ordination Service contemplates the most
close and searching intercourse between the pastor
and the souls committed to his oversight, of whom,
at the last day, he must give account, and for
which our Lord shed His blood. The difference,
therefore, between England and Rome does not
lie in this — that the Church of Rome would have
her pastors deal closely, and the Church of England
would have them deal slightly, with their people's
souls. God forbid I The difference between them
lies in the object and purpose of this branch of
their ministry. Neither is it that she denies the
grace of confession and absolution (for how could
she deny this undoubted use of the power of
the Keys) .'' It is, that she uses them with an
other purpose. Viewing them as remedies provided
for a peculiar state of actual disease, she goes
so far as to prescribe certain times and circum
stances for their administration. When any con
science is burdened with a sense of sin, and longs,

I40 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM.
before Holy Communion, to disburden itself; or
when any secret sin prfesses on the soul of the
sick man, then his confession may be received or
even solicited by the priest, and his absolution pro
nounced s. The Church of England does not in
deed absolutely limit the practice to these times
for which she has prescribed it. No really living
ministry could be so limited. Burdened souls
must be permitted this relief, even when not im
mediately preparing for communion or harassed
by the trials which so often wait upon a bed of
sickness. No absolute rule, therefore, is rigidly
propounded by her for such cases. But know
ing how probable it is that the practice of con
fession may lead on to the up-growth of a sys
tem of spiritual direction ; and knowing, therefore,
its dangerous tendency to supersede the law of
conscience ; and, having seen plainly its gross
abuses in the Roman Communion, she discourages
such confession as an habitual custom, and gives
no authority to her ministers to treat it as the
common diet of the soul under the ordinary cir
cumstances of the spiritual life ; still less to press,
with all the force of spiritual authority, it and its
repetition as a duty and means of grace, so that
tender consciences are constrained, and feel well-
s " Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special con
fession of his sins if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty
matter ; after which the Priest shall absolve him," &c. — Order of
the Visitation ofthe Siek.

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 141
nigh forced to employ it as almost essential to
their safety. Believing, then, that there is upon
this point this wide difference, first of intention,
and then of practice, between ourselves and Rome,
I cannot but fear that any who, in their ministry,
inculcate strongly the blessedness of the custom,
as one of common observance, and receive freely
those who come to them habitually to practise
it, are really paving the way for such perversions
as have of late made our hearts ache, and our
hands hang down.
In all these cases then, as I believe, simple
fidelity to the tone and teaching of our Church
will, under God, be our best mode of resisting
this danger.
But it is not by faithfulness to her teaching
in these particulars alone, in which she protests
especially against Rome, that we shall be safe.
Rome, of course, has great truths in her system,
or it could not attract and hold men as it does.
For every erroneous system holds men not through
its errors, but in spite of them. Rome holds out
to men the promise of living in a spiritual com
munity in which the voice of authority shall quiet
their doubts, a visible unity confirm their faith,
and covenanted gifts of grace received in the
use of appointed means, renew and save their
souls. Now our strength against her must lie in
shewing that we have in our own Church, in their

142 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
truest form, and with a purity she knows not,
these very gifts, through promising them which,
she would allure our children from us. And this
was the position taken by our Reformers. They
maintained that this our National Church was
a true branch of the Church Catholic, tracing up
her descent of orders and doctrine to the Apo
stles, and claiming, therefore, a commission to be
a keeper and witness of God's Word, and to speak
as such with authority to those committed to her
charge. Their first step was to vindicate this
position by asserting that, according to God's
Word, and the laws of the Primitive Church, nei
ther the Pope nor any other foreign Bishop pos
sessed any superiority or jurisdiction here. They
opposed, that is to say, to the corruptions and
pretensions of Rome, not a school of reformed
opinion, but a Reformed Church. They asserted
that her Sacraments were true channels of grace ;
that her priests did receive the true grace of
ordination. Mission and Orders, from Christ Him
self, through those whom Christ had sent. This
was their position ; and this, if we would resist
Rome successfully, must be ours. The experience
of every day may teach us that any wavering,
any uncertainty, any indecision here, gives Rome
an immediate advantage. We may see this in
her readiness to seize upon and exaggerate an
unwary expression recently drawn forth by the

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 143
most shameless duplicity, which seemed to throw
doubt, on our Church's faith in her Apostolic
orders, though her formularies are perfectly ex
plicit on this point. For they assert, first, the
descent of this gift from those twelve upon whom
Christ breathed, declaring it to be, not probable,
or the like, but " EVIDENT unto all men diligently
reading the Holy Scriptures and ancient authors,
that FROM THE Apostles' time there have been
these orders of ministers in Christ's Church, —
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons ;" which orders fur
ther, in prescribing the subject of the ordination
sermon, they declare to be " necessary in the
Church of Christ;" and then, beyond this, they
advance her claim to have herself received these
orders by unbroken succession from the Apostles,
by making a provision that they may be "con
tinued" amongst us. For that cannot be con
tinued which has been already broken. For what
reason, then, in the face of these authoritative de
clarations of our Church, was Rome so anxious
to seize upon a presumed rehnquishment of this
our claim by one in high authority amongst us ?
It was because she at least well knows that any
weakness of ours here is her best strength. Ac
cordingly she has shewn herself eagerly ready to
turn to her own ends any decision which seems,
however untruly, to imply that we are indiffer
ent to any truth of Christ's Church, or that the

144 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
State settles for us our doctrines, or appoints,
without our being able to raise the question of
their canonical unfitness, whom it would to be
our Bishops. We cannot yield her this advantage.
We must resist her as alone she can be resisted,
— not as though we were a mere collection of
individual believers, but as a Church ; — with all
the spiritual gifts, and powers, and order, and
authority which are the Church's heritage and
strength. It is no true answer to what I would thus
press upon you, to allege that those who have
been perverted to Rome have previously held
some such views as these ; nor is it true, in any
sense of reproach, that such views of the Church,
and of our own position as a Church, tend to
lead men to Rome. Whilst, indeed, we deny
the imputation that the Church of England alone
has been furnishing converts to Rome, and point
in proof of our denial to the Lutheran body on
the Continent ^ we are ready at once to admit
that it is for those only who do faithfully be
lieve in the existence and spiritual gifts of the
Church that Rome can possess attractions, just
as those who dwell exclusively on subjective and
individual religion are alone tempted by one or
'" Some of these have been men of no small note ; e.g. Frederic
Hurter, the Antistes of Schaffhausen, Professor Philipps of Munich,
Overbeck, &c.

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 145
other of the sects. But this does not shew either
that Sectarianism is the true conclusion to which
a high value for individual religion leads, or that
Popery is the legitimate conclusion of the teach
ing of the Church of England. The fact is, that
Popery in the one case, and Sectarianism in the
other, is the counterfeit falsehood which, as it
ever happens, lies beside the truth. Popery is
not a step on from the teaching of the Church, but
a step aside. They who have learned the truth
know that salvation through Christ and the gifts
of the Holy Ghost are, under the Christian dis
pensation, bestowed, not on separate and indi
vidual men, in virtue of their belonging to a cer
tain school of opinions, but to men living in a
certain organised body, and then each one for
himself, by individual faithfulness, holding in that
body, as the very life of his own soul, those great
objective truths. Take from such men their
hitherto undoubting confidence that our Reformed
Communion is, and knows itself to be, that living
spiritual body, with its gifts and its authority,
and you fearfully expose them to the tempta
tions of Rome. Faltering accents as to what they
know to be the truth, lead them, in seeking to
hold fast that truth, to begin to endure what
once seemed to them intolerable errors. That
some of our late grievous falls may be traced to
this cause I know too well. Let us see, then, this
L

146 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
danger. It is not always that which is farthest
from Rome which is necessarily true. With us
she holds the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity,
of the Incarnation, of the work of the Holy
Ghost, of the inspiration of God's Word, and every
other leading Christian verity. He, therefore,
who would guard the truth by merely taking
that which is most opposite to Rome, would, if
he acted with strict logical consistency, become —
first a sceptic, because she holds fast the truth of
Revelation ; then a Socinian, because she receives
the Divinity of the co-eternal Son ; and finally
an Atheist, because she maintains the being of
a God. That she held all truth, and well-nigh
all corrupted by her additions, was the charge
brought against her by our great Reformers : and
this is the only safe ground for us to occupy ;
neither shrinking from any truth because she
holds it, nor, because we acknowledge her as a
rightly-constituted Church, shutting our eyes to
her deep corruptions and intolerable errors ; but
claiming for ourselves, of God's mercy, more than
an equality of Apostolical order, with a restora
tion of primitive purity of doctrine.
Against this Catholic character of our Church
the busy Romish proselyter and the Presbyte
rians of the North '¦ equally inveigh : the last, be-
' See Edinburgh Review, No. CXCH. Art. VIII. On the Anglo-
Catholic Theory.

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 147
cause our possession of Apostolic order silently
reproaches them for lacking it ; the first, because
he well knows that if he could indeed refute our
claim, he would have removed out of the way
the most formidable opponent to his full triumph.
The two parties agree in aggravating every irre
gularity which can be discovered or surmised in
the history of our Reformation, and then seeking
to draw from them consequences hostile to our
claim far greater than can be justified by any
law or principle of the Universal Church. Both
agree in mis-stating what was done at our Refor
mation ; asserting that we then separated our
selves from the Catholic Church ; whilst the Pres
byterian goes on to assert that our Church prin
ciples imply the necessity of such a perfect visible
unity of the whole Church that, to secure it for
ourselves, we ought either to seek immediate re
union with Rome, or else to abandon them, and
take our humble place amongst the confused mul
titude of the Sects ; and further he asserts that
our Church principles contradict those great foun
dations of the Reformation — the supremacy of
God's Word over tradition, and that absolute rule
of conscience which they themselves express by
the inaccurate term, the right, but which we should
term the duty, of private judgment. These im
putations, though levelled against us, assail far
more directly our great Reformers. For if the

148 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
charge could be established, it would prove that
they, in reforming our system, had not really acted
on their own principles. But we utterly deny the
charge, and oppose to it the open professions
of our Church, to which we trust we faithfully
adhere. She declares that, being a branch of the
' one Holy Catholic Church, she never, in thought
or act, severed herself from it ; but, abiding in it,
cast off certain corruptions of faith and practice
which were contrary to God's Word and primi
tive use ; that in doing this she asserted the duty
of referring to God's Word as the sole ultimate
authority for Christian men ; and, at the same
time, of using all the means given by God for
understanding that Word aright. The first and
greatest of those means she finds in the sense put
upon it by undivided Christendom, and she has,
therefore, always acted on that early enactment
of the reign of Elizabeth'' which expressed the
mind of our Reformers, and which was declared
by no one more plainly than by the blessed mar
tyr, John Philpot, in the course of his examina
tion', — That "nothing shall be adjudged to be
•^ I Eliz. cap. i.
' See the 4th examination of Philpot : —
" Gloucester. By whom will you be judged in matters of con
troversy which happen daily ?
"Philpot. By the Word of God. For Christ saith in St. John,
' The word that he spake shall be judge in the latter day.'
" Gloucester. What if you take the Word one way and I another ?
who shall be judge then ?

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM.' I49
heresy but only such as heretofore has been
ordered, adjudged, or declared to be so by the
authority of the Canonical Scriptures, or by the
first four General Councils, or any of them, or by
any other General Council, wherein the same was
declared heresy by the express and plain words
of the Canonical Scriptures." This duty of " ap
proving all things, and holding fast what is good,"
which she affirmed for herself as a body, she vin
dicates for her members as individual Christians.
The great appeal she herself made against the
errors prevalent around her to God's Word, rightly
understood, she allows, under the same limitations,
to them against her own teaching ; declaring that
there have been and may be errors in particular
churches ", one of which she claims to be, with an
authority to teach, to be set aside only by that
higher appeal, proving her to teach what is con
trary to God's Word rightly understood. She
never claimed for herself the absolute right of
private judgment in the sense of an unfettered
licence to draw what inference she pleased from
Holy Scripture. She does not teach it to others.
She bids them, indeed, appeal always to Scrip
ture as the one unalterable authority which must
at last bind the conscience of every man as
' ' Philpot. The Primitive Church. "
And again, in answer to another question, he replies : "I
do not think the Catholic Church can err in doctrine." — Fox's
Martyrs. ¦" Article XIX.

I50 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
a reasonable and responsible being, though it led
him to oppose every other teacher : but she bids
them remember the awfulness of such an appeal ;
the weight to be given to all authority ; her own
claim to an immediate and visible authority over
them ; her agreement with the consent of primi
tive and united Christendom ; and the fearful
risks of waywardness, prejudice, and so eternal
condemnation, under which, in prosecuting such
an appeal, that awful duty of private judgment
must be exercised. There is, therefore, no oppo
sition in her system to the great principles of
the Reformation rightly understood. So far from
this, the English Reformers did carry fully out
their own principles, and were not guilty of the
halting inconsistency which this imputation seeks
to cast upon them.
Nor is the argument drawn from the alleged
necessity of the Church's visible unity a whit
more valid. The declaration of the Church of
England, remember, is, that she reformed herself
from intolerable corruptions, and that for this
lawful and blessed work she was cast by Rome
out of actual communion with herself and the
churches over which that haughty mistress had
established her unrighteous power. That what
ever schism, therefore, was hereby occasioned, rests
as a guilt on Rome, and not upon herself. But
whilst she laments the interruption of that full
and open communion of the various branches of

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 151
the Church amongst themselves which was the
blessing of earlier times, and which was lost
doubtless by the Church's sin, she has always
acted as though that communion, interrupted as
it is, were even now not so wholly broken that
one or other of these parted branches of the com
mon stock must have ceased to be a part of the
one Church. On this principle she acts in that
admission of Roman Orders to which I have be
fore referred. And hereby she affirms that whilst
there can be between us and them no direct in
tercourse in sacred offices, so long as their fearful
corruptions continue, there is still between herself
and them such a real, though interrupted com
munion as is needful to the essential unity of the
Church ; and she condemns, as a Popish error,
that stern requirement of perfect visible commu
nion with a common earthly centre for the main
tenance of essential unity which the Presbyterian
imputation seeks to fix upon her principles. Here
then, again, no real disagreement can be esta
blished between the system of our Reformed
Church and the principles of our Reformers. For
they could teach, at one and the same time, that
unity was a mark of the Visible Church, and that
such unity might still exist where it was not
perfect. 1851.

152 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM.'

The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
. . . The dogma is that the Blessed Virgin Mary
was herself, by a miraculous interposition of God's
providence, conceived without the stain of ori
ginal sin.
. . . We object, not only to the introduction of
a new dogma, but in particular to this, as, to say
the least, having direct tendencies to heresy . . . For
first, if in the course of the divine process for work
ing out our salvation, our fallen nature was pure
from spot of sin in any one, before that in the
person of Jesus Christ our Lord it was, through
the operation of the Holy Ghost, sanctified wholly
by the union of His Godhead with it, then is that
one, and not He, the first fountain of new life to
our corrupted race. This teaching, therefore, points
us not to Christ, but to Mary, as the well-head of
our restored humanity; and thus does it directly
shake the great doctrine of the incarnation, which
teaches us that the union of Deity with our na
ture in His person made that nature uncorrupt,
and that He deriveth into us from His person
that incorruption which we need. Nor does the
Roman communion shrink from this false con
clusion ; for, in strict accordance with it, she in
structs her people to address the Virgin as the

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 1 53
"principium salutis mundi"," the beginning and
fountain of all benediction". And then, further,
if that nature which He thus took in the womb
of His Virgin mother was not that which she, like
others, inherited from Adam, but one made by
God's creative power to exist under new condi
tions of original purity, how can we say that He
indeed took from her our very nature ? Then was
that quarry whence was dug that flesh which He
united to His Godhead, not of our fallen, but of
a new and different, nature ; and then is His per
fect brotherhood with us destroyed. To Mary
then, again, and not to Him, must we look as
having, like ourselves, a mother of the fallen race,
and as being THE true link between incorruption
and impurity. And yet once more : this last con
clusion leads us to another reason why, in God's
Name, we protest against this dogma. For it is
not merely accidentally, and by some deduced
inference, that it thus endangers our faith in the
true incarnation of our Lord, and points our eyes
from Him to His mother as the medium between
God and us ; but this dangerous delusion is a part,
and the crowning part, of a whole system which
does thus place on the Mediator's throne the Vir-
" Novena Conceptionis, fifth day.
" An Italian Stellario for the conception lately authorised at
Rome. Both of these are quoted by Dr. Wordsworth in the notes
to " Occasional Sermons," No. 43.

154 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
gin mother instead of the incarnate Son. For this
is the grand characteristic of the whole Roman
system of Mariolatrous imposture. It does con
fer upon the Virgin Mary the Mediator's office.'
It does not intentionally raise her to deity, al
though many of the words it sanctions do express
even this amount of blasphemy, and though, in
impiously imploring her to command her Son, it
in some sort sets her even above deity p. Still,
however the Roman Church may incidentally fa
vour this awful blasphemy, she undoubtedly dis
claims it in intention. But she cannot disavow
her substitution of the Virgin for her Son, upon
the intercessor's seat. The whole system of Rome
does make the Virgin mother the special mediator
between God and man. It teaches sinners to look
to her as more tender, more merciful, more full of
pity, more able to sympathise with their infirm
ities, than is that true High-priest, who is such as
"became us," because He is fitted by the perfect
holiness, and yet true brotherhood with us, of the
nature He assumed, " to have compassion upon
the ignorant, and upon them that are out of the
way." Amongst all its defacement of the- truth
of Christ, this is perhaps the plainest and one of
the most hideous features of Roman superstition.
In this, as in an outward sign, may its corruption
P "Jure matris impera tuo dilectissimo Filio." Bonaventuras,
canonized in 1482, Opera, torn. vi. p. 466. Moguntiae, 1609.

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 155
everywhere be traced, from the tawdry shrines of
Spain and Italy to the "Mary-temples" of southern
India. Nor is any sign of evil in that communion more
remarkable than the festering growth with which,
as with some germinating principle of corruption,
this false doctrine is instinct. Generation seems
to vie with generation in heightening to the very
verge of direct blasphemy, the ascriptions of the
Saviour's honour to His merely human mother.
Litany succeeds litany in still grosser and more
glowing language, until the Church's noble hymn
of praise to the Almighty Father is travestied to
exalt her glory, and the Te Deum Laudamus be
comes a song of praise to Mary. Wherever, more
over, there has seemed of late to be a revival of
warmth and earnestness of religious feelings within
that communion, this special form of error, like
some close-clinging parasite, has enlarged and mul
tiplied its evil growth.
To this ne-sy and false dogma then we object, as
being the culminating point of this deadly sys
tem ; and as sure to act back again, with fresh
agencies of evil, upon the unhappy body by which
it has been promulgated. Already, indeed, we
have proof of this new growth of evil, since the
decree which establishes the dogma contains words
which but a little while ago would in our mouths
have been condemned as the grossest calumnies;

156 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
for it draws from its promulgator this practical
conclusion : " Let all the children of the Catholic
Church, most dear to us, hear these our words ;
and with a more ardent zeal of piety, religion,
and love, proceed to worship, invoke, and pray to
the most Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of God,
conceived without original sin ; and let them fly
with entire confidence to this most sweet mother
of mercy and grace, in all dangers, difficulties,
doubts, and fears 1."
Lastly, brethren, suffer me to lay before you
some of the duties which, as it seems to me, are
enforced upon us by this sad spectacle of deep
corruption within the Roman Church.
I. The first is that which, however inadequately,
I have felt bound to attempt this day to discharge.
It is to protest anew against this monstrous effort
to corrupt, by man's additions, the revealed truth
of God. We may not lawfully accept such new
dogmas. On us in our day, as having inherited
the pure deposit ; on us as witnesses and guardians
of the ancient faith ; on us as solemnly set to
interpret God's Word, as from old it has been
interpreted, — the duty is imperative to declare that
1 The words in the Latin are — " Audiant haec nostra verba om
nes nobis carissimi CatholicEe Ecclesiae filii et ardentiori usque pie-
tatis religionis et amoris studio, pergant, colere invocare exorare
beatissimam Dei genetricem Virginem Mariam," &c. The transla
tion in the text is here, as elsewhere in this sermon, copied from
the Roman Catholic ("Tablet") paper.

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 157
this is not what God's Word reveals ; that it is
not what apostles taught ; that it is not what the
Church has learned ; that it is another Gospel ;
and so this day, from the bosom of this ancient
University, as the bishop of this Church, set in
trust with this guardianship, in God's Name, and
with you all as witnesses, I solemnly denounce it.
2. Next, surely it is our duty, with all sadness
of soul, to make on behalf of those who have so
deeply fallen, our humble intercessions with our
long-suffering Lord. For what sight can be sadder.?
Time was when the ancient Church of Rome was
the especial guardian of the common faith. But
she was lifted up, and she fell. Her very great
ness proved her downfall. The honour, wealth,
and greatness of the earth flowed with a strong
tide into her, as the Church [of the whole world's
metropolis, and she grew proud and earthly, fierce
and arrogant in her temper ; priestcraft and super
stition ruled her, and the purity ofthe faith fled far
away: and now she has fallen even unto this. Who
can read the official announcement, — " The Pope,
officiating at St. Peter's, has declared the expected
decree. The immaculate conception of the Virgin
is declared to be the faith of the Church, and
whoever denies it to be a heretic. — Rome is
drunken with joy," — who, I say, remembering how
many souls this vast perversion of the truth has
slain, by turning them from seeking in their only

158 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
Lord the grace, mercy, and peace of which He,
and not His mother, is the only fountain for the
lost, — who can read the words, " Rome is drunken
with joy," and compare them with the awful vision,
' And I saw the woman, whose name was Mystery,
drunken with the blood of saints V and not gaze
with grief and fear at this sad spectacle of what
was once the faithful city, now become an harlot .''
who would not weep even tears of blood at such
a sight ? who will not pray that now, even now,
it may be granted unto her "to remember how
she has received and heard, and to hold fast,
and repent, lest the Judge should come upon her
as a thief, and she know not the hour when He
will come' ?"
3. Again, the sight of this evil surely enforces
upon us another duty. For the sake of truth and
for the love of souls, we, whose rule of faith is
God's Word, and whose interpreter of Scripture
is true catholic consent, are bound to hold faster
than ever to these our real principles. Taught
by the example of others, we should guard specially
against our own dangers. No dread of evil im
putations, no infection of the spirit of the day,
no undue fears, even of the errors against which
we protest, should lead us to shrink in any thing
from adhering to our own principles, and so en
dangering on our side too the precious deposit
"¦ Rev. xvii. 6. • Rev. iii. 3.

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 159
of God's ancient truth. Who can say, if only we
are kept faithful, what may not be yet in store
for us as a nation and Church; or of what in
estimable blessing we may be made the channel
to the rest of Christendom > Many within the
Roman communion are outraged by this new in
vasion of the truth. Already the warning has
been addressed by one of his own sons to the
Roman Pontiff : — " If you should command the
reception of such a dogma, ... it will be a new
argument .... that the Bishop of Rome is, like
other men, a weak man, prone to sin, obnoxious
to error ; and that it may happen that he may
become a prevaricator in his holy office, and be
deceived, and endeavour to deceive '." In how
many hearts may not this same spirit be stirring .'
May we not hope that God, whose province it
is to bring good out of evil, may through the very
intenseness of this evil deliver some hitherto cap
tive souls from the chains of error .¦" And may
it not be the special mission of our own com
munion to afford to such the haven which they
need .' To offer them Evangelical purity with
ApostoHcal order; God's pure Word within Christ's
holy Church ; and so to be the blessed means
at once of drawing them from the errors of super
stition, and saving them from the shipwreck of
' Letters from the Abbe Laborde, ofLectouse, to Pope Pius IX.,
reprinted in "The Ecclesiastic," No. 23.

l60 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
unbehef.? But for this end it is essential that
we maintain, without flinching from reproach or
yielding to the whispers of a specious hberality,
our own cathohc standing-place firmly and un
moved. 4. But we have yet another duty, as we con
template this fearful spectacle ; we have to sepa
rate ourselves from its evil. To us sounds forth
the voice of warning, " Come out of her. My
people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and
that ye receive not of her plagues " ;" on us, as
of old on the lingering patriarch, the long-suffering
angel of wrath lays graciously his hands, hastening
us in mercy from the doomed city. For to us
there is here indeed, on this side also, a startling
warning, — a warning which, when we look along
our ranks and see places empty which were once —
how nobly I — filled, who dare say that we do not
greatly need ; lest, tempted by its sweetness or
allured by its sparkling promise, we taste one
drop of the cup of her enchantments .¦¦ For un
doubtedly there are minds amongst us to which
her promises are most alluring. Amidst the strife
of opinions wherewith the soul is often torn well-
nigh asunder, her voice of assumed authority is
heard promising the peace of certainty ; amidst
the divisions which perplex and weaken us, she
claims, and to a superficial glance appears to be,
" Rev. xviii. 4.

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." l6l
the one only embodiment of Catholic unity. These
are her spells ; and mighty hearts — oh that the
Spirit of the Lord might set them free! — ^have
sunk entranced beneath them. Let no man under
value their potency or trifle with their might.
It is the very character of the cup of the sorceress,
that its lightest taste so besots the subtlest in
tellect and subdues the strongest will, that her
victim follows her bidding, lead him whithersoever
it may. The only safeguard, therefore, is in the
earliest and most instant refusal to drink of the
wine of her fornication.
And this which we have seen happen before us
should surely enforce this caution upon us. What
though the cup of the sorcerer sparkle brightly,
and he promise high, yet, if we see crowding in
a shameful herd around him the transmuted forms
of those whom he has robbed of the reason and
the gifts of man, who will taste of his enchant
ments ? And is not a sight all too like to this
opened here before our eyes .¦" Have we not seen
those who, amongst ourselves, had the sensitive
consciences, the manly hearts, the pure love of
truth, and the keen insight into its depths, which
of God's great mercy our apostolic Church breeds
in her true sons ; but who have yielded to tempta
tion and harboured discontent with what they
had, and who thus have, step by step, been led
on to submit themselves to Rome, when once in
M

1 62 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM.
her toils, become the most implicit receivers of her
uttermost corruptions .' And why, if we suffer
ourselves to follow them, why should we escape ?
Surely "in vain the net is spread in the sight
of any bird ;" and is not this spread openly before
our eyes : is not the latest end exposed to our
gaze in this last act of the Roman Pontiff ? Rome
may promise us a certainty of belief, and an in
fallible guide, a rest for our aching spirits amidst
weary distractions, and the unity of an unbroken
body amidst countless divisions ; but here we may
see what is the real worth of these high-sounding
offers ; for first we see her vaunted infallibility and
unity broken up and discredited by the manifest
presence in her body of discord and contradiction ;
and next we see, from the beginning, what must
be the end. They who cast in their lot with her
must take her whole or take her not at all ;
and here we see her making false doctrine, con
demned by God's Word, contradicted by catholic
antiquity^, rejected by all the saints, and resting
^ Hear the judgment on this point of one of their bishops, by no
means the least learned of their canonists : — "That the Blessed
Virgin," says Melchior Canus, "was entirely free from original sin,
is nowhere held in Holy Scriptures, taken in its literal sense ; but
on the other hand, in them is delivered the general law which
includes all the sons of Adam, without any exception. Nor can it
be said that this teaching descended to the Church through the
tradition ofthe apostles, since such traditions have come down to
us only through those ancient and holy writers who succeeded the
apostles. But it is evident that those ancient writers had not

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 1 63
mainly for its credit upon the grossest inventions
and most lying legends y, articles of her creed.
received it from those before them . . . All the Saints who have
mentioned this matter have "Hath one mouth asserted that the Virgin
Mary was conceived in original sin. This St. Ambrose lays down,
this St. Augustine repeatedly ; this St. Chrysostom, this Eusebius
Emissenus, this Remigius and Maximus, this Bede and Anselm,
affirm ; this St. Bernard and Erhardus, bishop and martyr, with
a multitude besides ; this doctrine none of the saints have contra
vened." — Melc'hioic Canus, De Sanctorum Auctoritate, lib. sep., cap.
iii. § 4, and cap. i. § 3.
'¦ The reception of a miraculous writing on the subject was
the first justification of their new feast, alleged by the canons of
Lyons, and discredited by St. Bernard. The following is another
example of this species of authority : — " A French Priest, who
was in the custom of singing the hours of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, returning from a house where he had committed adultery
with another man's wife, entered a boat alone to cross the river
Seine, — ' Pelagus Sequanse ;' and as he sailed he began to sing
the hours; and when he came to the invocation, 'Ave Maria,'
and was got into the middle of the water, a great crowd of devils
overthrew him, together with his boat, and carried his soul to hell.
On the third day, the mother of Jesus came, with a vast company
of angels, to the place of his torment, and said to the devils, ' Why
do you torment the soul of my servant thus unjustly ? ' They replied,
' We ought to have him, and rightly, -as he was taken in our works.
To which she replied, ' If he is his whose works he was doing, he
ought in truth to be mine, as he was saying my matins when you
seized him ; so that you are more to blame than he is, in having
acted thus unfairly to me.' On these words the devils dispersed,
and fled hither and thither ; and the Blessed Virgin Mary restored
his soul to the body, and seizing him by the arm, whom she had
saved 'ab utroque funere,' she commanded the waters to stand as
a wall on the right hand and on the left, and brought him from the
depth ofthe sea to a safe port. He in joy then fell down at her
feet and said, ' O dearest Lady and most beautiful Virgin, thrice
grateful to Christ, what shall I give you for the benefits which you
have done to me ? You have delivered me from the mouth of the

1 64 "THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM."
And, from the beginning, we know that to this
they must assent at last, who assent to her at all.
For the most part, the growth of error is so slow
and gradual, it comes forth from truth with such
minute degrees of exaggeration, with such severally
small measures of deviation, that it is most diffi
cult to fasten upon any one teacher, or even any
one school or age, the crime of its evil parentage.
But God has suffered us to see the work done
openly before our eyes, that we may fly, as from
His judgments, from the evil worker.
Let us take the caution. We have faults, evils,
deficiencies, God knows, amongst ourselves ; we
feel them, perhaps groan under them, and would
fain cast them out or impatiently fly far from
them ; and she, veiling from us the grossness of
her own evils, invites us with honeyed words of
seeming sympathy to fly from them to her. But
see in this one instance what is indeed the truth
in all. See from the first where you must end,
lions, and my soul from the most grievous torments of hell. ' To
whom the mother of Jesus replied, ' I entreat you not for the future
to fall into your former sin, lest a worse fate overtake you ; and
I beg you, besides, to celebrate yearly the festival of my conception
on the 6th of the Ides of December, and teach it everywhere.'
When she had said this, she ascended into heaven in his sight ; and
he, leading an eremitical life, related what had happened to all who
wished to hear it. And afterwards, as long as he lived, he cele
brated the feast of the conception solemnly and devoutly, and
taught 'its celebration to all." — Christian Remembrancer, No. 76,
p. 402.

"THE STRIFE WITH ROMANISM." 1 65
and remember that no preference for certain things
in her communion can ever justify your accepting,
in any one the least particular, what you know
to be falsehood, as the truth of God. And yet
this they must do who take her as their guide.
They must come to bear with her trifling with
the truth ; with her undervaluing of God's Word ;
with her portentous system of priestcraft, whereby,
first, the sacred and inalienable responsibility of
conscience is invaded, and then its purity cor
rupted, and in many instances its very life ex
tinguished ; they must endure her substitution of
another Mediator for the co - eternal Son, the
Virgin-born ; they must receive her new-coined
dogmas, and her spurious articles of faith. See,
then, all this from the beginning, and when she
comes to you ,with her fairest promises, with all
her grossness veiled from you, and she herself
transformed into an angel of light, to work your
downfall, then, to disenchant your beguiled senses,
read and weigh the warning graven by the finger
of God upon her forehead, and upon that of every
other carnal perverter of the Church's purity :
" Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother
of harlots and abominations of the
EARTH \"
' Rev. xvii. 5,
1855.

APPENDIX.

"Alien from that of the sober teaching of the
Church of England," &c. — Such appear to me (i.)
the special devotions to our Lord's wounds, intro
duced into the works to which I refer. (2.) Language
largely allowed in them, describing, under the terms of
earthly and sensuous affections, the communion of the
soul with God. I will give here some instances of each
of these to illustrate my meaning, only sapng, first,
that this subject is one on which, from its deep awful
ness, it is most painful for me to speak in any tone
which savours of controversy. For, indeed, it is im
possible for. us to love too well those marks of Our
Lord's bitter passion, which were stamped upon that
Body in which He paid the price of our Redemption.
But whether we ought to be so affected is not the
matter at issue. It is no question whether, when pray
ing to Our Blessed Lord, we ought not, with the deepest
and most reverent affection of our souls, to remember
His pierced hands and feet, and riven side, but whether,
in the judgment of the Enghsh Church, it is, strictly
speaking, lawful, — and, even if lawful, whether it is
expedient, — to address prayers, not to our Blessed Lord,
who is a person and can hear prayer, but to separate
parts of His body, which are not persons, as if they were
capable of hearing our prayers, and consciously co
operating in the work of our Redemption. Of these
latter prayers I know no instance in the formularies
of the English Church, and they are most rare, if they
are to be found at all, in the -writings of any of our great

APPENDIX. I 67
Divines. They are, that is to say, alien from the temper
of the Church of England ; whilst, on the other hand,
they form a large part of the more ardent devotions
of the Church of Rome. Whoever, therefore, seeks
systematically to introduce such devotions amongst our
own people, must do so from believing : Either (i.) that
these devotions are really deeper and more spiritual
than those to which we have been accustomed in the
Church of England ; or, (2.) That it is good, per se,
to accustom our people to an un-English class of de
votions, not more spiritual than our own, merely because
they are Roman.
But to proceed to the passages themselves. They
are such as these : — " On the second day thou wilt offer
homage to the Heart of Jesus lying as an infant in the
stable ; on the third, to His mouth ; on the fourth, to
His eyes ; on the fifth, to His hands ; on the sixth,
¦ to His feet ; on the seventh, to His flesh =>." And these
directions are carried out into such prayers as these : —
" O, adorable heart of my Jesus, the only object of
all my desires, in which so many mysteries of love have
already passed since the Holy Spirit formed Thee
of the pure blood of Mary  I offer Thee all
the most respectful and most loving homage of my
heart. Thou art close locked within the bosom of
a Babe ''," &c. Again, " Divine and Infant mouth
of my Divine Sa-viour .... I adore Thee in the
womb of Thy Holy Mother, where Thou keepest
unbroken silence. O, adorable Mouth, consecrate
mine "," &c. " O infant hands, O sacred hands ....
I adore you, but grant me all the help I need in
» " Guide to Advent," p. 138. " Ibid., p. 153.
= Ibid., p. 161.

l68 APPENDIX.
order to assure my Salvation''." Again, "O precious
tears of my Jesus, flow on ; . . . . reach even to the
Heart of the Father of Heaven, that ye may extinguish
the fire of His wrath <=." Again, " Hail ! wound of the
right hand of my crucified Lord V " Hail ! blessed
wound of the left hand e," &c. " Hail ! gracious blood-
besprinkled wound of the right foot of my Lordi^."
" Hail ! venerable wounds all wet with purple blood
of the left foot of my Lord '." Hail ! most health-
bringing wound of the side and heart of my Lord ; . . . .
Wound my heart, I beseech Thee, with the shaft of Thy
Love"^." The second class of expressions to which I allude
are such as " our being inebriated by the Blood of the
Lord." Such expressions and their repetition, cannot,
in my judgment, be justified by a marginal variation
in the translation of the Canticles (Cant, vi.) ; they are,
I believe, shocking to the ears of most English Church
men ; because they are not English, but Italian ; for
whatever examples of the use of such expressions may
be found in the early Fathers, they have never been
naturalised amongst ourselves. They are not to be
found in the pages of our Divines who were the greatest
masters of patristic learning ; they belong to a character
of devotion foreign to that of the English Church, for
which hers 'would be ill-exchanged, even if the change
led to no further consequences, — but which is further
Sure to draw those who have acquired a taste for it,
from her to Rome.
And these extend through the fiftieth week, especially
of " The Year of the Affections." They appear to me
^ " Guide to Advent," p. i68. « Ibid., p. 176. ' Parad., p. 102.
« Ibid., p. 103. •¦ Ibid. ' Ibid. " Ibid., p. 104.

APPENDIX. 169
so sensuous, so irreverent, so utterly unlike anything
to which I have been taught by the Church of England
to aspire in devotion, — so unlike the prayers of Ken,
or Kettlewell, or Andrewes, or Taylor, — that it is really
painful to me to transcribe them. I will merely mark
down a few out of very many, from various parts ofthis
work, in order to make more plain what that is to which
I object. "An excess of wine causes a shameful inebriation
.... So the pious excess of divine love causes to the
soul a wise inebriation  The soul, dazzled by
a briUiant and insupportable light, now tastes an ex
quisite sweetness which delights it ; ... it is, as it were,
overwhelmed by an excessive abundance of affections,
joys, and caresses ; . . . . these .... deprive it of sense :
it knows no more what it says and does; in a word,
it is inebriated '." " Bring me. Lord, into this Divine
cellar ; inebriate me with the precious -wine of Thy
love ™." " Wilt thou have the strong wine of constant
. . . love? thou wilt find it abundant in this cellar. . . .
Dost thou desire fervent . . . love ? thou wilt find this
fiery liquor in the cellar of thy Spouse " j" and so on,
page after page, of which. I will extract but one more
specimen : " To lose the mind, the memory, and the
senses, — to say and do extravagant things, — are the
monstrous consequences of the inebriation of wine ;
but they are also the effects of the inebriation of Divine
love; and when we go forth from the Holy Table of
the Spouse, if it is not so -with us, we have failed in our
duty, because we have not loved sufficiently °." Surely this
is most unlike the tone of truth and soberness which, ,
' "Year of the Affections,'' p. 318. ¦" Ibid., p. 319.
¦ Ibid., p. 320. " Ibid., p. 323.

170 APPENDIX.
amidst all their bursting exultation of gratitude and
love, pervades the Epistles of St. Paul. Nor in my
judgment is this objection removed, though the passage
proceeds in a different strain. "Yes, Lord, I desire
to love Thee, even to the loss of my mind ; I mean
this human mind, this worldly mind, which is not in
accordance with Thine, that I may think and reason only
according to the rules of Thy love ; I desire to lose)
by my inclination, all sense of pleasure, insults, and
amusements, that I may feel henceforth only the ardours
of Thy charity ; I desire to speak only the language
of Divine love, and I consent to stammer in all beside :
I desire also to undertake, with holy boldness, all that
Thy love shall command me, even if I pass for a mad
man in the eyes of men : happy and wise madness, for
it will proceed only from the inclination of Thy love,
which is Sovereign Wisdom."
The expressions above quoted may suffice as samples
of one kind ; but these adapted books contain others,
equally, in my judgment, substituting irreverent and
sensuous thoughts and words for those of sober earnest
ness. I allude to such passages as these : " It is at the
Holy Table that I perceive in Thee, heavenly Bride
groom, all the tenderness and the sympathy of an affec
tionate Brother  Desire, then, ardently, O my soul,
to draw near to this Divine Brother, this adorable Bride
groom ; to give Him the chaste kiss of a sister and
a spouse, and to stain thy lips with His blood; there,
caress tenderly this infant Brother, who abridges His
immensity, that He may be contained in the elements ¦'."
" A perfect charity affectionately constrains this Supreme
Greatness to descend from the Throne of His Majesty,
p " Year ofthe Affections," p. 274.

APPENDIX. 171
in order to become familiar with a bride," &c 
" What Divine caresses, what reciprocal complacencies '',"
&c. It is my deliberate conviction, that the intro
duction of such prayers prepares those who use them
for secession from our body ; for their use soon gene
rates, where it does not find it, a morbid taste in prayer,
which, for the reasons I have stated above, grows to
prefer the sensuous mysticism of Rome to the sober
tones of our English Church, and so infallibly inclines
them to prefer that Unreformed Communion to our own.

IL
" Tone of their o-svn church." — I allude to such pas
sages e. g. as the following translation inserted in the
" Paradise ofthe Cliristian Soul," § v. p. 123 : —
" Prostrate I adore Thee, Deity, unseen.
Who Thy glory hidest 'neath these shadows mean ;
Lo ! to Thee surrendered my whole heart is bowed,
Tranc'd as it beholds Thee shrined within the cloud :
Sight, and touch, and taste, are all in Thee deceived,
' Tis the hearing only safely is believed." — Parad., § v. p. 123.
I can conceive of no real interpretation of these re
markable lines, except that which involves the Roman
fiction of Transubstantiation, which represents the senses
of touch, taste, and sight, which deal with the qualities
of the transubstantiated bread, as being all deceived,
whilst the hearing, excepting the " Hoc est " as above
the senses, alone perceives Christ.
I could point to other passages, which appear to me
to have the same tendency ; as, for instance, those which
speak of Christ as "abridging His immensity that He
1 "Year ofthe Affections," p. 79.

172 APPENDIX.
may be contained in the elements," and the like; but
these two may sufficiently illustrate my meaning.
Again, I would point to expressions which speak of
the reality and expiatory nature of the sacrifice in the
Holy Sacrament which are as strange to English formu
laries as they are familiar to Roman. I will mention
only one or two, as types of a class. " Instead of the
mysterious cloud — we have the Adorable Sacrament'."
How different from this is the language of Bishop An
drewes, who ends the remarkable passage from his con
troversy with Bellarmine ", with the distinct assertion,
" Et Sacramentum tamen nulli adoramus." Again,
" During the august Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist, in
which the Blood of Christ is shed — and wherein this
same sacrifice wherein the -victim is a Saviour and a
God is offered for the remission of our sins to an all-
powerful God ;" words which can scarcely convey any
idea below that of direct meritorious propitiation.
And now I turn to another set of passages which
seem to me to be open to the same objection. There
is no error more distinctively characteristic of Rome
than the worship, or quasi-worship, of the Virgin Mary.
There is none against which the pious editor of these
adaptations (as in the preface to the " Paradise of the
Christian Soul ") has spoken more strongly. Yet I
grieve to say that I find in them not a little which
seems to me distinctly to encourage the early growth
of that error against which, in its full development, he
himself so strongly protests. Let me refer, in proof of
my words, to the whole of the adaptation of the Medi-
' " Guide to passing Lent Holily," p. 218.
¦ Quoted in pp. 77, 80, of Dr. Pusey's Letter to the Bishop of
London.

APPENDIX. 173
tation from " Avrillon's Guide to Advent," called " The
Day of Purity." "Jesus Christ is the Sun, but His
Mother may be called the day breaking'." "Think
on that ineffable purity." "Verily, how much more
than Angelic purity must have been conferred on that
body, from which -will one day be taken that of Jesus."
" The flesh of Mary is to become that of Jesus . . . and
the blood which shall be taken from her will be that of
Christ . . . What degree then of purity must not have
been bestowed on that flesh and blood." " She -will be
the ark." . . . "From the pure and chaste, and undefiled,
and holy Virgin Mary cometh forth Jesus Christ our
Lord . . . What purity then must not that flesh have.''
" Mary is that pure dove. . . . She brings with her that
original purity which our first parents had lost." " That
He might redeem man with His most precious blood
which He hath taken from Mary.'' " It was fitting that
with purity, than which no greater can be conceived
short of God Himself, should that Virgin be arrayed."
" Entreat of God a portion of that same grace which
He bestowed upon the blessed Mary''." "The Holy
Spirit gave her soul a new capacity for containing larger
grace, than all Men and Angels together^" Qfc. "Thou
didst redeem her by this same blood, which, before it
flowed in Thy veins, did flow in hers '." " She had no
sins to weep over ^." " It was her privilege to caress
Thee, while we sinners consider ourselves too much
honoured if Thou suffer us to remain humbly prostrate
at Thy infant feet ^" " The adorable flesh of Christ . . .
is the work of the Holy Spirit and the chaste production
' " Guide to Advent," p. 50. " Ibid., p. 122.
- Ibid., p. 125. ¦} Ibid., p. 224. ^ Ibid.
» Ibid., p. 225.

174 APPENDIX.
of a Virgin more pure than Angels'^" i^c. " Mary was
not as yet the mother of God ; she was not so until
a little while after these words, /(?/- the Holy Ghost vouch
safed to await her consent ere working within her chaste
womb "," &'c. Considering the way in which this idea
is worked out in the " Month of Mary " and " The
Glories of Mary," teaching that the salvation of man
kind hung upon the -will of Mary, this passage seems to
me peculiarly objectionable. Such quotations might
easily be muhiplied. Such expressions, I am bound to
say, seem to me wholly unwarranted by God's word ;
wholly alien from any formulary of the Church of Eng
land ; certain to prepare the mind, which becomes ac
customed to such devotions, for any further exaltation
of the Virgin ; and by implication involving all the
Roman fables of the Immaculate Conception itself in
their treating the blood and flesh given by the Lord as
having been before so actually and entirely the blood
and flesh of the Virgin, as to have been necessarily
absolutely holy and perfectly free from all stain of sin
in her.
Again, I must notice another class of passages which
seem to me directly to contradict the teaching of the
English Church as she has rightly drawn it from God's
word and primitive antiquity. And these concern not
merely one master form of Roman error, like the wor
ship of the Virgin Mary, deeply important as that of
course is, but reach to the very root of all things in
our justification and acceptance with God.
I will simply quote one or two of these out of many.
" Deliver me from the pains which are the due of my
¦• " Guide to Lent," p. 360. ' "Guide to Advent," p 124.
The italics throughout are mine.

APPENDIX. 175
Sins, whilst I impose voluntary pains upon myself to
save Thee the sorrow of punishing me in this world and
the next\" Again, a httle lower down: "My suffer
ings and the penitential exercises which I am about to
undertake during this Lent in order to obey Thy laws,
to redeem my sins, to appease Thy justice . . . for my sal
vation'." "Rejoice then -with the saints at being, by
these humiliations, a voluntary victim in time to thy
sins and to the justice of God, so wilt thou assuredly
escape being one day their involuntary victim in eter
nity." And again : " Good works and acts of penitence
[are] the precious coin 7uhieh enables us to gain acquittance
of our debts to God's justice, to satisfy for our sins, to ob
tain His grace and His love, to redeem from hell, and to
purchase heaven '." " It is absolutely needful that thou
make some [atonement — compensation] either in this
world or the next «." ..." Accept our fasts . . . that
they may serve to make amends for our sins, to propitiate
Thy justice'*'" ofc. " We consent ... to impose on our
selves, moreover, voluntary sufferings to appease Thy
justice '." " That so these fasts . . . needful to us that
we may redeem the sins of which we have been guilty . . .
may make us pleasing both in body and soul to the eyes
of Thy adorable Majesty ^" &c. " It is Thou alone
who canst give to our labours and fasts the acceptable
ness which they need in order to appease Thy wrath, to
efface our sins, to draw down upon us Thy mercy, and
to obtain eternal hfe . . . V &c. . . . And again : " That
we, expiating the sins of which we are guilty by the sharp
•and voluntary penitence wherewith Thou dost inspire
^ " Guide to Lent," p. 7. » Ibid., p. 8. ' Ibid., p. 13.
s Ibid., p. 69. k Ibid., p. 150. ' Ibid., p. 214.
"• Ibid., p. 222. 1 Ibid., p. 279.

176 APPENDIX.
US, and which Thou in Thy goodness wilt accept as an
amends which is due to Thee '"," &c.
These expressions, I confess, seem to me wholly un
warranted by any authorised language, either of the
Church of England or of primitive antiquity, and only
really accordant with that branch of the Roman system
which deals in " satisfaction,'' " the celestial treasures of
merit '' at the Church's disposal, purgatory, and indul
gences. For I see no other meaning which can be at
tached to them, than that whilst our salvation depends
on the merit of Christ's death, there remain sufferings
which must be borne by us either in this world or the
world to come, unless the Church opens for us her trea
sure-house of supererogatory works ; and thus these
statements tend, in my judgment, to lead those who
fully enter into them to adopt the whole Roman system,
whilst they lead more ignorant readers to trust to their
own sufferings as expiations for sin ; and as that to
which, being joined to the sufferings of Christ, they
may look for their salvation. And what error can be
more fatal than this ? What can more certainly endanger
the salvation of those who are seduced by it ; for what
can tend more to draw men from a simple living and
saving faith in Christ ? I am indeed aware that it is
alleged in justification of such expressions that Scriptural
warrant may be produced for them, since the expression
"break off thy sins by righteousness," (Dan. iv. 27),
would be more literally rendered by " redeem thy sins
by righteousness." But I cannot admit the validity of
this plea. For even if the suggested translation be the
most literal, I cannot think that the first address of
the Jewish Prophet to the heathen king, who must of
¦^ " Guide to Lent," p. 310.

APPENDIX. 177
course have been wholly ignorant of the righteousness
of faith, can at all justify such expressions in the mouth
of a Christian teacher to those to whom the way of sal
vation has been clearly revealed.
Again : I cannot but think that expressions are in
serted in these works which favour another most im
portant branch of Roman errors ; I mean that which
tends, in practice at least, to draw the prayers of Chris
tians away from the one God through the one Mediator
between God and man, to Angels and Saints. In this
matter the distinction between what is Roman and what
is Catholic seems to be, that whilst primitive antiquity,
in strict accordance with Holy Scripture, holds that the
Church MiHtant here on earth receives help and succour
from God's holy Angels, and, being one Church, that
the living are associated in holy fellowship with the
Saints departed, and may, therefore, receive help from
their intercession with God ; yet that all worship is so
strictly God's prerogative, that neither Saints nor Angels
may be addressed as hearing prayer, but that whatever
aid is sought from them must be sought in prayer to
God. As an exact model of what I mean, I may refer
to the CoUect of the Church for the Festival of St. Mi
chael and All Angels.
In the Roman Communion, on the other hand, though
she retains this collect, addresses to Saints and Angels
are common, and have led to that whole system of which
the Litanies and prayers to the Virgin Mary are the
culminating point of practical error. Now, to take on
this head but one passage, the following address to the
holy Angels seems to me to be entirely Roman in its
tone : —
" 0 ye powers of Heaven, ye Cherubim shining with
N

178 APPENDIX.
light, ye Seraphim burning with the most fervent and
the purest love, impari to me both your light and your
zeal, that I may know, that I may love, that I may
adore"," &c. III.
The Use of the Rosary. It is easy to shew that it is
from confounding together those most diverse things-
earnest supplications to God poured forth by man's
spirit and prescribed repetitions of certain words or
phrases, that Rome finds the Rosary of use. One pas
sage from Thomas Aquinas will illustrate this. He
says ", " The effect of prayer is threefold. The first
indeed common to all actions wrought with charity,
which is — to merit. And for this effect it is not neces
sarily required that attention should be given to the
prayer through the whole time [of praying] ; but the
force of the first intention with which any one draws
nigh to prayer renders the whole prayer meritorious, as
is the case with other meritorious actions. The second
effect of prayer is proper to it, which is — to obtain some
what : and for this effect also the first intention suffices,
to which God principally looks,'' &c. Now here is the
Roman system in its perfection : a man intends to do
a meritorious action ; with this view he resolves to re
peat the Lord's Prayer, or the like, a certain number
of times ; no matter whether his mind wanders through
out the actual repetition ; it is to " the first intention
God principally looks." These vain repetitions are
" meritorious," and " imperative," in -virtue of that first
" " Guide to Advent," p. 211.
° Summa Theolog. Secunda secundse, Qusest. 83. Art. xiii.
Conclus.

APPENDIX.

179

intention. And this view of prayer exactly harmonises
with the false system of the Church of Rome as to
merit, satisfaction, indulgences, purgatory, &c. It ex
plains the meritorious nature of certain repetitions of
Paters and Aves, when an indulgence has been pro
claimed ; and, as the result is attained by the repetition
of a certain number of these prayers, it requires some
mode of reckoning them up ; and, to supply a conve
nient machinery for this, it has brought in the rosary.
It is easy- to see how, in this way, the rosary may be
used for this purpose ; but it is difficult to conceive any
other in which it can be supposed to assist devotion :
the help the rosary really gives, is not the fixing the
mind on the object or subjects of prayer, but the
enabling it, without any such fixedness, nay, with many
wandering thoughts, still to know -with accuracy when
the due number of mechanical repetitions have been
fulfilled. I vrill only add to these quotations that the recent
¦writings of the Editor of these adaptations, especially
his last published sermon before the University of
Oxford, seem to me to intimate so quickened a sense
of our present danger from Roman doctrines, that I
trust I may, in closing these extracts, express my earn
est hope that he will no longer circulate devotions
which in my judgment tend so powerfully to favour
errors he would oppose, and to prepare the way for
secessions which he so deeply mourns ; but that by an
open disavowal of such errors he would remove the
suspicions which must otherwise attach to his ministry.

iSo APPENDIX.

IV.

" One of the great evils of the Catholic Church," says
a Roman Catholic, " seems to me to be the erroneous
opinion formed by the multitude of the Sacrament of
Penitence. As I have elsewhere dwelt on the import
ance and innumerable benefits of this institution, I have
no fear of being misunderstood if I ahow myself to point
out wherein I think its application at present imperfect.
People, in general, consider the declaration of their sins,
or confession, as the true and only mode which con
ducts them to forgiveness ; and whatever be the argu
ments you may use to convince them that a change of
life is the first condition of pardon, you cannot uproot
the notion they have formed for themselves. Faithful to
the orders of his Catechism a man examines his con
science, stirs himself up to contrition and sorrow, and
receives absolution. Nothing is wanting, and one hour,
or even less, suffices for getting rid of his burden. As
to making any resolution for the future, that is the last
thing with which he troubles himself Why should he
sin no more ? Has he not the intention and the duty
of returning to confession? So he does: and a fresh
absolution has speedily set all to rights. It is true that
each time this is given with increased difficulty, until,
at last, some great habitual sin makes it impossible.
But what then ? There are still many ways to obtain it,
even though it be not that last hour at which none re
fuse it. Thus confessions follow which, far from doing
good, cause nothing but destruction. What then is the
act of repentance which is accomplished in less than
an hour ? Does it not pre-suppose a profound ignorance
of the nature of the Sacrament ? What miserable mate-

APPENDIX. l8l
riahsm ! What is it but to make the obtaining justifi
cation or not to depend, not on the state of the soul
and its renewal, but solely on the absolution of the
priest ! It is to place reconciliation with God on an
outward act : it is heathenism.
" Thus men confess ; Hfe passes ; sin not repressed
becomes a fearful power ; and the soul, despite of the
sacraments it has received, falls continually lower and
lower. These sad realities deserve the Church's ut
most care. Everything which religious teaching has
hitherto attempted for its remedy has been found
unavailing, and we may beheve that an erroneous con
ception is not altogether its cause. It seems to me
that the customary frequency of confession is injurious
to the seriousness and reality of the act. So if it was
limited to those states of soul for which it is expressly
ordered as a duty, then perhaps it would better be seen
to be, what it truly is, an entire renewal ; and the sinner
would not come to confession merely because custom or
his own habits required it, but when a crisis in his
spiritual state forced him to it. When we see at certain
fixed times saints and sinners regularly throng pell mell
to the confessional, we are tempted to believe that the
Sacrament of penance is an institution at which men
attend periodically to accuse and acquit themselves, and
not an act of conversion deciding the whole life. An
other circumstance which leads to the view we combat,
is the extreme importance attached by some confessors,
and especially by the younger clergy, to the minute
specification of faults which have been committed. They
question with anxiety and a superabundance of details,
and what follows from that troublesome mania, but that
the people, losing sight of the great end of conversion,

102 APPENDIX.
think of nothing but an examination and avowal which
seems to them the proper and essential condition of
pardon. Is it then so useful, and was it the intention
of the Church to make the sacrament of penance an
instrument of inquisition, and imprint upon it this odious
character ? Let him reply whom false theories do not
blind, and who can see at work the indiscreet curiosity,
the imprudence, the minuteness, and blunders of our
modem inquisitors. Let him reply, for he knows their
deplorable results." — L'Etat actuel de I'Eglise; par J. B.
Hirscher, Chanoine de la Cathedrale de Freybourg en
Brisgau.

XV.
"THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY."
OUR danger, my reverend brethren, from the
spirit of infidelity, threatens the great mass
on every side of us. Its strength, indeed, is to be
found in the inquiring, busy, self-asserting, self-
worshipping, material spirit of the present day.
The form, accordingly, which it takes differs widely
from that of other times. It is quite unlike the
atheistical spirit which haunted the close of the
last century, or the deistical scepticism of the
school of Hobbes and Chubb. It has little or no
direct hostility to a certain form of Christianity.
It is willing to receive Christianity as an aesthe
tical system, having in it many elements of truth ;
as an elevated form of religious belief and feeling,
useful for most minds in a certain stage of their
development. The one thing which it resists is
authority : it would place every single soul in
direct and independent communion with the Cre
ative Spirit, of whose nature he partakes, and to
whom alone he is responsible. So far as Chris
tianity promotes this, it is to be encouraged ; but
it is not, they urge, to be bOrne that any dogma
should be enforced on such seekers after truth

1 84 "THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY.
by any external authority as essential to salva
tion, or in itself necessarily true ; or any medium
interposed between their spirits and the Universal
Father. In their first stage, therefore, these prin
ciples begin commonly by resisting the authority
of the Church, as that which meets them most
immediately ; they proceed to raise questions as
to the inspiration of some parts of Holy Scrip
ture ; they end by denying altogether its autho
rity, and leaving their victim with an entire un
belief as to the objective truth of any spiritual
agency beyond those of the one Great Spirit of
the universe, and his own soul as an emanation
from Him seeking reunion with Him. This pro
gress has been traced out with remarkable power
and clearness, in the history of his own religious
course, by one of the most sincere and able of
his class, in a work which he has denominated
" The Phases of Faith," but which might more
properly be termed the Phases of Unbelief; in
which he has marked down with the utmost accu
racy the logical sequence of every one of his steps,
from an ardent love of evangelical truth com
bined with a denial of all spiritual authority save
in the letter of the written Word, down to its
close, in a mystical but universal scepticism.
Now it is with this spirit, in unnumbered de
grees, forms, and combinations, that we have to
struggle ; and I would pray you, therefore, to

"THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY." 185
notice why this set of errors, like the last, can be
successfully resisted amongst ourselves only by
a full and faithful maintenance of the teaching
and authority of our Church. For this form of
unbelief does not attack the doctrine of the being
of a God ; it does not attack a shadowy undog
matic statement of an atonement, or spiritual
influences. It treats these doctrines, not as true
in themselves, but as useful for those who, from
the weakness of their minds, still need such
aids to communion with God. It exalts, and
really values, moral principles and spiritual affec
tions. It is not, therefore, directly opposed by
a mode of teaching which contents itself with
merely enforcing these subjective truths, which
belong to the individual spiritual life. What it
does deny is precisely that truth which the Church
of Christ is embodied to maintain. For this,
briefly stated, is, that God having given to man
a revelation of Himself, has appointed the Church
a living body, constituted by Himself as "the
pillar and ground of the truth," to be its keeper
and witness ; that the wilful rejection of that reve
lation by any soul to which it is duly presented,
is the rejection of Himself : farther, that with that
revelation of Himself, God has been pleased to
institute, through His Son, a new mode of access
to, and communion with. Himself, for redeemed
man ; that the first step towards this access is

1 86 "THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY."
through the union of each soul with the Church,
which is " His body," to be obtained by acts pre
scribed by God, and done as He has appointed ;
that in that living body each soul, in virtue of its
union with Christ, has new modes of approach
to Him, and may have new gifts of His grace
through appointed channels ; so that if it be true
to itself, if it do not resist or quench grace given
to it, if under the power and guidance of that
grace it believe for itself, and for itself claim union
in the Church with its Head, that then, having
been regenerate, it will day by day be renewed
by spiritual influences given to it in the use of
appointed means, until it is ripened for immor
tality and glory. '
This, which is the system of the Church of
Christ, is the truth which is denied by the specu
lative Latitudinarians of the day. For they deny
the need or use of all this external machinery for
man's salvation ; they will go straight to God ;
they will have no rites or sacraments interposed
between their souls and Him. But, in denying
all these, what else do they, but, whilst they pro
mise men an unlimited liberty of access to God,
rob them of all the special means of approach to
Him, and all the peculiar gifts of grace from Him,
which are the blessing of the Christian covenant ;
and thus, under the appearance of securing for
them a simpler and more spiritual religion, bring

"THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY." 1 87
Christians back from membership with Christ to
a state which really possesses far fewer covenanted
blessings than that which seems to have belonged
to the dispensation of the earliest patriarchs be
fore the calling of Abraham ? For they appear
to have possessed some appointed means of com
munion with God, some adumbrations of a
mediatorial kingdom, some hints of the coming
Mediator ; whereas these teachers would have
their enlightened followers cornmune directly, how
ever uncertainly, with the Infinite — each one, in
the singleness of his own spiritual being, without
the reception of any external dogma, without the
need of a mediator, and consequently without the
intervention of any appointed media. And what
is this but virtually to deny the existence of those
peculiar operations of the Holy Spirit on the
souls of men, which are the result of the coming
of the Comforter, and of His indwelling in the
body of Christ, the Church ? what is it but to
introduce men into a spiritual twilight, which is
a miserable exchange for that full sunshine of the
Christian Church, in which the glory of the Sun
of Righteousness is given back from every act,
sign, institution, and sacrament which He has
appointed, not to serve instead of Him, or to
draw men's eyes from Him, but to lead the eager
gaze of all up to Him as the present abiding
light of the faithful amongst whom He dwells ?

l88 "THE STRIFE' WITH INFIDELITY."
For here, too, the constitution of the Church,
when rightly understood, does, in truth, secure for
men, by Christ, and through the Holy Spirit,
that certain and direct access to God, the vain
promise of which, through their own enlightened
intellects, is held out by her Latitudinarian op
ponents as their chiefest gift to those who follow
them. I would speak of this, my reverend brethren,
the more plainly, because there are, in my judg
ment, at the present day, those who (themselves
believing, I cannot doubt, indeed in Christ, and
loving Him, I trust, truly) are yet, whilst they
think themselves to be resisting formality, bigotry,
priestcraft, and Popery, unawares helping on the
spread of this fatal system, which really denies
the gifts of Pentecost, and the indwelling of God's
Spirit in the Church, and threatens gradually to
gather itself up into the last great form of open
and persecuting unbelief.
Such then is, I cannot doubt, the effect of a
teaching which declares — and here I quote the
words of one who, from his piety, ability, and zeal,
has done more than most to leaven with his own
principles an ardent band of devoted followers
— " the Scripture notion of the Church " to be
merely — "that religious society should help a man
to become himself better and holier by the aid
and example of our fellow Christians, just as civil

"THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY." 189
society helps us in civihsation ^;" thus entirely
excluding from " the Scripture notion " of the
Church all idea of its being dwelt in by the Spirit
of God, and so becoming an instrument whereby,
through appointed channels, the gifts of the Spirit
are ministered to men, for we are " not to derive
our salvation through the Church''," and which
contrasts with this "Scripture notion" as "the
Popish view "=;" "that the Church .... is a sort
of chartered corporation ; and that, by belonging
to this corporation, .... any given individuals ac
quire such and such privileges ;" and which again,
consistently with this view, resolves the Holy
Eucharist simply into the fact, that in it " each
man pledges himself to Christ and to his brethren
upon the symbols of his redemption and sancti
fication''," hereby wholly forgetting that it is a
means of grace in the use of which " our souls are
strengthened and refreshed by the body and blood
of Christ, as our bodies are by the bread and
wine";" or that there is given in it any increase
of God's grace or of spiritual union with Christ ;
" I quote these passages in the words of the late Dr. Arnold
(Dr. Arnold's Life, vol. ii. p. 65,) rather than in the exaggerated
expressions of some of his living copyists, because I think that the
teaching I condemn is seen to the greatest advantage in one who
was so able, so free from all low motives, and who manifestly clave
for himself with such love and trust to the person of our Lord.
" Ibid., p. 66. ' Ibid., p. 66. ¦• Ibid., p. 76.
' Church Catechism.

igo "the STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY."
and again, which, speaking of the Sacraments,
denies as a very dangerous error, "that an out
ward bodily act can have a tendency to remove
moral evil'." For all this is exactly that which
they would labour to establish, who, beginning
with denying all .spiritual life and authority to
the Church, and with questioning altogether the
inspiration of the Scriptures ; and whilst they
grope blindly, through the acting of their own
intellects, for the spiritual presence of God, deny
His promised working through His own appointed
instruments. With this system, advocated as it
has been, and is, by some, who seem to consider
themselves as her only faithful sons, I have ven
tured to contrast a simple adherence to the teach
ing of our own Church. For if this be at all her
meaning, not I only, but all her greatest and most
judicious divines, have altogether missed her sense.
Certainly, to make the English Prayer-book speak
this language to an ordinary understanding, it
must be re-written. For, if this system be the
truth of the jealous God, how can she declare the
Sacraments of the Church to be " means of grace
generally necessary to salvation.'" how can she
pronounce a belief in the dogma of the creeds
needful for every one who willeth to be saved ?
How can she say in her Ordination Service, " re
ceive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of
' Dr. Arnold's Life, p. 115.

"THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY." 191
a priest in the Church of God," if there be with
her no indwelling of the Spirit ; if there be there
fore no gifts of that Spirit for her to minister;
or if there be, indeed, in the Church of God, no
such office for them to receive, or work for them
to execute ? How can she say, " take thou autho
rity to minister the Sacraments," if there be no
such authority for her to give, or for them to
exercise .¦• how commit to them the power of ab
solving sin, and prescribe the times and terms of
its administration, if there be no ministry of ab
solution endowed with special gifts of God's power
and grace .''
Surely every dispassionate mind must see that
one and all of these and such like acts and sen
tences of our Church do presuppose, as a certain
truth, that we are under an appointed spiritual
economy, in which human instruments and out
ward acts are made the channels of divine grace :
that we are in a spiritual kingdom, which has
its appointed officers, through whom God works,
doing Himself, for those who seek Him for them
selves, by the unseen but certain operations of
His blessed Spirit, what His ministers do in His
Name according to His will. In short, for I know
not how to express the truth more clearly than
by inverting the quotations I have already given
you — "that the Church is a sort of chartered
corporation, and that, by belonging to it, indi-

192 "THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY."
viduals do acquire spiritual privileges ;" " and
that outward bodily acts," powerless as they are
in themselves, " have " yet, for those who believe
in Him, when done by Christ's appointment, and
with true faith in Him, a certain because cove
nanted "tendency," not through any virtue of
their own, but through His promised working,
" to remove moral evil."
Or, in the words of one of the great lights
and most judicious writers of our Church; in the
words wherein, almost three centuries ago, Richard
Hooker seems to have provided for our present
needs, " that saving grace which Christ originally
is, or hath, for the general good of His whole
Church, by sacraments he severally deriveth into
every member thereof. [For] sacraments serve as
the instruments of God to that end and purpose ;
moral instruments, the use whereof is in our hands,
the effect in His ; for the use, we have His ex
press commandment ; for the effect. His condi
tional promise ; so that, without our obedience
to the one, there is of the other no apparent
assurance ; as contrariwise, where the signs and
sacraments of His grace are not, either through
contempt unreceived, or received with contempt,
we are not to doubt but that they really give
what they promise, and are what they signify s."
With one caution only let me guard my words
e Hooker, Eccl. Polity, lib. v. § S7-

"THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY." 193
on this subject. It has been often urged that they
who use this language set the Church before their
flocks instead of Christ, and place an earthly mi
nistry in the room of His one true priesthood.
Now, whilst it is untrue to state that this is the
necessary consequence of giving in our ministry
the fullest prominence to the spiritual character
of the Church ; yet it is undoubtedly easy to
speak as if there could be another true priesthood
besides His, and so to dwell upon the Church and
to be silent as to Him, as practically to place
her, instead of her Head, before the eyes of men.
Against this deadly error then, my reverend bre
thren, let us ever be on our guard. Let us be
ware of ever so thinking or speaking of our office,
as if we were anything but the mere ministers
of His grace ; the mere instruments earthly and
miserable in ourselves, through whom He is
pleased to work. Let us watch diligently, lest
any of our people place their possession of Church
privileges in the room of that change of heart
and renewal of soul in their own individual spiri
tual being, to effect which these privileges are
given, and without which they will at last but lead
to their more fatal condemnation. Let us ever
more be holding up the cross of Christ, His pas
sion, His death. His person. His righteousness.
His indwelling in each separate soul, as the only
and sufficient hope of any sinner. Let our teach-
O

194 " THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY."
ing concerning His Church never rest in it, or
its privileges, or its rites ; but ever lead on to
Him, witness of Him, declare Him, apply Him
in all His offices to every soul. Let us, if God
enable us, make every one of our people feel that
it is not through a love of any formal system
whatsoever, be it the purest, but because we know
that God the Holy Ghost works through her ap
pointed ordinances on the souls of penitents and
saints, that we would lead them to believe rightly
in that great article of their creed — the One Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church.
And if such, my reverend brethren, be through
God's grace, our course, I have no fears for the
issue. The prospect, indeed, before us on many
sides, is dark and threatening enough. But when
has it been otherwise with the Church ? When
the Lord raised the curtain which hides her future,
what — even whilst He bid her not be troubled —
did He reveal to her as her portion but wars and
rumours of wars, tribulation, persecution, and The
End. But His beloved presence was to support
her under all. And have we not His presence
amongst us ? If not, whence come these stirrings
of our Church's heart ? whence spring these gra
cious revivals amidst all our griefs ? How is it
that our churches multiply — that our services are
more frequent — that growing numbers worship in
them with growing devotion — that self-denying

"THE STRIFE WITH INFIDELITY." 195
works of piety and charity increase — that houses
of mercy and homes for penitents are springing up
— that our Colonial Church is at last beginning
to replenish the earth with a holy seed — that our
failing faith is a little stirred up, and our flagging
love somewhat revived ? From whom are these
things, if they are not from our unseen, but ever
present. Lord ? And if He be with us, who shall
be against us .'' Then, indeed, may we welcome
trials, hindrances, yea, and darkness itself; for
still, as of old, at that darkest hour, when the
wind is contrary — when the strong are waxing
weary, toiling in rowing, but still persevering in
the work which He hath set them, is He nearest
to them. Only let each one of us, in his own
appointed place and work, so toil, and trust, and
wait ; and to each of us, in our single strife most
certainly, to all it may be at any hour, he shall
manifest Himself, walking by His kingly power
upon the swelling waves of this troubled world ;
and amidst the glad calm which then shall spread
itself around His presence, we too, like those of
old, shall immediately be at the haven whither
we would go.
1851.

XVL
THE APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPATE.
 A MIGHTY crisis had been reached in
the setting up of Christ's kingdom ; and in the
brief record of God's word, we may expect to
see some of its deeper powers flashing into
light. And so in truth it is. For to those who
dwell upon them with a dutiful docility, almost
every one of these words conveys some special
revelation of the hidden wonders by which we
are surrounded. Pause upon them with me,
brethren, for a few moments, and let them fill
your souls. " Now there were in the church that
was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers ;"
here are the baptized held in their common fellow
ship under a visible ministry, whose members,
according to their wont, " ministered to the Lord
and fasted," when, amidst these human forms and
outward instruments, is heard a voice, from God
the Holy Ghost : " Separate Me Barnabas and
Saul for the work whereunto I have called them."
Here at once, as in an instant, we touch the very
centre of this world of wonders, — for He, the
Holy Ghost, the Third Person in the adorable
Godhead, He is with this company ; He speaks
from the midst of them as from His accustomed
shrine. All the visible appointments of their new

THE APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPATE. 1 97
life are full of His mysterious presence ; He has
a work for them to do ; He has been preparing
these His instruments to do it. We see, then, what
is meant in God's Word by "The Church that
was at Antioch." It is the company of men who
had been baptized into Christ, amongst whom,
because they belonged to Christ, dwelt this awful
presence : and this transforms all their appointed
acts from being mere outward forms into spiritual
verities. We can understand why there is such
a living power even in the hands of feeble men
about the Sacraments of the Gospel, we can see
the true binding and loosing which in the world
of spirits waits upon the actions of a human
ministry. For He the Holy Ghost is in very deed
amongst them. We see the danger of resting
on the forms which are the instruments of His
working, as if they were in themselves anything,
and thereby turning them into veils which shut
out from our souls the near vision of His presence ;
we see the risk of making light of them, since
it is through them that He works, and Him whom
we reject when we cast them away. We under
stand that the symbol of our faith combines these
two utterances, " I believe in the Holy Ghost, the
Holy Catholic Church ;" to guard us in our daily
handling of the outward instruments of the Holy
Spirit's working against a deadly formality, or an
equally deadly unbelief.

198 THE APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPATE.
Again, what instruction is there for us in that
which is here the particular call of the voice of
God. It summons two of that company to a
special work : " Separate Me Barnabas and Saul
for the work whereunto I have called them." Mani
festly they to whom the command came understood
its bidding, for they set at once about an orderly
preparation for obedience. It was, then, to some
office with which they were already familiar that
their brethren were summoned ; and in it they
were to be placed by human hands. Here is none
of the startled confusion, the hovering uncertain
readiness to obey, which follows upon the accents
of a sudden and unintelligible summons ; but an
instant acquiescence in an understood direction.
What the work was, in what office it was to be
wrought, how that office was to be conveyed, were
manifestly plain to those who heard the order.
That call of God, though it singled out the two by
name, was not of itself sufficient. " I have called
them," ye must " separate" them. Though all the
power is from Me, yet it is by your hands that
I will array them with it. They had learned before
this that His work was to be wrought by earthly
instruments ; that He had appointed the apostle
ship ; and even as the first twelve filled up their
number, so did they now add these to that com
pany of witnesses of Jesus, of those workmen of
the Spirit, through whose feeble hands the world

THE APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPATE. 199
was to be subdued to their Lord — " and when they
had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on
them, they sent them away." Oh, marvellous
union of man's impotence and the power of the
Holy Ghost ! He who from his mother's womb
had been separated ^ for this work ; he in whom
the Son had been revealed '' ; he to whom the
Lord had "appeared in the way";" he, by the
laying on of hand-s of mere men, is sent forth
armed with the power of the Holy Ghost. For we
read, " They sent them away ;" " so they being sent
forth by the Holy Ghost, departed ^"
Here, then, we have opened to our eyes the very
secret fountain of the mighty power of Christ's
apostleship and of the Church's mission. Hands
which the Holy One hath filled, must indeed
be full of grace. Verily the triumphant song
of lancient prophecy is fulfilled before our eyes.
The ascended King hath poured out His largess.
"Thou hast ascended up on high, Thou hast led
captivity captive : Thou hast received gifts for men ;
yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God
might dwell among them ^." " And He gave some,
apostles ; and some, prophets ; and some, evan
gelists ; and some, pastors and teachers ; for the
perfecting of the saints, for the work ofthe ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ V
¦ Gal. i. 15. ' Gal. L 16. "= Acts xi. 17.
'' Acts xiii. 3, 4. ' Ps. Ixviii. 18. ' Eph. iv. II, 12.

200 THE APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPATE.
Further, as we have here the foundation of the
office to which these were called, so have we in
many respects its peculiar features. . For, first, it is a
separated office ; parted by the voice of God from
all besides itself; endued by Him with an actual
real being ; diverse from the ordinary life even
of common saints, and this it has, not of man's
appointing but of His ; not because wise men
are lovers of order, and because in any mixed
society, the pre-eminence of some is essential to.
the order of all, but because God is present in new
measure with the Church of Christ, and is pleased
to work through earthly instruments, and so His
indwelling severs His ministry from all earthly
offices. For, as one says of old, " neither man,
nor angel, nor archangel, nor any other created
power but He Himself, the Paraclete, hath or
dained this calling s." And then, besides its sepa
ration, here is another feature of its character,
that it is a WORK — and how is this evermore
stamped upon it, as of its very essence ; " Separate
them for the work," and so we read elsewhere.
It was the fault of John Mark, that he "went
not with them to the work '' ;" and the Corinthian
converts are claimed by St. Paul as his " work
in the Lord';" and it is "for the work of the
ministry" that the ascended Lord "gave apostles
8 S. Chrysostom De Sacerdotio, lib. iii. ed. Bened., p. 382. B.
•¦ Acts XV. 38. i I Cor. ix. i.

THE APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPATE. 201
and evangehsts'';" and it is for "their work's
sake" that such should be "very highly esteemed
in love'." And, "he that desireth the office of
a bishop, desireth a good work ™ ;" and the last
charge of the aged Apostle to the beloved Timothy
was, that he should "do the work of an evan
gelist"." Yea, and even the details of that work
for God which is thus committed to His separated
instruments may here be traced. For as the former
chapters of the Acts of the Apostles have recorded
chiefly the growth under other hands of the Jewish
Church, so from this point are they filled with the
history of that apostleship of the Gentiles, which
here opens on us. For we have this full-furnished
minister of Christ first preaching. the Word, and
sometimes by himself, but oftener by those who
ministered beneath him, baptizing converts, and
thereby on every side making disciples of Jesus :
and when he had thus planted the Church, we
find him afterwards confirming and ruling it, and
providing for its continuance. So that in the
sketch given of his life, most of the distinctive acts
of his special function may be found severally
mentioned. For in the record of the Acts of the
Apostles, we may trace him not only always and
everywhere preaching the Word, but also bap
tizing converts, confirming the baptized", ordaining
'' Eph. iv. II. ' I Thess. v. 13. " i Tim. iii. i.
» 2 Tim. iv. 5. 0 Acts xix. 6.

202 THE APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPATE.
elders in every cityP, consecrating a bishopi, giving
him directions how to rule the Church of God •¦,
committing to him power to silence or suspend
its teachers', holding visitation of the brethren',
and especially of the clergy", delivering ordi
nances to be kept", and by the like authority
" setting the rest in order when he came^," defining
in synod ^ the Church's doctrine upon doubtful
matters, pronouncing the awful censure of the
Church upon the evil " ; and again, restoring to
its fold the awakened penitent '' ; and throughout
not only bearing, often with a burdened spirit,
in weariness and painfulness that care of all the
Churches which came upon him daily, but inter
ceding night and day for his several converts, and
with the tenderest sympathy sharing their weak
ness'', burning in their offence, feeding them ac
cording to their power of bearing food, and seek
ing by unceasing watchfulness and labour to per
fect what was lacking in their faith. This was the
work to which the Holy Ghost had called him :
this was the work by which, in the power of
that same divine Spirit, he was evermore faith
fully and truly bearing everywhere his living wit

s' Acts xiv. 23. 1 Tit. i. 5. ¦¦ l and 2 Tim. and Tit
passim. ' Tit. i. II. 13 ; xi. 15. ' Acts xv. 36.
" Acts XX. 17, 18, &c. ^ I Cor. xi. 2. ? i Cor. xi. 34.
Acts XV. 2. ° I Cor. V. 5. '2 Cor. ii. 10.
" 2 Cor. xi. 29.

THE APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPATE. 203
ness of the resurrection of the Lord, and that His
kingdom was indeed established amongst men.
So that here is an ordinary ministry with the
additions of the power of rule, the special custody
of doctrines, the gifts of confirmation, and the
power of ordaining and consecrating ; of com
missioning, that is to say, those who in the next
order of the ministry should discharge their own
appointed functions ; and imparting his own office
to others, who should hand it on even till Christ
came again.
Here, then, was the work to which the two were
separated, and this was the office in which it was
to be fulfilled ; and in looking at it, we must notice
within itself a most important twofold character.
It was, in part, the doing certain acts through
which God the Holy Ghost worked : which, there
fore, no uncommissioned man could do, and which
when rightly done by one commissioned, did not
depend for their essential efficacy upon the per
sonal faith of him who wrought them, but upon
the present power of Him who had appointed
them. This was one part of his work and office :
and the other was the devotion of a life, with all
its energies of loving, and daring, and suffering,
and enduring, to the service of the Lord their
Redeemer. Nor, in the work as a whole, could
these ever be separated. It was the necessary
consequence of the employment of men to minister

204 THE APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPATE.
to men, that even the very series of official acts,
which severally were unaffected by their agent's
worthiness, should be evermore interpenetrated,
and so weakened or enforced by the life of him
who wrought them ; whilst in a large part of their
work the actual efficiency of the agent depended
on the spirit in which he wrought. Thus, though
the clear perception of the truth might by revela
tion be given even to an unfaithful messenger,
yet the power of declaring it in love, as from a
soul leavened with its healing, purifying, elevating
power, depended on his own reception of it. And
so throughout their ministry; the unwavering faith,
the healthy conscience, the untiring zeal, the tender
sympathy, the boldness to dare, the meekness to
endure, the joy in sorrow, the clear eye, the calm
judgment, which were all needed for God's chosen
instruments, were blessed fruits in their own souls,
of their first " taking heed to themselves," and then
"to the doctrine" which they preached to others.
And how do the glimpses which we have of all
that passed within the soul of Saul of Tarsus from
the day when the lot of God separated him as
His peculiar instrument of service, illustrate and
enforce this truth ! What a mighty grace strove
evermore within him ! How does the marvellous
inner life of his spirit, those wrestlings of his soul,
its ardent longings after Christ, its unutterable
thirst for holiness, its seraphic love, its exceeding

THE APOSTOLICAL EPISCOPATE. 20$
purity, its deep humiliation, its burning zeal, its
more than woman's tenderness, bear, if it were
possible, an even plainer witness to his living Lord,
than all the vast circumference of his outward
labours ! How deeply marked upon him are all
the lines of the apostolical character ! How had
the Church's prayers been answered ! How had
He who said, " Separate Me Barnabas and Saul
for the work' whereunto I have called them," per
vaded all the inmost being of His chosen servant
with His own transforming influence !,....
i8S3-

XVII.
THE CHURCH'S TEACHING ON THE
HOLY EUCHARIST.
SUFFER me now to lead your thoughts for
awhile from these matters, which more es
pecially belong to our own Diocese, to others in
which we share the general interests of the Church.
In taking such a survey, we are met at once
by a subject of the utmost importance, which just
now occupies a large measure of attention, on
which, therefore, you may naturally expect me, and
on which some of you have privately requested me,
to give you my judgment — I mean the teaching
of our own Church on the subject of the Holy
Eucharist, and our own duties with regard to it.
As to the circumstances indeed which have given
a present prominence to this matter, or the par
ticulars of the pending controversy, you will well
understand my silence. But the doctrine in ques
tion, and the mode in which we should treat of it
in our instruction to our several parishes, are so
important, that no private feelings would justify
my passing them over without notice. The teach
ing of the Church of England, then, as to this
great mystery, in strict agreement with the Holy

THE CHURCH'S TEACHING, &C. 207
Scriptures and primitive antiquity, is, I apprehend,
simply this. First, that there is a peculiar and
supernatural presence of Christ with His people
in that Holy Sacrament. That in it He does,
in and by the due reception of the consecrated
elements, convey to the faithful believer a real
partaking of His body and of His blood, whereby
the souls of His faithful people are nourished and
refreshed. But, secondly, that He has not revealed
to us the mode or conditions of that presence ;
which, being Divine and supernatural, is not to be
thought of, or made the subject of argument, as
if it either were governed by the laws, or involved
the consequences of a material presence. To the
many questions, therefore, which may be raised
touching the conditions, or mode of this presence,
our Church gives no answer ; but protests against
their discussion as being curious and dangerous ;
as being likely to lead, and as having led those
who entertained them, into many errors; and as,
therefore, to be discouraged as attempts to be
wise above what is written. As to one of these,
indeed, because it specially threatened the faith
of her own children, she has pronounced a distinct
and emphatic censure ; condemning the Papal so
lution of the mystery in terms which apply to
it alike in its grosser form of an undisguised belief
in the transformation of the bread and wine into
flesh and blood, and in that subtle refinement

208 THE CHURCH'S TEACHING
of the fancy, whereby — whilst the theory of a ma
terial change is still preserved — its grossness is
veiled, for more educated intellects, by the de
claration, that the substances of the bread and
wine, in their highest essential being, are removed,
and for them miraculously substituted the essential
substance of our Lord's body, whilst the acci
dents of that altered substance, such as taste,
colour, shape, and the like, remain, through God's
power, unchanged, so as to delude the senses.
This doctrine of Transubstantiation, — the fruitful
source, or apt ally, in the Papal communion, of
so many and such dangerous superstitions, — our
Church condemns in no faltering accents, as being
unknown to primitive times, incapable of proof
by Holy Writ, and repugnant to the plain words
of Scripture, as overthrowing the nature of a
sacrament, and having given occasion to many
superstitions. But this direct condemnation of
the teachers of error is not her common course.
Rather, for the most part, has she guarded the
faith by a simple denial of the erroneous doctrine,
or even by asserting, with authority, the distinct
truth, which those who have maintained the error
she condemns, have endeavoured to disfigure, or
deny. Thus in declaring, that " to such as rightly,
worthily, and with faith, partake of that sacrament,
the bread which we break, is a partaking of the
body of Christ ; and likewise the cup of blessing.

ON THE HOLY EUCHARIST. 209
is a partaking of the blood of Christ." And again,
" that the body and blood of Christ are verily and
indeed taken and received by the faithful in the
Lord's Supper ;" and again, that " the wicked do
not therein partake of Christ;" and once more,
" that the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten
in the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual
manner ;" she asserts those truths which are dark
ened by the confusing and erroneous doctrine of
consubstantiation, and denied by the cold na
turalism of the Zuinglian theory, which resolves
the reality of Christ's presence into the quickened
apprehension of the devout worshipper ; but whilst
she has thus authoritatively re-asserted the truths
which were in peril, she has not stepped aside
to censure by name either the one error or the
other. This, then, being so, we may, I think, without
difficulty, gather what should be our teaching as
to this great mystery.
We should first, and above all, in opposition to
the unbelief which is so natural to the heart of
man, insist upon the reality and truth of that
supernatural presence which our Lord is graciously
pleased to vouchsafe in that Sacrament to the
worthy receiver. Next, we should discourage, to
the utmost of our power, all speculations as to the
mode of that presence, the reality of which we
inculcate. Further, whilst we should distinctly
P

210 THE church's TEACHING
condemn every specific form of erroneous teaching,
concerning the mode of that presence, which our
Church has actually censured, we should watch
against that dogmatical spirit which would lead
us to anathematize all with whose statements
ours do not exactly harmonize ; remembering the
moderation and wisdom which has led our Church
to seek to maintain undefiled the purity of the
Faith, by an unreserved and uncompromising re
assertion of the truth which heresy assails, rather
than by a direct condemnation of the holders of
error ; and being on our guard lest we be rashly
led, on the mere strength of our individual judg
ment, to multiply censures which she has advisedly
withheld. Lastly, we should labour to lead our
people from curious questions as to that which
is eminently a mystery, to be received simply
by faith, and not argued out by the subtlety of
reasoning, to an humble and unquestioning belief
in the working of the Power of God, and to earnest
longings for the great spiritual blessings, which,
if they come aright, will be vouchsafed to them
in thus partaking of Christ. And if at any time
we are forced to enter further upon this mystery,
we should keep as closely as possible to the letter
of Scripture, and to the inculcation of the doctrine
as a revealed fact in its bearing upon practice ;
remembering, what is admitted even by Bellarmine,
" that though it is a matter of faith to believe that

ON THE HOLY EUCHARIST. 211
Sacraments are instruments whereby God worketh
grace in the souls of men, ' yet that the manner
how He doth it, is not a matter of faith ^" Surely,
to turn our own minds, or the minds of our people,
to such enquiries, instead of seeking simply that
nourishment of our souls which the Lord is then
imparting to us, is as if they whose bodies He
was graciously feeding in the wilderness with the
broken bread and the distributed fishes, had turned
aside from that provision which He was making
for their need, in order to ascertain whether, at the
time of blessing, or in the breaking, or the giving,
or the receiving, was vouchsafed the multiplication
of the loaves and of the fishes ; on which, instead,
it was their wisdom and their duty thankfully to
feed. Thus, for example, instead of speculating upon
what is received by the unfaithful in the Lord's
Supper, or dogmatizing thereon as to what may
seem to some to be infallible inferences with re
gard to a matter on which Holy Scripture is well-
nigh silent, and as to which, if the presence be,
as we undoubtingly believe it is, indeed immaterial,
we have no data for constructing an argument,
we should remember that, though our Lord's
promise is sure, and though, therefore, where the
whole appointed rite is duly performed in all its
parts, including equally the consecration of the
» Quoted by R. Hooker. See Note 22 to Eccles. Pol., Y. 6.
Edit. Oxford, 1836.

212 THE church's TEACHING
elements, and their faithful reception, the presence
of the body and blood of Christ are certain to the
faithful receiver, yet that we have no right to stop
after the prayer of consecration, or at any other
intermediate point in that which by the Lord's
appointment is one undivided whole, and to argue
that at that time, that Divine Presence must have
been granted, which is promised only to the act
of duly giving and receiving, and not to any of
its several parts. We shall, therefore, do well,
as to this mysterious matter, to confine ourselves
to asserting with our Church, that the ungodly
are, in partaking of the consecrated elements, " in
nowise partakers of Christ," and yet, that, in eating
that bread and drinking of that cup unworthily,
they partake not of common food, but, as our
Church teaches again, " to their own condemnation
do herein eat and drink the sign or sacrament
of so great a thing," as the Body of the Lord,
and do that, for the doing of which of old many
of the Corinthian Christians were "weak and
sickly, yea, and many slept."
Suffer me before I leave this subject to sum
up all that I would impress upon you in the words
of one, whose devotion, sobriety, and learning,
stamp him as a fit exponent of the views and
temper of the English Church, and whom all pos
terity have consented to revere as judicious.
"The fruit of the Eucharist," says Richard
Hooker, "is the participation of the body and

ON THE HOLY EUCHARIST. 213
blood of Christ. There is no sentence of Holy
Scripture which saith that we cannot by this
Sacrament be made partakers of His body and
blood, except they be first contained in the Sacra
ment, or the Sacrament converted into them.
' This is My body,' and ' this is My blood,' being
words of promise, sith we all agree that by the
Sacrament Christ doth really and truly in us per
form His promise, why do we vainly trouble our
selves with so fierce contentions, whether by con
substantiation, or else by transubstantiation, the
Sacrament itself be first possessed with Christ
or no ? A thing which no way can either further
or hinder us howsoever it stand, because our par
ticipation of Christ in this Sacrament dependeth
on the co-operation of His omnipotent power,
which maketh it His body and blood to us, whether
with change or without alteration of the element,
such as they imagine, we need not greatly to care
nor inquire ^."
1854.
'' This passage was objected to by the Puritan authors of the
Christian Letter, 34, as ' ' seeming to make light of the doctrine
of Transubstantiation, as a matter not to be stoode upon or to
be contended for, cared for or inquired into." Hooker's MS. note
shews how far this was from his meaning : " Not," he says, "to
be stood upon or contended for by them, because it is not a, thing
necessary; although, because it is false, as long as they do per
sist to maintain and urge it, there is no man so gross as to think
in this case we may neglect it. Against them it is said ....

214 THE church's TEACHING

What is clearer in God's Word than that, in
the blessed Eucharist, to every faithful partaker,
the bread which we break is the communion of
the body of Christ, the cup of blessing which we
bless, the communion of His blood " ? For that
His " flesh is meat indeed," and His blood " drink
indeed." Or, what can be proved more easily
than the reverence and love with which this spi
ritual presence of Christ was held, as one of its
choicest treasures, by the earliest Church ? and
into what a system of idolatrous impiety, — with
its adoration of the wafer, and its masses for the
quick and dead, and its notion of the Church's
accumulating treasures of disposable merit, — has
the added doctrine of transubstantiation, (an ad
dition, which, whilst it seems to exalt, does yet
most truly overthrow the very nature of this Sa
crament,) practically converted, at least for the
multitude, this great gospel ordinance.
Yet here, again, how certain is it that our re
sistance of the falsehood must be accompanied, as
it was accompanied in the teaching of our great
It sufficed to have believed this, (the Communion of Christ in
the Holy Sacrament,) and not by determining the manner how
God bringeth it to pass to have entangled themselves with
opinions so strange, so impossible to be proved true." — Hooker's
Eccles. Pol, Book V. Sect., Note 22, Oxford Edit. 1846.
" 1 Cor. X. 16.

ON THE HOLY EUCHARIST. 21 5
reformers, by a re-assertion of the primitive truth
on which it is grafted, if we would resist success
fully the twofold danger to which in this contest
we are evermore exposed.
For if we falter here, — if, with some of the con
tinental reformers, in our zeal against Roman su
perstition, we pare down a Gospel mystery, — if,
because Rome has invented the fable of a sub
stantial, we fear to assert a verity of a real, par
taking of the Body and Blood of Christ by every
faithful worshipper in that holy Sacrament, — if we
diminish primitive truths because we think they,
and not man's sin, led before, and may lead again,
to superstitious error, — what do we but, first, make
ourselves unable to strive successfully against the
deceiver into whose hands we thus timidly resign
the truth .¦• For surely hereby we give up to her
that which is her strength against pious souls. For
they, hating, it may be, her frauds and inventions,
yet despairing to find elsewhere the great primitive
truth for which their spirits thirst, of a real pre
sence of their Lord in His appointed ordinances, do
well-nigh violence to their antipathies to what they
still feel to be errors, in their overmastering long
ing to secure what they know to be truth, and so
turn to her to give them, what we indeed possess
in far greater purity, but of which, in our faithless
prudence, we did not dare to speak. And then,
secondly, and beyond this, do we not hereby en-

2l6 THE church's TEACHING
danger altogether the belief of bolder spirits, whom
we do not give up to Rome, but whom we teach
to eliminate mystery from their religion, and so
to sap the very foundations of the faith ? Surely
it ought not to be in vain that God has set be
fore our eyes the manifest downfall, through these
very steps, of that Genevan communion which was
fondly conceived by those who fashioned it to be
the purest of all Churches, the morning-star of
the faith, foreshewing the dawning of that day of
true religious life, and freedom, and purity, to
which they looked so confidently forward. Here
again, then, we may see that only on the great
principles of the English Reformers can we strive
against papal error at once successfully and safely.
What, then, can be more fitting than that here to
day, in this three-hundredth year from the time
when, in this University and city, God gave them
grace thus wisely and scripturally to maintain His
truth, and to witness for it by their deaths, we should
with humble thankfulness to Him make mention
of their deeds, and strive to follow their examples .-'
O that we could copy more exactly that goodly
pattern, and hand on with greater brightness that
light which they kindled, who with strong faith
and ready wills here " played the men " in the
last agonies of the stake, and were borne upwards
to their rest in the fiery chariots of martyrdom !
And how, brethren, may we hope to do so ?

ON THE HOLY EUCHARIST. 217
First, by each one learning more entirely to place
all his own hope and trust in Him who shed His
precious blood for our redemption, and now liveth
as our Intercessor and our Head ; by more truly
casting ourselves down as helpless sinners at the
foot of His Cross, to be saved by Him alone ;
by seeking for a stronger personal faith and truer
confidence in Him ; by living with Him more con
stantly in prayer, in obedience, and good works.
And then, by fixing in our inmost hearts, through
a constant study of His Word, and earnest prayer
to Him for teaching and enlightenment, so deep
and serious a sense of the inestimable value of
the truths for which we strive, and of the greatness
of the errors against which we contend, — that we
shall cleave closely with our affections as well as
our passions to the ancient faith, and reject even
with abhorrence the corruptions which obscured
it in the middle ages, or the contempt which
threatens to slight it now : that we shall be un
able, further, to endure either that any rob us by
speculative doubt, or gloss, or scoff, of our as
surance that in His Church, through His Word,
and by His Sacraments, Christ is with us, and the
Holy Ghost amongst us ; that we have as our
special trust " that good thing " which was " com
mitted " from the first to the peculiar charge of
the undivided Episcopate ; or that we or ours
should tamper with one single popish corruption,

21 8 THE church's TEACHING, &C.
indulge in the luscious sentimentahty of their spi
ritual phraseology, or imitate the outward signs
through which their inward spirit is displayed :
in one word, that, like our faithful martyrs of
blessed memory here in Oxford, in all things we
cleave close to God's written Word as the infallible
record of the faith, to the ancient creeds as its
compendious summary, and to primitive practice
as its best expositor.
Let this example, brethren, be our safeguard ;
maintained, through God's help, by a life of secret
communion with Him ; by a humble sense of our
own infirmities and errors ; by strong desires for
the visible re-union of Christendom in one faith,
and service, and love ; and so, by labouring for
peace as well as truth ; above all, by earnest prayer
for ourselves, and continual intercession for our
brethren, that we and they may be led into all
truth, and brought nearer to each other, by being
brought evermore nearer to Christ our Head.
1855.

XVIII.
RECENT OUTCRIES AGAINST PREACHING,
AND HOW TO MEET THEM.
A RE our sermons what they ought to be, or
-^^- what real labour and prayer on our part
might make them ? Are we not too much in the
habit of thinking of preaching as if it were that
which all educated men could do competently,
without any peculiar training or education of their
faculties for that special purpose .¦" Now I am by
no means disposed to give an indiscriminate as
sent to the truth of the popular outcry against our
sermons, which has of late reached the ears of all
of us ; but still, are they not, with many excel
lencies, too often deficient in precisely those quali
ties which are necessary to make them really
effective with our people ? For is not their general
cast that of essays or disquisitions ; their merit,
soundness, moderation, perhaps exactness .¦• And
is not their fault — that really unpardonable fault
with all listeners of every class, and specially with
our class of listeners — that of dulness ? And is
not what we want to reach our people a style of
composition the exact opposite of this ; one which
intellectually is terse, pointed, dealing in short
sentences ; using Saxon words, as close to every-

220 RECENT OUTCRIES AGAINST PREACHING,
day life as it can be, without being profane or
vulgar, in its subjects, applications, illustrations,
and assertions ? Should it not be rough enough
to make itself felt through the dull skin of indo
lence and inattention ? Should it not startle the
careless, and positively jog the drowsy man ere his
sleep is sound ? Should it not be pathetic ? for
who more need, or more answer, than our common
hearers to what reaches them through the affec
tions .<" Should it not through illustrations convey
truths which the unlearned never receive through
argument ? Should it not avoid the easy uni
formity of a man applying a nostrum, and with
the living earnestness of one who believes that he
has all -important truths to convey, declare the
curse of sin, and the blessed remedy provided for
it in the sacrifice and offering of our Lord, and in
the working of God the Holy Ghost ? Should it
not dwell upon and proclaim Christ on His Cross,
Christ in His work of love, Christ in His Word,
Christ in His Church, Christ in His Sacraments,
Christ crucified, Christ risen, Christ mediating,
Christ saving ? And should it not impress these
with all the variety, and fire, and love which be
long, not to a mouth full of phrases, but to a heart,
and mind, and soul full of their subject, and that
subject eternal death or eternal life, man's loss or
man's salvation, and the love of Christ, and the
working of the Eternal Spirit, and the blessedness

AND HOW TO MEET THEM. 221
of the Church of the redeemed ? And should not
all this be delivered as if we were in earnest,
because we are in earnest ? I must leave it to you
to determine for yourselves whether you can best
speak thus for Christ from or without a manuscript.
I believe that the best course, generally, is to
preach once each Sunday a written and once an
unwritten sermon. But when I say an unwritten
sermon, I by no means mean one which has been
committed to memory, nor, on the other hand, one
which is the mere pouring off of the first frothy
surface of our minds ; but one which, though the
fresh utterance of the moment, is the product of
thought, and study, and prayer. For the written
sermon secures exactness and variety, and the
unwritten the habit of speaking to our people
from the heart to the heart, instead of reading
compositions in their presence. '
It would help us, I think, to gain this mode
of preaching, if we remembered more constantly,
that, especially for the mass of our illiterate hear
ers, preaching commonly is and must be the great
instrument of converting souls to God ; and that
it is only, for the most part, through this, that the
dull monotony of a life of worldliness is ever
broken in upon in their case by that stirring of
the spiritual affections which belongs of God's
mercy to devotional addresses.
1857. 

222 RECENT OUTCRIES AGAINST PREACHING,
I BESEECH you, my brethren, sharers with me
of the great responsibilities of the Christian minis
try, to labour yet more abundantly in the great
work of preaching Christ's Gospel to the flock.
And here I allude not so much to the frequency
of your sermons, as to the diligence, labour,
and prayer that you should give to their prepa
ration. Accounts have reached me from some
parts of the diocese, which make me fear that
in their honest and necessary efforts to escape
from the dull routine which so often freezes up
the ministry of the mere reader of written essays
to his flock, some of you are in danger of falling
into an opposite error ; of entering the pulpit with
too little preparation, and uttering from it, some
times with a perilous facility of language, empty,
vapid, and pointless generalities. The spread
amongst us of such a style of preaching would
be indeed a deadly wound to our usefulness, and
I warn you earnestly against the snare. Let us
not suppose it possible that we can please God or
promote His glory by offering to Him that which
has cost us nothing. More I will not say here upon
the subject, because I have discussed it at length
in the volume of " Addresses on the Ordination
Service" which I have this year published.

AND HOW TO MEET THEM. 223
You must live near to God, if you would know
Him so as to be able to declare Him, and you
can only thus live near to 'Him by loving Him ;
and love, which opens the blind eyes so that they
see Him, is His gift; it is love which places you
in " the cleft of the rock " as He passes by : " He
that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God, for
God is love." Yes, ever remember it, love is His
gift, His gift to those who wait on Him. Without
it everything else is vain ; and it can from its
own treasures supply everything beside which
you may need.
For the love of God will make you indeed know
Him for yourself ; and it will make you love your
brother, and so know him too, for love is ready-
eyed and most sharp-sighted. The loving soul
will see what his brother needs, and be able to
supply it ; for love is quick and true in applying
remedies, and has that master power which must
dwell in every healer, that it draws the sufferer
to itself, instead of driving him away. There is
a tenderness in love which makes its touch so
light that even the most deeply wounded will bear
its handling : there is a reality about it which
makes it go straight to the true point. And this
will make all our ministry, and especially our ser
mons, effective. Instead ofthe dry, wandering, un
real generalities, the fine writing, or the unmeaning
repetition of phrases which make so many sermons
so absolutely intolerable, they will be felt by those

224 RECENT OUTCRIES AGAINST PREACHING,
who hear them to be indeed living voices, voices
about God, voices about themselves ; as good
news from the far land ; as the message the weary
soul wants. They will have abundantly that
strength and blessing which the living words of
men otherwise, perhaps, somewhat unfurnished,
but whose souls have been full of love to Christ,
have been ever found to have, piercing through
the crust of carelessness and sin, and reaching
home, as the very power of God, to the drowsy
or the stricken conscience.
I press this the more because no one can listen
carefully to the majority of sermons preached in
our churches ; few, alas, can closely scrutinize
their, own, without deep sorrow, shame, and de
jection of heart. We could not, indeed, hope to
make all the members of so numerous a body as
the English clergy orators. But then, it is not
oratory that we want. We want the plain, earn
est, real, practical addresses of men who, having
found Christ for themselves, long, like St. Andrew
of old, to lead their brother to Him. We want
men to speak closely and really of sin and of
salvation, of heaven and hell, of corruption and
of Christ. And how little do the ordinary run of
sermons fulfil these requirements ! How many
sermons seem to be composed with no better idea
than that they must occupy a certain time pre
scribed by custom, and that they must be filled
with the religious phrases current in this or that

AND HOW TO MEET THEM. 225
school of theological opinion ! Hence we find in
them prefaces of inordinate length, porches larger
than the buildings to which they lead ; truisms
repeated with a calm perseverance of dull repe
tition which is almost marvellous ; vague gene
ralities about the fall and about redemption, as if
these awful mysteries were empty words, and not
living, burning verities. We hear, perhaps, one
sermon wandering languidly over the whole scheme
of theology, containing in itself a prophecy of its
perpetual repetition, with an altered text, and
sentences interchanged in collocation, through all
succeeding Sundays ; we find the faintest and
most general description of sinners, such as can
reach no one in particular ; mere outlines of men
in the abstract, not portraits of individual men,
amongst which each hearer shall find himself;
empty general exhortations not to sin, not reve
lations of sin in itself, or sin in its deceitful work
ing ; cold, heartless, unreal words about Christ
the Healer, not the earnest, plain-spoken zeal of
one to whom, because he believes, " Christ is
precious." And, my brethren, can we wonder
if, under such preaching, men slumber on un-
awakened ; if conversions are few, if edification is
scanty, if sinners abound, if saints are rare, if,
though the prophet prophesy, all be still as it was
of old ; if there be no noise, nor shaking, nor
coming together of the bones, bone to his bone ?
Q

226 RECENT OUTCRIES AGAINST PREACHING,
To such a dead,, condemning ministry I earnestly
pray God, even our Father, for His dear Son's
sake, that none of you may at this time be sent
forth. May He open your mouths, may He give
you utterance, may He make you to "speak
boldly as ye ought to speak," the mysteries of
Christ's eternal Gospel.
Such messengers, once more let me remind you,
you cannot be, whatever other fitness may be
yours, unless your own hearts are indeed the sub
jects of His grace ; unless in them be shed abroad
the love of God, which shall surely breed within
them the love of your neighbour also. For this
only can make your ministry as it should be, —
searching, close, nay, even startling ; and yet at
the same time felt to be indeed the voice of the
most real, loving sympathy with every grieved
spirit. This will indeed enable you to lift up the
cross of Christ ; this will- make you feel the im
portance, in every sermon you preach, of having
some one fixed and definite purpose, some great
Gospel truth you mean to inculcate, some gra
cious promise you desire to unfold ; some sin
you mean to expose, some definite declaration of
Christ and His redemption, some special need in
the flock committed to you ; and such sermons
cannot be unmeaning.
i860.

AND HOW TO MEET THEM. 227
THERE is one topic more on which, from its
importance, as always, so now as it seems to me,
especially, I would wish to address to you a few
parting words. The subject on which I would
speak is that great duty of our high office, the
preaching of the Word of God. This must at all
times be a most important part of our ministry,
but it is, if possible, at this time of even pecuhar
importance. First, because the unsettlement of
the minds of many as to religious truth requires
that we be most fully furnished with all which
is needful for expounding and justifying to them
the ways and works of God ; and next, because
in an age of such general intellectual activity
as the present much is sure to be required from
us, and if we disappoint these requirements we
shall lose our hold on the attention of our flock,
and bring reproach on the ministry.
For if whilst the leading article of almost every
newspaper is written with care, intellectual exer
tion, and so as to rouse the reader's attention,
the utterances of the pulpit alone are dull, mo
notonous, and" droning, it will soon be powerless
and despised ; and so one of the very chiefest
instruments which God has provided for the saving
of souls will, through our carelessness, lose its
efficiency. It is but a few plain suggestions I would offer,
especially to my younger brethren in the ministry,

228 RECENT OUTCRIES AGAINST PREACHING,
to help them to succeed in the discharge of this
great duty. And first I would say, settle thoroughly
in your minds the greatness of what you have to
do. Never mount the pulpit without having your
whole spirit awed by this thought. You are to
speak for God to men. Your words, through
His grace, are to bring them to Him. Many of
them are altogether afar from Him ; some are
wandering further from Him ; some are reaching
ignorantly after Him ; all need to be stirred up
to seek after Him more earnestly. You have to
bring them back ; to lead them on ; to direct
their uncertainty ; to arouse them in their dull
distance from Him. Their eternal destinies hang
in great measure on your words. For a space
they will think your thoughts ; yield their minds
to be swayed, bowed, directed, elevated by you.
What grander, what more awful vocation can a
man have than so to speak to his fellow-men .'
This then, first. And from it follows all that
I desire to say. For if preaching be this great
opportunity of honouring God and blessing man,
certainly we should prepare ourselves thoroughly
for it. What reasonable being would go unpre
pared to such a task .?
What, then, must be the preparation for this
work } It must be both habitual and immediate.
It must be habitual, that previous study may
make our minds full of their subjects, without

AND HOW TO MEET THEM. 229
which we soon degenerate into narrow, technical,
and frigid statements of the noblest truths ; and
again, that we may be accurate in our statements
of truth. It is God's truth which affects souls, and
if we state it inaccurately we make it powerless
or poisonous. What physician of the body would
dare to administer carelessly the most powerful
drugs of his art ? It is not possible, I believe,
for me to say too strongly to you, that loose,
inaccurate declarations of God's truth do make
preachers of the Word unawares the slayers of
souls. We must, then, be thorough students to
be preachers. We should use all means to be
deeper and more successful students of the mys
teries of God. For this end, besides our private
studies, we may well have recourse to frequent
meetings with our brethren for the direct ex
amination of the Word of God. Shall politicians
have their conferences, and men of science their
consultations, and we alone neglect what may, as
iron sharpens iron, give some point to our words,
or stir the flagging zeal of our spirits in the
blessed search for truth ?
Further, to this habitual we should add im
mediate preparation : chiefly and above all that
of prayer, that we may be taught by the great
Teacher ; that our words may be His words, and
that in speaking them we may be His instruments
— calm and yet earnest, reverend and yet lively,

230 RECENT OUTCRIES AGAINST PREACHING,
deeply serious and yet homely and expressive ;
that we may be what is above all else except being
true, that we may be holy, loving, and devout
in all our utterances.
But though prayer be the chiefest part of im
mediate preparation, it is far from being all. We
must, if we are sincere, add to it patient labour,
to secure for our discourses depth, sohdity, and
order. It is, I believe, mainly idleness which ruins
sermons, which makes them vague, confused,
powerless, and dull. We need ever to remember
the somewhat caustic words, " The sermon which
has cost little is worth just what it cost." We
must labour first to comprehend our subject, and
next to arrange clearly what we mean to say about
it. Many of our flock are idle hearers, and if
we are idle preachers we play up to their weak
ness. There is great force in another old saying,
"The sermon which has cost the preacher little
to compose costs the listener much to hear."
Commonplaces, generalities, recapitulations fill it
full, whilst over all is shed the blinding cloud
of a meaningless confusion. We must resolve
and patiently strive to be easily understood, for
which end we must understand ourselves, and then
leave no confusions to mislead others.
Thus prepared, we must be careful, further, what
we speak. It is to be the Word of God — the
word of His grace. His messages of love, not

AND HOW TO MEET THEM. 23 1
curious speculations, not displays of our talent ;
but His Word in . its piercing, soul-dividing sim
plicity. His Word in the completeness of His
message to man whom He has redeemed. Heaven
and hell ; death and judgment ; sin and salva
tion ; the love of God — of the Father, of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost ; the incarnation of the
eternal Son, with all its consequences ; His life
for us and in us ; His death ; His resurrection ;
His atonement ; the remission of sins ; the in
dwelling of the Holy one ; the Sacraments of His
grace ; the communion of His faithful ones ; the
new life in its beginning, its struggles, its victory,
and its glory. Here are our subjects. Old
and yet ever new to him who, loving God and
loving souls, will labour to comprehend, to feel,
and to state them. For to enforce these old and
cardinal verities is our very vocation, " non debemus
dicere nova sed nove."
To secure this, I should as a general rule say,
never preach habitually the sermons of others,
whether taken in mass or in fragments, mechani
cally re-arranged into a composite whole. This
is commonly the resource of vanity or of idleness,
weaknesses which in holy things deepen into sins,
and drive away the influences of the Holy Spirit.
Nothing short of incapacity can excuse this as
an habitual practice, and then its use and its
cause should be avowed with a humble shame-

232 RECENT OUTCRIES AGAINST PREACHING,
facedness which will preach for the unfurnished
man. Widely different from this adoption of others'
sermons, is the practice of reading some full dis
courses on a subject on which you are about to
preach, in order to fill or to arouse your own mind,
and then composing for yourself when you have
made the thoughts your own. This is often
a most useful course.
Suffer 'me to recapitulate in the form of a few
direct counsels what on this great subject I have
gathered from experience or the writings of others.
To secure thought and preparation, begin, when
ever it is possible, the next Sunday's sermon at
least on the preceding Monday. Let prayer for
God's help be the beginning. Then select care
fully your subject — if possible, from the Gospel,
Epistles, Lessons, or Psalms of the day. Choose
it according to your people's need, and your power
Let it be as much as possible resolvable into a
single proposition. Having chosen it, meditate
upon it as deeply as you can. Consider, first
how to state correctly the theological formula
which it involves ; then, how to arrange its parts
so as to convince the hearer's understanding.
Think, next, how you can move his affections,
and so win his will to accept it. See into what
practical conclusions of holy living you can sum
it up. Having thus the whole before you, you

AND HOW TO MEET THEM. 233
may proceed to its actual composition. And in
doing this, if any thoughts strike you with peculiar
power, secure them at once. Do not wait till,
having written or composed all the rest, you come
in order to them : such burning thoughts burn
out. Fix them whilst you can. I would say,
never, if you can help it, compose except with
a fervent spirit ; whatever is languidly composed
is lifelessly received. Rather stop and try whether
reading, meditation, and prayer will not quicken
the spirit, than drive on heavily when the chariot-
wheels are taken off. So the mighty masters of
our art have done. Bossuet never set himself to
compose his great sermons without first reading
chapters of Isaiah and portions of Gregory Na
zianzen, to kindle his own spirit. In some such
way set yourself to compose, and, until you have
preached for many years I would say, to write,
at least one sermon weekly. Study with especial
care all statements of doctrine; to be clear, par
ticular, and accurate. Do not labour too much
to give great ornament or polish to your sermons.
They often lose their strength in such refining
processes. Having written them, if you m.ust
deliver them with the manuscript before you,
strive to do it as little as if you were reading,
as much as if you were speaking them as possible.
Do not be the slave of your manuscript, but make
it your servant. If you see that a word is not

234 RECENT OUTCRIES AGAINST PREACHING.
understood, vary it ; that an appeal is reaching
some heart, press it home. If you have the gift,
after having written your sermon carefully, make
short notes of it, and preach from these. This
will help you greatly to shew in your manner that
you feel what you say ; the first and chiefest rule
for making it felt by others.
But after all other words are spoken let me say,
my reverend brethren, for this and all other parts
of our work we must live as God's witnesses, if as
His witnesses we would speak. For above all
other things, we must be real. The affectation
of feeling in any part of our ministry, and espe
cially in the pulpit, is most chilling and hardening.
And we cannot really feel the Gospel message
unless its truth is in our own hearts. In secret
meditation and prayer that love, which is the life
of ministerial power, must evermore be nourished,
as on the mossy mountain-top where the seething
mists distil their precious burden are fed the
hidden springheads of the perennial stream which
fertilizes the lower vale. In these, my reverend
brethren, and in the works of patient love and
labour which spring from them, may our lives
be spent, until, in the time which He knoweth,
we too be one by one gathered into the Paradise
of His perfected. Whither may God of His
mercy, for Christ's sake, in His own good time
bring every one of us.
1863.

XIX.
RESULTS OF MINISTERIAL INDISCRETIONS.
SEEK to hold the truth in love. Love alone
can apprehend God's secret revelations ; love
alone can deal wisely, firmly, and yet without
needless provocation, with your brethren. If you
do love God truly, you will enter, as others can
not, into all the depths of His teaching. If you
love your people truly, you will be as none others
can be, firm, and clear, and unflinching in main
taining truth in doctrine and in discipline, and
yet for Christ's sake will yield everything but
truth to keep their love to you. This will save
you from what is, alas ! a very common danger.
You will not mistake a quarrelsome temper for
a courageous spirit ; nor self-assertion for the love
of Christ's truth. You will be tender towards all
men, not taking offence, nor giving offence, but
affectionately desiring to impart truth to others,
not to maintain your own position.
How many a ministry would such a temper
have saved from failure and reproach ! Lacking
it, and the humility which it breeds, a young man
goes with ardent earnestness into a parish ; finds
its tone as to doctrine low, and its manners as to

236 RESULTS OF MINISTERIAL INDISCRETIONS.
discipline relaxed ; finds, it may be, its most re
ligious men, through past insufficiency of teach
ing, little awake to the special truths of our holy
Church ; and then, instead of seeking to win them
to higher views by prayers for them, by a holy
life amongst them, by building further attainments
on their present religious knowledge, by gradually,
in the loving and unsuspected influence of holy
intercourse, raising the standard of truth in those
who can endure its being raised, and then by
acting through them on others — instead of this
patient and humble course, he begins at once to
assail the prejudices of all around him ; speaks
as if he was the bearer to them of another Gos
pel ; alienates them wholly from his ministry, and
even from the truths which he is with so little
humility, and therefore with so little wisdom, en
deavouring to instil ; and leaves behind him, when
he goes, an angry, alarmed, disordered parish, the
troubled waters of which may not lose for years
the muddy turbulence which his unhappy vehe
mence has stirred into such fierce commotion.
i860.

XX.
MODES OF DEALING WITH THE STRANGE
DOCTRINES OF THE SECTS.
OUR people ought to be so trained as to re
fuse to listen to the first whispered false
hood, and it is this training which the Church has
provided for theiri. This is the meaning of that
wise forethought which has appointed festivals for
keeping ever in remembrance those leading events
and acts of our blessed Master's life, out of which
all the great truths of our Creed naturally unfold
themselves. This is, again, the wisdom of pro
viding for the common use of those various Can
ticles in which are stored the record even of the
abstruser and more difficult articles of the faith :
so that truths from which, in the naked severity
of a dogmatic statement, the minds of unlearned
men would shrink as harassing and perplexing,
may make their way into their minds, and be
come familiar and established inmates, through
the words of some well-known chant or accus
tomed hymn of praise. And if we would have
our people strong in the faith, our ministry must
bear this stamp ; following the Church's teaching,
we must endeavour to build them up thoroughly

238 MODES OF DEALING WITH THE
in all truth, not wearying and perplexing them
needlessly with the names, dates, and narratives
of past heresies ; but establishing them in all the
contrary truths to what have been, and so, it must
be feared may again be, prevalent errors. This
work must be done in our sermons, in our visita
tion of our people, in our catechizing, and in our
schools. Especially must we labour to work into
the very texture of their souls those master truths,
— the personality of the all-holy, all-mighty God ;
— the mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity ; — the
fall of man, and his corruption ; — the misery and
defilement wrought in him by sin ; — the eternal
counsels of the Father's love in the Gospel scheme
of salvation ; — the Incarnation of the ever-blessed
Son our Lord, His perfect life. His spotless death.
His all-sufficient atonement ; — the gift ofthe Holy
Ghost ; the calling and grace of the Church ; — the
presence of Christ in the Sacraments ; — the need
of individual renewal unto holiness ; judgment and
salvation, heaven and hell ; — of all of these we
must labour to work a right knowledge into the
souls of all committed to us, as the guards against
and the antidotes for the various evils by which
they will be assaulted 
But, again, another point of great moment in
the " driving away all erroneous and strange doc
trines contrary to God's Word," is that we should
understand wherein lies their strength and attrac-

STRANGE DOCTRINES OF THE SECTS. 239
tiveness ; for these will, in their essence, be ever
found to be closely connected with some truth.
The accidents of error are, indeed, often of them
selves welcome to fallen men, as its lascivious rites
have often recommended idolatry to an evil gene
ration ; yet no falsehood, simply as a falsehood,
has ever, or as far as we can see ever can, exercise
any wide or deep sway over the minds of men.
It is as a perverted truth that it has its great
power. And in this the subtlety of Satan may
oftentimes be very specially seen ; for he well
knows how thus to wrap up in falsehood the truth
which at the time the accidents or circumstances
of an age or people require. In such a case pre
eminently, as indeed more or less in all cases, the
only effectual hindrance to the spread of the false
teaching is for the Church fearlessly to supply
that very truth of which this current error is the
perverted image. But this course requires a strong
faith and a clear single-minded uprightness. It is
far more easy, instead of fully stating the truth
which is allied to the error, to put it for the time
out of sight, as if at that moment it was dangerous
to dwell on it ; and then to bring forth, as all im
portant, the truth which is the direct contrary of
the error which has been mingled with the per
verted truth, whilst we inveigh loudly against it,
and dart our thunderbolts against its maintainers.
But this, though the easier, is not really the true,

240 MODES OF DEALING WITH THE
and will not be the successful, way of putting
down the error. For it is, after all, the disguised,
altered, disfigured truth which gives the lie its
power : and if it be thus opposed, it can hardly
fail but that one or other of these evil conse
quences will follow, — either in driving out the
error we shall lose the truth around which it was
encrusted, and then the Church will be hurried
from one extreme of danger to the other, — too
common an event in the history of doctrinal
opinion ; or, which happens still more frequently,
we shall altogether fail in driving away the evil.
For whilst we merely inveigh against the lie, even
those who join us in condemning it feel that there
is something in this false teaching besides that
lie which they hate ; and as we do not shew them
what that is, they give the falsehood the benefit
of this secret feeling, and so do not utterly con
demn it ; whilst those who have been seduced by
it, having a true consciousness that there is some
thing which our censures do not at all reach, set
down all the condemnation as unjust, and through
our unskilfulness hug more closely the deadly de
ceit. The history of all great heresies which have
overspread the Church, and the history, on the
smaller scale, of most successful parochial dissen
sions, are alike illustrations of this truth ; the vi
brations of heresy for the first four hundred years
after Christ, which are summed up with so mas-

STRANGE DOCTRINES OF THE SECTS. 241
terly a hand by Hooker ^, exhibit the first danger ;
and for the second, almost any parish in which
dissent has a powerful hold might be quoted as
an example.
Every age, indeed, repeats the same lesson.
Thus, for example, what truths can we name of
greater importance than such as these, ^that no
man can enter into life unless the Spirit of God
has indeed changed and renewed his own indi
vidual spiritual being ; that to know God as a re
conciled Father, who, in Christ, has put away our
sins, and enabled us to walk as dear children be
fore Him, is the blessed privilege of His faithful
people here; that as the correlative of having
a conscience, we are each one charged with and
must exercise the awful right of private judg
ment ; and again, that in the Church of the re
deemed are gifts of living grace free and common
to all even without the direct aid of any earthly
minister ; and yet that in it, too, is a ministry of
absolution and guidance and consolation, to be
received faithfully at the hand of Christ's ap
pointed officer by every penitent: — what more
important truths, I say, can we name than these .?
Yet it has been from the careless handling of
these necessary truths, giving occasion to the
kindred false teaching which naturally encrusts
itself upon each of them respectively, that the
" Eccles. Pol., lib. v. cap. 52.
R

242 MODES OF DEALING WITH THE
errors of the Antipsdobaptist, the Methodist, the
Latitudinarian, and the Romanist, have severally
taken root in the Gospel field ; and in no way
can these be met successfully but by declaring
fearlessly these very truths, which have been per
verted, and shewing to our people that the truths
themselves, and all the blessings which are to be
obtained by believing them, can only be firmly
held, and enjoyed in all their fulness, in the fel
lowship and teaching of the Church. It is not by
withholding such truths, and inveighing against the
erroneous exhibition of them, that we shall re
claim wanderers ; the eagerness with which they
are embraced shews the acute sense which the
thirsty spirits of men entertain of their necessity.
It is only by freely, openly, joyfully proclaiming
in its simplicity the truth which the false teacher
mutilates that we can shake his dominion over
our people's minds. There is hardly any rule of
greater moment for delivering our people from
error than this, — see what the truth is wherein
lies the strength of the misleading teaching, and
in the strength of that truth oppose the system
which is strong by its abuse.
But there is one other rule, without which, my
brethren, all will be in vain. We must resist error
in a spirit of love. Here, after all, is the secret
power of the wise reprover. There is nothing
which love cannot say without offence, nay, with
a most winning persuasiveness. "Faithful are the

STRANGE DOCTRINES OF THE SECTS. 243
wounds of a friend ''." Well was it answered by
one holy man to whom it was remarked, " I can
not think why your people bear such plain speak
ing :" " It is because they know I love them."
But it must be a true love of which this is the
fruit. It is not the addressing them with epithets
of endearment and words of tenderness which will
secure it for us ; it must be a deep inward love
of souls, learned beneath the Cross of Christ : it
should manifest itself rather in the actions of a
loving life than in ready and apparent demon
strations, and when it is real it will lead to the
self-denying abandonment of ease, favourite pur
suits, and of pleasant company, that in the morn
ing, and at noon-day, and at eventide, whenever
we can best reach them, we may be with the sick
and with the whole, " weeping with* them that
weep, and rejoicing with them that rejoice ;" teach
ing the young, and comforting the mourners, and
recalling the wanderers, and building up the weak.
Such love as this will impart to the loving pastor
a character which all can understand, and which,
in the long run, few can resist. The humility and
sympathy which are true love's accustomed hand
maids, give grace and ornament to all its words ;
diligence is its offspring ; public and private mo
nitions and exhortations, both to the sick and to
the whole, are its certain fruits.
'' Prov. xxvii. 6.
i860.

XXI.
USE AND MISUSE OF CONFESSION.
IV T OW as to this important subject it is plain,
¦^ ^ first, that our Church never designed that the
ministers of God's Word and Sacraments should
abdicate that which is amongst the most import
ant functions of their office, the dealing as minis
ters of God with the consciences of men. Yet, on
the other hand, it is equally clear that there is
a broad distinction between her intention herein
and that of the Church of Rome. Can, then, this
difference be referred to any guiding principle of
action ? It seems to me that it may, and that we
may find the difference here. The object of the
Roman Communion and of our own is widely
different, and this difference at once affects our
several practice. The object ofthe Roman Church
is to bring the conscience under the power of the
priest, to make him the judge to whose sentence
it should absolutely defer. The object of our
own Church is so to awaken, enlighten, and
strengthen the conscience, that with the aid of
Holy Scripture and the ordinary public minis
trations of God's Word, it may rightly guide the
individual soul.

USE AND MISUSE OF CONFESSION. 245
With these different objects in view, there is
between the two systems far more than a mere
difference in degree. Every part of the priest's
private ministrations with consciences is affected
by it. The one is always seeking to subdue, the
other to emancipate, the individual conscience.
And this difference of object has by degrees
greatly affected the statement of doctrine as well
as the administration of discipline in the two
Communions. Thus it is not merely that private confession is
enjoined upon all in the Roman Communion, and
only permitted in certain exceptional cases in ours,
but that the spiritual aspect of the same act
assumes a wholly different character in the two
Communions. The teaching of the Church of
Rome is, that confession to a priest is a direct
sacramental ordinance of the Church of Christ ;
and, that to be duly practised, it must be secret
and complete, numbering all remembered sins.
So made, it is to be followed by private absolu
tion, which, as it is held, conveys a special pardon
for the sins so remembered and confessed ; and
then, consistently with this system of confession,
she recommends that every soul should be per
manently under the direction of some priest ; that
this spiritual director should habitually guide those
who consult him ; that the conscience should be
committed to his keeping : this is, in their view.

246 USE AND MISUSE OF CONFESSION.
the result to be aimed at ; it is the best state of
spiritual health when most regularly and syste
matically the conscience lays down all its burden
in confession before the minister of God as a
direct act of spiritual submission, and receives
most humbly and obeys most implicitly his direc
tions for all its conduct. It is not difficult to see
what must be the effect of such a system. It will
lead to many great evils, and amongst them these.
When confession to man is thus enforced, or even
encouraged as a duty, instead of being allowed
as a last permission, to which under certain pecu
liar circumstances, and as an extreme remedy,
the stricken soul, unable to re-assure itself, may
have recourse, it will with many be used dis
honestly. The habit of withholding the real and
deepest sins of the soul, consistently with getting
through confession, will soon be formed. On the'
other hand, those who strive to confess all will
assuredly be led to weaken the spring of con
science by devolving that determination of what
is right, which is its own solemn responsibility, to
be discharged under the eye of God and by the
light of His Word, to the decision of another
for it. The confessor will take the place, first, of
Christ, as the receiver of all the secrets of our
guilt, and shame, and weakness, and then of the
conscience as the judge, arbiter, and director of
our lives.

USE AND MISUSE OF CONFESSION. 247
Now in opposition to this system, the Church
of England, in exact conformity, as we maintain,
with the Word of God, and the teaching and the
practice of the primitive Church, allows private
confession instead of enforcing it, and recommends
it only under certain prescribed circumstances and
conditions, as a means of restoring health to a
sick conscience, instead of treating the habit of
confessing as the state of health. She treats it
as wise men treat medical aids, as blessed means
of renovation, stored by God's mercy for their
need in times of sickness, but still as not meant
for, and not wholly compatible with, a settled
habit of strong health. And this difference of
view is founded upon a great doctrinal difference
as to the place which confession occupies in the
new kingdom of Christ. The Church of England
does not treat it as a separate ordinance of Christ,
endowed with a special sacramental grace of its
own ; but she regards it as a permitted " opening
of grief," as a " lightening" of a " burden," as in no
way bringing any special pardon or absolution
to the penitent over and above that which he
might equally obtain by general confession to
Almighty God, and public absolution in the con
gregation, but only as a spiritual confidence which
might be entrusted to any brother Christian, but
which it is most natural and best to commit to
the physician of souls, as having more experience

248 USE AND MISUSE OF CONFESSION.
of such cases, and as being specially provided by
God with grace for their treatment and relief
This, then, is what we should bear in mind in
this delicate part of our office. We must seek to
awaken a slumbering conscience, to heal one which
is wounded. If we see it possessed by apathy,
we must use all our strength to rouse it ; if we
think that we perceive it to be burdened with
some secret load, we must strive to win it to hearty
confession to God. If it be earnestly desired, we
must ourselves receive, as God's ministers, the
spiritual confidence of the burdened soul ; but we
must do all this with the distinct aim of restoring
the conscience to that healthier action in which it
shall be able to guide the soul which God has,
with the gift of individual personality, committed
to its watchfulness and keeping.
i860'.

.... Take, by way of illustration, the teaching
of the Church of Rome on one practical point
on which, for many reasons, it may be useful to
touch, — the power of the keys, and their use in
the Church of Christ as to confession and abso-
» Note by the Editor. — The several Addresses to " Candidates
for Ordination," from which this and other extracts are taken, are
undated. It has seemed best, therefore, to assign to them the
date at which they were first collectively published.

USE AND MISUSE OF CONFESSION. 249
lution. Undoubtedly God's Word does teach the
need of a penitent confession of our sins, and the
grace and blessing of our absolution from them
by those appointed ministers of Christ to whom
He spake the mysterious words, "Whosesoever
sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and
whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained''."
And with as little doubt may we affirm that the
primitive Church put faithfully into practice that
teaching of her Lord, when she introduced into
her public services those heart-broken confessions
of sin in which every penitent, with a special eye
to his own transgressions, might breathe out to
God his own woeful secrets of defilement ; and
those public absolutions in which he might hear,
as from his Lord's mouth, the authoritative de
claration of pardon. It is clear, moreover, that
beyond this, in the earliest times, there were per
missions of a more private confession, and of more
particular absolution, for some special case of spi
ritual sickness, though the habitual adoption of
the practice was discouraged ". But into what a
different and polluting system have these truths
been drawn out, and how in it are they still ex
hibited by the Papal communion ! For, first, that
allowance, to extreme cases, of private confession
and absolution which the early Church so sparingly
>= St. John XX. 23. = See Bingham's Origines, Bk. xviii.
c. iii.,— the whole chapter.

250 USE AND MISUSE OF CONFESSION.
sanctioned, has been laid down as the universal
law. It is not now that the overburdened and
well-nigh distracted penitent may, in his last ne
cessity, cry to the steward of the mysteries of
Christ for this reserved cordial, the use of which
his extremity may warrant, but that every one
before communicating must thus open to the priest
the secrets of his soul, and receive his absolution.
How fatal a change ! For first, and above all,
it leads the careless sinner to the perilous expecta
tion of being able at the hour of death, by con
fession to his priest, to secure a certain escape
from the consequence of sin ; whilst it enervates
the conscience of the trembling penitent by lead
ing him to pour into the ears of man what he
should address to God, and to receive, as an act
of mere obedience, the direction of another, in
stead of quickening his conscience and bracing up
his soul by living habitually under the eye of his
all-seeing Judge and merciful Intercessor^. Nor
are these master evils all : for further, it too often
introduces a deadly formality into the use of con
fession by the penitent and of absolution by the
priest ; it renders needful all that morbid ana
tomy of the soul which pollutes the mind of every
candidate for Roman orders ; it introduces, in
stead of the straight rule of Gospel morality, all
^ See pp. 80, 81. Extract from the writings of a Roman
Catholic Divine.— Editor.

USE AND MISUSE OF CONFESSION. 25 1
the inextricable windings and dishonest subtlety
of a most perplexed casuistry ; whilst, to make
her clergy fit ministrants of that priestcraft which
is its certain fruit, it draws after it the enforced
celibacy of their order, and so their separation from
all the purifying and humanizing influences which -
God's holy ordinance of marriage sheds over a
married priesthood ; and lastly, through the ever-
encroaching presence amidst the sanctities of
family life of one thus invested with a character
of supernatural holiness, whom all are bound to
make the official depository of every secret, and
who is cognizant of every real or suspected in
firmity of his devotee, and so (unavoidably) of
those who have shared with him in the sins he has
from time to time confessed, it dissolves the most
sacred ties by which God has bound society to
gether, — introducing another, and how often an
adverse, counsel between father and child, between
the mother and her daughter, between the hus
band and the wife of his bosom. Here is Rome's
perversion of a great truth ; and mark for a mo
ment, I pray you, how the double danger of which
I have spoken arises from it. For, first, because
confession is Christ's ordinance for sinners, and
absolution His gift to penitents, she, professing
beyond others to retain His teaching and to ad
minister His gifts, wins over to herself the stricken
and bleeding hearts of many who pant only for

252 USE AND MISUSE OF CONFESSION.
that true Gospel healing which in their extremity
she offers them ; and thus men who long, not for
what is Roman but for what is Apostolical, are
seduced by the truth on which she has grafted
her error, and, seeking for the gifts of Christ, they
drink of her cup of poison. On the other hand,
stronger spirits and keener eyes, seeing clearly
the falsehood and evil of her system, are con
tinually hurried on to denounce as popish all close
dealing with individual consciences, without which
the pastoral ofiice must become unreal ; and to
deny, as an imposture of priestcraft, the grace of
absolution and the reahty of the ministerial com
mission. They speak of every declaration that
the supernatural working of God the Holy Ghost
does accompany the official acts of Christ's minis
ters, as a superstitious claim to magical powers ;
and thus rob Christ's spiritual Kingdom of its
glory, and degrade the Sacraments of the Gospel
to the level of Jewish ordinances. From which,
result two fatal consequences; for hereby some
are driven into that fog-land of a mere general
spirituality, where the stronger devils of neological
resolutions of all dogmatic truth into mere words,
where scepticism, pantheism, and entire unbelief,
roam evermore, waiting for their victims ; whilst
others, fearing such an end, in order to obtain
the spiritual aid they long for, turn, often even
with reluctance, to the delusions of the Papacy.

USE AND MISUSE OF CONFESSION. 253
From both evils, only the principle of the English
Reformers, the cleaving with equal simplicity to
the letter of God's Word and to primitive prac
tice, can really protect us ; for this course alone,
by casting off the added error and yet retaining
firmly the original truth, can supply to man, with
out impure additions, what his spiritual necessities
require, and what Christ has provided for him in
His blessed Gospel.
1855.

XXII.
ON AVERTING GROUNDLESS SUSPICIONS.
WE live at a time when the miserable defec
tion of many members of our body from
our own reformed Church, and their deadly fall
into the corruptions of the debased communion
of the Papacy, have necessarily awakened a sus
picious !habit of mind amongst our people as to
any tendency in their spiritual guides to this fear
ful apostacy. It is the character of such suspicions
to be vague, unreasoning, and often most unjust.
They may attach themselves to us from some
mere accident, or from our resolving to abandon
no truth because it is unpopular, or from our
honestly and honourably refusing to persecute
others from whom we ourselves differ, but to
whom we will not be unjust. When these sus
picions are thus awakened, deeply as we must
lament them, we cannot blame ourselves for their
existence. We must maintain truth at any price :
we must not be unjust to others, — even to weak
and foolish men, — in order to purchase for our
selves immunity from damaging suspicions. Such
trials we may indeed take as persecutions for
righteousness' sake, and humbly hope that our

ON AVERTING GROUNDLESS SUSPICIONS. 255
Master's " Happy are ye," may reach to us ; and
that these seeming evils shall in the end, through
His grace, turn out rather to the furtherance of
His Gospel. But these suspicions often arise from
a widely different source : and as to such, those
on whom they fix are by no means the guiltless
victims. If, for example, the wearing a particular
dress, the addiction to unusual forms or modes
of conduct in or out of our churches, will almost
certainly arouse such suspicions, how can we be
blameless, if, because they are more suitable to
our own feelings, we adopt them, and so place
stumbling-blocks in the way of weak brethren for
whom Christ died .' I will not enlarge upon this
head. A mere hint will suffice to suggest to you
all that I would say. But let no man suppose that
his conduct as to such matters can be trivial. The
common impassive eye of society is caught far
more readily by such external badges than by the
far deeper reahties of doctrine. Many a man who
might, without raising one suspicion, have won
a parish by a holy example and sound teaching
to the true tone of our reformed Church, has
marred all his usefulness and destroyed all his
influence by the suspicions which his dress or
his manners have most needlessly but inevitably
awakened. Nor is this suspicious habit, most in
jurious as, alas ! it is, either wholly unreasonable
in itself, or wholly misplaced in attaching itself

256 ON AVERTING GROUNDLESS SUSPICIONS.
to these external indications of a supposed inward
unsoundness. The colours and devices of the
army's banners do but indicate to the eyes of all
to which side it appertains, and men will naturally
think that, except as signs and badges of a party,
such trifles could not seem important in the eyes
of men set to deal with the salvation of souls and
the issues of eternity.
i860.

XXIII.
ON MAINTAINING PEACE IN
TROUBLOUS TIMES.
IT was impossible that so great a change as the
Reformation of religion in this land in the
sixteenth century should be unaccompanied by
evils of a magnitude in some degree corresponding
with its blessings ; and one of the first and greatest
of those evils was the shaking of Christian peace
and love. The mere quickening, indeed, of religious
earnestness must, amongst fallen men, always en
danger peace. The soul that is suddenly wakened
up to the perception of the vast realities round it,
and of its own share in them, is driven into action ;
whilst this action must of course partake of the
nature of the agent. The quickened zeal of sera
phim burns evermore with the pure flame of un
mingled love. But so it cannot be with such as
we are. For even when the man is indeed offering
himself up to God, there are many earthly ele
ments which, from their grosser nature, will mingle
heavy clouds of dark and offensive vapour with
his attempted offering. Limited knowledge, par
tial views, incompleteness in his best surrender of
himself, and hence clinging selfishness, old pre-
S

258 ON MAINTAINING PEACE
judices, unworthy motives, cramped affections, —
all these mar his service, and give it an earthly,
self-willed, inharmonious tone. Consequently, there
is in almost every case some want of full agree
ment among men of the most vehemently earnest
zeal ; often there is direct opposition, and the
threat of bitter, mutual violence. This is the sword
of which our blessed Master spoke as that which
He was come to send on earth. His blessed truth,
in its perfect purity, from His own lips of absolute
knowledge and entire love, could not but awaken
this earthly strife in earthly hearts. And such
is the rule of His kingdom evermore. Wherever,
therefore, there is a great awakening of religious
earnestness either in a single heart, or in a parish,
or in a nation, this evil of unquietness, religious
strife, and discord are lying in some deadly ambush
near. And evermore, therefore, at such a time
is it a matter of the deepest wisdom to labour,
as for the very chiefest and most necessary thing,
for a spirit of quietness, peace, and love amongst
those who form the fermenting mass.
This danger, which at all times besets such great
movements, for special reasons particularly beset
our own Reformation. For it is one part of the
curse of an unrighteous tyranny, that it not only
oppresses its victims during its supremacy, but
that even in its removal it still blights them
by the licence which is engendered by its dis-

IN TROUBLOUS TIMES. 259
solution. And so it was with us when, of
God's great mercy to our land, the old papal
tyranny being swept away, the reasonable rule
of the early Church was re-established, and His
holy Word put into the hands, and brought home
-to the consciences, of all. The new liberty bred
in many parts a wild licentiousness ; with such
a visible tearing of its victims did the evil Spirit
hardly depart from them whom it had possessed.
There were, indeed, of God's mercy to this land,
many influences at work which made this evil
far less amongst us than in most parts of the
Church to which the Reformation reached. Yet
even with ourselves the evil was distinctly marked.
The Anabaptists, the Family of Love ", and various
other sectaries troubled and disturbed our peace.
All the records of our history at the time bear
abundant marks of the fierce strivings of these
spirits of turbulence and evil. . . .
The awakening people were in great peril of
substituting an unbridled licence of religious specu
lation for the deadness of their old superstition.
From this had sprung, already, unquietness, strife,
and a lack of charity : and the minister of God's
Word, therefore, was called solemnly to pledge
himself that he would strive to maintain and set
forward quietness, peace, and love in his flock.
He was to use his utmost efforts to set them free
' Sparrow's Articles, p. 171.

26o ON MAINTAINING PEACE
from the trammels of the old superstition ; he was
to awaken and arouse their consciences which had
been sent asleep or enervated by the system of
enforced private confession, priestly direction, and
a vicarious religion ; he was to feed their souls
with the strong meat of God's Word, instead of
the sapless legends with which their appetite had
been cloyed, and their spiritual strength wasted :
but he was at the same time to guard them from
the intoxication of soul which the sudden pos
session of great truths is so apt to produce ; he
was to strive to teach them to find their strength
in the quietness and confidence of a humble,
loving, personal religion ; he was to remember how
easy and how fatal it would be to make them noisy
disputers about religious dogmas, instead of humble
receivers of the truth, feeding their own souls, in
a meek and loving peacefulness, upon the bread
of life.
In many respects, my brethren, the temper of
the times in which it is our lot to minister seems
to make a like exhortation specially useful. For
around us, too, religious disputations abound. It
is a time marked by a good deal, let us hope, of
real earnestness in religious matters ; and wherever
there is earnestness there is temptation to division ;
certainly this time is marked by a great deal of
noise about religion, and this is earnestness already
turning into strife. Religious questions meet us

IN TROUBLOUS TIMES. 26 1
in general society ; they form, to a wholly new
extent, the topics of public discussion, even in our
Houses of Parliament. God knows whether, with
all this interest about religious matters, we are
a peculiarly devout, self-denying, or humble gene
ration. But, beyond all doubt, there is amongst
us a great deal of religious life of one quality or
another : opinions are carried amongst us to the
utmost extreme on all sides ; so-called religious
newspapers, which live upon our dissensions, stir
up the strife, and often point it by the most
shameless falsehood and personalities ; party meet
ings, party societies, party names, party watch
words abound ; and, to say the least, we have
great ground for fearing that many lose their
Christian love in their party zeal, and that the
religion of Christ becomes to them at last little
more than the struggle of a faction. Surely, then,
at such a time as this, we have great need to listen
to this searching, sobering question, put solemnly
to us by our Church '', and to weigh well the need
of observing herein her teaching, and remember
ing that everything will be in vain in our ministry
if it does not form humble, loving souls for Christ's
heavenly kingdom.
^ viz., " Will you maintain and set forwards, as much as lieth in
you, quietness, peace, and love, among all Christian people, and
especially among them that are or shall be committed to your
charge?"

262 ON MAINTAINING PEACE
Let us endeavour, then, to see some of the ways
in which the temptation against which we are
here warned may assault us in our work, and
how we may guard successfully against it.
First, then, let us see how it may attack our
selves. It may easily tempt us from that per
sonal dealing with souls in our own appointed
sphere which is the chiefest duty of every one
of us. To most men of earnestness and energy
of character there is something attractive in the
large hazards of a public struggle. Some great
truth which we do in very deed prize highly, or
some institution which, as we believe, is bound
up in the bundle of the Church's life, is rudely
assailed. We cannot doubt that we are called
by God's providence to contend herein earnestly
for the faith once delivered to the saints ; and
perhaps we are so called : and if this be clear,
let us by no means hang back. And yet let us
enter on the encounter with a trembling fear, not
indeed of our enemies, but of ourselves. For even
as we enter on it, what risks must we run. As
we are drawn from our quieter duties in their
narrower spheres, to deal with what seem to be,
and perhaps are, wider interests on a broader
field, how hard is it to maintain quietness, peace,
and love in our own hearts : how easy to lose the
confessor in the combatant. The loss may, per
haps, be first perceived in the flagging of our full

IN TROUBLOUS TIMES. 263
interest in our own peculiar work ; we feel it to
be hard to come back to it again, and find it just
as engrossing, just as full of supreme interest, just
as much an object of earnest prayer, daily labour,
and perpetual watching, as it was before. To
our corrupt nature it is indeed very hard, after
" visiting our brethren" in the king's army, and
"seeing how they do, and taking their pledge,"
and perhaps being drawn in ourselves to chal
lenge, and with our sling and stone to slay, the
contrary champion, to return when the conflict
is over to our sheepfold in the wilderness with the
same love and care for those committed to us as
we had before ; to be as ready in defending them,
to meet the lion and the bear in the solitary field,
as to go forth against Goliath of Gath before the
armies of Israel : and yet if our love be chilled,
our affections disturbed, and our care for them
drawn away, how spiritless and poor will be our
service to them, how small our hope of good, how
sure our own and their perpetual declension.
How easily may the effect of such a course be traced
in the parish. Whilst, perhaps, the busy pastor
is maintaining the rights of the Church to conduct
the education ofthe nation, his own village school,
which was his constant, perhaps his daily haunt,
is seldom entered, the visiting of the sick and of
the whole within the cure is greatly intermitted,
languidly laboured through, or hurried carelessly

264 ON MAINTAINING PEACE
over ; the parishioners no longer pass before him
in his times of meditation and hours of prayer
in all the deep interests of individual characters,
studied, mastered, watched, and prayed for, and
striven with, but they grow into a dull mass, in
whose occasional presence his necessary public
duties must be decently conducted. His weapon
has lost its edge, his ministry its life.
Yet even these are only the external evils con
sequent on the change, and we have not yet
reached their fountain - head of mischief within
the pastor's own souk
This may be most direct and substantive ; for
the incessant public vindication of any one special
truth or institution is not without its own danger
to us. Our minds are so apt to grow one-sided ;
the object on which they dwell becomes to our
apprehension so preternaturally developed, that
the due order and relation of the various parts
of truth becomes disturbed in our minds. We
may learn the instancy of this danger from that
common judgment of men which is fixed in the
second sense which the word to "dogmatize" has
assumed. For it shews us that a special zeal
for any peculiar dogma of the truth has become
in men's minds naturally associated with the habit
of a vapouring assumption of a state of authority.
This acts back on our own temper. The truth
and our view of the truth become confused in bur

IN TROUBLOUS TIMES. 265
minds, and we grow narrow and authoritative, and
obstinate, and too often violent ; unable to allow
for the appearance which the same truth, as really
held, may present to the mind of another; and
apt to exact, at the price of endangering peace,
breaking limits, and losing love, the implicit re
ception of our peculiar statement as the test of
orthodoxy. Alas ! how few are there of whom
it can in any measure be said, as of the great
champion of the Church's truth against the Arian
heresy, " Only in Athanasius there was nothing
observed throughout the course of that long
tragedy, other than 'such as very well became
a wise man to do and a righteous to suffer "."
But again, besides these dangers, more public
labours must commonly plunge us into contro
versy with some, or into opposition to others ; we
shall have gainsayers to confute, and adversaries
to silence ; and the weapons of the world, so ready,
alas ! always for our hands, will seem to be thrust
into them. We may at first begin to use our
various faculties in the encounter really for the
sake of truth : but how soon does there spring
up in our hearts the love of victory for its own
sake ! And then how soon does the tongue learn
the language of raillery and sarcasm, and biting
insinuation ; how quick does the eye grow to see
a weak point, and the ready hand to strike home
¦= Hooker, Eccl. Pol., lib. v. 42. 5. p. 180. edit, 1845.

266 ON MAINTAINING PEACE
at it, and the heated spirit to rejoice in all the
doubtful success, mixed motives, and manifold
unkindnesses of the keen encounter of sharpened
wits. How plainly in this case is the work of evil
being accomplished in our soul, and all hope of
the continuance of a faithful and prosperous mi
nistry being destroyed. How likely is it that the
once laborious pastor will be transformed into the
restless, eager, busy, and by degrees unscrupulous,
party leader, a troubler of the Church, a stirrer-up
of its discords ; above all, a hideous wreck within,
living upon external excitements, and more and
more a stranger to that deep quietness, inward
peace, and heavenly love, which are the Holy
Spirit's work, and which must mark the character
of every one who is admitted into heaven.
Where, then, is our safeguard ? Not certainly
in inactivity and sloth. You will hardly suspect
me of giving you such a counsel. God's truth
must be maintained, the Church's doctrines must
be vindicated, her powers of service must be at
tested and preserved, the dangers of life and action
must not make us content with lethargy or death.
We must contend, and that earnestly ; but we
must do it with self-recollection, with continual
watchfulness against this ever -ready evil, with
perpetual self-suspicion, extending to our motives,
our methods, and our acts ; with intervals of
silence, with continual prayers, with an eye ever

IN TROUBLOUS TIMES. 267
fixed on our great Exemplar, with a full sight
of Him who came to "send not peace on the earth,
but a sword," and yet who did " not strive nor
cry ;" about Whom in closest presence all the
hotness of the fight ever more gathered itself,
and raged, and yet Who was ever "meek and
gentle in heart," ever healing each separate suf
ferer who came to Him, ever giving "rest to
souls." 
But besides these dangers, which beset all times,
there are some which specially beset such days
as ours. For it is hard in times of strife and party-
spirit to find men who are thoroughly in earnest,
and yet who have not consciously identified them
selves with any party as a party. Yet if we do
become party men, our direct usefulness is fear
fully blighted, and we are certain to be stirrers-up
of strife ; increasing party-spirit on both sides,
by increasing exclusiveness of feeling on our own
side, and embittering opposition on the other.
Here, then, we must guard jealously both our own
spirit and our own demeanour ; for in times of
trouble he who would really be a man of quietness
must eschew all those party badges by which
inward party feelings are at all times vented,
manifested, and increased. The most innocent
trifles may thus become of the utmost moment.
I need hardly remjnd you that in times of great

268 ON MAINTAINING PEACE
civil suspicion the mere colour of a dress has been
cause enough to deluge the streets of a city with
blood. Most closely does this apply to us. Let
me suggest to you a single instance. Some
amongst us desire, for the very best objects, that
our dress as clergymen was more distinctly de
monstrative of our calling. They urge the whole
some restraint to ourselves which such an out
ward mark must prove against levity or sports
unbecoming our sacred character. They dwell on
the self-recollectedness it would help to engender,
and on the aid it would give us in society by
reminding others as well as ourselves who and
what we are. They point to many and good
examples of the usefulness of so natural a dis
tinction. They have much to urge, and they are
not unwilling to practise what they commend ;
they would fain, if it were possible, bring back
into ordinary use the cassock and the tippet.
Failing this, they adopt a dress as near as possible
to it, and as remote as possible from that of or
dinary laymen. On the other side, it is urged
that the English clergyman is an English citizen ;
that, like other men, he marries, mixes in society,
and takes his full share in all civil and social
matters ; that he is not like the Roman eccle
siastic, a member of a separate, unsympathizing
class ; and that on his retaining his freedom from
this ecclesiastical separation depends greatly his

IN TROUBLOUS TIMES. 269
acceptance and his usefulness with Englishmen.
This party, therefore, whilst it would retain those
moderate badges of colour and shape which all
men identify with clerical attire, would eschew all
prominent and startling diversity of dress from
that of sober lajnnen. On their skirts, as on the
skirts of the other side, hang a loose cloud of
extreme men, who pride themselves in throwing
off all the established sobriety of a clergyman's
apparel. Now how light a thing this is, and yet
how important. For the adopting either one ex
treme or the other, marks internal unquietness,
and soon disturbs external peace. The hottest
strifes and the most lasting prejudices, are en
gendered and kept alive by these outward badges.
Many a young clergyman, who might have
preached Christ and spread the life of His Church
throughout a parish around him, has marred all
his usefulness and raised a host of enemies by the
straightness of his collar or the length of his skirt.
And what think you in the hour of death, and
what in the day of judgment, will be the issues
of such a loss ? I would, my brethren, press most
earnestly upon you the great Christian duty of
quietness in such matters as these. " Let your
moderation be known unto all men. The Lofd
is at hand."
And this same principle applies with even
greater force to our vestments in the sanctuary,

270 ON MAINTAINING PEACE
and to the adoption in our services of rites which,
however they may be justified by the letter of
long-sleeping laws, are strange ahd novel in the
eyes of our people. I have no hesitation in saying
to you that it is better in these 'matters to ac
quiesce for a while in a long-established custom
of deficiency than to stir our people up to sus
picion and hostihty by the impetuous restoration
of a better use. More harm has, I believe, been
done amongst us by such attempts to restore
bits of a ritual to which our people are unac
customed, than by any other single error Our
people argue — and do they argue altogether amiss ?
¦ — that these changes either mean something or
nothing : if something, what, they ask, is it that
they mean, and whither are they leading us 1 if
nothing, do they not imply either puerility, un
quietness, or folly in him who can for nothing
disturb our minds, or even alarm our prejudices ?
Depend upon it, my brethren, that if we are to
keep this promise of our Ordinal, we must as to
these matters — so trifling in themselves, so mo
mentous as indications of a drifting current — in
wardly and outwardly manifest ourselves to be
men of quietness and peace.
And if this is so, we must, as to the yet deeper
quality of love, have learned ourselves to embody
what we would fain reproduce in others. The
spirit of love must have leavened and moulded

IN TROUBLOUS TIMES. 27 1
our spirits. We must have learned from Him,
-who only can teach them to us, its full reality,
its constraining power, and its unwearying tender
ness. Love in our own hearts will flavour all our
teaching with its own blessed presence. We
shall teach, and our people, through God's help,
will imbibe, truth in a truly loving spirit. They
will not be so ready to wrangle about the great
doctrines of the Gospel as to live on them. They
will not so much be keen to detect an error, as
quick-sighted to apprehend a truth. Here, too,
depend upon it, the pastor will to a great degree
be reproduced in his flock. Love will generate
love. The battle therefore here, as elsewhere,
must be won in secret, and upon our knees. When
we have been loosed beneath the cross of our Lord
of the burden of our own sins ; when we have
looked, indeed, for ourselves into that calm, divine
face of unutterable love ; when we have heard
His voice of healing pity speak to our wounded
hearts ; when His pierced hand has been laid on
us ; when we have, as accepted penitents, poured
forth our souls before Him, — then shall we have
learned, as we never otherwise can learn, how to
go. forth day by day amongst our people, repro
ducing amongst them His work upon ourselves,
whilst we " maintain quietness, peace, and love
amongst all Christian people, and specially amongst
them that are committed to our charge."
i860.

XXIV.
OBEDIENCE TO THE BISHOP.
IN answer to the question, "Will you reve
rently obey your Ordinary .'" what is first
promised, is a reverent obedience ; by which no
less can be meant than an obedience for con
science' sake, as a matter of reverence, and not
of legal necessity. To interpret thi.s, then, as if
it meant no more than " I will submit to such
commands as can by course of law and under
penalty be enforced upon me," is a manifest eva
sion of the words, as it is of the intention, of the
promise. For there would be no object in ex
acting a promise of submitting to that legal force
to which without any such promise we must
equally submit ; and such a submission would
manifestly be an enforced and not a reverent sub
mission ; a submission to power, and not to duty ;
from fear, and not from love ; from necessity, and
not from reverence. Next, we should notice that
the words which immediately follow, explain and
limit this promise. They first explain it. For
the description of the " chief ministers," as those
" to whom is committed the charge and govern
ment over you," at once leads our thoughts up

OBEDIENCE TO THE BISHOP. 273
to Him who has committed to them this charge,
and thus reminds us that our obedience to them
is an obedience to Him, to be rendered, not for
fear, but for conscience' sake. At the same time
the Words which follow confine this promise of
obedience to that subject-matter to which alone
the charge of our spiritual rulers extends, that is
to say, to our conduct as ministers of the Church
of Christ. Moreover, the obedience promised is
itself limited by those general laws which bind
the ruler as much as the ruled ; so that the ruler
can properly enjoin upon those under his rule
only either what those laws have previously en
acted or by true logical deduction imply, or such
matters as the Law has left to be settled by the
voice of living authority. And accordingly the
words continue ; " following with a glad mind and
will their godly admonitions, and submitting our
selves to their godly judgments." Where, again,
the ready submissive temper of one acting for
conscience' sake, and not under legal compulsion,
is distinctly expressed ; and the gloss that we are
bound to obey such commands only, as can, if we
disobey, be enforced on us by processes of law,
is absolutely excluded.
But another and a most important limitation to
the duty of obedience is now brought in, namely,
that the admonitions and judgments to which we
submit must always be "godly." Here, then,
T

274 OBEDIENCE TO THE BISHOP.
arises a new question : how far, namely, this last
limitation extends, which cannot be dismissed
without some more particular inquiry.
There is, indeed, no doubt thus far: that by
this hmitation all obedience to any command
which is contrary to God's will is expressly ex
cluded. But then arise the further questions, ist.
How far does this word "godly" extend.? and
then, 2ndly, Who is to judge how far any par
ticular command is or is not godly ?
For if the decision of this question rest alto
gether with the Ordinary, he may command that
which he esteems to be godly, though in fact
it is ungodly ; and so, if absolute and unquestion
ing obedience be our duty, we may be compelled
to do what is wrong ; or if, on the other side, the
receiver of the command is the sole judge of what
is godly in the injunctions of authority, and if
there be no certain limit to the extent of the
term., he may conclude that every direction which
crosses his own will, or is contrary to his own
judgment, is one which, not being for the true
furtherance of God's cause, he may lawfully reject
as an ungodly judgment. Now the solution of
this question must be found in a consideration of
the ground on which alone the duty of obedience
rests. We are, then, to obey those who have the
rule over us, because their power is from God.
For " there is no power but of God, the powers

OBEDIENCE TO THE BISHOP. 27S
that be are ordained of God. Whosoever there
fore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance
of God ; and they that resist shall receive to them
selves damnation ^"
When, therefore, we are bidden by a competent
authority to do anything or to leave it undone,
we have at first sight simply one course, and that
is to obey ; because we are bound to consider the
command which comes to us from an authority
placed over us by God as coming to us from God
Himself. And to this there can be but one vahd
counter-plea, namely, that the command which
comes to us from the deputy contradicts the
command of Him who sends him. This was the
Apostles' plea under the. threatening of the Jew
ish rulers, "Whether it be right in the sight of
God to hearken unto you more than unto God,
judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things
which we have seen and heard *>." And again,
" Peter and the other Apostles answered and said.
We ought to obey God rather than men "." And
this plea, . where it is rightly grounded, is un
doubtedly valid. But then it is one which can
be urged only in extreme cases, and it is put
forward in every instance under a fearful risk.
It does not claim for the subject of command the
right of settling for himself how much of that
which is commanded he shall obey, which were
" Rom. xiii. i, 2. ^ Acts iv. 19. " Acts v. 29.

276 OBEDIENCE TO THE BISHOP.
to abolish all real obligations to obedience, but
admitting that the measure of command is in the
breast of authority, it impeaches him who holds
this delegated power of being guilty of unfaith
fulness to the highest source of all authority, and
claims on the issue of this charge to be at last
justified as one who is indeed obeying the Prin
cipal in disobeying the immediate ruler. So that
it is a plea which cannot be urged in defence of
our preference of one lawful course rather than
another; nor of our judgment of the more expe
dient of two lawful courses, but then only when
we can appeal to God Himself that the command
which we neglect or violate is contrary to Hi?
revealed will ; when we can distinctly affirm,
" This is an ungodly command, and one therefore
which I must disobey, or sin against the Lord."
This ultimate licence to disobey, — used under the
awful risk of appealing to the Supreme Judge to
reverse the general sentence of damnation pro
nounced upon the disobedient — all must concede
who acknowledge the supremacy of conscience as
the last authority to each man. But whilst we
freely concede this, we are bound to add that to
concede more is, in truth, to do away with all
authority. For such universal licence must be the
result of that further liberty, sometimes claimed,
at least in practice, for those under command, for
whom it is urged that, under shelter of this hmit-

OBEDIENCE TO THE BISHOP. 277
ation of submission to such judgments only as
are godly, each one may settle for himself whether
any particular direction be expedient or inexpe
dient, and then may either act upon it or reject
it according to his own conclusion. For by such
a rule not only would each one be left, in truth,
to act upon his own opinion, but to exact a pro
mise of submission would simply be absurd, since
where our judgment concurred with the voice
of authority the promise would be needless, and
where they differed it would not apply.
To this, then, we must conclude that our pro
mise of obedience binds us ; that in respect of our
exercise of that ministry into which we seek to
be admitted, we will submit our will to the com
mands, and our practice to the judgment of our
spiritual rulers, within the limits of those laws by
which they as well as we are bound, subject only
to the further limitation, that nothing which is
contrary to God's revealed will can be by them
rightly ordered, or by us lawfully obeyed. . . .
We cannot over-estimate the degree in which
the life and efficiency of the Church must be
impaired by the loss or weakening of this just
subordination and connexion of her several parts.
For this injury to her unity disturbs the flow of
those currents of Divine grace on which alone
depend her inner life and outward efficiency, and
soon brings decay into her whole being. The

278 OBEDIENCE TO THE BISHOP.
highest graces of seraphic love, intense and ab
sorbing devotions, unsullied purity, and a noble
prodigality of self-sacrifice disappear first; then
the lower though most blessed gifts of earn
estness and zeal in action are debased, first by
the intermixture of personal vanity in her clergy,
and then by party-spirit everywhere. Individual
pastors work for themselves with a self-willed in
dependence of choice and action. Brotherly love
is weakened, and mutual confidence impaired.
Then knots of men gather round self- chosen
leaders, party watchwords and cruel shibboleths
are framed, and these increase the evil from which
they sprung. A few draw together and draw
apart from others. Then follow still more strait
ened graces, and the loss of charity, mutual re
pulsions, hard judgments, hard thoughts, hard
words of one another ; then comes separated ac
tion, the Church's instruments must be divided,
societies must rival and weaken one another, men
are to be judged as they are ranged under the
banner of this or that association ; earthly pas
sions, earthly motives, earthly names, are debasing
and dividing the fair heritage of Christ. Then fol
low open strifes and angry recriminations, whilst,
like obscene birds which scent from afar the
coming carnage, calumnious and malignant pub
lications, bred of our internal discords, flock un-
reproved about the servants of the Prince of purity

OBEDIENCE TO THE BISHOP. 279
and peace. How is the gracious Spirit grieved by
such fightings and divisions ! How many prayers
are blown aside ! How many hands are weak
ened ! How many hearts are broken ! Alas !
how many souls are lost, by such unholy strifes !
How is the seamless coat of Christ torn ! How
is the Holy Name blasphemed ! How are the
Church's graces lost ! How is her white raiment
stained and the place of her candlestick en
dangered by their continuance and increase !
Here, then, are the certain consequences of in
subordination in the camp of God. Alas ! beloved
brethren, can we fail to perceive, as we trace them
out and then reflect upon our own condition, that
we as a Church have indeed abundant reason to
cry mightily to God to enable us to see the
" great dangers we are in through our unhappy
divisions," and to beseech Him to pour into our
estranged hearts the loving spirit of His long-
suffering and uniting grace ?
i860.

xxv.
SOME DANGERS ATTENDING REVISION.
' I ""HERE is some risk in beginning alterations
-'- even when all have agreed beforehand where
they shall stop ; because the love of change grows
by its indulgence. But this danger is indefinitely
increased if there be no agreement as to the limits
of alteration, and if behind the moderate and some
what impassive favourers of change stand a sterner
body, with deeper convictions, ulterior ends, and
a far more restless energy. And this is our con
dition. Behind the moderate revisionist, who
would change a few obsolete expressions, render
definite a few obscure rubrics, retrench a few re
dundancies, and give us a better compacted and,
where it was desired, a briefer Office, stand men
with far other objects and far different claims.
Alleged doctrinal purity, — an accomplished re
formation, — such a cleansing of the Common
Prayer as would cleanse out of the ministry of
the Church all who differ from their own view
of truth, — these are the avowed intentions of some,
the desire, half-hidden from themselves, of more.
There is no disguise or concealment as to this.

SOME DANGERS ATTENDING REVISION. 281
Both before and since the Reformation the Sa
cramental and anti-Sacramental view has wrought
strongly in the religious mind in England. It was
a mighty and anxious problem whether the fa
vourers of these different views could be combined
in one reformed Church, with articles and formu
laries free from dishonest ambiguity of diction.
This problem God gave to our fathers the grace
to solve. To a marvellous degree the Church of
England did combine all the men of both sections
of thought who possessed any moderation of cha
racter. The struggle, indeed, was long and often
renewed ; but, upon the whole, the fusion was
most happily accomplished, and a rare inheritance
of peace and purity was bequeathed to English
Churchmen. The matter had been wrangled out ;
and we still enjoy the good fruits which have
grown over the graves of controversies as old as
those of Hooper and Ridley, of Travers and of
Hooker. This has been possible because our common
formularies contain all the positive truth which
is needful for each class of minds, with no such
contradiction of what either holds as would make
subscription to them dishonest.
Such a state of things is sometimes, but I think
unfortunately, termed a compromise ; unfortu
nately, because truth does not admit of compro
mise. Rather is it, indeed, a combination than

282 SOME DANGERS ATTENDING REVISION.
a compromise. And this is the special character
of Catholic truth : for all revealed religion rests
upon certain great principles ; which the human
mind can hold together in what it knows to be
a true concord, whilst yet it cannot always by its
intellectual processes limit, define, and reconcile
what its higher gift of intuition can harmonize.
Thus, for instance, the master -truth of the
absolute sovereignty of Almighty God, running
out, as it must, into the necessary fulfilment of
His eternal counsels and the omnipotence of His
grace ; and that second truth, the certainty of
man's responsibility based upon his free agency,
may both be received by the human mind as they
are taught in Scripture; each in its fulness, and
harmonized by the intuitions of a humble faith :
or they may be wrangled over by logicians, or
fashioned by minds of opposite temperaments
into the exclusiveness respectively of the Pelagian
or the Antinomian sects. They may be calmly
and reverently viewed as two vast mountain-peaks
appear to the natural eye, — one in very deed,
however far apart they soar, in the great under
lying unity of the common truth in which they
are both embedded, and from which they both
emanate ; or their separate existence may be
looked upon angrily as a hideous contradiction,
which man, in spite of his feebleness, must either
reconcile or destroy. Thus, whilst the sects have

SOME DANGERS ATTENDING REVISION. 283
risen and flourished, and faded through their ar
rogant and one-sided assertion of some great truth,
perverted by the one-sidedness of its statement
into a most dangerous form of practical falsehood,
the Catholic Church has ever satisfied honest
minds of both schools by contenting herself with
stating, like the Holy Scripture which she guards,
both sets of truths in their simplicity. Thus her
Creeds and her Formularies are a combination,
and not a compromise. And such are the formu
laries of our own Church, inherited, as in the main
they are, from the earliest times, and marked with
the broad stamp of combined truths and Catholic
statements. This is exactly the character of which our more
ardent revisionists would deprive her. It is an
easy process. It is but to take from the common
document that which expresses the side of truth
to which we are disinclined, and the Catholic
statement is transmuted into the confession of
a sect. This is all that is asked of us. Only let
us alter the language of the formularies of Bap
tism, Absolution, and Ordination, and we shall
remove occasions of misconception : only let us
make, that is, the common document sufficiently
one-sided to speak none but our own views. It
is easy to see what would be the consequence of
such a change. The removal of an expression in
a religious formulary does not leave the altered

284 SOME DANGERS ATTENDING REVISION.
composition what it would have been if what is
now removed had never been there. There is
a pregnant meaning in the very act of removal
which gives its own interpretation to the mutilated
document. As it has been admirably suggested, the ex
cision even of an excrescence leaves a scar ; how
much more the removal of one feature upon the
presence of which depended the combined har
mony of all the face. The success of any such
attempt upon our Prayer-book would unquestion
ably lead to a disruption, which would break up
our national Church, destroying alike her large
tolerance, which God grant may never be lessened,
and her comprehensive exhibition of all saving
truth, which God grant may never be obscured !
I do not mean to imply that the narrowing of
our terms of communion is the purpose of all
the favourers of revision. Far from it. Some
amongst them advocate change on the idea of
making the Church of England more comprehen
sive, and of gathering into her those who now
dissent from her doctrinal statements. But this
they seem to me wholly to overlook, — that their
comprehension is all on one side, and that whilst
it is most doubtful whether they could change
enough to gather any in, it is quite certain that
it would be easy, by what they deem slight altera
tions, to change enough to drive many out. How

SOME DANGERS ATTENDING REVISION. 285
far these alterations, conceived in this spirit of
comprehension, might extend, we may understand
from the declarations of the noble Lord who re
presents in the Upper House the cause of the
revisionists, and who, to include in the Established
Church "a Livingstone or a Havelock," (acquisi
tions the value of which no man could more highly
estimate than I should,) thought it a small matter
just so far to alter her doctrinal statements as to
give up Episcopacy and the Baptism of Infants.
Concessions so devised, from a conviction of their
expediency as measures of comprehension, and
not from a belief in their truth, would be fatal to
those who made, and most hurtful to those who
accepted them. To strive earnestly for the faith
as they have received it, is the common duty of
all religious bodies who would not sink ihto the
dead sea of absolute unbelief. Such a sacrifice of
truth as has been suggested would ruin us ; and
it would, I am convinced, be most injurious to the
highest interests of the dissenting bodies them
selves to accept of such concessions as the terms
of restored communion.
Nor are such proposals mere declamation. With
a far deeper acquaintance with his subject, and in
a truly serious spirit, they are urged on us for the
truth's sake by the ablest and most honest advo
cate for change with whose writings I have met.
For he, too, in his most matured convictions.

286 SOME DANGERS ATTENDING REVISION.
would, he tells us, "modify in some degree the
present doctrinal character of the Prayer-book ;"
and he afterwards explains to what the "some
degree " might extend, by informing us that it
needs a " vital and essential purification in matters
relating to doctrine "."
Now such an altered tone in our formularies,
even if it were adopted on this higher ground of
its greater purity, and not with the miserable hope
of contriving an unprincipled comprehension, would,
in my belief, injure all the religious bodies around
us as well as ourselves. For it is from the uni
versal Church, represented here by its English
branch, that they draw their Christianity, and re
ceive their Bible and their Creed. Any faltering
in her voice as to the Articles of the Catholic
faith, would make fainter and more indefinite the
echoes of the truth which now find their way
amidst the mountains and valleys which lie around,
though, alas ! apart from the holy city. Let the
tone of the Church's doctrine be lowered down,
and the echo of it would melt away amongst
those more distant hills into a mere inarticulate
murmur. i860.
• See " Liturgical Purity our Rightful Inheritance," by J. C.
Fisher, M.A., ofthe Middle Temple ; Second Edition, p. 20.

XXVI.
PROTEST AGAINST EVENING COMMUNION,
THERE is one mode of seeking to increase
the number of Communicants to which I
feel bound to say to you that I entertain the
gravest objection. I allude to the introduction
of afternoon and evening celebrations. I have the
warmest and most entire sympathy with the pur
pose and desire which has prompted some to
begin or to adopt this custom ; I know that it
has arisen from a tender longing to meet the diffi
culties of classes of our people, to whose presence
at the mid-day celebrations our social habits pre
sent a formidable difficulty ; but I cannot allow
that any difficulties warrant this innovation, and
I believe that our difficulties may be otherwise
and unobjectionably met. It is right that I should
place before you the grounds of my objection
to the practice. They are briefly these : — i. That
it is contrary to the usage of the whole Church,
certainly from very early, and most probably from
apostolic times ; 2. That it involves an unlawful
use of our Liturgy ; and 3. That it directly tends
to the desecration of the highest rite of our holy

288 PROTEST AGAINST
religion. Very few words, I think, will suffice to
establish the truth of each of these propositions.
It has pleased God that, in the well-known
letter of Pliny to Trajan at as early a date as 104
years after Christ, we have direct evidence upon
the first point. "They affirmed," he reports to
his imperial master of those whom he had put
to the torture and to death for their religion,
"that this was the sum of their fault or error, —
that they were accustomed to assemble on a fixed
day before light, to say responsively a hymn to
Christ as God, and to bind themselves sacramento,
not to any wickedness, but not to commit theft,
robbery, or adultery, or breach of faiths" Can
there be any reasonable doubt what the sacra
mentum against sin was, wherewith these early
confessors said that they bound themselves " very
early" on the resurrection morning, even " whilst
it was yet dark," and did but " begin to dawn
towards the day V Was it ever known in the
Church of Christ that men should be allowed
to take an oath that they would not commit sin }
Certainly to the early Church such a notion must
have been most strange. They knew full well
that not in any vow but in closest communing
with their risen Lord was their strength against
iniquity ; and, speaking to a heathen, to whom
the secrets of their faith could not be revealed,
' C. Plin. Epist. ad Trajan, xcvi.

EVENING COMMUNION. 289
they would most naturally apply the word sacra
mentum to the mystery of the Holy Eucharist.
Doubtless it was for its celebration that they thus
assembled themselves before light. And from this
time downward we have an unbroken chain of
proof as to the practice of the Church. The words
of TertuUian '', in the second century, are plainly
to the point : so are those of St. Cyprian ¦= in the
third ; and in the fourth we have St. Augustine's
reference to the practice of celebrating on one
evening in the year, namely, on the anniversary
of the institution of the Lord's Supper, in words ^
which prove the universality of the rule to which
this was a special exception. Thus we trace up
an unbroken custom of condemning late Com
munions to within the period when the voice of
the beloved Apostle must have been instructing
the Christian Church in the Lesser Asia.
That the custom of early Communion should
have begun so soon, suggests, for other reasons
than its mere antiquity, that it rested upon apo
stolical authority. For the divine institution and
the first celebration were after the evening paschal
meal. How within so short a period could such
'' TertuUian de Corona, c. 3. " St. Cyprian. Epist. Ixv.
ad Csecilium, p. 109. ed. Bened. ¦* St. Aug., Ep. 54, ad
Januarium, vol. ii. p. 126, ed. Bened. See also Conc. Carth.
can. 29; Labbe, vol. ii. p. 11 71. References to and arguments
drawn from these passages may be found in an able article in the
" Christian Remembrancer," No. cix., July, i860.
U

290 PROTEST AGAINST
a change have been possible had it rested upon
any lower authority } For every argument from
the convenience of evening celebrations with which
we are familiar must have applied with far more
force to them. The social difficulties of servants
in Christian households must be nothing com
pared with those of Christian slaves in heathen
families ; or, indeed, with those of the whole body
in times of persecution. Yet, as it seems, these
perils were not esteemed sufficient, even in the
bloody Decian persecution, to warrant such a cus
tom. The probability, then, is strong, that the
inspired apostles themselves altered the time
of celebration from the hour of the paschal feast
to that of the resurrection of the Lord. And no
careful student of the New Testament will doubt
that, in the abuses which had crept into the
Corinthian Church touching the holy Eucharist,
and in St. Paul's treatment of them, they find the
occasion and the time of the alteration.
First, then, I condemn these late Communions
because they are a violation of the custom of the
universal Church, which may be traced to the
very first century, and which rests, most pro
bably, on an apostolical ordinance framed to guard
the holy rite from abuse.
Further, our own Communion Office, in my
judgment, embodies this rule. It is not indeed
anywhere expressly said that the Communion

EVENING COMMUNION. 291
Office is a part of Morning Prayer ; the reason
of the omission evidently being that when our
Offices were compiled no Christian man thought
of any other time for the public celebration of
the Holy Communion. But though not expressly
asserted, this is clearly, implied in the very letter
of the Office. It may be traced throughout : in
the rubric, e.g., which orders that "the Collect
appointed for every Sunday, or for any Holy-day
that hath a vigil or eve, shall be said at the Even
ing Service next before ;" which evidently treats
the Communion Office as a part of the next day's
Morning Prayer ; and less explicitly is' the same
implied in the order that " so many as intend to
be partakers of the holy Communion shall signify
their names to the Curate, at least some time
the day before :" and yet more plainly in the
rubric before the Offertory, which orders, " Then
shall follow THE Sermon," &c. For THE Sermon
was then an essential part of the Morning Prayer,
and of it alone.
This question being one of the legal construction
of our offices, I have thought it my duty to consult
the very learned Chancellor of our Diocese : and
I am fortified by his opinion that any Clergyman
violating herein the monition of his bishop would
subject himself to the penalty of suspension.
Further, I am persuaded that if this usage be
came common it would greatly tend to the dese-

292 PROTEST AGAINST
oration of this holy ordinance. If it were not
a matter of apostolical injunction, it was, I doubt
not, a deep and wise instinct of the Church, which
so early associated this great mystery, in which the
faithful Christian communes so specially with his
risen and ascended Saviour, with the first services of
the Lord's-day, that he may give to it the fresh
ness of his spirits and the stillness of his soul
before it has been wearied, worn, and soiled by the
toils, and anxieties, and earthly dust from which,
even on the day of rest, he cannot keep himself
altogether free. At present the influence of this
spirit is strong amongst us. Who that has dwelt
in the bosom of a religious family does not know
that a far more than ordinary measure of thought-
fulness and devotion pervades the whole circle
before partaking of that holy Sacrament .¦' Who
can estimate the blessed effect of such a tone
of feeling, both as to the immediate result of the
devout partaking of that holy ordinance, and in
directly on the maintenance of a high standard
of Christian doctrine concerning it ? But all this
must pass surely away if evening celebrations
become common. They must come to share in
the normal character of the later services of the
Sunday, which, as compared with the earliest, all
observant men amongst us would, I beheve, admit
to be marked by drowsiness in the afternoon, and
in the evening either by weariness or excitement.

EVENING COMMUNION. 293
How great might be the effect upon the next
generation, when these influences would have had
full time to work out their results, it would, I
believe, be very difficult to estimate.
Nor can I admit that late Communions are
the only or even the best mode of meeting the
difficulties which they seek to relieve. I can say,
from the experience of a large parish, that the
attendance of the class who are to so great a
degree excluded by our social habits from the
midday service, may be secured at celebrations
either in the early morning or at some hour of the
forenoon ; whilst the self-denial which this requires
is most wholesome, both in bracing up the souls
of those who come, and in bringing to bear on
those who will not make the effort, exactly that
amount of self-executing discipline which their
case requires. Even if there were not the in
superable objections to late Communions which
I have detailed above, I think that this last sug
gestion ought, for practical men, to settle the
question. Every one allows that the early Com
munions are the best. Experience, I am assured,
shews that whelre evening Communions have un
happily been tried, they do not, in the long run
largely increase the whole number who attend.
If then, which all admit, the eariier is the better
hour, nothing short of our being able to declare
that there is no earlier time which we could give

294 PROTEST AGAINST
to such a service could justify our resorting, even
if it were lawful, to the less profitable hour. Yet
who can say that with some self-denial he could
not find or make the time for an early celebration.
In this diocese, I rejoice to say, this custom has
not spread. Some of you have consulted me upon
the subject, and have been content to be guided
by my counsel.
i860.

Against one suggestion of most recent times
for increasing these [Communion] services, — I mean
Evening Communion, — I must again solemnly
warn you. As in my Charge of i860 I have
stated at length the grounds on which I believe,
1st, that such a celebration is contrary to the
law of our Church ; and, 2nd, why I feel bound
myself to enforce obedience to that law, and to
resist, by all means in my power, the introduction
of this greatest of innovations, I will not repeat
what is in your hands already. I will only say
that my reading and observation since that time
have, if possible, deepened my own conviction,
and that I deprecate, — even more earnestly than
I did then, — the introduction of such a practice
into any of your parishes, as contrary to the rule
of the whole Church for 1800 years, and certain,
in the long run, to lower men's reverence for that

EVENING COMMUNION. 29S
great Sacrament. One fact only I will add to
what I have said before, namely, that the judg
ment of the greatest of the foreign Reformers on
this point is as clear as is that of our own Church.
" At this day," are the words of Peter Martyr to
Bishop Hooper, "we so administer the Eucharist
in the morning time, that after dinner we will not
have the Communion in the sacred assembly ".''
And to the same effect Bucer writes, " Hence we
celebrate the Sacred Supper neither in the even
ing nor in a private house, nor recumbent, nor
among men only V

1866.

' Gorham's " Reformation Gleanings," p. 195.
' Ibid., pp. 205-6.

XXVII.
RITUAL, ITS VALUE, ITS LIMITATIONS,
AND ITS EXCESSES.
IT has always appeared to me to be the duty
of a bishop of the English Church to throw
himself heartily, without stint or grudging, into
the labours of the clergy or laity of all the differ
ent schools of thought which are allowed within
her communion. He must, of course, have his
own definite line and thought of action ; the more
definite the better. But he ought not in my judg
ment to allow a divergence from that type and
model, within the limits his Church allows, to
weaken his sympathy with any within his sphere
who are labouring earnestly for Christ. And here
I am speaking not of a cold grudging assent to
the lawfulness of their position, but of all the ful
ness of help which he can give them in their
own mode of working, by his prayers, his per
sonal CO - operation, and his confidence. Such
a rule of action involves of necessity certain great
difficulties. It is sure, till it is well understood,
to lead narrow-minded men who can move but
in a single groove, to suspect that such a course
is tainted with a want of care for the absolute

RITUAL, ITS VALUE, &C. 297
truth, and a sinful desire to please men. These
suspicions, bred in shallow minds of intellectual
feebleness, a bishop must live down. But beyond
these there is the further imputation ready, that
such a course tends to deprive the Church itself
of all definiteness of doctrine, and to make its
teaching a mere bundle of conflicting opinions,
held artificially together by the external bond of
a common establishment. Now if this licensed
variety did exceed in anything that which the
Church has received as vital of dogmatic truth, the
objection would be true, and it would be fatal ; for
the Church exists to be the pillar and ground
of the truth, to hold and therefore to hand on
without addition, diminution, or adulteration the
faith once for all delivered to the saints. Of
differences, then, on points which constitute the
one faith, I am not speaking. But I do not
believe that such difference does, to any consider
able degree, exist amongst us. For it, where it
does exist, I put in no plea. I ask for it, within
our own body, no toleration. But I maintain that
putting all question about these master truths
wholly aside, there is room for large difference
of tone, of feeling, and of the mode of expressing
the common faith amongst those who hold, and
hold earnestly, the same Word of God, the same
tradition of creeds, and the same definiteness of
articles. The temper of one man's mind leads

298 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
him to apprehend most readily, and to embody
in his own spiritual life most completely, one as
pect of a mighty, far-reaching, many-sided dogma.
This leavens all his own inner being and all
his own teaching. And I venture to say that
it is well that it should be so. Well for him,
because what he has thus made his own is the
most real ; well for the Church, because, first,
what he most really holds he can most vividly
express and reproduce in others ; and secondly,
because by this permitted variance the many sides
of the common truth will be most faithfully main
tained in themselves, and most readily supplied
for the spiritual sustenance of others.
It is easy to say, as the Popish enemies of
our Church are so fond of saying, that thus our
teachers teach all conflicting theories, whilst tlieirs
speak with one utterance, and therefore give their
people what we cannot give to ours, the same
ness and the certainty of truth. But the taunt
proves as false under examination as it is easy
in the utterance. For, first, they who use it do
not all teach one doctrine. The slightest acquaint
ance with their writings and their internal action
at once dispels the illusion. To name but one
instance. They range from the Augustinian far
nearer than we do to the semi-Pelagian theory
of grace. But further. Whilst it is the essence
of the truth that it should be one, it is of the

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 299
essence of a living reception of that one faith
by different souls that it should in its subjective
reproduction within them differ in its modes of
acting. All life, because it is life, has of neces
sity this faculty of diversity of reproduction com
bined with essential unity. Dead things only
can be stamped out with an absolute ever-re
curring identity of shape and proportion. In
stead, therefore, of considering this variety, within
allowed limits, as an evil, I hail it as a sign of
life ; and I would no more make every voice in
a diocese speak in exactly the same tone than
I would abolish the music of nature by requiring
the same note from every free songster in the
brake. There are, of course, limits to such a licence.
If the fundamental articles of the Creeds, if the
authority of God's revealed Word, if the atone
ment wrought for us on the Cross, if the gift of
the Holy Ghost and the life of the new kingdom
of Christ are assailed, all question of allowance
within the Church is at an end. Where the claim
for permitted diversity distinctly reaches up to
these points, there is of course no difficulty in our
course. We have but to say in love, but with
all clearness, " If any man teach any other Gospel
than that ye have received, let him be accursed."
But there is a vast range of spiritual teaching
within these well-defined limits as to the par-

300 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
ticulars of which a minute and tyrannous positive-
ness savours far more of the narrowness of a sect
than of the real breadth of Catholicity ; and the mo
dern Papacy, as to these, exhibits far more exactly
the temper of the Donatists than that of any of
the ancient Catholics. As to these comparatively
open questions, on the other hand, the Church of
England has forborne to exact as the condition
of conformity a mechanical exactness of agree
ment, and as to these it has always seemed to
me that her ministers should act freely and gene
rously in her spirit. In that spirit, my reverend
brethren, I may take you, amongst whom I have
lived, to witness, it has been my endeavour to
administer this diocese ; and it is to my acting
on this rule, and to your great kindness, your
large forbearance with me, and your wonderful
confidence in me, that under God's grace I attri
bute the quietness, combined with earnest vigour,
with which we have been enabled to work His
work for this quarter of a century ; and that now,
when we are bringing to a close our united action,
I have the blessing of seeing amongst the warm
est of my friends, representatives of every school
of thought amongst us. For myself I will say
openly that I could not have endured to have
been the bishop of a party, when God's providence
had called me to be the bishop of a diocese.
To a certain extent this rule of liberty as to

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 301
thought must apply also to the rule of external
observance. As to such outward forms indeed
there need not, and consistently with any uni
formity there cannot be, so large a licence. There
need not be, because here the sacrifice of choice
to charity implies no dishonesty of mind. He
who could not honestly give up an opinion, may
with entire truthfulness give up a dress or a pos
ture by which a brother is offended ; and without
some such sacrifices external uniformity is im
possible. Feeling this strongly, few things have
more grieved my own spirit than the course of
recent controversies about dresses and externals.
With the mighty work we have to do ; with the
growing masses on every side of us who need
the simplest preaching of the Gospel of Christ,
and the most elementary instruction in the life
of grace ; with the seething multitudes of our
great towns steeped in sin and suffering, and with
the irreligious coldness, dulness, and coarse sen
suality which abound in so many of our country
districts, it is simply heart-breaking to see the
zeal of earnest spirits diverted from even pas
sionate endeavours to bring the Name, the Cross,
the power, and presence of Christ home to such
sufferers, and to see it miserably wasted on un
meaning contests as to the cut of a surplice, or
the colour of a stole. In such a strife both sides
seem to me to be in the wrong, because both

302 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
exalt things comparatively indifferent into an
utterly undue importance. It is hard to under
stand the religion which consists in refusing on
the one hand to wear a surplice, or on the other
in convulsing a parish in order to introduce into
its public services the startling novelty of a gor
geous vestment.
Still, as to these merely outward matters, I have
always held that, provided the law was not in
fringed nor the weak brother for whom Christ
died offended, it would be hard to enforce on
others my own disinclination to change. Where,
therefore, with the rising tone of a parish there
has been such a corresponding rise in its ritual,
I have always felt it to be my duty in my office,
instead of coldly discouraging such accidents of
growth, whereby perchance the growth itself might
be checked, to guide and moderate rather than
oppose their development. Life, even with cer
tain eccentricities, seems to me, after all, to be so
much better than death ; the sparkling stream,
even though it does brawl, is so far more lovely
than the reek of a stagnant pool, that I have
always joyfully associated myself with the living
workers of the diocese, whether, in their fear of
change they sought, as to ritual observances, to
maintain a somewhat starved and unpicturesque
simplicity of manner ; or in their desire of acting
by all lawful instruments upon the souls of men.

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 303
they adopted a more ornamental style of worship.
A reasonable growth in the decency and beauty
of the externals of worship naturally accompanies
and often helps forward increasing devotion, a
growing sense of God's presence with His Church,
and of the greatness of the service which we
ought to render to the Heavenly King. The
restoration of our churches, the comely and often
beautiful adorning of our chancels, the vast im
provement in our church music, the greater order,
efficiency, and heartiness of our services, all instance
this, and call for our deepest gratitude to God.
The time has passed away, I hope for ever, when
we could be content with dilapidated churches,
the mould-stained walls of which were broken by
patches of plaster into irregular deformity ; with
their rattling rifty windows letting in every blast
from which the high separating pews gave but
scanty shelter, even to the favoured occupant of
the safest corner. All this, I trust, is gone for
ever : and with it the meanness of the holy table,
with its discoloured coverings, its iron -moulded
linen, and its discreditable plate ; with the dingy
surplice put carelessly or reluctantly on in the
face of the gaping congregation, preparatory to
the poor and often stammering duet between the
parson and the clerk, which a still surviving in
stinct named " reading prayers." All this, I hope,
has vanished from us for ever. With these, too.

304 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
is disappearing, would that it was wholly gone,
the monotonous reading from the pulpit of bought
or borrowed essays, which, with their dreary dul
ness and cold lack of Christian truth, could reach
no soul. For these great and growing improve
ments we may all assuredly thank God. Better,
surely, is it to run the risk of some occasional
excess in development, than to bind down the
rising temper of the Church to the almost obso
lete poverty of a doubtful life.
But whilst I rejoice in this altered tone of our
services, I must not fail to remind you that there
may be changes, in what look at first sight to be
mere outward matters, which do involve great doc
trinal questions ; and, as by the mere substitution
of one flag for another, there may be indicated in
a very small alteration, changes which reach very
far indeed. As to all such changes, it is of course
impossible to be too watchful. They may, if they
are allowed to establish themselves without ques
tion, lead, almost before we are aware, into an
alteration of our position as to great and funda
mental truths. Thus, for example, our Church
and nation did deliberately, at the Reformation
in the sixteenth century, reject at once the tyran
nous usurpations of the Bishop of Rome, and a
whole system of superstitious accretions which,
under the shadow of the Papacy, had, moss-like,
overgrown the fair proportions of primitive truth.

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 30S
This great restoration of an earlier purity was ob
tained at the price of a convulsion which could
hardly fail to injure and even destroy some things,
and to endanger more, which, though good and
valuable in themselves, were by accident con
nected more or less directly with the discarded
errors. As time passed on, the loss of these, in
evitable as it was, and to be willingly endured as
the price of the great gain of recovered purity,
began to make itself felt. Negligence, careless
ness, sloth, and coldness of heart increased the evil.
On this state of things broke, as God saw fit to
give them, " times of refreshing from the Lord."
Such, I doubt not, was the great Evangelical
movement, reviving personal religion at the end
ofthe last and the beginning of the present cen
tury. Such again, I doubt not, was that awaken
ing of the Church's corporate life which is known
as the Oxford movement. Both of these aimed
at arousing the dormant energies of the spiritual
life amongst us within our own reformed Church.
Both, in their main action, with human imperfec
tions, mistakes, and failures, tended to accomplish
this result. The changes introduced or attempted
by each of these were a prolongation of the ac
tually-existing lines upon which our sacred edifice
is planned. They might, in many of their details,
be wise or unwise, successful or unsuccessful ; but
both sought to perfect, not to change the Church
X

3o6 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
of England. To the efforts therefore of both of
these, those who believed with equal faith in her
Catholicity and her Reformation might, if their
minds had breadth enough to free them from mere
party trammels, heartily wish God speed.
But there is another set of changes which men
may aim at introducing, changes which do not
tend to the perfecting of our own system, but to
the introduction instead of it, of that which is in
whole or in part really another. Such changes as
these, whether their advocates do or do not see
the conclusion to which they are naturally leading,
do really symbolise a body different from our own,
and tend, so far as they are allowed, to transform
our own into it.
Suffer me to name to you, as an instance of
what I mean, one practice, the growth of which
amongst us I view with great apprehension, I
mean a tendency unquestionably manifested in
certain quarters to change the idea of the Holy
Eucharist from a Communion of the faithful into
a function ofthe celebrating priest. Such a change
is, in my most mature judgment, no lawful pro
gress in increased reverence for that great Sacra
ment upon the lines of our own Church. I cannot
but regard it as the adoption of the view, and
therefore of the practice, of another Church, to
whose doctrine as to the Holy Eucharist it natu
rally belongs, whereas it is absolutely subversive

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 307
of that which has been received amongst ourselves.
For in strict agreement as we believe with the
words of Holy Writ, and with the teaching of the
primitive Church, we do not regard the Commu
nion of the faithful as an accident of the Holy
Eucharist, which may be added to it, or separated
from it, at will, leaving the great function of in
tercession untouched by the omission, but as of
the very essence of the Sacrament. So it was at
the institution : " Take, eat, this is My Body."
The mysterious presence and the actual Commu
nion are bound indissolubly together. So they
are in St. Paul's address to the Corinthian Church :
" The bread that we break, is it not the Commu
nion of the Body of Christ.'" Such was the cus
tom of those first Christians who came together
on the first day of the week, not to see even an
Apostle celebrate, but to break bread ; to partake,
that is, plainly, themselves, of the consecrated ele
ment. From this the solitary Mass of Rome is
so absolutely unwarranted a deviation, that we
can have no assurance that it does not altogether
overthrow the very nature of the Sacrament. It
is certain that this practice is most intimately con
nected, both as cause and consequence, with the
greatest practical corruptions of the Papal Com
munion. Whatever, then, tends to its introduction
amongst ourselves appears to me to threaten the
existence of our whole religious system. Such ten-

308 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
dencies I see in the attempt to make the celebra
tions of the Holy Eucharist at our principal Sun
day Morning Service impressive, if not gorgeous,
as a display, whilst the congregation are urged
to remain through the service as spectators, but
not to partake of the Sacrament as communicants.
Such a tendency I detect in the multiplication of
choral communions, where few members of the
choir communicate. The very purpose for which
these practices are recommended seems to me at
variance with the true idea of the Eucharist ; for
effectual with God, as we doubt not, through
Christ our Lord, this great appointed act of the
Church's intercession is, I know no ground for
supposing that prayer, offered up by those who
are present at the celebration but do not partake
in it, is one whit more prevailing than prayer at
any other time or in any other place. Nor does
it seem to me that a surrounding crowd of non-
communicants adds any honour to the Sacrament.
On the contrary, to remain and not to communi
cate seems to me to dishonour Christ's institution,
and to injure the soul of the worshipper. Far
truer, far more reverend, far safer for the unpre
pared spirit, was 'the old warning, which, before
the sacred mysteries, proclaimed to the unbaptized,
to the catechumen, and to the unreconciled peni
tent that he should depart.
Against these changes, then, and such as these.

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 309
I venture with a parting voice to warn you. Never,
so far as I can read the signs of the times, was
there a period when re-union with the corrupt
communion which has ever persecuted with a tho
roughly Donatist hatred our Reformed Church,
was more impossible than now. More and more,
by an arrogance which increases with her weak
ness, by a growing intolerance for truth which she
once endured, by a new fruitfulness in error, and
by a bhnd infatuation which looks to me most
like to a judicial sentence, which makes her able
to forget truth alone and to learn nothing but
falsehood, the Papal See is alienating from itself
its own Italy, its favourite Spain, its old adherents
in Germany, and its most enlightened children in
France. . At such a moment, we are told, its hopes
are concentrated on England. It has always been.
it still remains, the special charge of the English
Church to resist these insidious assaults. Nor,
God helping her, will that Church resist in vain.
The s^cts, like the undisciplined mass whose burn
ing zeal cannot compensate in the terrible time of
an invasion for their lack of disciplined movements
and compact organization, would soon fall before
her : but the Catholic Church of England, whilst
she is true to herself and to her God, can, and
in Christ's strength I venture to say will, ward off
from this nation so tremendous an evil as its sub
jugation to the yoke ofthe Papacy. Strange, in-

3IO RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
deed, it may appear to some, that empty visions
such as these, which seem almost to belong to-
a delirious dotage, should pass before the eyes of
the old enchantress. But they are not wholly
without some semblance of probability. I will
not detain you now to examine with me the cu
rious problem of those laws of thought which ever
make such oscillations of opinion possible. I will
content myself with urging on your consideration
the reasons for resisting the danger, and suggest
ing one or two modes of keeping guard against it.
We should then, I think, most earnestly resist
all real movement towards Rome, first, because
its accomplishment would most certainly involve
the loss of that blessed heritage of the truth of
God, which, of His great mercy, through the fires
of martyrdom and the anguish of a whole gene
ration of our fathers. He has given to us ; and
next, because any degree or semblance of such
movement does more than anything besides to
help on, by the shock which it gives to our long-
established habits of belief, the progress of that
flood of lawless infidelity which Revelation shews
to us as the plague of the last days, and which
seems to have been already poured largely forth
by the angel ministers of wrath upon the air
around us. Already we have, I beheve, so suf
fered. Faith amongst us has already endured
a far ruder shock from perversions to Rome, than

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 311
from those scientific discoveries which are by
some supposed mainly to endanger its continu
ance. Between true Science and the Christian
Revelation there can be no conflict. The Queen
of sciences must be at one with her imperial
sisters, even though the too eager and perhaps
half-instructed followers of each may indulge in
passionate brawls and unseemly contentions. For
whilst there are those who bring true Science into
disrepute with believers, by setting up her claims
as hostile to the Christian faith, there are also
those amongst ourselves who decry Science in
order to exalt Revelation. The one evil creates
the other. Surely any dread or hatred of Science
is unworthy of a Christian man. For his God is
the God of nature as truly as He is the God of
grace. Nor need we fear for the result if short
sighted men do seek to array the powers of Science
against Christianity. The assaults of such as
these upon the sacred deposit of the faith the
Church has from the first endured and defeated,
and she can endure them again, and again defeat
them. Only internal corruption can make her
fall before her enemies. Whatever, therefore,
weakens within herself the heart of faith is her
chiefest danger, and this evil has been wrought
in this generation by the perversion of mighty
ones amongst her children to the corruptions, the
untruthfulness, and the superstition of the Papacy.

312 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
Against this, as a real and great danger, we are
bound to strive.
The main outline of that strife, as we ought to
wage it, it is not difficult to trace. There must
first be kept alive amongst ourselves a high esti
mation of the value of that truth which God has
given to us ; that is, of the Christian dogma in
their simplicity, of the Word of God in its autho
rity, of the Church of Christ in the completeness
of its organization and the fulness of its spiritual
powers. There must be this, to make us vigilant
in guard and ready in act to beat back the first
assault. Next, there must be unity amongst ourselves.
How little do men estimate at their full weight
of evil to the cause of Christ, those too common
faults of hard words, peevish suspicions, and un-
brotherhood in action ! What a grieving of the
blessed Spirit of unity, what a dividing of hearts,
what a weakening of hands, what a scattering of
faith is the fruit of this, and yet how decently
is it veiled over with the specious show of zeal
for the truth, and fearlessness in its defence ! To
you, brethren, I speak as to those to whom God
has given largely hitherto of this spirit of unity,
and I beseech you cultivate it yet more and more,
spread it wider around you, proclaim its blessed
ness, and be witnesses of its power.
But beyond all else, if for our Church, our

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 313
country, and our age, we are to do the work of
God, we must each one grow and abound more
and more in the deep mystery of personal one
ness with Christ our Lord. There must be no
tarrying on the threshold, but a pressing in to
the full knowledge and enjoyment of this blessed
companionship. Respectability, earnestness, ac
tion, spotless orthodoxy, ceaseless labour, patient,
successful study : all these are needful, all admi
rable ; but all of these must fail of the great end
if there be not in us, as members of His Church,
yea, and yet more abundantly as ministers of IJis
Word and Sacraments, a close, entire, personal
union with Him. We cannot witness of Him, we
cannot be filled with His strength, unless having
found peace through the blood of His Cross we
have each one borne to Him the mystery of a life,
laid it down at His feet, taken it again from His
pierced hands, and then sought in prayer and
meditation and holy communion to know more
of His actual indwelling, sq that He is one with
us and we one with Him.
1869. 

The history of human thought is little else than
a chronicle of re-actions ; and the true links which
bind successive schools may most often be found
in their antagonisms. Thus the rise of the great

314 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
evangelical movement in this land, to which not
this nation only, but every quarter of the world
owes so much, — was itself, through the working
of the Spirit of God, a re-action against the slug
gish apathy of the last century as to Christian
doctrine and the spiritual life. It was stirred into
fuller action by the infidel revolution of France,
amidst the sparks which were blown amongst our
selves from that vast conflagration. This move
ment, by degrees, changed the whole temper of
our Church. Being, — and needing to be to do its
work, — essentially a protest against old formality
in the dry use of common means of grace, its
great labour was to stir up the spiritual life_in
individuals. It proclaimed the uselessness of
creeds and formularies, and services and sacra
ments, to those whose souls were not awakened
by the living breath of the Lord. Dwelling thus
mainly on the subjective side of Christianity, to
a certain extent it tended to prevent the putting
prominently forward those great objective truths
and institutions which provide for the permanence
of the Church ; and, as it died away in a gene
ration, many of whom inherited more of its watch
words than of its spirit, — it left the Church with
a vast increase of individual piety, with a general
standard of religious feeling raised by the spasms
of true life through which it had led so many, —
but with some estrangedness amongst some of its

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 315
most exclusive adherents from the great external
provisions which God has set in the new covenant
for perpetually re-implanting, and so maintaining,
the Divine life in the world.
Meanwhile, a new eddy in the great world-
stream was making these very provisions pre
eminently important as safeguards of the faith.
The rising temper of the day was one marked
by an impatience of all authority, human and
divine, which was running rapidly into utter law
lessness. Every opinion, every institution, almost
every fact, in politics, in history, in morals, and
in religion, — was attacked. Upon the established
Church, as was natural, because it stood directly
in the course of the revolving cyclone, the storm
burst in all its fury. The men of the former
school, who clung pertinaciously to their own
shibboleth, were in some respects singularly dis
qualified from making head against it. Many of
them, in their hearty zeal for individual piety,
had come to see in their Church little more than
the most national, the best educated, best en
dowed, and most sober-minded of the sects around
them. The subjective and individual had swal
lowed up the objective and the corporate, just
when the whole strain of the struggle must rest
upon the Divine fact of there being a revealed
external truth, and a Divine present machinery
upon which the individual and inward could rest.

3l6 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
But this was not the case with all. There
woke up in many hearts, which had been directly
and indirectly affected by the last movement,
a new modification of the old re-action. Loyal
spirits were driven back to contemplate the true
essentials of the Christian Church, as the divinely-
constituted keeper of God's Word and God's
truth, as, through the teaching of that Word, the
unchanging authority in a world of perturbations,
as the divinely-constituted channel of His grace
to man. To maintain and spread these truths,
to prove that our* Church was for our land, this
one Apostolical communion, — and to shew her
forth in this character, — was the vocation of the'
new school. It took into its ranks, as all new
and strong movements will, most heterogeneous
supporters. But many of its leaders were the
very men who, in the former generation, would
have been the standard-bearers in the evangelical
column. Inheriting their love to souls, their zeal
for truth, their simple-hearted devotion to Christ,
they were ready to bear every suffering and re
proach, so that they in their day could but fight,
as their fathers had fought in the generation be
fore them, the good fight to which THE VOICE
had called them.
How mighty for good, even with all its draw
backs, has been the result of this movement, even
theJ' can form some idea who measure it by the

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 317
mere outward standard of the spiritual power of
the Church of England, as it was then, and as
it is now. And yet this outward power is but the
consequence of that growth in devotion, in self-
sacrifice, in zeal for the faith, in belief in God's
presence with her, which lie deep down below
the outer surface.
But such a movement must have its own dan
gers. As it attracted the attention of eager, and
drew the affections of passionate men, in whom
was no great depth of faith, to the glorious vision
of the Church of Christ, some would rest in it,
and so become the victims of mere exterior sen
sations ; whilst others would crave, amidst the
unsettledness and questions of the day, for the
assertion of infallibility and the utterances of ab
solute authority.
Besides such fantastic and undisciplined spirits,
in their hour of weakness, ever stood our Church's
oldest and deadliest enemy, the schismatic papal
communion ; offering them all that their mother in
her wisdom withheld, promising them what she in
her very love denied. And when, troublous times
came, when it seemed as if some great doctrine of
the faith were not duly asserted amongst us, she
succeeded, even with some nobler natures and more
loyal hearts, in drawing them away, to drink of
the cup of her sorceries, and exchange their true
old English Churchmanship for the distempered

3l8 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
foreign growth of an intriguing Ultramontanism.
This was most especially the case with some whose
earliest training had been in the Evangelical
movement, and upon whom the vision of the
Church in her completeness burst as a new dis
covery with an almost dazzling brightness. Yet
still, in spite of such losses, and of the foul re
proach and deep suspicion to which they exposed
it, the movement flowed on unchecked, blessing
often the most those who did not, as party men,
belong to it, until at this day, restored churches,
re-established ritual, more frequent and devout
communions, works of faith, and love, and mercy,
and a devotion to the truth and to the fellowship
of the saints, and stirrings of life in Synods, Con
vocations, and Missions, such as our fathers knew
not, attest, — we humbly trust — the presence with
us of the good hand of our God.
Now, it is at this time and amidst such bless
ings, that there has risen amongst us (to deal first
with that subject) this great development of Ritual
Doubtless it has sprung out of the two move
ments I have sought to describe. It seems to
me like some brilliant fantastic coruscation, which
has cast itself forth from the surface of the welter
ing mass of molten metal, which, unaffected by
such exhalations, flows on with its full stream
into its appointed mould. Those burning sparks
witness of the heat of the mass from which they

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 319
sprung ; they are not, in their peculiar action,
of its essence or its end. For it is carefully to
be noted, that, where the movement itself has
been the deepest, there ritualistic extravagances
have the least appeared. No diocese, perhaps,
from various causes, has risen more than that of
Oxford, with the general rise of Church devotion ;
none has been more free from these peculiar ex
cesses. And this suggests some important con
siderations as to our conduct with regard to these
newly-restored rites, and as to those who have
sought to introduce them.
How then, first, are the introducers of these
rites to be treated by us ? Not, I venture to say, .
at once, with harshness and reproach, not with
unloving severity, not with undistinguishing con
demnation, not with unbrotherly suspicions. These
are not the weapons of Christian men ; by these,
Christ's truth cannot be advanced. We are bound
to admit, that amongst the clergy and the laity
(for this has been anything but an exclusively
clerical movement) who are conspicuous for the
introduction of these novelties, are men inferior
to none in self-devotion, in apparent love to Christ,
in tenderness towards His poor, in zeal for His
truth, or in the fervour of their own devotion.
Such men we can ill affprd to lose. I trust that
no taunts from without, and no timorousness
within, will lead any of the rulers of our Church

320 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
to aid in driving out any one who can, consistently
with truth and faithfulness, be kept amongst us,
lest we repeat again our fathers' fault, and lose
our brethren as they lost John Wesley and his
noble fellows ".
" I append some almost prophetic words from a predecessor
in this See : — " It is peculiarly unhappy, that while we are em
ployed on one side in defending the Gospel, we are accused on
another of corrupting it. I have not now in my -view either the
Church of Rome, or the Protestants who broke off from us a century
ago. The methods of dealing with both have been long since
prescribed, and I repeat them not ; but intreat your attention to
the movements of each, especially the former, if you have any
of them in your parishes. But I mean to speak of persons risen
up in our own times, and professing the strictest piety : who ve
hemently charge us with departing from the doctrines and slighting
the precepts of our religion ; but have, indeed, themselves ad
vanced unjustifiable notions, as necessary truths, giving good peo
ple groundless fears, and bad ones groundless hopes ; disturbed
the understandings of some, impaired the circumstances of others ;
prejudiced multitudes against their proper ministers, and prevented
their edification by them ; produced first disorders in our Churches,
then partial or total separations from them, and set up unauthorized
teachers in their assemblies. Where these irregularities will end,
God only knows, but it behoves us to be very careful, that they
make no progress through our fault.
"Now, it would not only be injurious, but profane, to brand
with an opprobrious name. Christians remarkably serious, merely
for • being such ; and equally imprudent to disclaim them as not
belonging to us, to let a sect gain the credit of them, and labour
to drive them into it. Surely we should take, even were they
wavering, or actually gone from us, the most respectful and per
suasive means of recalling such, and fixing them with us. Nay,
supposing any persons irrevocably gone, we should not be hasty
to condemn, even in our thoughts, either them or their party,
as enthusiasts or hypocrites : whatever they are, it maketh no matter
to us. And much less ought we to say of either, worse than we are

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 32 1
But, with this kindly forbearance, which strives
to retain the men, there must be joined distinct
sure they deserve. When we are undoubtedly well-informed of
any extravagant things which they have asserted or done, it may be
useful to speak strongly of them, but not with anger and exaggera
tion, which will only give them a handle to censure our un
charitableness, and confute us ; but -with deep concern, that when
so few persons express any zeal for the Gospel, so many of those
who do, run into extremes, that hurt its interests. Nor will
ridicule become our character, or serve our cause better than
invective. It may please those very highly who are in no danger
of being proselyted by them. But what shall we get by that ?
Persons negligent of religion -will at the same time be confirmed
in their negligence, and think that all they need to avoid is being
righteous overmuch. Tender minds will be grieved and wounded
by such iU-placed le-rity, and crafty declaimers will rail at us with
success as scoffers denying the power of godliness. But if we let fall
any light expressions that can be wrested into a seeming disrespect
of any Scripture doctrine or phrase, we shall give our adversaries
unspeakable advantages, and they have shewn that they will use
them without mercy or equity. Therefore, we must guard every
word that we utter, against misrepresentations : be sure to express
in public and private our firm belief of whatever evangelical truths
border upon their mistakes, and certainly be as vigilant over our
behaviour as our teaching ; encourage no violence, no rudeness
towards them, but recommend ourselves to them by our mildness,
our seriousness, om: diligence ; honour those who are truly devout
and -virtuous amongst them, much more on that account than we
blame them for being injudicious and hard to please ; and be full
as ready to acknowledge the good they have done as to complain
of the harm ; yet beware, and counsel others to beware of being
drawn by esteem of their piety into relishing their singularities and
patronizing their schism." — Seeker's Charges. Second Charge, as
Archbishop of Canterbury, A.D., 1762, pp. 256 — 9. (Published by
Rivington, 1799.)
" We have, in fact, lost many of our people to sectaries by
not preaching in a manner sufficiently Evangelical ; and shall
neither recover them from the extravagancies into which they have
Y

322 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
utterances as to the truth committed to our charge.
We do, my brethren in Christ, — I doubt not one
and all, — hold fast to the great protest against
mediseval corruption made by our fathers three
hundred years ago. Certainly in our day we have
seen nothing to induce us to let it die out in un
certain or ambiguous murmurs. We have seen
the full bloom of corruptions which were then but
budding ; doubtful expressions of earlier times
concerning the Blessed Virgin have been first
exaggerated (" developed" is the Romish eu
phemism for the characteristic operation), then
fixed in formal statements, and at last enforced
as dogmatic truth. The growing cultus of the
mother of , our Lord, long bordering on the highest
act of impiety against the only God, that of trans
ferred worship, — seems to have reached its highest
conceivable limit. Never did the English mind
revolt more thoroughly than now against that
whole system which hangs like a lurid atmosphere
around ultramontane belief ; poisoning, as it seems
to us, the blessed sanctities of family life, and
breaking into strange distortions the straight lines
of unswerving truth.
No tenderness then towards men, can make us
trifle with the protest of our Church against the
run, nor keep more from going over to them, but by returning to the
right way, declaring all the counsel of God ; and that principally,
not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy
Ghost teacheth. " — Ib. , Third Charge, p. 276.

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 323
Roman alterations of the primitive and apostolic
truth. Should it at last unhappily, be plain that
any do indeed intend, through practices in ap
pearance at least , somewhat assimilated to those
of Rome, to introduce the Roman teaching, — one
course, and one course only as to them, would
then remain. May God avert that evil day, and
teach us in the meantime how to draw closer to
ourselves those whom, for our very love of Him
they love, — we cannot choose but love.
Most reluctantly should I admit any general
charge of disloyalty to our own Church as the
moving spring of this ritual development. In
some few of its abettors such disloyalty may lurk,
— I trust in very few. I cannot doubt the hearty
honesty of the great number of those whose ac
tions I am, nevertheless, compelled to condemn.
I desire to believe that they have intended only
to protest in act against the careless negligence
which has shocked them in some of their brethren,
and against the lowering down, through modern
unbelief, of some of the great doctrines of our re
formed communion ; that they have desired to
raise the English, not to introduce the Romish
use. But, leaving the men, the question remains as
to these new rites. We in this diocese have read
of them without ; but our churches, as to these,
remain as they were. To such a course I have

324 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
earnestly exhorted you both publicly and pri
vately, and to-day, in the face of the Diocese, I
repeat the counsel. Nor will I scruple to assign
my reasons for praying you still to maintain this
cautious abstinence from such changes as these.
First, then, let me say I do not rest this advice
upon any authoritative decision of mine as to the
illegality of any or all of these innovations.
There are two reasons why I avoid altogether
this ground of advice.
I. Because I may at any moment be required,
as an ecclesiastical judge, to decide upon this
question, having heard it argued before me ; and
it seems contrary to the duty of my office to pro
nounce as if I had prejudged what I afterwards
must hear with impartial care.
2. Because I think the mere legal settlement
of such a question cannot meet the vast issues
which are involved in it. I should have far more
hope of healing our troubles by taking a broader
view of the matter than merely ascertaining the
exact limits, intended or unintended, of a statute
passed some hundred years ago.
I would, then, ask all who long for these alter
ations, whom my voice can reach, — to consider
for a few moments what are the purposes and
what therefore, at any time, ought to be the
limits of ritual. All religious ritual then, which
is not used in conformity with the direct com-

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 325
mand of God, must of course be adopted for the
end of assisting His people to set forth His glory.
There can, therefore, be no absolutely fixed stand
ard to which all public Christian worship should
rigidly conform. It must, to a certain extent,
vary according to the knowledge, the customs,
and the temper of the country and age in which
it is practised. This I notice first, because the
necessity of such power of variation may, I think,
lead us on to see what are the great fundamental
rules on which the whole scheme of ritual ought
to be framed. For to fulfil its purpose, it must
lead the worshipper to God, not interpose itself
as a veil between God and him ; it must express,
whilst it may elevate his devotion. Whatever fails
in this, fails of effecting its true purpose. For if
it does not express the inward worship of the
heart, it must be either an hypocrisy or an op
pression, and in either case it must mar and not
raise devotion. It may thus fail if, by extrava
gance, or by its mere unaccustomedness, it rudely
shocks the religious instincts of the worshipper.
It may thus fail if by its splendour, its variety, or
its intricacy, it draws the soul, which should be
lifted up to God, down to the painted images
which float as upon an intervening mist upon its
own presence and action.
If these principles are sound, it follows — first,
that whilst ritual may rise with, and in its turn

326 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
help to raise increasing devotion, such a rise must
be most gradual, that it may be free from the
starts and shocks which must accompany the
sudden acting of external force on any living
body, and be able to adapt itself freely to the un
seen growth of the inward and spiritual devotion
of the souls whose outward worship it is to em
body and express ; next, that all sudden changes
of the externals of worship, which in violation of
this harmony run greatly beyond the inner life
of the worshipper's devotion, are like to injure
the character of his worship : and thirdly, that,
irrespective of any such shocks, a greatly raised
ritual need not necessarily be in itself a blessing ;
for that it may be approaching the condition in
which the intricate and artificial character of its
symbolism, or even its very beauty and gorgeous
ness, unfit it for being a transmitting medium of
the soul's worship.
As to the application of the two first of these
limitations, whilst we must always guard against
weakly yielding to the love of pre-eminence which
still leads many a parish Diotrephes to seek to
dictate rudely to those who are set over him in
the Lord ; yet there ought to be a loving, tender
watchfulness on the part of those, whether clergy
or laity, who desire any change, lest what they
deem an improvement should become a stumbling-
block to another. Still more care is needful as

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 327
to the third limitation. For .as we have, in all
the details of worship, no divinely-appointed ce
remonial, we must watch jealously in all changes
whether or no we have with us indications of the
leading hand of God, and at once suspect as
earthly additions, whatever seems to lack such
discoverable tokens of the Divine approval. And
now, when I proceed to try by these principles
the extreme ritualism of which I speak, I have
no hesitation in avowing that it does not appear
to me to make good its claim to our adoption.
Its growth has certainly been hasty and apparently
excessive. For, first, the sudden restoration of
unaccustomed vestments, — always trying to eyes
used only to a simple and colourless attire, — has
been accompanied by &n obtrusive introduction of
new, perhaps suspected, attitudes, postures, and
actions, as well as by interruptions of the wonted
service which, through addresses to the senses of
sight, sound, and smell, — challenged to themselves
notice and criticism. In all this, then, there has
been no advance by insensible gradation, but
rather a studied display of large and rapid change.
Next, there has been no general preparation of
men's minds for such alterations. All, I suppose,
would admit that in most, if not all, of our old
parish churches, the introduction of these new
rites would be startling and disturbing, — we may
even say offensive,^--not only to a few jealous,

328 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
ignorant, and narrow-minded persons, but to the
great mass of our sober-minded and devout wor
shippers. Thus, instead of finding the ground
prepared for them, they would necessarily repel
those (and they would be the many) to whom they
would be offensive, and may we not further fear
that they would too often tend to draw down from
the great Object, to the mere vehicle of worship,
too many of those to whom they were welcome .'
Further ; are there about the introduction of
these rites those marks of God's leading which
should precede, or at least accompany, such
changes .'' I cannot trace them. Rather I see
counter-indications. For, the working of the un
seen Spirit which fashions and moulds the external
aspect of the Church, must surely be traced by
most orderly developments, or God were not the
God of Order. So I think it has been in that
marked rise in the tone of our services which has
distinguished the last thirty years. The choral
worship which survived, under the shelter of au
thority, in our cathedrals, has spread to one after
another of our parish churches, as the parishioners
became fitted for the change. Whole districts
have been leavened gradually with a higher idea
and practice of worship. With that has come
a greater outward exhibition, and, I verily believe,
a quickened inward spirit of reverence towards
holy things, and in religion^ services. Faith in

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 329
God's presence and gifts has grown equally with
the external manifestations which belong to and
affirm them, until some, at least, of those without
have been constrained to fall down and confess
that God is with us of a truth. But can we with
any like confidence claim His working in these
later changes .' We have seen already their lack
of that character of gradualness which is a cor
relative of growth. Are they not wanting in other
almost equally sure indications of the presence of
His hand who is the author and the restorer of
all good ? Have they the marks of being, like
all stirrings of the life-giving Spirit in nature and
in grace, common and diffusive .' Again, Have
they with them, I will not say the encouragement,
but even the clear allowance of living authority,
whether in office, or in the weight which gathers
in any church round wisdom, learning, and holi
ness ? Is it not, on the contrary, a matter of
notoriety, that they have been eminently sectional,
if not individual in their rise ; and that they have
been mainly introduced, sometimes clearly by the
rash, and generally by the young and the ardent,
against the wishes of the more sober-minded, and
the advice of those whom He has appointed over
seers ofthe flock.
Is there not here again, a marked diversity
between the introduction of these new changes,
and the advance of that earlier and broader column

330 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
of which it is apt to deem itself the head. Op
position indeed there was to the earlier movement ;
but until the publication of the celebrated " Tract
90," nothing like the general condemnation of the
Episcopal body ; nor was there the voice of the
Church's synod uttering, as now, its cautious but
distinct words of censure on the character and
amount of what had been attempted.
If I am so far right in my principles and my
conclusions, I may venture, without any fear of
seeming faint-hearted, to go one step further, and
suggest to those who favour these changes the
great dangers which wait on such a course. These
seem to me manifold. There is no small peril
that it must ere long raise before Courts of Law
questions both of religious worship, and even of
doctrine, touching those sacred and mysterious
subjects which are never brought into such pre
cincts without fearful injury to the reverence,
tenderness of spirit, and devout love of many ; nor
without absolute shocks to the faith and stedfast
ness of others. I may go further still and say,
that, in the present condition of our Courts, such
a reference to them might easily involve us in the
peril of provoking, as to some of the most mys
terious articles of the faith, — authoritative state
ments which would create a wide-spread schism.
This first; and then, beyond this again, there is
the danger of provoking what is too likely to

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 33 1
prove the injurious because, if for no other rea
son, the premature legislation of Convocation
and Parliament on these high matters. And
again, there is the danger too of waking up the
half-slumbering spirit of religious suspicion and
narrow intolerance, which needs but to be awaked
to do, as in the times of our fathers, deeds of
ignorance and brutal violence which might make
us hide our faces before Christendom in shame.
Here, surely, are dangers enough to make us
cautious ; and all the more so, because in these
dangers is involved the great risk of staying, if
not of driving back, that gradual advance of re
verence for holy things, and that modest and yet
prolific increase of sober ritual, and withal of
deepened devotion in worship, which the present
generation has seen moving onward with such
a blessed presence.
Two other dangers let me suggest, lying in
a deeper sphere than those I yet have named.
As it is through the spiritual organization of
their own Church that her ministers and members
come into actual contact with that whole body of
Christ in which the Spirit dwells, and which is
moulded by that Divine presence, — is there not
a danger, lest in resisting authority, even to pro
mote, as they think, the efficiency of our services,
— men may be found to have been putting rashly
forth an uncommanded hand to stay the ark of
the jealous God .-'

332 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
With the suggestion of one remaining danger,
I will quit this part of the subject. There are,
I believe, those who have favoured these changes
because they appeared to them to introduce not
Roman customs but those of England before the
Reformation ; — such as those embodied in the
Sarum Missal or the Provincial Constitutions col
lected by Lyndwood, or his glosses thereon. This
is true in fact, but it seems to me to go but a little
way towards removing the just objections enter
tained to this revival by those who value purity
of doctrine above all things. For these were not
the rites of the earlier, but of the later centuries.
There can be no question that, though our English
rite preserved even at that time, like the Ambro
sian at Milan, its own distinctive character, — yet
that as we were then deeply imbued with the cor
ruptions of the West, these errors would in some
degree be represented in our peculiar services.
Earnestly, in God's name, would I implore all who
value His truth to weigh well the danger they
incur by familiarising the young and the unwary
even with such mitigated forms of error. For one,
I trem.ble at our Master's words, " Whosoever
shall break one of these least commandments,
and shall teach men so, he shall be called least
in the kingdom of heaven''."
For these reasons then, amongst many others,
I deeply lament these extreme changes which have
" St. Matt. V. 19.

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 333
been here and there introduced amongst us. I la
ment if possible still more the lack of temperate
discretion, and the manifest unwillingness to obey,
which has in many instances marked the mode
in which the changes have been made. Most
of all I deplore what seems to me the unquestion
able fact that in some instances there has been
a studied introduction of names and usages which
seem to have nothing else to commend them than
their distinctively Roman character. Words would
fail me in condemning such conduct, if it implied
in Church of England clergymen a secret attach
ment to that schismatical and corrupt body. But
if it be free from this greater sin, how grievous
is the fault of at once seeking to introduce novel
ties into God's service, and at the same time
needlessly attaching to them that most certain
of scandals, to all true and loyal-hearted English
Churchmen, — a popish appearance ! Most justly
does the Committee of the Lower House of the
Convocation of our Province " remonstrate against
the adoption of a phraseology borrowed from
foreign communions, and which is, in some in
stances, as applied to the ministrations of the
Church of England, novel and offensive "." Surely
our Master's tenderness with the weak, and His
love for souls, has been too much forgotten in such
displays as these.
" Report of the Lower House of the Convocation of Canterbury
on Ritual.

334 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
But you may ask. What are the practical steps
which the crisis requires .' The indiscretion of our
brethren has made any answer to this question
difficult, and I propose one with unfeigned mis
giving. But thus much appears clear to me.
I. That the remedy cannot be found in legisla
tion : first, of course, through our Convocations
and ultimately by Parliament. Such legislation
would be eminently premature, and therefore dan
gerous. To be safe, it should embody and ratify,
but not precede the Church's general conclusions.
To take but one instance. Legislation, if at
tempted, must of course deal at once with the
Rubric which is quoted as legalizing these restored
ornaments. What could it do ? If it simply re
pealed the enactment, it would, by the mere act
of such repeal, stir many sleeping embers into
a wide-spread blaze. For this is the enactment
which connects the whole ceremonial of our Church
with the ceremonial of Christian antiquity. It is
the counterpart in outward rites of the claim
which we put so fearlessly forward in doctrine
that we hold implicitly all which was held from
the beginning by the undivided Church. Circum
stances may have suspended the common em
ployment of these outward tokens of our unity
with the past, but we claim them as ours should
occasion require us to use our inheritance. How
many amongst us who would greatly prefer allow
ing our existing customs to rule undisturbed in

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 335
act, would protest earnestly against breaking any
links which yet join us to the pre-papal Catholic
Christendom ? Looking at the constitution of
many minds, it is really impossible to say how
far this might not reach.
But, besides these considerations ; if this rubric
were simply repealed, no rule for our ritual would
remain. Are then the tirties propitious for Con
vocation and Parliament proceeding further, and
enacting by canon and statute a new table of
rules for all the ornaments and ceremonial of our
Church ? Every one of us, I believe, would de
precate a step so certain to be richly productive
of evil in its discussion, so likely to promote in
the end variance and schism, which might utterly
rend our body and paralyse its usefulness. Any
legislation, be it remembered, must be in the
direction of restricting the large liberty now en
joyed by men of all shades of opinion in the
Church, from the mere fact of the various pre
sent sources of rule. For statutes, canons, pre
scriptions, and usage all now tend to modify and
to enlarge our licence. A new sharply - defined
statutable rule would indeed make havoc of the
Church's liberty on every side.
The same objection applies to seeking in judi
cial sentences new and authoritative interpreta
tions of rules, the many-sided application of which
has often enabled our Church to expand or con-

336 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
tract her ceremonial with the elasticity which a
great national communion so eminently requires.
Here, again, I think we may find words of wisdom
in the Report of the Committee of the Lower
House, when they give their opinion that "judi
cial proceedings would tend to promote rather
than to allay dissensions," and that "to attempt
to establish a rule applicable to all places and
congregations alike, is to establish a uniformity
which cannot be obtained except at the price of
peace ''."
Add to this, the certainty of another and per
haps a greater danger. However we might strive
to limit the question to rites, we could not, in
the discussion, avoid dealing with the doctrines
of which rites are the shadows ; so that we should
incur the peril of requiring such tribunals as ours
are, to interpret with authority definitions of the
greatest mysteries of our holy faith, which we
have inherited from an undivided Christendom,
of the history of which, and of the value of the
theological terms in which they are expressed, the
Judges of such courts are likely to be absolutely
ignorant. Legal proceedings, then, as well as legislative
measures, may, I trust, be avoided : and yet I fear
both will be inevitable unless those who, by rash-
¦* Report of Committee of Lower House of Convocation on
Ritual, p. II.

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 337
ness, to say the least, of action, have brought
themselves and us into these difficulties, will make,
under the fatherly counsel of those set over them
in the Lord, some sacrifice for peace. My earnest
counsel to them is, that, in every instance, they
lay their whole case before their Bishop, and act
absolutely on his direction. He will, no doubt,
consider well and lovingly the special circum
stances of each church ; the difficulty of suddenly
abandoning all to which a congregation has be
come attached, and, so far as he deems he law
fully can, will seek to meet such difficulties by
a just and comprehensive settlement of the ques
tions referred trustfully to him. In urging this
course upon faithful Churchmen, I speak with
the more confidence because it is assuredly the
true Church line. Until the passing of the Act
of Uniformity there is no question that the Bishop
to a large degree fixed the Liturgy of his Dio-
c^e ; those, then, who contend, on the strength
of a dormant Rubric, for a legal right to innovate
on the use of the Diocese against the judgment
of the Bishop, are, in truth, seeking to super
sede the Church's rule by an Act of Parliament.
Peace, I believe, is still obtainable if, as I venture
to advise, they will place the matter in their
Bishop's hands. For, that which has most alarmed
the great body of the Church, is a sense of entire
insecurity as to what amount of alteration, and
z

338 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
what hidden doctrinal meanings, recent changes
seem to threaten.
It may be objected to this that it would still
leave some difference of ceremonial in different
churches. To a certain extent it would. But
I do not regard such a variation, if it be mode
rate, allowed by authority, and such as implies
no discordance of principle, as in itself an evil.
So far from it, with a general uniformity some
differences in detail ought, I conceive, to be al
lowed. On this principle, I have now for twenty-
one years administered this Diocese : never even
urging upon those who from habit disliked it
themselves, or feared the misunderstanding of
their flocks, (and not in such cases urging it now,)
obedience to such plain requirements as that the
Sunday morning sermon, when a part of the Com
munion Office, should be preached in the surplice
and not in the gown. And, in leaving such mat
ters open, I have feared no injurious breach of
uniformity. What is most suitable in one church
may be very unsuitable in another. Choral ser
vice, a sober splendour in ceremonial, all that
our Church allows of symbolism, may be useful
in one place and most harmful in another ; and,
for the most part, the just application of so
flexible a rule as this of course implies, may,
I believe, be trusted to the discredon of the
clergy and their congregations throughout our

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 339
different parishes, under their Bishop's rule, if
only we are prepared at once to remind the tur
bulent and disaffected that the due ordering of
the services rests, within the limits fixed by the
law, with the Ordinary, and not with them, and
at the same time to consult, with a tender anxiety,
ever for the infirmities of the really devout. So
far, indeed, do I carry this principle, that where
new churches have been built with a view to the
practice in them of a legal ritual higher than the
common, and where congregations have been
gathered to it and learned to value it, — I should
greatly regret any sudden and violent changes
(except as to matters absolutely necessary) being
forced upon them in the direction of a lower
ceremonial in order to maintain a frozen uniform
ity. Within certain limits, and those somewhat
wide ones, I should wish to see the Church of
this free country left free to gather in the people
to herself. If into churches in which there are
no worshippers of longer standing, who, being
used to another mode of conducting the service,
would be rudely shocked by some increase of
ceremonial, any of those multitudes who are now
without, can, by any increase of the externals of
worship which does not violate the law, or tend
evidently to superstition, be drawn in to hear
God's Word, and to worship Him, — I for one
should unfeignedly rejoice. Nor, whilst I think

340 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
it our absolute duty to regard tenderly and lov
ingly the very prejudices which in our own people
have entwined themselves with their devotions,
can I understand why those who have preserved
for themselves the simpler modes of worship to
which they are accustomed, should grudge to
others the more florid use to which their hearts
incline, provided only that the differences involve
no variety of principle or infringe upon the har
mony of a common faith. By such conscientious
self-restraint, alike in adopting changes ourselves,
and in interfering with and judging others, I think
we may best promote that growth in faith, in
devotion, and in the accidents of worship, which
has marked the present century, through the in
fluence first of the Evangelical, and then of what
I should term the Church movement, and which,
I trust, through God's mercy, may yet advance
soberly and healthily amongst us.
For surely there is much left to be attained.
How far, for instance, are we below the standard
set by our Reformers as to our celebration of
the Holy Eucharist. They, as I have already
remarked, to guard against the abuse of solitary
masses, provided that the celebration of the great
crowning act of public worship, — which they clearly
contemplated as the rule for Sundays and holy-
days, — should be arrested at a certain point of
the service, unless four, or at least three, should

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 341
be ready to communicate with the Priest ; and
we, alas, have adopted, as the normal condition'
of our services, what they prescribed, — under
exceptional circumstances, — to prevent one spe
cial abuse ; and except on one Sunday in the
month, too commonly interrupt our celebration
as a matter of course, however many may be
present who would communicate.
Surely the natural consequences of such a de
cline may be traced amongst us in our infrequent
celebrations, in the comparative paucity of our
regular communicants, and in the wide prevalence
of low and unworthy notions concerning the blessed
mystery of the Lord's Supper.
It is not, then, — and I trust that this may add
weight to my words of caution, — from a blind
contentment with our present standard as abso
lutely perfect, — that I have advised you to ab
stain from adopting the recently exhibited ex
treme development of ritual. Nay, it is not even
because I would imperatively stay all ritual pro
gress, so only that it conforms to these four con
ditions : — First, that it is not contrary to law ;
2ndly, that it does not tend to promote amongst
us any false doctrine or corrupt practice ; 3rdly,
that it be at the least not condemned by living
authority; and 4thly, that it be the gradual ex
pression in outer things of the advancement of
the Church's inward life. Such a moderate and

342 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
sober development of its ceremonial seems to me
to belong necessarily to the Church as a living
body : nor, if it be at all in its normal condition,
can its ritual be healthily congealed into abso
lutely unalterable forms. Life implies, of neces
sity, change. As the sap rises abundantly or
is impeded in its flow, the outer aspect of the
living bough bears witness to the alternations
of the hidden current. As the currents of the
blood or the vibrations of the nervous energy,
are healthy or diseased, the countenance, and
even the very form of the limbs, will visibly alter.
Death only secures immutability. No less cer
tainly must the outward expression of the Life
Spiritual change with the changes of its inner
currents. Again, in any normal condition of the Church,
the spiritual necessities of the body necessitate
changes. Every varying phase through which
it is passing renders some change expedient, per
haps essential to life. The bark-bound tree, the
hide -bound animal, must suffer, and too often
die. The rigid clasp of an unalterable ritual may
fatally repress zeal, generate formality, or nourish
superstition. In the normal condition, therefore,
of the Church, ritual must be, and ought to be,
elastic, and subject to variations. But it may be
thought that with us such changes are made im
possible by the legal character of our rubrics and

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 343
services. Impossible of course such changes are
not, even when they mount up to alterations of
the letter of our rubrics ; since they may be, and
have been, effected by Convocation and Parlia
ment. Difficult they no doubt are, and, from
various causes, which will occur to most of you,
often dangerous ; and therefore not to be at
tempted save in the last extremity of some press
ing danger ; or, better still, when they are autho
ritatively registered by the legislatures of the
Church and of the State as the conclusions which
have been generally adopted after patient wait
ing and wide discussion. But it is of the essence
of living bodies that they provide .spontaneously
and without external or foreign aid for the mul
titude of lesser contingencies by which they are
beset. The bough which is growing over-weighty
to maintain in the blast its connection with the
parent stem, secretes the knotty fibre which
sheathes anew the threatened junction. Animal
life abounds in such self-developed compensations,
and the spiritual life is not less self-sustained or
exuberant in resource. How often, alas ! in our
own and in every other Church has the ebbing
tide of the spiritual life, by its mere listlessness, re
duced to its own new level its nominally unaltered
ritual ? How often, thank God, has revived love
and renewed earnestness in devotion filled the
old limbs with a flood of life which has trans-

344 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
figured forms which it retained ? And it is the
special duty of the Church's living governors to
understand such symptoms, and to minister to
their relief whatever powers of relaxation or con
trol have been left to them, without incurring
the hazard or waiting for the tedious issues of
actual legislation. Many such powers our own
Church has lodged in its living governors. It is
their charge to interpret ambiguous rubrics, to
reduce to unity matters diversely taken, to ac
quiesce in or to disallow changes which by minute
accretions the living body has silently developed.
Great, no doubt, is the judgment, the courage, the
knowledge, and, above all perhaps, the impar
tiality which is needful to enable them to dis
charge aright these delicate and often momentous
duties. But they cannot leave these duties un
done without grievous danger to the polity over
which they are appointed overseers ; and, how
ever difficult be the task, there is a strength for
its discharge which they who seek it faithfully
will find. Such difficulties are the sure accom
paniments of times of earnestness and growth ;
when the full current of the inner life must,- by
reason of its strength, cast itself forth into some
new development. Dull and lazy governors
marvel at and hate such times ; and there is
mixture enough of evil in all such movements
to make such a feeling plausible at least, if not

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 345
natural. The mountain torrent which brings
down the dust of gold carries with it a heavy
load of far ignobler substances. But the opened
eye reads in such flood times, with all their tur
bulence and perils, tokens of the marvellous in-
working of the Spirit, opportunities of co-opera
tion with it, pledges of the great restoration of
all things.
It is in this spirit that I think we are called
on to look at the present time. The waters surely
are troubled, but what if the hidden presence
of an angel of the Lord has troubled them, and
it be, if rightly used, a time of healing from
our God .'
Whilst, then, I consider the actual ritual de
velopments which have been so hastily adopted
in their novelty, multiplication, and amount, as
rash, unadvisable, and dangerous, may it not
be that the attempt to introduce them, and the
amount of welcome they have met with from
many both of the laity and clergy, point to some
part of our present system which may admit of
perfecting .' This is a grave question. Most of
the heaviest blows dealt against our Church have
been the result of neglecting such intimations.
If Her rulers had read aright the signs of the
times, and tried the wise policy of supplying
within the Church that for which so many yearned,
instead of retreating upon what must always be

34^ RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
the losing game of a chill repression of the
desires of a multitude of hearts, the great Me
thodist division might, I doubt not, have been
prevented. Does, then, the present movement point to any
want to be supplied, or to any point to be gained .?
I believe that it does. There is, I think, clearly
to be traced, not only in our own communion, but
in the more earnest of the religious sects around
us, a craving for a more expressive symbolism in
worship. This is probably a re-action against the
chillness in which Puritanism has been long dying
out, as well as against the utter vagueness of mo
dern doubts. Now, if this is so, the wise ruler
should, I think, consider whether it is possible in
any way to guide and satisfy so legitimate a de
sire. Its mere repression may make some sluggish
and apathetic who might have been trained up in
all the glowing zeal of Christian soberness. This
is perhaps the great danger of the policy of bare
repression. It tends so terribly to dry up the
springs of an earnest spirituality of life. Besides
this, it will assuredly drive others over to adopt
the deceiving symbolism of Rome, which is ever
lying in wait to profit by any mistakes of ours.
She manifests by her undisguised hatred to all Ca
tholic movement amongst us, how well she knows
the strength we might find against Papal perver
sion in a satisfying amount of English Ritual.

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 347
But here we are met, first, by the allegation that
this increased ceremonial is, after all, only the ex
pression of a feeble love of ornament, an unmanly
desire to deck out the ministers of the sanctuary
in gorgeous attire and sumptuous vestments, and
is really incompatible with spiritual worship. This,
when it is examined closely, proves to be the old
Puritan objection to the Church's whole system
of external rites and ceremonies ; it really applies
as truly to surplices and hoods as to chasubles
and copes. I need not repeat to you Hooker's
old argument against Travers, to expose such fal
lacies as these. All God's appointments in the
Jewish, all early practice in the Christian Church,
and all the symbolism of the Apocalypse, alike
contradict such a teaching. So much, indeed, the
more thoughtful objectors to all increase of ritual
admit. For they object to change, not on its own
account, but from their condemnation of the doc
trines which the altered Ritual appears to them
to symbolise.
They regard our limited customary rites as an
essential part of our protest against Popery, and
as all which can safely be allowed without some
danger of restoring, with what they think Roman
ritual, Roman doctrine. With me, and I doubt
not with you, so far as our own judgment on the
matter is concerned, this is the very essence of
the question. We would tolerate no rites which
do really favour the corruptions of Rome.

348 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
But do facts and does reason bear out this view .'
Is it not rather contrary to the facts, and deroga
tory to the character of our Reformation ; dero
gatory to its character, as though it were directed
against forms, and not against corruptions in doc
trine, against ancient vestments, and not against
the claims of Papal supremacy and infallibility,
against transubstantiation, against the worship of
the Blessed Virgin, against purgatory, against with
holding God's word from the people, against "those
sacrifices of masses in which it was commonly said
that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and
the dead "." The allegation that Rome uses this
ceremonial, of itself proves nothing against it.
The real question for us English Churchmen is.
Is it a use of Christian antiquity, or is it a Popish
addition ? for this is the very point of our protest
against Rome. We charge her with having added
her own superstitions to the great deposit of pri
mitive truth and |3ractice which we hold and ob
serve with her ; and never, therefore, do we more
emphatically protest against her than when, re
jecting her novelties, we assert our own Catho
licity by our adherence to the old customs 'in their
simplicity, which, for herself, she has depraved
with her superstitious additions. If the real rule
were, the farther from Rome the nearer to truth,
we must equally give up Scripture, Creeds, and
' Art. XXXI.

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 349
Sacraments, and become Rationalists, Infidels, or
Brownists ^.
The question, then, is one of fact. Are our pre
sent rites all that the earliest times, or that our
own most learned Divines have admitted and
practised .' There can be no doubt about the an
swer to both of these questions. The ceremonial
of qntiquity was far richer than ours ; so was that
in use by such great Anglican Bishops, (to name
no others,) as Cosin and Andrewes. The real in
fluence which, at the season of the Reformation,
lowered our customary ritual, was the presence
not of the anti-Papal, but of the Puritan element ;
of that element which wrought on according to
its nature, and never rested till it brought down,
in one common ruin, our Altar, our Prayer-book,
and our Crown. It was partly the need of Puritan
support, partly the desire of Puritan comprehen
sion, partly the influence of those who, after the

' Our Church has always disavowed this mode of argument ;
hear, for instance, the language of the thirtieth Canon of 1603 : —
" But the abuse of a thing doth not take away the lawful use of it.
Nay, so far was it from the purpose of the Church of England to
forsake and reject the Churches of Italy, France, Spain, Germany,
or any such like Churches, in all things which they held and prac
tised, that, as the Apology of the Church of England confesseth,
it doth with reverence retain those Ceremonies which do neither
endamage the Church of God, nor offend the minds of sober men :
and only departed from them in those particular points wherein
they were fallen both from themselves in their ancient integrity and
from the Apostolical Churches, which were their First Founders."

3SO RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
Marian persecutions, returned amongst us with
the glory and influence of Confessors, but with
the feelings of the foreign rather than of the
English Reformers, which carried forward these
changes ; it was the force of these influences, and
not our protest against Rome, which gave its spe
cial shape and colouring to our own ceremonial.
Of this I remind you, ist, for the sake of his
torical truth ; and 2ndly, because I see little hope
of peace amongst ourselves, and I see much danger
of the loss of many, if matters are to be discussed
in heats bred by misstated facts, and not in the
calmness of reasonable consideration.
Yet it may be urged, that, as most of the points
of ritual now in discussion, tend to exalt men's
estimate of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper,
they must inchne towards Rome. This common
allegation seems to me to contain a most im
portant error. The protest of our Reformers
against the Roman teaching as to that great Sa
crament, was not that it was lifted up thereby
too high in men's estimation, but that its simple
grandeur was defaced by human additions ; that
the doctrine of transubstantiation was a modern
rationalistic mode of explaining what God had
left unexplained ; that it was not making the
transcendental presence more real, but more ma
terial. All the Roman corruptions of this great
Sacrament seem to me the results of applying to

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 351
it this rationalizing process. Instead of receiving
with simple faith the institution as a whole, and
resting on the assurance of God's Word, that, duly
ministered and received, it conveyed to the re
ceiver the partaking of the Body and Blood of
Christ, speculation set busily to work to pry into
what God had hidden, and ascertain how that
conveyance was effected. Thus the immediate
effect of the prayer of consecration was to be de
fined ; the mode of the Presence to be explained ;
the difficulties attending it to be accounted for.
Hence the solution of the change in the Sacra
ment of the matter of the Bread and Wine, with
the preservation of their qualities ; and, from this,
the assertion of a material, and so, in truth, of
a local presence on the Altar, and with this (as
our Reformers most truly alleged), at once the
overthrowing the nature and mystery of a Sacra
ment, and the giving occasion amongst the ig-
norant,s to those superstitious, if not idolatrous,
uses which are now so fearfully favoured by the
new rite of the Benediction. It was to this chain
of error, and not to the reality of the Presence,
that our Reformers objected. I will not weary
you with proving this ; let, for such purpose, these
few words of Ridley, (Bishop and Martyr here in
Oxford,) suffice. "Think not because I disallow
that presence s," (the carnal presence asserted by
E " Which the first proposition maintaineth. "

352 RITUAL, ITS VALUE,
the theory of transubstantiation,) " as a presence
which I take to be forged, phantastical, and be
side the authority of God's Word, brought into
the Church by the Romanists, that I therefore go
about to take away the true Presence of Christ's
Body in His Supper rightly and duly ministered,
which is grounded upon the Word of God ''," &c.
There need not, then, be any tendency toward
Rome, but on the contrary, a safeguard against
her wiles, in rites which shewed that we valued,
as highly as herself, this great culminating act of
Christian worship, whilst with our Fathers we pro
test in no faltering tones, against her corruptions
of the great primitive doctrine of the Eucharist,
and refuse to receive the ungrounded fiction of
a carnal, for the unquestioning certainty of a real
Presence in it of our Blessed Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. A distinctive dress, then, for him
who ministers at this celebration, need not be
Roman. It is indeed at this moment ordered for
our cathedral service ; it was in common use at
one of our Cathedrals within a century. It need
not, if unaccompanied by other causes of suspicion,
shock any now. I know not that I can better
shew this than by quoting to you some striking
words of a bishop of our sister Church in America,
of the school of thought most adverse to Rome,
in answer to the allegation I have just dealt
¦¦ Works of Ridley, Parker Society, p. 201.

ITS LIMITATIONS, AND ITS EXCESSES. 353
with : " Our glorious Reformation was directed
not against the ritualism of Rome, so far as it re
tained the sanction of the Bible and the Primitive
Church, but against those false and corrupt doc
trines by which she had so grossly innovated upon
the pure creed of the Gospel. The main labours
of my ministerial life have been devoted to our
controversy with Rome, to the defence of our mar
tyred Reformers, and to the vindication of our
own Scriptural, Apostolical, and really Catholic
system '." " I have little doubt that my children
will behold the ' glory and beauty ' of our public
worship brought back to its first stage in the Re
formation, in accordance with the rule which has
never been formally renounced, and still remains
in the rubric of the Enghsh Prayer-book \"
It may, I hope, allay the fears of some amongst
us, who value, as I do, the great inheritance of
primitive truth, won for us by our martyred Re-
forniers, to see that the sober flow of reviving
ritual is not hostile to that truth, and need not
tend toward Papal corruptions : that it may tend,
if rightly guided, only to restore to us what our
Fathers had before those corruptions arose ; to
revive old English, not to ape new Roman, ways ;
and that, so viewed, it may be a movement of
God's Spirit re-acting against the too prevalent
' " Law of Rituahsm," by Bishop Hopkins, of Vermont, p. 5.
" Ibid., p. 98.
A a

354 RITUAL, ITS VALUE, &C.
inclination to remove all mystery from religion ;
a holy desire to mark more clearly in outward
act and sign that the worship of the Church even
here, for each one who has faith to read aright
its true character, is but the shadow cast on earth
of the intercession and the worship of the heavenly
temple. Only let it never be forgotten, that every
increase of outer ceremonial must be accompanied
by an equal increase in the simple preaching of
the Gospel of Christ, and of the heart's devotion
of the worshippers : for that without this inward
breathing of the soul under the inspiration of the
blessed Spirit, all external imagery soon passes
into the second death of a hypocritical formality.
1866.

XXVIII.
CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF MODERN
INFIDELITY.
T^ /"E have God's Revelation as we have His
* » Law, and we must cleave to it purely,
wholly, and determinately. We must let no in
dolence of spirit make us yield up the great con
tention for the truth which in all generations
God's witnesses have had to maintain ; we must
let no illusive promises of intellectual advance
ment beguile us from the simplicity of the Gospel ;
but holding fast the word of truth, and striving
earnestly for the old faith once delivered to the
saints, we must not fear to say with the great
Apostle of the Gentiles, " If any man preach any
other Gospel unto you than that ye have received,
let him be accursed "." You will, I am certain, feel
with me that this is neither the time nor place for
entering at large on a refutation of these opinions.
The objections advanced by these writers must
to a very great degree be answered in detail ;
and he that would deal convincingly with them
must therefore be prepared to examine them at
a length which would be impossible here. Such
" Gal. i. 9.

356 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
a treatment they have already received from many
able hands, and we need not be in any measure
ashamed of the answers given to objectors by the
existing defenders of our faith. The issue of this
strife is in the hands of God. It may be that the
rapidity of the Church's growth, the great stirring
within her of the religious affections, the shooting
forth on all sides of the green tendrils of awakened
feelings, and here and there perhaps something
of the rank growth of a too hastily developed
ritual, rendered such a sharp touch of frost need
ful ; and that, having nipped what was too forward
to be matured, called up the .sterner spirit of argu
ment, and awoke from their temporary slumber
the reasonable defences of our faith, the storm
of infidelity shall pass away, as it has passed
before. It may be so. But, on the other hand,
it may be that we are but entering on the first
approaches of that dreary winter of unbelief which
shall usher in the glorious spring-tide, when the
Son of Man cometh. It may be that what we
hear around us now are the echoes of the coming
footfall of the great Antichrist. God knows. But
however it be, it equally becomes us to hold fast
for ourselves the word of truth, and, as God's
watchmen, to be marking vigilantly the signs of
the times, that we may be ready to meet each
error as it rises with the sure witness of His un
failing truth. Some utterance then you may, I

MODERN INFIDELITY. 357
think, at such a time expect from one set over
you in the Lord as to the general aspect of this
assault upon our faith, and as to the mode in
which it becomes us to bear ourselves in relation
to it. To these points, then, God helping me,
I will now address myself.
And, first, let me ask you to notice how widely
this spirit is spread. So far from being confined
to our own Church or nation, wherever throughout
Christendom the mind of man is awake, equally
amongst Roman Catholics and Protestants, there
it is stirring''. Next, observe, that it does not pro
fess to be an attack upon the Christian faith, still
less a maintenance of atheism. It professes to be
an attempt to develope the true inward life of
Christianity ; to make its doctrines reasonable,
its morals perfect, its pervading spirit large and
comprehensive. It would find in the Christian
Creeds, as in all other modes of belief, a residuum
of truth : in the Holy Scriptures, as in all other
good books, a remaining word of God, after the
errors and prodigies had been discharged from its
pages : in the Church, when the supernatural
had been eliminated from its constitution and its
life, a congregation ever advancing towards its
complete development and full perfection.
>> A striking instance of this may be seen in the recent Vie de
Jesus, by Ernest Renan, which differs from the writings of our own
authors only in its more plain profession of the Ebionite heresy.

3'58 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
It is quite essential to our comprehension of this
movement, and therefore to our being able effec
tually to oppose it, that we should understand
that it professes to aim not at the destruction
of Christianity, but at its perfecting. Hence it
has happened that a very few of our own body
have persuaded themselves that they may retain
their position amongst us, and yet lend their aid
and countenance to the spread of the new opi
nions. Such a fact is an additional reason for our
seeking thoroughly to understand the meaning of
this movement, and the limits to which in con
sistency it must reach.
Now what has been already said may, I think,
sufiice to fix its meaning. It is an endeavour
to get rid of all belief in the personal acting
amidst us of any supernatural power, whether
in the realms of matter or of spirit. Every move
ment in either kingdom is to be resolved into the
working of a fixed system of unalterable laws
pervading all being. But it is to be observed,
that whilst so far there is a great consent within
the school, yet that there is as great a variance
on the further question of how those laws came
to be impressed on the creation. As to this,
indeed, all these writers are confused, indistinct,
and often self-contradictory ; sometimes inclining
to the Pantheistic view; sometimes, however un
consciously, to that of a simple atheism. Thus

MODERN INFIDELITY. 359
we are told in one of their latest volumes ", which
I shall quote throughout the remarks I shall here
make, with full confidence that it expresses most
thoroughly, and in the most careful language, the
last expressions of the advocates of this new
scheme of Christianity, that " to a perfect intelli
gence, one particular individual existence being
given, it would necessitate in thought the rest
of the universe of Being ; as a scientific anatomist
can reconstruct in idea the whole of an animal
organism from the inspection of a single member.
To such an intelligence each individual existence
would imply the whole of the universe as con-
ditionary and conditioned by its existence ^," &c.
Now this it could of course do only on the
supposition that all which exists, exists of neces
sity in one continuous chain of correlative being.
Once admit the presence and acting of a reason
able Will in the midst of such a creation, and this
necessary correlation is at an end. Even man,
because he has a will, perpetually interferes
through the acting of its higher law with the con
tinuance of the lower chain of prefixed conditions.
Every interference of the will of man with the
" A Brief Examination of Prevalent Opinions on the Inspiration
of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. By a Lay
Member of the Church of England. With an Introduction by
Henry Bristow Wilson, B.D., Vicar of Great Staughton, Essex, &c.
(Longman, Green, and Co. 1861.)
•i Introduction to Brief Examination, &c., p. Ivii.

36o CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
laws of gravitation is an instance in point. When
he projects upwards into the air the stone which
the force of gravity would force to the earth,
he interferes with the acting of the lower con
stant law by the simple introduction of the higher.
It is absolutely dependent upon his will whether
that stone shall, as all the inevitable sequences
require, lie motionless upon the earth, or whether
it shall mount upwards into the middle air against
the primary law of its nature. The voluntary
acting of the will of a reasonable being interferes,
that is, with the chain of events around him. And
if we suppose the entrance into such a world of
Being of a Divine Person, acting so as to ad
minister the lower creation for purposes of love
and goodness towards reasonable creatures, them
selves possessed of free will ; and suppose, further,
that for any reason he is willing to heal, to feed,
or to teach them ; such interferences as we call
" miracles," — that is, no true infraction of any law,
but the subjecting for the time the lower law
to the higher, — become, so to speak, natural.
But the presence of such a Divine Person with us
is exactly the fact which these writers wish to
deny ; and so they are driven to such statements
as this, which involves in its very terms the whole
doctrine of atheistic necessity. Probably its ut
terer was himself unconscious that he was teaching
atheism ; his only aim being to exclude alike from

MODERN INFIDELITY. 36 1
nature and from grace the voluntary actings of
a personal God ; but not the less surely, though it
may be unconsciously, do he and those who think
with him in their strife with what has hitherto
been received as Christianity attack theism itself ;
for whilst they seem to themselves still to main
tain it, they do in fact deny one or other of its
necessary consequences.
Perhaps it is the attempt to veil this from them
selves which leads them more commonly to at
tack the acting of God amongst us, by adopting
the Pantheistic method of confounding the Creator
with His works. Thus the same writer says
again : " This universe is interpenetrated and com
bined into an infinite whole by an all-pervading
infinite Spirit . . . •. He is not withdrawn from the
universe, or from any of its parts, as governing
it from without .... it is the natural and neces
sary expression of His thought according to a di
vine nature and a rational necessity''." And again,
he tells us that God " is in the most intimate
relation with the whole universe of finite exist
ences, which is, as we have said, the experience
of His own life and reason ^"
The end to be gained by this Pantheistic con
fusion of the Creator with His work? is what we
saw before to be this writer's object. He would
exclude from the administration of the worlds
' Introduction, p. lix. ' Ibid., p. Ixii.

362 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
of nature and of grace the direct acting of a
personal God ; and so he tells us that " the dis
tinction between natural and supernatural is fluc
tuating and arbitrary .... that which is as yet
unknown is supernatural ^." Here we should note
a well - concealed but very mischievous fallacy.
It is of course quite true that to ignorance many
things appear to be infractions of the ordinary
laws of nature, which knowledge ascertains to be
their simple fulfilment. An eclipse in the hea
vens over us, or the volcanic eruptions of the
earth below us, are instances in point. In this
sense, therefore, it is most true that the line be
tween the natural and the supernatural is fluc
tuating and arbitrary. But it is simply a falla
cious assumption to infer that there is no line
between the two, because the mists of mis-appre
hension prevent the ignorant from tracing it with
perfect accuracy ; or that God does not personally
interfere in His world when He says that He
does, because untaught men have believed Him
so to interfere when He has not done so. Having,
then, thus fallaciously confounded together, as
though they were identical, our subjective notion
of when God may be pleased to interfere, with
the objective fact of His interfering at all with
the creatures of His hand, he proceeds to state
that " We cannot suppose God to construct an
s Introduction, p. Ixiii.

MODERN INFIDELITY. 363
universe in order to shew power by infringing
laws which observed order had led His creatures
to believe constant, nor to constitute a moral
order causing to grow up in us sentiments of
justice and of love in order to shock them, in
the contents of any Revelation He should make
to us ''." By " infringing constant laws," and
" shocking moral order," the writer means to de
scribe those introductions of the higher law of the
action of the will of a Divine Person which, as
I have above suggested, are the fittest attributes
of that supernatural presence with us which it is
the writer's great object to deny. This, I think, we
shall clearly see, if we examine the detailed ap
plication of the principle he has thus enunciated.
For first, the direct action of God is hereby
excluded from the Holy Scriptures, which become
" the product of a special, though not super
natural, working of the Divine Spirit in a race
endowed with rare moral strength, centrally placed
for influence upon history," &c. "There must,"
we are told, " be much error mixed up in such
a literature ; error not touching scientific matters
only, but also moral and spiritual subjects '."
" If there were," it is suggested, " no principle or
force in operation, — natural or supernatural,- —
ensuring absolute truth or accuracy in the Scrip
tures as to comparatively unimportant particulars,
•" Introduction, p. Ixiv. ' Ibid., p. xxxii.

364 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
with what reason can it be inferred respecting
the more weighty ? if the Scriptures be not found
self - consistent in narratives of ordinary occur
rences, can there be demanded for them an un
hesitating assent when they relate things pro
digious ''."
The " marvellous stories ' " are, therefore, first
to be " eliminated :." such, for example, by way
of specimen, as the waters of the flood covering
the mountains ; the waters of the Red Sea stand
ing as a wall on the right hand and on the left ;
Abraham hearing an audible voice from Heaven ;
Joshua arresting the light ; Isaiah's reversing the
shadow on the dial; Jonah being swallowed by
the fish, or "the prodigies related in the first
part of the book which goes by the name of
Daniel™;" God's writing of the Ten Command
ments °. Then we are to understand that " the
Pentateuch and other narrative books of the Old
Testament" are only "the natural development
of an historical literature °," drawn from " monu
ments," " lays," " tales of recitation," " annals p,"
which have been subjected to "the process ac
cording to which the histories of ancient peoples
become invested in course of time with a super
natural character ;" that in such writings " meta-
'' Introduction, p. xxxiii. ' Ibid., p. xxxiv. " Ibid.,
p. xxxix. " Ibid., p. xl. ° Ibid., p. xlvii. p Ibid.,
p. xlviii. — li.

MODEltN INFIDELITY. 365
phor abounds from limitation . of thought and
paucity of words 1 ;" that " metaphor easily runs
into simile," poetical amplification helps, and then
"metaphors have grown into similes, and similes
have been expanded into allegories, and allegories
have come to be taken for histories '." Thus the
"prodigies" having been eliminated, and prophecy
accounted for " on the supposition of happy con
jecture','' they are now followed by such facts
recorded in Scripture as " the interviews of Moses
with Jehovah, and Elijah's commission given him
in Horeb*." Next follows the moral purifica
tion, by a judicious " discrimination ^ " of this well-
meant but most erroneous book. Thus we learn
that in it "some narratives are instinct with strong
national prejudices ; such as those of the Exodus,
or of the occupation of Canaan." For that as to
these, " there was no doubt an Egyptian, a Ca
naanitish, an Assyrian point of view, from which
public transactions appeared very differently than
they did from the Jewish one. The Jewish actors
in the history may have imagined they had ex
press Divine command to expel the nations of
Canaan, and Jewish historians would naturally
so represent it^," though really they were only
actuated "by the play of their own passions."
Thus we get rid of the moral evil supposed to
1 Introduction, p. Iii. ' Ibid., p. liv. " Ibid., p. xxxv.
' Ibid., p. liv. " Ibid., p. xiv. " Ibid., p. xlii.

366 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
be involved in the cruelty of killing the Amalek
ites, of Jehu putting to death the worshippers
of Baal, of Elisha's guilt in "stirring up the re
bellion of Jehu." The amount of immorality which
our new divines find it needful to remove from
the Bible is indeed great : for they have dis
covered "how very like .... are some Biblical
passages to parts of the Homeric poems which
Plato thought y to convey profane and unworthy
notions of the gods '¦." These immoralities, then,
which Plato has censured, must be removed from
the Bible at all costs, as being " unworthy of
Jehovah." And so stronger passages only call
forth a stronger treatment ; and as it is expressly
written that Elijah called fire from heaven to
destroy the companies of fifty, and as he could
have done this " only in a faithless and resentful
spirit," the " quickened moral judgment " detects
the "impossibility" ofthe account, and finds that
"tradition" in inventing it "has done dishonour
both to God Himself, and possibly to His ser
vants "." So that it is not altogether certain that
the falsehood was Elijah's invention.
y It is not easy to read such words from the pen of a Clergyman
of the Church of England without astonishment. Could he have
read Plato's "Dialogues," and compared them with the first
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, when he thus proposed to
introduce Plato as a sort of moral verifying faculty for Holy
Scripture ?
^ Introduction, p. xv. " Ibid., p. xlv.

MODERN INFIDELITY. 367
But there remains behind a yet greater instance
of the power of overcoming such a difficulty.
For some of these eliminated prodigies and re
jected immoralities are "alluded to in the New
Testament," and even by our Lord Himself, as
"historical transactions or actual facts." To most
men this would have presented an insurmountable
barrier in the way of the modern theory, except
on the simple hypothesis of absolute infidelity.
But it is none to our modern critics. For we
are told, " The New Testament writers could only
express themselves according to the modes of
interpretation which were current in their own
day'';" that is, our Blessed Lord and His Apo
stles declared false and immoral traditions to be
actual facts because they could only express
themselves according to the current modes of in
terpretation. Does the enlightened critic forget
how large a part of our Lord's discourses is taken
up in -ruthlessly exposing exactly such traditional
falsehoods as it is here supposed fettered Him
self and His Apostles ? Surely they who heard
His condemnation of " making the Word of God
of none effect through your tradition "," would
have learned with some surprise that He could
only express Himself according to the modes of
interpretation current in His day. But strange
as this is, it is surely surpassed by the attempt
'' Introduction, p. liv. " St. Mark vii. 13.

368 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
to take from the miracles of Holy Scripture the
support given to them in the fact of the Resur
rection of our Lord, which, if it happened, must
be the chiefest of miracles, by the suggestion that,
instead of its being " an exceptional miraculous
fact," it was "the revelation ofan universal law*;"
words which, if they mean anything, must to
ordinary readers mean, that instead of our Lord
being the first-fruits of them that slept, and raising
them by the same Divine power by which He
rose Himself, He did but reveal the unknown fact
that by a universal law all dead men had been
in the habit of rising again on the third day.
Into these sad absurdities these writers are driven
by the one desire of excluding the direct inter
ference of God from the inspiration of the Holy
Scriptures, and resolving them into "a literature
the product of a special, though not supernatural
working of the Divine Spirit."
Holy Scripture, then, being thus dealt with, the
same principle is next apphed to that kingdom
of grace the very essential characteristic of which
is that in it God the Holy Ghost does by His
inscrutable working bring to bear upon the family
of redeemed man, and upon individual -souls within
it, the personal presence and acting of God. Now
this is tite point which is denied by these writers.
Accordingly, as Holy Scripture was degraded into
'' Introduction, p. xxx-vi.

MODERN INFIDELITY. 369
the literature of a selected people, with special
but not supernatural assistances, so the Church
is in their view a living congregation of men in
whom knowledge, morals, and imagination are
higher than in others ; but there is no super
natural working amongst them.
All those organs, therefore, through which the
Blessed Spirit works are to be disparaged to the
utmost. To believe that God the Holy Ghost
actually works on the faithful soul through Sa
craments is to trust "to magical formularies."
It is "a superstitious theory" to teach that "the
clergy can convey to the soul, by a material inter
vention, some spiritual influence in an occult man
ner '= ;" that is, that Baptism or the Supper ofthe
Lord are means of grace. To believe that Christ
has Himself appointed a ministry, the official acts
of which when done according to His will are
His acts, is accordingly a special stumbling-block.
Nothing, we are told, but an "imagination misled
by the fervour of ecclesiastical feeling could lead
the clergy to fancy themselves really the reci
pients in their ordination of a mysterious power
transmitted to them from the Apostles'." And
it is " with difficulty to be conceived how within
a recent period extreme views could have become
current, attributing a supernatural influence to the
° Introduction, p. xxvi. ' Ibid., p. xxviii.
Bb

370 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
ministrations of an episcopally ordained clergy ?."
Indeed, it would seem that we should have been
better off without such a ministry at all. For
it is, we are told, " not without fair reason con
sidered " that it is " an unhappy thing on the
whole for the English Church to have preserved
its chain of episcopal consecrations unbroken '' ; "
because, as we gather, if it wanted this, instead
of trusting to its membership in the Church
Catholic, and receiving its Bible, its Creeds, and
believing in the teaching of the Spirit ; instead,
that is, of believing in the Holy Ghost, and there
fore in the Holy Catholic Church, it "would have
had no option but to throw itself unreservedly
upon the principles of national independence of
rational interpretation of the Biblical Scriptures,"
(we have seen, my brethren, what that would be,)
" and of the living and therefore growing con
victions of the congregation '." What they would
ere this have been let Geneva testify. But in
deed we need not travel to Geneva for a witness,
for the well-grown convictions of these writers,
who would have led such a congregation, may
teach us the lesson. Thus in full consistency with
denying supernatural agency in the world, in the
Scripture, and in the Church, we learn, further.
that the " current doctrines as to the relation "
of fallen children to God is the root of most im-
K Introduction, p. xii. ^ Ibid., p. xxvii. ' Ibid., p. xxviii.

MODERN INFIDELITY. 371
moral teaching, and that it is therefore a culpable
ignorance in Laymen not to "inquire into the
real significance of the narrative of the creation
and fall of man in the first chapters of Genesis,
and into the value of the references to it in the
Epistles and in the Church Catechism'' ;" because
it seems the acceptance of this fabulous story
in the Epistles and Catechism, together with the
teaching of miracles, leads to the general belief in
that most immoral conclusion that our natures are
corrupt, and that we each one need the convert
ing influences on his own soul of God the Holy
Ghost. For we are told, "As God is believed
to have acted in history, so will it be expected
He will act in the individual. If He manifests
Himself by interference in nature, and by signs
and wonders in history. He will doubtless operate
by supernatural conversion of the corrupt heart
in His dominion of grace '."
Here, then, my reverend brethren, we have,
I believe with some completeness, the scheme of
this new Christianity before us. It professes to
receive the Christian revelation, and the Christian
Church, with its Creeds, its Scriptures, and its
hopes ; only it would remove from them every
thing supernatural. It would remove from them
and from us all idea of a personal God administer
ing by a personal presence and direct interference
'' Introduction, p. xiii. , ' Ibid., p. xvi.

372 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
His world of nature or of grace. The Godhead
is reduced to the mighty self-originating cause of
all being, which He pervades and in some un
known sense is ; but which proceeds along its
pre-determined course self-governed and self-ad
ministered, according to eternal and unchanging
laws and gradually ascertainable sequences, whilst
all the pretended revelations of His interference
are either fables, allegories, metaphors, or mere
human inventions, which were permitted to exist
for the education of man until the living and
growing convictions of the congregation were suf
ficiently developed to cast them aside, and rest
on the great abstract philosophy into which a
sublimated Christianity would thus expand and
evaporate. To you, I know, I need not say that this hu
manizing of Revelation, this robbing theology of
its God, however little, as we trust, many of its
votaries understand their own theory, is in fact,
so far as man's heart and soul are concerned,
only a disguised atheism. If there be no super
natural Revelation of Himself by the unsearch
able Jehovah, there can be no certain knowledge
of Him as a personal God ; and if no such know
ledge of God, there can be no leaning of the soul
upon Him. On such a theory, then, we lose not
only Christian hope, but even Jewish belief and
Patriarchal aspirations.

MODERN INFIDELITY. 373
How, then, are we to meet such a system ?
First, we should be careful not to impute to it
any evil which does not belong to it. Every false
imputation is really an argument in favour of the
system to which it is imputed.
If, then, we charge these teachers with intend
ing to overthrow the Christian Revelation, as they
have no such intention, and know that they have
not, we weaken our own hands and strengthen
theirs. Next, we must have clearly before us the master
principle of their delusion, that we may contend
against that equally everywhere.
Now that master principle is, as we have seen,
the denial of the presence with us of the super
natural, and so the withdrawal from us of the
presence and of the acting of a personal God :
against this, therefore, we must strive equally
everywhere ; in nature and in grace ; and in grace
equally in every part of its blessed kingdom.
For if we yield one part of the truth here, it will
be in vain for us to seek to maintain the rest.
Thus, for example, we shall in the long-run be
unable really to maintain the Divine authority of
Holy Scripture if we give up the Divine autho
rity, in its proper place, of " the Holy Catholic
Church." The two are absolute correlatives. In
our sense of the words we could have no "Bible"
if we had no Church ; if, that is to say, the Primi-

374 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
tive and as yet undivided Church had not, under
the breath of the Divine Spirit, settled for us its
canon " ; and if the Church Universal had not
maintained it. For the Church, as our Article
teaches us, is the witness and the keeper of Holy
Scripture. It is its witness, because it witnesses
to us that this particular Book is God's revealed
will ; and it is its keeper, because it preserves
that Book whole and unaltered, without addition
and without mutilation, as the inspired record.
Without such a witness there could have been
no "Bible," no Book which we could receive as
a whole as the record of God's Revelation. For if
its claim rested only on its internal evidence, every
individual might strike out from its pages what
did not recommend itself to him : we might lose
the Epistle of St. James because one objector
rejected it, the Epistle of St. Peter to please a
second, and those of St. Paul at the dictation of
a third. Although when the Bible is once given the
Church must receive its teaching imphcitly as
the Word of God, yet in priority of time the
Church was of necessity before the Bible. For
it is the record of God's dealings with and reve-
" Any one who desires to follow out this subject should refer to
the work of Bishop Cosin, " ScholasticaJ History of the Canon of
the Scriptures." Of course the Anglican Church, though a true
branch of the Church Catholic, yet as only a branch, could not
settle such a matter as the canon of Holy Scripture.

MODERN INFIDELITY. 375
lations to the Church, and the thing recorded
must in time precede its record. That it did so
in fact we know. The Church of the Old Testa
ment was founded on that day when God made
a covenant with Abraham : but four hundred and
thirty years passed away, patriarch after patriarch
lived and died in the faith, before Moses set his
hand to those inspired books, the earliest in Scrip
ture, which bear his name. It was not otherwise
with the Church of the New Covenant. That
was born on the day of Pentecost ; but it was
many years before the earliest Gospel, that pro
bably of St. Matthew, was given to the Church.
Moreover (as we have seen) to have that fixed
canon of Holy Scripture which defines what is
" the' Bible," the Church must receive it ; and
upon this authority of its reception it must pro
pound the Bible to each separate soul as the
Word of God. For the external evidence which
proves the Bible to be the Word of God must
from the nature of the case precede the internal
evidence. Once received on external evidence
as the revealed will of God, soul after soul will
have, in passage after passage, the inward witness
that through it God Himself is speaking to its
inward ear. The delicate needle of its own spiri
tual being will tremble under the awful Presence ;
'and to the faithful soul this, the last in point
of time, will be for itself the crowning evidence

376 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
that through it God is indeed revealing Himself
to His creature. But the Book, as a Book, must
come to him from the witness of the Church
before it is capable of receiving from his own
spiritual experience these inward confirmations.
The will of any testator must be propounded
and received as his by external proof before any
benefit can be claimed under its separate bequests.
And how could the Church fulfil this office un
less of a truth God were personally with her ?
Unless her whole system be supernatural, unless
a Divine breath inspire her judgment, how could
she discern the truth amidst the confiicting claims
of many writings to be included in the sacred
record, or settle the canon of the inspired books
— how could she witness to or keep them .' How,
indeed, can she without this fulfil any part of
her charge for God's glory or man's salvation ?
Unless God be with her, — not as a causative
power acting now only through the self-adminis
tering laws of a Divine order, but as a present,
interfering Person, how can her intercession be
real, or her prayers anything but a disguised and
deceiving self-magnetism ? For if all things that
are, exist in an unbroken set of inevitable se
quences, what room can there be for prayer or
receiving answers to prayer ? or under such a
scheme how can there be any one to whom to
pray ; for how can prayer be addressed to a Di-

MODERN INFIDELITY. 377
vine Order .-• How, again, unless the Divine Spirit,
as a real present Person, acts indeed upon separate
hearts, regenerating, converting, renewing, purify
ing, strengthening, and saving them, can any of
the means of grace within her be anything else
than what these writers so profanely pronounce
them to be, lying magical delusions .¦'
There can, in the strife which is forced upon us,
be no intermediate position between the dull na
turalism to which so many are tending and a sim
ple faith in God's presence with His Church, and
so a hearty belief alike in her Sacraments, her
Creeds, her Orders, and her Bible as the separate
portions of the great system of instruments through
which her God, her Saviour, and her Sanctifier are
present with and working in her. And such a faith
will breed a wholesome reverence for all which God
has given us, which is the safeguard our own spi
rits need amidst the manifold perturbations around
us. We shall feel, when alterations are proposed
to us in our oflSces of prayer or in our Creeds, even
before we see the direct evils they would work,
what the wise surgeon feels as to the subject of
his skill ; that he is dealing not with a mere mass
of matter, but with the delicate organization of
a living being to whose very existence one care
less touch of the knife may be fatal. We dare
not handle rashly any organism through which we
do indeed believe that God the Holy Ghost, who

378 CHARACTER AND CAUSES OF
has framed it for His indwelling, is yet stooping
to work. This, then, secondly : we must through
out the strife maintain the supernatural against
the naturalist theory. Thirdly, and as a subdi
vision of what has last been said, we must main
tain fearlessly the same truth in dealing with the
seeming discrepancies which anxious or sceptical
minds are seeking to exasperate into contradic
tions between the voice of God in Nature and His
voice in Revelation.
This I believe to be of such importance that
I will add a few words specially upon it.
It is alleged, then, that recent discoveries in
science contradict direct assertions of the Bible.
Now how should we treat such allegations, or
deal with the apparent facts on which they rest .'
First, we should never refuse, or hesitate, or dis
like, or fear to receive any really authenticated
fact because it seems to contradict any other fact,
either in Nature or in Revelation. Secondly, we
should never twist, distort, or mutilate any such
fact in order to make it fit into any system. All
such conduct is more or less either fraud or weak
ness ; as it is most certainly unbelief Nature is
as much the voice of God as is Revelation. We
may through our own infirmities or ignorance mis
understand or mistake that voice, either in Nature
or in Revelation ; but the voice itself must be
true ; and our faith is to be shewn by our simple

MODERN INFIDELITY. 379
acceptance of it, without any regard to conse
quences. When two such voices, then, seem to
contradict each other, faith is not startled and un
easy ; she does not look eagerly about for some
reconciliation of them, or snatch at seeming ex
planations, as though eager to save an endangered
character ; still less does she seek to suppress any
fact because she does not at once see how it will
fit in with her own system. But she is calm, self-
sustained, and satisfied that there is perfect agree
ment between these two voices, and that the seem
ing disagreement is altogether the fruit of the
present ignorance of man. The confiding child
who has no doubts of his earthly father's truth
and knowledge has no feeling of misgiving when
he is told by him that the fire with its heat and
the ice with its intense cold will alike burn his
flesh : he does not know the philosophic reason
which makes each altogether true ; but he believes
and is satisfied, because he knows that his father's
word is true. And the believer in like manner,
if his faith is firm, knows that what God says
both in nature and in grace is true, even when he
cannot yet reconcile what seem to be discordant
utterances. And here, too, faith is the best phi
losophy. For it is altogether as unphilosophical
for him who knows but one part of a mighty whole
made up of many dependent portions, to sit with
his partial knowledge in judgment on what is pro-

380 CHARACTER AND CAUSES, &C.
pounded to him concerning it by one who knows
the whole, as it is unfaithful to question what is
received from another on the faith of that other's
word. Thus, then, these difficulties are to be met. Nor
need we fear to avow that — so far as we can learn
the plan of the Almighty with us from the analogy
of His other dealings — we should even expect their
presence, both as a discipline for our will, and a trial
of our faith. And this we may certainly add, that
whilst we receive with a like docility both voices, on
different evidences, — not daring to doubt the wit
ness of the senses our Maker has given to us, nor
to distrust the Word which on the evidence of His
Church He has spoken to us, — and know that,
like bodies moving in various planes, they may
cross each other's path without collision ; yet that
on the whole, every wide increase of our knowledge
has tended to shew that many things which once
seemed to be, were not really contradictory, and
that those which still have not reached, are yet
approaching to a full reconciliation.
1863.

XXIX.
ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM.
ON the second movement, which appears to
me to have arisen from the same source as
the ritualistic tendency, I will compress into a few
words the suggestions I desire to make to you.
To restore the true unity of Christendom, — that
for which our Master prayed, that for which every
heart He has touched with His own love must
most intensely long, — who would not gladly die ?
Every such attempt then, — whether it be to re
move the barriers between ourselves and our sepa
rated brethren in this land, or to heal the breaches
between the East and the West, with their several
subdivisions, — must, I think, attract to itself our
deepest interest, and call forth from us most earnest
prayers for the gift of 'one mind in our one, com
mon Faith. God forbid that I should chill one
such prayer, or check one such aspiration. Yet
I must remind you that all practical attempts
at re-union must be made with a full recognition
of the wide difference between mere coalescence
and unity. Coalescence may be of the earth,
earthly ; it may be the veiling of essential dif
ferences under well-prepared ambiguities of action

382 ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM.
or of profession : unity must, in our holy religion,
be unity in Christ ; and Christ is Truth. There
can be no unity in Him based on disregard of
error. With these principles full in view, I yearn for
the re-union with us of our brethren of the home
separation. What might not be our strength
against evil if this sore wound were healed ? I see
no formal differences of the faith which need hope
lessly part us. I believe that time has, to a great
degree, worn away the causes of our existing
division. Let not the memory of past disagree
ments keep us for one day needlessly asunder.
Nor, with the great Eastern Church, if the spirit
of unity breathe in mercy on us, should I despair
of union. Old ways, old thoughts, old words,
seem indeed to hang unchangeable, as in a charmed
air, throughout the venerable East ; and many
of these are diverse from ours. Still the East
is bound to no irreversible sequence of developed
corruptions of the One Faith, and with her it may
yet be that we may regain open intercommunion.
But, earnestly as we may long and pray for
unity, we can make no overtures for it to any
whose first principle is the absolute retention of
what we hold to be grave error in doctrine and
in practice. I see not how to avoid the conclusion
that this must make at present impossible all such
overtures from us to Rome. At the very gate

ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 383
of her spiritual dominion sit the two stern Por
tresses, Supremacy and Infallibility ; forbidding,
as it seems to me, all attempt to us to • enter.
"Since Rome" — these are her own words, spoken
but yesterday — "is infallible, union with her
cannot be accomplished except on her own dog
matic base, i.e. by the method of absolute and
unreserved submission to her authority ''." How
can we take the first step to such submission,
contending as we do against many of her state
ments of Christian doctrine, and more of her
practical abuses ; against her claim to supremacy
and infallibility ; her cultus of the Blessed Virgin ;
her maiming of the Eucharist ; her enforced con
fession ; her enjoined clerical celibacy ; charging
her, as we must, with Donatistic self-exaltation and
schism ; and, abhorrent as is to us, that cruel,
faithless, arbitrary temper, which we believe these
corruptions of the Faith have introduced into her
moral nature.' No, brethren, I mournfully declare
that I cannot believe that any honest explanation
of conflicting terms can, whilst Rome is what she
is, remove these hindrances to union, I, for one,
could never, even for so great an end as the doing
away of division, endure to see the English Church,
the Enghsh people, English family life, or English
straightforwardness, adapted to the standard in
which Italy and Spain exhibit the true cpnse-
" Dublin Review, No. xii. p. 448.

384 ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM.
quences of Roman supremacy. I believe that, —
though we are bound to wait and pray and watch
for unity, — it is not, as I read the signs of the
times, — given to us in our day to look for union
with those who are of the Papal obedience.
Meanwhile, the old assumptions of Rome seem
only to increase in arrogance. With more than
her earlier hardihood she denies all membership
in the Church of Christ to those for whom she has
rendered union with herself impossible. Specially
does she rage at this time against National
Churches, seeking in the midst of its evident
decline to exalt her own exclusive monarchical
supremacy, and, as her power decays, waxing
fiercer in her sentences and denunciations. Yet
is this against which she thus rages the system
which from the beginning had been established
in the Church, in which each Bishopric was one
independent whole, federally joined to all the rest,
the seat of its own jurisdiction, and governed,
not by an external despotism, but by the Holy
Spirit expressing His overruling Will through the
decrees of the common synods of the universal
body. This was most clearly the system which
St. Cyprian maintained, and on which, in spite of
all opposition, he acted in all his memorable con
tests with Rome. Her present pretensions differ
in nothing material from that which, in the mouth
of John, Patriarch of Constantinople, woke up the

ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 385
righteous wrath of Gregory the Great, and led him,
in his expostulation with his brother Patriarch,
to declare that "in assuming the name of Uni
versal Bishop he had caused scandal to the hearts
of all the faithful, invaded the rights of all other
Bishops, and learned from the old enemy to desire
proudly to be like God*"." And, again, "con
fidently to declare that whosoever calls himself,
or desires to be called Universal Bishop, is the
forerunner of Antichrist ¦=." The English Church
may surely rest quietly in a position in which she
is defended against Pius IX. by Gregory the Great.
Sad, too, as to loving hearts must often be the
sense of our isolation, may we not trace in the
existence, and even, in some sort, in the separation
of national Churches, one of those providential
arrangements by which even chastisements are,
by God's goodness, converted into blessings .'' Just
as it seems to have been His purpose to keep the
perfect truth of our blessed Master's twofold na
ture ever clear before the Church, by suffering
four independent witnesses to write the Gospel
histories with the permitted varieties which the
diversity of their own several characters stamp
upon their narrative, — so may we believe that He
has provided, in the chastisement of division, by
the diversity of testimony, for the guardianship
of His Truth. How diverse from the beginning
•> St. Greg., Epist., lib. v. 18. ' Epist., lib. viii. 83.
C C

386 ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM.
have been the special vocations of the East and
of the West ; — the East maintaining, against all
the subtlety of heretics, the great objective truths
of the Trinity in Unity, the Incarnation, and the
Godhead of the Eternal Son : — the West, with its
more subjective tendencies, defending the doc
trines of grace from all the wiles of the school
of Pelagius. May it not be our special vocation,
in maintaining our protest against those changes
of the Faith which Rome has so corruptly sanc
tioned, to be the Witness who shall combine the
active energies of the West with a maintenance of
the primitive faith as absolute as that of the un
changing East ; and at last perhaps to be the body
whom God shall employ to fuse again into unity
with those who stand on either side other, — breath
ing younger life into those venerable but lethargic
Oriental forms, and drawing back the West from
the intoxication of her numberless developments
into the sobriety of the Faith once for all deli
vered to the saints .¦• Only let us not forget that if
ever this service is to be rendered by us, it must
be by us not as a sect, but as a Church, that it
can be wrought. If we would keep alive the hope
of so glorifying God, we must maintain our true
membership in the written Word, in Creeds, in
Sacraments, in the Apostolic ministry , and in the
mysterious presence, power, and gifts of God
the Holy Ghost with the Church of Christ from

ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 387
the beginning. So alone can we hope in the
mean season to leaven this Land and its widening
Colonies with the true life of God. In spite of all
difficulties, if He be indeed with us, this we may
accomplish. His Grace, His Word, His appoint
ments carry with them His Almighty power ; and
we, earthly instruments as we are, by the foolish
ness of our iriinistry may keep His revealed truth
alive to be the salvation of this Land.
These great functions God has committed to our
hands for this people, yea, and for His Church
throughout the world. May He grant us grace
and faithfulness duly to discharge our trust ! May
no slothfulness of spirit, no weakness of faith, no
worldliness of temper, mar our work and forfeit
our Crown ! There are not wanting those who
would counsel us, by all the arguments of ex
pediency, to take another and a lower line. They
urge us to consider the greatness of the position
we may aspire to fill as the chosen clergy of this
great empire, if we will but throw ourselves into
full sympathy with what they tell us is its spirit,
and speak to it the accents which it loves to hear :
" Behold now," it is the old whisper of this world's
messenger, " the words of the prophets declare
good unto the King with one mouth : let thy
word, I pray thee, be like the word of one of them,
and speak that which is good ''."
^ I Kings xxii. 13.

388 ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM.
It is but to give up the supreme claim of God's
written Word ; it is but to drop the stern require
ment that men . to whom it is clearly proposed
must believe in the dogma of revealed truth, and
not develope a suitable religion for themselves,
conformable to the fleeting intellectual movements
of the hour, or the fanciful acting of their own
inward consciousness ; it is but to be content with
the respectable position of doctors of the national
religion, and so to consent to give up claims which
are uncongenial with what are assumed to be the
nation's opinions. Let us but get rid of the old-
fashioned notion that the Church is indeed the
very body of Christ, and we, servants of the Cruci
fied, His Apostles, with powers committed to us
through the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost, which
man gave not, and which man cannot take away ;
with a supernatural kingdom around us and within
us, — this is all, and we shall be as gods to this
grateful people.
God grant that not one of us may listen to the
seducing whisper, and so abdicate his trust Let
Micaiah's declaration be ours : " As the Lord
liveth, what the Lord saith unto me, that will
I speak "." Woe were it for us, woe to this people,
if we failed. If the Church of England ever con
sents to renounce her Apostolical character, and
to receive her commission from man, she cannot
' I Kings xxii. 14.

OF THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 389
for a day defend God's truth against the Papist
or the Infidel. In giving up these pretensions,
be they popular or unpopular at the moment, she
would give up that which from the beginning has
enabled her to withstand the enemy, and to bless
this land. How can she do for God any act of
her daily vocation unless His own power does in
very deed attend her ministry.' How else can
she believe that through her feebleness He will
regenerate, or convert, or nourish with the bread
of hfe, one single soul .' What miracle is greater
than these her daily works .¦" If she dared to drop
her royal claim, every sacrament she ministers
would but seal her degradation, and the subject
spirits would triumph at her fall.
No, beloved brethren in the Lord, let us stand
fast in our holy calling. Let us witness for Christ,
in word and in deed. Let us speak in all the
power of God the Holy Ghost. Having received
this ministry, let us faint not ; no one better
knows than we how earthly are the vessels He
has chosen for His service ; yet in those vessels,
earthly as they are, is the treasure of the Master's
covenanted presence. Let us bear His testimony
meekly, but unflinchingly, learning ourselves,
through His grace and love day by day, to live
more in the secret place of His tabernacle ; to
labour for Him more abundantly, to pray more
constantly ; to abound more in works of charity ;

390 ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM.
and to suffer meekly, if it be His will, so only that
on us may be more deeply stamped the impress
of His Cross. These, I believe, are the special re
quisites for the due discharge, at such a time as
this, ofthe ministry which He has committed to us.
At such a time, moreover, distinct dogmatic
teaching must be especially required from those
who bear the testimony of the Lord. And yet
with what tenderness of spirit, with what wise
adaptation to His people's power of receiving it,
with what a freedom from spurious self-asserting
dogmatism, with what a living sympathy with all
other truth, must dogma be taught, if we would
avoid the great fault of placing stumbling-blocks
in our brother's way.
We cannot indeed, veil, still less distort, any
truth. We must proclaim, — whether or no men
will listen, — the authority of God's Word, the
simple promises of Christ's Gospel ; the mystery
of the Triune God ; the Incarnation and Atone
ment ; the presence of God the Holy Ghost and
His real acting through Sacraments and means
of grace, on every side of us in the Church of
the living God.
But these great truths, and all that flow from
them, may be set forth drily, hardly, and pugna
ciously ; or, with every winning adjunct of tender
ness and conciliation, as a nurse cherisheth her
children. There may at times be forced upon

ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 39 1
US opposition to what the general intellectual
excitement of the present day leads shallower
minds to vent. There ought to be no opposition
between us and the highest intellectual actings
of our age. All that intellect requires for its
grandest development, Christianity not only allows
but furnishes. The temper she loves to form,
that modest all -venturing courage, that ardent
docility, that tender receptivity, that critical nicety
of perception, that large observation, is the very
temper of the true philosopher. No question can
be raised which it is her interest to silence ; there
are few which it is not her special province to
handle. Christianity has always tended to ad
vance the intellect. Let any man who doubts
this, study the pages of Origen, Augustine, Atha
nasius, or Aquinas, and he will see how the be
lieving Divine may, in mere power of thought, be
centuries before the deepest thinkers of his time.
In some measure, perhaps, the too prevalent
disposition to question this, is due to faults of
ours. If many of the reproaches cast upon us
rise from the carping poverty of thought which
belongs essentially to unbelief, many more, — let
us honestly confess it, — are the fruit of our own
narrowness, our want of a fitting elasticity of
mind, making us unable to sympathise with our
age and our people ; from our faithless fearful
ness for the truth, and our shallow knowledge
even of our own mysteries. Hence, even for the

392 ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM.
power of teaching dogmas, the first of all pre
requisites is to have received them into our own
spiritual life, not to have heard of them merely
by the hearing of the ear ; to have learned them
in watching and in living : above all, in a life of
continual prayer, to have so imbibed their blessed
fragrance, that our own life may be redolent of
their sweetness. This will give us depth and
comprehensiveness, and these are but other names
for humility ; and, with that, dwell holy love, and
large forbearance, and tender sympathies, and
unwearied labours ; so shall we not hold dogma,
but, — if I may so say, — be dogma : so shall we
place it before others, not as a restraint on, but
as an assistance to, the acting of the intellect ;
not as a short formulary to be produced instead
of thinking, but as the axiomatic principle on
which the vast edifice of thought is to be erected.
With dogmas so used, not thrust threateningly at
them, — men of any fairness will have no more
quarrel than with the axioms of mathematics, or
the admitted principles of science.
But time warns me to conclude. And, as I cast
my eye back on the various course over which
I have been led, I am indeed tempted to sigh
forth my innermost confession, — "Who is suffi
cient for these things .¦¦" And yet, brethren in
the Lord, whether clergy or laity, let me say, —
Fear not ; be strong, play ye the men ; in watch
ing, in striving, in praying ; and your God shall

ON THE RE-UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 393
fight for you. It is yet but a little while, and
He shall come who is the Great Renewer. Al
ready the Eastern sky seems as though it were
lighted up with the brightening glow of its Advent
glory ; the tarrying ages are at last surely running
out their weary span ; and, by every sign of which
He has spoken, we may see that " The Coming
of the Lord draweth nigh."
For each one of us, in his several sphere of
work, this is the thought fullest of strength and
consolation. Then shall end for ever, the up
braiding of the evil, the uncertainty of the good ;
then shall be swept away our own doubts, and
fears, and short-comings, and divisions, and in
firmities, our lack of faith and charity ; then shall
be gathered up every faithful effort, every strug
gling prayer, every secret tear, every throb of
love ; then shall He who giveth the rule over
Cities to reward the dihgent use of but a single
talent, stand suddenly beside us in our work ;
and the " Well done, good and faithful Servant,"
shall sound in the ears of the Elect, and the
presence of their only Lord shall wrap them round
in perfect and never-ending blessedness. Thither,
brethren, may God's mighty Grace bear on even
our utter feebleness, through Jesus Christ our
Lord. 1866.

xxx.
ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
THE Reformation period must always rivet the
attention of Englishmen. For then, what
ever evils were inseparable from it, was the birth-
time of their liberties both in Church and State.
Its long sufferings were but travail pangs, and
though many of the attendant operations were
rudely managed, with no little loss of vital energy
and threatenings of still greater evils, yet was the
birth at last gracious, and on those who were the
instruments of its accomplishment must always
rest with the deepest interest the enquiring gaze
of after generations. Never, perhaps, was this
more the case than at the present time, when we
are passing again through many struggles both
of religious thought and of national policy, not
unlike those with which our fathers grappled.
For the great questions which stirred so deeply
the souls of our Reformers that they were ready
to burn and to be burnt at a thousand stakes to
procure their settlement, seem, after a torpor of
three hundred years, to have suddenly re-awoke
among us, and we have almost each one of us

ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 395
again to examine the Pope's claim to supremacy
and infallibility, with all the train of teaching
which is involved in such an admission : — the ne
cessity of auricular confession ; the celibacy of
the clergy ; the maiming for the laity of the great
Sacrament of the Eucharist ; the cultus of the
blessed Virgin Mary ; the offering of masses for
the quick and dead ; and purgatory with its pains,
its indulgences, and its corresponding pecuniary
advantages. Questions of public policy, too, which
were then in course of settlement, and the settle
ment of which has been thenceforward interwoven
with the very warp of our national life, are all
suddenly re-opened. The existence of a Church
really national — the only bulwark as our fathers
believed, and as our children may find to their
cost, against the arrogance and ' the usurpations
of Rome — is suddenly threatened. For if Eng
land and Ireland be one united kingdom," with
one Established Church, and not two separate
monarchies loosely allied by the overshadowing
of two Crowns Imperial resting for the time upon
one brow, the destruction of the Church's nation
ality in one island must logically imply its de
struction as a national Church in both, although
it may still survive as an anomaly in one. To
build this up, which it is now so lightly proposed
to pull down, was, in fact, the master-aim of the
great Reformation statesmen. Thus, in the grand

396 ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
old English of the Statute of Appeals, it was de
clared that : —
" By divers sundry old authentic histories and Chron
icles it is manifestly declared and exposited that this
realm of England is an empire, and hath so been ac
cepted in the world ; governed by one supreme head
and king, having the dignity and royal estate of the
imperial crown of the same ; unto whom a body politic,
compact of all sorts and degrees of people, divided in
turns by names of spirituality and temporality, be bound,
and ought to bear next to God a natural and humble
obedience . . . the body spiritual whereof having power
when any cause of the law divine happened to come in
question, or of spiritual, having declared, interpreted, and
shewed by that part of the body politic called the spi
rituality, now usually called the English Church, which
also hath been reported and also found of that sort, that
both for knowledge, integrity and sufficiency of numbers,
it hath been always thought to be, and is also at this
hour, sufficient and meet of itself without the interfering
of any exterior person or persons, to declare and deter
mine all such doubts, and to administer all such offices
and duties as to their room spiritual doth appertain."
It was on this foundation of the unquestioned
existence of a national Church of the empire, as
a body spiritual, that the usurped claim of the
Bishop of Rome to interfere with this kingdom
was by enactment fully and for ever excluded,
and all attempts to re-introduce his jurisdiction
were branded with the guilt of treason against
the high reserved nationality of the realm which

ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 397
centred in the Crown of England. How well
that bulwark was conceived, how straight its lines
were devised and drawn across the main stream
and flow of papal aggression, how deeply laid
were its foundations, how well compacted were its
stones, has been shewn beyond the possibility of
question by all succeeding events : by its stand
ing under Henry VIII. and Edward VI. the first
buffet of those proud waves, by its speedy resto
ration from the demolition attempted under Philip
and Mary, and by its continuance from Elizabeth
to Victoria as the very breakwater of our nation
ality against whatever storms have burst from
time to time upon us, from the dark and turbulent
depths of that spiritual Black Sea, which has never
ceased to rage against our borders 
One leading object of the Dean" has evidently
been to shew the unbrokenness of this Church of
England from the beginning until now ; to exhibit
it one and the same body from the mission of
Augustine to the present hour ; to shew it pro
testing against the rising aggressions of Rome
under the Plantagenets, and compelling and en
forcing the protest with the brave hearts and
the strong hands of the Tudor kings.
" "When we speak," he says, " of the continuity and
perpetuity of the English Church, we only affirm an his-
' See " Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury," by W. F.
Hook, D.D., F.R.S., Dean of Chichester.

398 ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
torical fact. By both Church and State measures had
been adopted to annihilate the Papal authority in Eng
land, long before any notion was entertained of dealing
with any points of doctrine. In the twenty-eighth year
of Henry's reign, when King and Parliament and Church
were vehement in their opposition to Protestantism, some
of the chief Acts against the Pope and his pretensions
were passed in parliament. . . . The Church of England
was anti-papal before it was reformed ; at the commence
ment of the dispute between the Church of England
and the Court of Rome^ in the sixteenth century, the
State accepted as a fact what the Church affirmed, that
the work to be done by the co-operation of the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities in England was not the dis
placing ofthe old Church and the supplanting of it by
some new sect, but the gradual reformation of that old
Catholic Church, which had been established here in
the first instance by the joint labour and devotion of
Augustine the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and Ethel
bert, king of Kent, the Bretwalda.''
One chief merit of these volumes may be traced
to the distinctness with which their author has
throughout realised this unbroken continuity of the
Church of England. For it has saved him from
the necessity of considering Cranmer as in any
real sense the founder of a new communion, and so
has made it easy for him to draw his character
with absolute impartiality. The Romanist who
charges him with the crime of founding, instead
of the old Catholic Church of England, the new
schismatic body which has replaced it, and the

ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 399
ultra - Protestant who believes that he and his
fellows founded a new Church at the Reforma
tion, are alike incapable of such impartiality : to
the one he is from first to last an apostate and
a traitor ; to the other he is, with the like uni
versal applause, a saint and a martyr. In these
pages he is one in a long line of Archbishops
of Canterbuty. He is distinguishable from others
especially by the circumstances of his episcopate.
His days are cast ' when a mighty change was
passing over the minds of his countrymen ; in
that change he himself largely participated, and
few were themselves borne along by the current
more palpably and completely; Something he
contributed towards the change ; he is to be
tried, like other men, by what he was, by what
he effected, by what he let slip. There is here
no temptation to exaggerate either his excellences
or his defects. He was neither a demi-god, whose
personality is lost on the rise of a new empire,
nor a convicted villain, who treasonably over
turned a well-balanced kingdom. Viewed as he
was, and not through these distorting media, he
appears to be rather an ordinary man : affec
tionate, forgiving, gentle, caring for and making
good provision for his family, very fond of field
sports, physically brave, but mprally not over-
courageous, sincerely religious, a great master of
English, a diligent student of his Bible, and.

400 ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
though not eager for intellectual or spiritual dis
coveries, with a mind slowly but surely receptive
of increased measures of truth as they were pre
sented to him.
But this is by no means the only advantage
which the clear mastery of this truth has given
to the writer of these volumes. It has aided him
as an historian as well as a biographer. It has
kept him clear from the strange confusion which
represents the Church of England before the Re
formation, as having been a spiritual body almost
independent of the State, and since the Refor
mation as an Act of Parliament establishment,
which has consciously renounced its claims to
an independent spiritual personality. In truth,
before the Reformation, as well as since the
Reformation, the Church of England was, on
one side, an Act of Parliament Church. It was
a branch of the one Holy Apostolic Church,
settled within this realm, welcomed by the realm,
honoured, endowed, established ; and so exercis
ing upon certain honourable conditions its spi
ritual functions in- the land. What the Crown,
the Parliament, and the people claimed was, not
to have created the spiritual body, with its creeds,
doctrines, ministry, and sacramental life ; but to
have created, and so to have the right to enforce,
and if need were to modify, the conditions under
which that life and ministry were exercised. All

ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 401
the struggles of the Acts of Provisors, and the like,
were the exercise of this power of the realm over
the external conditions through which the spiritual
power acted. At the time of the Reformation
this struggle reached its most critical point. The
State, and to a great degree the national clergy
also, felt that the original conditions of acknow
ledged nationality, under which the spiritual body
ought to act, had been infringed. The nation rose
in all ranks and orders to rectify these broken
conditions. The strife at its beginning was
limited to this. But, as soon as it broke out,
it became evident that the violation of these more
outward conditions was itself an effect of yet
higher obligations, and that the great deposit of
religious truth itself had been corrupted by its
guardians. The second wave broke upon the
crest of the first, and the religious reformation
rolled in upon the ecclesiastical. The Church,
which had been the subject of old Acts of Parlia
ments, became the subject of new Acts, which
aimed at restoring the old compact between the
spirituality and the temporality to their original
conditions, and guarding for the future against
the evils of the past. But whilst as an establish
ment the Church was brought, ks the consequence
and punishment of former Popish insolence, under
straiter bonds, there was no leaven of real Eras
tianism in the change. From first to last the
Dd

402 ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
spiritual power, and the ecclesiastical conditions
under which it was to be exercised in England, are
kept wholly distinct in the Acts of Henry VIII.
" The Institution of a Christian Man " laid clearly
down this principle : " Christ and His Apostles
did institute and ordain in the New Testament,
besides the civil powers and governance of kings
and princes, that there should also be continually
in the Church Militant certain other ministers and
officers, who should have special power, authority,
and commission under Christ to preach and teach
the Word of God to His people, to dispense and
administer the Sacraments of God unto them, and
by the same to confer and give the graces of the
Holy Ghost." " This office, this power, this autho
rity was committed and given by Christ and His
Apostles to certain persons only ; that is to say,
to priests or bishops, whom they did elect, call,
and admit thereunto by their prayers and im
position of hands." The English language is
scarcely capable of being made to express a de
claration more at variance than this with what
we read in the Erastian press of the day, as the
result of the change intended and wrought by the
Reformation on the old English Church and its
pretensions. . . .
There never was a time when it was more
important to make this truth universally known
and recognised. For, on the one hand, there is

ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 403
a party, — ably represented by the ingenious writer
of what we must term the Romance of the Reign
of Henry VIIL, under the title of a " History of
England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death
of Elizabeth," — who delight to speak of the Re
formation changes as being an abandonment on
the part of the Church of England of her claim
to be an integral part of the Church Catholic —
a spiritual body, with spiritual power given by our
Lord through His Apostles, — and an acceptance
of a new position as holding from the will of the
State alone her authority and position as a reli
gious body; whilst, on the other side, there are
those who groan over the utter loss of spiritual
liberty at the Reformation, and who under the
garb of a spurious Catholicism, preach disaffection
to their Father's Church. These last conveniently
forget that, antecedently to the Reformation, Con
vocation could pass no canons without the King's
consent ; that no bull or ecclesiastical constitu
tion could be pubhshed in this kingdom without
his sanction ; that the bishoprics of England,
being of royal foundation, were filled by the
Crown as donatives, before it granted to the Chap
ters the modified rights conferred by the allow
ance of the Congi d'Elire ; and that under the
Congi d'Elire the Sovereign still so effectually
selected the Bishop to be elected, that Warham
could write in 1522 to Cardinal Wolsey, "Whereas

404 ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
I am informed that it hath pleased the King's
most noble Grace to name to the bishopric of
London, Master Cuthbert Tonstall, Master of the
Rolls, at your Grace's special recommendation,
furtherance, and promotion, I thank your Grace,
therefore, as heartily as I can." Equally oblivious,
in their longing for re-union with Rome, are men
of this school of the troubles which, long before
the Reformation, embittered the relations of this
land with the Papal communion ; nor do they
seem to have heard that though the Pope con
tinually renewed his efforts to obtain the recog
nition of his claim to be the fountain-head of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction before the Reformation
quite as earnestly as after it, these efforts were
resisted and put down by the Crown and by the
law of England. These great principles were
indeed endangered, as the Dean points out, amidst
the various struggles of the Reformation and the
Laudian period : —
" The distinction between the royal and the sacer
dotal powers was totally disregarded by CrumweU and
the unprincipled men who formed the government of
Edward "VI. ; and the royal supremacy was too often
permitted to encroach on the sacerdotal powers through
the weakness, the servility, and want of fixed principles
on the part of Archbishop Cranmer. Much injury was
done to the cause of the Church through the mistaken
policy of our leading ecclesiastics under the unfortunate
dynasty of the Stuarts. To strengthen their posifion

ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 405
against the Roman nonconformists on the one hand,
and the Puritan nonconformists on the other, they ex
aggerated the royal prerogative."
But in spite of these accidental perversions,
the doctrine of the Church of England was at
all times essentially that which the Convocation
declared in 1534, and which Parliament subse
quently ratified ; that " the Pope of Rome hath
no greater jurisdiction conferred upon him by
God in Holy Scripture in this kingdom of Eng
land than any other foreign Bishop." The Dean
quotes at length from Mr. Gladstone's remarks on
the royal supremacy, the clear and memorable
statements, which set so courageously forward the
true position of spiritual freedom, secured alike
by law and practice to the Church of England.
If the truth on this subject were more generally
borne in mind, we should be delivered from those
Erastian claims on the one hand, and from those
disloyal diatribes on the other, with which ex
treme men create, renew, prolong, and embitter
those dissensions and disputes which so grievously
injure the Church's power, and at times threaten
even to rend her asunder. . . .
The further progress of the reformation of re
ligion is traced in the following pages with a
master's hand. The Dean shews that, —
" neither Henry nor Cranmer was a theorist, they had
no particular schemes of their own to carry. He found

406 ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
the Church of England bowed down by the galling
tyranny of Rome, through powers gradually usurped.
"When they had asserted the freedom of the National
Church, and declared the king to be ' in all causes and
over all persons civil and ecclesiastical within his do
minions supreme,' they had to legislate not -with a view
to further their pre-conceived opinions, but simply to
meet the difficulties arising from the circumstances in
which they were placed. In an age of inquiry they soon
discovered that the Catholic Faith, though always pre
served in the three Creeds, had been obscured by super
incumbent superstitions ; and they sought, as they were
discovered one by one, to remove them."
In this work, throughout Henry's reign, he and
the Archbishop worked in the main steadily to
gether, though
" Henry was of a conservative temper, and would move
slowly, whilst Cranmer, though slow to receive a truth,
laboured eagerly when he had accepted it for its pro
mulgation j both were frequently inconsistent ; the one
urged on by his passions, the other retarded by his
weakness." It was of God's great mercy to this Church and
nation, first, that two men of these opposite
temperaments were acting together, one from the
throne of England, the other from the marble
chair of Canterbury, to guide the coming changes ;
and next, that the changes themselves were but
remedies for immediate practical evils. There was
in the nation a wide-spread dissatisfaction with

ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 4O7
the whole body of Papal corruptions. If the first
attack on these had been conducted by one who
had once been what Luther describes himself to
have been, a "most mad Papist," and who in
his first intoxication from newly-discovered truth
had appealed to that feeling, and had found the
strength with which to carry his reforms in the
passions of the populace, England's Church might
have become what the religious systems of Saxony,
of Geneva, and Scotland have been. But the first
energy of the English Reformation was spent in
demolishing the master evil of the Pope's usurped
supremacy, and denying its sister vice of his in
fallibility. Slowly, cautiously, and like an ebbing
tide, rather than with the violence of a cataract,
with reluctant pauses, and seeming returns, the
stream of feeling turned against those distinctly
doctrinal errors which had affected the great
mysteries of the Christian Church ; and this
branch of the Reformation was in consequence
approached calmly, and dealt with moderately,
so that the evil parasites were removed, without
shaking the truth round which they had wound
themselves, and to which they clung  That
the English Reformation was wrought by men of
this calibre is, perhaps, its most notable charac
teristic. Undoubtedly it is to this fact that the
Church of England owes its absolutely single and
separate character amidst all the reformed com-

408 ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
munions. It bears the mark and impress of the
intellectual or spiritual peculiarities of no single
man. Herein at once it is marked off from the
Lutheran, the Calvinist, the Zuinglian, and other
smaller bodies. On each one of them lay, as the
shadow on the sleeping water, the unbroken image
of some master mind or imperial soul. The mind
of that founder of the new faith, his mode of
thought and argument, his religious principles,
and his great defects were reproduced in the body
which he had formed, and which by a natural
instinct appropriated and handed on his name.
And so it might have been with us too, had there
been amongst the English Reformers such a leader.
If Wycliffe — the great forerunner of the Reforma
tion, whose austere figure stands out above the
crowd of notables in English history, — if Wycliffe
had lived a hundred and thirty years later than
he did, his commanding intellect and character
might then have stamped upon the religion of
England the essential characteristic of a sect.
But from this the goodness of God preserved the
Church of this land. Like the birth of the beauti
ful islands of the great Pacific Ocean, the founda
tions of the new convictions which were so greatly
to modify and purify the medieval faith were laid
slowly, unseen, unsuspected, by ten thousand souls,
who laboured, they knew not for what, save to
accomplish the necessities of their own spiritual

ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 409
belief. The mighty convulsion which suddenly
cast up the sub-marine foundations into peak, and
mountain, and crevasse, and lake, and plain, came
not from man's devising, and obeyed not man's
rule. Influences of the heaven above, and of the
daily surrounding atmosphere, wrought their will
upon the new-born islands. Fresh convulsions
changed, modified and completed their shape,
and so the new and the old were blended together
in a harmony which no skill of man could have
devised. The English Reformers did not attempt
to develope a creed or a community out of their
own internal consciousness. Their highest aim
was only to come back to what had been before.
They had not the gifts which created in others
the ambition to be the founders of a new system.
They did not even set about their task with any
fixed plan or organised set of doctrines. Their
inconsistencies, their variations, their internal dif
ferences, their very retractations witness to the
gradualness with -which the new light dawned
upon them, and dispelled the old darkness. The
charges of hypocrisy and time-serving, which have
been made so wantonly against Cranmer and his
brethren, are all honourably interpreted by the
real changes which took place in their own opi
nions. The patient, loving, accurate, study of Holy
Scripture was an eminent characteristic of all
these men. Thus the opinions they were receiving

410 ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
from others who had advanced far before them
in the new faith, were continually modified by
this continual voice of God's word sounding in
their ears, and by corresponding changes in their
own views. Thus they were enabled by God's
grace, out of the utter disintegration round them,
to restore in its primitive proportions the ancient
Church of England. Surely, in bringing to an
end this review of their great enterprise, we may
well say with the late Professor Blunt, —
" God grant that a Church which has nearly for three
centuries, amidst every extravagance of doctrine and
discipline which has spent itself around her, still carried
herself as the mediator, chastening the zealot by words
of soberness, and animating the lukewarm by words that
burn ; that a Church which has been found in ex
perience to have successfully promoted a quiet and
unobtrusive and practical piety amongst the people, such
as comes not of observation, but is seen in the con
scientious discharge of all those duties of imperfect obli
gation .... which laws cannot reach ; that such a
Church may live through these troublous times, to train
up our children in the fear of God when we are in
our graves; and that no strong delusion sent amongst
us, may prevail to her overthrow, to the eventual dis
comfiture (as they would find, too late, to their cost) ol
many who have thoughtlessly and ungratefiilly lifted up
their heel against her."

XXXI.
"THE EARTHLY SIDE OF HEAVENLY
THINGS."
THERE is, even to the most earnest and de
vout, a danger, lest too great delight in those
lower actings of the religious life in which our
senses and our earthly affections take a part,
should unawares rob us of the highest and truest
spiritual communing with God. If the pure de
light of the holy Apostles in the sight of their
Master in the flesh could hinder their being led
on to desire His spiritual presence, and if there
fore His removal from them was a necessary step
to their seeking the higher communion, how far
greater must be our peril in our use of all those
outward forms which address themselves to the
same affections in us! How easily may things
which are given us to lead us on to a true spiritual
apprehension of Him, by their misuse, become
hindrances instead of means to our communing
with Him in spirit and in truth ! The ritual of the
Church, its music, its gatherings, nay, even its
highest appointed ordinances, may have such at
tractions for us that we may rest in them, and
make them ends instead of means, and so lose, in
what becomes to us a beautiful painted wreath of

412 "THE EARTHLY SIDE," &C.
intervening mist, the realities of intercourse with
Christ, which only can maintain our souls. At
a time when, thank God, the bare cold sourness of
Puritanism has so greatly passed from us, and
when the tendency on all sides is towards some
amount of higher ritual, we need in a special
manner this solemn caution ; and especially is it
needed by the young, in whom imagination and
feeling are strong and lively, and so, apter to in
trude their dangerous presence within forbidden
limits, and to draw down to their lower level the
higher actings of the enfranchised spirit.
Nor does this apply only to ritualistic develop-
m.ent. There is a strain of earthly passion run
ning through many books which profess to be
instruments of high and extatic devotions which
are full of the same danger. The wings of the
soul are so easily clogged with this earthliness of
affection ; there- is such a tendency to know even
the ascended Lord rather after the flesh than after
the spirit, to substitute a new form of earthly for
the reality of spiritual love ; and this is so weaken
ing and so lowering to the soul ; it so certainly
draws it down from Him, and therefore injures
the whole moral tone of the spirit which allows
it, and tends to deaden the conscience, that we
cannot too zealously or too earnestly watch in our
selves against the very beginnings of the danger.
Between 1863 and 1870.

XXXII.
" SENSUOUS RELIGIOUSNESS."
THE two temptations of this [inward] class
which I have named as at this time specially
besetting your spiritual life address themselves to
minds of different constitutions. Both are most
dangerous : against both the safeguard is the
same. There is the temptation to a sensuous religious
ness. You will not suspect me of entertaining
any puritan dread of the externals of worship.
Though God is a Spirit, and is to be worshipped
in spirit in order to be worshipped in truth. He
has made us not spirits but men, reasonable beings
with spirit, soul, and body ; and He is to be wor
shipped by us with all the separate parts of that
marvellously compacted whole. They who, to
make our worship more spiritual, would shut out
from it the worship of the soul or the body, make
it a mere play of the fancy, or a struggle of the
intellect, till they evaporate its essential charac
teristics as the worship of redeemed men. But
whilst this is most true and most important, it is
no less important and true that our worship may
easily be smothered by the weight of its external

"SENSUOUS RELIGIOUSNESS." 41S
in the deep mystery of personal experience, that
He and He only has the words of eternal life.
Such an one comes to comprehend that the aesthe
tic love of ornamented service may be no true love
of Christ, but some mere fancy play wrought for
the soul's ruin by the deceitfulness of Satan trans
forming himself into an angel of light, as a mock
ing substitute for that true love of Christ. It ap
prehends that this love is evermore a severe thing,
a piercing, penetrating, personal affection, and
that what falls short of this is not the love of
Christ Himself, but of the accidents of His pre
sence. It comes to understand those deep words
of S. Augustine, "Quod non propter se amatur non
amatur \"
Here, then, is the safeguard against this tempta
tion also ; and there is no other. You cannot get
rid of it by\ merely lowering the tone of services,
and baring them of their external ornaments ; for
it is just as possible for one man to be deceived
by his love for the bareness, which he calls sim
plicity, in worship, as it is for another to be be
guiled by the splendour which is dear to him.
Like the parasite, which will cling to any prop
around which it can cast its tendrils, these spurious
affections will find their own support in the forms
which habit, natural inclinations, and, above all,
party-spirit, endear to them. The snuffle of the
' Tom. i. 366, a. Ben.

414 ¦ " SENSUOUS RELIGIOUSNESS.
adorning, till it sinks into the death of mere for
mality, or is sentimentalized into the languid feeble
ness of an unmanly emotion. This temptation ex
ists amongst us, and when yielded to, it utterly
emasculates the character ; it brings on an uni
versal languor in action ; it enervates the will, and
soon clogs with a cloying sweetness the healthful
acting of the affections. The victim thinks him
self growing in devotion when in fact he is learn
ing more and more to substitute for devotion an
jesthetic attachment to well-rendered services, to
an ornamental ritual, and to highly-demonstrative
forms of material worship. What do such men
want to break the charm which binds them ? They
want to know Christ, to know Him on His Cross
dying for their sin, for all is real there ; to know
Him awakening by His word within their heart
the sense of guilt ; to know Him bringing to them
the blessed message of forgiveness ; to know Him
holding communion with their reconciled spirits ;
when this mighty revelation of Himself has visited
the soul, it cannot rest in outer things, it cannot
endure to have sign or symbol, be it of never such
bewitching beauty, intercept one ray of His coun
tenance, who is fairer than the children of men.
To see Him, to be alone with Him, to hear His
voice, to know His touch, to lean on His breast,
to yield itself to Him : this, and no less than this,
can satisfy the soul which for itself has learned,

41 6 "SENSUOUS RELIGIOUSNESS."
conventicle is as precious to some tempers as is
the gorgeousness of Eastern ceremonial to others.
You cannot starve the busy intrusive fancy into
a heavenly affection. You must exclude it by
occupying the soul with a plant of higher nature
and nobler origin. The love of Christ must so
elevate the spirit, that it shall rest in no form, but
in every form seek Him supremely ; it must so
enlighten the eye, that in every sign of His ap
proaching it can see Him, and see nothing else as
beautiful but that which does reveal Him. Then,
and then only, are we safe in worship.
Between 1863 and 1870.

XXXIII.
"THE REAL TALISMAN AGAINST
UNBELIEF."
T T is by almost insensible gradations of decline
-^ that the end of utter irreverence and unbe
lief is reached. There is first the mere unwatch-
fulness of a heated spirit ; then the pleasant whis
pers of an asserted self-will, or the gratified sense
of a secret superiority to others, perhaps to parents
or instructors ; then the tinsel brightness of the
new discoveries of seeming truth, with which arro
gance and ignorance dazzle the eyes of those they
would bewilder and mislead. Then come all the
motley crowd of encouraged doubts ; then the
cold shivering ague of scepticism, and at last the
wilful hardness of unbelief But were there not
here also restraints broken through and whispers
disregarded which might have shielded and saved
the miserable soul ? Most assuredly there were,
and the listening to that one voice, " See that
ye refuse not Him that speaketh," would have
saved a soul from everlasting death.
This, then, is the history of cases such as these,
and surely it is a history which is full of awfulness.
E e

4l8 "THE REAL TALISMAN
For the depth of the downfall answers to the
greatness of the former elevation, and each of
these are only less than infinite, when the rege
nerate soul has become a castaway, the redeemed
of Christ has chosen to be Satan's slave, and the
temple of the Holy Ghost is turned into a cage
of unclean spirits, and a dwelling-place of devils.
If it were possible for anything to add to the
awfulness of such a picture, it would be the sight
of what might have been the blessedness of one
so highly favoured. Even as we see it, shorn
of so much of its glory, shattered and defaced
by the work of sin, how grand even in its ruin,
shews that soul of man which was created in the
image of God ! How various its endowments, how
noble its qualities, how vast its reach ! What
must it not have been, when in its original excel
lence it was dwelt in fuUy^by the grace of God !
Yet it is to that, and it may be to far more, that
the regenerate under the moulding of God's hand
are here in progress. Oh ! thought of awe for
those who are marring this work and losing its
perfecting. Oh ! blessed thought for those in
whom this work is advancing.
For that loss reaches everywhere. That per
fecting extends its work of restoration throughout
the whole nature. Even in that which, high as
it is, is not the highest part of man, I mean his
intellectual powers, it is impossible to overrate

AGAINST UNBELIEF." 419
the blessedness of this gift, or the great damage
of losing it. Sin in every form, but especially
in that of self-will, is ever bidding for our hearts
by the old promise of making us through our
self-choices to be like gods, knowing good and
evil. But it is the false promise of a lying spirit.
Sin, even as regards the intellect, is always weak
ness. Sooner or later, wanderers from God in
the far country of their wilful choice " begin to
be in want." They miss even their intellectual
perfecting. The softness, the impatience, the arro
gance, the scornfulness which sin brings into the
soul are films which soon thicken into blindness,
and shut out from the darkening eye the bright
beams of the world of light around. He that
would know the full powers of the marvellous
intelligence which God has given him, must seek
for that acting of the uncreated intelligence upon
his own which will set free all its energies, and
give it back at once its strength and harmony.
And even this is but the least and lowest part
of that unspeakable work of renovation which is
wrought, within those who yield to Him, by God
the Holy Ghost. His chiefest work is on man's
highest spiritual nature. It is the purifying of
the soul, the filling it with love, and joy, and
peace ; the cleansing it from all its stains, the
opening of its eye-sight to drink in the radiance
of the uncreated light.

420 "THE REAL TALISMAN
Oh that my words might persuade any of you,
brethren in Christ, who have not as yet tasted
of them, to believe indeed in these powers of the
world to come, which are all around you, and to
make them yours. Before their might, all diffi
culties melt away ; under their influence, the soul'
rises to its true strength, and expands to its
proper dimensions. Doubts, and fears, and weak
ness, and all the evil heritage of the Fall, vanish
where He is. Oh, for ourselves, and for the
Church around us, let us seek with a new earn
estness His presence and His gifts. Yea, this
day come down amongst us. Thou blessed Spirit
of the Father and the Son, and work mightily
in this Thy Church Thy manifold work of love.
Amidst the strivings of the busy intellect. Oh
Wisdom of the Father, shew us what is truth.
Amidst the tumults of the earth. Oh mighty
Comforter, vouchsafe us peace. Amidst our many
discords. Oh bond of the uncreated Trinity, knit
us into One by the sure binding of Thy un
broken unity. Amidst our pollutions. Oh Spirit
of holiness, vouchsafe us purity ; in spite of all
our coldness. Oh breathe into us some inspiration
of Thy love !
Then shall we love and serve Thee as we would ;
then shall Thy languishing ministry be filled kgain
with noble, burning, loving spirits ; then shall
hearts be opened, then shall tongues be loosed.

AGAINST UNBELIEF." 42 1
yea, and the blessed day be hastened in its dawn
ing, when all the elect shall have been gathered,
and when in spite of all our manifold infirmi
ties, our eyes shall see the King in His beauty,
and our spirits rest for ever on the bosom of our
Lord. . . .
.... I need not tell you that an insulting levity
in the treatment of Christian dogma abounds in
the present day around us. You have all read or
heard the sneers, the insinuations, the depreciating
compliments, and the withering scorn with which
simple earnest belief in the Word of God and
the great Credenda of Christianity are now-a-days
too often treated. The whole blame of this is
not fairly to be laid on those who so speak or
write. They have, doubtless, had many provo
cations to bear from the narrow prejudices which
so readily entwine themselves with an ignorant
and imperfect belief. Nor is the temptation to
be traced exclusively to what is evil amongst us.
Ages have their own temper, just as natural sea
sons have their own character ; and to that cha
racter, be it what it may, peculiar disorders, as
well as peculiar advantages, are akin. No good
is to be done by simply flouting at the temper
of our age. The only wise course is to acknow
ledge and act with the good, and to strive to
precipitate the evil in the great stream which is

422 "THE REAL TALISMAN
weltering round us and bearing us and ours along.
There is very much that is noble in the temper
of our own age. It may contrast most favourably
with sensual, dull, drowsy, easy-living times, when
mind seemed almost stifled with matter, and the
soul embruited by the dominance of its corporeal
mate. In physics, in history, in philosophy, in
religion, ours is an active, busy, inquisitive, dis
covering, critical age. Little enough it knows
of rest. Labour, conflict, victory — these are its
watchwords. There is a great deal that is noble
in all this : a great deal with which the young
and the ardent, and the high-minded, and the
intelligent must specially sympathise. It is, most
certainly, a very interesting time in which to
live ; but it has its dangers, and some of those
of the gravest character. Its victories, of neces
sity, breed in it a certain audacity. The autho
rity and the genius of the Christian revelation
oppose themselves to this element of its temper.
It revenges itself by subjecting the claims of
which it is impatient to a newer and stricter
criticism than former times have used. To the
apprehension of many, it seems to succeed in
greatly reducing the range and authority of those
claims, and unbelief and lawlessness spread with
no mean increase on every side.
Now in what course at such a time is safety
to be found .'' Certainly not, I think, in sleepily

AGAINST UNBELIEF." 423
disregarding what is passing around us : as cer
tainly not in simply setting ourselves against the
temper of the day : in hating progress ; in wor
shipping ignorance or dulness ; in suspecting
science ; or with a timid restlessness, bred of the
weakness of faith, seeking to invent some new
concordat between it and revelation ; nor in
forbidding criticism ; in turning away from dis
coveries ; and scoffing at advance. No, brethren,
these cannot help us. The rock which with its
rugged breast affronts the violence of the torrent,
cannot stay, but can only chafe into a ruder anger,
its troubled waters. Christian philosophy should
know some higher wisdom than that ; — and where
else, but in this same safeguard, is to be found
the talisman for such times as ours .' If there
are hard sayings discovered in the Christian re
cord ; if many turn back because of them, and
walk no more after Him, what is all this but
a sifting of the inner willingness of hearts to go
away from Him ? What else do the many voices
round us proclaim, but that, more than ever, we
need a personal knowledge of Him to keep us
safe amidst the strife of tongues ? That not in
ears closed artificially against syren songs, not
in minds manacled and ignorance courted, but in
a more abundant presence with us of Him who
is our faith, shall be our safeguard. When faith be
comes more difficult, when sayings become harder.

424 "THE REAL TALISMAN
we do but want the more a real personal ac
quaintance with Him. We need to trust, with
a simple affiance, in His atonement ; to walk
more with Him in our Galilee ; to lean our bur
den more entirely on Him ; to have more inward
experience of what He is to the soul who lives
in communion with Him ; so that the chafing
surf of intellectual difficulty, when it breaks upon
us, will but lead us, like the limpet, to its rock,
to cling, by the renewed instincts of the soul,
the closer to Him.
This is the real talisman against unbelief It is
not to be found in hard, narrow, exclusive views,
but in a personal love to Christ ; for this rises
in its strength as difficulty rises ; this arms the
soul with new instincts, which defend it in the
day of danger For such an one, when questions
trouble him, there is a whole life of resistance
to unbelief, which is quickened into action by the
mere touch of what might harm the spirit. There
is the remembrance of past communings with his
Lord ; there is the sense of His present nearness ;
there is the clasp of deepening love ; there is the
soul's passionate cry, " Lord, to whom should
we go .¦"" there is the realization, by our own
spirit, of the great simple philosophical verity,
" Qui recte amat procul dubio recte credit ^"
True love to Christ will sweep away a thousand
» S. Aug., tom. vi. 240 d.

AGAINST UNBELIEF." 425
doubts, and answer a thousand speculative diffi
culties ; and as this is to be our own internal
safeguard, so it should set the note for those who
have to handle the jnysteries of God before such
a generation as this. With this safeguard, there
can be no danger to the truth from any amount
of increased intellectual activity. It is mere un
belief to suspect that criticisms or science can
threaten Christianity. Such fearfulness belongs to
the defenders of an imposture, not to the keepers
of truth. It does but increase our difficulties ;
for suspicion evermore breeds suspicion. It is
not by limiting the intellectual side of our reh
gion, but by exalting its spiritual side, that we
can be safe and keep others safe. It is not by
striving to repress intellectual activity, nor by
jealously warning it off the precincts of revealed
religion ; it is by lifting up before men's eyes
the Cross of Christ, and teaching them personal
affiance in Him, that we shall keep uninjured the
great deposit of the truth. And this is the only
talisman : without it all speculations upon the
mystery of Hfe and of God are full of danger ;
for though such peril is pre-eminently present
in studies and enquiries which tend to shake re
ceived belief as to things sacred, it is not with
them only that it is present. It is almost as
easy for controversial orthodoxy, as for adverse
speculative criticisni, to land the spirit in the

426 "THE REAL TALISMAN
valley of the shadow of death. Nothing can more
endanger the true life of the spirit than the cold
charnel-house breath of a mere reasoning, un
loving, uncharitable orthodoxy. Alas, the path
way of the Church, through times of great con
troversy, is marked by the mouldering corpses of
such combatants for truth. This, and this only,
can keep us safe amongst our own perils, — to
have known ourselves the love bred within the
soul by a true belief in Christ's atoning blood,
in Christ's perpetual presence, in Christ's abiding
love. And of this we may be sure — no specu
lative difficulties can endanger one soul, which
has been taught by experimental knowledge to
say in times of darkness, " Lord, to whom shall
we go .' Thou hast the words of eternal life." . . .
We must learn the need of reverence in seek
ing. For as the finding is not the natural result
of our endeavour, but the free gift of His Will,
all true seeking must be a perpetual bowing to
His Will ; a receiving His communications of
Himself as He is pleased to make them, not as
we think they ought to be made. What a lesson
this is. And when more needed than now .'' If
you will but learn it, you will be delivered from
many of the most dangerous of your temptations.
For nothing more tends to weaken resistance to
indolence, or even to gross sensuality, than doubts
as to the reality of the truth of the Gospel.

AGAINST UNBELIEF." 427
And these doubts are often bred, and always
strengthened, by our irreverend impatience as to
the difficulties which beset the revelation God has
given us. If, therefore, you will settle in your
souls this truth, that our God is a God who hideth
Himself, you will be able to see that the presence
of difficulties which you cannot solve is a neces
sary condition of the dispensation under which
you are living : that they must be inseparable
from a state of imperfect knowledge, and from
a limited revelation ; that they essentially apper
tain to a state of trial and probation ; that they
are needful for your own full development, and
may be made moral instruments for working out
your own perfection.
Further, you will see that the true mode of
treating them is neither to deny their existence,
nor to fear their presence, still less to let them
minister to the production of doubt or unbelief,
but to look at them as men look at the clouds
which fleck the heavens ; which, though for the
time they hide the sun, yet do not make it the
less present in the firmament, but which may
themselves become so full of its light as to give
back its radiance with a beauty which, if its burn
ing brightness had not been broken by them into
the infinity of light and shade, it could not have
possessed. For difficulties, and temptations, and
all the permitted accidents of our life of trial

428 "THE REAL TALISMAN
here, will become to those who. bear them pa
tiently, and use them faithfully, new instruments
for conveying to the soul the assurance of His
presence who casts His light upon them ; and
whilst He veils Himself at will behind them, at
His own will breaks through them with the mani
festation of His presence. This is the way in
which we may learn the secret of God's nearness
to us. It is the discipline by which we may get
rid of the unreality which talks about God, and
in a certain way connects Him with what we
think the religious part of our days, but forgets
His nearness to us in the common everyday ac
tions which make up our lives. For, just as we
cannot see the natural light in its own essential
being, but only in its reflections from that on
which it falls ; so can we never fully learn the
presence of God with us unless we see it reflected
on us from all things round us, and not the least
from the trials and temptations which that pre
sence gilds with heavenly radiance.
Here then, brethren, is this truth, and here its
practical bearing on our lives. But one word
more, and I have done. It is also most full of
comfort. Whose heart amongst you all, even
amongst the youngest and most joyous, has not
knovvn some touch of deep sorrow. As life goes
on, you must know more of it. The spring of
the spirit slackens, outward cares and troubles

AGAINST UNBELIEF." 429
multiply, inward struggles increase. Life becomes,
with very many even of those who seem the most
successful, a day of clouds and thick darkness.
How unspeakable is the blessing to every one
thus visited, of knowing that if only he be faithful
all this shall pass away. That the God in whose
presence is life, is but out of love hiding Him
self for a season, but that He will reveal Himself.
That for every faithful believer in Jesus the clouds
shall pass away, the sun shall break out in its
glory ; that his eyes, strengthened then to bear
the vision, shall see the King in His glory, his
spirit cast itself in permitted completeness on that
eternal love which created, redeemed, and has
perfected it.
Between 1863 and 1870.

APPENDIX.
Village-Churches in 1842 — 45.
THE impression I have gathered from my inspec
tion of the parish-churches of the county [viz.
of Surrey] is, upon the whole, of an encouraging com
plexion. "With some few exceptions, these hallowed
heir-looms of our land are yet sound in the material
part of their structure ; their ecclesiastical character,
though often humble in its pretensions, is, in its main
outlines at least, undestroyed ; whilst the injuries which
past negligence or ignorance have inflicted on them are
capable of remedy. In raany of the village-churches
much has been done within these last few years : some
have been absolutely dug out of the ground which long
neglect had suffered to accumulate round them, to the
destruction of the symmetry of their proportions, and
the grievous injury of the building from damp and
want of ventilation. The broken pavements, crumbling
windows, decayed seats, and mouldy walls of too many
more, no longer continue to reproach the impiety which
had surrounded them with houses " ceiled with cedar,
and painted with vermihion," whilst it wantonly or in
dolently permitted the house of God to lie ruinous and
waste. New churches, too, have risen both amongst the
crowded multitudes of our metropolitan district, and in
many an out-lying hamlet of our rural parishes.
Yet much remains undone ; and it is rather from
the evident awakening of better feelings in a multi
tude of quarters, than from what has been already ef-

APPENDIX. 43 1
fected, that I gather my chief encouragement. StiU are
there multitudes amongst us who know no pastor's voice,
who have no place in any house of God ; stiU is it too
often a painful and humihating thing to enter the parish-
churches which we inherit from our fathers' piety. We
find, perhaps, in some remote district", the ancient
building preserving marked traces of the unsparing ex
pense at which it was erected, and by which it was
adorned. The hands of its founders and its gravers have
long since mouldered into the dust of the surrounding
churchyard. Alas, that with them should have been too
often buried the blessed spirit which led men to delight
in rearing up and making beautiful the altar of their
God ! For what do we see now ? Their poor estates
have grown great with the increasing wealth of the land.
The houses in which the fathers dwelt have been found
too strait for the children ; palaces have sprung up
instead of mansions ; every land and every climate have
been ransacked to furnish the heautifiil woods, the costly
silks and carpeting, which minister to their magnificence
and ease. The abundance of wealth has even over
flowed the dwelling-house itself; the fruit and flowers
which our fathers knew not, cluster on our walls, or
scent our gardens. And how, meanwhile, has it fared
¦with the house of God ? There, as it seems, alone,
all expense is grudged. The narrow walls have never
expanded for an increasing^ population ; nay, its strait
ened area has been too often made straiter still by the
grasping hand which has seized on the best situations
on which to erect private enclosures, which are car
peted, and cushioned, and warmed, to secure as large
a share as possible of merely personal comfort, whilst
' The village-church of Leigh, Staffordshire, is a good illustration.

432 APPENDIX.
the surrounding building is suffered daily to grow poorer
and more waste. Unshapely galleries block up its
windows, in which the beautiful stone-tracery of other
times has been replaced, when repairs became unavoid
able, by the commonest materials : other windows have
been closed wholly, because to close was cheaper than
to restore them. For the same cause whole arches
have been walled up, and their very aisles demolished ;
whilst on every side the waste of gradual decay, or the
meanness of cheap repairs, give an air of depressing
desolation to the sacred building.
This is but too faithful a picture of holy places bor
dering upon private mansions which are decked and
furnished with every instrument of splendour and luxury.
And surely . that so it should be, is a fearful sign that
there has grown widely up amongst us an earthly,
luxurious, and unchristian temper, which has lowered
the general standard, and thus injured grievously even
the best amongst our people. For though, doubtless,
superstitious motives, from which we, thank God, are
free, mingled often with better purposes in the rainds
of those who spent of old thus nobly, it is a deep
disgrace to us that, instead of purifying the motive,
we have renounced the zeal; and when we learned
that we could not purchase heaven with our offerings,
have therefore ceased to offer to the Lord our God ....
Before any alteration whatever is made in a parish-
church, the concurrence of the ordinary must be ob
tained 
It is of great moment that the law on this point
should be clearly understood, as it wifl henceforth be
strictly enforced by those whose duty it is to enforce it.
Neglect of this in times past, as well as too great

APPENDIX.

433

readiness to grant faculties, has brought the interior
of most of our churches into a state which calls most
urgently for some immediate and stringent redress. In
a mere clamour against pews, if by pews are meant
fixed seats of convenient construction and just allot
ment, I am not disposed to join. I have no sympathy
with -views recently put forward with great ability by
a writer on this subject, who would remove from our
churches all facihties for sitting. That our fixed seats
were one consequence of that Reformation for which
we can never be too deeply grateful to Almighty God,
is -with me no discredit to them. "With the great men
who, in the 17 th century, did resist their novel forma
tion, we shall do well to object to their abuse, and not
to their existence ". "Wholly unsuitable as they no
doubt are for a worship which consists chiefly in gazing
upon the official devotion of another, they may assist
the " common prayer" of our reformed Church, they are
suitable to our national character, they tend to foster
habits of family religion, and, by preventing the in
convenient confusion of different classes, they may,
whilst they protect his rights, be even more welcome
to the feelings of the poor man than of the rich.
But that these advantages attend their use is no justi
fication of their abuse ; and that they have been greatly
abused, the churches of any district will prove. During
^ In the curious " History of Pews" published by the Cambridge
Camden Society, it is plain that the objections of Bishops Montagu
and Wren were not to pe-ws, but to "pe-ws or ne-w seats erected
by private men on their o-wn authority;" or, again, to "seats or
pe-ws -which hinder and encumber the neighbours in hearing God's
-word and performing Di-rine service;" and, once more, to "high
and close pe-wes," -which made it impossible for the -wardens to
present for irregularity of behaviour.
Ff

434 APPENDIX,
my parochial visitation, I have met with manifold in
stances of the evils to which I refer. For the most
part, the oldest pewing is, in all essential matters, far
the best. It is the most adapted to general devotion,
and the most suited to the architectural character of the
church. The earHest seats are the lowest, the widest
(both important assistants to general kneeling ;) they
are the most regular, the most substantial, of the best
materials, and, above afl, the least unjust in their ar
rangement. The first change is commonly marked
by the insertion between the oak-benches of anomalous
deal-doors. These are followed by deal skirting-boards
raising the sides of the old oak-seats. As you advance
up the nave, large square seats, with sides often six feet
high, entirely of deal, painted or unpainted without,
and often of matting or green baize -within, swallow
wholly up the old oak-benches. Soon after these, a
gallery has commonly appeared, blocking up the arches,
choking the windows over which it stretches, and op
pressing with its low ceiling the worshippers below.
All this is bad enough as a mere disfigurement of
the church; but in its moral aspect it is far worse.
For this change in the character of the seats has been
the consequence of the private appropriation of what
once were acknowledged as the common rights of the
parishioners. It is wealth, or parish influence, or some
other earthly power, which has enabled pretension, even
in God's house, to seize upon benches which were freely
occupied before by humble worshippers, and to ap
propriate their Christian birth-right to the maintenance
of its own barren grandeur. The degree to which this
evil has risen can hardly be suspected without a de
tailed examination of our churches. In my progress

APPENDIX. 425
through this archdeaconry I have found chancels, which,
vrithin these few years, contained benches free to all,
wholly enguffed in two vast pews allotted to the squire ;
in other cases, I have found all the best parts of the ,
nave entirely engrossed by private pews of similar di
mensions and allotment, in each of which sit two or
three stragghng inmates, nursing their separate dignity.
"Whflst in others, a vast pew, raised up to the height
of a low gallery, absolutely shuts out the whole chancel
from the church, rendering even the rubrical perform
ance of the service thenceforth impossible.
Charge, 1842.
For the raost part, as far as our parish churches go,
we succeeded to the marred inheritance of a penuriously
spendthrift generation, which grudged the necessary
means for keeping up that which their poorer ancestors
ungrudgingly erected. The system, too generally pre
valent, has been that seemingly economical, but really
most costly plan, of repairing insufficiently; covering
defects, rather than curing them ; putting off a little
present expense, by allowing it to run on from year to
year at the compound interest of self-aggravating dilapi
dation. In some of our parishes this has gone on so
long, that the church must soon be rebuilt, or cease to
be at ah. The evil day has been put off until repairs
become, at the same time, impossible and unavoidable.
In many others, the evil, though existing, has not reached
this head. In many it has of late been effectuahy re
moved, and the church thoroughly and worthily re
paired. Still, in too many of country districts, some
church may be found approaching to this sad condition ;
and others, which, in one or other of their parts, exhibit
tokens of a like neglect. The very aspect of these

436 APPENDIX.
buildings is unworthy of their purpose, and depressing
to the merest chance observer : — their church-yards,
with ill-kept fences, full of ragged, mouldering monu
ments, which openly proclaim descendants' utter care
lessness of a memory, which too fond a confidence be
queathed to them with other hopes : — the earth heaped
high round the ruined, sunken walls of the sacred edi
fice itself; which, undrained, unguttered, and patched up
with mean substitutes for true repairs, invites on every
side a wider ruin ; casements closed with masonry, be
cause bricks, darkness, and want of ventilation, cost
for the moment less than windows decently restored ;
the pitch of the roof lowered, and so symmetry de
stroyed, damp invited, and the walls strained or rent,
because it was cheaper to saw off than to restore the
ends of solid beams, whose whole extent our fathers
grudged not, as a free gift to God and to His poor : —
all this prepares us for the scene within ; where, stum
bling over the pavement broken into holes, or repaired
unevenly with the cheapest materials other floors reject,
we proceed up aisles bounded by high irregular pews,
into whose ancient oak foundations, and modem deal
additions, the moist green walls are perpetually breath
ing damp, decay, and rottenness. Often, too, as if to
aggravate the sense of desolation, cheap expedients for
relieving personal discomfort may be seen in cumbrous
cushions, gaudy pew-linings, and columns sheathed care
fully with hat-pegs, which plainly intimate that, in the
house of God alone, would the frequenters ofthis build
ing bear around them such disorder and neglect.
On the moral influence which such buildings exercise
upon a parish I will not enlarge, because it will sufiice
for me to shew you their direct physical effect. Their
damp, unventilated atmosphere makes them inaccessible

APPENDIX. 437
or fatal to the sickly and infirm; their ill-conditioned
casements, ill-closed doors, and draughty roofs, lead to the
continual heightening of the pew-sides, from which alone
any shelter can be gained : these, in tum, enclose, block
up, and obscure the church ; shut out the young from
the wholesome restraint of observation, and the occu
pation of the eye, so useful in fixing a volatile attention ;
while they exclude the old from the opportunities of
sight and hearing ; and all from the possibihty of kneel
ing, or joining, as one whole body, in many ofthe pub
Hc services. PubHc baptisms, for instance, as a congre
gational solemnity, "representing to each" adult "his
own Christian profession,'' become almost impossible.
Some ordinary vessel, and a private corner, replaces the
darkened font, which is mutilated, broken up, or filled
with the litter and rubbish which a rare act of purgation
occasionally gathers from the more open spaces of the
church. Such, in too many instances, was the building
we received from those immediately before us ; such,
in some at least of the features I have painted, stifl re
mains the House in which God is to be honoured by
our united worship. His blessing sought upon an as
sembled parish. His Gospel declared to waiting souls ;
in which all His flock, and especially His poor, ought
to find their own place provided for them in which to
hear His word, to seek His name, and to give Him
thanks. Such evils, then, it is ours to repair.
Charge, 1845.

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