Essays on various subjects

Preface

In preparing this collection for publication, the reader may well suppose, that this thought must have presented itself to the writer's mind : Would it not be better to suppress the whole of this controversy, which occupies this volume, as dead and gone; as either having attained its purpose, or not likely now any longer to attain it? Such a thought was natural, and connected with other feelings, of which I may have to speak. But it was necessarily overruled by the motive of the entire work. Those persons, whose judgment I respect more than my own, who wished such a collection to be made, particularly desired that this series should not be omitted.

The strongest objection to be overcome in acceding to this wish was, the painfulness of appearing in conflict with persons who are now joined with me in perfect unity of thought and principle, of many whom I respect and even venerate for their learning, their piety, and their orthodox zeal. But this consideration had its other side. For it may not be without its use to see how those who once clung to error through earnest conviction, who defended their mistaken views with erudition and ability, but who, throughout, showed themselves sincere in the desire to attain truth, could nobly abandon that erroneous system, when the moment of Grace arrived, and become far more powerful advocates than their former adversary, vi

PREFACE.

of the Faith, which these pages represent them as opposing. It shows us how really we should be full of hope, wherever there is sincerity ; they bring home powerfully to our minds the words of St. Augustine : — " Plerumque, cum tibi vicleris odisse inimicum, fratrem odisti, et nescis.,,a

But these words at least have not their full application here ; and this is a strong motive with me for republishing these papers. If they exhibited not so much as hatred, but harshness even, or unkindness, towards those for whose sake they were written, I should be ashamed to put before the public the expression of feelings which must now appear most uncalled for and unjust. But it is a consolation to look back at those times, and feel that every kind anticipation has been fulfilled, no expression of trustfulness disappointed. When the day of union came, there was nothing to forgive on either side, nothing to regret. Each had writen with earnestness, and even perhaps eagerness; but mutual respect had been observed, and on one side, I can answer for it, most affectionate interest had been felt. So that now I am sure, that those very persons, whose feelings it may be thought would be best consulted by suppressing all this matter, will be the first to admit, that no unpleasant personal recollections will be awakened by recalling the memory of times when the united were disjoined, only to manifest the amalgamating and unifying powers of God's Church.

I have already alluded, in the Preface to the first volume, as well as in the body of this, to the first circumstance which turned my attention to the wonderful movement then commenced in England — the

a " Often, when you think you are hating an enemy, you are hating a [future] brother, and know it not." In Psal. liv.

PKEFACE.

vii visit which is recorded in Fronde's Remains. Erom that moment it took the uppermost place in my thoughts, and hecame the object of their intensest interest. It is but little remembered now, how chillingly were met the views which they suggested ; how little support they received from any single writer beyond the pages of the Review ; how systematically they were opposed by our periodical press ; how pamphlets were issued by perhaps more than one priest, with such titles as " Are the Puseyites sincere ?" And it is not known, how friends remonstrated with the holder of hopeful views, how they treated him as an enthusiast, or rather a fanatic, who was digging a pit of bitter disappointment for his OAvn feet ; how even the most learned of our historians wrote in friendly warning, to remind him of the vain hopes raised and doomed to bitter disappointment at the times of Laud and of the Nonconformists, and ask him what he saw in the present movement that gave better grounds of reliance than experience had proved to exist then. Even those so situated as to have near them the evidences which convinced him of hopeful advance, viewed them in a very different light, and thought their importance, to say the least, much exaggerated.

At the same time, a serious danger had to be avoided. No concessions could be made to error, beyond the acknowledgment of sincere belief that it was unconscious. To have allowed it to possess a single mark or element of Catholicity, to have admitted a particle of the specious theory of apostolic succession, silent unrecognised communion with the Church, and possession of sacramental power by the national establishment, would have been both false in theology and pernicious in practice. It would have viii

PREFACE.

encouraged a delusion, which, undisturbed, might have laid many asleep in a fatal contentment, who now repose in peaceful security in the bosom of their Mother the Church. No real love for those involved in this state could be shown, except by energetic endeavours to snatch them from it. Whoever, therefore, wished to be truly their best friend, had to make up his mind to appear their most unrelenting opponent.

Besides the pain which such a position inflicted, it had its further difficulties. The theories propounded in the High-Church system were new, and totally different from any aspect which Protestantism had really assumed since the Reformation. They were put forward by men, some of whom brought to their work great ecclesiastical learning, while others contributed acute reasoning, power, and constructive skill. The entire system was built with great apparent consistency, such as to deceive its very architect, who believed it to be planned and raised upon orthodox and primitive models. There could be little hope of undeceiving them, except by pursuing them on to their own ground, and finding there the instruments of assault. Reasoning had to be met by reasoning ; a mistaken, by a truer, reading of antiquity.

To undertake this work was the aim and undeviating purpose of the essays here collected together: and they will consequently be found to present various forms. To say that they proceeded, from the beginning, on a complete and preconcerted plan, would be not only an exaggeration, but a false assumption of sagacity. They followed the course of fresh events and new publications, till by degrees more accurate views were obtained of the opposite system, and then it was felt necessary to attack it in its foundation.

PREFACE.

i \

This led to a mere theological discussion, in which the principles of the ancient Church were collected and applied to the existing controversy. "While acknowledging the immense imperfection of every part of these essays, it would be ungrateful not to express what consolation has been derived from the information, after many years of unconsciousness, so graciously and affectionately conveyed, that they had exercised a material influence on minds so infinitely superior, in every way, to their writer's, by awakening attention to arguments which those minds were peculiarly able to develop for themselves.

However, such as they are, these papers form the only body of Catholic controversy on the subject, during several years, and until they for whom they were written, happily standing on our side, took up the weapons which their experience made a hundred times more powerful and effectual, and rendered it both unnecessary, and presumptuous, for earlier writers to keep the field. After the wonderful lectures on Anglican difficulties, and the smaller treatises by so many other learned converts, as Capes, Thompson, Renouf, Wilberforce, Belany, Lewis, Allies, Northcote, the lists may be considered as about closed ; and scarcely an objection can be anticipated which has not been forestalled and answered. These writers, and especially the honoured and venerated Superior of the Oratory, have amply paid back, as children can do to parents, whatever solicitude the Church may have at one time entertained for their welfare.

And let me become selfish once more, before I close. If, during the years of affectionate opposition which preceded the happy hour of our union, I can say that I never was unhopeful or unloving, so will I with equal assurance assert, that since that period I have

b

X

PREFACE.

never been for a moment suspicious or distrustful. Protestant writers and Protestant speakers chose to say that unkindnesses, or jealousies, or doubtfulness, had arisen between some converts and myself. This was a simple untruth ; for which, nor act, nor word, nor thought, could furnish the semblance of a ground. "Whether it sprung up complete, as an invention, or grew imperceptibly as a rumour, I give it a most unqualified contradiction.

And now let my conclusion be in the form of an earnest and affectionate request ; that if any of my readers shall remember to have formerly received profit, however small, from any passage now reprinted in this volume, he will kindly more than repay it by a short and fervent prayer, that he who has here presumed to preach to others may not, through neglected graces, himself become a castaway.

London, April 23, 1853.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

PAGE

"Tbacts for the Times." Part 1 27

Froude's Bemalns 73

The High Church Theory of Dogmatical Authority 103

" Tracts for the Times." Part II. Anglican Claims of

Apostolical Succession 161

" Tracts for the Times." Part III. The Catholic and

Position of the High Church Theory at the close

THE

HAMPDEN CONTROVERSY.

From the Dublin Review for May, 1836.

THE

HAMPDEN CONTROVERSY.

Aet. XI. — 1. Inaugural Discourse read before the University of Oxford in the Divinity School, on Thursday, March 17, 1836. By E. D. Hampden, D.D., Eegius Professor of Divinity. London, 1836.

2. A Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, explanatory

of the Proceedings at Oxford. London, 1836.

3. Elucidations of Dr. Hampden's Theological Statements. London,

4. Dr. Hampden's Theological Statements and the Thirty-nine

Articles compared. London, 1836.

We feel obliged to confess, that, in looking over the controversial tracts which the appointment of Dr. Hampden to the theological chair of Oxford has called into being, our minds have been crossed by feelings, which we scarcely know how to reconcile together, or even to analyze, with satisfaction to ourselves. On the one hand we see learned and zealous, and we have reason to believe, in some instances, amiable men, contending, in the spirit which belongs to a better Church and a better cause, in favour of a rigid adherence to principles and doctrines which we must approve ; yet, thereby departing from the consistency of their professed faith, and betraying how powerless they are in wielding the weapons which it has long since blunted, and then thrown aside. On the other side, we see the professor elect accused, not unjustly, of rash and dangerous opinions in his earlier

b 2

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works, but yet most unjustly cited to answer for them, upon principles which his accusers themselves had no right to adopt. Eor he is charged not so much with heterodoxy in faith, as w ith violating articles, that can pretend to no power of binding the internal belief.

But the anomalies of the system, which this controversy has exposed, are still further exhibited by - the new position, wherein the professor installed has placed himself. His inaugural discourse appears ; in it all is conformable to what his opponents could require ; the doctrine of the Trinity is no longer the result of " a combination of the judgments of speculative reason, with the prescriptions of authority,' ' or " an exact scientific view of the principle of causation ;"a the sacramental influence is no longer the consequence of a " general belief in magic in the early ages of the Church ;"b transubstantiation is no more a doctrine which, as "a simple opinion, might have had no harm in it;"c but all is just what the most zealous supporter of the church articles could desire ; the Trinity, as in them taught, cannot be denied " without expunging the Scriptures themselves,"11 the sacrament of regeneration is efficacious as a means of grace, through Christ's blessing, " so as to be indispensable to all within the reach of it;"e and, as a peace-offering perhaps to more relentless spirits, transubstantiation is "rejected as a fond notion." f Not only in these points, but in many others, the impartial reader of the works before us will see manifest variations of opinion, not to say glaring contradictions.

But is the blame of this to be cast upon Dr. Hampden ? Assuredly not. Had he been a teacher in our Church, had he made his confession of faith amongst us,

a Theological Statements, pp. 17, 19. b lb. p. 58.

c lb. p. 61. <l Inaugural Lect. p. 9. c P. 14. s Ibid.

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we might have been startled at such a change ; because we could have discovered no principle in the mind of a Catholic theologian, whereby it could be justified. But where the religion itself admits the possibility of variation in the whole collective Church, and supposes, that to-day it may be plunged into idolatry or gross superstition, and to-morrow rise regenerated and purified from the laver of a reformation, it is surely unreasonable to expect, that its individual teachers shall have preserved consistency, through the growing experience of life. We do not mean to insinuate that the professor's chair can have, or has had, a magical influence upon the opinions of its occupant, or that it is an infallible nostrum for the cure of heterodoxy. Eor the professor's adversaries absolve him from all formal guilt in this respect, as the schoolmen call it. Dr. Pusey says, that what they have written, "it should be plainly understood, has not been done with any idea of passing judgment upon the personal faith of Dr. Hampden." " On the contrary," he adds, "we believe that the earlier faith planted in the soul yet survives, and we trust and pray that it may survive, unharmed if possible, by the later philosophical system, which has been admitted into the intellect." g The report of the Committee, appointed, March 5, by the Corpus meeting, makes the same declaration, and is careful in stating that " they are far from imputing to Dr. Hampden personally those unchristian doctrines, with which his system [characterized in the preceding paragraph as the theory of rationalism^] is closely connected, or the consequences inevitably flowing from it."h

Here, then, is an admission, of inward orthodoxy in

s Theological Statements, p. iii.

h Letter to His Grace the Archb. of Canterbury, p. 32,

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the accused professor, while his outward teaching is in direct opposition to the principles of faith which he has professed, and to the articles of religion which he has solemnly subscribed. Yet even here there is no inconsistency, upon the principles maintained by distinguished divines of the English Church; though the order of proceeding is obviously reversed. For Dr. Hampden is acknowledged inwardly to believe according to the doctrines prescribed, and only charged with outwardly professing what is at variance with them ; whereas the more ordinary theory is, that the subscribers of the articles may in their hearts reject them, while outwardly they shape their teaching in conformity to them. Which species of discrepancy between the heart and the hand is the more reprehensible, we leave candid readers to determine. Bishop Bramhall says of the thirty-nine articles, that they are " only pious opinions fitted for the preservation of unity ; neither do we oblige any man to believe them, but only not to contradict them."1 Dr. Hey, when actually Norrisian professor of theology in the sister University, asserted in his Lectures, that " the sense of the articles is to be determined by circumstances." Dr. Balguy is still more explicit ; for he says, " The articles are not exactly what we might wish them to be. Some of them are expressed in doubtful terms ; others are inaccurate, perhaps unphilosophical ; others, again, may chance to mislead an ignorant reader into some erroneous opinions ; but is there any one among them that leads to immorality?" Such is his opinion of the articles ; now hear what he says of subscription and mental adherence to them. "I am far from

i This is the language so severely blamed in Dr. H. "Pious opinions (such as the doctrinal statements of our articles) are not parts of revelation."— Elucidations, p. 43.

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wishing to discourage the clergy of the established church from thinking for themselves, or from speaking what they think, nor even from writing. I say nothing against the right of private judgment or speech, I only contend, that men ought not to attack the church from those very pulpits, in which they were placed for her defence."

Now, Dr. Balguy, as Dr. Milner remarks,1" was the most strenuous opposer of those clergymen, who, in 1772, petitioned the legislature to be relieved from the burden of subscription ; and his sermons, from which this passage is drawn, were dedicated to the king. The theory therefore of these, and many other divines of the Establishment, whom we could quote, is, that the articles are not obligatory on the conscience, but only " articles of peace," which need not be believed, but must not be publicly, or rather officially, impugned. And if in Dr. Balguy's text, we simply substitute chair for pulpit. Dr. Hampden's justification is complete ; nay, he may go on still philosophizing on the articles and analyzing them in speech and writing, till he has sublimated them into a vapoury breath, so long as from the chair which he now holds, he shall not gainsay their solidity !

Surely this is strange doctrine ; but it is not ours ; it is the strait to which the right of freedom in religious opinion on the one side, and the exacted submission to subscription on the other, have, by alternate and repeated blows, driven the theological science of the Establishment. It is the doctrine not merely of this, but of foreign communions too : the clergy of Geneva continued to subscribe to the Divinity of our Lord, long after belief in that doctrine had been openly disavowed among them : Michaelis maintains that the

k " End of Religious Controversy," Let. xi.

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adhesion, by subscription, to formularies of faith, only extends to outward profession, and not to interior conviction;1 and Semler bitterly complained that men should be compelled to subscribe such documents, when, according to the very principles of the Reformation, it was tyrannical to exact a profession of belief even in the inspiration of Scripture.™ But if such has been the belief of so many dignitaries and lights of the Protestant Church, Dr. Hampden has surely no reason to be challenged and summoned before any tribunal, for acting in conformity with it. On the contrary, we fancy he has not come up to the measure of dispensation to which those opinions and declarations seem to entitle the conscience; for, once more, we observe, that he is acquitted of believing anything at variance with the established creed.

How, then, are we to solve this mystery, and account for the jealousy now felt regarding the former opinions of Dr. Hampden ? Did not a prelate of the English Church, of whom, as laden with years and infirmity, we wish not harshly to speak, translate and make known in this country one of the most dangerous, because one of the most covert and moderate, rationalists of Germany? and did not his notes, partly by not reaching through the entire work, partly by the dilutedness of their antidote, by their illustrating rather than removing the danger, greatly add to the mischief? And yet if Dr. Herbert Marsh was the importer and propagator of rationalism, was not the Margaret Professor, and the Bishop of Peterborough, a zealous

1 In an Essay on the Possibility of Effecting a Union of Eeligions, in his " Commentationes, E. S. G-otting prajlecta?." Not having the work at hand, we cannot refer more accurately.

m In his Preface to his Abridgment of Schultens's Commentary on Proverbs.

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churchman, and the unrelenting foe to popery? Ought not this example to have given hopes of others, that when placed in high places of responsibility, the spirit of their order would come forth, and flourish perhaps the fresher, for their early and partial blight ? But it is not difficult to discover the secret springs which have been here at work ; and inasmuch as therein are found the latent germs of principles which we would gladly see avowed in the face of heaven, we must feel an interest in watching the course of the accusation.

That the individuals, who call Dr. Hampden to account, are leading men among the high church party, is sufficiently understood. The history of this section of the Anglican Church it is not our province to trace ; but we believe that we may compare it to the theory, which Dr. Gilly, and other fanciful writers, have imagined for that Church itself.11 For, these gentlemen, unable to get rid of the universal domination of popery during so many centuries, have devised a species of mythological protestantism; which, like the Homeric deities, was invisible save occasionally as a thin vapoury phantasm appearing amidst the turmoil of controversial warfare, but yet really existed in its Idas and Olympuses amidst the mountains of Savoy, until it came forth, in bodily substance, as a celestial Avatar, from the head of Luther. And so, do we really believe, that the party in the Church, to which Dr. Hampden's impugners belong, hold their only true and semi- visible Church to have existed pure, until this day, amidst the wilder theories of Protestantism ; always bearing with it some precious remnants and

n See the Rev. James Wheeler's short, but triumphant reply to Dr. Gilly's work entitled, " Our Protestant Forefathers." Durham, 1835.

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relics of good old Catholicity, upholding the authoritative teaching of Christ's Church, and the true efficacy of His sacraments, and reverencing, and perhaps regretting, many of those institutions, which the hurricane of the Reformation recklessly swept away.

The genealogy of this church-party is easily traced, with occasional breaks, from one advocate to another of principles too obviously Catholic; sometimes the depreciators of ecclesiastical rule are for a brief space the lords of the ascendant, at others the star of the church culminates in the political and literary sphere ; but still it has ever continued to live, and the opinions, which this controversy have brought out, have circulated, with alternations of languor and of activity, through the body of the Establishment. In the " Report " above alluded to, the head and front of Dr. Hampden's offending is, his having no " regard to those rules and principles of interpretation, which have guided the judgments of Christ's Holy Catholic Church in all ages of its history, and under every variety of its warfare."0

Again, the committee write as follows : —

" They [the committee] suggest and submit it [a declaration] to you, as a measure, which, while it removes from us a charge of supineness or indifference, may warn the younger part of our students against immediate danger, and will solemnly declare to the world our resolution to hold fast those great laws of Scripture-interpretation and Scripture- Proof, which we inherit from our ancestors in the faith.'" — P. 33.

Is this Oxford or Salamanca that speaks? Is it Corpus Christi College or the Sorbonne ? First, a dogmatical condemnation of opinions ; secondly, a censure on the same; thirdly, the judgments of the Church ; fourthly, this is no other than the Holy

0 Letter, p. 32.

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Catholic Church ; fifthly, this Church guided through all ages by the same sound principles, for this is implied in the jealousy wherewith they are to be guarded ; sixthly, these same sound principles in all ages observed in every warfare, therefore against Berengarius, Wicklif, the Waldenses — why not Luther ? seventhly, these principles to be derived from ancestors in the faith ; eighthly, no law of Scripture-proof to be admitted save what is thus inherited ; — surely these are not the distinctive principles, and acts, and terms of a Protestant clergy, and a Protestant University ! We doubt not that those who signed the Report would reply in the affirmative, and seriously and earnestly maintain that such has always been the conduct and the belief of their Church. Alas ! we wish it had been so. Por had these principles been always practically upheld in England, never would the sad separation have occurred which has rent this country from its mother Church. Others, however, will not so easily see the conformity between these principles and those whereon the Reformation was originally based; but will refuse to believe, that the thick wall of separation which it was intended at the era of that event to place between popery and the new religion, was in reality so thin a film, as it must here appear. The author of the Letter to his Grace of Canterbury, reads Catholicity in every line of the Report. Por thus he writes : —

" I venture to affirm, without risk of contradiction, or at least of confutation, that the doctrine involved in both the above-cited passages is much more manifestly at variance with the characteristic principle of Protestantism, and with the practice of the English Established Church, than any doctrine extracted from Dr. Hampden's writings." — P. 37.

Again —

" The Eoman Catholic doctrine would, if such admission were made, have a manifest advantage over every Protestant church,

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inasmuch as the rules and principles of her interpretation, and her interpretation itself, if not more ancient or more uniform, have unquestionably been more prevalent during many ages of the Church, and have been more distinctly inherited from ancestors in the same faith, than any articles, expositions, or confessions of faith, adopted by the Church of England, or recommended by any Protestant community on earth. I know not to what conclusions a theory like Dr. Hampden's, founded on the belief of the Scriptures, and entire freedom in interpreting them, might lead a rash or intrepid disputant; but I am morally certain that the slavish doctrines propounded in the Corpus Report would compel every consistent reasoner, who adopted it, to acknowledge an infallible Church. "When we once start on the line of infallibility, it is obvious at what goal we must arrive. — Tendimus in Latium. We may bawl out No Popery ! on the road, but we must put up at the Old Lady of Babylon's at last."— P. 40.

This is consistent reasoning ; and we can forgive some words in it which we like not, in consideration of its general sense. It is only another illustration of what Catholics have repeatedly observed, that if two contending parties arise in the Protestant Church, the one is driven to tax the other with Socinianism, and that other retorts with the accusation of popery. It only confirms what every Catholic must feel, that the rejection of a principle of authority necessarily leads, theoretically at least, to the rejection of all mystery, and so to Socinianism, while its adoption obliges its supporters to reason on principles purely Catholic. This tendency of the party at Oxford to run into Catholic principles for shelter, has necessarily attracted the attention of many. It has been ingeniously developed by the author of a clever pamphlet entitled a " Pastoral Epistle from His Holiness the Pope to some Members of the University of Oxford." Imitating in some respect Sir U. Steele's witty device of a letter to the Pope, complaining that the Protestant Church laid claim to as much authority and infalli-

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bility as himself, the writer introduces the Sovereign Pontiff in person, accepting and commending the opinions set forth in the " Tracts for the Times," by members of that University. In reading this ingenious production, we could not help sometimes imagining, that a feeling better than mere love of sarcasm came over the writer's mind, and that his imagination gradually warmed with his subject into an enthusiastic regret, that he could not say in truth what seemed so beautiful even in sportive phrase. One instance of text and commentary will suffice to explain our meaning. The Tracts write as follows : —

" The Catholic ritual was a precious possession ; and if we who have escaped from popery have lost not only the possession, but the sense of its value, it is a serious question, whether we are not like men who recover from some grievous illness with the loss or injury of their sight or hearing : — whether we are not like the Jews returned from captivity, who could never find the rod of Aaron, or the ark of the covenant, which indeed had ever been hid from the world, but then was removed from the temple itself." — Tract, No. xxxiv.

Upon this passage, the Pope is thus imagined to comment : —

"Oh, when you have returned to the temple, with what joy will you behold the rod of Aaron and the ark of the covenant still preserved in its mystic depositaries ! "With what delight will you behold the splendour of our ritual ! What new sensations of piety will throb within your bosoms, as you prostrate yourselves with reverence before our holy altar. The ark of the covenant will be presented to your view ; the real cross will offer itself to your vision ; the relics of holy martyrs will animate your devotions ; nor will you be pained by the absence of the prayer (which you say has been excluded from the English ritual) ' for the rest and peace of all those who have departed this life in God's faith and fear.' You have justly remarked, that 1 prayers for the dead ' formed a portion of those liturgies which have emanated from St. Peter, St. James, St. Mark, and St. John ;P and when you join us in these devotions, you will feel a new proof p Tracts, No. xliii.