Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

of persecution. We cannot say, with him, that this is the 'worst part of the system.' That, in our judgment, is to be found in the separation which it effects between the spiritual Christ and the human soul, and which may be effected as well by substitution as annihilation, by popery as infidelity. But if not the worst part, it is a bad part, of the system. To deny that we are christians is enough to justify our loudest protest; but to assert the right to punish us for not being so, is to go the whole length of blind zeal, or cunning cruelty. Let it be known that this length Puseyism is prepared to go. The following extracts from different works quoted by Mr. Madge, will show this :

In proof of the accusation thus brought against them, I will first refer you to a passage contained in the sixty-fourth number of the 'British Critic.' It had been said in the Quarterly Review,' that the church is not now in a worse position with respect to the state, than it was in the days of Whitgift and Hooper. Upon this the 'British Critic' observes-'Now, with all deference to the respectable quarter from which this assertion proceeds, we cannot call it anything else than a palpable and egregious mistake. The church is in a very different, and in a much lower position, with respect to the state, than it was in the times of those divines. Then it was co-extensive and identical with the state. When men ceased to be members of the former, they were also deprived of their position in the latter. A seceder from the church was, as such, a criminal and a malefactor. The king, the council, and the parliament, were all not only necessarily churchmen, in common with the rest of the nation, but churchmen bound officially to protect the church, and put down her enemies. We put it, then, to any person, as a simple question of fact-Is or is not this order of things reversed? Are persons now obliged to go to church in order to escape going to jail? Are even ministers, privy councillors, members of parliament, magistrates, or any class of civil functionaries, obliged to be churchmen?'* Palmer, in his treatise on the church, after mentioning various laws relating to its discipline and doctrine, which still exist, goes on to observe, that, in accordance with the principle involved in those laws, and in the articles and canons of the church of England, the state has a right, when necessary, to oblige the members of the church, by temporal penalties, to submit to her ordinances, and neither to establish a different worship nor teach different doctrines from hers.'† 'No man can forsake the church without committing a grievous sin. The civil magistrate may reasonably restrain such men by temporal penalties, in order to prevent them from disturbing the weak brethren and troubling the church '‡. In one of the Tracts for the Times,' the writer, referring to those who exercise the right of

British Critic, No. lxiv., p. 321.

+ Palmer on the Church, vol. ii. p. 274, 3rd. edition. Ibid, vol. ii., p. 276.

private judgment, makes this observation :- Such troublers of the christian community would, in a healthy state of things, be silenced, or put out of it, as disturbers of the king's peace, and restrained in civil matters; but, in our times, from whatever cause, being times of confusion, we are reduced to the use of argument and disputation, just as we think it lawful to carry arms, and barricade our houses during national disorders.*' Attend, also, to what Mr. Newman says: If scripture-reading has, in England, been the cause of schism, it is because we (the church) are deprived of the power of excommunicating, which, in the revealed scheme, is the formal antagonist, and curb of private judgmentt.' The same author, in his 'History of the Arians of the Fourth century,' speaking of those who denied the doctrine of Christ's deity, and what he thought to be the evil consequences of their conduct, says, It is but equitable to anticipate those consequences in the persons of the heresiarchs, rather than to suffer them gradually to unfold and spread far and wide after their day, sapping the faith of their deluded and less guilty followers.' 'In this,' says Mr. Newman, 'lies the difference between the treatment due to an individual in error, and to one who is confident enough to publish his innovations. The former claims from us the most affectionate sympathy and the most considerate attention; the latter should meet with no mercy. He assumes the office of the tempter, and so far forth as his error goes, must be dealt with by the competent authority, as if he were embodied evil.''—pp. 37-44.

[ocr errors]

We give these extracts because the doctrines they teach have not received the notice they deserve, by reason of the more strictly religious bearing of the system. They are sufficient to satisfy any reasonable man as to what we might expect from the uncontrolled power of Puseyism. The authorities are high enough, and the language is plain enough, to show that its tender mercies would be cruel. The nature of its doctrines prepared us for these avowals of its advocates. Dissent is a civil offence; physical force is the proper answer to nonconforming objections; the only unlawful thing is argument, which is justified by nothing but the existence of great disorders. And it must not be forgotten, that these statements are made while Puseyism is seeking to get power; they are the declarations of a party not yet in the ascendant, and therefore under strong temptations to conceal the most offensive features of their system. If these things are said now, when policy must be the order of the day, what would be done in the time of triumph and of pride? If persecution is so boldly pleaded for when opponents are to be conciliated, with what zeal will it be carried out when they have only to be destroyed? Tractarianism in this matter is not even milder than full-orbed popery. We Tract No. 59, p. 3.

+ Newman's Treatise on Roinanism, p. 170.

question whether the adherents of the latter in this country would think it wise to make so little reserve of their compulsory tenets. The new sect is far more reckless than the old one. Of all men, upstarts are the most offensive.

[ocr errors]

In the second lecture, the usual topics relating to the christian church' are treated in the usual way. It is shewn that the church is the congregation; that there is no foundation in scripture for the assertion that Christ or his apostles instituted a ministry consisting of three orders, and that to the first of these orders alone belongs the right of ordaining to the ministerial office; that the episcopal form of government, in its present shape, had no existence in the first christian churches, and that the whole system of prelacy is a mere human contrivance, devoid of all scriptural authority, and supported only by strained analogies and gratuitous assumptions. We have been impressed in reading this lecture, as we never fail to be when reading on the ecclesiastical controversy, with the immense use that has been made of terms. Archbishop Whately remarks in one of his works, that 'it would have been better if, from the very first, no scriptural terms had been introduced into systems of theology.' It would have been as well if none had been introduced into discussions respecting ecclesiastical polity. The truth could not have failed to be perceived long ago if recourse had not been had to charmed words, and technicalities had not been made to do the work of arguments. Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.' And in no department have they possessed a greater value than in that of church government. Bishops,' 'churches,' 'ordination,' have acquired a particular signification, a sacred sense; and the moment they are heard, the minds of most confess its mighty presence. Must not christians be in churches? Can there be churches without bishops? Can there be bishops without ordination? are questions of potent force, importing to many selfevident propositions. But what are churches, bishops, and ordination? The terms bear not a scriptural meaning, but a traditional one; and it would be about as wise and as valid to appeal to the chapel' of Amos, or the general assembly' of Paul, in favour of the objects which those expressions now represent, as to suppose that 'church,' 'bishop,' 'ordination,' must embody episcopalian views. The voice of early ecclesiastical history unites with that of scripture in declaring a church to be a congregation, not a corporation; the bishop an overseer of people, not of ministers; and ordination, a mode of recognizing what is, not of conferring what is not.

[ocr errors]

The third lecture is occupied with the question of apostolic succession,' and it is saying little for any discussion upon that

doctrine, that if we did not know what power is exerted by education and prejudice, it would be matter of wonder how any one could read it without conviction. Indeed, there is a disadvantage possessed by those who contend against this strange notion, in the overwhelming force of the evidence by which it may be assailed. The suspicion is apt to be generated, that the case cannot be as it is represented, solely because of the absurdity which it involves, that there must be some great argument on the other side which is not noticed, but which would put the matter in quite a different position. And thus vision is prevented by excess of light. The silence of Scripture on so great a doctrine as apostolical succession, and the immense historical difficulties connected with it, can be considered as not essentially vitiating the whole claim by those only who believe that the proof of a doctrine may be small in the precise proportion of its magnitude. Even if Scripture had been clear as to the succession as a mode of transferring from one generation to another the awful powers that are alleged to be secured by it, the possession of them by any individual minister would be a question incapable of a satisfactory decision. To prove that they are somewhere, is not to prove that they are here; and when the many circumstances essential to the validity of an ordination are taken into account, and the innumerable irregularities which are known to have prevailed in some ages of the church are remembered, he must be a bold man who can be confident that the mysterious prerogatives have come down to him. Amid all the miracles which abounded in the dark ages, none are greater than that of a real and pure succession, and if a revelation were necessary to show that such a thing were intended to be by God, nothing short of a revelation would suffice to evince the participation of its benefits in the case of every single and separate clergyman.

Besides the general argument, there are several considerations which place the Oxford Tractarians in an awkward predicament. Mr. Madge adduces some of these, and we shall give our readers a specimen of the manner in which he employs them.

The claims set up by the churches of England and Rome were also set up in times past by churches now branded with the name of heresy. This was the case with the Arian churches. These churches, it is well known, once prevailed to a considerable extent, and through many countries. As to their ecclesiastical constitution or form of government they were episcopal, and had as fair a claim to the apostolical succession as any churches then in existence But the orthodox party, in spite of this claim,-in defiance of the apostolic title possessed by their bishops,-denounced them in the fiercest terms of condemnation. In the East, the Greek church also, which is at vari

[ocr errors]

ance on points of faith with the Western churches, has quite as good a claim as they have to the grace of apostolical succession.' But this avails nothing with the orthodox believers. With them it forms of itself no bond of fellowship and union, presents no barrier to rejection and exclusion from the true catholic church of Christ. The Nestorian, the Eutychian, and other churches, all condemned by councils as heretical, present exactly the same title to the possession of apostolic orders. So that, according to the showing of these high-church divines themselves, the simple fact of apostolical succession, does not, on that account, imply the inheritance of apostolical endowments. For what reason then, I ask, is the fact so earnestly insisted on, and so ostentatiously exhibited? It seems, after all, that there may be apostolic succession unaccompanied with apostolic gifts and graces. But if the possession of apostolic orders be no security against the inroads of error, and no safeguard for the preservation of the church, it ceases any longer to be a mark or sign of the true church.'-pp. 120-122.

Another consideration of which Mr. Madge makes good use, is the fact, that

'As the church of England denies not to the church of Rome her apostolical descent, she ought not, on that ground, to claim for herself more than is allowed to the church which she has abandoned. And yet she does claim more. Notwithstanding her acknowledged derivation from the Romish church; at least, notwithstanding that her chief pretensions to holy apostolic orders are built upon her kindred to, or connexion with this church, she does not hesitate, at the same time, to speak of her spiritual relation in the most derogatory and degrading terms. She proclaims her to be polluted and corrupt; calls her an idolatrous church; and in the book of Homilies, which, by the twenty-fifth of the Thirty-nine Articles, is declared to contain a goodly and wholesome doctrine, the church of Rome is described in language so foul and loathsome that it is impossible for me to repeat it in this place. And yet this very church, thus stigmatized and branded, is admitted to possess the true apostolic succession. What, then, becomes of the wonderful virtue ascribed to this 'succession,' if the very church to whose care it was first committed, and by whose instrumentality it has been conveyed, to other communions, could, after all, be guilty of such idolatrous practices as those charged upon the church of Rome? Can any thing, I ask, be more demonstrative than all this of the unspeakable weakness and folly of the claims and pretensions set up by the high-church or Puseyite party?'-pp. 124, 125.

[ocr errors]

The fourth and fifth lectures discuss the doctrines of tradition' and the 'right of private judgment.' We like these lectures very much: they are the best in the book. If disposed to make exception, it would be to the statement (p. 221), that 'the Roman catholics and the Anglo catholics, in asking us to

« ForrigeFortsæt »