Another illustration may perhaps be more obviously appropriate: The Church has buoyed certain channels in steering for the port of eternity; she tells all who neglect to keep the prescribed course that they run a heavy risk of being stranded amidst shoals and quicksands, or at least of hindering themselves much in their progress towards the wished-for country. She gives them this friendly warning; but, unlike the Church of Rome, she refuses to "sink, burn, and destroy," those who hesitate to comply with her directions. Now there are many who will be every man his own expounder, who are some (as they think) of Paul— some of Cephas-some of Apollos-some of Christ: who, confounding the intellectual illumination of the Spirit with the moral, pin their faith to the theories of some favourite expositor or (so called) evangelical preacher. They thus exercise their right of private judgment in turning their backs upon the beacon-light far shooting from the rock of apostolical antiquity, in order to follow the ignes fatui of modern conjectural interpretation. Thus they pursue their dreamy way amidst the uncertain and ever conflicting currents of opinion, like vessels without a rudder and without a compass, at the mercy of every wind that blows under heaven. Such is and must be the position of these clamourers for the right of private judgment. Deluded by the phantom of popery which scares them away from consulting the primitive fathers as WITNESSES, they are content to grasp the shadow whilst losing

6

*

"Against the ancient fathers and the early Church (says Mr. Faber, referring evidently to Ancient Christianity,' &c., by Isaac Taylor) a succession of charges, both negative and positive, has lately been brought by an ingenious author who does not give his name.

"In their teaching, it seems, they omitted the weightier matters of the Gospel, and occupied themselves, not very profitably, in gnosticising upon the virtues of celibacy, in lauding the potent meritoriousness of fasting, in prominently exhibiting the benefits attendant upon the invocation of dead saints, and in determinately mystifying the sacraments, until those divine ordinances assume the suspicious colour of the veritable Romish opus operatum.

"The professed object of these charges is to aim a blow at the well known Oxford Tracts for the Times.' I do not quite clearly understand the author's chronology: for, though his special attack is upon what he calls the Nicene Church, meaning, I suppose, the Church subsequent to the first Council of Nice; yet, in search of his materials, he seems inclined to travel back well nigh, if not altogether, to the apostolic times. Had he distinctly limited the term of his attack to the fourth and fifth centuries, a very fair argument, on Tertullian's just principle that every doctrinal innovation is a palpabie adulteration, would have been brought against the Tract writers; but if he means to carry up his censures to the strictly Primitive Church which conversed with the apostles, I should think, on the principles of historical testimony, PROVIDED his case could be evidentially established, that the gentlemen of the Tract school will hold themselves obliged to him for consolidating a much stronger argument in their favour than I have as yet chanced to encounter.

"However this may be, I here mention the work, simply lest it should be

*

the substance, and to take their articles of faith from John Calvin, instead of from those who knew and conversed with John the Divine. The Church, however, visits such with no temporal penalty for these their erratic absurdities; she warns them of the danger into which their error is likely to lead them; she lays down for them a sure and safe principle of guidance, by forsaking which they render themselves in many cases virtually excommunicate, but in the exercise of a mild and tolerant spirit peculiarly her own, she pursues them with no temporal ban. If they continue in their delusion, she leaves them in sorrow to their own devices. How absurd then is the froth continually put forth in magazines, from pulpits, and on platforms, about liberty of conscience," and the free exercise of the "right of of private judgment," as if the Anglican Church either interfered with the one or questioned the other.

66

Immediately allied to this clamour, and another result of the

eagerly caught up, by some strenuous misopaterist, as stultifying the legitimate principle of an appeal to antiquity.

"Agreeably to the wise recommendation of the Anglican Church, we, who are her dutiful sons, appeal, in the way of evidence not to this father or to that father, but to the entire succession of the fathers from the very beginning and, furthermore, we appeal to such aboriginal succession, not for the purpose of imposing upon the faithful matters unscriptural or extra-scriptural, but in order to ascertain, through their harmonious testimony, what was ALWAYS the catholic received sense of doctrinal Scripture; inasmuch as our very principle, in direct opposition to the spurious Tridentine principle, is a strict limitation of our appeal to the evidential ascertainment of the true apostolical sense of doctrinal Scripture only.

Now, whatever gratuitous absurdities may have been personally advocated by the fathers as we descend the stream of chronology, and whatever unscriptural notions may have been by them heaped upon sound catholic doctrines, this cannot affect their unanimous TESTIMONY to the universal reception of really Scriptural doctrines from the very beginning.

"Let all the fathers, if the author means to include them all, gnosticise ever so copiously on fasting and celibacy; or let them, with the Roman Clement unexpectedly at their head, labour ever so perseveringly to obscure and overlay the sincere Gospel by mystifying the sacraments, and by invocating the saints: must we say, that therefore they become, henceforth and for ever, quite useless and incompetent WITNESSES, as to whether the Catholic Church, from the time of its foundation, universally held, or universally denied, the doctrines of the Trinity, and Christ's Godhead and the atonement, and many others, which, correctly or incorrectly in the abstract, are yet all professedly deduced from Scripture?

Truly, we might just as reasonably maintain, that those grave clerks who, in the days of good King James, devoutly believed in witchcraft, were therefore incompetent WITNESSES to the real quality of the doctrinal system professedly deduced from Scripture by the Reformed Church of England.

* "Let them, in the first place, take care that they never teach any thing in sermons which they would have the people hold and believe but what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and which the catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from that very doctrine."- Vide Canons of 1571.

habit of too hastily snatching at things without proper investigation, is the use, on the part of this class, of the everlasting adage "The Bible only is the religion of Protestants." This wise, and true, and pious saying, is perpetually brought forward, as Mr. Faber observes in his preface-

"In order to shew Chillingworth's decided approbation of that modern hermeneutic system, which, throwing aside all ancient ecclesiastical testimony in the true sense of doctrinal Scripture, would set up, in its place, the mere unsupported opinion or the mere insulated private judgment of each jarring and conceited individual.

"No such vague empiricism, however, as the system in question, seems ever to have crossed the well-exercised brain of Chillingworth. So far from it, he distinctly gives in his adhesion to that identical Anglican principle of an appeal to concurrent antiquity, for which, until better informed, I shall always feel it my duty to contend.

"Let me tell you (says he) the difference between the various Protestant Reformers is the difference, not between GOOD and BAD, but between GOOD and BETTER. And they did BEST that followed SCRIPTURE INTERPRETED BY CATHOLIC WRITTEN TRADITION: which rule the Reformers of the Church of England proposed themselves to follow. *

"And again: The doctors of the Romish Church do the principal and proper work of the Socinians for them; undermining the doctrine of the Trinity, by denying it to be supported by those PILLARS OF THE FAITH which alone are fit and able to support it: I mean, SCRIPTURE and THE CONSENT OF THE ANCIENT DOCTORS. +

"In thus delivering his own principle of Scriptural interpretation, which, as he truly states, is the principle of the Church of England, Chillingworth seems not to have anticipated the remarkable modern discovery, that an appeal to Scripture INTERPRETED by Catholic written tradition, (I employ his own precise words) is no other than the introduction of a second rule of faith which entirely supersedes and nullifies what ought to be the SOLE rule: and as little, apparently, did he anticipate that, in the rapid spread of theological light and scriptural knowledge wherewithal in the present day of great things we are blessed, he himself, because he had declared that the Bible ONLY is the religion of Protestants, should again and again, upon platform and in magazine, applauding and applauded, be adduced as the uncompromising advocate and the indubitable patron of that same discovery."

But now to turn to a view of the opposite party. It was naturally enough to be expected that the grievous disregard of Catholic authority, in matters no less of doctrine than of order, on the part of those who were deeply imbued with more of the sincere love than the right understanding of evangelical truth, should have led many learned and thinking individuals

Chillingworth's Relig. of Protest. chap. v. § 82. p. 285. Tenth edit. London, 1742.

+ Chillingworth's Relig. of Protest. Preface, § 16. p. 16. See my Apostolicity of Trinitarianism, book ii. chap. 1. § 1. 8.

to turn their attention more particularly to the much forgotten discipline; and that from keeping their eyes thus steadfastly fixed upon this one object, their views with regard to doctrine should have been much coloured and modified (as indeed to a certain extent, it was right that they should be) by their views, sometimes carried to extremes, with regard to discipline. Hence the origin of a narrow and exclusive theology embodied in the "Tracts for the Times" and other productions emanating chiefly from the cloisters of Oxford, which tended to maintain too much, as those of the other party had maintained too little; and moreover, we fear, in many cases, to lead the junior and more enthusiastic adherents to give an undue prominence to externals, and to exalt mere matters of opinion or convenience into objects of faith. And whereas the study of the fathers had been too much overlooked by the others, and a due regard to their HISTORICAL TESTIMONY withheld; on the part of these again, the value and authority of the primitive divines was too much magnified, and their legitimate position, as witnesses to what was taught in the earlier ages of the Church, was changed into something more akin to that of judges, whose decrees were placed almost on a level with those of the apostles themselves. It is by no means difficult to perceive that this tendency to magnify historical testimony into authoritative decision must pave the way for the introduction of error whenever it derives a colour of support from the writings of the often mysticising fathers, and accordingly such has been the result. There is too much of the mint and the anise and the cummin of the gospel in the writings and sermons of the school to which we refer, and this we feel bound to state, whilst doing all justice and paying all affectionate regard to the eminent spiritual-mindedness which distinguishes many of its leaders.

And not only is an undue prominence frequently accorded to the less weighty matters of the law, but the systems of divinity propounded by the Tract writers abound, as might be expected, with much actual error, amongst the most prominent of which stands that, as they hold it, of Baptismal Regeneration. Mr. Faber, by his masterly clearing up of this matter, has conferred an invaluable service on the Church. Invaluable, we say, because, following the admirable principle medio tutissimus to the letter, interpreting Scripture first by Scripture itself, and afterwards by the light of Catholic antiquity (which must, as he employs it, be a true light, if the apostles understood what they themselves wrote), he has succeeded in producing a work which, independently of the immense mass of collateral information which it contains, is more than all valuable, as presenting a

rallying-point, where the better educated and the more sound udging of both sides may find a comfortable ground of union, as we sincerely trust, for the good of the Church, that they will. The question which we hope he has set at rest for ever forms, with that of apostolic succession, the great battle-ground between, what in default of a more accurate nomenclature, we suppose we must call, the High and the Low Church party. The one holding much to apostolical order, but somewhat dark in their views of evangelical truth; the other having clearer, though by no means correct, views of the latter, but who, proceeding upon the principle of the Presbyterians at the Reformation—that every thing done contrary to the practice of the Church of Rome must be right-cast out of sight, in their zeal for what they deemed evangelical truth, all wholesome regard to apostolical order.

In the views advocated by Mr. Faber, the thinking, wellinformed men of both parties may meet, as we have already observed, and as we hope to succeed in showing, upon a fine vantage-ground, from whence to attack the common enemy. The implicit follower of the Tracts will have his opinions greatly cleared, and enlarged, and modified; the same result, we were about to say, will follow, as regards the Evangelical Low Churchman. But we must retract our prognostication-we fear we are saying too much. It is not so easy to lay aside that lax habit of theologizing which pins its faith on the mere unsupported dicta of favourite expositors, and is content to substitute assumption for proof, and one-sided assertion for impartial investigation. This much, however, at least is certain, that all who are not determinedly bigoted to certain sets of opinions-all who are not committed to the watch-word of a party-all who have sufficient clearness of discrimination to see the perfect compatibility of giving heed to the weightier matters, the great doctrines of faith, whilst by no means overlooking the mint and the cummin of the gospel-the full possibility of preaching a doctrine gloriously evangelical, whilst holding a discipline nobly apostolic-such will here find rest to their souls-such will become what Mr. Faber is-what our great Reformers were-what we glory in being ourselves-what all who are not led away by too lax a spirit on the one side, or restricted to too narrow a mode of theologizing on the other, are rapidly becoming -need we say that we mean EVANGELICAL HIGH CHURCHMEN?*

* We find that we have been misunderstood by some in our use of this term, as though we were seeking to call into existence any new sect in the Church. We need not say that we never for a moment entertained any such intention. There are a vast number of Churchmen who, having regard mainly in their