believed that its statements are more than mere human expositions of Scripture? Yet the twenty-first Article is far more difficult of explanation to such high-churchmen,' than the nineteenth Article (the Church of Rome hath erred') is to me. (see p. 100.) So the notice at the end of the Communion Service is far more difficult to reconcile with any belief in the Real Presence of our Lord's Body, than the twenty-eighth Article with the Roman belief. (see p. 118.) As to the twenty-second Article ('on Purgatory,' &c.) the real distortion seems to be the applying it to abstract Roman doctrine at all this seems to me quite a forced and unnatural construction: as much so as the construction which I put on the twelfth Article. So again a comparison of the sixth Article, the twentieth, and the twenty-first, will shew them utterly irreconcilable in spirit with the idea of any authorized interpreter of Scripture in times past, whether Pope, Council, or consent of the Fathers; and quite as irreconcilable with the last as with the first. Yet a Canon came out at the same time ordering authority to be given to the Fathers, and the Homilies exemplify the same in their language.

In some particulars 'high-churchmen' adopt a less reasonable interpretation than any others at all. For instance, the oath of supremacy may most naturally be understood as denying spiritual authority to the Pope, and attributing it to the King: only in Article XXXVII. the Reformers shrink back again from this; for 'ministering of the Sacraments' is precisely that prerogative in which spiritual power consists. So again it is reasonable, much more consistent with Article XXXVII., though much less consistent with the more obvious meaning of the oath of supremacy, to interpret the latter as Dr. Pusey interprets it, considering the word 'spiritual' in that oath to be merely synonymous with ecclesiastical;' like the other synonyms power, prince, potentate,' &c., so as merely to refer to power in the ecclesiastical courts, &c.: temporal power in things spiritual. But what is so absurdly untenable, is the ordinary interpretation of this oath; which introduces into an oath of royal supremacy a determination on the respective place of Pope and Bishop; which tries to

impose a yoke on our conscience, and make us believe that in that oath we deny something to the Pope which yet we do not attribute to the King. An extravagance this, which need only be stated to be refuted.

Are the Latitudinarians then better off in their subscription? Allusion to the Athanasian Creed, and to the strong language of the Prayer-book on Baptismal Regeneration, sufficiently disposes of that question.

In a word. I am firmly convinced that no one clergyman of our Church, who will look honestly in the face the formularies which he is called on to subscribe, will be able to subscribe them all in a natural and straightforward sense. I attribute this fact to the utter want of fixed religious principles displayed by the leading Reformers; and I attribute to it much of the disingenuous and unmanly spirit, which has so often been the shame of religious controversy in our Reformed Church. But how those who look on the leading Reformers as serious men, as having been zealous for doctrine, and as having realised their religious expressions, how these can subscribe our formularies, it is for themselves to consider.

a Hear an admirer of the English Reformation. In that movement Dr. Arnold "used to say it was necessary, above all other historical periods, 'not to forget the badness of the agents in the goodness of the cause, or the goodness of the cause in the badness of the agents." Arnold's Life and Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 290.

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE IN THE PURSUIT OF

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRUTH.

1. ATTACKS are continually made on integral parts of the received Christian system, which imply such a maxim as the following; viz. that a fair, and unbiassed, and searching examination of any doctrine we have been accustomed to hold, is under all ordinary circumstances a means of increasing the certainty of our religious knowledge; and that he, who when fairly challenged to the task of investigation refuses to comply, exhibits a consciousness of the weak basis on which his faith rests, and a marked deficiency in the true philosophical spirit. On this principle it must be, that the rationalist is so loud in his complaints, or so contemptuous in his comments, when-notwithstanding the very serious and numerous difficulties he succeeds in raising on the genuineness and the authority of the various books in Scripture, and the inextricable confusion in which he is able to involve the whole question of inspiration; notwithstanding the unanswerable, or at least unanswered, difficulties which he is able to place in the way of those who maintain the ancient reverence for the inspired volume ;-Christians nevertheless proceed to read the Bible as devotionally, or to draw doctrinal truths from its individual texts with as much of unconcern, as much of humble and unquestioning reverence, as though he had spared himself the trouble of his deep research; and as though all the labours of the modern German school had been devoted to some subject wholly unconnected with religion,-to mathe

a

matics, or to astronomy, or to gunnery. On the same principle the Socinian enlarges, with no modified feeling of contempt, on the bigotry and narrow-mindedness which the orthodox display. In vain does he put in the clearest light the difficulties which surround their doctrine; in vain does he shew them, that their tenets are simply unmeaning and self-contradictory, unless they go on to admit the whole patristic scheme of technical theology; and that no two things can be more openly and undeniably opposed in spirit and general bearing, than the text of the New Testament and the technicalities of the fourth century; in vain does he bring before them passage after passage in Scripture, of which it seems to him absolutely inconceivable that it could have been so worded, were the Trinitarian doctrine Apostolic; in vain does he adduce texts to shew how little need be understood by the high and glowing language, here and there applied to our Blessed Lord; he cannot obtain from them even a confession that there is the slightest difficulty in the matter. 'They take for granted,' he says, 'the truth of their own interpretation as unblushingly, as though they had most carefully examined the whole question for themselves, or as though the whole world agreed with them in opinion on the subject. Not one in ten thousand will so much as take the trouble to find out that there are any arguments on the opposite side ; and of those even who go so far, not one hundredth part will take the further step, of fairly giving their mind to the task of appreciating the force of those | arguments.'

Nor are similar comments confined to unbelievers. The Protestant is not less excited to anger, or contempt, or a mixture of the two, by what appears to him the strangely arrogant and inconsecutive course adopted by high-churchmen.' They profess, in the main, to base their belief on the faith of the primitive ages. Now it is well known that many Protestant thinkers, of most undeniable qualifications for historical research, and certainly no more (indeed much less) fairly chargeable with prejudice than 'high-churchmen,' have come

a An observation of Mr. Blanco White's.

to conclusions on the history of these times widely different from theirs. Yet will these theologians, with unruffled brow, nay with professions on their lips of the deepest and most shrinking humility, speak of their opponents as 'unhappy men,' or 'miserable men,' or 'misguided men,' and of themselves as beyond any possible question in possession of the truth; nay more, private Christians, who do not profess to have studied the matter at all, but take their opinions on trust from others, will speak of their peculiar doctrines (e. g. the Eucharistic Presence) with as much undoubting dogmatism, as though these doctrines rested for support, not on a difficult and disputed historical inquiry, but on the clearest and simplest mathematical proof. What can we do with such men?' say the Protestant world; we drive them in argument from one position to another; yet they still confront and attack us as resolutely as ever. After all their confident and boastful language on the favourable and striking contrast afforded by their doctrines to the Roman schools, we find them-not only softening their tone every year, but-quietly giving up, one after another, points which they had maintained as confidently as any which they still maintain; nay, we find them remaining silent under the irresistible attacks of Roman theologians, and yielding them the victory without a struggle. Looking at the opposite quarter-in the midst of their assumptions on the impregnable nature of the historical ground they have occupied, we obtain from them by the way the cool admission, that at last the evidence is no more than enough to prove, that "there are three chances (so to say) for revelation, and only two against." And yet for all this, there they remain as pertinaciously and undoubtingly upholding their present views, and as unreservedly charging with moral culpability all departure from them, as though they had made good their historical argument to the satisfaction of all; and as though they had never hitherto been mistaken, in a single position which they confidently maintained."

Nay, the high-churchman' himself, who, one might have

b Tracts for the Times, No. 85, p. 112.