right to know my opinions on these matters; and I shall proceed to state them as plainly and as briefly as I can. This is the first opportunity which I have had of doing so, in an official address to the clergy, since the controversy assumed a definite and prominent shape; and I acknowledge that I was not unwilling to pause, and to be silent for a time, in the hope that those who have been engaged in that controversy would see the evils which must ensue to the Church from its continuance, and be led to modify, or, at least, to keep within their own bosoms, what I considered to be extreme opinions. That hope has unhappily passed away; and it now remains for me to perform the duty of pronouncing that deliberate judgment, which the clergy of my own diocese are entitled to look for. In so doing, it will be my endeavour, in humble reliance upon the guidance of the Holy Spirit, not to enter into a polemical discussion on the truth of the doctrines, or the propriety of the rites and ceremonies, which will come under consideration; but to act as an interpreter of the Church's sense as to the one, and of her will as to the other. If these can be clearly ascertained, we can have no difficulty, looking to the relation in which we stand to her, as to what we are to teach, or how we are to minister: for we have all solemnly promised, at our ordination, to 'give our faithful diligence, always so to minister the doctrine, and sacraments, and the discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church and realm hath received the same.' After stating the Church's view with regard to ministerial authority, and showing that ministerial duty is limited and defined by the laws of the Church and the Thirty-nine Articles, he proceeds: "The endeavour to give a Tridentine colouring to the Articles of Religion agreed upon by the Council of London in 1562, and to extenuate the essential differences between the two Churches, is a ground of no unreasonable alarm to those whose bounden duty it is 'to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines,' and therefore to guard against the insinuation into our Church of any of those false opinions which she has solemnly repudiated. It is one of the methods by which the Court of Rome has before sought to beguile the people of this country of their common sense. What real good is to be effected by any attempts to make our Reformed Church appear to symbolize with that from which she has been separated, in some of the very points which formed the grounds of that separation, I am at a loss to imagine. Desirable as is the unity of the Catholic Church, lamentable as have been in some directions the consequences of its interruption, earnestly as we ought to labour and to pray for its restoration, we can never consent to reinstate it, by embracing any one of the errors which we have renounced. Yet there is no other method than that of embracing all those errors, by which a reconciliation could be effected between our own Church and that of Rome, which, when it decreed its own infallibility, cut off the possibility of its abandoning a single erroneous opinion which it has once formally sanctioned. If, therefore, we are to seek for unity in a reconciliation with Rome, we must be prepared to traverse the entire space which lies between us and the Vatican; for not a hair's breadth I will the rulers or doctors of that Church advance to meet us. Read the recently published letter of Dr. Wiseman on Catholic Unity, and you will see that he stands at the door, and holds it open for those amongst us who profess, as he says, to be conscious 'that reunion with the Holy See will give vigour and energy to a He languid and sickly existence, and who must be prepared to go to the full extent of sacrifice of personal feelings, necessary to accomplish so sacred a purpose.' beckons them in with gracious words of commendation, but not a step does he advance beyond the threshold to meet them; not an error does he promise to renounce; not even a glimmering hope does he hold out of any reformation. I believe that his expectations will be disappointed; that the number of those who are prepared to apostatize to an idolatrous Church, is very inconsiderable. But a greater evil than the apostasy of a few, or even of many, would be the success of any attempt to establish the fact, not indeed of a perfect identity, but of something more than a sisterly resemblance between the two Churches; and to prove that a member of the Anglican Church can consistently hold all the errors of the Roman, except one or two of the most flagrant, and even them, it may be, with certain qualifications." After asserting that in proving the Articles, the single ultimate reference must be to Scripture, not to the Creeds, nor to tradition of any kind, he goes on: "I have already observed, that in the interpretation of the Articles which relate more immediately to doctrine, our safest guide is the Liturgy. It may safely be pronounced of any explanation of an Article which cannot be reconciled with the plain language of the offices for public worship, that it is not the doctrine of the Church. The opinion, for instance, which denies baptismal regeneration might possibly, though not without great difficulty, be reconciled with the language of the 27th Article; but by no stretch of ingenuity, or latitude of explanation, can it be brought to agree with the plain unqualified language of the offices for Baptism and Confirmation. A question may properly be raised as to the sense in which the term regeneration was used in the early Church, and by our own reformers; but that regeneration does actually take place in baptism, is most undoubtedly the doctrine of the English Church; and I do not understand how any clergyman, who uses the Office for Baptism, which he has bound himself to use, and which he cannot alter nor mutilate without a breach of good faith, can deny that, in some sense or other, baptism is indeed the laver of regeneration." The 11th Article is then adduced as one of those of which the language is corrected by that of the Liturgy ; it being less theologically correct to say that we are justified by faith, than to say, as in the Post-Communion Service, that we are justified "by the merits and death of Jesus Christ, and through faith in His blood." After which, the following passage occurs, on the doctrine "of religious reserve" taught in the Tracts for the Times: - Now, if justification, or its results, be, as undoubtedly they are, inseparably connected with faith in the atonement wrought by Jesus Christ, I do not understand how it can be expedient or lawful for us, who are to declare to our people all the counsel of God, to practise anything of that reserve which was practised by the early teachers of Christianity, and to forbear from pressing upon the less advanced of our hearers the most sublime and mysterious doctrines of the Gospel. But in truth the reserve of the early (not the primitive) Fathers of the Church, was different, if not as to its subjects, yet certainly as to its objects, from that which appears to be now recommended; and supposing it to have been prudent and commendable in them, it by no means follows that it is expedient or proper in the present state of the Church. If, indeed, the reserve which is recommended to us be nothing more than a cautious and reverent abstaining from a too familiar mode of treating the sacred and sublime mysteries of our religion, or from such an inculcation of them as may tend to throw into the shade its practical duties, and lead men so to contemplate the attributes or secret things of God, as to forget or undervalue His commands, I readily admit the necessity of such a reserve; but anything of the nature of a disciplina arcani I as promptly reject. I now proceed to offer some observations upon the duty of complying with the Church's directions in the celebration of Divine service. Our proper rules in this respect are the Rubric and Canons, as the Articles are with regard to doctrine; and we are bound to observe the rule in the one case as in the other, although it must be acknowledged, that a departure from the truth is more injurious in its consequences than a deviation from the prescribed ritual. Now, it is impossible to deny that a great degree of laxity has crept over us in this matter; and we are much indebted to those learned and pious men who have forcibly recalled our attention to a branch of duty too long imperfectly performed." In some instances, indeed, they have gone beyond the line of duty and of prudence, in recommending or practising ceremonies and forms not authorized by their own Church, and in ascribing to others an importance which does not properly belong to them; but there can be no doubt of their having mainly contributed to the progress which has been made in the last few years towards a full and exact observance of the Church's rubrical injunctions, as well as to a better understanding of the foundations and proportions of her polity, and the nature and value of her discipline. We ought not |