PaJ U\er A BETTER REV. DR. HAMPDEN, REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. IV WILLIAM PALMER, M.A. KEM.OW AND TUTOR OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE COLLEGE, OXFORD, AND DEACON IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. OXFORD. JOHn'hENRY PARKER; J. G. F. AND J RIVINGTON, ION DON 1S42. BAXTER. PRINTER, OXFORD. ADVERTISEMENT. I wish it to be distinctly understood, that in the following pages I make no attack upon any other Protestantism than that which is so designated in the writings of the Regius Professor, which however is identified by him with Protestantism in general, and more particularly with the religion of the Church of England. To mark this as strongly as possible, I have always printed the word in inverted commas whenever I wished to confine it to Dr. Hampden's sense. W. P. " Every man certainly may define his own Protestantism as he pleases, but if it is sought to include all Protestantism under such descriptions, we must entirely deny them." Rose on Pr. Ret. in Germany, notes, p. 117. A LETTER, cfc. Sir, The appeal which you made at the conclusion of your Lecture delivered in the Divinity School on Wednesday last and since published " to the sincere part of the Church and the University," and to the judgment of all "unprejudiced and still Protestant Members of the Church," against your opponents, whom you represented as a virulent " Romanising" party banded together under leaders against you, will be a sufficient excuse for my addressing to you this Letter. As I am one of those who concurred in passing the original Censure, and am now prepared to vote against its removal, and am certainly no " Protestant" (at any rate not in your sense of the word1,) and so find myself included in your charge, and besides know that I am reputed to be among the more violent followers of that party against which the charge itself was brought, I wish to enter into some explanation of the grounds on which. I acted in 1836, and on which I conceive myself justified in still maintaining the same line of conduct, without any consciousness of cither party-spirit, or personal prejudice against yourself, or error in the view which I take of the character and doctrine of the Church of England of which I am a member, or of the sense of the XXXIX Articles to which I have subscribed. When I voted against you (since you make it a personal matter) in 1836, I had been resident several years in the north of England, and knew nothing whatever of "the movement" and "party" which you so severely blame, and which you describe as having then chiefly procured your condemnation, and as having since absorbed into itself all the elements of hostility against you. I had heard indeed a hint dropped in private conversation of a design or attempt on the part of some individuals to form a new Theo logical School at Oxford, but of any such attempt (knowing no more than I did at the time) I most heartily and entirely disapproved. With respect to the Censure itself which was then passed, I voted for it without the slightest doubt or hesitation, simply and merely because you appeared to me to deny the root and principle of the doctrinal authority of the Church. It seemed to me, I confess, that the style of language employed by you in your Bampton Lectures, and in your Observations on Dissent, in speaking of all doctrines and of all differences of opinion concerning them, though exceedingly offensive and alarming to men of almost all parties in the Established Church, yet would be perfectly reasonable and de fensible, if I were only to accept your first prin ciple of regarding the Bible as a Revelation addressing itself immediately to all mankind, and were to deny the absolute duty of submitting private interpretation to the Authoritative Teaching of the Church. It seemed to me that you were perfectly right on your " Protestant" principles, (I use the word " Protestant" throughout in your sense of it, and as you think in that of the world at large,) in the view you took of the origin and nature of Creeds and Articles, of their uses and disadvantages, and of the sort of authority which may rightly be given them by societies. I did not ever understand you, as some seem to have done, to have any intention of denying any particular doctrine whatever, which you were bound by the laws of the Established Church to teach, nor of asserting any particular error which you were by the same laws bound to deny ; far less did I imagine that you would attribute to your own necessarily inadequate and variable phraseology a perfection and definiteness in expressing your own opinions, which you denied to all dogmas whatsoever. On the contrary, starting from your principles, I should have found myself obliged (though with a reluctance on certain points similar to what you seem to have felt yourself) to admit the essential unity even of Socinians in Religion with ourselves2, and to defend in general your conclusions. Nor do I at the present moment see any thing in any of your publications, not even in those passages and extracts which have been most objected to, which could be easily or successfully impugned on any other ground than that of the perpetuation of a Divine authority to teach in the Church. As it was, I neither felt nor feel now any manner of personal animosity against you — I merely perceive that you are not like the great mass of our Church-people "Protestant Catholic," but in intellectual opinion at least a thoroughgoing and consistent " Protestant" in your own sense of the word ; one who sees more clearly than others the principle of what you call the " Protestant Religion," and in past times has not shrunk from following out that principle to its consequences. It is evident indeed that in the boldness with which you stated and developed your principle, and applied it to the consideration of Creeds and Articles, you went far ahead of the Protestant mind of your own country ; and scan dalized not only the great majority of the Clergy (in whom the Catholic principle of respect for the Authority of the Church — though mixed — was still strong, and whom you have materially cooperated with the Authors of the Tracts for the Times — indeed with the times themselves— in bringing to a deeper sense, of their own principles) but also the so-called Evangelical Party, whose feel ings of zealous persuasion on particular points were so outraged, that they unhesitatingly condemned you, without waiting to reflect that their own Protest antism of feeling had no other ground to stand upon against the Apostolical Party than that which was common to your more intellectual Philosophy; and that the clay might come when they should be obliged to fall back with you upon that fundamental principle, which is common to you both, and to all sects of Protestant Dissenters besides. But for myself I certainly did not in 1836 accuse you in my own mind of any wilful fault whatever, nor of any conscious disloyalty towards the holy Scripture, or towards the Creeds, Articles, and Formularies of the ' Establish ment;' except indeed so far as the very notion that Scripture is a mere record of Divine facts, and the original source from whence individual reason is to elicit its own Creed, is of itself subversive of the au thority of all Creeds, and ultimately of Holy Scripture too. I did not, I say, accuse you ; I merely differed from you in opinion as to the root and princi ple of my religion, and that of the ' Established Church.' What seemed to you the fundamental principle of true Theology as " Protestant," seemed to me then, as it seems now, the fundamental principle of all heresy and error. I voted for the Censure then on the very same principle on which you on your view ought to be desirous of seeing me, and such as me, not only censured but excommuni cated if possible from the Church ; which, if she were a Society really based upon your principles, I should be unquestionably only labouring to subvert. Since the Censure was first passed by the Univer sity, you have certainly avoided any unnecessary recurrence to those speculations upon the nature and history of Dogmatism, which you had found by experience to be so very unpalatable to the Univer sity and to the Church. You have even seemed rather to approach towards the ' Evangelicals,' and to range yourself on that side of " Protestantism" which is based upon mere feeling. You have not, however, shrunk from reprinting on occasion you i former 10 works, and you have been far indeed from retracting the principle on which all your reasonings were based. Whatever a prudent consideration of the prejudices opposed to you, or respect for the ex pressed opinion of the University, or perhaps a secret, and if so, a most laudable fear lest the Philosophical development of a principle might really have led you to trench, in appearance at least, upon some verity which your heart believed ; what ever such motives could rightly prompt, you have yielded; but you have not yielded — what no honest man could yield, unless he had first really changed his own mind — you have not yielded, I repeat, one jot of your fundamental principle. On the contrary, though willing to retract error, if error could be proved against you, you said the other day in my own hearing that you were not conscious yourself of having fallen into any error to retract". This being the case, I shall of course vote for the continuance of the Cen sure against you now, on the very same grounds on which I voted for its enactment six years ago. It remains that I should say a few words on the ground which you took up with respect to your oppo nents in general, in so marked and emphatic a man ner in your recent Lecture. I observed that in that Lecture you distinctly based all now as before upon your great principle of a self-originating or Biblical Chris tianity; and supposing mankind, to have first satisfied themselves "as to the canon of Scripture, the genuine " The words alluded to " and I am not aware that I have' do not appear in the Lecture as since published. 11 text, the laws of interpretation, the authenticity and credibility of the volume and its doctrines," &c. you accounted for the origin and formation of Creeds, Articles, and Confessions, in a word of Dogmatical, or as you more correctly upon your principle would name it, "Systematic" Theology, from the constitution of the human mind and the social tendency. You then passed rapidly over all the various discordant views which are, or which might be, taken of the subject; i. e. the whole endless variety of doctrinal views and statements which different individuals or associations of individuals may deduce from Scripture ; no one of which has any right to identify itself ob jectively with Divine truth, or to condemn any other as being in itself error : all this chaotic gulph, the region of your former speculations, you passed over at a step, and threw yourself at once into the mould of the English Established Church. This would certainly have been very good policy if it had been done on purpose ; as it was, it seems to have been accidental, resulting merely from the nature of the subject you had chosen. However, I must say that it laboured under the disadvantage of concealing in great measure from superficial or inattentive auditors the precise natttie and degree of that authority which you were about to ascribe to the Creeds and Articles and Constitution of the English Church. The view which you proceeded afterwards to give of the relative position of yourself and your opponents seemed to me to be accurate enough. You had in your former publications developed con sequences offensive to alt buf a very few of the VI .Members of the Established Church, who yet so far as they were Protestants held generally more or less of the principle from whence they were derived : you had been condemned ; and in your condemnation, not only particular statements, but the principle also itself of which they were in you the consequences, (viz. that of the ' all-sufficiency' of the written volume, or the denial of the Dogmatic Authority of the Church,) was objected against you in the strongest manner as one of the chief grounds for the whole pro ceeding3 ; while yet it is probably true, that very many of those who condemned you, were far from distinctly perceiving that they were then not only asserting the principle of Church-authority, — which they intended to assert, — but also by implication rejecting the contrary principle of that " Protestantism," on which all your Divinity was based. You have therefore some reason for asserting, that it was the " Tractarian" principle, or as I should have termed it the Church or Catholic Principle, which was at the bottom of your condemnation then, and in calling upon all those who are " still Protestants," and who have been led by the alarming development of the High Church principle since 1836 to see and lament their mistake, to rally around your standard now. You tell these " still Protestant Members" of our "Protestant Reformed Church," that you have been all along the defender of our Religion ; that you have sincerely held, and faithfully and diligently taught, the true doctrine of our Thirty-nine Articles, the standard of our " Reformed Faith ;" while your enemies 13 have been, and are still labouring to do the very things for which they maliciously and calumniously accused you ; namely, to deny the binding authority of those same Articles, for denying the authority of which they condemned you; to introduce latitudinarian methods of evading or explaining them away, so as to put upon them a " so-called Catholic," or as it is in fact, a " Romanist" meaning, just as they accused you ho ate "co-opted" (XXIII. Lat.) by the same. That this Church teaches, (VI.) and decrees, (XX.) and hath authority in Contro versies of Faith; (XX.) that there are such things N contemplated by our Church as Patriarchal Sees, (XIX.) and General Councils; (XXI.) that xvhosoever would be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith ; that if any man do not keep this Faith whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly; (VIII.) and that whosoever is rightly cut off from the Unity of the above One, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the Faithful as a heathen and a publican, till he be reconciled and received by a Judge having authority thereto. (XXXIII.) All this is in the Articles. But further, and in the second place, since questions may be raised as to the true sense5 and interpretation of the Articles, as well as of Scripture ; and some general rule may be re quired, I think you midst allow, that no better rule, nor any more authoritative, can be desired, or even imagined (at least for a member of our Church) than one (if any such exist) prescribed by the authority of the Church herself. Will you therefore, since you declare solemnly that you accept the Articles in their true sense, will you, I ask, accept with me the Canon of 1571, which was enjoined conjointly with the Articles themselves, and by the very same Convocation which first imposed their subscription on the Clergy6? And will you promise for the future to teach not only the doctrine of Holy Scripture, which, as you justly say, by the very act of subscription you assert the Articles to contain, but also that doctrine of Holy Scripture, and by consequence of the Articles also, which the " Catholic Fathers," and " ancient 15 Bishops," have found there, and delivered to the Church ? Will you accept this rule of inter pretation, framed before Forbes or Davenport lived, and centuries before the appearance of the 90th Tract, and imposed on the Clergy, together with the Articles themselves, by the very same authority of the " Protestant Reformed Established Church?" And will you promise to make this rule, I will not say absolutely, but practically and in spirit, to the very best of your power, the rule of your own future teaching and interpretation, not only of the Articles, but also ofthe Bible itself? If you will, there is no longer any reason that I can see to prevent any one from voting for the repeal of the Censure ; if you will not, 1 merely say that your religion is not my religion1; and I protest in that case against your assumption of belonging to the Church of England, whose Formularies you accept only in your own sense, and whose rule of doctrine and interpretation you deny. 1 remain, Sir, Your obedient humble servant, W. PALMER. St. Mary Mnydii/i-nr College, June 4, 1HJ2. NOTES. P. 5. note 1. In Dr. Hampden's system, the acceptance of a certain volume as a Divine Revelation addressing itself to mankind is the first principle. 2. This Revelation consists only of " Scripture Facts," which are the true and only objects of Faith; and are never to be confounded with human doctrines, opinions, theories, or statements, which are all attempts of individuals or associations to express their views of the Scripture Facts themselves. 8. The "one Catholic Faith" once for all delivered to the Saints is neither more nor less than the Scripture Facts themselves, the only objects of Divine Faith, which have been consigned to the Book. 4. The " One Holy Catholic Church" consists outwardly of all Theorizers or Associations of Theorizers upon Scripture Facts, 5. No one individual, nor any one association of individuals, have any right to identify their own outward form of expressing their inward faith, or view of Scripture Facts, with absolute truth, nor with the Scripture Facts themselves ; nor, on the other hand, can they have any right to identify the different expressions of other individuals or associations with absolute error, however much they may be error to them, i. e. may seem contrary to those expressions which are truth to them: in other words, there is no absolute outward rule of truth, nor any outward authority to condemn error. 18 Of this system, which makes Christianity a mere science, perfectly analogous to any of the Physical Sciences, a very clear exposition may be found in the celebrated Treatise of Grotius, De Veritate Christianas Religionis. And this system, or rather its first principle, Dr. Hampden identifies with " Protestantism." The maintenance of this system Dr. Hampden does not make absolutely necessary to the profession of his " Catholic Faith," nor to membership in his " Catholic Church :" he is aware of the existence of a contrary principle and theory upon which many Christian associations base their own account of their spiritual existence, of their acceptance of Scripture Facts, and of their peculiar Systematic Divinity. He sees that the Churches of the Greek Orthodox and of the whole Roman or Latin Communion, as well as the Heretical Churches of the East, are all constituted upon the principle of authority; he feels that that principle worked strongly even in the primitive ages of " the Church," and that it is not extinct in the " Protestant Established Church" of our own country. Of the religious system which is based upon authority, he regards Rome and the Roman Bishop as the source and centre : its pro fessors he does not exclude from the Christian fatnily, because they receive (in common with the Socinians) the Facts of Scrip ture ; and all their Dogmatism may be viewed as so much theory upon Scripture Facts, although they improperly introduce and mix up with it another element, viz. that of Authoritative Tra dition, upon which and upon sacraments they base their religion, and not upon the perusal of the sacred Volume. He attaches, however, the very greatest importance to his own view of the scheme and system of Christianity, which he identifies not only with the spirit of " the Reformation" and of " Protestantism" generally, but also more particularly with the " Reformation" and " Protestantism" of the Church of Eng land, and with the Church of England itself, in its con stitution and essence — in its Creeds and Articles, as a part or 19 member of the Reformation " planted" in this country. According to him " the Glorious Name of Protestant" (with the principle, that is, which it embodied) was established b\ a Remonstrance of certain German Princes against a Decree of a certain German Diet, " as a rallying point to the Christian world against ' the' corruptions of Rome ;" and especially against the root and principle of all those corruptions — which lay in the investing human theories, and Episcopal or Papal Decrees on human reasonings, with the authority which is due only to Scripture Facts. In conjunction with the " Glorious name of Protestant," appear also the Apostles of the Professor's new Christianity — the men who instigated the Princes above- mentioned to Protest — certain individuals, led to theorize upon Scripture Facts by the constitution of the human mind, and around whom adherents gathered according to the social principles of our nature — called " The Reformers." And from henceforth " Statements" of the " views" held by these " Re formers" upon Scripture Facts take the place of the previous suc cession of Councils of Bishops with their Dogmatical Decrees. Our own XXXIX Articles, though confirmed by the Authority of the Existing Church of England, yet did not according to the Professor originate in Authority, but in the exercise of Reason against Authority ; and therefore cannot now be rested by us on the principle of Dogmatical Authority, nor enforced against us upon that principle by the Established Church. Their authority, such as it is, is not like that of the Councils of Chalcedon and Trent, which " authoritatively ruled," but perfectly analogous to that of the " strictly didactic" Articles of Luther or Melancthon, and of those " authoritative formularies of the faith — of the Reformers," which could bind nobody, and which could represent only for the moment the opinions of " The Reformers" who wrote them, and of such others as happened to agree to their words. And in fact we are told that our own Articles, " when fully examined," will be found to exclude virtually the principle of traditional B 2 20 authority, by asserting the contrary opinion of the all-suffi ciency of Scripture Facts ; and to be " strictly Protestant" on all points: further, that " the basis" of the University and of the Church itself " was enlarged at the Reformation," and that they both passed from one Faith to another, " from the Roman Catholic Faith to Protestantism." For himself, Dr. Hampden professes now, as in 1836, to be a true Member of the Church of England, and a faithful asserter of her doctrines ; and he speaks now as then of his enemies and opponents, as a party maintaining "the Romanist principle," repudiating his own scheme of " Protestant" Chris tianity, opposed alike to Scripture and to the spirit of our Church. And he rightly thinks that he cannot satisfy these his oppo nents, without admitting the formation of the whole Church, and of all particular Churches, by Divine Grace conveyed through the channel of the Episcopate and the Sacraments, instead of through the profession of Justification by Faith only; without admitting the right of restraining private judg ment by other means than by appeal to Scripture and argu ment; and the propriety of calling Dissent Sin, Mysticism Religion, and Superstition Faith ; and, in a word, without surrendering " both the name and the principle of Protest antism." P. 7. note 2. " When I look at the reception by the Unita rians both of the Old and New Testament, I cannot, for my part, strongly as I dislike their Theology, deny to those who acknowledge this basis of Divine Facts the name of Christians. Who indeed is justified in denying the title to any one who pro fesses to love Christ in sincerity." (See St. Paul's Epist. to Tit. i. 11. and iii. 10.) " Putting him however" (the Unitarian) " on the same footing precisely of earnest religious zeal and love for the Lord Jesus Christ, on which i" should place any other Christian, I propose to him impartially to weigh with himself, 21 whether it is not theological Dogmatism and not religious belief, properly so called, which constitutes the principle of his Dis sent." Observ. on Dissent, p. 20, and 21. P. 12. note 3. a.. Extract from the Report ofthe Committee ap pointed by a Meeting of Resident Members of the Convocation in the University of Oxford, March 5, 1836. " In submitting the Declaration which they were appointed to draw up, your Committee beg leave to observe, that they cannot close their task without anxiously calling your attention to one important fact, which (in all these most painful discus sions, carried on, as they have been, at so great a sacrifice of .private feeling and public tranquillity) ought to be kept steadily in view, as the best justification of the past, and the surest guide for the future. " After a most careful and systematic research, they entreat you to bear in mind, that the present controversy is not so much concerned with an individual or a book, or even an ordinary system of false doctrine, as with a Principle; which (after corrupting all soundness of Christianity in other countries) has at length appeared among us, and, for the first time, been invested with Authority within the University of Oxford. " This principle is the Philosophy of Rationalism, or the assumption that uncontrolled human reason, in its present degraded form, is the primary Interpreter of God's Word, without any regard to those rules and principles of Interpre tation, which have guided the judgments of Christ's Holv Catholic Church in all ages of its history, and under everv variety of its warfare. It is the Theory of Rationalism, (as set forth systematically in the Bampton Lectures of ls:32, and still more recently asserted in Lectures addressed to Stu dents) which is to be considered the root of all the errors of Dr. Hampden's system." 22 The Report from whence the above Extract is taken, was signed on the 10th day of March, 1S36, by the Members of the Committee. Vaughan Thomas, Chairman. Edward Bouverie Pusey. John Hill. John Henry Newman. William Sewell. Edward Greswell. jS. Extract, from the " Declaration of Resident Members of Convocation, upon the nature and tendency of the Publications of the Rev. Dr. Hampden, the recently appointed Regius Professor of Divinity in this University." " We the Undersigned, engaged or interested in the Reli gious Instruction of this place, feel it our bounden duty at the present crisis to make this public Declaration. " We have seen with alarm the office of the King's Pro fessor of Divinity in this University entrusted to one, whose Publications abound with assertions of principles which neces sarily tend to * * * subvert the authority ofthe Church. " And we hereby declare our stedfast resolution to oppose, under the blessing of Almighty God, the spread of that false philosophy to which those principles may be traced; a philo sophy which in other countries has poisoned the very foun tains of Religious Truth, which for a long time reduced Protestantism, in its original seat, almost to an empty name, and changed the Religion ofthe Cross into the Theology of Deism." The Declaration from whence the above Extract is taken, was dated at Oxford, March 10, 1836, and subscribed by 82 Resident Members of Convocation. The Censure afterwards proposed by the V ice-Chancellor and the Hebdomadal Board to the House of Convocation itself, passed by a majority of 474 to 94. 23 P. 13. note 4. See the last note. Also Rose " On the State of the Protestant Religion in Germany," Discourse I. p. 9. " It need not be added, that the Protestant Church of that country is the mere shadow of a name. For this abdication of Christianity was not confined to either the Lutheran or the Calvinistic profession, but extended its baneful and withering influence with equal force over each. It is equally unnecessary to add, that its effects were be coming daily more conspicuous in a growing indifference to Christianity in all ranks and degrees of the nation. But it is rather to the means by which such dreadful results were effected, that I am anxious to direct your attention. And those means were unquestionably the deficient Constitu tions of the Protestant German Churches, the entire want of control in them over the opinions of their Ministers, and the consequent wild and licentious exercise of what was deemed not the base, merely, but the essence of, Protestantism, the right of private judgment, on every question however difficult, or however momentous." And p. 21. " If then it be an essential principle of a Pro testant Church that she possess a constant power of varying her belief, let us remember, that we are assuredly no Pro testant Church." And p. 24. " If this be Protestantism, if it be Protestantism to doubt of every sacred truth, or at least to receive none with confidence, may that gracious Pro vidence, which has ever yet preserved the Church of England, preserve her still from the curse of Protestantism ; may it teach her that He who has given her Scripture as a guide," (not as the original source of her Faith,) " has given her also the power of understanding the truths it contains," &c. P. 14. note 5. Dr. Hampden says well in one place of the Articles, " They must be interpreted by them- xelres, by the phraseology of the Church, and a know ledge of Us intention in proposing them to its members ;" elsewhere he seems to think (though his words 24 may perhaps bear another and better interpretation) that they are to be interpreted not by the intention of the Synod (which did not frame, but only received them from Queen Elizabeth, and decreed them) but " by the intention of their framers," who " formed," or " framed," or " com piled" them, founding them " in their mode of expression, on the suggestions and phraseology of the most moderate of the Reformers — Melancthon," and so " left them to the Church in their present form." But whatever may have been the wishes and intentions of their original framers, (and certainly they were not Protestants of Dr. Hampden's School) we have now no more to do as Churchmen with their particular views in framing or compiling the Articles, than we have to do as citizens with the feelings or views of the political party which carried, or of the individual, who first drew up the Reform Bill: They may, for any thing that appeared to the contrary, have designed the total overthrow ofthe Constitution. P. 14. note 6. Extracts translated from the " Canons agreed upon in Synod, by Matthew, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Primate aud Metropolitan of all England, and all the other Bishops of that Province, in the Synod opened at London in St. PauVs Church, the thirtieth day of April, 1571." " Every Bishop shall before the first of September next call to him all the Public Preachers who may be in each Diocese, and require from them their Licenses for Preaching duly sealed, and either keep them by him, or destroy them at his discretion. Then he shall prudently select from among them such as may be fit to receive fresh Licenses, before receiving which, however, they shall subscribe the Articles of the Christian Religion publicly approved in Synod, and engage willingly to maintain and defend the doctrine contained in them, as altogether agreeable to the Word of God." " Above all things, Preachers shall take heed that they 25 never teach in their Sermons any thing to be religiously held and believed of the people but what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have from that very same source drawn (or collected) : and since those Articles of Christian Religion, which have been agreed upon by the Bishops in a legitimate and sacred Synod, convoked and celebrated at the command and authority of our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth, are most certainly collected (or drawn) from the Sacred Books of the Old and New Testament, and altogether agree with the heavenly Doctrine which is con tained in them ; — and since also the Book of Public Prayers, and the Book of Ordination of Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, contain nothing diverse from that very same doctrine," (we decree that,) " whosoever shall be sent to teach the people, shall attest the authority and truth of those Articles, not only in their Sermons, but also by subscription under their hands. If any refuse, or disturb the people with contrary doctrine, he shall be excommunicated.'" Wilkins's Concil. vol. iv. p. 263 — 267. P. 15. note 7. " Your religion is not my religion." Dr. Wiseman, or whoever is the Author of a recent Number in the Dublin " Catholic" Review " on the Protestantism of the Anglican Church," says, that for an individual to anathema tize Protestantism " will not do;" that is, it will not avail to prove the essence of the English Church Catholic as opposed to Protestant ; for that the real nature of a Church depends not upon the quantity of truth which she suffers individuals to hold, or on the quantity of error which she suffers them to anathematize or reject, but upon her maintaining the whole truth and anathematizing every error herself. This is un doubtedly true ; and if my rejection of Dr .Hampden's " Pro testant Religion" went no further than his own " Protestant" idea of an anathema, I must admit myself to be a member of 26 a Church divided against herself on fundamental principles, and tolerating equally in her members the assertion and denial of her own existence. Dr. Hampden's words (Observ. on Dissent, p. 27.) are as follows : " To the Trinitarian [or, by parity of reasoning, to the " so- called Catholic" or " Romanizing" member of the Established Church] " the consequences of rejecting the Doctrine of the Trinity" [or of rejecting the principle of Catholicism or of Church authority, and maintaining the contrary principle of Scriptural Protestantism] " must consistently be regarded as dangerous. But he has no right to extendhis anathema beyond himself, to one who has unhappily not embraced the same view of Scripture truth," [or of the Definition and Authority of the Church.] To which passage is appended the following note. " It appears to me that anathemas, as originally used, were not intended to bear any other meaning, than merely to be tests of the. personal sincerity of an individual in avowing or disclaiming a given^octrine. Pelagius and Celestius, for example, were called upon, not only to deny their peculiar doctrine of original sin, but also to anathematize it. Thus it is said ; " nefarii prorsus et ab omnibus nobis anathema- tizandi erroris." Ep.Patr. Cone. Carth. August. Oper. Ep. 90. " Ad satisfactionem San eta: Synodi; Anathematizo eos qui sic tenent, aut aliquando tenuerunt." Augustin. de Peccato Origin. lib. ii. Oper. t. 7. p. 257. 4to. Still if this form of assent becomes antiquated, and gives unnecessary offence to other Christians, it is to be considered whether it would not be better to discontinue it." So then according to the Professor's view all that the ancients meant by calling upon every convert to anathematize the heresy or sect which he quitted on coming to the true Church, was to disclaim it not as simply and absolutely and in itself erroneous f necessarily separate from the truth, and from the Church to which, as to the truth itself, he came; but only to disclaim it 27 subjectively as error to him and to those who agreed with him. But this is to make the primitive Catholics into " Protestants," and to put a " Protestant" sense upon their rules and customs: and the passage which I have quoted, is much like another in which the Decrees of Chalcedon and Trent are placed on a level with " statements" of the views of -the " Reformers" on Scripture Facts, and invested with a like authority over those who please to receive them. But indeed truth has no place nor habitation in the individual apart from the Church ; and the " Protestant," in Dr. Hampden's sense of the word, (i. e. the man who is a heretic upon principle,) can no more anathema tize error than he can really possess Faith. And if the ancients had used and exacted anathemas only to shew sincerity of individual opinion, their anathemas would have had no more sense nor force than common cursing and swearing; as when it is written of one in Holy Scripture that he " began to curse and to swear," avaflsju-aTi^siv. So when I say that Dr. Hampden's " Protestant religion" is not my religion, nor his " Church" my Church, I intend to do more than bear witness to a mere difference of subjective opinion between two individuals equally theorizing upon Scripture Facts. I say what I say, not merely as an individual, but as a member of this Church of England, in her, with her, and under her. Of course Dr. Wiseman or Dr. Hampden may say " yea" to my " nay;" but 1 trust that in the anathema by which I witness not my own opinion only, but my consciousness of unity with the Faith and being of the Church of England, I am doing no wrong to any man, (nor to Dr. Hampden himself, for I do not accuse him personally of maintaining his error wilfully, with full understanding of its nature, or with malicious opposition to the truth,) but rather, that I am doing what is right, and what will be acknowledged some day as such, and praised perhaps more than it deserves. In the mean time, I have weighed my words, and the occasion for them, and am well content to be blamed (c\ en though in appearance f \>c 28 blamed by all) so long as those whom I reverence or respect or love, blame me only from a misunderstanding of my mean ing, which I foresaw before I wrote, and those who do not misunderstand my meaning, blame me only because they feel an attack upon error to be in some way an attack upon themselves. In the foregoing pages, I have tried to set in as clear a light as possible the contrariety existing between Dr. Hamp den's Protestantism, which he identifies with Protestantism in general, and with the Religion of the Church of England in particular, and the principle of dogmatical authority which he repudiates for the Church of England, and calls " the Romanist principle," but which I maintain to be no less the principle of the Church of England, than it is of the Churches of Rome and Greece, and indeed of all Apostolical Churches. At the same time I repudiate both for myself individually, and for the Church of which I am a member, Dr, Hampden's Protestantism, and say in the words of the late Mr. Rose, " If this be Protestantism, — assuredly we are no Protest ant Church: — If this be Protestantism, — may that gracious Providence which has ever yet preserved the Church of England, preserve her still from its curse."" I cannot affect to conceal my own personal apprehension, that Dr. Hampden's sense and definition ofthe word " Protest antism" is upon the whole the true sense, and the sense of the world at large : and on that account alone I can say from the bottom of my soul, that " I wish we were well rid" of the term with all the phraseology that belongs to it ; although perhaps herein I should have incurred the displeasure of One, from whom I borrow the expression. But, I beg to add with reference to a censure recently passed upon me by an Authority to which as in duty bound I humbly and grate fully submit, — and which at the same time I revere for its clear indiscriminate rejection of " Protestantism," in all the 29 heresy which the word sometimes imports, — and I mean no more, — that there is a sense in which I can myself defend it, as indeed I have already done, and will do again when occasion serves. THE END BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.