Part 41

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I regret to say that, in the best and the most liberal, there is a strong leaning towards them; but the majority, I believe, are not only their decided but their zealous advocates. They know that the gospel they preach is preached with equal purity, and sometimes with greater power, in the pulpits of Dissenting churches and chapels; and hence, from motives of policy, I apprehend, they endeavour to enlist the sympathies of the lay members of the Establishment in favour of these principles, to prevent the possibility of their withdrawing from it. To what extent they succeed in imparting their spirit of exclusiveness and bigoted attachment to Episcopacy, amongst the enlightened and the pious laity, I have no means of judging; but I believe, from some few indications I have seen, that in liberality of opinion, and generous expressions of Christian feeling, these lay members of the Establishment are at least half a century in advance of their clergy. They were, a few years since, equally exclusive and bigoted, but, from the concurrence of various causes, they have improved most rapidly in the cultivation of charity and brotherly kindness--the prominent graces of the Christian faith. They are acting now as pioneers in the work of church reform, though that, I fear, is a forlorn hope."

_Mr. Stevens._--"Then, Sir, we cannot calculate on any great accessions from the clergy of the Church of England to the cause of Christian union and fraternal fellowship, during the prevalence of these high church principles."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"A few, who are ripening more rapidly than the average of their brethren for a removal to a purer world, gladly hail and accelerate the progress and the triumph of fraternal union of all denominations amongst the people of God; but they subject themselves to much obloquy and reproach, by overstepping the broad line of ecclesiastical demarcation which is drawn by these high church principles, to prevent any intermixing of the different denominations, even in ordinary social intimacy. They are marked men; deemed by their brethren ecclesiastical renegades, who sacrifice clerical consistency to gratify their vanity."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"These high church principles, in their development and practical working, militate very strongly against the Church of England, and do more than any other cause to shake the confidence of the laity in her Divine origin; they make her more like the gaudy, intolerant, and exclusive Church of Rome, than the simple, meek, and loving church of the New Testament. She has now officiating at her altars a numerous tribe of Tractarian priests, who are subdivided into two orders--one prepared to fraternize with Papal priests, the other directly opposed to them--but both orders unite in denouncing their evangelical brethren, and with as much severity as they denounce Dissenters. The various tribes of infidelity watch the virulence and the progress of this internal contest with intense gratification, and its tendency is to increase their contempt for the Bible and Christianity. We know that the church has in her service a comparatively small number of clergymen who preach the pure gospel of Jesus Christ; but, unhappily, with few exceptions, even these are as much opposed to Dissenters as the Tractarian clergy, and consequently it would be utopian to expect any rapid progress in the cause of Christian unity and fraternal fellowship while these high church principles continue in the ascendant. What reaction may take place on the evangelical party from the tremendous efforts of the Tractarians to assimilate the Church of England to the Church of Rome, must be left to pure conjecture, but we may hope that, in process of time, they will be brought to see and to feel that the more nearly they are conformed in spirit, in temper, and in disposition to _the_ LORD OF ALL, the more brilliant will be their moral lustre, and the more powerful their ministry."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I should like to see the dove with the olive branch make its appearance, betokening the abatement of the elements of strife and contention; but I fear the day of its alighting on our altars is far distant. However, let it be our aim and our daily prayer to aid the progress of Christian union and fraternal fellowship, and then we shall have this testimony, that we please God our Saviour, and serve our generation according to his revealed will."

THE CHURCHMAN'S LAMENT.

The Rev. Mr. Ingleby, when opening an evening discussion on a very important question, gave it as his opinion that the judgment which Robert Hall formed on the present aspect of the Papal movements, is perfectly correct. He says--"It is certain that the members of the Romish community are at this moment on the tiptoe of expectation, indulging the most sanguine hopes, suggested by the temper of the times, of soon recovering all that they have lost, and of seeing the pretended rights of their church restored in their full splendour. If anything can realize such an expectation, it is undoubtedly the torpor and indifference of Protestants, combined with the incredible zeal and activity of Papists; and universal observation shows what these are capable of effecting--for often they compensate the disadvantages arising from paucity of number, as well as almost every kind of inequality."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"If, Sir, we were merely torpid and indifferent, there would be less danger to apprehend; but the fact is, the high church principles, which are now struggling amongst us for the ascendency, are imperceptibly and very extensively reconciling the clergy and many of the laity to the fatal errors of the Church of Rome. It is, I believe, the opinion of most who have paid much attention to the records of prophecy, that Popery, before her final overthrow and extinction, will revive from her long torpid state, will shake herself from the dust which has been accumulating around her during her slumber of inaction, and come forth with new and more vigorous life. I fear that a large number of our Episcopal clergy are preparing the way, some few openly, but the greater proportion of them secretly and slyly, for the triumphs of the Papacy in the United Kingdom, especially amongst the Churchmen of England."

_Mr. Lewellin._--"That the Papacy does look with a longing eye on Britain, the emporium of wealth and of the arts and the sciences, and is with Jesuitical artifice concocting schemes for its recovery to her own dominion, is now too palpable for any one to doubt; and I believe, when she does come forth in some new forms of seductive attraction, she will gain over many to her ranks, both of the clergy and the laity of your church; but her efforts to beguile and subdue Dissenters will be but the serpent biting at the file; our absolute and exclusive authority in support and defence of our belief is the Bible, and our watchword is, 'To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them'" (Isa. viii. 20).

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"And _our_ appeal, if we acted a consistent part as sound Protestants, would be to the same authority; but many of our clergy are not satisfied with this authority, but are for calling in the fathers, and appealing to the decisions of councils, and listening to the vague and often contradictory testimony of unauthenticated tradition. They are unsettling Protestantism by the attempts they are making in its defence."

_Mr. Lewellin._--"A high Churchman may say, and say truly, there is but a step between me and Popery. And consistency has already forced some of them to take this step; but I apprehend that many, with the Pope in their hearts, will feel more disposed to sacrifice consistency on the altar of self-interest, than publicly profess allegiance to his authority. The entreaties and the tears of a loving wife, especially when she pleads under the shade of a palace, the mitre gracing the brow of her frail lord, or when standing on the luxuriant soil of a rich benefice, will decide many a bishop, and many a prebend, and many a rector, to prefer hypocrisy to apostasy; they will content themselves by attempting to assimilate the Church of England, as nearly as possible, to the corrupt original from which she withdrew at the Reformation."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"But some are so thoroughly honest, that they prefer apostasy to hypocrisy. Some, even of the evangelical clergy, are gone off to Rome, and many others, I fear, will follow them."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I have long apprehended and dreaded this, and I have made many efforts to convince my clerical brethren of the fatal tendency of their high church principles, but I have not been very successful. No mathematical demonstration appears to me clearer than this, that if the clergy will magnify the church, instead of magnifying the Saviour; if they will confine salvation within the pale of her communion, instead of proclaiming that whosoever calleth on the name of the Lord shall be saved; if they will maintain that no minister of the Christian faith is a true minister of Jesus Christ, unless he has received episcopal ordination from a bishop in the regular line of succession from the apostles, they will be led, in the process of the inquiry, to see the palpable inconsistency of having a secular power as the head of the church, and then there is no alternative but to bow down and do homage to the Pope, as the spiritual head of a church founded and upheld by his spiritual authority. But so strong is the attachment they cherish to their high church principles, that some say they cannot give them up, even though such an issue should take place; and others are even sanguine in their expectations of being able to effect a junction with Rome, by inducing her to abandon some of her dogmas, and relax in some of her absolute, and what they consider unimportant regulations."

_Mr. Stevens._--"I see dark omens in the heavens. A severe testing time is coming. I believe we have amongst us many noble spirits, who are valiant for the Protestant faith; but we have also a powerful and subtile enemy in the field, and, I fear, many treacherous men in our camp. A party of the clergy of our Protestant Church hailing with delight a union with Papal Rome! How startling and humiliating!"

_Mr. Roscoe._--"Many great and good laymen amongst us see the tendency of these high church principles, and deeply deplore it, yet but few of the clergy apprehend any real, or rather any very alarming danger. Indeed, the leading men amongst them believe that these principles are the only safe barrier of defence which can be thrown around the Church of England, thus virtually admitting that she is not established by Christ's authority, nor guarded by his strong arm. I have often said to many of them, You act not only impoliticly, but dangerously. You are professedly protecting your church against Dissenters, from whom you have little or nothing to fear; while by your manoeuvres you are moving nearer and nearer the Romanists, who will ultimately seduce you to their fellowship, if they do not gain actual possession of your church."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"Yes, I fear that evil times are coming. Many of the best part of our clergy are tainted with the popular opinions of the worst. They do not preach like our pious forefathers, urging the people to repent and believe in Christ. They magnify the Church of England at the perfection of ecclesiastical order and beauty, and direct their vituperations against their fellow-Protestants who differ from them on the comparatively unimportant questions of Episcopacy and Episcopal ordination. The only points of importance on which the evangelical clergy differ from their Tractarian brethren, relate to the efficacy of the sacraments."

_Mr. Stevens._--"These high church principles have always prevailed amongst some of our clergy; but they never gained such notoriety as they have recently done. They were merely an undercurrent, but now they are like the Jordan overflowing its banks. Daubeny's _Guide to the Church_ made a little stir on its appearance, but it produced no ferment in the popular mind. Mant's tracts on baptismal regeneration made a more powerful impression; but it very soon subsided, and things remained as they were. But the Oxford tracts have roused the attention of Europe. They are shrewd, subtile, elegantly written papers, which, by laying hold of the imagination, easily beguile the heart; they are doing great execution amongst our sentimental half-Popish Churchmen, and especially amongst silly women: written professedly in defence of the Church of England, yet, as I once heard a Catholic priest[24] say, nothing that ever issued from the press has done so much to aid the triumphs of Popery."

[24] Rev. Mr. Logan, a priest at Oscott College, near Birmingham.

_Mr. Roscoe._--"I have read most of these tracts, and I am fully convinced, by the arguments and reasonings of the writers, that the high church principles, which are becoming so popular amongst our clergy and some of the laity, cannot be deduced from the Bible, which contains the religion of Protestants."

_Mr. Stevens._--"From the Bible, Sir! no; they emanate from the Prayer-book, that keepsake which Rome gave to Protestantism at the time of the Reformation, with this inscription written in hieroglyphics:--'Occupy till I come.' That book, Sir, is the cause of all the Popery with which our church abounds. It is the destroying angel of a pure Protestant faith."

_Mr. Lewellin._--"Ay, I have often told you that you were too much attached to your Prayer-book. It is to many Churchmen not only a domestic idol, but the idol of their temple: and now you are suffering for your idolatrous attachment to a book which the Jesuitical spirit of Rome induced your Reformers to take into their worship, and indorse it as the guide of the faithful in all future ages. To that book, which you admit to be an authority, the Puseyites now appeal in support and defence of their Papal opinions and customs, preferring its authority to the authority of the Word of the Lord. They tell you, as the Papal priests tell their devotees, that the Bible is an ambiguous book; that it ought not to be put into circulation, except with notes and comments written by some of their own order; that prophets, and apostles, and Jesus Christ himself ought not to be trusted amongst the people, unless some Tractarian professor or priest go with them to give the proper interpretation to their equivocal teachings; but the PRAYER-BOOK, in their estimation, is the living oracle, the Urim and Thummim of a new theocracy, which utters the truth of inspiration in unmistakeable language."

_Mr. Stevens._--"I went and heard the Rev. Mr. Farish, who left his curacy a few months ago, preach his farewell sermon. He knew that the clergyman who was appointed to succeed him, was one of the most rabid Puseyites that Oxford ever sent forth. At the conclusion of his discourse he said, as nearly as I can recollect, 'I have preached to you Christ and him crucified; and I have told you again and again that there is none other name under heaven given amongst men whereby we must be saved. I have proved from Holy Writ that salvation is of grace--free unmerited grace through faith--and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: "not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph. ii. 9). My successor is a clergyman of a different school, and he will, I fear, dwell more on the ceremonies of our faith than on its doctrines, and most likely he will give to the sacraments a prominency to which you have not been accustomed. But if the gospel should be excluded from the pulpit, as I fear it will be, sorrow not, even as others who have no hope; you will hear it from the desk. The great truths of the Bible may be perverted and suppressed, but no sacrilegious hand will dare to mutilate or withhold our Prayer-book. This ever liveth, and is unchangeable amidst all the mutations of a mysterious Providence. You then, brethren, will not forget that you are Churchmen, and you will still cleave to the altar and the walls of your church; and wait till the vision returns, which for a season is about to vanish away.'"

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I have always protested against advising people to attend their church when the gospel is banished from the pulpit, and for this reason: it is the gospel of Christ which is the power of God unto salvation, and not the Prayer-book. And experience proves, that if there be no more gospel in a church than what the Prayer-book announces, the people show no signs of spiritual life."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"This is diverting the attention of the people from the Word of God, to the compositions of man--a most dangerous experiment, fraught with great evil."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I think so. When we go to the Bible, and take its lessons, believing what it teaches us, we are safe; but if we admit any other book to become our authoritative teacher, then we are in great danger. In that case we follow a fallible instead of an infallible guide. Hence originate the discordant opinions which are now disturbing the peace of our church."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"Yes, Sir, this is the root of the evil that exists and is spreading amongst us. I certainly admire much of our Liturgy, and think that the men who drew up some of the prayers, though not inspired, in the sense in which apostles and prophets were inspired, yet they must have been greatly assisted by the Spirit of the Lord when composing them. But many parts of the Prayer-book are very exceptionable, of which I was not conscious till lately. The fantastical exhibition of the white-robed priest in the pulpit, and wax candles burning on the altar at mid-day, or in readiness to be lighted, have led me to examine the Prayer-book more attentively and minutely, and I must confess that the closer I study it, the lower it sinks in my esteem and confidence."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I have been attached to the church from my youth, and I am still attached to it. But my attachment is to its excellencies, not to its defects. I prefer Episcopacy to Presbyterianism, or Independency; but the exterior form of government is a matter of little moment, when compared with the essential principles of the Christian faith. Forms may change, as they have changed before, but Christianity itself undergoes no change; the new and living way of access to a reconciled God and Father in Christ Jesus, is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever--one Lord, one faith, one baptism, for all ages and all countries."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"If we could have Episcopacy thoroughly relieved from the excrescences which disfigure and defile it, and our Prayer-book thoroughly purged from all its Papal sacraments and ceremonies, we then should have, in my opinion, the faith embodied in an external form of government and ritual, as near the perfection of the New Testament as human wisdom could make it. I then should look on the Church of England as one of the purest churches of the Reformation: it then would be the temple of peace and order."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"Yes, Sir, I should like to see this done; but alas! it is what, I fear, the present temper of the times would not tolerate--something to be desired, rather than expected--a utopian calculation--the forlorn hope of ecclesiastical reformation."

_Mr. Lewellin._--"Reform the Prayer-book! Why, Sir, to touch that antique book, grown gray in the service of the temple, and around which there is such a clustering of tender and imaginative associations--to obliterate a single sentence, or change a single custom, or new-shape a single ceremony--would be, in the estimation of the great majority of Churchmen, a crime as heinous as that of Uzzah, who laid hold of the ark of God with unclean hands; and would merit a similar doom. The proposal to do such a foul deed would disturb the peace of every parish within the domain of Episcopacy; would raise such lamentations as have never yet been heard by the ear of living humanity; and compel many a grave old man, and many a still graver old matron, to go and mourn apart from the general community of grief. Reform the Prayer-book! that pure relic of antiquity! What wild project next? If you take my Bible, O, spare me my Prayer-book! would be the exclamation of many of the church-going people of England."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I think, with you, Sir, that the current of national prejudice in favour of the integrity of the Prayer-book is at present too strong to be resisted; and all attempts to effect any essential change in it will end in failure."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"It must be revised and reformed if we are to retain our Protestantism."

_Mr. Lewellin._--"As Protestantism and the Prayer-book have lived together in love for so many centuries, why not permit them to live on to the end? especially as this close alliance has had both the sanction and the support of the most distinguished of the evangelical clergy."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"Because the Prayer-book is now putting forth that inherent Papal power which long lay dormant and unsuspected; and is doing this, not to aid the spiritual triumphs of the glorious gospel of Christ, but to sap the foundation of our Protestant faith; and thus prepare the people to hail the return of the Papacy amongst us. It is, if I may be allowed the use of such a figure, the decoy duck of Popery, which we have been carefully preserving in the ark of our faith, mistaking it for the gentle dove. Dr. Pusey, in his letter to the Bishop of London, says: 'It is more than idle to talk, as some have done, of putting down Tractarianism in order to check secession to Rome. Such might drive hundreds from the church for tens; but while that precious jewel, the Prayer-book, remains, they cannot destroy or weaken Tractarianism. Tractarianism was entirely the birth of the English Church. Its life must be consistent with the formularies with which it is embodied.'"

_Mr. Stevens._--"But there is certainly a change coming over the public mind respecting the Prayer-book. Some very stanch Churchmen are for driving it out of our church, as the buyers and sellers were driven out of the temple; but most are for purging it from its Papal defilements and sacraments."

_Mr. Lewellin._--"I am aware that there is a slight movement amongst a certain order of Churchmen in favour of a revision of your Prayer-book, that it may be brought into a more perfect agreement with the purity of the Christian faith; but how is it that so few of the evangelical clergy take part in the present struggle? They seem, so I judge from their inaction, as willing to let this stronghold of Popery remain unscaled, as their Tractarian opponents."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"Two reasons, I think, may be assigned for their inaction, though, in my opinion, they are not very logical or powerful. They love peace and quietness, and this restrains them from taking any active part in the contest; and, in addition to this, they are somewhat apprehensive that if the secular powers interfere, they may decree a rejection of the old Prayer-book, and the construction of a new one."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"I would not give my sanction to such a decree. No, Sir, we will retain our Prayer-book, but have it submitted to a very severe purifying process. There must not be, as at the Reformation, an attempt made to please both Papists and Protestants; it must be made thoroughly Protestant, as it is designed for us; and hence there must be a thorough purging out of the old leaven of Popery, and nothing retained but what is in exact harmony with the New Testament records. No rite, no ceremony, no institution, no ecclesiastical law or regulation which does not originate in Divine appointment."