The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-14 00:00:00

ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON THE HAMPDEN

CONTROVERSY.

The following " Statements and Reflections," by the
Archbishop of Dublin, will be read with great interest. It
appeared exclusively in the Daily News of this morning.
If we were to suppose some intelligent and righteminded
member of our church to have resided for the last fifteen or
sixteen years in some remote part of the world, and to return
at this time to his country, one cannot doubt that he would
be greatly astonished, and greatly alarmed, on being in-
formed of the recent transactions, and at tke existing state of
things, in reference to that church.
He would learn, first, with no small wonder, that a con-
siderable number of the ministers and other members of
the church had offered remonstrances (not to say threatened
resistance) against the appointment of a certain individual
to • bishopric. The astonishment he would at first feel at
the novelty and apparent indecorum of such a proceeding,
would, perhaps, be transferred, for a time, to the conduct of
her Majesty's advisers, in recommending for a seat on the
gnaw* bench a person who had been stigmatised by the
University of Oxford as heretical.
And ill proportion as he inquired more and more into the
particulars of the case, he would find, at every step, fresh
caw for wonder, and fresh reasons for altering the views he
bad been at first led to take of the whole matter.
For instance, he would learn, with ins reused surprise, that
the remonstrating parties did not advert—as at first sight,
it would have been natural for him to expectLto any private
immorality of life in Dr. Hampden, such as might have never
come to the knowledge of ministers, or to any heterodox
opinions broached in private conversation, but to matters
Which must have been as well known to the ministry as to
themselves; to publications which had been before the
world for fourteen years, and to a public vote of the Oxford
convocation eleven years back. And, to add to the wonder,
he would find the remonstrant; not professing to have them-
selves read these publications,and to have found therein what
was, in their own judgment, heterodox, but merely referring to
the alleged censure pas.ed by the University. And to crown al,
he would find the remonstrant urging ministers, on the
me ground of Dr. Hampden's theological unsoundness, to
leave him in the office of regius professor of theology. For
if they had thought it possible and desirable to remove him
from that office, by bringing him to a regular trial for ho-
mey, and obtaining a sentence against him, of course they
would have done so many years ago.
And yet, one would think, soundness in religious opinions
must be, at least, not less requisite—perhaps even more so—
a a professor, who is necessarily occupied in training for the
ministry successive generations of divinity students (who
me required, generally, by the bishops, to attend his 'ec-
he*, than in a bishop, who may, and sometimes does,
take no part, personally, in the instruction and examination
ofcandidates for holy orders—handing them over altogether
to his chaplains.
From this most important and responsible office, held by
De. Hampden for so many years, no attempt was made to
remove him. The celebrated vote of convocation only de-
Prised him of a seat at the board which appoints the select
Preachers before the university ; which was a post of com-
paratively small importance ; because, in the event of any
Ruston arising as to a person's fitness to be select preacher,
teas professor bas only one vote among several. But when
it was proposed to remove Dr. Hampden from the professor -
thip, by raising him to the bench, then the remonstrant
bully called for an inquiry into his doctrines, not en the
Pound of any conviction that they were heterodox, but
avowedly on the ground of the clamour that had been Used
ru. him, " And as they cried out, and cast off their
thes, and threw dust into the air, the chief captain com-
manded him to be brought into the castle, and bade that he
Mould be examined by scourging, that he might know
wherefore they cried so against him."—Acts, xxii., 23, 24.
A stranger, then, such as I hare been supposing, would be
Mauch with this as one of the most extraordinary features of
skis strange transaction—that men professing great seal for
Parity of doctrine should be found imploring ministers to
make choice of some other person" for a bishopric, and to
"ewe Dr. Hampden in an office especially calling for sound
tbeolegical views, because his views are nasound !
The supposed inquirer, if he pursued the investigation
"ith good sense diligence, and candour, would, I think, not
ftil to arrive ultimately at the, following conclusions;

I. That the alleged aline of the Haiversity of Ozford
ought to be totally disregarded.
H. That ministers would have beat much to blame had
they pared by • Mall pommeging such seine se Dr. Hampden.
111. That tf, a bevies noommoncied him to bee Ye
jesty, they lad afliwasmig, Le compliance with the reason-
I drawn addressed to them, withdrawn that recommendation,
they would have lies guilty of a Fogg dereliction of duty,
I would have txmle4 'slimming to merited contempt, and
would ban ehalen the fnadations of all lawful authority,
inaladia4, man gepsoiany, 'pimps' authority. And
IV. That the grommet novsesat lie and mach dis-
credit and mush lima is the church, which an wholly
imputable to the Whom of the movement, end wend have
been incalculably groats: still had it proved suconsful.
I will proceed tolay before you my reason for theme sow
elegiacs.

I. First, then, I maintain that the alleged university min-
AM of Dr. Hampden, in 1836, ought to be totally diem
.efede for the following three as (among others)
ht be added), any oof w*lt would be decisive:
77:fibat one
it iv, at best, very doubtful whether that vote of
invocation were legal, and, oonsequently whether it is to
M essgarded es propeely the act of the Unlimeity
a Became it wait ceded eat virtual, ?Vulva by
the University Dull: and
3. Becauselt in manifestly and uotioisellyesallit-
' L IS is well known that Dr. H
the night of Cesuestis to deprive tin AZ: ;I;
bes tubs 21.6 a lend TM* Moist, *s IstiSer—ma
He misesesei to lam amenmted Mame .wkdone
aa this poin owill to ham been confirmed ialtsiveglesti
Um. He Is geaseally believed to have boss Veit
*inswing up Ids skim in a mat of Enke merely by7Z
'mobility leamet the enormous, smdillideseiseu, expellees,
of such a peendwre; but he never mitist M pretest solsmok
lorgnette" legslity of that vote.
Now, eremite legality must depend its claim to boll-
=saas enact of the university at all. For it is phda
tires only are to he regarded as the acts of any civil
community or other body, which are performed by such
famionartes u are, in respect of sash sots the lawful re-
primands.' of the whole body, to., legally entitled se to
proceed in their own respective provinces. Thus. if the
sovereign of this empire declares war, or makes a treaty with
say foreign state,--if the parliament, in conjunction with
the sover4n, impose a tax, a court of law melee •
dochisa as to a man's guilt or innocence of some crime, or
his legal claim to some property;--all these are considered
so sets of the British nation, being the acts of those who, in
their respective departments, lawfully represent the mum-
But if the sovereign should attempt to impose a tax, such so
nip-moray, by royal proclamation,—if the House of Com-
mons should pretend to declare war, or to make a treaty,—
or if • judge sad jury should takempon them to enact a new
law ;—these would not be regarded as acts of the nation, bat
ea moat culpable attempts at usurpation, by individuals, of
powers to which they had no right.
It is, then, I say, very doubtful, to say the least, whether
the University of Oxford can be said to have ever passed any
legal—that is, any real censure, on Dr. Hampden.
Moreover, this censure, such as it wee, the university
itself virtually cancelled some years atter, and utterly dhow
garded. In 1842 the university, acting in • imam beir
putably legal and regular, appointed the Regius Framer,
—Dr. Hampden then holding the office,—to be a member of
a board of theological examiners, for persons who were to
hold situations of high importance.
Now it would be utterly absurd to require that a ministry
should pay more regard to an alleged decision of the uno
varsity than was paid to it by the university itself;—that
Oxfird should be allowed to dictate to the crown, though
not to its own constituted authorities ;—that an act which
the university itself had utterly disregarded, should operate
m a veto on the royal authority.
111. This alleged vote of censure was manifestly and no-
toriously unjust.
It is well known to persons conversant with the trans-
actions which have taken place at Oxford fur the last lifters
yams (though, for obvious reasons, many deny what they
well know to be true), that the pretended heterodoxy of Dr.
Hampden's Hampton Lectures was a mere pretext ; and that
the real offence which incensed so many members of the
university against him was his pamphlet on dis-ent, which
advocated the placing of that university on a similar footing
to the University of Dublin, which affords education to
Mounters.
It would require a longer discussion than I shall now enter
on, to prove that the doctrine of Dr. Harapdeu's Hampton
Lectures u, in fact, sound ; but that it was not thought ob-
jectionable by the great mass of the university is an saeer-
Um much more easy to be established than most theological
dogmas; for, tint, the vote of convocation relative to these
lectures was not passed till about three years after they were
delivered, and about two years after they were published.
If they were heretical, why were not proceedings taken at
the time ? Why was the discovery, and the censure, of the
heterodoxy, delayed till Dr. Hampden was uoininated Regius
Professor
The answer—the only answer, as far as I know—that is
given by Dr. Hampden's assailants, is one to which I invite
your attention, that you may judge what is the soundness of
their reasoning, and what the truth of their statements. It
is, that during this interval of three years, Dr. Ilempden did
not hold any responsible situation in which the soundness of
his religious views was a matter of high importance.
Now, suppoaiog this assertion true, what a wretchedly lame
plea does it constitute! A man is selected from the whole
university by the heads of colleges to deliver a course of
lectures from the university pulpit, which are afterwards
published (printed they must be by the injunction of the
founder), and go forth to the world with this high sane.
tion from the uoiversity—uncensored; and then this
university is represented as saying to the Christian public,
"It is true this work is full of moot dangerous errors,
and is likely to mislead you; but that is nothing to
us, so long u the authors not placed in any new
situation of responsibility within these walls! " Such is the
plea set up in behalf of the university by those who urge her
claim to control the decisions of the sovereign's responsible
advisers.
But this plea, which would be worthless and disgraceful,
if founded on fact, is utterly at variance with facts. During
that interval, above alluded to, Dr. Hampden occupied as
less than three highly important official situations. 1. At
the time of the publication of the work he was, and con-
tinued to be afterwards, the senior Public Examiner for
Degrees in Arts; one essential requisite in the examina-
tion being theology. 2. He was, during the above-men-
tioned interval, appointed by the chancellor of the university
principal of St. Mary's Hall ; having, u such, the complete
superintendence of the studiea secular and rdigious, of the
members of that hall. And, 3, he was also appointed, by
certain heads of houses, to whom the nomination belongs,
professor of moral philosophy.
So much for the plea of his bottling no office of high re-
sponsibility during the interval between the appearance of
the Hampton Lectures and the vote of censure upon sham.
What has been said will be deemed by many persons quite
sufficient to establish the position that Dr. Hampden's
Hampton Lectures were not really judged objectionable by
the members of convocation generally—that their alleged
heterodoxy was a mere pretext, and that, consequently, the
mounre paved on him was grossly unjust. But further proolls
etas semi point may easily be adduced. For,
iloweally, if the accusations against his doctrines had been
really believed by the authors of them to be well founded,
why did they not bring him to trial in a regular way, so.
cording to the existing statutes ? This course was adopted,
subsequently, in respect of a sermon of Fearsome Fumy's,
which had been objected to, and which was accordingly sub-
mitted to a calm examination before persons to whom the
statutes assign that office; and the result wee a regular
statutable suspension from preaching in the university for
two years.
Such a trial was not deprecated, but earnestly demanded
by Dr. Hampden. Why wee a preference given to a vote of,
at least, doubtful legality, in convocation—a procedure which,
in the first instance, war stopped by the concurrent veto of the
proctors, on the ground of its irregularity ? The answer is ob-
vious. Because the accusers knew how little chance they
would have of a verdict, as the result of a calm examination
of the book itself, and preferred trusting to a vote, given
under the influence of excited feelings, by men who, for the
most part, were notoriously utterstrangers to Dr. Hampden's
work, and judged of it only from garbled extracts and the re-
presentations of avowed enemies. For it is to be observed, that
that majority in convocation which they calculated on, and
which they ultimately obtained, consisted, for the most part,
not of resident men:then—men who had held offices in the
colleges or in the university, or who, at least, had been accus-
tomed to take part in university transactions, and were
conversant with the theological and other studies of the
place—but of non-residents, who bad (perhaps many years
before) kept their terms as undergraduates, and taken their
degrees, and had never revisited the university afterwards,
except for a day or two at a time, at long intervals, and had
never known, or cared, or thought much of the statutes, the
officers, the pursuits, or, in short, of any of the concerns
of the university. But persons so circumstanced had
votes equally with the residents ; and their votes were
far more likely to be, in many instances, influenced by mis-
representations of Dr. Hampden, and unfair extracts from
his writings.
These representations and these extracts (" elucidations,"
as they were called) emanated from persons among whom
the principal leaders have since joined the church of Rome;
though not till after having for several years shown their die-
ingenuousness of character by remaining (u the majority of
their party still do) professed members of our church, and
partakers of its endowments, while inculcating Romanist
principles. But moreover,
Thirdly. Their resort to this shameless garbling would
alone be sufficient to show how little, in their own opinion,
Dr. Hampden's work itself was really open to censure.
Sentences and half sentences detached from the context, and
pieced together in a kind of cent*, in a way by which the
Bible itself might be made to countenance any kind of ab-
surdity and atrocity, were exhibited as an " Elucidation" of
Dr. Hampden's Hampton Lectures. Now the most unscru-
patois pettifogging attorney that ever was pilloried for per-
jury would never resort to the misrepresenting and garbling
of a document, especially when he knew that the document
itself was at hand, ready to be brought into court, if he be-
lieved that that genuine document would serve his cause.
Men who have no reverence for truth will yet, when it hap-
pens to be on their side,prefer it to falsehood, because they
know that falsehood is able to detection. The resort there-
fore to falsification, by Dr. Hampden's accusers, would alone
furnish a sufficient proof that they themselves did not think
the truth would serve their cause.
Further proofs, if further were needed, might easily be
adduced, of the insincerity of many of Dr. Hampden's assail-
ants ; such as the praises lavished by some of them on his
Baropton Lectures to his face, in the presence of witnesses
now living, and their reference to him (when Divinity Pro-
fessor) of young men, for solution of their doubts and diffi-
culties on religious points. But what has been said is suffi-
cient to convince those who are open to conviction; and
with those who are not it would be lost labour to argue.
" Remedia," said the ancient physicians, " non egunt
in
cadaver."