The Express.
London, England, 1851-05-14 00:00:00

TRACTARIAN THEORY.—No. IV.

TO Till limos OF Till DAILY muss.
gm,—A reply with which " D.C.L." has honoured
ose first two letters has only just now reached me,.
I must interrupt the course of the discussion, and
trespass on your indulgence, by noticing in this let-
ter some of the statements which he has made in
answer to mine.
I know not what could have made him suppose
that I was a Roman catholic. I never was, and, I
hope by the grace of God, never shall be a member
of that church; assuredly I am at present wholly
wanting in the inclination to enter that communion.
I am a protestant ; whether an ultra-protestant I
neither know nor care. Such epithets as ultra have
little meaning in themselves • their significance
is to be drawn solely prom the opinions
of the man that applies them. They are
often cast on men of moderate Tieing by
violent partisans of an opposite side ; they are still
oftener the favourite missile of invective against
those who are bold and honest enough to think out
and avow the pr:neiples involved in their opinions.
As a graduate of an English university, I must pro-
fess membership of the church of England : as a
man and a Christian, I am a true and attached mem-
ber of that church. I am aware that some who take
a strong and one-sided view of the teaching and
essence of that church feel themselves unable to con-
ceive the sincerity of the reverence and affection felt
for her by persons who entertain the directly opposite
views: but they should remember that the church of
England has many sons ; and that her children,
truly as they form one family, nevertheless vary in
their dispositions, their tone of ecclesiastical feeling,
and their theology.
I am not a little surprised at the analogy by which
0 D.C.1.." attempts to escape from the rerfactio ad ab-
surdum which such eminent men as Newman, Man-
ning, Hope and others, think, by their secession, that
" church principles" have been brought to within the
Church of England. I adopted an expression which
possesses a well defined and ascertained meaning is
these discussions. I nowhere alluded to the sacra
mental theory nor to any particular doctrine of reli-
gion : and by the phrase "church principles" I in-
tended to describe—rind did so definitely and re-
peatedly—the specific theory which regards the
episcopate, or, as "D.C.L." calls it, the apoetolate,
derived by imposition of hands from the apostles as
the essential and indispensable condition of a Chris-
tian church, and makes the bishops, jure &an°, the
mole lawful expositors of the faith, and governors of
the Christian people. " Bible principles," on the
contrary, is a phrase of the very vaguest kind, to
which no definite meaning has been attached by ge-
neral use : it expresses with equal readiness what
the protestants hold in common with, as what they
hold distinctly from, the catholic church. If by
" Bible principles" " D.C.L." means the great cardinal
principle of protestantism, that the Bible is the sole
fountain of revelation far Christians, so that " what-
soever is not read therein, nor may be proved
thereby, is not to be required of any man that it
should he believed as an article of the faith, or be
thought requisite or necessary to salvation," then I
accept the analogy, and I du say that the secession
of the protestant nations from 'tome implies that
in their judgment " Bible principles" had been
brought to a retina l° ad absurdum within the church
of Rome. I repeat, " in their judgment"—for I ex-
pressly spoke, not of my opinion (though it coin-
cides with theirs)—but of the opinion of the ae-
ceders, that church principles were reduced ad ab-
surdum within the Church of Englund, and the
weight to be attached to that opinion I thought
should be estimated by the peculiar opportunities
those men had had of thoroughly appreciating
"church principles," and the powerful motives they
were under to reconcile them with the true charac-
ter of the English church. But, if by " Bible prin-
ciples" " D.C.L." means, as he evidently wishes it
to be meant, for otherwise the argument would lose
all point, a religam which receives the Bible, then
the analogy doer not hold ; for it was not on the
denial of the Bible by the Roman church that
the protestant secession turned.
1 um Parry that " I).C. L." should have been led so to
misrepresent my very plainly expressed meaning as
to describe me as wishing to get rid of low churchmen
as an incumbrance, and us annihilating their claims
ci fortiori. No low churchman who nods my words
will dream, I am sure, of thinking that I intended to
cast a slur on his principles, because I complain that
so many of his friends full short in realising and
avowing them. However, as "D.C.L." says, this is a
matter between them and me; and, though my ob-
servations may very probably be unpopular with
that section of the church, I am confident that not
one of them will fasten his quarrel with me on the
grand assigned by " D.C.L. ;" so let that pass.
1 now come to a matter of far different im-
portance. I am accused of heessant petal° principii.
A very grave charge ; fur this is one of the grossest
of fallacies, and utterly destructive of every chance
of convincing. I do not deprecate such accusations
if only they are accompanied by proofs. I care too
much for the cause I advocate, I am too confident
of its excellence, not to be willing to avow my
error on conviction, and to really it, at whatever
eon.: " D.C.L." will be doing me a substantial
kindness, whenever he gives me the opportunity of
substituting argument for a paiti° principii. But
he must not characterise ordinary assertion with this
berologism; it is a vice of reasoning, and should
char only when argument is pretended. I
pleud,tirearefore, - nut guilty" to the first count of
" D. C. L." 1 have not yet compared, in reasoning,
the Anglo-catholic with the Romish theory. I dis-
tinctly said that I was not doing so; and when I
told the low churchmen that "the catholic theory
was wholly true or wholly false," I comprehended
under the term" catholic all forms of it, whether
Anglican or Roman. I used it solely in opposition
to protestantism ; and all I had in view was to ex-
hort the low churchmen to take up their protestantism
wholly. Pettit.° principii is a begging of the question
at issue. When I ;urged low churchmen not to
glide into part of the catholic theory, because it must
be wh.lly taken up or wholly abandoned, the cor-
rectness of the Anglo-catholic or the Romanistic
versien of that theory was not the question at
issue. How was I guilty of petitioprinapii ?
In reply to the next paragraph, I answer that I
have not characterised the Reformation as rebellion
on ate Rttnian theory, but simply endeavoured, not
to assert, but to prove that Anglo-catholicism could
not in principle justify the Reformation. That was
all I required in order to establish the protestant
foundation of the Church of England. My object
was purely negative—to show that the constitution
of the Church of England must be unsatisfactory to
church principles in the sense in which I have Oil
along used the term.
" D.C.L." is in error when he says that
the limiting phrase, " as far as the law of
Christ allows,"- is founded in the statute entitled
"The Submission of the Clergy." Ile confounds
that statute (23 Hen. VIII., c. 19)—the one I re-
ferred to—with the petition of convocation, which
declared the King to be the supreme head of the
church of England. It was to this latter declara-
tion that the limiting expression was appended.
The Bishop of Exeter would rejoice, fur the sake of
his approaching synod, to discover that " D.C.L."
was accurate here.
Every one knows that convocation sanctioned the
Prayer-book in 1662 ; but this is a fact unimportant
t.• the argument. The acts which restored the
(lurch of England in 1662 were rendered necessary
merely by the interruption of kingly government, and
'`., consequent disestablishing of the church during
' c commonwealth. The prayer-book prescribed by
'le Act of Uniformity of Elizabeth was in use, with-
ot the sanction of Convocation, down to the time of
Charles I. ; and would have continued on so down
to our day but for the civil disorder. A ra-
tification given by Convocation a century later—sad
that not for the sake of the ratification itself, bat
for merely restoring what a temporal accident had
swept away—in no way affects my argument.
The next paragraph is levelled against my ima-!
ginary Roman catholicism. I need make no reply.
I do not speak of the act of supremacy. I have
laid no stress on it in my letters. Nor do I refer to
the last part of the letter of "D.C.L.," because it is
irrelevant to the issue I am engaged in. I did not
discuss the sacramental theory, nor the character and
quality of any religious doctrine whatever. I have
said nothing whatever to prevent "D. C. L.," or any
other member of the Church of England, from hold-
ing that theory I nor to disturb " D.C.L.'s" con-
viction, that the "catholic element" of doctrine, as
I understand him, is the soul and life-sustainingprins
ciple of that church. My argument has been avow-
etuY • narrower, though a fundamental, one. I have

raised the single question, on what authority, or
what grounds the changes made at the Reformation
in the constitution of the church are held to be law-
ful and binding; and for what reasons of external
obligation the articles of faith then put forth, and
the doctrines involved in the formularies then sanc-
tioned, whether they belong to the catholic or
protestant element, are pronounced to be true•
Manning, Hope, and the others have seceded, chiefly
because, as I believe, they could find no other au-
thority for that church but such as involved
testant principles. "1). C. L." ',broils convocation and
quotes Pugin. The quotation was needless. No
one disputed that convocation sanctioned many—nay,
most of the changes. But I asserted first, that the
bishops either did not ratify the innovations, or, if
they did, acted against their own sense of what was
true, in compliance with a force external to them-
selves. In either case, we have no authority, for the
new doctrines and government which can satisfy one
who thinks the bishops the divine rulers of the church
and the divine interpreters of the faith. "D.C. L" has
not met this argument at all. Secondly, I assorted
that even if the English bishops had made the changes,
on their own free will and conviction, they were
not, on the theory of Church principles, authorised to
make them. That argument is not yet finished; and
it would have been but fair in " D. C. L." if he had
not charreterised as acts of petitio prinesPii, as-
sumptions which were under course of proof.
May 2. M. A.