The Express.
London, England, 1851-05-02 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OY Tilt DAILY NEW&

SI it, -I come now to the theory, by means of
which Anglicans, that is, the upholders of the w-
eaned church principles within the church of Eng-
land, justify the Retiirmation. It is one which has
been inculcated with extraordinary diligence up and
down the land of late years. It is the favourite
theory of our younger clergy. It is the great delu-
sion whereby they persuade themselves that they
may claim to be catholics and true brethren of the
church of Itome,and yet enjoy all the independence
and isolation and substantial advantages of the Eng-
lish establishment. I need nut say more to show the
vast importance:of testing the solidity of this theory:
fur if it were once recognised to be absurd and un-
tenable, the ineompatibility of church principles
with the historical and theoretical constitution of the
Church of England would soon become transparent,
and the great source of the treason which betrays
members of that church into defection to Rome be
dried up. Mr. Bright has truly remarked at Man-
chester that the Church of England alone furnishes
cornetts to popery; and the fact is only what might
be natunilly looked for. Within that church alone
is the protestantism of the Reformation demo-
lished, not by herself, but by the autho-
ritatice teaching of many of her minis-
ters ; and the theory wr are considering
is the lever with which the work of destruction is
etfieted. And I am sorry to be obliged to odd, that
the blame dues not rest with the Anglicans alone ;
11w low church, and evangelical clergy are fur from
being innocent in this important matter. The general
cast of their doctrines, both as regards religion and
ecclesiastical polity, has, no doubt, been protestant ;
but their ears have not been proof against the sweet
music of opinions, which represented episcopally-
ordained clergymen as the successors of the
Apostles. They have too often been guilty of
dwelling on this comfortable distraction between
themsehes and their dissenting brethren. They
have not been unwilling to appropriate to themselves
the superiority over the clergy of the non-conformists
at home and protestants abroad, otlieed them by
Anglican views. They have shut their eyes to the
truth that such a superiority could not be vindicated
on their own pnneiples ; and have indulged
is loose, misty, illogical language, which
accepted the pre-eminence, without daring to
justify it. And what have been the consequences?
Phut Anglicanism has not encountered that resist-
ance which the country had a right to expect should
have been offered to it by the protestant section of
the clergy ; that it has lied a fairer field and
more favour than was its due in the actual state of
clerical opinion ; and that a general discredit has
fallen upm protestant principles, which has enabled
Anglicans to paint successfully their views as the
only ones which the church acknowledged. No one
familiar with meetings of clergy can have failed
to observe the weakness of the low church party in
face of the Tractarians ; a few of the latter
arc more than a match for hosts of the former. And
no wonder : the high churchmen put forward their
doctrines boldly and avowedly ; each man knows his
own meaning and that of his party ; there is identity
and fearlessness of assertion, though that assertion is
founded on delusion. On the other side, the low
church clergy are afraid and ashamed to meet the
catholic by the protestant theory; theydare not attack
Anglicanism in its very first principles; they lack the
courage. and alas! not seldom, the inclination to utter
the fearful sounds of the right of private judgment,
of the perfect validity of non-episcopal ordination,
and non-episcopal sacraments; of the equal legiti-
macy with their own of non-episcopal churches ; and
then can it be matter of surprise, if, being thus
afraid to accept the full, nay, the irresistible conclu-
sions of their protestantism, they are powerless to
combat men, whose principles are secretly admitted
by their inconsistencies, their halfness of heart and
feeling, and their fears? We are engaged in an
internecine war of principles ; a war that allows of
no quarter being shown ; the opposing principles of
ecclesiastical polity are antagonistic to and destruc-
tive of each other. Nothing but the fullest asser-
tion of protestant doctrine can repel not only the
spurious Anglican, but the only legitimate form—
Roman catholicism. It can be met only by a direct
counter-declaration of principle. The catholic theory
of the church is either wholly false or wholly true.
Let the evangelical clergy realise the truth that
these are the only two possible positions, and that
there can bo no halting between these two opinions.
Till they do this, their resistance must be ineffectual
and despised, and progresi and victory must be the
mead of those who, nevertheless ,within the church of
England, have no defensible cause.
I have been led into this digression by the feeling
of shame and sorrow, that the true doctrine of the
church of England should be deprived of its natural
defenders. I do not wish to pain their feelings.

They mast, I am sure, be deeply grieved by the
catastrophes which are daily occurring before their
eyes; and I hope they will forgive me if, in a crisis
of such magnitude, I attempt to point out the real
character of the struggle, and to urge them to take
up that ground, on which alone they can, but on
which also, if bravely occupied, they must certainly
win the day.
Now, to come back to the Anglican view of the
Reformation. I observe that it is a question of title,
and of title only. The legitimacy and authority of
the Reformation, and of the church of England,
which was its product, arc the points at issue. The
actual doctrines of that church, their truth and ex-
cellence, as well as of her ecclesiastical system, are
one thing; the authority by whose sanction those
doctrines were professed aria that polity adopted is
another. We are here wholly unconcerned with the
first; our sole business is with the latter. The pro-
testant asserts that the church of England bases her
religious creed on the private judgment of the
Chnstian society in England, and her ecclesiastical
constitution on the inherent right of that society to
frame its own government for itself. The Anglican
derives the legitimacy of both the creed and the
polity from the authority of a special corporation,
which was exclusively endowed by Christ with the
prerogatives of declaring religious truth, and
governing the Christian body; and this corporation
he affirms to have existed all along in England
since the introduction of christianity into oar island,
and to have been the sole fountain of right and lega-
lity for every proceeding carried on in the English
church. Every act of religious government, which
was not the act of this corporation, he stigmatises as
invalid and rebellious; and in conformity with the
necessity imposed upon him by his theory, he
declares the reformation to have been the work
of this divinely instituted corporation. Hence a
double task is required of the Anglican. He is
bound, like the Romanists, to prove that one
special self-perpetuating body of men was instituted
by Christ to rule Christians far all ages, and to be
the sole depository of religious truth and govern-
ment; and then he is further bound to show, in re-
spect of England in particular, first, that the na-
tional episcopal clergy were not merely apart of the
universal corporation of Christian ru ers, but pos-
sessed fully and de jure all the entire powers of that
corporation for that particular nation ; and secondly,
that all the acts done at the Reformation were per-
formed by, and in the name of, and by virtue of, the
mule authority of the divine instrument of faith and
government. With Rome, as against the Christian
society, he must establish the transfer by a positive
divine appointment of the right of self-govern-
ment, otherwise inherent in it, from the whole body
of Christians to a particular order amongst them;
and as against the Papist, he must prove first that
the divine organisation is not one but ninny, com-
posed of many co-ordinate national unities, each
enjoying the fullest right to rule faith and practice
for its own particular nation, however much all the
other co-ordinate corporations dissent front and eon-
demi; its ordinances; and, secondly. that the teno-
vated constitution of the church of England, her
separation from the rest of Christendom, her new
articles of faith, her litany, her laws, were all the
regular and deliberate enactments of thia divinely-
instituted authority.
I will not discuss now the theory of national
• churches, nor the fearful disadvantages under which
the Anglican theory labours when compared with the
. papal ; but I ask at onee, on the hypothesis of the
truth of the Anglican view, whether the Reforma-
tion was really the work of the episcopacy of Eng-
land ? Will any man who sets the slightest value
on historical reputation step ficrward and declare that
the schism from Rome, the new fbrmularies of faith
and worship, and the ecclesiastical constitution of the
English church, were the deliberate and voluntary
acts of the English clergy? It is neces-
sary at this time of day to remind the Anglican
that the recognition of the supremacy of the crown
was extorted from a most reluctant convocation by
the imminent peril of a pneinuuire ? 'that the
submission" of the clergy, whereby they pledged
themselves not to pass any causes or constitution
without the assent of the crown, was enacted by par-
liament, equally under the pressure of the civil
power? That the recorded opinion of almost all the
episcopal bench against the Innovations in religion
exist to this day? That the proemdings of the
reign of Edwaril Vt., whic•lt erected the church of
England, were the work of acts of parliament and
royal commissions, which had nothing but statutes of
Henry VIII. and his ton to authorise them? That
the visitations and htjunctions which carried out these
measures emanated solely from royal authority, and
commanded the giving of the cup to the laity, the
use of the Prayer-hook, and other mast important
points of ritual and doctrine? That the Prayer-book
itself, which the act of uniformity of Elizabeth esta-
blished, and which the Anglicans extol as the
precious depository of catholic truth, never reecived
the sanction of convocation, but rested on the decree
of parliament alone? That when protestant prin-
ciples finally triumphed by the accession of Eliza-
berth, only one bishop could he found who would re-
tain his office under the new creed? Shall we be
told any longer, in the face of such facts, that
it was the old church', the bishops of the
old Anglican church, who were moved by
holy zeal and inspired enlightenment to shake
off the corruptions of Rome and restore the pure and
ancient faith.' It is idle to urge in reply that the
doctrines and practices introduced were of catholic
quality. This is an assertion of private judgment,
which may be true or false. Our concern here is
not with the doctrines themselves, but with the au-
thority which established them. And this I affirm
to have been the will and opinion of the Christian
people, as expressed by their legislature. For the
facts compel one of two conclusions. Either the
separation from the old and the establishment of the
new church was forced upon a dissenting clergy, upon
these divinely ordained expositors of the faith and
rulers of the church, by an authority higher than
their ownand an acquiescence in the revolution
effected by this power becomes a complete acknow-
ledgment of its competency to overrule the opinion
and authority of the clergy and a real abandonment
of any attempt to derive legitimacy fur the new
order of things from the authorities thus overruled,
or we are driven to the only other possible inference.
We must, then, suppose that it pleased God to reveal
the corruptions of Rome and the purity and aposto-
licity of the reformed doctrine to tfie minds of
the King and his parliament alone ; but that to
save the institution of the episcopate as the divine
organ of truth and government, it equally pleased
God to keep away from the minds of the still-
blinded clergy all thoughts of invincible resistance
or of becoming martyrs for the truth, and to give
them the grace of being willing, against their own
convictions, to enact and establish
•convocation a
profession of faith and an ecclesiastical polity which
had nothing to sanction them but the will and com-
mand of the King and people. To the Anglican I
say, " titrum horum ;" either conclusion is sufficient
for the practical refutation of catholic principles
within the church of England. In my next letter I
will consider the doctrine of national churches, on
which the right of the English church to dissent and
separate itself from all other catholic churches is
theoretically maintained. A----

THE BISHOP OP EXETER'S " SYNODICAL ACTION"
SCHEME.—On Monday the Rev. John Rowe, rector of St.
Mary Arches, convened a rural decanal meeting to discuss
the propriety or otherwise of approving of the bishop's
scheme for bringing about synodical action. Only fifteen
clergymen out of thirty-seven in the deanery attended, and
these were far from being unanimous. Weunderstand that
one clergyman boldly protested against the whole measure ;
and two or three expressed their determination uot again to
attend a similar meeting. It has been suggested in influ-
ential quarters, that a meeting of the laity of the diocese
will be requisite, to take into consideration these recent
proceedings of the Bishop of Exeter, which now occupy so
much of the public attention. The eyes of the nation at
large are turned towards the county of Devon, in anxious
expectation of its adoption of steps Wr the maintenance and
vindication of that great protestant principle—the right of
private pidgesent.—Ezeter Flyisag Pod.