The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-13 00:00:00

ESSAYS AND _REVIEWS.

The case of the Bishop of Salisbury v. Dr, Wil- I
liams was resumed on Saturday morning in the
Arches Court, before Dr. Lushington.
Dr. Phillimore continued the consideration of the
11 th article, meeting the account of the deluge
given by Dr. Williams by the words of Genesis, in
which that event is referred to. In the same way
the smiting of the Assyrians was supported by the
text of Holy Writ, and the extract from the Essay
in reference to this point only showed the careless-
ness of Dr. Williams, who, as he was wrong in his
quotations from Paley, was equally wrong in his
citations frem Scripture, for the " visible angel"
was mentioned in the account given in the Book of
Kings, and there was not, therefore, the discrepancy
between the descriptions of Kings and Chronicles
which Dr. Williams attributed. The words of
Scripture were also sufficient to convict Dr. Wil-
liams for his opinions regarding the smiting of the
firstborn, the passage of this Red Sea, and the offer-
ing up of Isaac, and in regard to the first-mentioned
of these events, Dr. Phillimore declared the inter-
pretation of the essayist to be untenable, from the
improbability that the Bedouin host, if they were
the destroyers, should select for destruction the first
born. Again, there was no authority whatever
for saying that it was in obedience to Molech, the
author of the fierce ritual of Syria, that Abraham
was about to sacrifice his son. Upon this point Dr.
Warburton had been quoted is support of Dr.
Williams's opinion. According to his (Dr.
Philli-
more's) view, the decisions in the Gorham case and
in the case of Burder v. Heath would not justify
Dr. Williams by the words quoted from Dr.
Warburton, even if those words would bear the
construction tput upon them, for it had
never been said that an isolated opinion in a
book of orthodoxy could sanction a gross heresy.
But the fact was that Dr. Warburton 's argument
was that net only was this the most important and
divine historical record, and he had carried it even
further than others had done, for he said that
the three days that Abraham remained in Mount
Moriah was also typical of the Saviour. Under the
next article, with the extracts quoted before him,
no one could doubt that Dr. Williams denied that
salvation was purchased by the bodily pangs of
Christ ; and could any rational being doubt for a
moment that this language was inconsistent with
the awful language of the Litany, and struck at
the root of the doctrine of the sufferings of our
Lord having purchased man's redemption P And
in this, as in the following articles relating to the
New Testament, the learned counsel submitted that
no clergyman had a right, with such levity and
caawrfeelelssmnyessstearsieDs rt.
oWwi ae
hm had do
edf
eo
rnree,
dt o
to l e aavpeptehaer
contradictory to the formularies of the Church of
England and the plain teaching of the Bible, and
then to come into a court of justice to suggest a
method by which the obvious meaning of his words
might be explained away. The learned counsel,
after remarking that the articles were divided under
two heads, the one relating to God's Word written,
and the other to the cardinal doctrines of the
Church of Christ, concluded his address in these
words :—" With respect to the former, we contend
that while the Church has wisely abstained from
giving any definition of inspiration, she has most
rightly and most clearly excluded that sense which
would be bringing down the Bible to the level of a
poem written by Milton, or a sermon composed by
Luther. With regard to the second division, we
contend that while the Church has left to ordained
ministers full liberty to criticise the text and inves-
tigate the history of Holy Writ, she has not ac-
corded to them the license of denying all the his-
torical facts according to the fancy of each particut-
lar minister, with the truth of which the .greta
euto tither
doctrines of our salvation, all that gives. dignnityano
Thesesssu
the life, and hope to the death of a Ct
are inextricablyweeootaenn dd ffoorLeTvehrebi
rore
d
positions
soundness are about to be submittedtothe roufdtehbeuset
necessary criterion of the admissibilitynga lusPOu n
articles in the Court of the
pAerscihtbiososhsoapreofthCe
result
bury. It is said that these
raisers of that
of vulgar clamour. Among the
vul-
gar clamour are the whole episcopate of England,
and 9,500 clergymen whose petition I now hold in
my hands. It is said that by these proceedings we
thlnatmyhum-
ble
is
alarm
shall
opinion
strip t bteheaht u
ar cr hg ;Pot
ehne
tr
isd
i learning.le
without foundation. Within the liberties of these
her formularies the mightiest intellects of England
—the greatest writers and thinkers which have ever
adorned the literature of this or any other country
in Christendom—have been expressed. In the much
vaunted learning of the essay before us there is
nothing but the revival of the exploded heresies and
discarded evidences of the earlier heretics and the
later infidels. But if it were otherwise, if it were
true, as we experimentally know it to be false, that
by establishing the admissibility of these articles we
should have an unlearned church, better, I say, to
have a church which in the opinion of some may not
be learned than a church which in the opinion of
all must be dishonest. Better would it be—a thou-
sand times better, at the risk of any religious con-
vulsion—that the canons, the articles, the formula-