The Sun.
London, England, 1847-12-23 00:00:00

S. PRESBYTER.

TO THE BISHOP OF EXETER.
Mr LORD Bisnor or EXETER,—The public were
not a little surprised, when a letter which certain
bishops addressed to Lord John Russell, on
the appointment of Dr. Hampden to the see of Here-
ford, first appeared, to find that the signature of "
Exeter" was not of that number. Conjecture was
rife ; it was thought you might hare had too much
respect for the Crown to have opposed the " powers
that be," or that your charity made you differ from
your protesting brethren; and hopes for a moment
were entertained that you thought Dr. Hampden an
ill-used man, and that you refused to join the bigoted
cry, which was got up by the Tractarian zealots for
party purposes. Twenty-four hours, however, dis-
pelled these pleasing illusions. The well-known
cutting style, for which your Lordship's writings
have obtained such an unenviable notoriety, appeared
in all its glory in the next day's papers, and told a
different tale. Your true character was then dis-
played, and while in strains of accustomed bitterness
you inveighed against the Premier for daring to nomi-
nate a man who had incurred your displeasure, and
that of a majority of the Convocation of Oxford, you
awoke in the minds of many (more especially of those
who know your Lordship as well as the writer of this
letter does) feelings of astonishment that you, of all
men in the world, should give utterance to such lan-
guage as that of your letter to Lord John Russell on
the appointment of Dr. Hampden.
I say you, of all men in the world, for one of your
chief grounds for attacking Dr. Hampden appears to
be that he is still lying under the censure of the
Oxford Convocation. Allow me then to ask, how
comes it, when a certain Dr. Pusey was lying under
the censure of an equally authoritative board at the
same University, amongst all your brethren on the
bench that you were the only one who despised their
censure, scorned their ban, and went unnecessarily
out of your way to allow that condemned theologian
to preach in any pulpit in your diocese to which he
could obtain an entrance while at the same
time the hebdomadal board at the University had sus-
pended him, on account of his unfitness as a teacher,
from preaching, as far as their authority extended.
And yet you condemn Dr. Hampden ! Et to Brute !
Again, your Lordship hints at the harshness of the
law which compels the Dean and Chapter of Here-
ford to obey the conge d'elire of the Queen under a
most heavy penalty, and you display a most affecting
degree of sympathy for the painful position in which
they are placed, by being required to elect one whom
you consider such an arch-heretic. But did not your
conscience, at the time you were penning your volu-
minous dispatch, whisper that you ycurself had once
lived in a glass house, and that it ill became you to
throw a stone ?—that after the Roman Catholic
Emancipation Bill the Dean and Chapter of Exeter
were required, by a similar mandate from the Sove-
reign, to elect a certain Dr. Phillpotts as their future
bishop ; and that it was very seriously considered at
the time whether they should not resist the royal
commanas—though they, for their own sakes, wisely
determined that discretion was the better part of
valour, and obeyed ? And is it not a fact that at the
time of your primary visit to the city of your epis-
copal see, that you were received—must I write it ?
with the cathedral bells mtyllec 1 And yet you ad-
vise the Dean and Chapter of Hereford to refuse the
Queen's conga
_cl'elire! Et to Brute!

Again, your Lordship ventures to V attack the theo-
logical opinions of. Dr. Hampden, and you assert that
he is unfit to be a chief pastor in the Church of Eng-
land; but are you sound, I may ask, in all points ?
Have you never attempted to draw aside from their
" literal and grammatical sense" those articles of
our Church which have a tendency towards Cal-
vanistic doctrines ? Is it not well'known in the diocese
that you boldly affirm of one of those articles, viz.,
the Mb, that it was foisted in to please a certain
Party in the Church at the time of the Reformation ?
And yet you question Dr. Hampden's theology I Et
Ia Brute!

Again, your Lordship quoting Scripture with your
accustomed suavity, says " a bishop must be blame-
less." True, most true ; but I would ask, more in
sorrow than in anger, have you never beard of a
certain bishop in the west of England, whose diocese
about three years ago was in a tii.me in consequence
of his abortive attempt to force upon an unwilling
people the follies and vagaries of the Tractarian sys-
tem, and that happily just one. grain of common sense
was left him to see that, it persisted in, it would end
in the disruption of the Church of England ?—that
the consequence of his notorious advocacy
of the
Tractarians has been to empty those churchesbef
which his followers have obtained possession, and t
nyde u
must insinuate
in nn' ut abut
be
paelinepnlaet,ewfohro ewveorutldhe
otherwiseaffection s
haveof a verybeeo largewit
b b101:31yboot
yet f
who are now against us ? And
a
that Dr. Hampden is not blameless,
to point out, at any great
a blitshisopulot Ewoctuthß
wruhleil.et
so apparentl in the voluminous
you have displayed so much acri-
dleinspgatthe,ht,heinsowpbbiiestry
m,,
sontayotdooviffm,rdls
aamb rhootlhi
eerr
thanclerg
surprise at the confidence (to clergymen
thou ;" or to express my
ynoanhaiirls-hceorncteearmled)
in which you have expressed your will to the Chief
Minister of our beloved
inSovereignhin such sentences
as these :—" Persist
not .
steps "--as
while you yet have
outirmreas,, e‘xpneeritmraeonety.
your
"—as if you were the Sovereign Lord or Pope
of these realms.
In conclusion, I beg to subscribe myself (of neces-
sity " slat nominis umbra'" for I have a wire and
children dependent on me for support, and my annual
income from the Church is considerably less than you
receive from the same source weekly), with every
respect for the office you hold,
ONE OF THE INFERIOR CLERGY OF
THE DIOCESE OF EXETER.
Dec. 15, 1847.

LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY.—In
consequence of the late very heavy rains, the directors
have, we understand, issued orders to diminish the speed
of the express trains over the Trent Valley Railway,
which was recently completed, and opened for thrcingh
traffic a few days ago, to that of the mail trains, during
the winter months. The ordinary express speed which,
on the old line, is forty miles an hour, will be, we learn,
adopted on the Trent Valley Railway early in the
spring.—lierapatit's Journal.

I DR. HAMPDEN.
ITO 7'HE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
SlR,—When I was an undergraduate at Oxford,
Ithe Rev. (now the Right Reverend) Daniel Wilson,
preached in his turn at St. Mary's a sermon on re-
generation ; and, because he did not advocate therein
the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, his sermon
was so unsavoury to the nostrils of the chiefs of the
University, that it was not allowed to come forth to
the public through that gauge of Oxford orthodoxy,
the Clarendon Press ! The
,Bampton Lectures of
Dr. Hampden, however, were treated with all due
respect, having come forth to the world through the
University press—a presumptive evidence that they
contained nothing exceptionable; and during four
1 years, after their having been thus introduced to
society, not a word transpired that the Rev. Lecturer
had advanced any unsound or strange doctrine ; but
the moment he was appointed Regius Professor of
Divinity by the Whigs, the then concealed but sub-
sequently manifested Tractarians, who were also ultra-
Tories, became enlightened all at once with regard to
the Hampden Bampton Lectures, and then for the first
time was heard the report of their containing un-
sound doctrine. How came it to pass that these men
never found out this unsound doctrine before ? They
had heard the lectures, they had allowed them uninter-
ruptedly to pass through the Clarendon Press, and
they had read them after they had so passed. The

Protestant Pope of Exeter says that the author not
being then in a position which would enable him to

do ittischief, these keen-sighted but good-natured

men, who were aware of the doctrine from
the very first, did not like to become accusers. This
is the defence set up for their silence and reserve;
but the error, which they subsequently pointed out
for condemnation, was asserted to be one of a very grave
character—an error subversive in effect of the whole
fabric of Christianity, being a rejection of the " Chief
Corner Stone." Were the men, then, who could
allow such an error to remain unexposed, unopposed,
and uncondemned for four longyears—were these men,
I say, who thus slumbered over such a dangerous
doctrine, actuated by a real concern for the faith
once delivered to the saints ?" Was it such a feeling
which induced them at length, after the lapse of
four years' silence, to expose this asserted false
doctrine ? Nothing of the kind ; but party
spirit—a politico-theologico party-spirit—was the
impulsive cause, and hence the tears drawn forth on
the discovery of the unsound doctrine in question. I
do not wish it to be understood, by what I have ad-
vanced, that I assert that the Hampden Bampton Lec-
tures do or do not contain erroneous doctrinal state-
ments, but my object is to exhibit to public notice
the insincerity of the promoters of Dr. Hampden'a
persecution, and the bitterness of their spirit. They
could hold their peace while it suited their purpose,
though at the expense of the truth, but the instant
an opportunity was presented them for damaging
their political opponent, they availed themselves of it,
wishing the world to believe that they were solely
influenced in their proceedings by a sincere regard
for the truth; but all reflecting men perceived that
they were acting under a cloak of maliciousness.
I have not the honour of being personally ac-
quainted with Dr. Hampden, but what I know of
him, through the medium of a common friend, a very
pious brother clergyman, and from his letter to that
friend, convinces me both of the soundness of his re-
ligious principles, and of the excellency of his Chris-
tian character, and I have no doubt of his proving a
zealous and efficient overseer of the Church, and an
ornament to the highstation to which I consider he
has been deservedly promoted.—l am, Sir, your obe-
dient servant,
21st December, 1847.