The Sun.
London, England, 1848-01-01 00:00:00

uAR 1, 1848,
a J
-N y JAN " *

and mine may, by the blessing of God, be amply
fulfilled.—l have the honour to be, with great respect,
your most obedient servant, J. RUSSELL.
Rev. A. J. Crispin, Vicar of Renhold, &c. &c.

The following is the address, to which his Lordship
has thus replied :

TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD JOHN RUSSELL.

We, the undersigned, clergy exercising duties
within the county of Bedford, beg leave to submit
our opinion to your Lordship in the following parti-
culars :

1. That we have no share in those feelings of alarm
attributed to the clergy, through the activity of a
portion of them, upon the subject of Dr. Hampden's
elevation to the'episcopal bench.
2. That we have throughout this agitation of so
grave a question, looked for the affirmation and 'proof
of some sufficient reason ; some unquestionable state
ment of erroneous doctrine supported by Dr. Hamp-
den, some palpable evidence of unsoundness in the
faith. But none such have we found ; no proof or
evidence of any." strange doctrine contrary to God's
word," as held or favoured by Dr. Hampden.
3. On the contrary, we have seen charges ad-
vanced upon the faith either of extracts from his
works, or of general statements of their constructive
meaning, which an examination of the original writ-
ings show to be entirely unfounded—such extracts,
by their garbled form in some instances, by false
connexions in others, quite reversing the true mean-
ing of the passages. And we have reason to think
that many of the clergy have received their impression
of Dr. Hampden's doctrinal views from these un-
trustworthy sources.
4. That having seen these modes of impugning Dr.
Hampden's orthodoxy so largely adopted, and having
seen no one proof of unsound faith extracted from
any of his writings, we hold ourselves atliberty to
conclude (even those among us who have not made a
thorough search through all his
.works), that none-
such are to be found.

5. That we have indeed read sermons by Dr.
Hampden upon the most vital and influential doctrines
of the Christian religion, which we regard not only as
admirable expositions of the truth upon those points,
but sufficient also to satisfy, our minds that the faith
of their author and. his view of Christian doctrine is
worthy of all approbation.
6.' That consequently the only objection to the ele-
vation of Dr. Hampden stands upon the authority of
the vote of censure passed upon him by the University
of Oxford in convocation, in the year 1836. And that
we do not, in the present day, regard that vote as of
so much weight as properly to stand in the way of Dr.
Hampden's elevation, for reasons which we think it
unnecessary to mention.
7. That Dr. Hampden has since the time of his
condemnation received a direct expression 'of confi-
dence, in the very article of previous censure, from
the legitimate heads and governors of the University,
whose age, and station, and responsibility. and
maturer judgment, entitles their act, in our opinion,
to more weight of consideration, as representing the
sense of the University, than the act of a body com-
posed in great part of younger and less responsible
persons..
8. That under such circumstances, and reviewing
the theological history of Oxford during the period
that has intervened since the occurrence above alluded
to, we consider the appointment to an episcopal
station of one holding, and stating the great doc•
trines of Christianity in that vital integrity, strength,
and simplicity exhibited in Dr. Hampden's sermons,
a circumstance favourable to the health of the Church.
A. J. Crispin, Vicar of Renhold.
William S. halk, Rector of Wilden.
Edward Swann, Chaplain of the Infirmary.
William Monkhouse, Vicar of Goldington.
William Henry Greene, Rector of Steppingley.
John Wing, Vicar of Stevington, and Incumbent
of Elston. •
George Maclear, Chaplain of the Prisons, Bedford.
Henry Fuller, Vicar of Willington.
Henry Pearse, Rector of St. John's, Bedford.
Thomas Shuttleworth Grirnshawe, M.A., Vicar
of Biddenham.
J. W. Hawksley, Rector of Knotting, and
Souldrop and Turvey, Bedfordshire.
John Gaskin, Curate of St. Paul's, Bedford.
Benjamin Trapp, Vicar of Thurleigh.
John Theophilus Wilkin, Curate of Stag-Aden.
Thomas Pierson Richardson, Vicar of Great
Barford with Roxton.
George Thornton, Vicar of Sharnbrook.
H. F. Lodington, Curate of Yelden, to all except
the fifth.
John Mendham, Rector of Clophill.
Alfred Browne, Vicar of Flitton.
Thomas Pearse, Vicar of Westoning.
Antony Pulley, Rector of Whip.nade.
Maurice Farrell, M.A., Curate of Cardington.
Benjamin Maturin, 8.A., Curate of Biddenham,
Beds.
William Mudge, Rector of Purtenhall.
11. Seymour Yates, Vicar of Henlow.
Alfred James Lowth, Assistant-Curate of Arsley
and Astwick.
John P. Moore, Rector of Apsley.
R. Pain, M.A., Apsley.
C. Hedges, M.A., Apsley.
11. Mathew, Rector of Eversholt.
H. Hutton, Incumbent of Woburn.
llenry Le Mesurier, Second Master of Bedford
School.

The following address from fifteen Heads of
Houses in the University of Oxford has been pre-
sented to the Bishop Elect of Hereford :--
"TO THE REV. DR. HAMPDEN, RILGIUS PROFESSOR
OF DIVINITY, &C.

" We, the undersigned, Heads of Houses in the
University of Oxford, have seen with great con-
cern the reports of proceedings in various parts of
the country upon your proposed appointment to the
see of Hereford, tending to injure your reputation,
impede your future usefulness, and even create a ge-
neral distrust of the soundness of your faith in our
blessed Lord. Under such circumstances, although
we only declare the sentiments which many of us
have expressed before, and particularly upon the
enactment in 1842 of the new statute concerning
theological instruction, we desire to assure you, that
having for several years enjoyed ample opportunities
of learning the tenor of your public teaching and
hearing your discourses from the pulpit of the Uni-
versity, we are not only satisfied that your religious
belief is sound, but we look forward with confidence
to your endeavours to preach the gospel of Christ in
its integrity.
"B. P. Symons, Warden of Wadham, and
Vice-Chancellor.
" Edward Hawkins, Provost of Oriel.
" James Ingram, President of Trinity.
" Philip Wynter, President of St. John's.
" John Radford, Rector of Lincoln.
" Henry Foulkes, Principal of Jesus College.;
" John Gaisford, Dean of Christ Church.
" Thomas David Macbride, Principal of Magda-
len Hall.
" David Williams, Warden of New College.
" Frederick Charles Plumptre, Master of Uni-
versity College.
" Henry Wellesley, Principal of New-Inn Hall.
" R. Bullock Marsham, Warden of Merton.
" William Thompson, Principal of St. Edmund
Hall.
" James Norris, President of C C.C.
" Francis Jeune, Master of Pembroke."

accordingly addressed by several of my clergy, with
the request that I would employ this 'machinery to
obtain such a trial, by sending a charge against the
soundness cf your teaching to the Court of Arches.
lat once declined to promote such a suit. I was then
requested--by performing the needful ministerial act
of granting the letters of request to them—to allow
other parties to promote such a suit. Such an inquiry
I did not think it right to prevent by the interposition
of a mere official veto. I signed accordingly the
necessary document, informing you in a letter, dated
December 16, that I had done so.

" -At this stage of the business it was suggested
to me by the promoters that, the matter being now'
in legal train, it was possible you might be willing
to render to my private suggestion, as bishop of the
diocese, the satisfaction which would otherwise be
sought by a more painful process through the Court
of Arches.. I gladly adopted the -suggestion, and
desiring the promoters to scispnd -all further legal
action till I had communicated With you, I wrote
to you a second letter, in :which I first stated, in
detail, the points of doctrine which it was alleged in
the Articles' laid before me your writings had im-
pugned, and asked you whether you would affirm
your full belief in them. And, secondly, I asked
whether you would be willing to withdraw. the
' Observations on Dissent' and the ‘Bampton Lec-
tures,' not as admitting their language to be unsound,
but for the peace of the Church, and because, in my
judgment, as your bishop, and in that of others, they
did contain unsound language. Had you felt at
liberty to reply fully to my questions, and to consent
to my suggestion, you would have given full satis-
faction as well to the promoters of the suit as to me.
"In your letter dated December 18, giving full
credit to the motives which led me to address you,
you answer my first question thus—' In perfect re-
spect to you as bishop of the diocese, and for your
personal satisfaction,
_I unhesitatingly reply in the
3- Y
affirniatiYe: -I say es. to all your queries on my
belief in that sense in which they are the plain natural
sense of the statements of our Articles and formu-
laries.' So far your answer was of course entirely
satisfactory. To.my request you gave no answer;
and this silence I understood as tantamount to a re-
fusal to withdraw the works in question ; and satis-
factory as I thought that your declaration of personal
faith ought to be to all, I deemed it to be impossible
for me to require the promoters of the suit to relinquish
it while there remained unwithdrawn and unex•
plained language which appeared to me so dangerous
as that which was contained, more especially, in your
Observations en Dissent' (first edition), which was
then on sale in Oxford. I therefore wrote to you
to say, that, as the language which seemed to
me unsound was not to be withdrawn, I could not
require the promoters to abandon their suit.
" But immediataly after writing thus I learned
from a letter of yours to a common friend, that it was
with no sanction of yours, and indeed against your
wish, that any copies of the first edition of " Obser-
vations on Religious Dissent" were now sold ; and
that even of the second edition you had put forth no
copies since its publication.
" This entirely altered my view of the case, and I
at once wrote to you, requesting you to allow me to
withdraw my last letter, because it, closed a cor-
respondence from which, if kept open, I now hoped
much.

" I had now before me, as bishop of the diocese—
" 1. Your -unqualified declaration of faith on the
very points selected by the promoters of the suit as
those supposed to be unsoundly treated.
"2. The virtual withdrawal of whiit I deemed
especially unsound.
" There remained only the withdrawal of the
Banapton Lectures' to fulfil every condition at first
desired for my own or the promoters' satisfaction.
" At this time I received your published letter to
Lord J. Russell, in which, to other explanations, you•
add the important admission, I should be much
concerned if, from any unskilfulness in the use of
words, I should have given rise to misapprehensions.
I would not assert, however, that I have always suc-
ceeded in conveying my thoughts exactly.'
" This admission appeared to me the more im-
portant, because at the same time I learned from the
common friend to whom I have already referred, that
you had expressed to him a readiness to remove, in
any reprint of your Bampton Lectures,' any ink
citutioiss or obscure language which might have given
rise to the impression that they contained unsound
doctrines, which you had not intended to put forth.
Mad I been able to obtain from you a direct statement
that such alterations should be made in passages
which I was ready to point out to you, full satisfaction
would have been afforded to those who objected to
your consecration ; but to my great regret I learned
that you were now acting under legal direction, and
did not think youself at liberty to answer, or even to
receive, any such proposals. This I deeply regretted,
because I am well persuatha that by such explana-
tions and assurances as you could most honestly
and easily give, the anxious fears of numbers now
disturbed within the Church might be at once
allayed, and without such direct' assurances some, I
fear, will still remain unsatisfied. Thus, in fact, the
promoters of the suit now expressed to me their wish
for its continuance. With this wish I could not
comply for two reasons—first, because I believed that
I substantially possessed already the explanations and
assurances desired, and I felt that what the Church
needed was, not the assertion of a point of honour,
but a real security for the soundness of your doctrine;
and, secondly, because I belkved that to allow now
the suit to proceed would imply a far more direct
judicial assent upon my part to its fitness than I had
given in first,signing the letters of request, for since
I had performed that act my podtion had undergone
an entire alteration. I thought at first that the Church
had a right to some assurance of the soundness of
your doctrines before your consecration as a bishop ;
and when no other way of obtaining that satisfaction
appeared to be open, I did not even shrink, at the re-
quest of my clergy, from relegating the question to
the decision of the Court of Arches. Since, at the
suggestion of the promoters, and by your consenting
to reply to my quasi-judicial questions, I had been led
myself,. as bishop of the diocese, to assume the office
of a judge in the cause, I could, therefore, no longer
act merely ministerially in issuing letters of request.
Both parties, to a great extent, committed the matter
to my judgment; and now, unless I was satisfied that
there was matter for a criminal suit, I could not think
myself justified in sending an accusation against you
to be tried in the Arches Court. Whether there was
such matter, could be determined by me only after a
careful study of the works in question, with all your
explanations in my mind. Regarding, then, the
`Observations on Dissent' as virtually withdrawn, I
accordingly applied myself to a thorough and impartial •
examination of the Bampton Lectures.' I have now
carefully studied them throughout, with the aid of
those explanations of their meaning which you have
furnished, both publicly since their first publication
and now in your private communications. The
result of this examination, I am boend plainly
to declare, is my own conviction that they do
not justly warrant those suspicions of unsound-
ness to which they have given rise, and which,
eusset e el
suspicionsto sele c teodf
ye xoturra sme,a
nli
nmg3:
ands elf
with equal frankness say that I discern the cause
ssfohorarltoehdneg. caolsnioslerqttuhent distrust of the University, I must
r
(whilst your works remained thus unexplained, and
the minds of men unassured by your full profession
of the faith) in what appears to me a not unfrequent
overstatement of favourite views, and much obscurity
of diction, resulting often from thearbitrary use of such
words as 'facts,' doctrines," proved,' deduced,' &c.; and
hence I believed it happened that men of such various
parties in the Church concurred, not unnaturally, in
the expression of a painful distrust of your meaning.
But allowing for these as the blemishes of what
was I believe a necessarily hasty composition, and
taking into account, as I now can, your various
explanations and assurances, I find in the
Lectures' little which will not admit of a favour-
able construction. And if at times I long for the
manifestation of a more evidently reverential spirit
in the discussion of the highest mysteries of our
faith, I yet read in them a thoughtful and able his-
tory of the formation of dogmatic terminology, not a
studied depreciation of authorised dogmatic language,
still less any conscious denial of admitted dogmatic
truth—l see in them, in fact, so far, little more than
Ns hat has been already expressed in the words (never,
I believe, considered liable to censrre) of one of the
ablest of your opponents in 1834, who says, If I
avow my belief that freedom from symbols and arti-
cles is abstractedly the highest state of church com-
munion and the peculiar knowledge of the primitive
Church, it is...first, because technicality and formality
are,, in their degree, inevitable results of public con-
fessions of faith.' And again ller rulers were loth
to confess that the Church had grown too old
to enjoy the free, unsuspicious teaching- with which
her childhood was blest; and that her- dis-
ciples must for the future calculate and reason
before they acted:—.Newman's Arians, pp. 41, 42.
"Having reached, then, this conclusion through
that close 'study of your work and explanations which
the due discharge of the office of a judge required from
me, I deem it my duty not only to be satisfied with
the assurance I possess of your future revision of the
work, and to withdraw therefore the letters of re-
quest, but also, with whatever force my previous
desire of explanation-, and my'position as Dish.* of