The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-25 00:00:00

DR. PUSEY AND UNIVERSI7 Y EDUCA-
-7 lON.

The following letter has been addressed to
the ex-President of the Wesleyan Conference,
which has just closed its sittings at. Liver-
pool :
" Reverend Sir,—As you are assembled
in conference, you will not, I trust, consider
it an intrusion if I write to you upon a sub-
ject with which, having been long resident at
the university of Oxford, I am well acquainted
—the bearings of Mr. Coleridge's bill on its
religious condition and your own interests
as a religious body. That bill has commonly
been advocated in the House of Commons as
being in the interest of the different dissenting
bodies. lam convinced that it can be in
the interest of no religious dissenting body
—of no dissenting body at all, except the
Socinians, and not even of them permanently ;
for Socinianism, being one of the most incon-
sistent of all religionisms, can maintain no
long hold upon the human mind. It must go
downwards towards Deism, even while it con-
tinues to call itself Christian, or to acknowledge
some ideal Christ of its own invention. But
this is a time of increasing consistency. People
will take their side more and more, either
with the old creeds of the Church or with
some forms of irreligion which, whatever it may
call itself, will be essentially atheist, or pan-
theistic. The effect of Mr. Coleridge's bill
would be to legitimise this conflict within the
university of Oxford. The body, whose inte-
rests it would advance, would be those whose
indistinct belief is ever being precipitated down-
wards, who, hardly know what they themseves
believe, and who, under the name of progress,
are ever retrograding to the hopeless scepti-
cism before our Lord came. It is true that
this—although a diminishing party among
our young men—does exist among us ; some
have gone further than this—to the denial of
Christianity itself, of their own free agency,
and of God. But they are, of course, in a false
position in a university which has any test or
any common faith at all. The effect of Mr.
Coleridge's bill would be to legitimise their
position and acknowledge them among the
teachers of our Christian youth. You would
not wish your own youth so to be taught ; the
only result which I can imagine of his bill
would be to drive our future clergy also to
seek their education elsewhere, as in matter
of fact in Franco, the bishops, in order to
exempt their candidates for orders from the
soul-destroying influence of the university
of France, obtained for them from the Em-
peror Napoleon an exemption from the neces-
sity of passing through a university course to
which they had. been subject under the pre-
vious dynasties. Supposing the present state
of things to be changed, some of us have
thought of two alternative expedients. The
one would be to substitute for subscription
to the 39 Articles an acknowledgment of the
faith according to the Nicene Creed. This
would admit to all the privileges and fellow-
ships of the university any members of dissent-
ing bodies, who hold the common creed of.
Christendom, such as you hold, and such as,
at least, the Particular Baptists and the Inde-
pendents hold—all Dissenters, in fact, who have
not lapsed into Socinianism. The other plan,
which has been publicly advocated by Mr. Lid-
don and myself, would, I should think, be
more acceptable to the religious dissenting
bodies, viz., that we should each teach accord-
ing to our own belief until God brings us all
to one mind, and that out of the funds of the
colleges provision should be made for those
dissenting bodies who wished tobe represented
in the university—in a word that new col-
leges should be founded out of the revenues
of the oldones for the different bodies who
hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Bet-
ter, indeed, even to decide that Socinianism
should be endowed than to allow that all col-
leges should become Socinian, sceptical, de-
istic, and atheistic. Either of these ways
would be religious ways ; and however un-
acceptable such plans might be to the Libe-
rals at Oxford, because they both of them pre-
suppose the continued recognition of a definite
, faith, they would, I am sure, be to the vast
'majority a the members of the unlyersity far

PRICE.. 4d.
STAMPE D 5 I

preferable to Mr. Coleridge's bill, which
would entrust the education of our youth to,
as it may be, deist or atheist. For ourselves, I
have always observed that proximity and
intercourse lead to a better understanding, and
that the only hopeless alienation comes from
absolute severance. Allow me to commend
this subject to your consideration and your
prayers ; and forgive me if I also beg you to
pray, as we do, that all these unhappy breaches
may be healed, and we may be all one fold
under one Shepherd. If we pray, God will
hear us in His own way. Yours very faith-
fully, in Christ Jesus, E. B. PUSEY."

In another letter, in explanation of the
above Dr. Pusey says :
In a letter to the Times, Dr. Pusey explains the
meaning of his communication to the Wesleyan
Conference. He, says :
I certainly do believe that we are in a state of
revolution, and that as a part of that revolution,
in all human appearance, the days of Establish-
ments aro numbered, whether, in fact, the dis-
establishment comes a little sooner or a little later.
I have for some time expected the Irish Establish-
ment to be modified or abolished first, then the
Scotch, then the English. I naturally do not
wish for disestablishment, but it is well to be pre-
pared for anything. But, disestablishment as-
sumed (and Mr. Coleridge's bill is a very large in-
stalment of the disestablishment of the English
Church, and, in principle, carries the whole), the
next question, and what, sooner or later, would
become the important question, is in what way
disestablishment is to be carried out—whether by
the denominational system, or (which is Mr.
Coleridge's plan) by secularization. People's
minds have been so occupied by the question be-
tween establishment and disestablishment that
they have not faced the further question whether,
if the Church should be disestablished, its funds
should be secularised, or whether they should be
so disposed that all denominations should be
equally endowed according to their importance
and numbers. In Mr. Coleridge's bill it is tacitly
assumed that so much of the Church's property as
is employed in university education should be
secularised. My motive, then, for writing to the
president of the Wesleyan Conference was this :
I believe Mr. Coleridge's bill to be very pernicious,
not to the Church of England only, but to religion
generally. In discussions both in and out of
Parliament it was assumed that Mr. Coleridge's
bill was in the interest of the Dissenters. I was
convinced that it would benefit no Dissenting body
except the Unitarians, that the so-called orthodox
(i.e. the non-Socinianising) Dissenters would gain
absolutely nothing by it, and would be among the
first to deplore its effects. They would gain no-
thing in the way of assistance in the education of
their sons; for all scholarships and exhibitions are
now given to superior attainments ; and the son
of a Dissenter, who has abilities and culture enough
to gain a scholarship .or exhibition, is entirely on
a par with any Churchman. This year even a
divinity scholarship (I was myself an examiner)
was awarded to one who was about to be a minister
in the Establishment in Scotland. Still the num-
ber of Dissenters at Oxford is but small, because
religious Dissenters mostly prefer having their
children educated in their own system. This pre-
ference appeared from the statistics of the London
University a few years ago. Degrees were con-
ferred on every denomination of Dissenters, but
the young men upon whom they were conferred
had been educated, not in the London University,
but in schools belonging to their respective bodies.
I thought then, and think still, that religious Dis-
senters would prefer a system whereby they would
gain the intellectual advantages of the university,
while they retained the religious teaching of their
sons in the hands of those of their own per-
suasion, to one in which they might be taught
(as Mr. Coleridge's bill would allow) seriatim
by a Baptist, a Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist,
a Pantheist; or, contrariwise, by a Roman Ca-
tholic. Such a mixture of religious or irreligious
teaching would mostly end in religious indif -
ference or scepticism. Anyhow, I wished the
Dissenting bodies to have the question before
them, and I wrote to the president of the Wesleyan
Conference, because, as the Conference was
then sitting, the subject could be considered
by them conveniently. Little sympathy as they
may have with me, they are, I believe, the most
religious body external to the Church, and the
most opposed to rationalism, and would, I hoped
and hope, give the subject consideration on its own
merits. But in neither of the plans did those who
agree with me give up the principle of definite
dogmatic teaching. The Nicene Creed contains
so much dogmatic teaching that anyone who really
received it would not be far from being a good
Catholic. He must on most matters of faith
which have to be taught to young men teach as
we. The other plan of forming colleges for the
different religious bodies who wished to have them
is a mere matter of money. A good deal of the
revenues of the colleges are wasted, since by the
Oxford Commission BO many fellowships have been
made permanent sinecure rewards for the attain-
ments of young men of 22 or 23, without any re-
ference to any future service to education. The
alienation of such revenue for the formation of
Dissenting colleges would not leave the existing
colleges less efficient. The proximity of a Wes-
leyan, Baptist, or even Socinian college might only
make our own teaching more definite. Nor do I
apprehend that it would involve any increase of
controversy; rather, our existing side by side, eac h
body preserving its own faith until it should see
greater truth elsewhere, would be more likely to
soften edges than to sharpen them. I fear not
for, the faith itself, but for- the minds of the young.
What I do fear is that young men, in the excite-
ment of the fresh feelings of intellectual power,
before judgment is matured, and when they them-
selves are disposed to embrace anything which
looks to them new and bold, should be committed
to irreligious novelties which may destroy their
faith. I never looked for .any answer from the
Wesleyan Conference. I only wished them to
consider a question which concerns their con-
sciences, not mine, whether they will be a party
to the secularizing of the University, seeing, in the
condition of the University of France and of the
Protestant Universities of Germany, what the
result will be. Mr. Coleridge's bill involves a
principle of far more moment and of far greater
extent than the proposal to disestablish the Irish
Church. For (as you rightly say) the Universities
are " not the only national institutions." They
were founded, indeed, for the benefit of the nation,
but by the piety of individuals, much more than
many of the endowments of the Church. If the
Universities are secularised (as Mr. Coleridge pro-
poses), so on the same principle may be the cathe-
drals and the parish churches, and the endowments
of both. His bill carries the principle, not of dis-
establishment only, but of secularization. The
Wesleyan Conference wisely did not commit itself
at once to any opinion upon a subject which was
new to them. But, notwithstanding what has been
s tid of a somewhat hard attitude which they have
taken towards the Church of Englan -I, I have too
much confidence in their religious feelings to think
that,with their eyes open, they would support Mr.
Coleridge's measure, which will only weaken the
Church of England by corrupting ft. They may
wish to rival the Church of England, but their
rivalry would be, as they would believe, for the
winning souls to Christ. They would not wish to
promote a plan by which until our sons should be
removed from the University soul-destroying wor-
ship, should be taught to the members and future
ministers of the Church of England. They have
their own College for the education of their
ministers. They would not wish to see the Uni-
versities at which our clergy are educated cor-
rupted, It would be a lose to themsolyes also,