The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-20 00:00:00

the heart, or to excite the languid devotion of the
soul. But there is a point where they become offen-
sive to those who have a clear perception of true re-
ligion ; and when such reliance in their efficacy is
placed, as implied in the conduct of some of the
clergy, they must in time degenerate into frivolity
and superstition. The rite or ceremony, or the point
enforced, may be harmless in itself, but a wise man
will look to the consequences of magnifying the im-
portance of such things as form no essential part of
religious faith or conduct.
" 4.1 do not here contend that the changes you
haveintroduced are themselves objectionable; Ido
not profess to divine the motives which have led you
to the conclusions you have arrived at; I do not
wish, as I have said, to argue with you the merits or
demerits of the Rubric, as it is out of my province to
enter into any such controversy; but I cannot, on the
grounds of common sense or right judgment, defend
the enforcement of those changes in the ordinary
worship of the church which are certain to disturb
the quiet and harmony of the parish for years to
come.

" If I granted all the changes you are determined
on to be simply good, or harmless, or things indifferent
(as the preface to the Prayer-book says of forms and
ceremonies), still I cannot think you can be justified
in disturbing the peace of your congregation for ob-
jects that really form no part of religion; objects
which, if you succeed in, may gratify' your own
feelings, but which cannot possibly advance the eter-
nal interests of man, or tend in any way to the glory
of God.

" On the contrary, it is certain, that whatever en-
genders strife, or promotes discord, or excites
or scatters the flock (of which you are the appointed
shepherd) must injure true religion and man's best
interests, at the same time that the impetuous zeal of
the clergy excites grave doubts in the minds of calm,
reflacting, religious men (wh) find their religion in
the Bible), whether the clergy are proving them-
selves the best friends of the Church, or the warm
supporters of spiritual truth. Their intemperate
desire to revive forms and ceremonies of another age,
at any expense, may lead others to doubt whether
they have really formed in their own minds the dis-
tinction between religious forms and religious truth.
" At all events such is the impression their present
proceedings are likely to leave—to pass by the false
ideas they are sure to engender in the minds of the
weak (and they are not a few) who, in all ages, have
tended to confound those two things together, and
thus in the end have gradually fallen into all the
mummery and superstitious observances we see, with
pain and surprise, existing in the Roman Church.
" When the importance and necessity of forms
have once taken possession of the mind, there is no-
thing more difficult than to root them out, as all his-
tory testifies ; for no reason 1 can conjecture than
that man is naturally prone to mistake the shadow of
religion for the substance, the typs or symbol for the
object represented.
" When we know that the Church of Rome has its
foundation in such superstitious observances, we ought
to be cautious how we multiply them, or unnecessa-
rily revive old ones, worn out by time, and abandoned
by general consent.
" Let us always consider it a maxim of truth, that
forms or ceremonies, or rites of any kind, called by
whatever name, are nothing in the sight of God, ab-
solutely considered.
" 5. Why the Rubric, which seems to arrogate to
itself no undue weight of importance, and which has
nothing to recommend it but the prestige of antiquity
(and that not of a remote date), and 1 may say good
sense, should all at once, in the eyes of the clergy,
swell into something of great purport, and almost of
Divine obligation, is an anomaly difficult to be ex-
plained or understood.
" If a party in the Church were to make an attempt
to bring the Church of England into conformity with
the simplicity of the age of the apostles, to assimilate
it to the severe and simple religion as promulgated by
its Divine Founder, there really would be something
meritorious, however unsuccessful the attempt, some-
thing good, however much savouring of enthusiasm ;
but an attempt, at enormous sacrifices, to revive cer-
tain formulae which have been neglected, as super-
fluities in the Church service, without assigning ade-
quate reasons for so doing—to give to the Rubric a
power and authority and weight in public worship
which it nowhere claims for itself, seems to me most
extraordinary and inconsistent.
" 6. In an age like this, when men are apt to think
for themselves, and analyse more carefully than before
their ideas on religious questions, it seems remark-
able that the clergy should make an effort to mystify
the truth, and tarnish the purity of religion, ley re-
calling those clouds of mystery, those pious frauds'
characteristic of times less civilised. The attempt is
sure to prove an unsuccessful one, because I think the
same intelligence, the same power of thought, which
brought about the Reformation, in an age compara-
tively barbarous, must, in the end, dissipate all those
errors and delusions of good, but mistaken men, in
times more refined and civilised. This is hardly an
age to make an attempt on the credulity of the
people ; or draw the veil of error over the face of truth.

"The power and independence of the clergy pos-
sessed lay virtue of their holy office, as well as by the
mode of their appointment, may permit them for a
season to proceed in their course, but, for my part, I
can see, in their very success, the elements of injury,
if not of destruction, to the Church herself; because,
while she is now assaulted from without by hosts of
Dissenters who await eagerly any breach in the wall,
the clergy are at the same time creating innumerable
enemies within ; they are making those who would be
friends lukewarm and indifferent; they are creating
a spirit of party very inconsistent with the unity they
preach and pray for, as one of her essential preroga-
tives ; they are causing doubts to arise where faith
should be one, and where practice should be uniform.
"7. In the prayer for the Church militant here in
earth,' God is solemnly called upon to inspire the
universal Church of Christ with the spirit of truth,
unity, and Concord; but do her clergy not throw a
firebrand into her very bosom by these new forms f
"In the forms for the ' Ordering of Priests,' the
Bishop asks the candidate if he will ' maintain and
set forward, as much as lieth in you, quietness, peace,
and love, among all Christian people, and especially
among those that are or shall be committed to your
charge ;' but I ask you to say candidly whether the
clergy are keeping their solemn promise ?
" Again, the priest is asked, if he is persuaded that
the holy Scriptures contain sufficiently all doctrine
required of necessity for eternal salvation, through
faith in Jesus Christ ; but how can his answer be re-
conciled with the present practice of the clergy, who
seem to regard as articles of belief things nowhere
mentioned or seven alluded to in Scripture?
"8. There, indeed, the clergy are called upon to
preach the Gospel—the truth as it is in Jesus ; the
revelation of God to man ; that eternal truth, ex-
pressed in simple language, and given to man with-
out pomp or parade ; which soars far above all con-
ventional rules and human devices, and which still
exist after all those objects on which man places a
foolish reliance shall have been consigned to oblivion
—when the Rubric, the Church herself, her rites, her
forms, her ceremonies shall be no more ; when all
those who administered them as essentials to true re-
ligion, as well as those who condemned them as the
vain delusions of the human mind, shall be laid quietly
in the grave.
. . . . _

" Religious truth is eternal ; but is it not also spi-
ritual ? It is spiritual and pure as the spirit of God,
because it came from Him ; and any form or cere-
mony must (abstractedly speaking) diminish the
purity and sully the lustre of that truth; and I think,
therefore, it would become the clergy—when nobler
thoughts of religion are gradually appearing—to ele-
vate and purify religious ideas, and not debase them ;
above all, to impress strongly on the minds of the
people the inutility of the shadow when the substance
is lost.

" 9. It appears to me that in reviving those obsolete
portions of the Rubric, on a plea of conscience, the
clergy are indirectly throwing a stigma on the
brightest ornaments the Church has given birth to—
whose lives are lasting memorials of devotion and
sincerity, and whose labours form one of the noblest
portions of our literature. These great men fulfilled
their duties with scrupulous fidelity, but they seem
not to have been staggered by those conscientious
feelings which sway men now, perhaps of equal
piety, but possessing not one tithe of their wisdom
or learning. If they had been so affected, they would
have accommodated their declarations to their better
judgment, and not have revived rubrics of dark ages
to satisfy scruples of conscience, or make the past bear
witness to the truth of new lights.
" 10. Again I say respectfully, that the object you
would attain is not worth the sacrifice you must
make. So long as you were not compelled, by a
higher authority, to revive those forms, or make those
changes, you cannot in my mind be justified in raising
strife where before all was concord; in forcing your
opinions where almost every man is opposed to them ;
in causing and separation, when your mission
is to preach peace and unity.
" With these observations (which I have aimed to
write in t candid spirit, and with a freedom which
the occasion can alone justify),
" I beg to subscribe myself your faithful servant,
"ROBERT MUSIIET.
"To the Rev. George B. Twining."
The following rejoinder was sent by Ur. Twining
" Tottenham, Oct. 24, 1844.
"Dear Sir—l have just received the favour of your
letter of the 22d instant, and I wish to lose no time
assuring you, that I any much concerned to find
that I have employed a 'term in my letter of the 21st
instant which you think inapplicable to the document
raeFred to. It was fa; from my Intention to use
the word petition!-in any objectionable Sense; my
object rather was studiously to avoid spealfcing of thf„.
pproom; wimp Bleed it'i• in 'a-ay way that could be
diiagreeable to a single individual. Let me now
profess my willingness to retract the term ; and to
speak of the document merely as a paper or address,