The Sun.
London, England, 1845-12-26 00:00:00

CHARGE OF THE BISHOP OF
WORCESTER.

The following is the charge of the Lord Bishop of
Worcester to the candidates for ordination, Dec. 21 :
"My dear young Friends,—You have now gone
through all the forms required by the law previous to
your admission to-morrow into the sacred orders of
deacons and priests. You have acquitted yourselves
in your examination to the satisfaction of my chap-
lain, and you have this day declared yourselves mem-
bers of the Church of England by subscribing to the
Thirty-nine Articles, which have been framed as tests
of your really holding those doctrines which she pro-
fesses as her distinctive characteristics, and which she
believes may be proved by the sure warrant of Scrip-
ture. Allow me to express a hope that in performing
this duty you have not merely complied with a form
directed by the Legislature as necessary previous to
your ordination, but that you have well considered
the different doctrines involved in these Thirty-nine
Article; and by the subscription of your names
thereto given your bona fide assent to them. When,
however, I require this of you, I do not require that
you, young as you are, and with your minds fur-
nished necessarily with a comparatively small portion
of theological learning, should have made up your
minds upon the many dark points of divinity involved
in some of these articles—

'Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute.'

Subjects of such intricacy and difficulty, that even
celestial substances are represented by the poet, when
they attempted to discuss them, as having
'Found no end in wandering mazes lost.'

To require perfect unanimity upon such points is to
suppose, in the words of Paley, that the Legislature
expected the consent of ten thousand men, and that
in perpetual succession, not to one controverted pro-
position, but to many hundred.' In considering, then,
the obligation imposed upon you when you sub-
scribed the Thirty-nine Articles, we take the most
liberal view of this question which has been taken
by that eminent philosopher to whom I have just re-
ferred. He states, in his work on Moral Philosophy,'
that the two points to be considered by those who
wish conscientiously to subscribe the Thirty-nine
Articles, are
Quis imposuit et quo animo.'
The first of these points is merely a matter of history.
There can be no doubt that the Legislature of the
13th of Elizabeth, who passed the Act by which
subscription to these Articles was made incum-
bent upon all future deacons and priests in the Church
of England, is the authority under which this ()blip
tion is imposed upon you; but the remaining ques-
tion, the quo animo,' with which such subscription
was required by them, is not so easily resolved, and
which may very beneficially occupy our attention on
the present occasion. Now, the first point which I
will endeavour to establish upon this important sub-
ject is that the ' animus ' of that Legislature
was specially directed to the exclusion of all
who professed the principal doctrines of the
Roman Catholic faith. That such must have been
the case would prima facie appear from the character
of the compilers of these Articles, for who were these
but Cranmer and Ridley—illustrious martyrs, who
shed their blood in defence of our Protestant Re-
formed Church ; and can it be believed that with
such views of religion they would have compiled arti
Iles so loose and indefinite as to admit the subscrip-
tion of those who held Roman Catholic doctrines ?
But we have further in this matter the authority of
Bishop Burnet, who, speaking of the design with
which the Thirty- nine Articles were compiled, dis-
tinctly states that it was a view to the exclusion of
Roman Catholics. The Reformers,' he states, in his
in'roduction to his work on the Thirty-nine Articles,
had smarted long under the tyranny of Popery, and
so they had reason to secure themselves from it and
from all those that were leavened with it. Those hero
in England had seen how many_had complied with all
the alterations both in King Henry and King Ed-
ward's reign, who not only declared themselves to
have been all the while Papists, but became bloody
persecutors in Queen Mary's days. Therefore it was
necessary to keep all such out of the body that they
might not secretly undermine and betray it.' In
order, however, to set this subject in the clearest point
of view, we will go through some of the leading and
most distinctive doctrines of the Roman Catholic
Church, and afterwards see how directly these are
repudiated by the Thirty-n;ne Articles which you
have all this day subscribed. Now, perhaps, there
is no one point upon which the Church of Roust
differs more from the Church of England than in the
respect which the former pays to what is called apos
tolical tradition. It is the doctrine of that Church,
that besides the -written word of God, there is a ne-
cessity for an unwritten word; that is, the divine and
apostolical traditions. Nos asserimus,' says the
learned Cardinal Bellarmine, admitted by the Roman
Catholics to be one of the highest authorities in their
Church—' Nos asserimus in Scripturis non contineri
expresse totem doctrinam neces'ariam, sive de fide,
sive dt., moribus et proinde prieter verbum Dei seriptum
requiri etiam verbum Dei non scriptum—id est, divinas
et apostoricas traditiones.' Nay, not only do they
put tradition upon a par with Scripture, but they
even give it precedence, conceiving , doctrines
handed down by tradition to be derived from our
Saviour himself, while those contained in the Scrip-
tures have no better authority than that of the Evan
gelista and Apostles. So the decree of the Council
of Trent upon this subject declares the doctrines of
the Roman Catholic Church to he contained in libris
scriptis, et sine scripto traditionibus, qum ab ipsius
Christi ore ab Apostolis acceptse, aut ab ipsis Apos-
tolis, spiritu sancto dictante, quesi per manus traditas,
ad nos usque pervenerunt.' Such, then, is the re-
ceived doctrine of the Church of Rome, and let us
now see what says the Church of England on this
subject. You have this day declared your assent to
the sixth article, which contains these words—' Holy
Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation.
So that whatsoever is not read therein nor may be
proved thereby is not required of any man that it
should be believed, as an article of faith, or to
be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.'
Is it in the power of language to contra-
dict this distinguishing doctrine of the Roman
Cstholic Church more expressly er more emphati
cally? Next to the theory of tradition, perhaps the
doctrine of transubstantiation affords the most striking
characteristic of the Roman Catholic Church. To
any Protestant who attentively considers the figu-
rative style, still so common in oriental nations, in
which the discourses of our Lord were generally
delivered, it appears scarcely credible that the ex-
pressions, This is my body which was given for you,
and this is my bloo 1 which was shed for you,' should
have been ever taken literally, and be supposed to
mean that the bread and wine could be converted into
the actual body and blood of our Saviour. It is not,
however, my intention to go farther into this subject
at present than to state, what is well-known to you
all, that such is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic
Church ; but what says our Church in its twenty-
eighth article ? Transubstantiation (or the change of
the substance of bread and wine) in the supper of the
Lord canuot be proved by Holy Writ, but is repug-
nant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth
the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion
to many superstitions. The body of Christ is given,
taken, and eaten in the supper only after a heavenly '
and spiritual manner. Who, then, who has sub
scribed this article, can hold the Romish doctrine of
transubstantiation ? So again, there are
,few doc-
trines which more distinctively mark the Roman
Catholic Church than that of Purgatory. In the
twenty-fourth session of the Council of Trent,
it was solemnly decreed, that The Catholic Church,
instructed by the Holy Spirit, through the sacred
writings and the ancient tradition of the fathers,
has taught in holy councils, and lastly in this
oecumenical council, that there is a purgatory,
and the souls detained there are assisted by the
prayers of the faithful, but more especially by the
sacrifice of the mass. In quoting these words it. is
not my intention to go at any length into the refuta-
tion of them, or to point out the errors and abuses to
which they necessarily led, but simply to prove, what
indeed is quite notorious, that such is the doctrine of the
Ro.man Catholic Church; but what again says the 22d
which you have this day subscribed ? " The
Romish doctrine of Purgatory is a fond thing, vainly
invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scrip-
ture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God. So
again, it is well known that the Church of Rome ad-
mits seven sacraments as of divine or apostolical au-
thority, whereas our 25th article distinctly states that
there are only two sacraments ordained of Christ
our Lord in the Gospel, that is to say, Baptism
and the Lord's Supper. It would be easy to
pursue this subject further through the Romish
doctrines of indulgences, the invocation of saints, the
adoration of relics and images, distinctly denied in
the 22d article ; the use of the Latin language in
the performance of divine service, condemned in the
24th article; the practice of the Romish Church to
deny the use of the cup in the administration of the
Lord's Supper, blamed in the 30th article; and the
celibacy of the clergy, asserted to be not required by
Scripture, in the 32d article ; but enough has surely
been said to satisfy you that one of the principal
objects of those who imposed this test of subscrip-
tion upon all future deacons and priests in the
Church of England, was to prevent those who pro-
fessed such Romisii doctrines from being admitted as
ministers of the Church. If, then, we are to adopt
Paley's rule, and resolve anydoubts which we may enter-
tain with regard to subscription, by. considering the
animus' of those who imposed this test upon the
Church, it is quite clear that that animus' was
a; ecially to exclude all those who professed Romish
doctrine, and that those, therefore, who do hold such
doctrines are guilty of a mai 'Ades, near akin to
perjury, when from motives of interest they sub-
scribe articles thus utterly repugnant to their re-
ligious belief It may, indeed, be doubted whether
the Protestant divines who compiled our articles
had not in view as large a comprphension as pos-
sible of those 'who had renounced the errors of