ANGLICAN CHURCH.

289

principle we are in search of. Now, whether this be the case, whether these forms do give a fixed expression to the idea of a church-do reveal its meaning-do not offer a refuge to them who need one,--is a fair question, which I have endeavoured to discuss fairly, and which, I shall heartily rejoice if any one will discuss with me. But, whether these forms are the best imaginable, is a very silly question, which no man in his senses will waste his time in debating. Men of business, men who are earnest, first ascertain what they need, and then to him who brings it are thankful; men who are not in earnest, mere talkers and cavillers, may talk and cavil till doomsday, if they will not insist upon our being listeners. As to the demand, whether we mean to confound the Anglican with the Catholic Church,-to those who have done me the honour to attend to the remarks I have been making on our position at the time of the Reformation, it will seem nearly as unreasonable as the other. I have shown wherein our church differs from both the Papist and from the Reformed bodies; that it is not a compromise between the two, but asserts that which is most precious in each more strongly than either. But what is the idea which it asserts so strongly and practically, and which all those bodies whereof we speak, have asserted poorly and ineffectually? I answer, the idea of Catholicity. We say that we offer a firm ground for universal fellowship, and that the Romish Church, by reason of its local and visible dominion, the Reformed Churches, because

290

THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES.

(omitting other reasons to be considered hereafter), they put the profession of a dogmatic or experimental religion in the place of sacraments, are necessarily exclusive. If of any particular body you allege this not to be the case, bring forward its pretensions, and we will either cheerfully acknowledge it to be as sound a part of the Catholic Church as our own, or will show you wherein we conceive it to have a more partial and narrow foundation. In the former case, your practical conclusion cannot be in the least affected by our candour, for no one will go to Germany or America for that which he has at his own door; in the latter, we shall no further assert the superiority of the Anglican Church, than as we prove it to have a wider platform of truth, and to be less arrogant and intolerant than others.

But the arguments require me to show, not only that this Sacramental view of Christianity is in itself more perfect than either the dogmatic or the purely spiritual; but also to prove, that both systems of divinity and Christian life have suffered, when Sacraments have not been made the ground-work of them.

To illustrate this point, I will first, for two or three minutes, call your attention to the object and construction of our Thirty-nine Articles, as contrasted with those which were compiled about the same time, and are in use among the other Reformed bodies. From what I have said already, you will easily see, that these definitions of doctrine can never be used in the Anglican Church

INTENDED FOR WHAT PURPOSE.

291

as tests and prerequisites to Communion,― can never be imposed upon the body of the people. They are employed for the education of our ministers and learned men, for whom they chalk out the method of study which they are to follow, and whom they warn of numerous errors, both scholastic and popular, which they are sure to meet with while they are seeking truth in their studies, acting upon it in the world, or communicating it to their fellow-men. For this end, I conceive, precise, formal, dogmatic articles became essential at a certain period of the life of the church, after men had been taught by experience the evils to which the understanding and heart are most prone, and had arrived at that stage of growth in which the intellect requires a discipline and method as well as the affections; and they cannot, I conceive, cease to be necessary, until the evils against which they are intended to guard, have ceased to be dangerous, or till the intellect shows that it can flourish in strength, and do no mischief to the other parts of our nature, when it is left unwarned and untrained. If the question be started, whether some other articles should not be substituted in our education for those which have been established about three centuries, it becomes those who answer that question in the affirmative, to do one of two things. either to allege some reasons why a better system of articles, that is to say, one better fitted for the purpose for which articles are designed, is likely to be framed now than at the time of the Reforma

292

LORD CHATHAM'S OPINION.

tion; or else, by examination of our existing articles, to show that they do not answer their professed object. On either of these pleas, we should be ready, at a proper time, to join issue with them. But perhaps, before either of them can be well argued, it might not be unadvisable to ascertain what is the form and method of those articles which, for their actual deficiencies, or the possibility of an improvement in them, are to be so summarily disposed of; and this, as I said, is a point which throws light upon our present subject.

You have heard often of Lord Chatham's oracular declaration, that we have a Popish Liturgy, Calvinistic Articles, and an Arminian Clergy. In each of these positions there is that glimmer of sense and truth, which is all that a rhetorician cares for, and which serves better far than naked falsehood to bewilder the understandings of those for whom he speaks or writes. What measure of meaning there is in the first member of the triad, we have considered already; we may try hereafter to find a meaning for the last clause; at present I will, with your permission, investigate the soundness of the second. And here our former remarks will be a great help. Just in the same sense as we have a Popish Liturgy, we have, I conceive, Calvinistic Articles. If we found good prayers which had been poured forth in the infancy of the church, before men began to argue and speculate, we did not discard them because they had been used by Romanists; if we found

HOW FAR TRUE.

293

a

good and accurate distinctions taken in that age in which men became capable of distinguishing, we did not consider them spurious because they had been noted or adopted by Calvinists; we did not go to the Reformers for our forms of worship, for we found them very cold; we did not go to the early church for intellectual niceties, because we found them sometimes obscure and declamatory. There is no defending our Reformers from the charge of profiting by the gifts which God gave to each of the ages; it was their principle, principle which it was very natural that statesmen should not understand, because it is one on which they so rarely act. In this sense, it is true, that as accurate distinctions were the peculiarity of pure Protestantism or Calvinism, and as accurate distinctions are precisely what are needed in a system of articles, our articles were Protestant or Calvinistic, and not Patristic. But the orator may be justified still further. We have seen that certain facts, relating to the condition of man as he finds. himself in the world, had been comparatively overlooked in the first ages, (except when the particular heresy of Pelagius brought them to light), had been subjects of anxious speculation afterwards, and had finally been set in a clear and strong light at the time of the Reformation. Such was the fact of the depraved nature of man-of the incapacity of his will-of his justification being by the righteousness of another-of all good deeds being the effect of union with that righteous Lord of the impossibility of supererogatory