205 AIDS TO FAITH.* (October 1862.) THE controversy, which the publication of 'Essays and Reviews' woke up, has been running its various course since, in January, 1861, we called the attention of our readers to that disastrous volume. To many of them, we believe, the subject was then strange; and to many more, we have no doubt, the great gravity of the occasion was till then unknown. Our warmest antagonists have charged upon us the crime of waking up the slumbering garrison to the coming assault. We accept these bitter invectives as a praise, which, not in this instance first, the Quarterly Review' has deserved from all lovers at once of the truth, and of our time-honoured institutions. We shall, perhaps, best fulfil the task we are undertaking, * 1. 'Aids to Faith; a Series of Theological Essays by several Writers.' Edited by William Thomson, D.D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 1861. With a Preface by the Lord Bishop of 2. Replies to "Essays and Reviews." Oxford. 1862. 3. 'Seven Answers to Seven Essays and Reviews.' By J. R. Griffiths; with an Introduction by the Right Hon. Joseph Napier, late Lord Chancellor of Ireland. 1862. 4. 'A Letter to the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Oxford on the Defence of the Essays and Reviews."" By the Rev. A. T. Russell. 1862. 5. Inspiration and Interpretation.' By the Rev. J. W. Burgon. 1861. 6. 'Scepticism and the Church of England.' By Lord Lindsay. 1861. 7. Preface to Sermons on the Beatitudes.' By the Rev. G. Moberley, D.D. 8. "The Revelation of God the Probation of Man: Two Sermons preached before 1861 the University of Oxford.' By the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Oxford. 9. Tracts for Priests and People.' First Series, 1861. Second Series, 1862. 10. The Philosophical Answer to the "Essays and Reviews." 11. 'Charge of the Lord Bishop of Salisbury.' 1861. 12. Speech of R. Phillimore, D.C.L., Q.C.' 1862. 13. 'Defence of Dr. Williams.' By J. F. Stephen. 1862. 14. Judgment on Essays and Reviews."' 1862. 1862. 15. Persecution for the Word.' By Rowland Williams, D.D. 1862. 16. 'Observations on Pantheistic Principles.' By W. H. Mill, D.D. 1861. if, before we review the present state of this controversy, we examine some portions of the literature to which it has given birth. How large and varied this has become, the list here given though it does not contain the titles of half which has been written-will, we think, prove. Writers of every class, and of most various merit and demerit, have mingled in the strife. Even the versifier and the maker of jokes has found a congenial theme in a warfare which has really had, as its subject, the very foundations of the Christian faith. Midway between these lighter skirmishers and some really valuable works, which the needs of the times have called into being, stand an anomalous set of volumes as to which it is difficult to say, with perfect fairness, to which side of the controversy they belong. These are typically represented in the Tracts for Priests and People,' on which, therefore, we will first say a few words. The writers of these volumes are in a great measure occupied in replying to the Essayists, whilst yet their own positions are little more defensible or less remote from orthodoxy than those which they think it worth while to attack. They were begun, we are told, when 'the controversy respecting the "Essays and Reviews" was at its height;'-that their writers could not sympathise with the Essays because of their negative character; nor with those who condemned them, because the condemnation also was negative;—that they felt it to be their business to express sympathy with the strong convictions of all parties and of all men;' and not to tremble at the censures of mobs' or 'of Convocations; and further, that it was a special object of the writers. . . . to show that opposite conclusions' reached 'by opposite processes of thought' are 'necessary to the existence of the English Church; and that, if she fall into the condition of a Church standing on opinions, she will renounce her position, and be deserted by God.' When we add that one of the chief writers in these volumes is the Rev. F. Maurice, we shall at once have prepared our readers to expect, what they will assuredly find, that they have to do with noble instincts, with high aspirations, with considerable subtlety and power; but, withal, with strange luminous mists which repeatedly promise us enlightenment on the deepest and most interesting of unanswered questions, whilst, instead of giving it, they are ever hiding from us, in the puzzling involutions with which their impalpable wreaths invest them, some of the greatest truths which were plain to us before. There are notable instances of all this in the two Tracts entitled the 'Mote and the Beam,' and 'Morality and Divinity.' Sprinkled through these there are, we gladly allow, many noble thoughts nobly expressed. There is also a great deal of the hard language with which Mr. Maurice seems increasingly to treat all who differ from him. Thus, for instance, because we urged upon those who are too often divided asunder as High Churchmen and Low Churchmen, that, since both perceived the importance of the great truths now in dispute, it was a time for healing animosities by a common earnest contention for the faith once delivered to the saints, we are anathematized in terms not unworthy of a legitimate descendant of the Great Lord Peter in such words as these: Merciful God! to what is' this writer 'leading these schools? . to drown them in a dead negation of other men's opinions; in a fellowship of hatred-accursed arrangement!' The leading idea of both Tracts is the defence of Creeds and Articles; and here there gathers thickly over every wellknow headland what we have ventured to designate as this writer's luminous vapour. Of course we agree altogether with him in defending Creeds and Articles against all comers; but with his mode of defence, which is most characteristic, we Supra, p. 180. * have no sympathy whatever. Creeds, we are assured, must not be regarded as containing any dogma. They are not, that is to say, what the Church has always deemed them to be, statements of the great facts of revelation, derived partly from primitive tradition, partly from the judgment of the whole Church on questions raised by heretics; and therefore, for those who believe in the collective Church as the transmitter of the witness of the Spirit, authentic statements of those facts. No! thus to treat them, we are taught, is their most deadly abuse. A mere authoritative declaration of faith' carries no moral power with it. It demands moral slavery, prostration of heart as well as intellect, and involves all those fatal consequences which the Bishop of Oxford has pointed out in his first sermon, and which he so happily describes as a neglect of revelation.' 'When the Reformers,' we are told again, acting on this mistake, 'put forward dogmatic confutation' of error. . . . and penal sentences. 'their own doctrine shrivelled into a dry, dead, cruel for mula, powerful only for cursing.' So momentous does the writer think it to avoid these evils, that he consents to be ' at variance with his dearest friends, and to incur the suspicion of deliberate dishonesty,' as the price of maintaining that in the Athanasian Creed, in speaking of the Trinity, we cannot be speaking of a dogma;' whilst, if that Creed 'does canonize a mere dogma, and anathematize those who dissent from it, we should wish it to perish utterly and for ever.' After the most patient and repeated endeavours to understand what all this means, we confess ourselves entirely baffled. The Creeds, beyond all question or dispute, are-as the Tract writers argue with a great deal of pomp of reasoning, as if persons could be found who denied the self-evident proposition-statements about the Divine Persons of the blessed Godhead, not those Persons themselves. Such statements are dogma: dogma concerning the facts which are the most real and most important to the whole reasonable creation. They have, in every age of the Church, been used as pointing out the right faith and guarding the humble from errors concerning it. Mr. Maurice has invented for them the newest and the most marvellous use. Creeds are meant to deliver us from the worship of opinions. One of the blessings of having Articles' of the Faith is that they permit partial statements' of the truth. Surely common sense rejects such glosses as these. Mr. Maurice, it seems to us, might just as well, when seeking his way through an unknown country by the help of direction-posts, address his driver with the words, 'Signposts are all-important. Little do men who despise them know how often they themselves have profited by them. Yes; treat them with all honour, but do not turn them into an intolerable abuse by conceiving that they are to guide your course! No; they are facts. To make them guides would be an intolerable tyranny. Accursed be such slavery! Why am I to go that path because another has set up the sign? The proper use of such instruments is to protect our liberty; to witness to us that we may drive where we will, may do everything, except receive their testimony to direct our steps.' Conceive of such an address, delivered with enormous energy, and you have, we believe, Mr. Maurice's whole doctrine on Creeds full of his mystical eloquence; but we greatly doubt whether the wayward philosopher would not be benighted before he reached his home. We have dwelt longer upon all this than it may seem to deserve. But, in truth, it is of no small moment thoroughly to understand how far in the great struggle with unbelief these writers will help us. For they offer us their service: they condemn alike the open infidel, the German rationalist, and the Essayists. They are for maintaining the Faith; whilst their names, their high moral tone, their intellectual subtlety, and, above all, their loud, and we doubt not sincere, P |