power, which in its operation would assuredly endanger both our freedom and our faith; but in the mode in which from the beginning the Church has guarded against it, by confronting the attacks of new heresies with the defence of new declarations of the ancient faith.

It is no real answer to this to allege that, with an action cramped and manacled as is ours from our connexion with the State, it would be impossible for us to frame such new Articles. That it would be impossible we wholly deny that it would be difficult we readily admit. The Spirituality must, of course, as the special guardians of the faith, first agree upon such Articles; when framed they could have no legal validity until the laity had assented to them, and until the nation in its duly-constituted Assemblies had decreed their enactment. So much the virtual compact involved in every National Church between the Church and the nation necessarily requires. For the Church has declared her message of truth, has laid down its formal declarations, and surrounded it with its necessary safeguards before she enters into such an alliance. These statements and these defences of the truth the nation on its part has allowed and adopted; and the Spirituality on these conditions has received the authoritative office and the remunerating endowments of the public lawful teacher of religion. No change, then, can justly be made in the statu quo without the free consent of both parties to the existing arrangement; and against any re-opening of the old settlement a multitude of objections would at any moment array themselves. The lovers of the old would fear that change might cost them the loss of what they had; the lovers of novelty would exclaim against it as threatening their attainment of the discoveries for which they long. Any such change therefore would, we admit, be difficult. Nor do we think that such difficulty is by any means an unmixed evil. It is only, in our judgment, in the

T

last resort that such changes ought to be attempted. But we do not for an instant believe that in such last resort they would be found impossible. The restoration of the action of Convocation amongst us, and the gradual revival by slow but sure steps of the Church's power of internal legislation for her own wants, in one at least of our provinces, may itself be a timely preparation for such a necessity. Nor do we doubt that, if our existing formularies prove to be an insufficient barrier against the fretting scepticism which has sought to rear its head amongst a few of our twenty thousand clergy, the honest and faithful indignation which has already so signally condemned these latest attempts of unbelief, would, if need be, embody itself in Articles of Religion sufficiently clear to enable our Judges legally to condemn the new devices of the old enemy of the Faith. And even before having recourse to this we have in actual possession another safeguard. No modern legislation has taken from our sacred Synods their power of condemning heretical books. Through these organs, should the occasion arise, we doubt not that the Church would make her voice of warning solemnly heard; and in doing so it is even an advantage, and not a loss, that, whilst she retains her power to condemn the error, she has probably no right, and therefore no requirement, to proceed against the person of the offender.

Our own Articles are a living evidence of such a mode of treating error. They had been rendered necessary on the one side by the wild fancies of the Anabaptists and other fanatics, and on the other by the corrupt traditions and usurping arrogance of the Papacy. They were calmly and cautiously but boldly framed by our fathers to meet the new forms of error with which their generation was threatened. All the Creeds of the Catholic Church beyond the simple Doxology have had in turn a like origin. Every dogma of which they are compounded is the battle-field on which

New

some mighty truth was defended, the burying-place of some slain and now decomposing heresy. And if the like dangers beset us we must find our safety in the like course. errors may even yet require new Articles. If the necessity should arise, it must be by the new definition of the old Faith-and not by that which even in civil matters is the most dangerous of all methods of legislation, namely, Judgemade law that we must confute the gainsayer and silence the heretic.

Here, then, we may perhaps discover to what alterations of our Ecclesiastical Courts, so far as concerns their treatment of doctrine, the real needs of the times seem to point. Not certainly to clothing our Judges with these uncertain and dangerous powers, the possession of which they so strongly deprecate, but to any change which may define more exactly what their true province is, if anywhere it has been left doubtful. One provision of recent legislation we think there is which needs such revision. The addition, in certain cases, of the two Metropolitans and of the Bishop of London to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, before which appeals from the Courts of Canterbury and York are held, interferes entirely with the views of his office which are enforced in this judgment by the Dean of the Arches as those which are true in themselves and which have been laid down by the Supreme Tribunal in the recent Heath and Gorham cases. The mixture of the spiritual element with the temporal in that Court gives to it an unfortunate appearance of undertaking to decide what is the true doctrine, instead of merely giving a legal exposition to the language in which the true doctrine is already defined; and this appearance, unfortunate in even a strictly ecclesiastical court, is absolutely disastrous in the Judicial Committee which is not an ecclesiastical tribunal, but a temporal Court, advising the action of the Sovereign, when appealed to as in the well

known 'appel comme d'abus,' as the supreme arbiter under God in any case of alleged injustice wrought in any Court against the subject. We will not stop here to inquire by what legislation this anomaly should be corrected. We now merely call attention to its existence as directly militating against the principle laid down in this judgment and maintained as true by ourselves.

Here, then, for the present we leave this great matter. We see upon the whole many grounds for rejoicing at the course by which it has travelled to its present posture. For there are many marks that now-as so often before in the Church's history-error has defeated itself. We rejoice in the unambiguous voice it has called forth from our high Ecclesiastical Court. We rejoice in the tone maintained by the Convocation of Canterbury, in the utterance of all our Bishops, and in the echo it awoke amongst the clergy. We rejoice in the calm, dignified rebuke administered by the expressive silence of the laity to the promulgers of this newfangled form of puny unbelief. We may lastly add that we rejoice in the literary issues of the conflict; in the exposure it has made of the shallow, crude, half-learned ignorance of the masters of the new movement; and in the enduring additions to our standard theology of which it has been the cause. And for ourselves, we rejoice that we were amongst the earliest to unmask the pretenders, and draw down upon our head the honourable distinction of their peculiar hostility.

5

§ Wilso.

8 Stanley.

277

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND HER BISHOPS.*

(October, 1863.)

FEW branches of literature are more generally, or, if well executed, more deservedly popular than biographies. The history of almost any man, if truly and simply told, must be full of interest to other men. The causes of this interest are suggested with all his wonted tenderness of touch and truth of sentiment by M. Guizot in his étude entitled 'L'Amour dans le Mariage.' Men will have,' he says, 'romances. Why not instead look closely into history? There, too, they would find human life, with its infinitely varied and dramatic scenes; the human heart with all its passions, startling and tender, and, above all, the master-charm of reality... Beings who have really lived, who have actually felt the chances, the passions, the joys and griefs, the aspect of which affects us so powerfully, these seen close at hand attract me more powerfully than the most perfect of romances. A human being, the handywork of God, so displayed before us, is far above all the works of man. Of all poets God is the greatest.'

Beyond, moreover, this portraiture of human nature, many biographies afford the finest and most real of touches of history. Events are for the most part only interesting to us in proportion to our power of associating with them the feelings,

1. A Memoir of Charles James Blomfield, D.D., Bishop of London; with Selections from his Correspondence.' Edited by his Son, Alfred Blomfield, M.A., Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Incumbent of St. Philip's, Stepney. 1863.

2. Addresses and Charges of Edward Stanley, D.D. (late Bishop of Norwich); with a Memoir.' By his Son, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of University College, Oxford. 1851. 3. The Life of the Right Rev. Daniel Wilson, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitau of India.' By the Rev. Josiah Bateman, M.A., Rector of North Cray, Kent, his Son-in-Law and First Chaplain. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1859.