THE INFLUENCE OF THE FATHERS ON ENGLISH

THEOLOGY.

On the Right Use of the Early Fathers; two Series of Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge. By the Rev. J. J. BLUNT, B.D., late Margaret Professor of Divinity. London: Murray.

Ir is not many years since a sort of apology was necessary for the study of the Fathers, as if for a luxurious waste of time in antiquarian reading which was unbefitting any one who aimed at being a practical divine. Few clergymen, until quite lately, had ever meddled with these patristic curiosities; and there was a very general impression abroad among clergy and laity alike, that those who did became contaminated with prejudices in favour of Popery to a degree that showed at once how much better it was to leave such lore alone. There was a standing witticism against such daring theological spirits, that they did not go back far enough into antiquity in their investigations, for they stopped short at the Fathers, when they ought to have gone direct to the grandfathers, meaning the Apostles and we remember to have heard quite large companies of intelligent people carried away by this small piece of claptrap, as if it had been a good sound argument against patristic studies. In fact, a glance over any clergyman's library of the average class which had been collected during the latter half of the last and the first quarter of the present century, would soon have shown how little respect was felt for this kind of reading. We looked through such an one not long since. There was a large number of classics and works on the classics, hundreds of volumes of Puritan books; Henry and Scott, and the Tract Society's Commentary, for ready reference in any difficulties respecting Scriptural interpretations; Dwight's Theology, in duplicate; Simeon's Hora Homileticæ; and Origen contra Celsum, the latter being the only witness for the Fathers in the whole range of our friend's shelves, with the exception of the sparsely-sown extracts, mistranslated or perverted, which might occur in the writings of Puritanism, or the seventy dubious volumes of the Parker Society's publications. And so far from there being any reason to think this was an exceptional case, there is much reason for presuming that the great majority of those clergy who received their education during the period we speak of, were utterly ignorant of that vast treasury of Christian knowledge which is contained in the works of SS. Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, and all that array of learned and holy names now happily becoming familiar, more or less, to every reading clergyman.

VOL. XX.-MARCH, 1858.

It is curious to trace out the causes of this general neglect of such study. That the clergy were what they were in those days —at least in the first years of their parochial life-must be attributed in a great measure, no doubt, to the state of the Universities, in which-to mention no other shortcomings-the study of theology in general was almost wholly lost sight of, until that revival which, having its origin with Bishop Lloyd at Oxford and in later days with Professor Blunt at Cambridge, is now giving good reason for hope that the time will soon come, when a clergyman altogether ignorant of theology will be an anomaly intolerable to respectable society and the rulers of the Church.

To be sure it was taken for granted by many, in the times we speak of, that the Fathers of the Church Catholic and the Reformers of the Church of England were almost as much opposed to each other in principle as Protestantism and Romanism, and that the latter was only a natural development of their teaching. So much was this the case, that even Bishop Warburton could write "a sovereign contempt for the authority of the Fathers, and no great reverence for any other is what now-a-days constitutes a Protestant in fashion ;" and yet that learned writer's own reverence for the authorities in question could have seemed such only through the extreme contrast presented by the tone and current of the times; for he himself had little of a Catholic spirit, and was far more willing to exact obedience to his own authority, than to set an example of submission by his conduct, whether in literary

or other matters.

Probably much prejudice of this kind arose from the mischievous confusion which had grown up as to the distinctive principles of the Reformed Church of England. For charity's sake many were willing to look with much too tolerant an eye on the errors of those who called themselves. Protestants; and not a few were willing to carry this confusion as far as those Divines who endeavoured in the opening of the present session of Convocation to brand the Church of England with the stigma of Protestantism, by identifying it with the foreign religious bodies which rejoice in that unsavoury cognomen. Thus the desire to gloss over existing differences led well-meaning men to put less prominently forward those great writings of antiquity with which the novel sectarian bodies could have no sympathy, and which in almost every page bore witness to the novelty and uncatholicity of their principles. The desire for unity has always been strong among the best men of the Church ever since the Reformation made the visible wrench it did in Christendom; and, while the repulsive and political attitude taken up by Rome seemed to shut out all hopes of union with that portion of Christendom, there was thought to be some prospect that by gentle forbearance and concession the Lutheran and Calvinistic bodies of the continent might be brought

into a closer assimilation with the principles of our own Church. And although-perhaps from the long inaction of Convocationthe Church as a corporate body has not lost anything of her essential position by this tampering with principles, the effect upon individuals has all along been to drift them more and more from the safe anchorage of that ancient authority, which refuses to reckon those religious bodies to be members of the Church which have not their foundations laid in a sacramental priesthood.

But in drifting away from the authority of the primitive Church, the clergy of these times also drifted away from the principles on which the English Church was reformed in the sixteenth century; for nothing appears more clearly in the whole course of the Reformation than that the leaders in it wished to guide themselves by that light of the ancient Church which was shed down upon them through the writings of the Fathers. In re-modelling the Offices of Divine Service it was their professed endeavour to restore the "godly and decent order of the ancient Fathers" which they considered to have been "altered, broken, and neglected" in the usages of the medieval Church of England: and it was their boast after all was done, not that they had contrived anything in accordance with the present times chiefly, but that "here you have an Order of Prayer, and for the reading of the Holy Scripture, much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old Fathers" in the first place, and secondly "a great deal more profitable and commodious than that which of late was used:" as if, in what they considered, and perhaps rightly, an urgent necessity, they were anxious before all things not to isolate themselves from the Church of former ages in things over which they had any control. And if the animus with which these Reformers went to work could be at all doubted in respect to the Prayer Book, from the number of alterations which were made in it (through an apparently inadequate study of primitive antiquity however, rather than a wilful disregard of it) yet the book of Homilies, which abounds in every page with quotations from the authorities we are referring to, gives clear evidence that the respect which the Reformers entertained for the writings of "the old Fathers" went far beyond the mere conservation of what had long held a place in the public services; and that when it was necessary to back their own teaching by the authority of others they knew of no authority higher than the Fathers, except Holy Scripture itself. In the very same spirit the thirty-nine Articles themselves were drawn up, as has been shown by every able exponent of them from Bishop Beveridge to Professor Browne-of all who have expounded them, perhaps the most able. We must, however, refer our readers to the volume. named at the head of this article for detailed proofs that the Reformers as a body were thoroughly imbued with respect for Patristic authority and also that "the reverence for antiquity is a

feature, more or less marked, of the temperament of almost every member of the Church of England of that day of whom we know anything at all:" and that against their Romanist assailants the strongest weapon they knew of was an appeal to what are called in the Canons of 1571 "the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops" of the Church. Nor is this spirit entirely confined to the Churchmen of the day; for as such men as Philpot quoted the Fathers familiarly in their defence, so in Puritan works of the day we find them largely used in a way that shows, at least, how high their authority was generally considered. "How, indeed," says Professor Blunt, speaking of men like Jewel, Hooker, or Andrewes:

"How, indeed, could it be otherwise? It was an inheritance to which they succeeded. Instead of turning, as we do in these days, to a contemporary commentator, or to one who has not preceded us by more than a few generations, to a Hammond, a Patrick, a Whitby, a Henry, or a Scott; they as naturally took from their shelves an Augustine, or a Jerome, or a Basil, or a Chrysostom, or some catena collected out of the works of these or other authors of a like date? Did they want a form of prayer? Instead of devising one for themselves they betook themselves to the old liturgies, and based their own upon these."-P. 10.

But we believe one chief cause which has led to the disuse of the Fathers—and we are surprised at not finding it noticed in the early pages of these Lectures-one such chief cause at least we believe to be the extensive growth of principles wholly or in part Socinian. The early contests between the Church and Puritanism turned mostly upon questions of discipline: and even where doctrine was plainly involved as in the case of the posture of adoration at the Holy Communion, or in the vital principles of Episcopacy itself; we find the Churchmen of the day defending their position rather on the ground of discipline than by an appeal to that which alone makes Church discipline of any real importance. Whether this "reserve" respecting Christian mysteries was designed or not it is hard to say; still more difficult to determine whether a more open and avowed proclamation of the Sacramental verities would have led the people away from the temptation of Puritan seductions, or fortified them against the danger of Puritan assaults. But one thing is certain, that when the disputes about external usages began, from one cause and another, to assume a less prominent position, the Socinian spirit began to make a much more open display than it had done while they continued. Indeed it is one proof of the close union between CHRIST and His Church that when the enemy had succeeded in obscuring the light of the Church, the attack was openly begun upon the Divine Nature of the Church's LORD; and every revival of the Church since the Great Rebellion has shown by the character of the opposition aroused that this is what her opponents are really aiming at. It

needs no proof from us that the most deadly antagonists of the Socinian spirit are those who rely for their weapons upon the writings of the Fathers. Dr. Burton's "Testimony of the AnteNicene Fathers" shows that whether those writings are used as early witnesses to the meaning of Holy Scripture, or as containing sound logical argument, mingled with copious and lucid illustration, they contain an almost inexhaustible armoury of defence and offence as appropriate for these later days as for those in which Arianism and Semi-Arianism were most vigorous.

No wonder then that the Fathers should be a special object of attack with men like Milton, whose theology had much more affinity with that of Socinus than with that of the Athanasian Creed. Nor is it any wonder to those who know Milton otherwise than through his great poem that he should accuse "Justin Martyr, Clemens, Origen, and Tertullian, and others of eldest time," of "foul errors, ""ridiculous wresting of Scripture," "heresies," and "vanities thick-sown," and wish that their "names were utterly abolished like the brazen serpent ;" for the impiety and grossness of Milton's prose is almost as marvellous as the beauty and grandeur of his verse. And the opinions thus put forth with such energy by this mighty master of the pen, we may well understand to be only a fair representation of what were held by his party at large, for the work in which they occur was expressly written to help the Puritans against their prelatical opponents, whose logical strength and learning was found by experience far to outweigh their own. As the religion of that party was prominently anti-Christian-as anti-Christian as modern Judaism-so did they detest the Fathers as the greatest and most glorious witnesses for that LORD whose presence they could no more discern, when they had It, than the Jews could who crucified Him and persecuted His Apostles and thought that they did GOD service.

It may be questioned, however, whether the clergy were, to any great extent, inoculated with the laxity and anti-sacramental principles which have their root in Socinianism at the period we speak of. While there was an Abbot on the bench, there was also an Andrewes; and while there was a Williams, there were also a Laud and a Montague; and it may be reasonably supposed that the character which has come down to us for our veneration in the case of Andrewes was but the type of many, equally holy, though not equally learned or great, among the inferior clergy. Nor is there any amount of literature of that day, traceable to the clergy as its authors, which can be charged with displaying the principles so prominently shown among the so-called Divines of the Puritan faction. There were not a few among them who were indifferent, or mere politicians, but it does not appear that their ranks were at all infected with the heretical spirit so prevalent among the sectarians. The same also may be predicated of those who served the churches