TO THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER.

MY DEAR DEAN,

You wrote to me a fortnight ago, to inform me of certain measures which the Chapter of Chichester were about to take with the view of endeavouring to avert the appointment of Dr Hampden to the See of Hereford; and you seemed to wish that I should propose some similar measure to the Clergy in the Archdeaconry of Lewes. When we met two days after in the Convocation, you spoke to me on the same subject. My answer was, that, having never read any of Dr Hampden's writings, I should feel it my duty beforehand to examine them, especially his Bampton Lectures, which are the main ground of the charges brought against him, in order to make out whether they do indeed contain sufficient reason for doing, what, at all events, must imply a grave condemnation of a person who had for eleven years filled the first theological chair in one of our Universities. Since then I have returned a like answer to similar applications, which have been addrest to me by clergymen in this Archdeaconry. To my surprise, my answer has seemed in some cases to surprise the applicants. Yet what other answer could a person return, who had any sense of the solemn responsibility incurred by such a proceeding, and knew that he

B

was called to do justly, and to love mercy, in all the relations of life, whether private or public? Even after the sad experience which half a century has yielded me, of the manner in which men's actions are swayed, not by conscientious principles, but mostly by prejudices taken up almost at hazard, it has astonisht me to see how thousands, I am afraid I do not exaggerate,-invested with the ministry of the Gospel, the ministry of love and reconciliation, have on this occasion rusht forward with blind, reckless impetuosity, to do what they could to condemn and crush a brother. Surely in such a matter we ought to act cautiously, deliberately, reluctantly. We ought to be slow in admitting a conviction, which brands a brother as a heretic, instead of running forward with breathless haste to embrace it.

I have been told indeed, that the addresses and remonstrances and protests of the Clergy do not involve a positive condemnation of Dr Hampden, but merely call for an enquiry to ascertain the real tendency of his writings, and that such a demand is amply warranted by the condemnation he has twice received from a majority of the Convocation at Oxford. This however is far from adequately expressing the bent of that spirit, which is now agitating our Church, and leading so many of our brethren into courses almost unprecedented; while dark threats are thrown out of ulterior, still more violent proceedings. The very demand for an enquiry in such a case, and such a tone, almost presumes a condemnation. Nor does it seem to me at all becoming our clerkly character, to pin our faith blindly to the tail of any extraneous decision, least of all to that of such a body as the Convocation of Oxford. For how many of the four hundred and seventyfour judges who assembled to condemn Dr Hampden in 1836, can we believe to have come with any competent

knowledge of the subject matter on which they were about to pronounce? Would it not be a large allowance to assume that one in ten did so? that one in ten had examined Dr Hampden's writings with that careful, candid, impartial scrutiny, which ought to precede a judicial verdict? that one in ten knew much more of Dr Hampden than what he had gathered from the extracts selected, in whatsoever manner, by some of his most zealous opponents? Yet what but shame would be the doom of a judge in any legal court, who should give sentence on a single ex parte statement of the cause? What then can we say of those who think fit to follow at the heels of such ill-qualified judges, except that they are the blind following the blind, and thus cannot by any possibility go right? This conclusion seems to result of necessity from the constitution of such a court as the Convocation of Oxford, when it assumes the right of condemning persons as heretics. And he who has observed the occurrences at that University during the last fifteen years, must have perceived that they are markt, not only by the violence, but no less by the variableness and waywardness, which are the characteristics of a popular tribunal. They who ostracize Themistocles one year, are ready to ostracize Aristides the next. The only way to prevent such alternations, such changeful gusts of party-feeling, which are nowhere more unbecoming, nay, scandalous and mischievous, than on the judgement-seat, is, that all judicial questions, above all, questions so difficult and complicated as those of heresy, requiring so much historical research, so much philosophical and theological knowledge, and such an impartial weighing of every word in its connexion, not only with the immediate context, but also with the general purport of a work, should be tried before a special court, properly constituted for the purpose,

where they may be certain of meeting with a calm, deliberate, full investigation. And here it is natural to ask, why, if Dr Hampden's heresies are so manifest, as they must needs be deemed by those who are passing such a summary condemnation on him, why has the charge of heresy never been brought against him before the proper Ecclesiastical Court? Why has he been allowed to discharge his office for eleven years, inoculating our students of divinity with his heretical doctrines, when his opponents, who burn with such zeal for the preservation of orthodoxy, might at any time, if their charges were legally tenable, have ensured his condemnation and consequent deprivation? This can hardly have arisen from any over-indulgent forbearance on their part, but seems to imply, that, however confident they were in their assertions, they had a strong suspicion that they should fail in making out a case against him.

Nor, for my own part, do I understand why such a course should not be adopted now. If Dr Hampden has indeed been guilty of heresy, let him be proceeded against according to the regular forms of our Ecclesiastical Law. This is a simple and easy course, honest and straightforward; and we may feel sure that Dr Hampden would not attempt to baffle such proceedings by mere technical objections. It would greatly add to his peace of mind, if the question were thus set at rest. But I cannot see why the whole Church should be convulst from the Land's End to Newcastle, why every minister in every parish should be disturbed in the quiet discharge of his pastoral duties, in order to call upon the Crown to institute such an enquiry. Is it wisht that Dr Hampden should indict himself for heresy? or is the Crown to do so? But the Crown, by the very act of its appointment, has declared that it does not believe him to be chargeable with any such offense.

The task of indicting him should surely fall on those who do believe him guilty, not on those who do not.

On the grounds above stated, I felt that I could not exonerate myself from my own personal responsibility in this matter, by throwing it off upon the decision of the University of Oxford. Moreover, if we call to mind when that decision was first past, and what was the state of feeling in our Church, especially among the Clergy, at that time,how, for several years after the conflicts of the Reform Bill, political party-spirit seemed to sway all minds, to the casting overboard of candour and discretion, until it was gradually superseded by ecclesiastical and theological party-spirit, how almost everybody was so agitated and warpt by political and ecclesiastical anxieties, by fears, first of the overthrow of the Constitution, and then of the overthrow of the Church, as to be almost incapacitated for a calm estimate of the theological opinions held by a political and ecclesiastical opponent,— when we call to mind that he, whose name now stands higher perhaps in the esteem and admiration and reverence of England, than any other man of our generation, my dear and magnanimous friend Dr Arnold, was in those days a butt for all manner of scurrilous reproach, poured out upon him by none so profusely as by his clerical brethren, when we call to mind, I say, what injustice was committed by the same class of persons at the selfsame time in the case of Dr Arnold, it cannot be invidious to think that the verdict which was then past on a friend of Dr Arnold's, may now need revision.

At all events, even without these special grounds for distrust, when eleven years so eventful in our Church, eleven years which have wrought such changes in the opinions of so many among our brethren, have elapst since Dr Hampden's condemnation,-seeing moreover that he