Surely anything which encourages had spread around them, so many creeping such a spirit ought to be carefully avoid- things and noxious animals had come to seek ed; all needless complaints; all sugges- shelter by their side, with them, but not of tions of possible changes under more them. They did not think to check puritanfavourable circumstances, which only ir- ism by encouraging Popery. Rather they ritate and discontent, however the intima- knew that both are, under different forms, tion may be guarded; all disposition to one and the same spirit of evil-here gathregard the Church that bore us, critically ered into a tyranny-there let loose in a and curiously, by a standard other than democracy; and that they could not depart her own; all despondency as to her pros- from the straight path of their own blessed pects; all censure of her own authorised Church, without involving themselves in a character, as distinct from warnings to circle, in which, step by step, they would unindividuals. consciously return back to the very point from which they were flying.

'Dearly beloved,' says Jackson, 'let us, in the bowels of Christ Jesus, I beseech you, content ourselves with the Reformation already established by authority. It is no time to sally out against the adversary in single bands or scattered companies; but rather with the joint forces of our united affections, of prayers, and endeavours, either to batter the foundation of their Churches' walls, or manfully to defend our own; keeping ourselves within the bounds whereunto authority hath confined us.' (1)

'Never,' says Bramhall, speaking of Grotius's plan of reconciliation-never were there any genuine sons of the Church of England who thought upon any change either in doctrine or discipline.' (2).

He,' says Hooker, again and again, that will take away extreme heat, by setting the body in extremity of cold, shall undoubtedly remove the disease, but together with it the diseased too.' (1) And if' as Jackson says, to oppose the Romish Church by way of contrariety, is but to seek the overthrow of a tyranny by the erection of an anarchy, (2) to oppose puritanism on the same principle will only overthrow an anarchy to erect a tyran

ny.

'Surely,' says Hooker, 'I cannot find any great cause of just complaint that good laws have so much been wanting unto us, as we to licentiousness of private interpretation, they Though the Bible has been abused by the them. To seek reformation of evil laws is a commendable endeavour; but for us the more never omitted the opportunity of magnifying necessary is a speedy redress of ourselves. We it, in its true interpretation, as 'the only inhave on all sides lost much of our first fervency fallible rule of faith;' as 'containing all the towards God; and therefore concerning our own principles of faith and points of salvation,' as degenerated ways, we have reason to exhort needing no associate, nor addition of any auwith St. Gregory, one hμev yerwμeba, let us return thority as equally infallible, nor more peragain unto that which we sometimes were; but touching the exchange of laws in practice spicuous than itself to supply what it Though the service of the

VII. Secondly, the divines of the seventeenth century were placed by Providence, like ourselves, to contend against the principles of sectarianism and dissent, which cover themselves under the common name of Protestant. But this never made them either

wants.'(3)

with laws in device, which they say are better for the state of the church, if they might take Church was threatened to be stripped of all place, the farther we examine them, the greater decency and order, they speak soberly and cause we find to conclude, pévouer öne isper, though cautiously of ceremonies. Though Episcowe continue the same we are, the harm is not pacy was made a badge of Antichrist, they great.' (3) do not reduce all religion to a matter of church discipline. Though the doctrine of faith had been perverted to the wildest excesses, there is no mention in them of justification by works, or of works at all, without immediate and solemn reference to the faith which alone can sanctify them. These insensible to those seeds of good, of which, teaching, might be advantageously examined. points, and many others of their doctrinal as in every case of error, those errors were For much of this caution and comprehenthe rank and unchecked growth; nor dis- siveness of view they were undoubtedly intrustful of the name of Protestants; nor sus-debted to the proximity of Popery, and to picious of the safety of their own ground, on their thorough acquaintance with its nature, which, in the deluge of evil which Popery and dread of its poison. Yet apparently

[1] Tom. iii. p. 694.

[2] Vindication of Grotius, c. iii, p. 612. [3] Eccl. Pol., the Epistle Dedicat.

(1) Book iv. s. 8.
(2) Jackson, vol. iii, p. 692.
(3) Jackson, vol. i. p. 226,

If I had blemished the true Protestant religion - The number of those persons whom, by God's blessing upon my labours, I have settled in the true Protestant religion established truth (the true Protestant religion here estabin the Church of England'-'I pray God, his lished) sink not God of his mercy preserve the true Protestant religion amongst us—(1]

This was the common language of Laud the martyr of the Puritans.

they had more to fear from Puritanism than the corruptions of Popery, we cannot cease from Popery; and if we in this day might to be Protestants, without ceasing to do our be reluctant to retain the name of Protest-duty as Christians. It is our glory and our ant, from the fear of being confounded with happiness to be Christians-our safeguard sectarians, much more might they. And and consolation to be Catholics-our sad and yet, Catholic as they were both in language melancholy duty, a duty which we never can and in spirit, they use it boldly and promi- abandon till Rome has ceased to work nently. As the believing Jews, when other among us, to be Protestants. Jews refused to believe, were compelled to distinguish themselves as Christians; and as My Lords,' said Laud, 'I am as innocent in the Christian Church, when heretics also this business of religion, as free from all practice, called themselves Christians, was compelled or so much as thought of practice, for any alterto add the name of Catholic; so Catholication to Popery, or any way blemishing the true Christians, when one great branch of the England, as I was when my mother first bare Protestant religion established in the Church of Church, retaining the same title, is spreading me into the world. the grossest errors, must distinguish themselves as Protestants. They are Protestant, as the Latin or West Church' (so Field has proved), wherein the pope tyrannised before Luther's time, was and continued a true Protestant Church, condemning those profane and superstitious abuses which we have removed; and groaning under that tyranny, the yoke whereof we have now cast off'(1) They are Protestants, as the Church Catholic itself is Protestant against So Bramhall, while rightly denying that the sins and follies of heathenism; as every Protestancy is of the essence of the Church,' Christian in every age and every country is any more than the weeding of a garden is appointed by God himself to be a witness and the essence of the garden, does not scruple protester against evil. If, indeed, the acts throughout the whole of the same treatise to we rebuke are no sins, then to protest is a use the word as the right denomination of crime. If they are sins, yet sins of the past, men, whom he describes in the same place now buried and forgotten, to rake them up as endeavouring to conform themselves in unnecessarily may well be condemned. If all things to the pattern of the Primitive we judge them by our own private judgment, Church,' as ready to shed their blood for the we intrude on the rights of our superiors, and least particle of saving truth.' (2) so we sin. And if they be distant and weak, and no danger exist of infection, we may well spare ourselves and others the pain of declaring against them. But whether the deeds of Popery be sins or not-whether they be dead and buried, or alive and in full vigour -whether our Church has spoken on them, and we are bound to speak with her voicewhether in the silence and debility of the Church Catholic she was not bound to speak, when no other voice could speak so strongly -and whether there is not danger from Popery now in the very heart of the country; danger, which calls on us all to rouse the weak and the strong together to vigilance The laws are now silent, and any man may be against their greatest enemy-unhappily the Church of England.' [4] now anything, so he be not an old Protestant of

need not be asked. We are not, and dare not be, Protestants, in the sense which some few may wrongly affix to the word, as discarding all guides to truth but our own self-will: in this sense Protestantism is worse than folly; it may be worse than Popery: but as remonstrating and warning all around us against

(1) Appendix to Third Book, p. 187.

So Hammond, speaking of those who preached resistance to the lawful magistrate:

'Such as these, if they must be called Protestants, are yet in this somewhat more than that title ever imported, I may say, perfect Jesuits in their principles.'—This doctrine [of non-resistance] purely Protestant-the contrary of which by God's Providence, hath formerly been timeously restrained, and not broken out to the defaming of our Protestant profession.' (3)

So Nicholson :

So Sanderson is not afraid to say

When we have wrangled ourselves as long as

our wits and strength will serve us, the honest, I used too carelessly, and a false meaning downright, sober English Protestant will be popularly given to it, which must be confound in the end the man in the safest way, and deinned and corrected. But as yet, while by the surest line.'

the Protestant religion of the Church of England is but another name for primitive Christianity, and a Protestant for a primitive Christian, who protests against all the corruptions of the gospel by popery.' [4]

We may not indeed distinguish ourselves solely as Protestants, or without express declarations of Catholic principles, especially where the name is likely to confound us with sects, and doctrines, which a Catholic Christian repudiates. The word has been

(1) There is a remarkable letter of Evelyn's to Archbishop Sancroft on the danger resulting from the omission of the word, and the advantage taken (4) Sermon before the Lord Mayor, vol. i., pp. of the omission by the Jesuits. D'Oyly's Life of

ers, attachment to existing institutions; or by
ignorance of the real claims which the
Church has upon their obedience. It was
not their feeling towards foreign Protestant
communions. With their resolute persua-
sion that the government of the Church by
bishops was ordained of God'-and to be
honoured not merely upon ancient custom,'
but as a true apostolical, heavenly, and di-
vine ordinance; (1) it is yet interesting to see
the caution with which they speak of other re-
formed bodies, which, without any fault of
their own, were driven to want that kind of
polity or regiment which is best, and to con-
tent themselves with that which either the
irremediable error of former times, or the
necessity of the present, had cast upon
them.' (2)
This, their defect and imperfec-
tion,' says Hooker, in the same pa sage, I
had rather lament in such a case than exagi-
tate.' And so, in no unfriendliness, 'blessed
Bishop Morton did often bewail their infelicity
for want of bishops' (3)-

'You demand then,' says Bishop Andrews, whether your churches sin against the Divine right? I did not say it: this only I said, that your churches wanted somewhat that is of Divine right; wanted, but not by your fault, but by the iniquity of the times; for that your France had not your kings so propitious at the reforming of your church as our England had.' (4)

And again:

'He must needs be stone-blind that sees not churches standing without it; he must needs be made of iron, and hard-hearted, that denies them salvation. We are not made of that metal, we are none of those ironsides; we put a wide difference betwixt them. Somewhat may be wanting, that is of Divine right, (at least in the external government), and yet salvation may be bad. . . . This is not to damn anything, to prefer a better thing before it: this is not to damn your church, to recall it to another form, that all antiquity was better pleased with, i. e. to ours; and this when God shall grant the opportunity, and your estate may bear it.' (5)

So Bishop Cosin, in his last will -

Wheresoever in the world churches bearing the name of Christ profess the true, ancient, and Catholic religion and faith, and invocate and worship, with one mouth and heart, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy

Ghost, if from actual communion with them 1 am now debarred, either by the distance of regions, or the dissensions of men, or any other

obstacle; nevertheless, always in my heart, and
soul, and affection, I hold communion and unite
with them-that which I wish especially to be
understood of the Protestant and well-reformed
Churches. For the foundations being safe, any
difference of opinions or of ceremonies-on
points circumstantial, and not essential, nor re-
pugnant to the universal practice of the ancient
Church, in other churches (over which we are
not to rule)—we in a friendly, placid, and peace-
able spirit, may bear, and therefore ought to
bear.' [1]

all or any considerable part of the episcopal di-
I cannot assent,' says Bramhall, 'that either
vines in England do unchurch either all or the
most part of the Protestant churches.
They unchurch none at all, but leave them to
stand or fall to their own master. They do not
unchurch the Swedish, Danish, Bohemian
churches, and many other churches in Polonia,
Hungaria, and those parts of the world which
have an ordinary, uninterrupted succession of
under the name of seniors, unto this day. (I
pastors-some by the names of bishops, others
meddle not with the Socinians.) They un-
church not the Lutheran churches in Germany,
who both assert episcopacy in their confessions,
and have actual superintendents in their prac
tice, and would have bishops, name and thing,
if it were in their power. ... Episcopal divines
do not deny those churches to be true churches,
wherein salvation may be had. We advise
them, as it is our duty, to be circumspect for
themselves, and not to put it to more question,
whether they have ordination or not, or desert
the general practice of the Universal Church
for nothing, when they may clear it if they
please. Their case is not the same with those
who labour under invincible necessity.... The
mistake proceedeth from not distinguishing be-
tween the true nature and essence of a Church,
which we do readily grant them, and the integ
rity or perfection of a Church, which we cannot
grant them, without swerving from the judg
ment of the Catholic Church.[2]

How would such minds as these how would Sanderson: (3) how would the martyr Charles :(4) how would Laud, whose 'worst thought of any reformed Church in Christendom was to wish it like the Church of England-whose deepest intention 'was how they might not only be wished, but made so'

(1) Life by Basire. See also Hickes [True Notion of Persecution, vol. i., Serm. iv.], and a remarkable passage in Brett on Church Government [c. v. p. 118 et seq.], in which he shows that the foreign privilege of episcopacy by the machinations of Popery, acting on its conviction that, if it come to pass that heretic bishops be so near, Rome and the clergy utterly falls.' [p. 119].

Protestant communions were excluded from the

(2) Vindication of Grotius, p. 613; see a passage to precisely the same effect, especially as regards the Lutheran churches, in Laud, Troubles and Trials, p. 141.

(3) See Episcopacy not prejudicial, S. II. s. xv. (4) Icon Basilice, c. xvii,; Clarendon Papers, vol. ii, p. 433, 434.

And the judgments of the English divines to the same effect are collected in a noble passage of Bishop Bull's 'Apologia pro Harmonia;' but their doctrine is too clearly established to require quotation.(3)

-whose continued labours for some years they deliver (tradant) those things only together were to reconcile the divided Pro- which they received from the Lord.'(1) testants in Germany, that so they might go This is a fundamental law of the English with united force against the Romanists- Church. It is the salt of the English Rewho joyed with a joy which he would never formation.(2) deny, while he lived, when he conceived of the Church of Scotland's coming nearer, both in the canons, and the liturgy, to the Church of England' (1) How would these great minds, who never confounded the case of schismatics within England with that of reformed What, then, is the danger to be appreChurches without it, have been gladdened in hended in this appeal to catholic antiquity, the hour of their trials with the prospect of which has recently been revived among us? a time, when, by the same monarchical re- It is, in the first place, lest, in honouring formation, to which we owe the blessing of our ancestors, we should learn to despise our episcopacy, a hope was once more held out parents; lest, in recognising them as a court of restoring to the Reformation of Germany of appeal, we should violate the obedience that great apostolical ordinance; without due to that authority which immediately which the Christian communion must fall to presides over us, our own mother Church. pieces, and all heresies spring up; and of It is, in the second place, lest, in pretending once more binding together, without compro- to recur to the judgment of the fathers, we mise of Christian truth-if so God grant- should in reality be appealing to our own the reformed Churches throughout all the world!

VIII. One more salutary warning we must mention in conclusion, which may be derived from the example of our old divines.

judgment, and to our own private opinion, and false interpretation of their language, not to their real teaching. And it is, in the third place, lest we should assume them as models for our imitation, and tie ourselves down to their rules, beyond not only the reasonable duty of Christians, but their own express declarations of our liberty to depart from them.

Whether our old divines, with their deep reverence for antiquity, failed in their reverence for the judgment of their 'dear mother Church of England,' may be estimated from what has previously been said. Not Bramhall, who,

That catholic antiquity must be studied, and studied deeply-that all modern churches, as they are engrafted, so should also be modelled on it-that it is the trunk from which all the branches spring forth-that a profession of disregard and contempt for it invalidates the authority of any religious teachers that to it a writ of error lies from subordinate tribunals in the Church, they all with one voice proclaim, and this without the least disparagement to the supremacy of scripture. It is the glory and the beauty until a general council can be procured, subwhich they delight to trace in the Church of mits himself to the Church of England, wherein England, that she is so primitive, so ancient, he was baptized, or to a national English so apostolical. She herself leads us always synod.'(4)

and

to the apostles and ancient catholic fathers,' to the ancient bishops and primitive church ;'(2) to the primitive Church which was most holy and godly,' 'most pure uncorrupt,' 'to the 300 years after our Saviour Christ, when Christian religion was most pure, and indeed golden,' to 'ancient and godly use; (3) always eschewing in novations and new-fangledness ;'(4) to the old councils and canons;'(5) to 'the apostles, doctors, and prophets in the Church of Christ, as to be listened to no less than the Lord himself if he were present, so long as

[1] Hist. of Troubles, pp. 134, 355, 419, 100.
[2] Jewell's Apology, p. 13, ed. 1838.
[3] Homilies, passim.

[4] Preface to Common Prayer.

[5] Cardwell's Document, Annals, vol. i. p. 418.

to his loving nurse, the Christian Church Not Whitgift, when he dedicates his book of England,'

(1) Latin Catechism, p. 15.

established in a small but very valuable publication
[2] See this fact elaborately and satisfactorily
of the Rev. W. Beadon Heathcote, Documentary
Illustrations of the Principles to be kept in View in
the interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles'—
[Oxford, 1841] especially pp. 67, 76. Of the ma-
ced, it is perhaps the only one of general and per-
ny works which the recent controversy has produ
manent utility to the theological student; and we
cannot but hope that it may be followed up by the
publication, by the same hands, of Archbishop
Cranmer's Commonplace Books, or Collections
from the Fathers,' illustrating the same fact.
[3] S. i. § 4. Works, vol. iv. p. 309.
(4) Preface to Replication, Works, p. 142.