I FEAR the title of this paper is not very attractive or inviting. History is notoriously regarded as a dry, dull, and uninteresting subject. It is an awkward fact which is related in the book of Esther, that on the night when King Ahasuerus could not sleep, he commanded his servants to read him ” the book of records of the chronicles.” (Esther vi. 1).

But surely this ought not to be so. The study of history, and specially of Church history, ought always to be interesting to a Christian mind. What is history but philosophy teaching by examples ? What so common as the remark of wise men, that history often repeats itself ? What is so likely to show us what we may expect from human nature in our own times, as an accurate knowledge of the workings of human nature in times past ? Let me try to show my readers that there are some deeply interesting lessons to be learned from English Church History.

I have chosen this particular subject because of the times in which we live, and the critical position of the Church of England. It is notorious that the English Establishment is distracted, vexed, and almost rent in twain by the rise and progress of what is commonly called Ritualism. The growth of this school of opinion within our pale is calculated to inflict serious damage on our beloved Church. How to oppose it most wisely, and meet it most successfully, demands the best attention of all faithful Churchmen. To supply Churchmen with a few good historical arguments for opposing Ritualism, to show them a few good reasons why it ought to be firmly rejected, is one great object of this paper.

I need not say that the first and foremost argument to be used against Ritualism, or any other religious error, is the Bible. “To the law and the testimony!” What saith the Scripture ? If the advocates of Ritualism can show us that its peculiar tenets viz. the real presence, the practice of auricular confession, the use of incense, sacrificial vestments, processions, lights on the communion table, and adoration of the consecrated elements in the Lord s Supper are things taught in the New Testament, as practised by the Apostles, I am ready to become a Ritualist to-day. They have never shown it, and they never will. These things are not in the Book.

The second argument to be used against Ritualism is the Church s authorized confession of faith, the Thirty[1]nine Articles. These Articles are distinctly recognised by the Statute Law of England as the Church s test of sound doctrine. The testimony of these Articles, on most of the leading points of the Ritualistic creed, is decidedly Protestant and evangelical. The advocates of Ritualism know that full well ! “No wonder they often call the Articles ” the forty stripes save one.”

The third argument against Ritualism is the Church s authorized manual of devotion, the Book of Common Prayer. Let that good old book, to use the words of its own Preface, ” be allowed such just and favourable construction as in common equity ought to be allowed to all human writings.” Let it be fairly, honestly, and equitably interpreted, with all the light that the well-known opinions of its compilers and the contemporaneous exposition of three centuries throw upon it, and we have no fear for the result. Let the advocates of Ritualism, for instance, show us a single sentence in the Communion Office in which the communion table is called an altar, or the Lord s Supper is called a sacrifice, or adoration of the consecrated elements is enjoined. Let them explain away, if they can, that most incisive Rubric which follows the Communion Service, and declares that ” the natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ are in heaven and not here,” and that “the sacramental bread and wine remain still in their very natural substances, and there fore may not be adored ; for that were idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful Christians.” Error about the Lord s Supper, I do not hesitate to assert, is the corner stone of the whole Ritualistic system. ¹ To that error the Prayer-book, fairly interpreted, affords no sanction at all.

¹Those who care to examine the controversy about the Lord s Supper are invited to read the note which concludes this paper.

But after all, there is one more argument against Ritualism which seldom receives the attention which it deserves. That argument is to be found in the lessons of English Church History. To point out what those lessons are, to show the conclusions to which an impartial study of English History ought to lead every unprejudiced mind, is the aim which I propose to myself in this paper.

Let me clear the way by explaining what I am about to do. Let no reader suppose for a moment that I am going to wade through the jungles of obscure antiquity, or to deluge him with dry disquisitions about pre-historic times. Whether St. Paul ever preached in England or not; whether there ever was a flourishing ancient British Church; whether Augustine of Canterbury was an apostolic man or an ambitious meddler; whether there was much vital religion in the days of Alfred, and Bede, and Edmund, and Canute, and Harold, and William the Conqueror, all these are points which I shall leave alone. I shall confine myself strictly to the Church History of the last six hundred and fifty years, a period in which the Reformation stands about midway. From the history of these six hundred and fifty years I shall try to draw out five most instructive lessons, lessons built on great, wide, broad, unmistakable facts, which seem to my eyes as clear as the sun at noon-day. Whether my readers will find them interesting I do not yet know. If they do not, I can only declare my belief that the fault will not lie in the facts, but in my way of putting them.

I. The first period of English Church History from which I shall draw a lesson, consists of the three hundred years which immediately preceded the Protestant Reformation. It is a period extending from the reign of Henry III. to that of Henry VIII. It is a period when the Church of this land was thoroughly, entirely, and completely Roman Catholic, when the Bishop of Rome was the spiritual head of the Church, when Romanism reigned supreme from the Isle of Wight to Berwick-on[1]Tweed, and from the Land s End to the North Foreland, when the ministers of religion in England and the people were all alike Papists.

Now what is the lesson I wish to draw from this period ? Why, simply this : that English religion was never in so dark and lad a condition as it was in the days when Romanism had everything its own way in England.

The facts that prove the truth of this assertion are so painfully numerous that it is hard to say where to begin and where to end, what to select and what to keep back. It is no exaggeration to say that for three centuries before the Reformation, Christianity in England seems to have been buried under a mass of ignorance, superstition, priestcraft, and immorality. The likeness between the religion of this period and that of the apostolic age was so small, that if St. Paul had risen from the dead he would hardly have called it Christianity at all !

As to ignorance, there were no English Bibles in the land, except a few in Wycliffe s time, and few of the priests could have told men what the Bible contained. The facts which were brought to light on Bishop Hooper s visitation of the diocese of Gloucester, in the time of Edward VI., are sufficient proof of what I say. Out of 311 clergy of his diocese he found 168 unable to repeat the ten commandments ! The worship, so called, consisted of services in Latin, which nobody hardly understood, masses, and prayers to the Virgin and the saints. The practical religion of most lay people was made up of occasional almsgiving, mass-attending, penance, absolution, and extreme unction at the last. Preaching there was hardly any, and what there was was unscriptural rubbish, and not worth hearing. In short, it was a period of darkness that might be felt.

As to superstition, the worship of relics, images, and dead men like Thomas a Becket, of itself speaks volumes. Famine, we all know from the last siege of Paris, will make starving men feed greedily on rats and mice, and other most loathsome descriptions of food. Want of the Bible will make people accept the most degrading dogmas as truth, and bow down to worship objects ludicrous, monstrous, and profane.

As to priestcraft, the tricks by which the Romish priests extorted money out of people s pockets and enriched the Church, the lying wonders, impositions, and false miracles, are too shocking to dwell upon. The rood or crucifix of Bexley, which frowned when worshippers offered copper, and smiled when they offered gold, the pretended blood of Christ at the Abbey of Hales, the pre tended feathers from angels wings, the clothes of the Virgin Mary, and pieces of the true cross, are enough to stamp the priests who made money by them, as either fools or knaves. If they believed these things to be real and true objects of adoration, they were fools : if they knew them to be cheats and impositions, and yet took offerings of money for showing them, they were knaves.

As to immorality, perhaps the less said about the matter the better. Abbeys, monasteries, and nunneries, an unmarried clergy, and an ignorant, priest-ridden laity, auricular confession, and money-bought absolution, all these things produced their natural fruits. There was not a commandment of the ten which men might not easily trample under foot, so long as they kept in with the priests, and submitted to the Church.

This picture of the three centuries before the Refortion, may seem a black and extravagant one. I have no reason to think it is a bit over-coloured. The more you look into authentic and honest history, such as the works of Strype, Burnet, and Blunt, the more you will find it is a true and correct account. ¹

¹Calvin s tract on The Advantages of an Inventory of Relics, is a most curious and instructive storehouse of information on Romish relics, and ought to be better known than it is.

Of course my readers will remember I am only speaking of the religious condition of the age. I do not say that there were no able statesmen, and brave, honourable warriors in those times. No doubt there were many, just as there were many in the palmy days of heathen Greece or Rome. I do not say that ALL the clergy were ignorant, unlearned, or immoral. I say nothing of the kind.

There were clever ecclesiastical architects in those times. Our cathedrals and old parish churches supply abundant proof of that. Even now we cannot surpass them in building up material temples.

There were hard students and deep thinkers in those times. Such schoolmen as Alexander Hales, in 1240 (doctor irrefragabilis) ; Koger Bacon, in 1280 (doctor mirabilis); Duns Scotus, in 1308 (doctor subtilis) ; William Ockham, in 1347 (doctor singularis) ; Thomas Bradwardine, in 1350 (doctor profundus), were known and respected all over Europe, however little known now.

There were stout opponents of the Pope s supremacy, like Robert Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln. There were bold exposers of Popish corruptions, like John Wycliffe, who paved the way for the Reformation, and did good in their day. There were Lollards scattered here and there all over England, who held much truth, and patiently endured much persecution.

But one swallow does not make a summer. Men like these were bright exceptions, and only made the dark ness around them more visible. The fact still remains, that the enormous majority of English clergy and people, for the three centuries before the Reformation, were in a miserable state of superstition, ignorance, and corruption. There was an utter famine of vital Christianity in the land. Practically, the religion of most Englishmen was Mary-worship, saint-worship, and slavery to priests. The true doctrines of Scripture concerning Christ and the Holy Ghost were almost unknown. The truth about repentance, faith, conversion, and justification was nearly as much lost sight of as if it had never existed. If you had taken the first hundred men you could see in the streets of London, Norwich, Bristol, Exeter, York, or Leicester, and asked them separately, “What must a man do to be saved ? ” I doubt whether five in the hundred could have given you the right apostolical answer, if their lives had depended on it.

Such was the English Church when the Pope of Rome had everything in his own hands, and Romanism reigned supreme and undisturbed. Let this lesson sink down into your heart, and be kept ready for use. Keep your powder dry. Listen not to those people who tell you that the grand panacea for the evils of this day is a revival of Catholic principles. Listen not for a moment to those who advise a return to Romish practices, and hint at the benefits of re-union with Rome ! Re-union with Rome ! I cannot imagine a more monstrous pro position, and one more thoroughly condemned by the teaching of history and common sense.

Tell those who advise re-union with Rome, that you know what Romanism did for England when it ruled undisturbed, and that this is enough for you. Tell them that the beautiful ” Catholic system,” so called, was the reign of ignorance, priestcraft, superstition, idolatry, and immorality, and that you have no wish to return to it. It was tried for three centuries, and failed ; it was weighed in the balances, and found wanting. It built splendid churches of stone, but it raised no living temples to the glory of God. Tell them, in short, that the panacea for these days is not the revival of masses, processions, incense, monasteries, nunneries, sacrificial garments, and the confessional; but more preaching of the Gospel, more reading of the Bible, more repentance, more faith, more holiness. Tell them all this, and you will have learned a good lesson from the Church history of the three centuries before the Reformation.

Facts are facts, and there is no getting over the facts of history. When it is right to forsake light for dark ness, and truth for error, knowledge for ignorance, purity for impurity, liberty for bondage, and good for bad, then, and not till then, it will be time for English Churchmen to talk of re-union with the infallible and unchangeable Church of Rome. In the face of the facts of English Church history, I boldly say that rather than go back to Popery, the Church of England had better perish altogether.

II. The next lesson from English Church history to which I shall invite the attention of my readers, will be drawn from the latter part of the sixteenth century, the period between 1530 and 1600. That period comprises the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Bloody Mary, and Elizabeth. Within these seventy years took place the mightiest change of thought and opinion which this country ever passed through. The chains which the Popes of Rome had thrown around England, were broken and cast aside. Englishmen awoke from their long sleep, and returned to the Christianity of the Scriptures. In a word, England ceased to be a Popish country, and became Protestant.

Now what is the lesson I want men to learn from this part of English Church history ? Why, simply this : I want them to settle in their minds that the change of these seventy years is a cause for unmixed thankfulness, and that the greatest “blessing God has ever bestowed on this country was the Protestant Reformation. Hold fast that lesson, and never let it go.

I am sadly afraid a right estimate of the English Reformation is not so common as it used to be. A gene ration has risen up in the last fifty years, which either reviles the Reformers, or else plumes itself on making an idol of a vague thing called ” earnestness,” and regarding all differences of creeds as strifes of words. Some in this day are not ashamed to scoff at Cranmer, Latimer, and other martyred Reformers, and labour to blacken their characters and depreciate their work. Others do not hesitate to tell you that they think “earnest” Papists quite as good Christians as ” earnest ” Protestants, and admire Erasmus as much as Luther, Gardiner as much as Hooper, and Queen Mary as much as King Edward VI. Let me, in the face of these strange views, dwell a little on the immense value of the Protestant Reformation, and try to point out how deeply thankful we Englishmen ought to be for it.

I grant many things without demur to those who carp at the English Reformation. I grant that the agents by whom it was first begun and carried out, were many of them most unsatisfactory men. I am not concerned to defend the character of Henry VIII., or of the courtiers of Edward VI., or even of that very arbitrary lady, Queen Elizabeth. I am not prepared to defend everything that Cranmer and his companions did and said in the heat of conflict. I freely admit that the Reformation was never perfected and completed, and that even the best Reformers themselves were not perfect Men.

But still, after all these admissions, I firmly maintain that the English Reformation was an enormous blessing, and I pity the Englishman who cannot see it in this light. Say what men will against it, there remain certain great historical facts, which never can be got over, and I commend these facts to the attention of all who read this paper.

I say then, without hesitation, that to the Reformation we owe an English Bible, and permission for every one to read it. Before the Reformation the Bible was locked up in a dead language, and the laity were discouraged from acquaintance with it. To the Reformation we owe the revival of the true doctrine of forgiveness of sins by simple faith in Christ s mediation. Before it men groped in darkness, amidst saints, and priests, and penances, and absolutions, and never got peace for their souls. To the Reformation we owe an English religious service in every parish throughout the land, which any poor man can understand. Before it the priests repeated prayers in Latin, and the people worshipped by deputy. To the Reformation we owe the production of a true standard of practical holiness. Before it people fancied the highest pitch of godliness was to be a monk or a nun. To the Reformation we owe the assertion of the supremacy of the Holy Scriptures, as the sole rule of faith and practice. Before it there was no certain standard, except that most uncertain guide the ” voice of the Church.” To the Ke formation we owe the revival of true preaching of the Gospel. Before it people could learn nothing except from forms and ceremonies. To the Reformation we owe the compilation of one of the best confessions of faith the world has ever seen, the Thirty-nine Articles. Before it few English Christians knew clearly what they thought or believed. To the Reformation we owe the simplifying, the purifying, and the popularizing of the whole Christian religion within these realms. Before it the true faith was fairly buried under a mass of idolatry, superstition, priestcraft, and mystery. In a word, the debt we owe to the Reformation is so large that the great difficulty is to realize it at all. It is a debt of which we can form no conception at this day, because we can form no adequate idea of the state of things from which the overthrow of Popery delivered us. But this I am bold to say, whatever England is among the nations of the earth, as a Christian country, whatever political liberty we enjoy, whatever freedom we have in religion, whatever safety for life and property there is among us, whatever purity and happiness there is in our homes, whatever protection and care for the poor, we owe it, in very great measure, to the Protestant Reformation. The man that does not see all this is, in my humble judgment, a very blind or a very ungrateful man.

Let this lesson of English Church history sink down into your heart, and never forget it. Listen not to those who, like some of the Ritualistic champions, are fond of vilifying the Reformation as a ” deformation,” and scoffing at the Reformers as ” unredeemed villains,” deserving no more respect than Danton, Marat, and Robespierre ! Violent language like this injures nobody but those who use it. Of course, the enemies of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and Hooper in this day can easily point to defects in their characters and blemishes in their lives. They were only men, and as men they were imperfect. But when they have strained their malice to the utter most, they will never find Englishmen who did more good in their day, lived better, died better, and left a better mark on our country, than did our martyred Reformers.

For my own part, the more I consider the enormous difficulties the Reformers had to contend with, the self-willed, tyrannical, inconsistent conduct of Henry VIII., the tender years of Edward VI., the bloody, persecuting cruelty of Queen Mary, the arbitrary, compromising policy of Queen Elizabeth, the more I consider these things, the more I admire the English Reformers. I marvel not that they did so little, but that they did so much. I marvel not that they were imperfect and committed mistakes, but that they were what they were and did what they did.

Say what men will, there are facts which speak louder than words. The Reformation found Englishmen steeped in ignorance, and left them in possession of knowledge, found them without Bibles, and left them with God’s Word in every parish, found them in darkness, and left them in comparative light, found them priest-ridden and left them enjoying the liberty which Christ bestows, found them strangers to the blood of atonement, to faith and grace and holiness, and left them with the key to the possession of these things in their hands, found them blind, and left them seeing, found them slaves, and left them free. For ever let us thank God for the Reformation ! It lighted a candle which ought never to be extinguished or allowed to grow dim.

III. The third lesson from English Church history to which I shall invite the attention of my readers, is taken from the one hundred and fifty years which immediately followed the Reformation. That period includes the reign of James I. and Charles I., the Commonwealth, Charles II., James II., “William and Mary, George I., and George II. Within it you will find some of the most momentous events in the history of England, the over throw of the Church and Monarchy, the Commonwealth, the Restoration, the expulsion of the Nonconformists in 1662, the Revolution which expelled the Stuarts from the throne, and the final establishment of religious toleration. Taken altogether, it is a melancholy era in our ecclesiastical annals. I pity the Churchman who can examine it without feelings of shame, sorrow, and humiliation.

Now what is the lesson I learn from this period ? Why, simply this : Departure from the principles of the Reformation inflicted irreparable injury on the Church of England.

That there was a gradual departure from Reformation principles during the seventeenth century, is as certain as any fact in history. Under the leadership of Arch bishop Laud there arose in England a school of Church men who made no secret of their want of entire sympathy with our Reformers, and their desire to make our Church less Protestant, less evangelical, less Calvinistic (as they called it), than it was in the days of Edward VI. and Elizabeth. The divines of this school would have been horrified if you had called them Romanizers ; but that they were un-protestantizers is a fact that cannot well be denied. About the doctrines of grace, about the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, about the Episcopal office, about the primitive Church and tradition, about the ceremonials of public worship, about the so-called impropriety of publicly attacking Popery, about the so-called wicked ness of Calvinism, the tone of these Laudian divines was peculiar and unmistakable. Their hearts were not entirely with the Reformers. Study the religious literature of this day, and you will find that, excepting Hall, and Davenant, and Usher, and Hopkins, and a very few more, there is hardly a Churchman of that day whose writings have the full taste of the Protestant Reformation. You feel at once, as you read most of the divinity of the age of the Stuarts, that you have stepped into a new theology, and are in a new atmosphere. Learning, eloquence, devoutness, good reasoning, all this you will find abundantly in the pages of Caroline divines. But you miss the clear, distinct, sharply-cut doctrinal system of the martyred Fathers of the Church of England, and their immediate successors. You have landed on a new soil, and are breathing a new air. And the explanation is very simple. Everywhere, almost, under the Stuarts, the bishops and clergy gradually fell away from the old standard of the Reformation, and were less thoroughly Protestant than the men of Edward VI.’s and Elizabeth’s day.

Of course it would be a mistake to suppose that there were not many good and conscientious men among the followers of Laud, and the leading Churchmen under the Stuarts. There were many, I believe, who were firmly persuaded they were doing the Church service in drawing back a little from the standard of the Reformers, and who thought they were only making the Church more beautiful, more primitive, and more excellent, because less Genevan. There were many who really thought that the best way to make men Churchmen was to compel them to come to church, and the surest way to stop Nonconformity was to persecute Nonconformists. But it is a curious fact, and most noteworthy in these times, that these well-meaning Churchmen seem to have been utterly blind to the consequences of their movement. They appear never to have asked themselves in what light their proceedings were regarded by others. They did not understand the English people. They awoke too late to find that they had been like children playing with fire. They found that the consequences of drawing back from the old paths, directly and indirectly, were disastrous, mischievous, and evil in the extreme. Let me show you what they were.

First, there arose throughout the middle classes and lower orders a spirit of thorough alienation from the Church of England. The attempt to compel uniformity failed completely, as it always will. Worshippers must be volunteers, and not pressed men. An impression spread everywhere that the bishops were not true Protestants at heart, and could not be trusted. The mass of English people began to dislike prelates whom they saw principally occupied in persecuting Puritans, silencing preachers, checking zeal, exalting forms, deifying sacraments, and complimenting Popery. They began to hate the liturgy itself, when they saw it crammed down men s throats by force, and people persecuted if they prayed without it. The multitude seldom draws nice distinctions. It measures institutions chiefly by their working and administration, and cares little for theories and philosophical principles. Episcopacy no doubt was primitive and apostolical, and the liturgy was very venerable and beautiful. But little by little English men, between 1600 and 1650, began to connect Episcopacy with tyranny, the Liturgy with formality, and the Church of England with Popery, fines, imprisonment, and punishments. When the famous Long Parliament met, in the time of Charles I., there was a painful unanimity of ill-feeling towards the poor old Church of England. The county and borough members, with few exceptions, were found for once entirely of one mind. They were thoroughly dissatisfied with the Church Establishment, and its assailants, both in number and influence, completely swamped its defenders. And all this was the result of retrograding from Information principles.

But, unhappily, want of confidence was not the only consequence of departure from thorough Protestant principles. The general dissatisfaction culminated at last in the temporary destruction of the Church of England. An ecclesiastical revolution took place, which settled at length into a kind of reign of terror. The pent-up feelings of the middle and lower orders, once let loose, broke out into a hurricane, before which the frame work of the Church of England was clean swept away. Bishops, and deans, and clergy, and liturgy were shovelled off the stage like so much rubbish. Good things as well as bad were involved in one common ruin. A bloody civil war broke out. Charles I. followed Laud and Strafford to the scaffold. Everything in Church and State was turned upside down. Common order at last was only kept by the iron hand of a military dictator, that great son of Anak, Oliver Cromwell. The crown and the mitre and the Prayer-book were all alike excommunicated, and rolled in the dust. And all this was the result of departing from the principles of the Reformation. Those who led that movement sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.

Nor have we come to the end of the story. There were other indirect consequences, of which we feel the bad effects down to this day. The whole balance of English feeling about the Church of England was completely disarranged and disturbed, and equilibrium has never been completely restored. A pendulum was set swinging which has now oscillated violently for two hundred years. First came a strong reaction in favour of the Church, when the Stuarts returned to the throne after Cromwell s death, having learned nothing and for gotten nothing. Moderation and toleration were then thrown to the winds, and Episcopalians proved that they could be as intolerant as the Nonconformists of the West minster Assembly. The wretched Act of Uniformity was passed, by which two thousand of the best clergy of the age were turned out of our pale, and lost to the Church for ever. Then came a long and dreary period of exhaustion and stagnation, a time during which the Church, like a torpid sloth, existed and hung on the State tree, but scarcely lived, moved, or breathed. And at last came the season of universal toleration, when Nonconformity was fairly settled, legalized, and rooted in the land for ever, and the Church stood face to face with myriads of irritated Dissenters. And all this was the consequence of departure from the old principles of the Protestant Reformation.

Such are the lessons of English Church history in the century and a half after the Reformation, mischief, irreparable mischief, arising out of the retrograde policy of zealous but misguided Churchmen. I trust these lessons will sink down into the hearts of my readers, and that they will know how to use them.

Listen not to those who in the present day are incessantly misrepresenting the Puritans. Many try to persuade you that the Puritans were enemies to the Church of England, unlearned, ignorant fanatics, who hated alike the crown, the bishops, and the Prayer-book. The man who says so only shows his own ignorance of historical facts. With all their many faults, the Puritans were not so black as they are painted. Charles II., in his declaration of 21st October 1660, admits that the Puritans were not averse either to Episcopacy or a form of prayer. With all their errors and shortcomings, the Puritans, as a body, were better Churchmen in matters of doctrine than many of the men who drove them out of the Church. Their written works speak for them to this very day. Let any intelligent man compare the works of Laud and Heylin, and their companions, with those of Owen, and Baxter, and Manton, and Charnock, arid Watson, and Brooks, and their fellow-labourers, and say which class of writers is most in harmony with the doctrine of the Thirty-nine Articles. Let him do that honestly, and I have no doubt whatever about the reply.

Settle it in your mind that the large mass of Non conformity which has existed in England ever since the days of the Stuarts down to this very day, is mainly the result of the stupid retrograde policy of the bishops of the Church of England. The bulk of the Nonconformists of the seventeenth century would probably never have left our Church, if our Church had not drawn back from the Reformation. They had no abstract dislike of Episcopacy, or a Liturgy, or an Establishment. But they did dislike the Romanizing tendency of our prelates, and would not give way to it. If men like Cranmer, and Grindal, and Abbot, and Jewel, had been the rulers of the Church, nine-tenths of English Nonconformity, I believe, would never have existed. The blame, in very great measure, lies at our own door. By departure from Reformation principles the Church cut off her own hands, and plucked out her own eyes, and inflicted injuries on herself which will probably never be healed. To speak plainly, nine-tenths of English Nonconformity were created and built up by the Church s own folly and unfaithful ness. We departed first from the Reformation, and retrograded from the sharp-cut Protestantism of the Reformers ; and then the Nonconformists departed from us, and set up for themselves. If we are weakened this day by the existence of huge bodies of Independents, Presbyterians, and Baptists in our land, we must remember we ourselves were first to blame. If the Church had done her duty to her children, and walked in the steps of Cranmer, and Ridley, and Latimer, and Jewel, her children in all probability would never have left her fold.

IV. The next period of English Church history to which I shall invite the attention of my readers, com prises the interval between 1730 and 1830, and takes in the reign of the three last Georges. It is an era which witnessed a religious change in this country, second only in importance to that of the Reformation. It witnessed the rise and progress of what is commonly called Methodism, and the formation of the Evangelical body in the Church of England.

Now what is the lesson I want you to learn from this period ? It is simply this : The revival of Reformation principles in the eighteenth century was the salvation of English Christianity.

Few persons, unless they have specially examined the subject, can have any idea of the low and degraded state of religion in England in the middle of the eighteenth century. From the expulsion of the Puritans in 1662, for a period of eighty or ninety years, the Church of Christ in England seemed to fall lower and lower every year, until a thick moral and spiritual darkness overspread the land. Mere natural theology, with hardly any distinctive doctrines of the Gospel, formed the staple teaching both in church and chapel. Sermons were little better than dry moral essays, devoid of anything likely to awaken or convert souls. Infidelity and Scepticism were openly avowed by many of the laity, and Arianism and Socinianism were unblushingly taught by not a few of the clergy. Learned and well-meaning bishops, like Seeker, and Butler, and Gibson, and Lowth, and Home, and Lavington, and Warburton, had eyes enough to see the evil of the times, but seemed powerless to meet them. As for the moral writers of the day, such as Addison, Johnson, and Steele, they had no more influence on the masses than Mrs. Partington s famous broom had on the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

It is really difficult to name a single bright and redeeming feature in this dark picture of the first half of the eighteenth century. The parochial clergy were sunk in worldliness, and neither knew nor cared any thing about their profession. Their lives were too often immoral, and their sermons were so unutterably poor, that the printed ones are now unsaleable, and the unprinted ones must have been rubbish. Education for the lower orders was at zero, and few rural parishes had any school at all. Gambling, duelling, swearing, Sabbath[1]breaking, fornication, and drunkenness were hardly regarded as sins by fashionable people, and of course were thought very venial by the poor. Hogarth s pictures, and the writings of Fielding, Smollett, Swift, and Sterne, are sufficient evidence of the morality that prevailed !

Hardly one of the good works with which we are now familiar was even known at this period. Wilberforce had not attacked the slave trade. Howard had not reformed prisons. Raikes had not founded Sunday schools. We had no Bible Societies, no Ragged Schools, no City Missions, no Pastoral Aid Societies. The spirit of slumber was over the land. In a religious and moral point of view England was sound asleep. In short, one only marvels that the foundations of Church and State and social order were not completely broken up, and that the country was not given over to a counter part of the first French Revolution.

Now what was it that, under God, saved England, and turned the tide of irreligion and immorality ? To what instrumentality are we indebted for the immense change which unquestionably took place between 1750 and 1830, and the enormous improvement in the moral and religious condition of the land, which even our worst enemies must allow ? This is one of the most instructive inquiries in English Church history, and I invite your special attention to the answer.

The agents who revived English Christianity from its fallen and death-like condition, were a few individuals, mostly clergymen, whom God stirred up about the same time ; and the agency which they employed was the preaching of the great leading principles of the Protestant Reformation. George Whitefield, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, William Grimshaw, William Romaine, Henry Venn, Daniel Rowlands, John Berridge, and a few score of like-minded clergymen, these were the men who literally delivered the Church of England from death ; and the weapons of their warfare were the glorious old doctrines of our Protestant Reformers. The supremacy of Holy Scripture, the total corruption of human nature, the atonement wrought out for us by Christ s vicarious death, justification by faith, the absolute necessity of heart conversion by the Holy Spirit, the inseparable connection between faith and holiness, salvation by free grace, these were the truths which the evangelists of the eighteenth century went about preaching and proclaiming. They found them in the Bible ; they found them in the Thirty-nine Articles ; they found them in the Prayer-book, the homilies, and the writings of the Reformers. Finding them there, they boldly told men that -this was the old way of truth, and while they told them so, they turned the world upside down. Yes ! without money, without patronage, without bishops, without the press, without Exeter Hall, they effected a spiritual revolution !

The amount of good which these gallant evangelists did will probably never be known till the last day. At first the bishops and nobility affected to despise them ; the men of letters sneered at them as fanatics ; the wits cut jokes, and invented smart names for them ; the Church shut her doors on them ; the old Dissenters too often turned the cold shoulder on them ; the ignorant mob frequently persecuted and pelted them; but the movement went on, and made itself felt in every part of the land. Many were aroused and awakened to thought about religion, many were shamed out of their sins, many were restrained and frightened at their own ungodliness, many were gathered together, and induced to profess decided religion, many were converted, many were silenced, and secretly provoked to emulation. The little sapling became a strong tree ; the little rill became a deep, broad stream ; the little spark became a steady burning flame. A candle was lighted of which we are now enjoying the benefit. The feeling of all classes in the land about religion and morality, insensibly assumed a totally different complexion. And all this, remember, was effected by a revival of the doctrines of the Reformation. These were the doctrines which turned England upside down, arrested the attention of peers and philosophers, made colliers and ploughmen weep till their dirty faces were seamed with tears, plucked thousands like brands from the burning, and altered the character of the age. Call them simple and elementary doctrines if you will ; say, if you please, that you see nothing grand, new, striking about them ; but there remains the undeniable fact of history, that the revival of Reformation doctrines saved English Christianity from destruction a hundred years ago. ¹

¹ Those who wish to see this part of my subject more fully discussed, are referred to a volume which I brought out in 1869, entitled Christian Leaders of the Last Century. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. net (Thynne).

Let this fourth great lesson of English Church history sink down into your heart, and be ready to use it. Listen not to those who are fond of running down the Evangelical leaders of the eighteenth century, and under valuing the mighty work which they did.

Some men, forsooth, in these latter days, will tell us that Whitefield, and Wesley, and Romaine, and Berridge, and Venn, and Grimshaw were unlearned and ignorant men, narrow-minded zealots, who despised sacraments, and held very partial and imperfect views of truth, ranting fanatics, who disliked the Prayer-book, and cared for nothing but preaching, hot-headed enthusiasts, who put no real matter into their sermons, and only ” split the ears of groundlings with excessive loudness of voice.” I advise my readers to pay no regard to such accusations. Those who make them are only exposing their own ignorance of simple facts.

As to learning, the Reformers of the eighteenth century were nearly all members of Oxford and Cambridge, and some of them Fellows of Colleges. Romaine and the Wesleys were well known at Christ Church, Oxford. Berridge, of Clare Hall, Cambridge, was one of the first men of his year. They were as well educated as most clergymen of this day, and certainly had more brains than many who now sneer at them.

As to despising sacraments, it is totally false. I cannot find one among them who did not attach great importance to the Lord s Supper, and did not frequently press it in its due proportion on his believing hearers. I doubt if there is a single Ritualist incumbent in all England who has as many regular communicants as Grimshaw had at Haworth. The difference between the Reformers of the eighteenth century and many of their modern detractors is simply this, they advised none to be communicants unless they repented and believed !

As to neglecting all parts of religious worship except preaching, again the charge is totally false. No one valued the Prayer-book and read it more impressively than Whitefield, Rowlands, and Romaine. No congregations in this day, I suspect, have better or heartier singing than their congregations. They had not ” Hymns Ancient and Modern,” perhaps, but they had among them such hymn-writers as Charles “Wesley, Toplady, and John Newton. Even now Ritualists are obliged to confess the beauty of their hymns. If they do not like their doctrines, they are not ashamed to use their ” spiritual songs.”

Grand Gothic churches, I grant, the Reformers of the last century did not build. They had no money to build them, and if they had, the age supplied no architects to design them. But after all they had among them plenty of temples of the Holy Ghost. Better a thousand times have ugly square brick chapels full of living stones and the Spirit of God, than grand cathedral-like churches full of coldness, deadness, histrionic ceremonial, superstition, and formality.

Once more I say, let us never despise the men who revived Reformation doctrines in the eighteenth century Whatever be their faults and infirmities, they saved the life of the Church of England, and without them the Establishment would not have survived to this day. If short-sighted bishops and blind clergy had not snubbed and opposed them, they would have done even a greater work than they did. But for what they did let us thank God, and never refuse to give them the honour they deserve.

V. The fifth and last period of English Church history to which I finally invite attention, is that which extends from the year 1830 down to the present day. It is a period which is characterized by one great and paramount feature. That feature is the rise and progress of that strange Romanizing movement within the Church of England, which rightly or wrongly is called Ritualism.

Now what is the lesson I shall ask my readers to learn from this period ? I reply honestly that I shall not talk of any lesson at all. We are in the midst of the conflict. We are poor judges of what is going on around us. But I shall mention the conclusions that 1 have arrived at in my own mind. These conclusions are simply these, that Ritualism is a fresh departure from the principles of the Reformation and a movement towards Rome, and that as such it endangers the very existence of the Church of England.

A question arises at the very outset of this part of my subject which demands consideration. Is the movement called Ritualism a movement towards Rome or not ? Do the Ritualists really wish to suppress Protestantism and re-introduce Popery ? Hundreds of well-meaning and simple-minded Churchmen reply, No ! They would have us believe that Ritualists are only aiming at a more ornate ceremonial than other Churchmen, and that they are not Romanizers at heart. With these amiable apologists I have no sympathy at all. The question is one on which I feel no manner of doubt. That Ritualism is a Romeward movement, and that it leads to Popery, is as clear to my mind as the sun at noonday. The proofs, in my humble judgment, are clear, full, and un answerable.

It is proved by the writings of all the leading Ritualists of the day. Let any honest and impartial Churchman study such papers as the Church Times and Church Review, read some of the ” Catechisms ” and ” Manuals of Devotion ” published by Ritualistic clergymen, peruse the debates and proceedings of such bodies as the English Church Union, and tell us plainly the impression these writings have on his mind. I defy him to avoid the conclusion that Ritualism is the highway to Rome.

It is proved by the repeated secession of Ritualists from the Church of England to the Church of Rome. Why have such men as Manning, and Newman, and Oakley, and the two Wilberforces, and Orby Shipley, and Luke Rivington, gone over to the Pope s camp ? Simply because they found the principles of their school could land them in no other logical conclusion. But their migration was one more proof that Ritualism is the highway to Rome.

It is proved by the repeated reference to the subject which bishops have made in their charges for the last fifty years. Mild and gentle and conciliatory to an extreme, as these documents have often been, it is im possible not to see that our prelates detect a Romeward tendency in Ritualism. Their cautions to Ritualists, you will notice, are almost always in one direction. ” Take care,” they seem to say, ” that you do not go too far in a Romish direction. You are excellent, earnest, useful men ; but don t go too near the edge. Your danger is, tumbling over into the arms of Rome.”

It is proved by the rejoicings of the Roman Catholics themselves over the whole Ritualistic movement, and the disgust with which it is regarded by Scotch Presbyterians, real old-fashioned Nonconformists, and most English Methodists. Both the joy of the one party and the dis gust of the other arise from the same cause. Both see clearly that Ritualism damages Protestantism and helps the pope.

It is proved, above all, by the unvarying character of all the ceremonial novelties which Ritualists have thrust into our Church worship during the last twenty-five years. They have all been in one direction, whether of dress, or gesture, or posture, or action, or anything else. They have all been as unprotestant as possible. They have all been borrowed or imitated from Popery. They have all exhibited one common bias and animus, an anxious desire to get as far as possible from the ways of the Reformers, and to get as near as possible, whether legally or illegally, to the ways of Rome. They have all shown one common systematic determination to unprotestantize, as far as possible, the simple worship of the poor old Church of England, and to assimilate it, as far as possible, to the gaudy and sensuous worship of Popery. A short catalogue of specimens will show what I mean.

(a) The Reformers found the sacrifice of the mass in our Church. They cast it out as a ” blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit,” and called the Lord s Supper a sacrament. The Ritualists have re-introduced the word sacrifice, and glory in calling the Lord’s Supper a mass !

(b) The Reformers found altars in all our churches. They ordered them to be taken down, cast the word ” altar” entirely out of our Prayer-book, and spoke only of the Lord’s table and the Lord’s board. The Ritualists delight in calling the Lord’s table the altar, and setting up Popish altars in all their churches !

(c) The Reformers found our clergy sacrificing priests, and made them prayer-reading, preaching ministers, ministers of God s Word and sacraments. The Ritualists glory in calling every clergyman a sacrificing priest !

(d) The Reformers found the doctrine of a real corporal presence in our Church, and laid down their lives to oppose it. They would not even allow the expression ” real presence ” a place in our Prayer – book. The Ritualists have re-introduced the doctrine, and honour the consecrated elements in the Lord’s Supper as if Christ’s natural body and blood were in them.

(e) The Reformers found in all our churches images, rood screens, crucifixes, and holy places, and indignantly cast them out. The Ritualists are incessantly trying to bring them back.

(f) The Reformers found our worship stuffed with pro cessions, incense-burning, flag-carrying, candles, gestures, postures, flowers, and gaudy sacrificial garments, and ordered them all to be put away. The Ritualists are always labouring to re-introduce them.

Can any one in his senses doubt what all this means ? Straws show which way the wind blows. Ceremonial trifles show the current of religious feeling. He that looks at the catalogue of facts which I have just brought forward, and then tells us that there is no tendency in Ritualism towards Rome, is past all argument, and must be let alone. There are none so blind as those that will not see.

But after all, is Ritualism doing any harm to the Church of England? With all its faults and defects, does not the movement do more good than evil ? Is it not better to believe all things, and hope all things, and to leave Ritualism alone ? These are questions which many in their simplicity are continually asking, and they are questions which demand a plain answer.

Some tell us that Ritualism has revived the Church, rallied the laity, infused a new spirit into the Establishment, lengthened her cords, and strengthened her stakes. Some tell us that the existence of a Ritualistic party in our Church is an excellent and healthy symptom, that parties keep each other in check, and act as counter irritants in the constitution, and that except Ritualism abides in the Church we shall not be saved. My own opinion is diametrically the reverse. I believe that Ritualism has done, and is doing, universal damage to the Church of England, and that, unless checked or re moved, it will prove the destruction of the Establishment.

Ritualism is dividing the clergy into two distinct parties, and hastening on an internecine conflict. So long as the difference was only between High Church and Low Church, little harm was done. But when the struggle is between Popery and Protestantism, union is impossible. Both parties cannot possibly co-operate with any advantage in the same ecclesiastical pale, and it is preposterous to suppose they can. One or the other is in the wrong place. What saith the Scripture ? The Master Himself has declared, ” If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand” (Mark iii. 25). ¹

¹If any one supposes that I wish to narrow the limits of English Churchmanship, and to confine it to one party, he is totally mistaken. I never met a sensible Evangelical Churchman who did not admit fully that the Church of England is a comprehensive Church, and that she was meant to include in her pale the three old-fashioned schools of opinion commonly known as High, Low, and Broad.

But we do maintain, and shall never cease to maintain, that the Church of England was never meant to comprehend downright Popery, and that those who hold all Romish doctrine have no lawful place in her ministry.

Ritualism is gradually robbing our Church of some of its best members among the laity. Not a few bankers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, and naval and military officers, are dropping off and leaving the ship. Their confidence is thoroughly shaken. They cannot understand an Established Church in which the service is Romish in one parish and Protestant in another. They are becoming disgusted with the continued toleration of Romish novelties, which their own common sense tells them are as thoroughly unchurchmanlike as they are unscriptural. Some of them go off to the Plymouth Brethren, some join the Dissenters, and some stand aloof, and refuse to take any part in the Church s affairs. This state of things is most mischievous. The life-blood of the Church is being drained away.

Ritualism is alienating the middle classes and lower orders from the Church of England. Thousands of tradesmen and farmers and artisans have an instinctive horror of Popery. They may not be very intelligent or deeply read in theological matters, but they are deter mined not to put up with Popery. They cannot draw nice distinctions : they are apt to call a spade a spade, and to give things their right name. And if they see the slightest attempt to re-introduce Popish ceremonies into our parish churches, their suspicions are roused, and they walk off to chapel. The Churchman who allows these suspicions to be roused may be earnest, well-meaning, and zealous, but he is no true friend to the Church of England.

Once for all, I must honestly avow that my chief fears of Ritualism arise from the effect which it has on the minds of the lower and middle classes. They do not like it. They will not have it. They call it Popery.

Shallow – minded members of the aristocracy, ill-taught ascetics, self-willed and half-instructed members of Evangelical families, who want to mix ball-going and worldliness with religious formalism, and to compound for the one by supporting the other, idle young ladies and thoughtless young men, who love anything gaudy, sensational, and theatrical in worship, all these may stick to Ritualism and stoutly support it. They are like children who admire poppies more than corn, and like babies who care for toys more than food. But Ritualism does not meet the wants of the hard-working, the hard-headed, the hard-handed masses of the middle classes, and intelligent artisans, the brain and muscle of England. These men want food for their souls and rest for their consciences. They find life too hard and heart-wearing to be content with trifles and toys in worship. If the Church can only offer them Ritualism, they will turn away from her in disgust. If she will faithfully give them the pure Gospel, they will never leave her, and never forsake her.

Only let Ritualism grow and spread for a few more years, and the end will come. The Church will perish for want of Churchmen. Generals and colonels and bands do not make up an army, and bishops and choristers and clergy alone do not make up a Church. The Church of England will never stand if it disgusts and drives away its congregations. Disestablishment will come as a matter of course. The Church of a minority will not be spared in England any more than in Ireland. Statesmen and orators will declare that the English Establishment is ” a huge anomaly,” and must be got rid of. The voice of the people will demand our destruction ; and on modern principles it will be obeyed. The Church of England, once disestablished, will split into pieces, or become a mere sect, like the Scotch Episcopal Church ; and the pages of history will then record that she made shipwreck of all her greatness by the suicidal attempt to recede from Protestantism and re-introduce Popery.

Such are my reasons for regarding Ritualism with un mixed dislike. It threatens the very existence of our beloved Church of England. Such are the conclusions I arrive at from the review of the fifth and last period of English Church history. Whether-iny fears are well founded, and the lesson I have drawn the true one, time alone will show. But I should not be doing my duty as an honest man, if I did not tell my readers that we are in a most critical position, and that the future must be regarded with deep anxiety. In short, I leave the Church history of the last sixty years, with the firm belief that, unless Ritualism dries up or is checked, the Established Church of this country in a very few years will be broken to pieces.¹ The leaders of the Ritualists, I willingly allow, may be zealous, earnest, able, well-meaning men. They may conscientiously believe, like many of Laud s school, that they are helping the Church of England, and doing God service. But it is my firm belief that, like Laud s school, they are ruining the Church instead of helping it, and are likely to bring the whole house to the ground.

¹ “The proceedings of the English Church Union will destroy the English Church, if they are encouraged in their present course. ” (Letter of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. December 1870.)

My paper must now come to a conclusion. I have tried to the best of my ability to draw lessons from five periods of English Church history, (1) from the period before the Reformation, (2) from the period of the Reformation itself, (3) from the days of Laud and his party, (4) from the days of Evangelical revivalism in the eighteenth century, (5) from the rise and progress of Ritualism in our own day. On each and all of these periods I feel that I have only touched the surface of my subject, and that I might have said far more if time had permitted. But I hope at any rate I have supplied some food for thought. I shall now wind up all with a few words of practical application. I have dealt with five periods of Church history, and I will offer, as a friend, five short pieces of parting advice.

(1) My first advice to every one into whose hands this paper may fall is this. Bead up the great facts of English Church history, and make yourself thoroughly familiar with them. Know what our country was when the Pope ruled supreme ; know what the Reformation did for us ; know what the principles of the Reformation were and are. Read such books as Foxe’s Martyrs, Soames His tory of the Reformation, Fuller’s Church History, Blunts History of the Reformation, Marsden’s History of the Puri tans. Read, not least, your own Thirty-nine Articles, at least once every year. Do this and you will not be easily led astray. Ignorance is one great ally of Ritualism.¹

(2) My second advice is this. Mind you do not underrate the danger in which the Church of England is in from Ritualism. That danger, I believe, is far greater than many suppose. The friends of Ritualism among the clergy are numerous, zealous, able, unwearied. Many Ritualists compass sea and land, and leave no stone un turned, to effect their objects. Many of them, I believe, are determined never to rest till they have the mass at every parish communion table, and the confessional in every church, and sacrificial garments on every clerical back. Do not fold your arms and sit still. If we mean to preserve Protestantism in the Church of England, if we mean to keep the martyrs candle lighted, we must stand to our arms and fight. Indolence and self-security are another great ally of Ritualism.

(3) My third advice is this. Settle it in your mind that Protestant and Evangelical principles are the real true principles of the Church of England, and the only principles that will keep the Church alive. They are the principles of your own Thirty-nine Articles, and of the glorious Reformation. They are the only principles that do good to souls. Processions, incense, flowers, gaudy vestments, bowings, turnings, crossings, and the like, may gather crowds of gaping people for a time, like any other exhibition. But they convince no sinner, heal no con science, build up no saint, lead none to Christ. Nothing will do that but the word of the Gospel and the grace of God. Never be ashamed of simple Evangelical religion. Want of confidence in it is another great ally of Ritualism.

¹ Some men are fond of sneering at Foxe s Martyrs, and decrying Foxe as unworthy of credit. Such attacks are ancient things, and the friends of Popery have never ceased to make them. Those who care to see the opinion of Foxe entertained by such men as Parker, Grindal, Whitgift, Fuller, Strype, Burnet, Soames, Dr. Wordsworth, Southey, and Froude, will find them in the preface to my Light from Old Times. Cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. net (Thynne). They will there see that the estimate of Foxe formed by these eminent bishops and writers differs widely from that of some modern writers.

(4) My fourth advice is this. Do not be in a hurry to leave the Church of England, because many of her clergy are unfaithful. It is cheap and easy policy for Churchmen to shirk trouble and run away in the hour of conflict ; but it is neither manly, nor Christian, nor kind. It is a short-cut road out of difficulties, to launch the long-boat when the good ship is in jeopardy, and to leave your comrades to sink. But it is not the line of action which becomes an Englishman. As Nelson said at Tra falgar, ” England expects every man to do his duty,” so does the Church of England expect every Protestant Churchman to do his duty, and stick by the ship. Let us not play the enemy s game, by deserting the good old fortress, so long as the Articles are unchanged and the pulpit is unfettered. Let us not basely forsake our old mother in her day of trouble. Rather, like Venn, and Romaine, and Grimshaw, and Berridge, let us man the walls, stand to our guns, nail our colours to the mast, and fight as long as we have a foot to stand on. Sneaks and deserters who are always making strategical movements to the rear are the weakness of an army. Rabbit[1]hearted Churchmen, who are always bolting into holes at the slightest shadow of danger, are the best allies of Ritualism.

(5) My last advice is this. Work publicly and privately, and work hard, for the defence of Christ s truth and the maintenance of Reformation principles in the Church of England. But work together in an organized and systematic way, or else you will do very little. “Men with muskets” do not make an army, as the French found to their cost, and Evangelical Churchmen without organization will do but little in opposing Ritualism. Associate, unite, organize, work together, keep together, and much may be done. Work charitably and kindly, and make allowance for the utter ignorance in which many Ritualists live of the real nature of Evangelical principles. Many of them, alas, appear to know no more of the views of Evangelical Churchmen than an illiterate country labourer knows of the streets of London. They talk and write as if they had never heard of any theological school but their own ! Remember this, and deal gently with them. But while you work charitably, lovingly, courteously, kindly, do not forget to work hard. Work for your Church s sake ; the Church of Hooper and Latimer deserves some exertion. Work for your children s sake ; when you are dead take heed lest they be left like sheep without a shepherd. Work for your country s sake ; her Protestantism is the key of her strength : this once lost, she is like Samson shorn of his hair. Work not least for your own soul s sake. It will do you good. It will nerve your graces. It will keep down besetting sins. It is not exercise, but sitting still, that does the body harm.

Think of these things, and do not despise them. Some men may cry, ” Peace ! peace ! Keep quiet ! Oh, sacrifice anything for peace!” I answer, there can be no real peace while our Church tolerates and fosters Popery. Is ecclesiastical peace really so sweet that it is worth purchasing at the expense of truth ? Is a quiet life so precious that, in order to secure it, we will tolerate the mass and auricular confession ? Is it, or is it not ?

God forbid that we should ever sacrifice truth to a love of peace ! Peace in a Church without truth is a worthless possession. What others think I know not. My own mind is made up. I have come to one decided conclusion. I say, give me a really Protestant and Evangelical Established Church, or no Established Church at all. When the Reformed Church of England renounces her Protestant principles, and goes back to Popery, her life and glory will have clean departed, and she will not be worth preserving. She will be an offence to God, and not a resting-place for any true Christian.

NOTE.

CONTROVERSY about the Lord’s Supper, we all know, is at this moment one of the chief causes of division and disturbance in the Church of Eng land. No less than four great legal suits have arisen out of the subject ; suits commonly known as the Mackonochie case, the Purchas case, the Bennett case, and the Ridsdale case. At such a crisis, it may not be uninteresting to some readers to hear the opinions of some of our well-known English divines about the points in dispute.

I will give fourteen quotations from fourteen men of no mean authority, and ask the reader to consider them.

(1) Archbishop Cranmer, in the Preface to his Answer to Gardiner, says :–

“They (the Romanists) say that Christ is corporally under or in the forms of bread and wine ; we say that Christ is not there, neither corporally nor spiritually. But in them that worthily eat and drink the bread and wine He is spiritually, and corporally He is in heaven. I mean not that Christ is spiritually, either on the table, or in the bread and wine that be set on the table, but I mean that He is present in the ministration and receiving of that Holy Supper, according to His own institution and ordinance.” (See Goode on the Eucharist, vol. ii. p. 772.)

(2) Bishop Ridley, in his Disputation at Oxford, says :—-

“The circumstances of the Scripture, the analogy and proportion of the Sacraments, and the testimony of the faithful Fathers, ought to rule us in taking the meaning of the Holy Scripture touching the Sacraments.

” But the words of the Lord s Supper, the circumstances of the Scripture, the analogy of the Sacraments, and the sayings of the Fathers do most effectually and plainly prove a figurative speech in the words of the Lord’s Supper.

“Therefore a figurative sense and meaning is specially to be received in these words, This is my body. ” (See Goode on the Eucharist, vol. ii. p. 766.)

Again, in the same Disputation at Oxford, he says of the Romish doctrine of the Real Presence :—

“It destroyeth and taketh away the institution of the Lord s Supper, which was commanded only to be used and continued until the Lord Himself should come. If therefore He be now really present in the body of His flesh, then must the Supper cease ; for a remembrance is not of a thing present, but of a thing past and absent. And, as one of the Fathers saith, A figure is vain where the thing figured is present. ” (See Foxe s Martyrs, in loco.)

(3) Bishop Hooper, in his Brief and Clear Confession of the Christian Faith, says : —

“I believe that all this Sacrament consisteth in the use thereof; so that without the right use the bread and wine in nothing differ from other common bread and wine that is commonly used : and therefore I do not believe that the body of Christ can be contained, hid, or enclosed in the bread, under the bread, or with the bread, neither the blood in the wine, under the wine, or with the wine. But I believe and confess the only body of Christ to be in heaven, on the right hand of the Father ; and that always, and as often as we use this bread and wine according to this ordinance and institution of Christ, we do verily and indeed receive His body and blood.” (Hooper s Works: Parker Society Edition, vol. ii. p. 48.)

(4) Bishop Latimer, in his Disputation at Oxford, says : —

“In the Sacrament there is none other presence of Christ required than a spiritual presence. And this presence is sufficient for a Christian man, and the presence by which we abide in Christ, and Christ in us, to the obtaining of eternal life if we persevere in the true Gospel ; that this same presence may be called a real presence because to the faithful believer there is the real and spiritual body of Christ.” (Latimer s Works : Parker Society Edition, vol. ii. p. 252.)

Again, he says in the same disputation : Christ spake never a word of sacrificing in saying of mass ; nor promised His hearers any reward, but among the idolaters with the devil and his angels, except they repent speedily. Therefore sacrificing priests should now cease for ever ; for now all men ought to offer their own bodies a quick sacrifice holy and acceptable before God. The Supper of the Lord was instituted to provoke us to thanksgiving, and to stir us up by preaching of the Gospel, to remember his death till He cometh again.” (Works, ii, 256.)

Again, he says in his last examination : “There is a change in the bread and wine, and such a change as no power but the omnipotency of God can make, in that that which before was bread, should now have the dignity to exhibit Christ s body. And yet the bread is still bread, and the wine is still wine; for the change is not in the nature, but the dignity.” Works, ii. 286.)

(5) Bishop Jewell, in his work on the Sacraments, says : —

“Let us examine what difference there is between the body of Christ and the sacrament of His body.

“The difference is this : a sacrament ; s a figure or token ; the body of Christ is figured or tokened. The sacramental bread is bread, it is not the body of Christ ; the body of Christ is flesh, it is no bread. The bread is beneath ; the body is above. The bread is on the table ; the body is in heaven. The bread is in the mouth; the body is in the heart. The bread feedeth the body; the body feedeth the soul. The bread shall come to nothing ; the body is immortal, and shall not perish. The bread is vile ; the body of Christ is glorious. Such a difference is there between the bread which is a sacrament of the body, and the body of Christ itself. The Sacrament is eaten as well of the wicked as of the faithful ; the body is only eaten of the faithful. The Sacrament may be eaten unto judgment ; the body cannot be eaten but unto salvation. Without the Sacrament we may be saved ; but without the body of Christ we have no salvation, we cannot be saved. “(Jewell s Works, vol. iv., Parker Society Edition, p. 1121.)

(6) Richard Hooker, in his Ecclesiastical Polity, says : —

“The real presence of Christ s most blessed body and blood is not to be sought for in the Sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the Sacrament.

“And with this the very order of our Saviour s words agreeth. First, Take and eat; then, * This is my body which is broken for you. First, Drink ye all of this ; then followeth, This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. I see not which way it should be gathered by the words of Christ, when and where the bread is His body or the wine His blood, but only in the very heart and soul of him which receiveth them. As for the Sacraments, they really exhibit, but for aught we can gather out of that which is written of them, they are not really nor do really contain in themselves that grace which with them or by them it pleaseth God to bestow.” (Hooker, Eccl. Pol, book v. p. 67.)

(7) Jeremy Taylor, in his book on the Real Presence (edit. 1654, pp. 13-15), says : —

” We say that Christ s body is in the Sacrament really, but spiritually. The Roman Catholics say that it is there really, but spiritually. For so Bellarmine is bold to say that the word may be allowed in this question. Where now is the difference ? Here by spiritually, they mean spiritual after the manner of a spirit. “We by spiritually, mean present to our spirit only. They say that Christ s body is truly present there as it was upon the cross, but not after the manner of all or anybody, but after that manner of being as an angel is in a place. That s their spiritually. But we by the real spiritual presence of Christ do understand Christ to be present, as the Spirit of God is present in the hearts of the faithful, by blessing and grace ; and this is all which we mean beside the topical and figurative presence.”

(8) Archbishop Usher, in his Sermon before the House of Commons, says : —

“In the Sacrament of the Lord s Supper, the bread and wine are not changed in substance from being the same with that which is served at ordinary tables ; but in respect of the sacred use whereunto they are consecrated, such a change is made that now they differ as much from common bread and wine as heaven from earth. Neither are they to be accounted barely significative, but truly exhibitive also of those heavenly things whereunto they have relation ; as being appointed by God to be a means of conveying the same to us, and putting us in actual possession thereof. So that in the use of this holy ordinance, as verily as a man with his bodily hand and mouth receiveth the earthly creatures of bread and wine, so verily with his spiritual hand and mouth, if he have any, doth he receive the body and blood of Christ. And this is that real and substantial presence which we affirm to be in the inward part of the sacred action.”

(9) Bishop Beveridge, in his comment on the Twenty-eighth Article, says : —

” If the bread be not really changed into the body of Christ, then the body of Christ is not really there present ; and if it be not really there present, it is impossible that it should be really taken and received into our bodies, as bread is.”

Again, he says, “I cannot see how it can possibly be denied, that Christ ate of the bread whereof He said, This is my body ; and if He ate it, and ate it corporally (that is, ate His body as we eat bread), then He ate Himself, and made one body two, and then crowded them into one again, putting His body into His body, even His whole body into part of His body, His stomach. And so He must be thought not only to have two bodies, but two bodies one within another ; yea, so as to be one devoured by another ; the absurdity of which, and of like assertions, he that hath but half an eye may easily discover. So that it must needs be granted to be in a spiritual manner that the Sacrament was instituted, and by con sequence that it is in a spiritual manner the Sacrament must be received. ” (Beveridge on the Articles. Ed. Oxford: 1846. Pp. 482-486.)

(10) Waterland says : —

“The Fathers well understood that to make Christ s natural body the real sacrifice of the Eucharist, would not only be absurd in reason, but highly presumptuous and profane ; and that to make the outward symbols a proper sacrifice, a material sacrifice, would be entirely contrary to gospel principles, degrading the Christian sacrifice into a Jewish one, yea, and making it much lower and meaner than the Jewish one, both in value and dignity. The right way, therefore, was to make the sacrifice spiritual, and it could be no other upon Gospel principles.” (Works, vol. iv. p. 762.)

“No one has any authority or right to offer Christ as a sacrifice, whether really or symbolically, but Christ Himself; such a sacrifice is His sacrifice, not ours, offered for us, not by us, to God the Father.” ( Works, vol. iv. p. 753. )

” The words of the Catechism, verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful, are rightly interpreted of a real participation of the benefits purchased by Christ s death. The body and blood of Christ are taken and received by the faithful, not corporally, not internally, but verily and indeed, that is effectually. The sacred symbols are no bare signs, no untrue figures of a thing absent ; but the force, the grace, the virtue, and benefit of Christ s body broken and blood shed, that is, of His passion, are really and effectually present with all them that receive worthily. This is all the real presence that our Church teaches. ” ( Waterlands Works. Oxford: 1843. Vol. vi. p. 42.)

(11) Bishop Burnet, in his comment on the Twenty-eighth Article, says :—

 “We assert a real presence of the body and blood of Christ : but not of His body as it is now glorified in heaven, but of His body as it was broken on the cross, when His blood was shed and separated from it : that is, His death, with the merits and effects of it, are in a visible and federal act offered in the Sacrament to all worthy believers. By real we under stand true, in opposition both to fiction and imagination, and to those shadows that were in the Mosaical dispensation, in which the manna, the rock, the brazen serpent, but immeasurably the cloud of glory, were types and shadows of Messiah that was to come, with whom came grace and truth, that is, a most wonderful manifestation of the mercy and grace of God, and a verifying of promises made under the law. In this sense we acknowledge a Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Though we are convinced that our first Reformers judged right concerning the use of the phrase, Real Presence, that it was better to be let fall than to be continued, since the use of it, and that idea which does naturally arise from the common acceptation of it, may stick deeper, and feed superstition more than all those larger explanations that are given to it can be able to avert.”

(12) Dean Aldrich, of Christ Church, says : —

The Church of England has wisely forborne to use the term of Real Presence in all the books that are set forth by her authority. We neither find it recommended in the Liturgy, nor the Articles, nor the Homilies, nor the Church s Catechism, nor Nowell s. For although it be seen in the Liturgy, and once more in the Articles of 1552, it is mentioned in both places as a phrase of the Papists, and rejected for the abuse of it. So that if any Church of England man use it, he does more than the Church directs him. If any reject it, he has the Church s example to warrant him ; and it would very much contribute to the peace of Christendom if all men would write after so excellent a copy.” (Dean Aldrich s “Reply to Two Discourses.” Oxford : 1682. 4to, pp. 13-18.)

(13) Henry Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter, in his letter to Charles Butler, says :—

“The Church of Rome holds that the body and blood of Christ are present under the accidents of bread and wine ; the Church of England holds that their real presence is in the soul of the communicant at the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

“She holds, that after the consecration of the bread and wine they are changed not in their nature but in their use ; that instead of nourishing our bodies only, they now are instruments by which, when worthily received, God gives to our souls the body and blood of Christ to nourish and sustain them ; that this is not a fictitious or imaginary exhibition of our crucified Redeemer to us, but a real though spiritual one, more real, indeed, because more effectual, than the carnal exhibition and manducation of Him could be (for the flesh profiteth nothing).

In the same manner, then, as our Lord Himself said, ‘I am the true bread that came down from heaven (not meaning thereby that he was a lump of baked dough, or manna, but the true means of sustaining the true life of man, which is spiritual, not corporeal), so in the Sacrament, to the worthy receiver of the consecrated elements, though in their nature mere bread and wine, are yet given, truly, really, and effectively, the crucified body and blood of Christ ; that body and blood which were the instruments of man s redemption, and upon which our spiritual life and strength solely depend. It is in this sense that the crucified Jesus is present in the Sacrament of His Supper, not in, nor with, the bread and wine, nor under their accidents, but in the souls of communicants ; not carnally, but effectually and faithfully, and therefore most really.” (Philpott’s Letter to Butler. 8vo edit. 1825, pp. 235, 236.)

(14) Archbishop Longley says, in his last Charge, printed and published after his death in 1868 :–

“The doctrine of the Real Presence is, in one sense, the doctrine of the Church of England. She asserts that the body and blood of Christ are ‘verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper.’ And she asserts equally that such presence is not material or corporeal, but that Christ’s body is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner. (Art. xxviii.) Christ’s presence is effectual for all those intents and purposes for which His body was broken and His blood shed. As to a presence elsewhere than in the heart of a believer, the Church of England is silent, and the words of Hooker therefore represent her views : The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not to be sought in the Sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the Sacrament. “

I will now conclude the whole subject with the following remarkable quotation, which I commend to the special attention of all my readers. It is from a pamphlet by the Rev. W. Maskell :—

“The strong assertions” of the Prayer-book Communion Service, “in their plainest and obvious meaning, support the low view, held and insisted on by so many of our clergy, that the Real Presence is a doctrine not approved by the Church of England, and not to be distinguished from the Romish error, as they go on to say, of Transubstantiation. ” (From a Second Letter on The Present Position of the High Church Party in the Church of England,” by the Rev. W. Maskell, vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Torquay, p. 62. 1850.)

I shall make no comment on the above quotations. They speak for themselves. They prove, at any rate, that the views of the Lord s Supper which are commonly held by Evangelical Churchmen (so called) are not new. They are “old paths,” paths marked by the feet of some of the greatest divines of the Church of England.