Controversy

Soon after my second marriage, I believe in the year 1822, lAutoLiogi-.ipliicaL

published my volume entitled “Christian Fellowship; or, the Church Member’s Guide.” This work immediately took with our churches, and edition after edition, in rather rapid succession, was called for, till it has reached by this time a tenth. It is like all the rest of my books, practical — not entering much into the controversy on church-government, but laying down rules for the conduct of church members. This work, some years afterwards, involved me in a controversy. It was reviewed in a periodical, since defunct, sustained whUe it lasted by the evangelical clergy, entitled “The British Review.” I had made very liberal concessions of some practical evils incidental to the working of the Congregational system of church-polity. I now see that I was incautious in much that I said, forgetting how many were ever upon the watch to catch up anything unfavourable to Dissent, especially the admission by its friends of anything faulty in the application of its principles. AU my concessions were carefully selected, though many of them wex’e infirmities common to humanity, and by no means peculiar to Dissenters, and classified under diSerent heads, and then held up to public notice with this comment, “See what Dissent is, by the admission of one of its ministers!” At the time I took no notice of the critique; but it was at length printed as a

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Autobio- tract, entitled “The Church of England and Dissent,” and cirgraphical.

culated by thousands through the length and breadth of the land. I found that it was incumbent upon me to reply to it, and in the year 1830 I published a pamphlet entitled “Dissent and the Church of England.” This pamphlet went through three editions in a very short time, and gained me some credit both for its argument and its spirit. The author of the critique had his own weapons turned upon himself, for just about that time a considerable number of books on Church-reform had made their appearance, containing the most appalling admissions of evils in the Church of England. Of these I made good use. No reply was made by the author of the critiqiie to my pamphlet.

Editorial. If those who fear and shun ecclesiastical controversy need any additional reasons to justify the publication of this pamphlet, they may find them in the following extracts from the preface: —

“Last year a reprint of this critique [in the British Beview] appeared, designed, as the title-page informs us, for gratuitous distribution; and which I find has been industrioiisly pushed into circulation in various directions, and especially in this town and neighbourhood. Still I was unwilling to continue a discussion which might in any degree endanger that good feeling and friendly intercourse which are happily increasing between Churchmen and Dissenters in this town. Moreover, as certain works of a very extraordinary character have lately been published by clerical members of the Estabhshmeut, I felt myself relieved from the necessity of a reply to my anonymous opponent, who, in much that he has advanced, is answered by the works of the Rev. IMessrs Acaster, Nihill, Cox, and Eiland. At length, however, this Protean critique has assumed a tJm-d shape, and is now in the arena, corrected and enlarged, in the form of a two-shilhng pamphlet. Here, then, my silence must be broken. Quiescence would now be construed into defeat or cowardice.

“It is the inf ehcity of Dissenters, if such it may be called, that they cannot state or defend their own principles without unpugning those of the Church of England. The terms ‘Dissent ’ and ‘Nonconformity,’ by which, as separatists from the National EstabUshment, we are designated, do not express our theological opinions and our relation to the New Testament, but our views of church-government and our position in reference to the diocesan episcopacy set up by law. Hence the very explanation of our identifying names, much more the defence of our principles, necessarily places us in opposition to the EstabUshment as such, invests the most candid of our statements with the semblance of controversy, and imparts to the mildest defence the appearance of aggression. It is knpossible not to observe, on the part of many Chiu-chmen, a kind of morbid sensitiveness on this subject. In their ardent, tender, and sincere zeal for their church-polity, they lose all forbearance for those who dissent from it, and become irritable, petulant, and intolerable towards them, if they have the insolence, almost the irreligion, to justify their conduct. The privilege of defence, much more of attack, must be all on one side. Is this quite fair t”

There is no reason to believe that Mr James ever regretted this fearless and somewhat vehement defence of Nonconformity; his autobiographical reference to it seems rather to indicate that to the last he remembered his prowess with pride and satisfaction, and saw nothing to condemn in the spirit with which he had written.

The pamphlet was not thrown off before the ardour and impetuosity of youth had had time to cool, for he was forty-five when he wrote it, and had been twenty-five years a minister; nor was he insensible at that time to the claims of Christian Charity, for his volume on that very subject was WTitten ten years before.

It is true that during the last twenty years of his life he seldom spoke in public, except in his own pulpit, in explanation or defence of Dissent, or of his own principles of church-polity, and that during that period he stood very distinctly aloof from organised hostility to the Established Church. It must not be inferred, however, that his convictions of the magnitude of the evils inseparable from the alliance of the ecclesiastical and civil powers, of the irreconcilable antagonism between some of the services of the Church of England and the Holy Scriptures, of the entire absence of primitive precedent, to say nothing of Divine sanction for the Episcopal form of church-government, were at all enfeebled. He doubted the wisdom of the leaders of the Anti-State-Church movement, but he did not differ from them in reference to their object; he wished for the separation of Church and State, as heartily as any of them. Nor did he ever imagine that it was either possible or desirable to silence the controversy, though he did believe it

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both possible and desirable for Christians to contend for truth without forgetting that charity which is the bond of perfectness. In 1849 he thus wrote: —

“The question between the advocates and opponents of religious estabhshments is not among the mere nugce of controversy; on the contrary, it is a serious and momentous subject. One party views estabhshments as the will of God, and essential in the present state of things to the maintenance of national religion; the other considers them as opposed to the New Testament, and essentially corruptive of the nature and obstructive of the progress of true religion. There cannot, therefore, with these opposing sentiments, be any cessation of the conflict between the two parties, or any truce between them. Allegiance to truth, to God, and to conscience forbids it. The advocate of each is contending according to his own view for truth, and against error. Each ought to contend. But, then, as truth is important, so is love. If truth ought not to be sacrificed for charity, so neither ought charity to be sacrificed for truth. The man who would never oppose error, but allow it to run its mischievous career for fear of violating charity, is wrong in one extreme; while the man who would do nothing to assist charity in its peaceful and tranquiUising efforts for fear of compromising truth, is wrong in the opposite extreme. He only is right who fears to be silent in the cause of truth, but equahy fears to be uncharitable in the cause of love.”*

His views on the policy of Dissenters remained, I believe, to the close of life what they were in 1834, in which year he published a Pastoral Address to his people, from which the following extract is taken: —

“It will be thought perhaps by some, that as all the deprivations under which we labour are but the shoots of a pohtical alliance between the Church and State, I ought, in order to be consistent, to urge you to lay the axe to the root of the tree, and caU upon you to make the dissolution of that union the main subject of appeal to the Government and the Senate. I need scarcely teU you that this point has been much agitated and discussed, both in the different committees of the Dissenting body, and in their periodical journals; and that the general feeling is, that while all our memorials to Government, and all our petitions to Parhament, should contain a strong protest against the alliance, coupled with a declaration that the Dissenters consider every reform to be incomplete as long as this remains, yet that it is not expedient to

Protestant Nonconfonnity, pp. 271, 272. make its removal the great object of confederated effort. It may not be improper to introduce here an extract from a letter which latelyappeared in the Patriot newspaper from John Wilks, Esq., who, as you are aware, is an Evangelical Dissenter, and a member of the House of Comjnons. It was written in reply to an application from the Dissenters at Bristol, for his advice as to the measures now expedient to be adopted: —

“‘They (the United Committee) have repeatedly met, and intend next week to address the Dissenters of England and Wales, and to invite their co-operation for the redress of the grievances of which Dissenters may yet justly complain. They will, in their address, assuredly state their conscientious disapproval of all religious establishments, and of an unhallowed alliance betn een the Church and the State; and they will recapitulate all the grievances heretofore announced by them, and stated at Leeds; — and which mauily consist of the want of an improved and ci-vil parochial registration; of compulsory payments for the support of the Church; of the exclusion of Dissenters from an equal participation •«ith Churchmen in the benefit and honours of the universities; and of the degradation of Dissenting ministers, by preventing them from celebrating marriages and from officiating in churchyards on the interment of their friends.

“‘Until this address shall appear, yourself and enlightened colleagues will probably defer any public proceeding and final resolves; and when it is received, I sincerely hope that prudence, and not passion, will dictate the course they pur.sue. The opinion of the Government, and oi many parliamentary friends to liberty of conscience and the cause of Dissent, I believe to be, that any immediate and urgent attempt at the severance of the Church and the State would utterly fail — would injure the administration — would delight and strengthen the Tories, still numerous, affluent, and strong — would delay the ecclesiastical reforms intended and desired — would retard an abolition or commiitation of tithes — and would prevent the Dissenters from progressively procuring that redress of practical evils by which they are afflicted, and which, if they be temperate, united, ldgilant, and judicious, they will gradually acquire, and at last completely obtain.

“* In these views I am much disposed to concur; and at least I urgently recommend them to devout and deliberate thouglit.’

“I approve of the sentiments of this able and eloquent advocate of religious Kberty, and have reason to believe they will be adopted as the rule by which our body will be guided. Until the union can be dissolved by the diffusion of sound scriptural sentiments, both among the people and the legi.slature, both within the Church and without it, most of the sober and reflecting members of our different denominations are

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAMES.

quite averse from making the attempt by the force of political agitation. Let our efforts be directed to the extension and consolidation of our o-vvn liberties, leaving the Church, if it is to be pulled down, to pull down itself, or the Church and the State to do it between them.

“In our endeavours to gain the relief which we have an equitable right to expect, I prefer that we in this town, for reasons which will readily occur to you, should act as separate congregations, and that we shoidd have no recourse to agitation and clamour. The best way to disprove the calumnious assertion — for calumnious it is — that Dissenters are in league with infidels and radicals, is to act by ourselves. I hope that we shall never give colour by any part of our conduct to the slander which has been so industriously circulated, and so greedily received, that we are after all far more of a political than a religious body. It appears to me that if we ever aim to carry a question by the power of numbers rather than by that of truth, by clamour and not by cool, dispassionate reason, by the influence of political strength rather than by the progress of conviction, and by secular confederation rather than by ecclesiastical association, we shall by so doing be setting up, though in a modified form, the alliance between Church and State among ourselves. I again quote from the beautiful speech of Sir George SaviUe, and address to you, and would address to our whole body, the nation at large, to the Government and the Legislature, were I writing for them, the forcible and sacred motives mth which he appealed to a British House of Commons: — ‘/ therefore beseech you; I become an humble and earnest supplicant to you, by the benevolent spirit of the gospel, by all that is serious, I beseech you by the bowels of Christ, that this affair be treated, not as a matter of policy, not as a matter of levity, not as a matter of censoriousness, but as a matter of religion.’”

It is impossible for a Nonconformist who is too young to remember the ecclesiastical conflicts which preceded and followed the Reform Bill, to glance through a collection of the pamphlets of that stormy time without astonishment. Since then the Church of England must have freed herself of many practical abuses, if either her friends or her enemies described her truly. There has been a change not less remarkable in the spirit with which Dissenters vindicate their own principles and criticise the evils of the Establishment. The controversial vehemence of our fathers may be explained without supposing that our charity is much greater than theirs. Those Nonconformist ministers who began their work early in this century had to struggle against hostility and

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persecutions of -vvhicli we know nothing. When they went out into country villages to preach the gospel, they were not unfrequently assaulted by brutal mobs, who knew that the clergy and the magistrates were looking on with scarcely concealed delight, and that the Methodist would appeal for protection in vain to the local preservers of the peace. From the very tower of the church, btones and rotten eggs were sometimes hurled on the itinerant evangelist as he passed beneath it to the village chapel. Among the clergy there were many whose immoralities made the church an object of disgust and abhorrence to their parishioners; and the earnest and devout, instead of being numbered by thousands as now, were bright and rare exceptions to a prevailing indolence and worldliness.

The ecclesiastical strife was embittered by habitual political antagonism. Durmg that long struggle for the extension of political freedom which triumphed in 1832, the vast majority of the Dissenters were the eager friends of reform, while the clergy were its most uncompromising and formidable opponents.

These were among the causes which gave to the permanent controversy between Church and Dissent an unusual and temporary severity. Since then, many events have assisted to produce a kindlier feeling, though the convictions of the two parties, on the theological and ecclesiastical questions by which they are divided, remain unchanged. Our civil disabilities have been removed. Mobs and magistrates have learned that there are penalties sharp and sure for the grosser forms of religious persecution. The pulpits of the Church of England in the large towns are generally occupied by evangelical ministers, many of whom exhibit a most noble and exemplary earnestness. Even in the rural districts, though there are vast numbers of churches which are the homes of mere religious routine, or of jmictices and teaching which fill a Protestant and Englishman with contempt, indignation, and alarm, we are not often scandalised by seeing men of profligate and dissolute lives pronouncing in God’s name the absolution of sins and consecrating the bread and wine of the sacred Supper.

The friendly relations between Church and Dissent were also

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAJIES.

greatly strengthened by the terror excited throughout the Evangelical party in the English Church, by the ability, the boldness, and the success of the leaders of the Anglo-Catholic movement of 1833. In that controversy, the commencement of which is popularly identified with the publication of the “Tracts for the Times” in that year, — though, perhaps, it might be more accurately fixed seven years before, when Hugh James Kose preached his sermon on the Clergy before the University of Cambridge, — and which virtually terminated with Dr Newman’s Essay on Development and secession to Rome, the evangelical clergy sorely needed the help, and it was generously and heartily given, of the learning and the genius of the Nonconformists.

And it would be most uncandid not to acknowledge that, with whatever amazement and antagonism Evangelical Dissenters cannot but regard the creed and the ecclesiastical practices of the Anglo-Catholic clergy, their purity of life and the simple and unobtrusive devotion of many of them to parochial duty, have attracted our affection and respect. With the old high-and-dry, fox-hunting clergyman, who loved port wine, and yet was willing to leave it to see a Dissenter mobbed, our controversy was almost of necessity bitter and angry. With the really devout and learned Anglican — I do not refer to that silliest and most solemn of idiots, the clergyman who professes to admire Fathers he has never read, and who utters, with an unction positively ludicrous, the battle-cries of a party, with the real genius and principles of which he has not the slightest acquaintance, and which he has only joined to avoid being vulgar and low, or for the sake of the candles and millinery; — with the devout and learned Anglican, I say, the most earnest controversy need not be envenomed by any personal enmity.

Twenty years ago, the perilous errors of Anglo-Catholicism drove us into kindly alliance with the Evangelicals; and now, though our hostility to those errors has not become less decided, the bright excellencies by which many of the adherents of the Anglo-Catholic party are graced and ennobled have won our admiration and esteem.

Finally, the startling revelations of the ignorance and ungodliness of millions of our population, and the manifest need of

CONTnOVERSY. instant and unsparing labour to deliver large masses of the English peoi:)le from heathenism, have made us forget questions less urgent, clamorous, and imperative. Whenever the Establishment controversy shall again be the subject of general public debate, the remembrance of the kindly intercourse of the last twenty years should dispose the combatants on both sides to that Christian generosity which has seldom had any place in ecclesiastical conflicts.

Mr James’s pamphlet, though free from virulence, is a fearless and unsparing assault on the English Church, and a manly defence of Nonconformity. As it has not yet appeared in his Collected Works, it may be well to give a full account of it, both to illustrate his power as a controversialist, and to inform those members of the English Church who loved and admired him, on what grounds he was accustomed to vindicate his dissent.

Having stated in his “Church Fellowship” that “the following are the first three principles of Protestant Nonconformity: First, The all-sufficiency and exclusive authority of the Scriptures, as a rule of faith and practice: Secondly, The consequent denial of the right of legislature and ecclesiastical conventions to impose any rites, ceremonies, observances, or interpretations of the Word of God upon our belief and practice: Thirdly, The unlimited and inalienable right of every man to expound the Word of God for himself, and to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience;” — his reviewer objected, that if the Church of England cannot quote for all her institutions and usages the letter of Scripture, Dissenters are equally destitute of inspired authority for many of their practices.

Mr James answers, —

“I now go on to reply to the charge of inconsistency brought against Dissenters, of acting in numerous instances in opposition to their own principles. Suppose that this charge were well sustained, what does it prove 1 Nothing more than that they need to be called back from their wanderings, and to be admonished to cleave more closely to then- guide. But the charge is not well founded, and rests only on a misconception, perversion, or forgetfulness of our avowed sentiments. Our views are these: the New Testament contains, in its recorded facts, such general

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principles on the subject of cliurch-government and discipline as are sufficiently explicit for the guidance of all who are willing to take God’s Word for their rule; principles wliicli need no addition, allow of no alteration, and demand universal submission. With these, such of our usages as cannot plead express command or example ought to be in accordance, and to the application of these all our customs must be directed. Whatever we do must be an act of obedience to the authority of Christ, as the only King and Head of the Church, and designed to carry into effect some law which as the supreme and exclusive legislator He has enjoined. We disclaim any right to decree, any power to impose; and feel that we have only one Master, who is the Lord that bought us, and only one rule to guide us, which is the Word of God.

“The general principles for which we contend are as follows: Christian churches are congregations of faithful men, united by voluntary consent, and for the purpose of mutual edification; the only officers of such churches are bishops and deacons, — the former being, not the overseers of many ministers, but each the pastor of one church — and the latter being appointed to take care of the poor; these officers are to be chosen by the people among whom they are to serve; the pastors are to be supported by the free-will offerings of the people who enjoy the benefit of their labours; the government and discipline of a church are entirely within itself; the reception and exclusion of members belong to the church, and not exclusively to the pastor. These are our principles, which we think are to be found in the Word of God, and may be defended by the practices of the earliest Christian churches. To the application of these principles we wish all our customs and usages to be directed.

“In carrying these principles into effect, it must be expected that a considerable diversity of opinion in minor things will exist. And here the Keviewer has confounded two things so essentially distinct, as a diverse mode of executing the same general law, and the rejection of it. We contend for the right of private judgment, which in many cases leads to a difi”erent result; the general law is acknowledged, although there is a contrariety of opinion as to the best mode of carrying it into effect. One or two instances may serve for the sake of illustration. It is our general pi-inciple that the people should choose their own minister: but we differ as to the best mode of appljdng this to practice; some thinking that the whole body, subscribers as well as communicants, should have the right of choice; others, that only the communicants should have this privilege. Again, it is our general principle that the church should receive members on satisfactory evidence of their personal reUgion; but we differ as to the manner in which that evidence should come before us. This will be a sufficient answer to all

COKTROVEBSy. that lias been advanced by uiy opponent, and will defend us from the charge of inconsistency, which he supposes he had deduced from my pages. We have essential agreement, combined vnih circumstantial difference. As to what is said about ’ lord deacons,” chairmen,” presidents,” influential members,’ »fec., &c., constituting other officers than those we admit to be scriptural, it was unworthy of his candour ti) write it, and would be only a waste of my time and labour to reply to it.

“Dissenters do not pretend to find Scripture precedent or precept for all their usages, any further than as those usages are involved in and deduced from general principles, or are necessary to carry them into effect. Some things, such, for instance, as the frequency and order of our public services on the Sabbath, are admitted by them to be truly indifferent; but then they are matters not considered essential to religious actions, nor imposed upon others as terms of communion. ‘The proposition that everything relating to the worship of God which is not commanded or implied in a command is forbidden, presents, when rightly understood, the only satisfactory conclusion on which we can rest. As those co-necessary, natural cii-cumstances which adhere to every action are virtually comprehended in the precept which is the basis of the instituted duty; so whatever circumstances, considered strictly as means of discharging what is positively enjoined, conduce to the more decent and impressive performance of the duty, are strictly consonant with the Divine command, are permissively, although not specifically, involved in it. On the contrary, whatever does not partake of the strictly subordinate character of means, or if the term may be allow-ed, does not come under the description of modal circumstances of obedience — whatever is added as a moral or religious circumstance, with a view of constituting the action more efiicient or more acceptable to the Lord of worship, is to be condemned as superstition.’ Thus far do Dissenters go in admitting things indifferent; but then it must be ever kept in view, that matters of acknowledged indifference are not terms of communion, nor considered to be essential to religious actions: for, to use the words of Stillingfleet, ’ what charter hath Christ given the Church, to bind up men more than Himself hath done 1 ‘And we may carry the question still further, and add, to bind up itself? From what has been said, it may be seen what is intended by the great fundamental principle of Dissent; I mean, the sufficiency and exclusive authority of the Scripture. This is so far suflacient, that nothing is gssential to the performance of mdividual or of social worship, which is not enjoined by express command, or implied in some precept, or set before us by example; and it is exclusively authoritative, inasmuch as nothing but what is so enjoined or implied can be lawfully taught by any human authority whatever. ‘It

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is our only rule, both in the sense of a law, and standard; a rule sufficient as opposed to all deficiency; exclusive as relates to the Divine authority from which it emanates: universal, as embracing all the principles of human actions, and ultimate, as admitting of no appeal. For all religious purposes it is literally the only rule, because the Divine command constitutes the only reason, as well as the only law of religious actions; and there can therefore be no scope for other rules, except -ttdth regard to the mere outward circumstantials of religious duties, which do not come within the obligations of any law.’”

The Eeviewer had also demurred to Mr James’s definition of the word “church.” In his “Church Fellowship” he had affirmed that in the New Testament this word has only two senses: “In some passages of Scripture it signifies the aggregate of the people of God of every age and nation, the whole company of the redeemed; and in others it means a single congregation, associated in the bonds of Christian fellowship, and accustomed to assemble for religious worship in one place.”*

“The Eeviewer thinks that he has found no less than five different meanings of this term, and having enumerated them remarks, — ‘Our

* It is only right to add, that Independents would not unanimously accept the argument of this passage; many would agree with the following paragraph from Dr Davidson’s “Congregational Lectures:” —

“The usage of Congregational Independents is also exceptionable in regard to this point; but our business is to elucidate principles, not to defend prevailing practices. They are right in maintaining that all the believers in Jerusalem, the (KKKrjaia, met together habitually under the government and instruction of various elders; but are wrong in splitting up what ought to be one church, the company of believers in modern towns, into several churches, each with its own pastor, which ill their independent individuality are patches and shreds, often incapable of a right self-government, because they have lost sight of the unity and kind of government existing in the earliest churches.

“By so doing they have thrown away much of their strength, and what is more, their views have been narrowed.

“Every man thinking, moving, and acting in the midst of his little society becomes contracted in his ideas of men and things. It is very difficult for him to avoid being sectarian, selfish, unsocial in spirit, because his sphere is so narrow. Comprehensive and liberal views of Chi istianity are not readdy nurtm-ed in the small canton which the preacher looks on as peculiarly his own.

“All Christians in a town or city shouftl be one church, having several teachers and rulers in common, as vi-as the case in Jerusalem. There are no peculiar circumstances sufficient to justify their separate, self-governing association in the present day, except the absolute impossibility of obtaining a place sufficiently large to accommodate all, and capable of being filled with the human voice. The entire readers may now decide whether the word has never more than two significations, and whether Mr James be a fit person to quote and interpret Scripture.’ A few paragraphs will indeed decide this matter. I shall consider my opponent’s five meanings of the word, though not exactly in the order in which he has arranged them.

“1. ‘The word signifies all the people of God, of all climes and ages, from the beginning to the end of the world.’

“In this view of the term we are agreed.

“2. ‘It signifies the faithfvd Christians of some one district or pro- ldnce.’ ‘The church of the Thessalonians,’ (2 Thess. i. 1.) ‘Ye PhiUppians, know also that no church communicated with me but ye only,’ (Phil. iv. 15.) I am surprised that it should have escaped the Reviewer’s recollection, for he certauily could not be ignorant of the fact, that Thessalonica and PhiHppi were cities, and neither districts nor provinces. His second meaning of the term, then, as signifying a district or provincial church, must be given up, as contrary to the passages he quotes.

“3. ‘The governors of the church.” TeU it to the church,’ (Matt, xviii. 17.) But this is an obvious begging of the question. By what argument can it be proved that the church means the governors of the church 1 He has yet to prove his assertion from Scripture. We might as well contend that a nation means the governors of the nation; that when the English nation, for instance, is spoken of, it means the parliament. This signification must therefore be abandoned.

“4. ‘The Christians of one family, who with a few other Christians were wont to meet with God in a house.” The church in their house,’ (Rom. xvi. 5.) There are other instances of a church in a house, (1 Cor. xvi. 19, &c.)

“Mr Scott, in his Commentary, has given a very probable meaning of the expression, ’ a church in a house.” The family of Aixhippus was so pious and well regulated, that it was in some sense a Christian church.’ The term in these cases is used figuratively, and not to be taken in its literal import. Or if, as the Reviewer observes, other Christians were united with the family, although this is assumed without being proved, then the company thus associated celebrated all Divine ordinances in a stated and regular manner in the house where they met; and these are instances directly and powerfully in support

church should always meet in one place for worship and ordinances, while congregations, for the purpose of bringing sinners under the power of the gospel and adding them to the church, might, at the same time, be regularly gathered. The preaching of the AVord might be conducted in many places; but the peculiar privileges of Christian assemblies composed of believers should be enjoyed together.” — Pp. 96, 97.

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of my view of the term, as meamiig a company of beKevers assembling in one place. But, then, it is contended, that if this be correct, it overthrows my position that the word is never employed to comprehend more congregations than one. PriscUla and Aquila, it is said, dwelt at Rome, and had a church in their house. Now, unless all the Christians of Rome met in the house of this pious couple, there must have been at least two congregations in that city. Well, admitting that there were, which probably there might have been, how does this prove the point, unless it can be shewn, which I defy the Keviewer to do, that all the Christians at Home are ever called a church? No, they are called ’ saints,’ * beloved of God,’ &c., but not a church. Aquila and Priscilla had also, says my opponent, a church in their house at Ephesus, (1 Cor. xvi. 19;) and as we cannot suppose that the whole body of the Ephesians were assembled under their roof, and yet the believers in that city are addressed in the book of the Revelation as one church, the term means sometimes more congregations than one. This by no means follows, since the Apocalypse was written forty years after the first Epistle to the Corinthians — in all probability, long after the church had ceased to exist in the house of Aquila and Priscilla, who appear to have spent a very migratoiy kind of life. The church in their house may have been the embryo of that larger one which forty years after ceased to assemble under their roof, either because they were dead or had removed, or because their house was too small. This supposition is surely more consistent than to suppose that the comparatively little company still met at Aquila’s house. My opponent is visibly hard driven, when he assumes the continued existence of this independent society in a private habitation, after the establishment of the much larger society to which the Apocalypse alludes. He must be fond of schism, indeed, and suppose the early believers so too, to make two separate communities at Ephesus, and the one so inconsiderable that its numbers can scarcely be supposed to have incommoded the other. But perhaps it will be said, that from the account furnished by the Acts of the Apostles, of Paul’s extraordinary success at Ephesus, it cannot be thought that the whole body of believers could assemble in a private house, and hence there must have been two or more churches simultaneously existing in that city. What then 1 Suppose there were j though this cannot be proved, inasmuch as we know not the dimensions of Aquila’s house, which, for aught we can tell, might have had an outbuilding large enough to contain all that really embraced Christianity and held it fast; but admitting that there were two churches in Ephesus at the time the apostle speaks of the church in Aquila’s house, this does not prove the point that the word is used in this case to signify more congregations than one, as the expression ‘The church at Epliesus,’ is used nowhere else in the New Testament besides the Apocalj-pse. The point to be proved is the simultaneous existence of two or more separate societies of Christians, which are addressed in the singular number, as the Church; tUl this is done, the argument of the Reviewer is obviously invalid. The other instances advanced by my opponent may be disposed of no less easily and satisfactorily.

“5. ‘The word means a number of believers called by Divine gi-ace out of the world, and worshipping God in one place.” The church at Jerusalem,’ (Acts viiL 1.) Now, this -^-iew of the term would seem to accord with that which is taken by myself and all Protestant Dissenters of the Independent denomination; and if by the word ‘place’ in this sentence were meant the building in which the believers assembled, and not the city in which they dwelt, the accordance would be real; but the subsequent reasoning of the Reviewer, in reference to the church at Jerusalem, plainly shews that he applies the word ’ place ’ in the latter sense. We are asked, ‘Was there only one congregation of Christians at Jerusalem? — what! when three thousand were added to the church at one time; and when it is said in another place, “Thou see.st, brother, how many myriads” (for so I admit the word signifies) “of Jews there are which believe 1” (Acts xxi. 20.) ‘I will first give Doddridge’s comment on this last passage, and then make some general remarks on the case of the church at Jerusalem. ‘I do not apprehend,’ says that erpositor, ’ that it can be certainly argued from hence, that there were more than thirty, or even twenty thousand Je-nish believers now present at Jerusalem — for the word (mjTiads) may only in general denote a great number; but it is certain that the greater part of them were not stated inhabitants of Jerusalem, but only ^a.sited it on occasion of the great festival, (compare ver. 27;) so that no certam argument can be deduced from hence, as to the plurality of congxegatious supposed to have been now under the care of the bishop of Jerusalem.’ Besides, I remark, it matters not what the numbers were, since it is said in the next verse but one, ‘What is it therefore? The multitude must needs come together, for they wUl hear that thou art come.’ Here it is necessarily implied, that notwithstanding their great number, they did congregate, did meet together for conference and instruction. If it be asked, where? I reply, in the court and precincts of the temple, for we are informed this was their practice from the beginning; ‘They, continuing daily with one accord in the temple;” and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch;” and daily in the temple they ceased not to teach;” then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them;” and when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church; — then all the multitude kept sUence.’ We may not know how such a multitude could conveniently assemble and con-M

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAMES.

duct worsMp, nor is it our business to explain the matter; we have only to prove the fact that they did assemble, and this fact is repeated in the Acts of the Apostles with a frequency which puts the case beyond all doubt. The church of Jerusalem was one church, and as such they were in the habit of assembling in one place.

“Where now are the Reviewer’siie significations of the word church] Not, I think in the New Testament. But had he even proved his point, it may be asked if among these five significations he can find the prototy]3e of his own church. He has given us a church in a house — a church in a city — a church of governors — a church in a district — a church in heaven and earth; but has he found a church established by, and united with, the secular governments of this world 1 Even had he overthrown my position, he has not proved the scriptural authority of his own system. He has not contributed one other sense of the word church. We cannot yet find a national church — nor a provincial church — nor a church extending beyond a single convenable society.”

In the chapter on Church Officers, he tluis replies to the argument of Lis Reviewer founded on Scripture for the superiority of a bishop to a presbyter: —

“But in what part of the Scriptures is this superiority discovered? In the following: ‘For this cause I left thee in Crete, that thou should set in order things that are wanting, [ra Xs/Voi/ra, things left undone,] and OEDAiN ELDEES in every city as I had appointed thee,’

(Titus i. 5.) ‘I besought thee still to abide at Ephesus, (where were many presbyters,) that thou charge some that they preach no other doctrine ‘rraeayyuXrii riai fj-ri iTio5i5aapiaX(iii: admonere quosdam ne doctrinam alienam a vera et pura rehgione Christiana ab apostohs tradita invcherent. Schleusner. (1 Tim. i. 3, andvi. 3.) ‘Against a presbyter receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses,’ (1 Tim. V. 19.) ‘If then to order things left undone; if to ordain presbyters in every citij; if to charge presbyters to preach sound doctrine; if to receive accusations against presbyters; — if all this does not prove that a bishop is superior to presbyters, we know not by what facts superiority can be proved, nor in what language superiority can be expressed.’

“Can the Reviewer be in earnest when he talks of this as most clearly proving from the Scriptures the superiority of the Episcopal to the Presbyterian office 1 We may be sure that this is all that he can find to support his position; but whether it most clearly proves his point, let any candid reader judge. How does it prove the point? This is not stated, but I presume the force of proof Mes in this: Timothy was a bishop, and ordained elders, and as the ordainer is superior to the ordained, therefore a bishop is superior to a presbyter. But this is assumption — assumption all, and not most clear proof. It is assumed, but not proved, that Timothy and Titus were bishops, in the usual scriptural sense of the term; their mission was clearly of an extraordinary nature, and bad little in common with the pastoral and episcopal office. Again, it is assumed, that ordination necessarily infers superiority of office in him who performs it. Is this the case in the Church of England? Virtually, the king ordains all the bishops and archbishops, — nominally the dean and chapter elect, — and ceremonially bishops ordain bishops. If the two archbishops deceased together, who would consecrate their successors Let my friend’s argument be resorted to for a solution of the difficulty, or rather the circle of difficulties, with which he is now* encompassed. Will he still maintain that the ordainer is necessarily superior to the ordained % ‘ATiy,’ says Milton, ’ should the performance of ordination, which is a lower office, exalt a prelate? Yerily neither the nature nor example of ordination doth any way reqiure an imparity of character between the ordainer and the ordained; for what more natural than every Like to produce his like, man to beget man, fire to propagate fire; and in example of highest opinion, the ordauier is inferior to the ordained; for the pope is not made by the precedent pope, but by cardinals, who ordain and consecrate to a higher and greater office than their own.’ But I refer to better authority than the practice of the Vatican, I mean the practice of the apostles. If Timothy was a bishop, then he was ordained by inferiors, for he was ’ set apart by the laying on of the hands of the presbyteiy.’ Paul an apostle, and Barnabas, were ordained to a special mission, by the prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch. * And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away,’ (Acts xdii 3.)”

His special objections (Chap. IV.) to the Church of England are, that she teaches that chUdren are regenerated by baptism; that her bishops have the power of conferring the Holy Ghost in the ordination of her ministers; that her priests have power to forgive sins; that all who die go to heaven, whatever their previous character. Moreover, “the Church of England uses liturgical forms, which we deem less edifying than extempore prayer; and her Liturgy abounds with vain repetitious.” In his “Church Fellowship “he had said, that “the Church teaches that her bishops have the power of conferring the Holy Ghost in the confirmation of the young this he retracts as an inadvertence.

The objection to the Burial Service is thus developed: —

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAMES.

“The question to be settled is this: — Is the burial service so framed as to pronounce upon the eternal state of all who are interred, and does it pronounce that they all go to heaven? This can be decided by a reference to the Prayer-book. We find there the following expressions: — ‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we commit his body to the ground, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.’ It is said by those who defend the Prayer-book, that the words are not in sure and certain hope of Ids resurrection to life eternal, who has been buried, but of the resurrection generally. But let any man of candour say whether the latter part of the paragraph is not connected with the former, and whether it is not intended to apply to the individual whose body has been committed to the grave. Why should it not 1 If God has in great mercy taken his soul to Himself, it is a matter of inevitable consequence that his body will obtain a resurrection to eternal life. We find also the following expressions: —” We give Thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this OVR BROTHER out of the miseries of this sinful world; we meekly beseech Thee, 0 Father, to raise us from a death of sin to a life of righteousness, that when we shall depart this life we may rest in Ilim, as our hope is this our brother doth.’ Now, in all this there is a mode of speaking which leads, so far as this service goes, to the conclusion, that all who die go to heaven, whatever their previous character might have been. I do not say the Church of England teaches this anywhere else, or teaches it here in so many words; but that the service is so framed as naturally to lead to this conclusion. I speak of the impression in toto, of the construction which every hearer naturally puts; not of the absence of a pronoun, but of the sentiment of the whole service respecting the buried person. Do not the relatives of the deceased feel persuaded that the clergyman has pronounced their departed friend to be a Christian; and consoled them with the assurance that he has gone to heaven, and that they will meet him at the resurrection of the just 1 I again say, make the experiment, ask the people whether this is not their view of the meaning of the service. There are but three cases in which the church refuses this solemn service of burial; viz., to those who die unbaptized, to seK-murderers, and to those who are under the sentence of the greater excommunication. To all others, let them die in what circumstances they may, the sixty-eighth canon commands the clergyman, under pain of suspension, to grant the right of sepidture and the office of burial. They may have died in a duel, or a pugilistic contest, or in a brothel, or in a drunken fit at an alehouse; — over every one of these the Church orders the clergyman to say, that ‘Almighty God of His great mercy has taken to Himself the soul of this his brother,’ and ’ to give God hearty thanks, that it hath pleased Him to deliver him out of the miseries of this sinful world; ’ and to pray, ’ that the spectators of the funeral, when they shall depart, may rest in Christ, as their hope is their deceased brother doth.’ And what is still more strange, the same man on whom the church pronounces eternal damnation while hing for not believing the Athanasian creed, she declares to be safe when he dies, although his last breath should have been a declaration of Arian or Socinian sentiments. Now, does not all this, in effect, teach the unreflecting multitude- that all men go to heaven, whatever may have been their previous character 1 To what conclusion will the great mass come who attend such a service 1 They know the life

of the individual who has been interred, if the clergyman does not; they in many instances know his dark and vicious career, and have seen him go out of life without a single mark of piety; and yet they have heard the Church, through the medium of her minister, pronounce him to be safe in heaven. Multitudes of the spectators of funerals, in consequence of their neglect of public worship, hear no other office of the Church but the matiimonial and the burial services; and therefore are out of the way of those wholesome instructions and checks to delusion which other offices of the Church supply.”

He thus concludes his indictment against the Prayer-book: —

“Such are some of the grounds on which, in reference to the Prayer-book, Dissenters secede from the Estabhshed Church. — It is well kno%vn that every clergj-man is required, before he is admitted to a benefice, to declare, exanimo, his belief ’ that the Book of Common Prayer containeth in it nothing contrary to the Word of God; and at the same time to declare his unfeigned assent and consent to everything contained therein.’ Some have argued that this unfeigned assent and consent which the Act of Uniformity requires, relate only to the use of the things prescribed, and not to the inward and entire approbation of them. That this, however, is incorrect, is shewn not only from the language of the Act, ’ unfeigned assent and consent,’ but also from the decision of the legislature itself; for on the final settlement, the year after the Act passed, an attempt was made to give this latitudinarian intei-pretation of the clause, but the effort faded, and the sense of the legislature was declared to be that unfeigned assent and consent relates not only to the use, but to the inward and entire approbation of whatever is contained and prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer.

“The objectionable parts of this book, and its imposition by human authority, formed originally almost the exclusive ground of Nonconformity. The great body of the two thousand holy men who were then thrust out of the Church of England had no objection to an alliance of

LIFE OF JODN ANGELL JAMES.

the Church with the State, provided they were allowed to exercise their own choice in the mode of conducting public worship. But so objectionable did the Book of Common-prayer appear to them, at least to those of them who had an opportunity of reading it before the time prescribed for their signing, that rather than forswear themselves by subscribing to that which they could not approve, they resigned their livings, and cast themselves upon Providence for their support. That which with some Dissenters constitutes the weakest ground of secession, was with them almost the exclusive one. They became outcasts, exiles, and prisoners; and exposed themselves to all kinds of sufl’eiings, and mockeries, and losses, rather than give their assent to that which they did not believe. They consulted not with flesh and blood; they hearkened to no such reasoning as that in quitting the Established Church they were putting a stop to their own usefulness, and extinguishing so many lamps of the sanctuary which were throwing their light upon the moral darkness of the land. They were mighty men, whose talents, equalled by their piety, would have adorned any communion; and while the Dissenters can mention the names of Owen, Baxter, Howe, and Bates, with many others, they need not fear the reproaches which may be cast on them by ignorance or prejudice.”

The fifth chapter is on the present condition of the Church of England as described in the recently published works of several of her pious clergy. Its severity is tempered by genuine sorrow that such great evils should exist in a Christian community, but will probably startle those who are unfamiliar with the literature of the Dissenting controversy; and it should be remembered that, while some of the evils are inseparable from the system, a remarkable change has taken place in the internal condition of the Church of England since 1830 — a change to be traced to the rapid growth of the Evangelical party, on the one hand, and to the religious earnestness of the Anglo-Catholic party, on the other; their combined power has almost cleared the Church of those ministers whose negligence and vices were so manifest a disgrace. The terrible exposure in pamphlets, reviews, and speeches in Parliament of ecclesiastical abuses, must also have contributed to the happy change.

The chapter is principally composed of extracts from publications by clergymen of the English Church. It commences thus: — “I come now to that portion of the Reviewer’s remarks which is designed to give, from my own concessions, a frightful and revolting picture of the evils of Dissent. These evUs are classed under seven divisions, and are intended to produce an impression to the disadvantage of Nonconformity. I shall not stop now to inquire into the fairness of so representing exceptions as to convey the idea that they form the general rule, but go on to lay before my readers an expose of the state of the Establishment, which has been drawn up by some of its most devoted supporters, and which therefore is furnished by men of whose competency and motives there can exist no doubt. The)/ at least cannot be suspected of bearing false witness against the Church; their testimony AviU be read without the suspicion usually awakened by the deposition of an interested or irritated foe. To this part of my pamphlet I feel pecuUarly anxious to draw the attention of my readers, whether they are Churchmen or Dissenters; that the latter may learn fi’om the writings of Episcopalians how strong are the reasons of Nonconformity; and the former be stirred up to seek with unwearied, imdiscouraged zeal, the removal of evils so flagrant and afflictive. As it regards my own feelings on this melancholy subject, I can truly aver, that although no degree of reformation could reconcile me to a Church which leans for support on the arm of secular power; although in all probability such a reformation would remove the objections of many Dissenters, and draw them back into the communion of the Church, and thus weaken the cause of Nonconformity; yet I should most truly rejoice m the removal of those abuses, which not only strengthen the grounds of Dissent, but are a grief to many pious and zealous Churchmen. I should haU the day when the Episcopacy would shine forth with a radiance as pure and bright as such a system admits of; when these impediments to its usefidness would be taken out of its path, and its career rendered as illustrious and successful in the spread of true religion as the most devoted of its friends could desire. I trust that without hy[)ocrisy or ostentation I may lay claim to that charity which ’ rejoiceth not in iniquity,’ but rejoiceth in the truth; and though I cannot coniform to the Church, I feel that it woidd be no inconsistency to say that I should at all times feel willing to join in efforts to j-rform it.”

The evidence is summed up in the following paragraphs: —

“Such is the picture of the Church of England as it now exists, drawn by the faithfid pens of some of her own clergy; for who else could or would have drawn it so accurately? They surpass all that has ever proceeded from the Dissenters, and more than justify our secession. Deeply must it be deplored by every friend of pure and undefiled religion, whatever be his denomination, that so much evil should be allowed to exist under the sanction of the Christian name. Eecoiling with disgust and horror as Dissenters do from all association with infidels in their attacks upon the institutions of the country, whether civil or sacred, and refusing the most distant help from such auxiliaries in their contest with the Church, they cannot but bewail the occasion of boasting which these things afford to their common enemy. Yet what an inference in their own favour may Dissenters di’aw from such statements and confessions!

“If there be vestiges of Popery in the Church of England, — if there be a want of due administration of the supreme presiding power, — if the legislatorial jurisdiction be exercised by men whose want of reflection renders them incompetent for the task, — if the appointment of the bishops be generally a matter of mere secular policy and cabinet influence, without regard to spiritual qualifications, — if the revenues of the cathedrals be lavished to aggrandise the pride and pamper the luxury of the richest and best-provided members of the clerical profession, — if the archdeacons cannot dischai’ge their duties -without exposing themselves to derision, — if the greater portion of the clergy are ignorant, or worldly-minded, or profligate, or incompetent, and this be the result of the easy access to holy orders, — if pluralities and non-residence be so common that a large portion of the clergy perform their duties by proxy, and thus occasion a mass of perjury to be committed, — if churchwardens also are continually guilty of this awful crime, — if there be this malignant and rancorous hostility carried on against the evangelical portion of the clergy, and such hindrances thrown in the way of their usefulness, — if the system of tithes be productive of so much altercation, — if the patronage of the Church be so incurably corrupt, — if the creeds, catechisms, and articles be all declared defective, and in some things obscure and seemingly contradictory, — if the Apocrypha be read as the lessons of the Church, and ’ nauseous gabble ’ be substituted for Holy Scripture, — if the absolution in the visitation of the sick have fallen in many cases into desuetude, because it claims a power which the clergy tremble to use, — if the oflice for the burial of the dead is a burden to the conscience of a great portion of the clergy, — if the rubrics are vagme, defective, and contradictory, — if the arts of evasion and sophistry have never been more notoriously developed than in attempts to explain away the strictness of subscription to the articles, liturgy, and homilies, — and if there be no hope of such evils beiitg removed, — and if these evils and the hopelessness of any remedy being applied to remove them be acknowledged by the clergy and laity of the Church of England themselves, — then let them not wonder that there are men whose minds are too enh’ghtened and their con-COXTROVEESy.

science too tender to subscribe, as every beneficed clergyman must, and every unbeneficed one does in efi’ect, in the face of such things, their unfeigned assent and consent to everything contained in the Book of Common-prayer; nor let them wonder that such men should secede from a communion in which the members and friends of it themselves profess to see so many corruptions: and especially let them abstain from reproaching them as restless, discontented, and factious schismatics, who have neither ground nor defence for their separation. We find many of our reasons of dissent stated in the works from which I have made such large extracts; and we find them stated there ^“ith a force and boldness of language which we ourselves should certainly have scrupled to employ. We measure not other men’s judgments and consciences by om* own; which, however, cannot certainly be condemned as remarkably squeamish or fastidious, merely because they cannot be reconciled to a system which some of its most pious supporters confess is disfigured by so many blemishes and tainted with so much cormp-Mon. But even were these blemishes removed, and this inherent corruption expurgated, which we have the authority of EpiscopaUau writers for believing never will be done; were the Church of England as much reformed as its most holy and zealous friends could wish; were its Liturgy revised, and the defects of its creeds and catechisms supplied, and all that is objectionable in its offices taken away; — still the intelligent and consistent Dissenter could not be conciliated and drawn back to its communion: for his objection lies not merely against the contents of its Prayer-book, but against its verj- constitution a-s a Church established by law, allied to and supported by the secular power. Of union there is therefore no hope. The Church must alter its fonn as well as its formularies, or we must abandon our convictions. One party must yield not merely its prejudices but its principles, before a coalition can be formed: this is not to be looked for, and therefore instead of seeking after uniformity, which neither legal restraint nor angry controversies can ever be expected to produce, let us now endeavour to obtain that unity of spirit, which is a thousand times more to be coveted than a mere outward and heartless agreement, and which will throw a brighter lustre over the Christian cause, by the very consideration that it has force enough to resist the damping influence of different sentiments and separate communions.”

In reference to the evils which are to be foxmd in the Church of England, and among Dissenters, as acknowledged by both parties, he says: —

“First. — The evils which I have confessed are to be found in Dissenting

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAMES,

Churches, are exceptions from the rule by which their general state is to he judged of, and not the rule itself.

“Instances are to be found — and taking them in the aggregate, not a few — which answer to the portraiture in my volume; but no one acquainted with our condition will believe that this is the usual posture of our affairs, or the general aspect of Nonconformity. To select from my book everything that was said in the frankness of candour, to tear such passages from their context, to detach them from their scope and design, and then to hold up this collation of facts as a fair specimen of the general state of the whole body to which they refer, is not very 1 lir in the way of argument, nor very honourable in the way of charity. Would it be fair to estimate the moral character of Ireland by the scenes of St Giles’s in our metropolis, or that of England by the assize calendar and the state of our prisons, or the morals of our nobility or gentry by the instances of profligacy which are admitted to exist, and that not unfrequently, in the higher circles; or the state of health in our towns by the casualties and diseases which are to be found in our hospitals? Yet this may be done as fairly as to represent the practical abuses of Dissenting principles as the usual condition of JSTonconformity. Perhaps we could not find half-a-dozen congregations of my own denomination in the three midland counties at this moment, but what are in a state of profound tranquillity; the ministers living in harmony with their flocks, and their flocks living in harmony among themselves. Yet if half-a-dozen could be found, these would constitute a number suflflciently large to justify the use of the language of lamentation, rebuke, and strong representation on the part of a writer who was laying the sins and duties of church members before them.

“Can these same remarks be applied to the evils admitted to exist in the Church of England 1 The evils, for example, of patronage, pluralities, non-residence; the secular influence of the crown or cabinet in the appointment of the prelates, or the spiritual quahfications of the clergy. I ask, if, according to the statements of Episcopalian writers, the evil is not the rule, and the good the exception 1 I appeal to the pages of the authors whose language I have quoted for an answer to this question. What can be meant by such an ominous title as ‘The Church of England in Danger from ItseK,’ but an admission that the practical abuses are predominating above the practical benefits? And is not the title borne out by the allegations of the volume? Will the Reviewer deny that there is a much smaller number of bishops elevated to the bench for their spuitual fitness and truly apostoUcal quahfications, than by mere cabinet or aristocratic influence, without any regard to distinguished personal holiness, or even hterature 1 And as to the inferior clergy, are the religious motives by which they are led to select their profession the rule, or the exception 1 Is eminent piety, as a ground of presentation to a benefice and a means of preferment, the rule, or the exception 1 Are pluralities for the higher classes of the clergy the rule, or the exception 1 The Church writers alluded to so frequently boldly admit that evil is in these things the usual practice, and good the deviation. And as to the Prayer-book itself, it would be almost difBcult to decide, Mr Eiland himself being judge, whether its excellencies or its blemishes predominate.

“Secondly. — The evils wldch I have admitted as exiating amongst Dissenters are in ourselves, and not in our ecclesiastical opinions; while the evils existing in the Church of England are inherent in the system.

“So variously constituted are men’s mental optics, and in such different hghts do they contemplate the same objects, that my opponent contends for the very opposite of this proposition, and says that the evils of our system are inherent, whUe those of his own Church are extraneous to it. Let us examine this point. One class of evils which he charges upon us — or to put it with all possible fairness, which he says I admit — is composed of those ordinary frailties of our nature and sins of human conduct which are utterly irrespective of all systems of church-government whatever; such, for instance, as pride, irascibility, tattling, backbiting, mischief-making, violations of the Sabbath by travelling, feasting, vain conversation, &c. &c. That such things really do exist among us it were idle and untrue to deny; for in what community do they not exist? And to rebuke them was very proper in one who, like myself, was pointing out the duties and exposing the misconduct of professing Christians. But what will be said of the candour of a writer who would glean all such passages, put them together, and hold them up as a part of a picture of Dissent — as, in fact, its personification 1 Did he not blush over his own sentences, or write them with a faltering hand 1 Such efforts may serve the purposes of a party, but not the cause of trutk And, then, as to the evils which more immediately connect themselves iciih the operations of Dissenting principles, we may affirm that they are more, far more, in ourselves than in our system. What are these evils 1 Collision of opinion on important matters, and that conflict of feeling which is its too frequent and its somewhat natural result; a desire after pre-eminence; a love of dictation; a want of just subordination; — these are the causes, i. e., the operations of the depravity of our nature which agitate our churches and bring in di%dsions amongst us, while our principles and practices as Dissenters are but the occasions of such abuses. The same evils exist in every association of human counsel and energy and operation. They are to be seen in every society, in every committee of a civil and secular nature. It is in human nature to be proud,

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAMES.

selfish, domineering; and as the members of a Christian church are still imperfect, it is not to be wondered at that these signs and operations of imperfection should be exhibited by them in their ecclesiastical capacity and relation to each other. But it would be as fair to trace up the bribery and corruption practised at our elections to the representative system, or all the jobs and tricks and unconstitutional influence sometimes practised by a corrupt administration to the sj’stera of monarchy and royal prerogative, as the evils of Dissenters to Nonconformist principles. That our principles give occasion to such things, in consequence of our imperfect nature, is very true. But they are not the cause of them. The gospel itself is exposed in all its great doctrines to a similar abuse. It is especially worthy of remark, as strikingly confirmatory of the scriptural support of our system, that the churches planted by the apostles, and addressed by them in their inspired letters, are supposed to be saints, — men acknowledging the authority of Christ and professedly governed by His laws, men with whom humility and love and meekness are cardinal virtues. For such men the system of union, upon the ground of voluntary consent, seems eminently adapted; it gives an opportunity for the operation and exhibition of their appropriate graces, and under the influence of these graces would be productive of nothing but good. The election of our pastors and deacons by the people, and the admission of the people by each other, seem to be things so rational in themselves, and so easily managed upon the acknowledged principles of the Christian character, that they are not to be surrendered because of the abuses to which they are incident by the imperfection of our nature. And as the evil is in us, but not in our system, our great business is to improve our own hearts; which, were it done more perfectly than it is in the management of our church afifairs, would immediately deprive Dissent of that which invests it with so much deformity in the eyes of its enemies. Wc do not pretend that our system is absolutely perfect; but we contend that most of the obloquy with which it has been loaded belongs to human nature, and is to be added to the melancholy proofs of human depravity.

“Examine now the evils of the Church of England. And what, by the confession of its candid, pious, and enhghtened friends, are these evils 1 Patronage is admitted by them all to be the great corruption: that which extends its polluting influence from the head to the remotest extremity; which corrupts it in mass and in detail. It is the caput mortuum of the ecclesiastical body into which all subsides. But will any one contend that this is extraneous? I ask if a State Church ca-r ever be separate and secure from State influence 1 Supported by tb power and fostered by the bounties of the State, it will ever, and naturally enough, both from principles of policy and feelings of gratitude, jdeld itself, more or less, to that v?liicli creates and sustains it. As long as the king is the head of the Church — and this must be as long as the Church alliance remains — the whole hierarchy must be a ’ compact and united form, composing a chain of various links which hang suspended from the throne.’ How much, then, depends, in this view of the case, upon the moral and spiritual qualities of that royal mind with which rests the appointment of the primate and all the prelates! But, in fact, it does not depend on him; for the mainspring of the EngUsh Church is in the cabinet, and the disposal of the higher offices is as much, and as certainly, the result of cabinet discussion, or the effect of ministerial influence, as the disposal of offices in the army and navy. If half the bench were to be desolated by death the next year, who would deny that the hero of Waterloo, were he still premier, would have the destinies, for the time being, of the Church of England in his hand? Nothing less than a divorce of the Church from the State could alter this state of things, or prevent the ecclesiastical system from being an engine of the secular power. The weaker party must ever be subservient to the stronger. The Church has lost the only shadow of independence it ever had, by the reduction of its convocation to a mere name and a mockery. And then go to the inferior clergy. Is not the patronage of almost all the livings in the kingdom in hands which nothing less than a miracle can render fit to employ it wdth spiritual advantage to the Church 1 About five thousand of these, as I have already remarked — that is, about half — are in the gift of the nobihty and gentry of the country, who, of course, look to them as a means of providing for their younger sons, rewarding their friends and favourites, or improldng their own means by the sale of advowsons. Thus, full half of the livings of the Church are at this moment interwoven with the private property of the country; and together with the congregations and cure of souls with which they are connected, may be put up at any time to auction, and sold, with the immortal interests involved in them, to the highest bidder. Is this, or is it not an evil? If so, is it inherent, or extraneous? It is so inherent, I will affirm, that by nothing short of a revolution, which no Churchman could contemplate without horror, could it be removed. It -^Cill not do to say, in reply to all this, that the Church could exist, even if these things were altered; for we are not now speaking of such a church establishment as we could frame for Utopia, but of such an one as does now exist in this country, and we are speaking of that as it is, with all the abuses which its best friends must know to be remediless. The alliance with the State is the great evil, and the proHfic source of many others, and which, as long as it remains, must inevitably corrupt it as a system of religious instruction, and

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAJIES.

render it to a considerable extent an engine of secular policy. In spite of all these evils so justly complained of, its pious clergy, holier and more efficient than their system, may do immense good, as is eminently the case in the present day: but the evils themselves must remain, for they are inherent and inseparable; they are a disease in the ecclesiastical body, which no medicaments can reach, no skill can eradicate; which must continue to fester and burn thi-ough the frame, impairing its health, and enervating its strength; and in reference to which, its more enlightened and candid friends must admit that the only hope they have is, that the stimulus supplied by the present accession of evangelical ministers will invigorate its constitution, form a moral antiseptic to resist the progress of decay, and still enable it to continue a little longer a blessing to the land. But in the meantime let them turn their attention to the diseased system they are prolonging, the immense good they are preventing, and the boundless evils which they are upholding and promoting.”

He also maintains that while the evils connected with Dissent are extraneous, its benefits are inherent; and that the very opposite is the case in the Church of England, as admitted by her own writers: that the abuses of Dissent are strikingly analogous to the irregularities and disorders which existed in the apostolical churches, and which are mentioned so frequently and with such minuteness of detail in the epistles of St Paul: that the abuses connected with the principles and practice of Nonconformity admit of easy correction, reformation, and removal; but that the abuses of the Church of England are almost beyond the reach of reform.

“As our evils are manifestly those of our nature, rather than of our system, we have only to begin a work of personal reformation, which is always within our reach, and by the aid of Divine grace is always attainable by our .efforts. We need tarry for no decrees of ecclesiastical courts, for no acts of parliament, for no orders of the king in council The gospel method and ours is a self-adjusting apparatus; easily reparable, because so simple — fitted to all cu-cumstances, all times, and all places. It never becomes absolute or powerless. We have in the New Testament an infallible rule, very near at hand, by which to conduct the business of improvement; and in the authority of Jesus Christ we have a tribunal which is final and decisive. Here is bahn for our wounded churches, and a Physician to apply it. We need no foreign power, which in all cases is itself tardy, faUible, and corrupt; we have only to ask, ‘What saith the Lord?’ and then, after receiving the response of the oracle, to apply the remedy. Our general system may not be so absolutely perfect, but the fault lies more in the irregular action or flaws of particular parts, than in any derangement or bad construction of the whole machine. AVhen evils do arise and operate for a wlule, they are generally removed in the end. In most instances, as is known to those who are at all conversant with Dissenting afl’airs, the causes which for a season have interrupted the harmony of particular churches, and produced collision of feeUng, have given way to the influence of time and Christian charity, and weeks or montks of agitation and discord have been succeeded by many years of the most delightful tranquillity and prosperity. Christian principle has recovered its elasticity; Ihe depressing and resisting force has been removed; and the church, taught by sad and humiliating experience -to be cautious, has remained both harmonious and happy.

“But are the abuses connected with the Establishment thus easily removed? The clergj-men who admit their existence are calling loudly for their removal Reform in the Church has become a topic of discussion, if not as extensive, yet as earnest, in the circle in which it is mooted, as reform in Parliament; and that circle is, of course, within the Church itself. It is from within the Establishment that these ominous sounds are heard, not from without. The books on Chiu-chreform have been published by clergymen themselves; who, while they admit the existence of evils so numerous and so flagrant, look round, after all, with a kind of hopeless though imploring cry for help: they know not to whom to apply for assistance, or in what way it is to be granted. Various remedies are suggested, and different plans of healing laid down: but their adoption is utterly hopeless; and if not, they would not meet the case.”

He is not, however, blind to the glories of the English ChurcL In his closing advice to Dissenters, he says: —

“In our conduct towards the Estallishment from icldch ive separate, let us cherish the influence and display the fruits of Christian charity. Let us not look at it with the jaundiced eye of prejudice, and profess to find in it nothing but one great mass of unmixed and unchecked corruption, which, diu-ing the progress of decay, is filling the atmosphere of religion with pestilential exhalations. That its constitution is unscriptural we believe; or why are we Dissenters? But with much to condemn in this ^’iew of it, we may in others find something to admire. Although its basis is unsound, its superstructure is magnificent. Its scriptural doctrines are the themes with which Luther and Cranmer and Cabin and Knox assailed the Papacy and efl’ected the Reformation; its dilines have covered its altars with works more precious than the

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JABIES.

finest gold of the ancient sanctuary of Israel; its literature is the boast and glory of the civilised world; its armoury is filled with the weapons of ethereal temper which its hosts have wielded, and with the spoils they have won in the conflict with iufideHty, Popery, and heresy; its niartyrology is emblazoned with names dear and sacred to every Protestant; and at the present moment are to be heard from many hundreds of its pulpits truths, at the sound of which, accompanied as they are by the hfe-giving power of the quickening Spirit, the dead in treslasses and sins are starting into life, and exhibiting a people made wOhng in the day of His power, which shall be as the dew of the morning. All this I for one most willingly concede, and only regret that so much excellence should be united with what I must be allowed to call, and Churchmen themselves have taught us to caU, so much corruption. And should the Church be destined to fall, may its humiliation never be effected by the rude hands of the sons of anarchy, nor by the violence of pohtical convulsion, nor by the confederacies of scheming speculators; but by the diffusion of those mild and holy principles of Christian truth, meekness, and love which shall conduct its members back to the simphcity of pentecostal times, when beUevers were united upon the ground of voluntary consent, and were of one mind and one heart; and may its requiem be sung, not by the voices and amidst the orgies of a -n-ide-spread and triumphant infideHty, but by a Christian nation, enhglitened to perceive by correct reasoning, and so far sanctified as to feel by satisfactory experience that the Bible, and the Bible alone, ■nithout the aid of the civil magistrate or the support of the secular arm, is sufficient to sustain the Church of Christ amidst all its difficulties, and to conduct it to final victory over all its foes. As Dissenters, we must be candid as well as conscientious. Let us avoid that bigotry in ourselves which we condemn in others; especially let us delight and bless God for the increasing piety of the Church of England, and feel it our duty as well as our happiness to enter into all those religious associations which the public institutions of the present day afford us for co-operation with those who differ from us on these minor points. Let us dissent only where we must, and unite where we can. Let us recognise piety wherever we find it, nor allow our principles as Dissenters to cliiU the ardour of our emotions as Christians. If we cannot have uniformity of order, let us have unity of spirit; and recollect that it is better to be of one heart, than even in all things to be of one mind.”

Finally, he appeals to the candour and good-will of Episcopalians: —

“As it respects the conduct of EpiscoiJidians towards Dissenters, we ask nothing but candour and good wilL We have suffered contumely, and hatred, and misrepresentation enough to provoke any degree of hostility, and exhaust any measure of charity, and these, not unfrequently, from individuals in whom such conduct was most imseemly, and least to have been expected. If we are occasionally betrayed into expressions of warmth and irritation, which will hardly bear the test of the high-toned morality of a religion that requires us to bless those that curse us, perhaps our excuse, if anything could excuse the least violation of Christian meekness, may easily be found in the pages of many wTiters, both clergymen and laymen, poetical and prosaic, who seem to regard it a proof of good churclunanship to insult and abuse the Dissenters. We sometimes smile at the harmless fulminations of ex cathedrd or ex rostro scorn and displeasure with which we are assailed; but they do not hurt us: amidst all we go on, and go on our way rejoicuig. Om- numbers ought to be sulEcient to protect us from contempt; and though excluded from the universities, and denied access to the national fountains of literature, by a bigoted and narrow-minded policy, and thus left to pro’ide as we can for the education of our ovax ministry, we have among us some, who, in the departments of BibUcal criticism, the Greek and Hebrew languages, systematic theology, and English literature, would be referred to as splendid ornaments of any church. At any rate there is one thing which entitles us to the gratitude and respect of all who prefer constitutional freedom to despotic authority: for David Hume himself, ’ a competent witness, if there ever was one, of political principles, and who was far from being partial to Dissenters, candidly confesses, that to them we are indebted for the preservation of hberty.’

“Desirous of living in the good-will of our neighbours, we ask for just so much esteem as our conduct entitles us to, and no more: and as to our principles, ihei, are matters between God and our souls, which we have placed in the sanctuary of olir heart, under the guardianship of our conscience, and allow no man to meddle with: which we love and value, notwithstanding the incidental evils with which it is our unhappiness to see them sometimes associated; which inspire us with no iU-will to those who differ from us, and disqualify us for none of the duties of social life, none of the operations that are carried on for the temporal or eternal welfare of mankind; which we pubhcly profess, and unblushingly avow, amidst the wonder of the ignorant, the suspicion of the crediilous, and the sneer of the scornful: which we have inherited from martyrs, and for which, shoidd God call us to the trial, we hope we should find grace to accept and wear the crown of martyrdom ourselves: but which we are ready, notwithstanding our present convictions and attachment, to surrender to any one who will prove N

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAMES.

them to be contrary to the Word of God. In ceasing to be Dissenters we should have no sacrifices to make, no persecution to endure, no cross to take up; these things lie all on the other side. Dissent, if it be a sin, is neither a courtly nor a gainful one. So far its motives are beyond suspicion. Our principles cost us much money and much respect, which we should save by entering within the pale of the EstabUshment: and at the same time we should lose the ungracious character of separatists, and get rid of the unmerited name of schismatics. We should, at any rate, try our fortune in the ’ lottery of ecclesiastical prizes,’ and the career of Church preferment. We are neither stoics nor ascetics; we do not profess to be in love with poverty and reproach, though quite willing to endure both for conscience’ sake. We are open to conviction, and will hearken to reason: but are never likely to be converted by the hectoring and contempt, the dogmatism and arrogance of either the evangelical or auti-evangelical members of any hierarchy upon earth. Although we contend for Dissent, our desire is to be vanquished by the truth; and if these two can be shewn to be at variance, we are quite prepared to surrender the former. But the man who wolild lead us back to the Church of England, must not meet us with the words of Hooker, but with the New Testament; he must not confide in that measure of dialectic skill or critical refinement, which may suffice to convict of many errors in style and logic so humble an advocate of Nonconformity as myself, but let him direct the weight of his artillery against our great position, that the Woed of God is the

SOLE AND SUFFICIENT AUTHORITY IN MATTERS OF RELIGION; let llim

impeach our argirment, and not our style of writing, lest we should ask the question, so little to the credit of Episcopalian charity, who is it that excludes us from the seats of learning, and then mocks our ignorance — and lest the world should shrewdly infer that our adversaries find our rhetoric more vulnerable than our reasoning: he must not only prove, if prove he could from my concessions, that Dissenters are guilty of many things inconsistent with their own principles, but he must demonstrate, and nothing less than this will give him the victory,

THAT AN ALLIANCE OF THE ChUECH OF ChEIST WITH THE SECULAR POWER IS SANCTIONED BY THE AUTHORITY AND ACCORDS WITH THE

GENIUS OP Christianity; that diocesan Episcopacy, founded on

THE SUPERIORITY OF BISHOPS TO ELDEES, IS OF APOSTOLIC ORIGIN AND APPOINTMENT; AND THAT THE BoOK OF COMMON-PEAYER CONTAINETH NOTHING CONTRARY TO THE WoRD OF God. UntU this is prOVed,

nothing is done; and when this is demonstrated, the grounds of Dissent are taken away, and Dissent itself will in all probability be abolished for ever.”

CONTROVEESy.

I repeat, that there is no reason to suppose that any of these opinions were ever abandoned by Mr James. That his heart yearned for close and affectionate communion with the spiritual members of the Church of England — that he earnestly promoted every scheme for fraternal intercourse — that he was lavish in his expressions of love and honour for those clergymen in whose devoutness and generosity of spirit and ministerial labours he rejoiced to recognise the very presence of the Holy Ghost, and that he shrank more and more from public antagonism to the Church of England as the Establishment controversy gave place to conflicts for the central principles of evangelical religion, is true.

Indeed, antagonism of every kind was a terror to him during his later years; it was his fixed resolve to live peaceably with all men. But his autobiographical account of this pamphlet is a virtual expression of his opinion, that it is no breach of Christian charity to speak and write strongly in defence of Dissent, and against those evils of the Establishment which render Dissent a duty.

The discussion cannot cease. If Churchmen and Dissenters no longer wrote or spoke about the great questions by which they are separated, their silence would only prove, either that they were indiflFerent to their ecclesiastical principles, or that, desiring to cherish fraternal affection, they had not sufficient confidence in each other’s charity to believe that it could withstand the wind and storm of controversy.

But that charity is very spurious and contemptible which would be destroyed by frankness and honesty. The peace which some good men have tried to secure is a truce between foes — not the cordial confidence of friends. If a Dissenter cannot cordially love a Churchman, who is clothed in the integrity, gentleness, and devoutness of Christ, and yet desires to perpetuate the political relations of the Established Church, approves her polity, regards her services with veneration, almost with awe, and openly and vigorously maintains his convictions, the Dissenter has no right to speak of his charity; and if a Churchman cannot cordially love a Dissenter, who manifestly loves Christ and keeps His commandments, though

LIFE OP JOHN ANGELL JAI^IES.

he desires to terminate the alliance between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, objects to the constitution of the Church, objects to her services, and without apology or concealment, employs all his energies to translate his convictions into facts, the Churchman has no right to speak of his charity.

Christians of different churches must have forgotten the grandeur of the objects of their common faith and love, to fear that frankness in debating their ecclesiastical differences will separate their hearts. Is it true that myriads of Churchmen and myriads of Nonconformists have prostrated themselves before the same merciful God, uttering the same bitter confessions of wrongdoing, pleading the same promises of free forgiveness and eternal life for Christ’s sake, and have all testified that their fears and misgivings fled when they learnt that the same mysterious and awful death was the atonement for their sia? Is it true that not a day passes without every one of them looking up with joy into the same glorious face, clinging with confidence to the same mighty Hand — that in sorrow they are all consoled by the same Comforter, and that in death they hope to be upheld by bright visions of the same immortal home? If so, their ecclesiastical differences, however earnestly they are debated, need not, and ought not, to chill their nmtual affection, or interfere with their fellowship in Christian work and worship. It is a calumny on that love of the brethren, by which we know that we are the sons of God, to say that differences like these must be concealed, or our mutual affection must perish. A compromise founded on silence, is a fraudulent imitation of that charity which is the gift of the Holy Ghost.