our part to the necessary faith, were in the first instance but indirectly connected with the Church at all.

I say the Church is not familiar with tests, not as if she may not adopt them as a matter of expedience, if she thinks fit, but because they are but the resort of authority when it is weak. We bind men with oaths when we can secure their fidelity in no other way; but the Church Catholic is inherently strong, can defend herself, and fears nothing. Ignorance of her own power is her only weakness. She admits her members on the profession of their being Christians, and if in the event they become heretical, she ejects them as she admitted. The power of the keys is the antagonist of Private JudgBut when, from circumstances, she suspends her use of that power, being deprived of her natural defence, she needs others; she makes "alliances," so called, or appeals to her civil rights; and in like manner declarations and pledges on the part of her members may become a suitable, as well as necessary expedient, for securing herself against the encroachments of heresy.

ment.

Accordingly in England she co-operates with the State in exacting subscription to the Thirtynine Articles, as a test, and that not only of the Clergy, but also of the governing body in our Universities, a test against Romanism; but, while so doing, she has, after her manner, modified and

elevated their original scope in a way well worthy of our gratitude.

The faulty principle, involved in the decrees of Trent, is, not the mere publication of doctrines, not contained in the Creed, but the enforcement of these as necessary points of faith. To collect, systematize, and set forth the Traditions of the Church, is surely a most edifying and important work, and great is our debt to Councils, modern or ancient, in proportion as they have attempted this; even though the direct Apostolical origin of every phrase or view of doctrine they adopt, be not certain. Now the Articles of our Church must be taken as doing this for us in their place and degree. It is no valid objection to them, whether the fact be so or not, that they are but partially drawn from Traditionary sources, or that the individual authors of them are unknown, or the state of feeling and opinion in the writers at the moment of their writing them, or that they were inclined to what is now called either Calvinism, or Arminianism, or some of them to the one, some to the other. objections, however popular, are very superficial. The Church is not built upon individuals, nor knows individuals. We do not receive the Articles from individuals, however celebrated, but as recommended to us by our Church itself; and whether we judge of the Church's meaning in imposing them by the consent of her Divines since

Such

their imposition, or by the intention of that Convocation', which immediately ratified them, we shall come to this conclusion, that whatever have been the designs or feelings of individuals, she intends us to receive them as portions of Catholic teaching, as expressing and representing that Ancient Religion, which of old time found voice and attained consistency in Athanasius, Basil, Augustine, Chrysostom, and other primitive Doctors. This is plain, I say, to a demonstration, from the words of the Convocation of 1571; which, on the one hand reviewed and confirmed the Thirty-nine Articles, and on the other injoined by Canon, that preachers "should be careful, that they never teach aught in a sermon, to be religiously held and believed by the people, except that which is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and which the Catholic Fathers and Ancient Bishops have collected from that very doctrine." It is evident that the Divines who drew up this Canon, did not dream, (to use a common phrase), of the Thirtynine Articles in any degree superseding or interfering with the Ancient Catholic teaching, or of their burdening us with the novelties of any modern school. Nor is there any thing in their "literal and grammatical sense," of which the King's Declaration speaks, inconsistent with this Ancient Teaching, whatever obscurities may hang over their

1 Waterland on Ecclesiastical Antiquity, 8.

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origin historically, a subject, which that Declaration renders unimportant.

The Thirty-nine Articles, then, are adopted by our Church in a sense equally remote from the presumptuous dogmatism of Rome, and from the cold and narrow feeling which a test implies. They are neither enforced as necessary for communion nor lowered to the mere negative purpose of excluding error; but they are instruments of teaching, of Catholic teaching, being, as far as they go, heads, as it were, of important chapters in revealed truth. And it is as thus viewing them, that we put them before the young, not by way of ascertaining their Churchmanship, but as the particular forms under which we teach the details of faith, the basis on, and out of which, the superstructure of theology may be most conveniently raised.

Such, then, seems to be the light in which we are to regard our Articles; and till they are imposed on all our members as terms of communion, they are quite consistent with the prerogative accorded, as we have seen, by Antiquity to the Apostolic Creed, quite distinct from the tyrannical enforcement of the Tridentine Articles on the part of Rome.

LECTURE X.

ON THE ESSENTIALS OF THE GOSPEL.

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I TRUST that the foregoing Lectures have disposed us to take a more cheerful view of what the Protestantism of the day considers a hardship. It considers it a hardship to have anything clearly and distinctly told it in elucidation of Scripture doctrine, an infringement on its right of doubting, and mistaking, and labouring in vain. And the violent effort to keep itself in this state of ignorance, this unnatural "stopping of its ears," and throwing dust into the air," after the pattern of those Jews who would not hear the voice of Apostles and Martyrs,-all this it dignifies by the title of defending the sacred right of Private Judgment, calls it a holy cause, a righteous battle, with other large and senseless epithets. But I trust that we have learned to glory in that which the world calls a bondage. We do boast and exult in bearing Christ's yoke, whether of faith or of obedience;