him into embracing-still less into promulgating-any new opinions which he has not solemnly and conscientiously examined and which, if promulgated, would require the faithful rulers of his church to expel him; and, on the other hand, we would entreat no man lightly to sever himself from the ministry to which he has been called by the providence and grace of God and in which he has power and opportunity to teach improving truth and so to carry on a Christ-like reformation from within. Brother, we would say to such an one, let the rulers expel thee for thy manly avowal of truth if unhappily they will: but do thou remember Jesus and the Apostles; and do not expel thyself, and so, weakening thine own influence for good, increase the love-concealing multitudes of sectarianism.

CHAPTER III.

SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS APPLYING TO THE CLERGY OF THE
ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

IF from these general remarks we turn to the particular case of the established church in England, it may be asked what portion, of the Law or of her formularies, is there which we transgress.

A. WE ARE NOT TOUCHED BY THE LAW AGAINST BLASPHEMY.

WE are aware that the English Statute Book still regards "blasphemy blasphemy" as a punishable offence: but we are persuaded that not even they, who may most widely differ from the opinions we have expressed in these pages, can, with any regard for truth, charge us with having treated the Bible, or Christianity, or any sacred thing lightly or irreverently. If, from general enactments, recourse be had to particular laws, we can suppose that the more or less bigoted character of the Act of Uniformity might bring it to the recollection of some who would like to repress this discussion by authority but, here as in all other quarters, we believe and hope that the persecuting wish will fail to find any legal sanction of its desires towards us.

B.--THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY CONDEMNS US NOT.

Or the Act of Uniformity we may approve or disapprove. The assent and consent it requires-to what has been described as an Arminian Liturgy and a collection of Calvinistic Articles-we may think to be of a good or of an evil tendency on the morality and intelligence of our religious teachers. But, whatever be our opinions of this Statute, which comes to us from the tyrannical Stuarts and which is still the chief test of English orthodoxy, we have yet to learn that the Act of Uniformity requires we should hold the Bible to be infallible; or, indeed, that it requires us to hold any particular theory of Inspiration. It is to the Book of Common Prayer that this Act points, and for that Book that it demands our unfeigned assent and consent to all the Calvinism, or Arminianism, or both, which any man may think is therein contained.

C.-IN THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, NEITHER THE CREEDS,

THE ORDINAL, THE LITURGY, NOR THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES

ARE OPPOSED TO US.

WELL then let us turn to the Book of Common Prayer. What do its Creeds or Articles pledge us to on the subject of Biblical infallibility or inspiration? The Nicene Creed teaches us that the "Holy Ghost "spake by the prophets." This we do not doubt, for we believe that the blessed Spirit, who is "the giver of

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life," speaks in every good word and that He especially spoke by the mouths of the "goodly fellowship of the "prophets." The Articles assure us that the three Creeds are to be believed because "they may be "proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture" ["firmissimis Scripturarum testimoniis probari pos"sunt."] To this, again, we heartily assent; for whatsoever we read in Scripture we are prepared to receive respectfully and judge reverently: whatsoever can be proved by any means, drawn from any source, we are ready to believe: and above all, whatsoever can be proved by the most satisfactory evidence of the Scriptures, that we shall assuredly not be slow devoutly to believe.

every

As to what are the "most certain warrants of holy "Scripture," the seventeenth Article does not fail to give us some very valuable information. By no means do its noticeable words tell us that isolated verse is such a warrant: but, rather, the last paragraph of the 17th Article implies that some passages are so far from being infallible that they might lead us astray if we did not limit their meaning and so correct them by other and truer passages. This, we say, and no less than this, is implied and cannot fail to be understood by every careful and unprejudiced reader of the following words in this Article; "We must receive God's pro"mises in such wise as they be generally set forth to us "in holy Scripture: and in our doings that Will of God "is to be followed which we have expressly declared "unto us in the word of God." Is not this the very

principle of Eclecticism for which we contend as a prime excellence in the Bible?

:

One more use, which the Articles make of Scripture, is as a barrier beyond which they are not prepared to find any truth which is essential to Christianity. It was not probable that any points, which were indispensable, and without which the gospel would be but a marred and incomplete religion, should be wholly omitted and never so much as mentioned or referred to by the Christians of the first century who penned the four Gospels, the book of the Acts, the numerous Epistles and the Apocalypse. This the English Reformers felt and they knew at the same time that the Romanists were adding to the list of Christian essentials countless points which they drew from ecclesiastical traditions, from the decisions of councils, and from various other sources. As an answer to all these traditional and other supernumerary alleged essentials, our Reformersbelieving that all the essentials of Christianity were contained in holy Scripture, whose history reaches no later than A.D. 100 at the latest-wrote and agreed to the sixth Article in the words, "Holy Scripture containeth "all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is "not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be 66 required of any man, that it should be believed as an "Article of the Faith or be thought requisite or neces

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sary to salvation." Thus to say that all the essential articles of Christian faith are contained in the Bible is altogether different from saying that all statements contained in the Bible are essential articles of Christian