To Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, over all persons and in all causes Ecclesiastical and Temporal within Her Dominions supreme.
We your Majesty’s faithful subjects have observed with pain the Controversies now for some time carried on with respect to the true interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and of the Subscription by law required to them and to the Book of Common Prayer; and we humbly pray your Majesty to institute such measures as to your wisdom shall seem fit, with the advice of your Majesty’s Privy Council, in order to provide a remedy for the uncertainty prevailing upon this subject.
It is with reluctance that I add to the above remarks any that relate merely to myself. Some circumstances, however, appear to require a few brief observations.
In a former publication on the Meaning of Subscription, [41] occasioned by the extreme uncertainty and perplexity in which this subject is involved, I stated my readiness to resign my preferment, if called upon to do so within a certain time by His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. That call has not been made. It may, however, be supposed that the remarks now offered on the same subject are published, not so much with a view to any general improvement as from a desire to obtain relief for my own difficulties. I wish therefore distinctly to state that this is not the case, and that those difficulties are removed, for the present, on the following grounds.
Within the last three years a departure from the plain and obvious meaning of the Articles has been displayed, to an unparalleled extent, amongst the ministers of our Church; yet no call has been authoritatively made upon any of them to resign, and they retain their situations, with the exception of two or three who have voluntarily seceded. In this state of things, I can hardly imagine any diversity of opinion with respect to the Thirty-nine Articles which calls for the resignation of a clergyman; indeed, it appears to me that it would be simply absurd in any one to resort to such a step, unless under a decided wish for communion with some other church or body of Christians.
It can hardly be necessary to say, after what has been already offered, how far I am from desiring that such a state of things should continue, however unfavourably a change might affect myself: for I still maintain,—
That the condemnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed, in their literal sense, are an un-Christian appendage to a document of extraordinary merit, yet such that a true Christian may innocently differ from some propositions set forth in it.
That a Bishop is not authorized by the Gospel to address a candidate for Ordination in the literal sense of the words, “Receive the Holy Ghost: whose sins thou dost remit, they are remitted, and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.”
That a Christian minister is not authorized by the Gospel to address any one in the literal sense of the words, “I absolve thee from all thy sins.”
Entertaining these views, I yet venture to conclude that I could subscribe the Articles and Liturgy with as near an approach to a literal assent as most of the clergy, and certainly with a far more cordial approbation of them than many who might be named. It has been said that the objections just mentioned are trifling. Whoever has marked the course of the controversy now existing in our Church will see how great a stress has been sometimes laid on two of the above points, as materially supporting the views of tractarian writers.
I have now only to acknowledge the comments of several clergymen and others in this diocese upon my last publication. To the Rev. B. Philpot, formerly Archdeacon of the Isle of Man, and to the Rev. C. Green, Rector of Burgh, I beg to offer my sincere thanks for the candid and Christian spirit in which their observations were made. I avail myself also of this opportunity to acknowledge with respect and gratitude a large number of private communications, both from friends and strangers, which were a valuable testimony at a period when they were most acceptable.