While Charles I. and Archbishop Laud were absorbed in maturing their favoured plans for Church and State, opposite and deeply-rooted opinions, whose force they never paused to appreciate till it was useless, were ripening all around them; and their lives became a sacrifice to their blindness. While James II. was only intent upon enforcing the dictates of his own one-eyed bigotry, the Revolution was already accomplished in the hearts of his people; and William III., the instrument to realize their wish, was almost at the gates of London. While Mr. Canning was delighting the electors of Liverpool with his eloquent, and to them convincing, denunciations against the minutest change in the parliamentary representation of this nation; while he was admonishing them, with a wisdom then esteemed oracular, “Spartam nactus es, hanc adorna,” a few brief years were to give us almost a new Sparta; new electoral departments; new laws and forms of election; new qualifications, and thus new constituents; and, more than all, new influences upon electors and the representatives elected.
And thus, as it appears to the writer, will it come to pass with respect to the subject now to be briefly considered. While the minds of the most able divines in our nation are bent to one point; are engrossed in discussing the meaning of our Confession of Faith, the interpretation of our Articles of Religion; they are imperceptibly nourishing the growth of a conclusion more irresistible and more unmanageable than even all the complicated questions now so eagerly debated; for they are, by their differences and divisions, demolishing the whole force of the solemn assent required to that Confession. Amidst the present confusion of tongues, the language of our Articles has still less than it ever had, a definite meaning. Subscription, instead of being the tie which is to bind people to certain opinions or truths, is become a rope of sand. So uncertain is the trumpet’s sound, that it no longer, as of old, proclaims the spirit of an united host, but turns every man’s sword against his fellow: and Englishmen must soon awake to the conviction that Subscription, according to the plain meaning of words, is blown to the winds, and become the disgrace and not the safeguard of the English Church.
2. When the Saviour of mankind was about to leave this earth, He consoled his dejected followers with the promise of a gift which should even compensate for His loss, and exercise a special influence upon Christians in all future ages of this world’s existence. “If I go not away the Comforter will not come.” And He then announced one of the purposes for which He should come. “He shall guide you into all truth.” Of all the qualities which can elevate the character and enlarge the usefulness of man, truth is the most lovely and powerful. If it be asked, what is, in briefest terms, the occupation of the ministers of Christ, it is, to exhibit truth to their people: and, in all their teaching, this it is which will establish their influence over the human heart, or at least that without which no wholesome influence can be exerted, namely, that each is a lover of truth.
But how is truth to be conveyed from man to man? Only through the medium of language. And what is language? A set of signs, or sounds, or words, which by general use and agreement mean certain things. But all human provisions are imperfect, and language is imperfect: and words may be artfully put together so as to have one meaning with the speaker, and another to the hearer; or written language may be twisted from its primary sense, and forced to a use contrary to the intention of the writer. Yet truth is a real thing, and every honest man knows that it is so; for whoever speaks that to another which he knows is not understood in his own sense by the hearer; whoever twists written language from the plain purpose of the writer; whoever, by a studied obscurity, veils his real opinions in order to mislead others, is a liar. Let no one be offended by a plain term which Scripture sanctions.
He who is justly branded with the imputation of such a vice as falsehood, is, in the common estimation of the best part of society, contemptible. But if a minister of the Gospel, a divinely commissioned teacher of truth, shall expose himself to such an imputation; if, in so solemn an act as Subscription to Articles of Faith, or in the interpretation of them, the plain meaning of words is evaded, or a sense put upon them which in common discourse between man and man would be deemed dishonourable and wicked, the character of that person as a teacher of truth must be damaged, and his influence impaired. He may indeed be surrounded by a set of admirers captivated by his talents, and their applauses may preserve his self-complacency, but the final verdict will yet be against him. It is possible that this error of the mind may arise from self-delusion, and then the guilt is diminished, but an evil result must still ensue; for as the root is, so will be the plant, and good fruit cannot grow out of falsehood or dissimulation. If we remove the case from one individual to numbers, the general effect will of course be proportionably worse, and the conclusion will be drawn that many of the appointed teachers of truth are not lovers of truth.
We may take, however, a less extreme case, and suppose only, that amongst the teachers of truth a great difference of opinion has arisen as to some of the doctrines of which they are called upon to treat, as to the Confession of Faith which they have to maintain, and as to the terms of the Subscription by which they declare their assent to it. Then the conclusion will be—when this difference is brought in glaring colours before the public eye—either, that the Confession itself, or the form of assent, is so obscurely worded that it cannot be understood; or that they are intolerable to the conscience of many subscribers, and so must be somehow evaded; or lastly, that words, to which a definite meaning has been assigned in past ages, have now lost that meaning; and that the learned, the pious, the teachers of the nation, are incapable of discovering and fixing the sense which they are now to bear.
Let it be fairly considered how far the present state of things in this nation agrees with any of the cases above supposed: and if it does so agree, then it is maintained that, on the principle of a sacred love for truth, Subscription is become the disgrace of the English Church.
3. It cannot be argued, in mitigation of the supposed evil results, that the present controversy on this subject is confined to certain classes of society, the studious, the well-educated, the members of our Church. Half our newspapers are teeming with it; some of our periodicals are almost confined to it; all, it is believed, are occasionally employed in its discussion. It is finding its way into almost every class of society. The commercial travellers’ room, we are told, has engaged in it, and much might many a sophistical controversialist learn from that numerous, acute, and ubiquitous body of men, who know more of the real opinions of the great mass of the people than any other class that can be named.
When our Lord remarked, “The harvest is plenteous,” He pointed to the multitude of unconverted souls; and surely England is not without its full proportion of such, towards whom the most anxious thoughts and zealous exertions of the Christian minister are naturally to be directed. The intelligent Christian, the well-affected churchman, may be ready to make every charitable allowance for the imperfections of our Church—though charity is not the virtue of these days—but the criminal, the profligate, the sceptic, over whom it is most desirable, yet most difficult, to obtain an influence for their good, are proverbially the most acute in discerning the defects of their appointed teachers, in noting any inconsistency between the lesson and the instructor. Suspicion is the very atmosphere they breathe; and to rejoice in iniquity, especially where there is a profession of religion, is, alas! too natural and agreeable to them. In whatever degree then the teacher of truth shall expose himself to the imputation of a want of veracity amongst the irreligious, deplorable is it to contemplate the decline of a wholesome influence which must ensue. The writer has himself witnessed a lamentable instance of this result in one of the most accomplished men of late times, now no more, whom he wishes it were allowable to name. Could some of our controversialists look into a conclave of youthful profligates, led on, it may be, by some ingenious sceptic, they would blush to hear the comments on their own writings; the bitter and triumphant questions—What is it which these our discordant and subtle instructors really believe? Do they believe anything? They subscribe, and reap the profit. Let them tell us what this Subscription and these Articles of Faith really mean, and then it will be time enough for us to consider about attending to their instruction.
Add to this the obvious reasoning of the dissenting part of our population. The best amongst them cannot but see some justification of their own separation from a Church whose teachers are proclaiming throughout the land, from an hundred pens, the discordance of their sentiments as to their own Confession of Faith: not mere shades of difference reconcileable with a general agreement in its object, but a division for instance on, to them certainly, a leading question. Was the Reformation a good or an evil? The more worldly amongst them of course hail with delight what they will designate as the quibbles and evasions of men apparently eager to escape the trammels of a subscription solemnly made, which during three centuries has occasioned troubles, and persecution, and separation, and exclusion in the Christian fold, and is yet further than ever from establishing its professed purpose—“Consent touching true religion.”