Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu.
I should leave them to conclude that I had been labouring under what the faculty, I believe, term “a false conception.”
His Lordship’s first reason for wishing for a more expanded Subscription, is that—
“If it be true that there is anything approaching to the appearance of insincerity on the part of those making the Subscription, if we seem to confess with our lips that we do not confess and believe in our hearts we give our opponents a vantage ground of which they will not be slow to avail themselves.”
There is said to be much virtue in an IF, and eâ virtute nos involvissemus, had not his Lordship torn the covering away, and “left us naked to our enemies,”—self-convicted of “confessing with our lips that we do not confess and believe in our hearts.” For says his Lordship—
“In fact, with respect to Subscription, I have never yet met with a single clergyman (and I have spoken with almost numberless individuals on the subject), who ever allowed that he agreed in every point, in every iota to the Subscription which he took at ordination.”
It would not be treating his Lordship with candour to give to his observation an offensive meaning, which it was not intended to convey. It is more with reference to the mal-construction and malicious use of it by our opponents, that we are led to wish that it had not been made. Since his Lordship’s subsequent pamphlet, from which we collect the sense in which he was viewing Subscription, when he made the observation, a sense in which, for instance with reference to those clauses of the Athanasian Creed, which are commonly, and unjustly, called damnatory, few I suspect do subscribe, being, in my opinion, in no wise bound to an application of the clauses, so manifestly at variance with the spirit in which the formulary was imposed on us by our Reformers;—since I say, this pamphlet can obtain but a very small part of the circulation of the speech itself, where the observation stands unqualified; the general impression of his Lordship’s meaning must be that the clergy subscribe ex animo, to that which ex animo they do not believe.
At the same time I have never seen the necessity of responding to those appeals through which the clergy of this Diocese have been called upon to take some public step, to repel the observation as an implied libel upon them. I would rather it should be remembered that his Lordship, comparatively speaking, has been but a short time amongst us, and that for anything we can tell, the enquiries of which he speaks may have been chiefly made amongst the clergy of another Diocese, (indeed, considering that it is not a likely question for a Bishop to put to candidates for Orders, or his clergy generally, the inference must be that they were), and if their “withers should be galled,” let them respond to these appeals, “ours are unwrung.”
It must, however, be admitted that any insincerity in the matter of Subscription, would deservedly expose us to the contempt of our opponents.—But a generous mind would shrink instinctively from inferring insincerity from any thing approaching only to its appearance. Decipimur specie ought to hold with respect to evil not less than good. Still, alas! to the jaundiced eye every object presents itself in colours not its own. And I fear that the opinion which his Lordship would seem to entertain of the actuating spirit of our opponents, is but too well founded, and amply justifies his apprehension that they would not be slow to avail themselves of the appearance, caring little to dissipate the “mentis gratissimus error,” by ascertaining themselves of the non-existence of the reality. That accomplished, but embittered infidel, the historian Gibbon, did not scruple to declare that the clergy, one and all of them, made their Subscription either “with a sigh or a smile;” but I trust that the clergy, as a body, can afford to leave such opponents in the unmolested possession of their imaginary vantage ground. Until Mordecai was removed from his seat at the gate, the soul of Haman could not be quieted within him—nor will the souls of our opponents, until the Church is brought down to a level with their own sects.
“If it (Subscription) is to be understood in the literal, most strict, and most stringent sense, it would create difficulties, which must weigh heavily upon scrupulous and tender consciences.”