“By God’s providence, my Reverend Brethren, we have been ordained ministers ‘of that pure and reformed part of Christ’s church established in this kingdom,’ which, from the deepest conviction, we believe to be ‘built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone;’ and in obedience to her authority, and in conformity with her Articles and Liturgy, we have pledged ourselves to discharge the functions of our ministry.
“I have been ordained to ‘administer the doctrine and sacraments and discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this church and realm hath received the same.’ And, until I am convinced that she is in error—that her Articles or her Liturgy contain ‘things which are neither read in scripture, nor may be proved thereby,’ as a minister of the Church of England, I may not indulge in speculations of my own imagination, or perform her offices in ways and modes of my own devising, but I must labor for the edification and salvation of the souls entrusted to my care, according to the laws, the regulations, and the spirit of the Church of England, which is the Church of Christ. When I can no longer do so conscientiously, it will then become me no longer to appropriate her emoluments.
“But revering and loving her doctrine, and approving her discipline, I can well repose myself under her guidance and administration. These, my Reverend Brethren, I may venture to hope, are equally the sentiments of us all.”
Whatever might be the individual opinion entertained of the obligations under which, on that occasion, I apprehended myself and all ministers of the Gospel to be, or of the sentiments which I expressed in regard to those obligations,—the Sermon, containing this acknowledgment of our ministerial engagements, and this expression of corresponding sentiments, was requested by the assemblage then present, without a dissentient voice, to be printed; and I think the charitable inference is, that each individual sanctioned with his approbation the sentiments delivered in that discourse.
If this construction upon their unanimous act be correct, the accidental publication of this Sermon will go far to exonerate the parties then present from the imputation of disingenuous Subscription, which, I must needs think, in your general remarks, you have endeavoured to attach to them.
But so far as it concerns my neighbours, I have yet something more certain than a fair and presumptive inference to advance. My personal intimacy with many of the Clergy around me, enables me to add my belief that these sentiments are theirs, equally as mine. And if this be true of the Clergy in one district taken indiscriminately, why should they not be the opinions of the Clergy of other deaneries and other dioceses? Until you can give me positive proof to the contrary, I shall charitably presume that they are so; and leave you to reconcile with fact the following extraordinary, and to me unaccountable, assertion:—
“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 the words, is blown to the winds, and become the disgrace and not the safeguard of the English Church.”
Under ordinary circumstances it would seem sufficient to have made a general statement in regard to Subscription, but as you have particularised three several points to which you take exception in the matter of Subscription, it might appear uncandid to pass them over without more especial comment.
These points will be best given in your own words:—
“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.’”
I am not sure that I understand your precise meaning in the expression, the “literal sense;” but I will not shrink from stating distinctly the sense in which I subscribed, and, so far as I have been able to ascertain, other Clergymen subscribe to these points.
Scripture itself is not always interpreted in a strictly “literal sense.”—Witness a great part of the sixth chapter of St. John. But in the interpretation of a particular passage, regard must be had to all the circumstances and considerations connected with it. The same observation, I apprehend, applies in ascertaining the meaning of the Articles and Liturgy.