The same habit of thought—avoiding and even protesting against definite statements of certain doctrines—appears in the Liberty of Prophesying and in the Nature of Faith. The duty of faith, he remarks, is complete in believing the Articles of the Apostles’ Creed,—“All other things are implicitly in the belief of the Articles of God’s veracity, and are not necessary in respect of the constitution of faith to be drawn out, but may there lie in the bowels of the great Articles, without danger to any thing or any person, unless some other accident or circumstance makes them necessary.”[411] “This is the great and entire complexion of a Christian’s faith, and since salvation is promised to the belief of this creed [I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God] either a snare is laid for us with a purpose to deceive us—or else nothing is of prime and original necessity to be believed but this Jesus Christ our Redeemer.”[412] Bearing in mind the distinction between religion and theology;—and it is to the former that Taylor seems to refer in his treatise on Faith,—the doctrine, in substance, may be accepted as sound. But turning to the Liberty of Prophesying where also the standard raised is the Apostles’ Creed, the question, as his biographer remarks, “becomes much more difficult, if, as Taylor seems to have meant, and as is implied in the very title of his discourse, we extend this same principle to the admission of persons into the public ministry.”[413] In other words, to treat Theology, which ought to be thoroughly understood by Christian teachers, as if it were entirely comprehended within the first simple primitive creed,—as if that creed, regarded as seminally containing all Christian doctrine, and as actually drawn out by the study of Scripture, and devout reflection into theological particulars, were a sufficient standard of orthodoxy for those who are teachers of others,—betrays a manner of thinking in which scarcely a second Anglican teacher could be found to agree. There and elsewhere the Bishop would seem to have found his way within Latitudinarian lines.
Taylor is a strenuous advocate for an Episcopal Church—yet even here he breaks bounds, and has exposed himself to the correction, if not the censure, of Episcopalian critics. Departing from Hooker’s method in his Ecclesiastical Polity, he endorses the Puritan idea, that a precise form of government is laid down in Scripture; and then he proceeds to say, that “the government of the Church is in immediate order to the good and benison of souls.” The first of these peculiar opinions, his biographer pronounces unwise, the second untrue, and both as going too far,—the one as proving too much, the other as an exaggerated conception of what is not to be ranked amongst things of the first importance,—for the sincere word and the means of grace are alone immediately necessary to salvation.[414] Mere government, according to Hooker, rests amongst the non-essentials of Christianity; and any change therein is to change the way of safety, no otherwise than as “a path is changed by altering only the uppermost face thereof, which, be it laid with gravel, or set with grass, or paved with stone, remaineth still the same path.”[415] A further example of running to an extreme of strictness in reference to Church polity, after so much latitude, and even looseness in relation to Christian doctrine, is found in Taylor’s assumption of facts touching Episcopal orders. It is an assumption, says Heber, “in which he is neither borne out by antiquity, nor the tenor of the Gospel history, when he finds in the Apostles, during the abode of their Lord on earth, the first Bishops, and in the seventy-two disciples, whom Christ also selected from His followers, the first presbyters of His Church.”[416]
ANGLICANS.—COSIN.
Amongst Anglican theologians Cosin requires particular attention. The history of his opinions is somewhat peculiar. In early life, his sermons, and especially his devotional writings, betray a strong leaning towards Roman Catholicism. In later life it is otherwise. His second series of Notes on the Prayer Book, indicates a controversial tone opposing the Anglican to the Roman view, which does not appear in the first series. After his son became a Papist, the father assumed a more decided attitude towards the Papal Church; but it does not so much appear that Cosin’s own views of doctrine altered, as that, during the earlier part of his life, he dwelt on points of agreement, and during the latter, on points of difference, between himself and Rome.[417] Every one, however, must see that such a change was a very great one, and involved much more than at first sight is visible. Cosin’s two principal contributions to theological literature are his Scholastic History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures and his History of Transubstantiation. The former, which is a work of very great learning and ability is directed entirely against the decisions of the Council of Trent, as to the canonicity of Apocryphal Books; and the author patiently goes over the whole field of Church literature, from the Apostolic age to the Reformation, showing that the books in question were never accepted by the Church, as inspired authorities. The stores of learning displayed in this history are of great value to the general student; and in any revival of this old controversy with Romanist theologians, Cosin’s work will be of eminent service on the Protestant side. The History of the Canon appeared in 1657, during Cosin’s exile. The History of Transubstantiation was, about the same time, written in Latin, although not published until 1675. A year afterwards, an English translation came out, executed by Luke de Beaulieu. The origin of the book is a key to its character. When Charles II., in his wanderings, reached Cologne, and there “visited a neighbouring potent prince of the Empire of the Roman persuasion,” he met with certain Jesuits, who accused the English Church of heretical opinions touching the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. That Church, said they, “holds no real, but only a kind of imaginary presence of the body and blood of Christ;” whereas Rome holds the sacred mystery of all ages,—to wit, that the whole substance of the bread and wine is changed into the substance of Christ’s body and blood. Cosin, being asked to vindicate the Church “from the calumny,” and plainly to declare what is her doctrine of the real presence, complied with the request; and the result is, that throughout his book, he labours to establish the doctrine of a real presence of the body and blood of the Redeemer in the bread and wine;—but at the same time, denies and demolishes the doctrine of a transubstantiation of the elements. As to the latter point, what he says resolves itself into an argument for the continued presence, not merely of the material accidents, but of the material substance. The bent of the author’s mind, and the necessary conditions of the author’s argument, looked at from the Anglican point of view, may be seen in his copious citations from the Fathers and schoolmen; and the purpose of those citations is to show that the real presence, as he expresses it, is the ancient doctrine of Christendom; and that the dogma of Transubstantiation is an invention of the twelfth century. Theologians of the Puritan stamp, if disposed to avail themselves of the distinctive reasoning of this distinguished scholar against Rome, would not follow the patristic and scholastic teaching on its positive side, to which he showed so much deference; but would rather represent very much of it—by its incautious phraseology, and its mystic sentiment—as preparing for the definite error which Cosin so earnestly denounced. Some of them would say, that the extreme doctrine of the spiritual presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine is as mischievous, in respect to superstition, as the doctrine of Transubstantiation itself. They would also say that Anglicans attach an undue importance to the continued existence and presence of the material substance of bread and wine, an importance which is scarcely perceptible to others who differ from them; for if the bodily presence of Christ in the sacrament be admitted, arguments in support of the continued substantial presence of bread and wine as well, only issue in some consubstantial theory, between which and the transubstantial one, there is little to choose, in the estimation of most English Protestants. And further, they would allege that whilst the Roman dogma is in itself incredible and absurd, it is in its terms intelligible; but that the High Anglican dogma is unintelligible in terms and incredible in itself, so far as its import can be divined. To the Puritan mind, the distinction maintained by Cosin and others between a real presence and a transubstantiation is of little importance, and quite incomprehensible; but to the Anglican mind, it is perfectly clear, and of the highest moment.[418] That I distinctly perceive. Without entering into the controversy, I may be allowed to add, that the belief of the spiritual presence of Christ’s body in the elements is one thing, and the deep and devout belief of a real and a special presence of Christ Himself with His people in the Lord’s Supper, is another. There is nothing whatever to prevent a modern disciple of the Puritans from consistently maintaining the latter. For my own part, I would maintain it with the utmost earnestness.
ANGLICANS.—MORLEY.
Next to Cosin let us take Morley. Morley lived to a great age, and had a high reputation for theological learning before the Civil Wars, as well as after the re-establishment of Episcopacy, being well versed in the logic of the schools, and proving himself a formidable controversialist. That he was a Calvinist is distinctly stated by Wood and Burnet; but I cannot find that he published anything upon the subject. Besides his controversy with Baxter, which turns upon political and ecclesiastical questions, we possess certain treatises written by him before and since the Restoration, in which he undertakes fully to make known his judgment concerning the Church of Rome, and most of those doctrines which fall into controversy betwixt her and the Church of England. The reader is disappointed to find, that these Treatises consist only of A short Conference with a Jesuit at Brussels; An Argument against Transubstantiation; A Sermon preached at Whitehall; Correspondence with Father Cressey; A Letter to the Duchess of York; and two Latin Epistles, relating to Prayers for the Dead, and the Invocation of Saints. Three points alone in the Romanist controversy are discussed. The treatment of these, however, indicate deep learning and great skill. Morley plies with much success the argument against Transubstantiation, “drawn from the evidence and certainty of sense,”—maintaining his convincing argument with the dexterity of a practised logician, so as to parry most successfully all the objections of Roman Catholic antagonists. He decidedly opposes the Popish doctrine of purgatory,—but he vindicates prayers for the dead, in the way in which they were offered in the early Church, and as by modern Anglicans they are still encouraged to be offered; that is, for the rest of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and the plenitude of redemption at the last day.[419] Whatever may be the propriety of praying for the dead in such a qualified sense as this, Morley contends that there is no ground on which to rest the doctrine of the Invocation of Saints. That doctrine he overthrows by an appeal to Scripture; and then he proceeds, after the Anglican method, to examine the writings of the Fathers, and to show that they do not justify the Popish dogma and its associated practices.
The writings of so eminent a man as Archbishop Bramhall ought not to be wholly passed over, even in this limited and superficial sketch. He did not write any comprehensive treatise on theology in general, or on any doctrine in particular; but whilst the other Divines named, with one exception, guarded what they believed to be the citadel of truth, this learned prelate of Ireland defended what he regarded as some of the outworks of Anglican Christianity. He strove, in his Just Vindication of the Church of England (1654), to repel the charge of schism, alleged by the Romanists; and, in his Consecration and Succession of Protestant Bishops, to rebut the Nag’s Head fable (1658). So far his battle was with Rome. He dealt blows of another kind in his treatises “Against the English Sectarie” (1643–1672), and included within his polemical tasks a “Defence of true liberty from antecedent and extrinsical necessity” (1655); “Castigations of Mr. Hobbes’ Animadversions” (1658); and “The Catching of Leviathan or the Great Whale” (1653). In the quaint pleasantry of the age, he spoke of using three harping irons, one for its heart, a second for its chine, and a third for its head,—meaning by these images, the religious, political, and rational aspects of the work. He further described this monster as neither fish nor flesh, but the combination of a man, with a whale—“not unlike Dagon, the idol of the Philistines.”[420] The Malmsbury philosopher was reckoned the most dangerous enemy of the day to the true interests of the Christian religion, and Bramhall, in writing against him, acted the part of one anxious to expose a covert and to crush a seminal infidelity.
CHAPTER XIV.
Those Divines whom I have already imperfectly described, may be characterized as High Anglicans. There remains for consideration, a second class, whom I venture to denominate semi-Anglicans.
Sanderson’s fame as a theologian rests mainly upon his treatment of casuistical questions, and upon his noble volume of sermons. The latter compositions (1659–1674), which exhibit great vigour, compass, and patience of thought, expressed in massive but tedious eloquence,—are chiefly practical; but also, they here and there reveal doctrinal opinions, and, together with the reports of his friends, and extracts from his MSS., indicate some of the leading points in the preacher’s system of divinity. He affords an instance of that change of opinion which we find to have been so common at the time. In early life, having adopted the sublapsarian scheme, he afterwards renounced it, “as well as the supralapsarian, which he could never fancy.”[421] To use his own words, “We must acknowledge the work of both (grace and free-will) in the conversion of a sinner. And so, likewise, in all other events the consistency of the infallibility of God’s foreknowledge at least (though not with any absolute but conditional predestination), with the liberty of man’s will and the contingency of inferior causes and effects.”[422] He made strong objections to some leading points in Twiss’ Vindiciæ Gratiæ, a book written against Arminius. But one of the characteristic principles held by the Divines of the school, to which Sanderson in earlier life belonged, he seems to have retained to the last, for he expresses, in one of his sermons, published by himself not long before his death, the following account of Christian faith:—“The word faith is used to signify, that theological virtue or gracious habit, whereby we embrace with our minds and affections the Lord Jesus Christ as the only-begotten Son of God and alone Saviour of the world, casting ourselves wholly upon the mercy of God through His merits for remission and everlasting salvation. It is that which is commonly called a lively or justifying faith; whereunto are ascribed in Holy Writ those many gracious effects, of purifying the heart, adoption, justification, life, joy, peace, salvation, &c. Not as to their proper and primary cause, but as to the instrument, whereby we apprehend and apply Christ, whose merits and Spirit are the true causes of all those blessed effects.”[423]