The reader will perceive that I have availed myself largely of portions of Mr. Badeley’s speech before the Committee of Council, as well as of other assistance, wherever I found any thing already collected or condensed, which appeared to me useful in the statement of my argument:—my object being, (as I am certain it will be allowed it ought to be) to set this forth in the most intelligible manner I was able to do, without being careful as to any charge of want of originality or research.
Market Lavington, August 10th, 1850.
LETTER.
My dear Maskell,
One who has known you so long and loved you so well as I have, cannot fail to experience much sorrow of heart in now addressing you. But private sorrows, and private feelings have little place in the great crisis in which we live. I do not mean that we are required to be stoically indifferent; but that our duties to God and God’s truth, are so paramount over any regard to earthly ties, or private griefs, that we must needs put them by—so far at least as that they be no hindrance or impediment to the doing His will. Truly, in our time does the cycle of the world’s course seem to have come round, and never perhaps since the early days of persecution has there been so much need to remember and apply the warning, “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me.” Believe me, I acknowledge fully, and am glad to acknowledge thus openly, that I am as much persuaded you are acting under the constraint of this great law, as that I am desirous to be guided by it myself. I acknowledge your trial (and have good cause to know how severely you have felt it), and I as much believe in your sincerity as I do in my own. I trust, therefore, that never by me at any rate shall your anticipation be realized, when you say, “I am prepared to be judged harshly, and the more harshly by oldest friends.” [6] Though I do not come to the same conclusions with you, and am about to controvert the general argument of your “Second Letter,” I know you will be the first and readiest to do me justice as to the temper in which I write.
Whatever view the world may have taken of that letter, or however it may regard its author, I think few will deny it is well it should have some answer. It is a different thing to say, it were well it had not been written, or, not written by one in this or that circumstance, from saying that being written, it does not demand a reply. Persons may and will judge differently, as to the propriety of your having published it, though I dare say, far the greater part of English Churchmen will be against you in that respect, and say they know not how to reconcile your having done so with either dutifulness or wisdom. For my own part, however, I must say (whatever may be thought of me for saying so) I do not condemn you for having published it; if only you will seek patience to weigh all circumstances indicating the line of duty, before you shall finally act upon the doubts and difficulties it discloses. I confess, to my mind, there is but one justification for any man in the communion of the Church of England, having written and published such a letter; viz.—that, feeling the oppression of the difficulties it sets forth, he is yet no more than in doubt, as to the matters debated in it, and the conclusion to be drawn from them. Perhaps in ordinary times even such a frame of mind would not be a sufficient excuse for the unsettling tendency of that which you have written; but certainly these are not ordinary times; and, I agree with you in thinking, many ordinary rules do not apply. Enquiries therefore how far the Church of England may have sanctioned error, or failed to teach the whole Catholic truth, pressed even with painful nakedness and pertinacity, must, perchance, now of necessity be instituted, in order “to do her good at her latter end.” At any rate there is a show of reason on his side, who says, “If her ‘grievous wound’ be not probed to its full depth, it will never be more than ‘slightly healed;’” and of this argument, I, at any rate, am disposed to allow you the full benefit. Moreover, when it cannot be denied that practically “the trumpet” has given “an uncertain sound,” it seems far more “tolerable” to have enquiry pushed even to what some will call the verge of disloyalty, than would be the case if the cause of uncertainty were only in the writer’s mind, and might not, with any plausibility or truth be charged upon the Church herself. Still, after making all due allowance for these disturbing forces, there is, I think, no justification at all for such statements as those in your “Second Letter,” but in the one consideration that the writer is grievously pressed by the difficulties of the case; (“the archers have hit him, and he is sore wounded;”) yet, believing it would be sin to let go his hold upon the Church in which his lot has been cast without the most direct and earnest endeavours to ascertain whether his doubts have not an answer, and his difficulties a solution somewhere, he lays them as a duty, and with great pain, though with all plainness, before his brethren of the same communion, that he may rejoice in such answer and such solution if they can be given. Take away this honest motive, and consider the writer’s mind as already made up, and I see no escape from the reproach of his having written as a traitor: but grant the supposition I have made (and I know, better, I believe, than most men, how safely it may be granted you), and there remains, to my mind, no ground for the invective and reproach with which in some quarters you have been met. [8]
You will not misunderstand me, if I say that I approach the task I have undertaken with a certain disquietude, arising from the responsibility I appear to take upon myself, and the consciousness how little qualified I am duly to discharge it. These thoughts have made me feel at times uncertain whether I do well to attempt it at all. Still, as I do not think at present there is any notice of another undertaking it; and as, if there be, my letter will be no hindrance to any one else more worthily occupying the same ground, and as I do seem (to myself at any rate) to have something to answer as to the principle on which your difficulties rest, perhaps I better discharge my duty by writing what I can, than I should do in withholding my letter, from the knowledge my ability does not reach to the half that I could wish. I trust, however, you will remember, if I have not learning or skill to state the Church of England’s argument in the way it may best be stated, that I only am responsible; and it is no fair mode of reasoning, to argue, the Church of England can say no more in defence of her position than I may be able to set down for her.
But I proceed to the subject before me.
The drift of your whole second letter appears to me to be summed up in this one sentence towards its close, “I have resigned my cure of souls, because I have no doctrines and no faith to teach, as certainly the faith and doctrines of the English Church.” [10] Plainly this involves the whole point at issue; for if you have none, (I mean as a result not of your own mind, but from the Church’s defect,) then of course neither have I, nor has any one of her priests; and if so, we have all, (all, that is to say, who are enough imbued with the spirit of Catholic antiquity to know and feel that we must teach as the Church in all ages has taught,) no other line before us but to follow your example in resignation of our cures. And this again is a sentence of deposition to the Church of England altogether; for that Church which drives from her all that is sound and Catholic, and can admit none but such as are more or less heretics to minister at her altars, is manifestly faithless to her trust, and has forfeited the “good deposit.” She can claim no longer to be a living branch of the true vine; nor can any man believe that she can bear and convey the grace of life-giving sacraments. To ascertain whether indeed this be so with us, is the point to which I purpose presently to direct my argument, endeavouring to show the contrary, inasmuch as I think it may be proved, that where the faith has been directly assailed, as on the subject of Baptism by the late decision of the Privy Council, our business is to clear and vindicate it; and that we have time, and I trust also, means to do this; whilst upon all other essential subjects, not in like manner attacked, though the Church of England may possibly seem upon some of them more open to objection or assault than upon Baptism, we yet have a rule of Catholic teaching which is dogmatic, and ought to be received as such by every one of us on the very face of the matter, until in any like mode it may be brought into question, when again, as such cause arises, the objection must be met, and the faith vindicated and cleared.
Before, however, I proceed to these positions and the proofs of them, I am anxious to say something on one or two preliminary considerations. And first, I must make an observation on my own former letter, and on the notice taken of it by you, (in the kindest terms, but, as I think, with some little misapprehension of its argument,) in the appendix to your “second letter.” I refer to this, not merely to clear up the misapprehension, which might appear a personal matter hardly worth the time, but also because I think the point will be found to have a further and necessary bearing on my present subject as we proceed. After speaking of my letter as to its tone, you say, “But as it was not intended to be an answer to the facts stated in my first letter, so it seemed to me to fail in meeting the real difficulty of the case.” [12] It is quite true it was not intended to be an answer to the facts, viz. the positions advanced by you as to the powers of the regal supremacy, and the jurisdiction of the Committee of Privy Council, as a court of appeal. Rather, it admitted the facts, for argument’s sake at any rate, (I did not intend to commit myself, and, I think, did not commit myself to more than this in the way of concession,) in order to show that, even so, the conclusions you drew would not follow legitimately from them. Its aim, therefore was, that even granting the premises to be as you had stated them, as to the authority of the said court, and granting also the judgment (then about to be delivered) to be heretical, still the Church might not be thereby committed to heresy; and would not be so, unless it could be reasonably made manifest that she intended such heresy to be permissible; that her animus was to include the heresy in her teaching. “Its point was,” (you continue) “that even granting such an ambiguity to exist in our formularies, yet it might have been an inadvertence at the time when our Prayer Book and Articles were put forth, and that we must prove that the Church of England at the Reformation intended that there should be such an ambiguity. But this is a line of argument which must admit that which has been so energetically denied to bear upon the question at issue, namely, the opinions of the reformers and divines of the sixteenth century; and it is to be remembered that if such are to be referred to as evidence of the animus of our Church on the subject of Baptism, so they must equally be appealed to upon the doctrines, for example, of the Eucharist and sacramental grace. In short, it is making use of an argument wisely and long repudiated by the High Church party.” [13]