II. Appeals of our Church to antiquity, and the teaching of the Church universal, as well as to her own previous constitutions and canons.
III. Recognition of such previous teaching by the civil power; if not proving the same point positively, yet at least shewing negatively that it is not contradicted.
IV. Some confirmation of the above view from considerations of what the Church of England would deprive herself of, (which no one has ever supposed her to have done) if the principle were to be carried out that her existence is to be dated from the sixteenth century only; and nothing to belong to her rule of faith but what was then determined, and in words set down.
I. Surely it is most certain on grounds of abstract reason and common sense, that things will stand as they are, if they neither fall to decay of themselves, nor are altered by any external power. No one pretends that the dogmatic teaching of a Church will fall to decay of itself. The other alternative, therefore, is all we have here to consider. I say then that, of any building, what you do not destroy, remains. You find such or such a fabric standing. It is, in your opinion, out of repair, or deformed with unnatural or unsightly excrescences, which in process of time have overgrown, or been engrafted upon it. Additions you may conceive them to be to the original structure, and now, injurious or inconvenient. You resolve that these, whether accidental or evilly contrived, shall be removed, and you address yourself to the task. Surely, your own principle in 1848, that what is not removed, remains, is most sound: I know not how to consider it less than axiomatically true. If a tower be taken down here, or a turret there, a window blocked up on this side, or a door opened in that, still the foundations remain the same as ever, unless you absolutely root them up. The basis of the building, except in such case, cannot be imagined to be moved, and just so much of the superstructure as you do not throw down, must stand as heretofore. It may be obscured by something else; it may be much less noticed, or noticeable, than it has been; it may be disregarded in the public eye; one whole side of the building may be clothed in shadow, but yet, if not destroyed, there it will remain, and remain as an integral part of the building to sustain its uses, and to be claimed for them when need is by the owner of the whole, and by his servants at his bidding. And so in that “city set on a hill,” her foundations are the same for ever; and, unless the Church of England at the reformation destroyed the foundations;—save where she may have “plainly and openly” pulled down any thing which had before-time been built up;—that which was laid, and that which was built remains, and is our heritage at this very day. So great is the absolute and essential difference between FORMATION and REFORMATION, and such the argument in favour of your principle in 1848, from abstract reason and the nature of things! [59a]
But further, we are not without an abundance of external proof, if I may so call it, besides this common sense reasoning, shewing that the Church of England at the reformation, if we gather her intentions not from opinions of individual reformers, but from her own authoritative acts, did not mean to adopt a wide and indiscriminate destruction of her previous teaching, and did mean to keep all that she did not mark to be destroyed. This point was the foundation of a large part of the most learned and able argument of Mr. Badeley before the Committee of Privy Council, by which he asserted, and as it seems to me, proved (although the Court appears to have taken absolutely no notice at all of this part of his speech) the certain and positive connection of the Church of England with the previous Church in this country, and with the Church universal, and this, not only by the links of the same apostolical succession, but in the maintenance of a connected doctrine. And the general principle as to antiquity, and the sense of the Church precedent to the reformation, which Mr. Badeley laid down expressly with a view to the matter of the suit in which he was engaged, and in order to apply it immediately to baptism; that same principle, be it observed, is applicable in exactly the same way, and the same fulness to every other article of the faith, unless any where it can be shown that the Church of England at the reformation did “plainly, openly, and dogmatically contradict it.” It would therefore be very much to my present purpose to cite here nearly the whole of this part of Mr. Badeley’s speech, but as you know it well, and can easily refer to it, I shall but extract a few of the more important passages, where the proofs of this principle being the rule of the English Church are given.
“I shall next appeal” Mr. Badeley says, “to antiquity in order to shew more fully that this doctrine for which I contend,” (of course the immediate doctrine which Mr. Badeley had in view, was baptismal regeneration: but his argument reaches, as I have just said, to the full purpose for which I cite it;) “has always been, and must necessarily still be, the doctrine of the Church of England. * * * If there can be any doubt at all about the sense and meaning of our Church, if it can be supposed by any criticism or minute construction, that these Articles and Formularies do leave any question open—do omit in any degree to declare with certainty the doctrine of the Church, resort must be had not to the writings of the reformers, not to the opinions of any individuals, however respectable they may have been; the only appeal can be to the early Church, and the doctrines which that Church professed. That is indisputably the standard to which we are referred, not only by our Prayer Book and our Homilies, but by those who took the most prominent part in the reformation in this country, and it is natural that this should be so, because what was in fact the reformation, and what its object? My friend, Mr. Turner, the other day, spoke of the Church of England in 1552, as being then in its infancy: but according to my understanding, it was then at least more than 1200 years old, for we have evidence of British bishops having attended some of the earliest councils. Some are supposed to have been present at the Council of Nicea, and it is positively stated that three attended the Council of Arles, which was prior to that of Nicea. The Church of England, therefore, is an ancient and an apostolic Church, deriving its succession from the primitive Church, and one and the same through all ages. The Reformation was no new formation, not a creation of a new Church, but the correction and restoration of an old one; it professed only to repair and reform, not to found or create—and it assumed to do this, according to the doctrines and usages of the primitive Church. The reformers well knew, that if they did not stand upon that ground, they had no resting place for the soles of their feet; they were fully conscious that if they attempted to alter the Church any otherwise than according to its ancient model, it would crumble to pieces altogether, and probably bury them in its ruins. All they professed, was to strengthen it where it was decayed, and to strip off those additions, which have encrusted or grown upon it in the lapse of time, without the authority of the Scripture, or of primitive tradition; but to this they declared that they adhered; they bound themselves down by this rule, and appealed to antiquity for all they did.” [63]
Then having quoted a passage from Bishop Jewell’s Apology, appealing to antiquity as our Church’s guide, and shewing (to use Mr. Badeley’s words) “that the intention of our reformers in departing from the Church of Rome, was not at all to depart from the doctrine of the Catholic Church,” he goes on to cite confirmatory authority to the same point in even more weighty documents.
“In the preface to the Prayer-book, as well as in the Articles, we have frequent references to the Fathers and the Primitive Church. We have the same in the Homilies; in almost every page they teem with quotations from the Fathers, and support themselves upon the ancient doctrine and the Catholic tradition; and therefore, in inquiring into what was the doctrine of the early Church upon the question now in issue, we are following precisely that course of inquiry, and appealing to that tribunal, which was marked out for us by the reformers themselves. They referred to the primitive doctrine as an indication of their meaning; and of course, if they had departed from that, they would have departed from the Church itself, because the Church, and the faith of the Church, can be but one.”
* * * * *
“I can show, that at the time of the Reformation there certainly was no intention to depart; and was no real departure in any respect from the doctrine of the early Church, on this or any other matter, certainly not on the Sacrament of Baptism, or upon the Sacraments generally; AND WHATEVER WAS NOT ALTERED AT THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION, REMAINS, AND CONTINUES TO BE THE DOCTRINE AND LAW OF THE CHURCH TO THIS DAY.” [64]
Again, Mr. Badeley says, “we have authority for looking to antiquity in one or two public documents which are of importance; for in the canons which were made in the year 1571, in that very Convocation which ratified the Thirty-nine Articles, we have this in the directions to preachers:—
“Imprimis vero videbunt, ne quid unquam doceant pro concione quod a populo religiose teneri et credi velint, nisi quod consentaneum sit doctrinæ veteris aut Novi Testamenti, quodque ex illâ ipsâ doctrinâ, Catholici Patres et veteres episcopi collegerint.”—Pp. 100, 101.