F. Spencer thought he had a gentleman to deal with in his adversary, but found that he had overrated the attributes his charity supposed him to possess. He pointed an argument upon the unity of our teachers as contradistinguished from sectarian ones, by bringing in Mr. Dalton and his brother us an example. At this Dalton took offence, and F. Spencer made a most ample and beautiful apology. This evoked all the bile of his opponent in a flourish of trumpets, by which he boasted of a post relinquished in the argument, which really argued gain in F. Spencer as a Christian antagonist. He flung out then in glorious confusion—imperfect councils, bad popes, Spanish inquisitions, just as they came to hand. When Spencer saw this, he thought of answering him according to his folly, and instead of analyzing his "concentrated lozenge," wrote something in the style of cudgelling him for the fun of the thing next time. Here is an extract from his next letter, which is produced more as a specimen of his humour than of his logic:—
A sentence of Mr. Dalton's letter ran thus:
"But let me first remind you what our view of private judgment is. Do we mean that every man may set up as an interpreter of Scripture, that every shoemaker and ploughman (as Catholics say) may become a preacher? By no means; we recognise authority when it is scriptural, and believe that an authorized ministry is God's mode of extending the Bible."
Father Spencer replies:—
"Now this sentence suggests so many reflections to me that I hardly know which way to begin with it. I will first try what a little paraphrase will do, and explain what I think might perchance have been in your mind when you wrote it, and you may tell me whether I am near the mark before I make further comments on it. I would figure you to myself as reasoning thus with your self:—The right of private judgment must be maintained in some form, or else even we ministers shall not be able to stand our ground against the Romanists. If we allow of any reasonable notion of Church authority when we talk to them, they will hook us up again, and we shall not be able to assert even our own liberty to interpret as we like. But, on the other hand, if we put away talking of Church authority when we mount our pulpits, and impart the word to our hitherto obedient poor followers, they will begin to ask themselves, what need, then, is there of our reverend guides? Why should we pay any more tithes, and seat rents, and church rates, and Easter offerings, and the like? Yea! then would be sad danger that our craft would come to be set at nought, and the Temple of Great Diana (the Church of Great Elizabeth) would be reputed for nothing, and therefore we must teach people that there is such a thing as ministerial authority at least, if we cannot make much of an attempt to prove ecclesiastical authority; we must take care to maintain that to be capable of being a minister, a man must be able to read the New Testament in Greek, and the Old in Hebrew, at least, have a smattering of Hebrew, or else we shall have shoemakers and plough-men setting up opposition without being able to put them down; for they will be able to match us in what we must hold forth as the grand proof of the ministry, viz., that a man should be able to quote texts at pleasure, and talk about them so rapidly and unintelligibly as to make a congregation think him mighty wise and deeply spiritual. Such are the men who must be proclaimed worthy of great honour and admiration, but, above all, of ample revenues. Never mind how many contradictory systems enter into their respective reverend heads, we must persuade the people, as long as they will swallow it, that they all speak by the Holy Ghost. It would, indeed, be more according to Scripture and reason, if all who professed to be led by the Spirit taught one doctrine; but this we can never bring about, unless we all get back to popery: and, indeed, it is not needful, nor even expedient, for the purpose we have before us, which is not to speak sound words which cannot be reproved, but such words as will keep together our congregation, and suit their tastes. Now as the tastes of men are so various, it is absolutely necessary that the doctrines we give them should vary too, and, therefore, as we know that Bible truth is but one, and the Bible, nevertheless, is the book out of which we must all pretend to teach, we cannot sufficiently praise the cleverness of those gifted individuals, who, by organizing a sort of skirmishing ministry, to take the place of the old uniform heavy phalanx of the Romanists, one fit to extend the truth of the Bible, so as to suit the tastes of all sorts of men, have enabled so many of us to extract from the pockets of all a genteel maintenance for our wives and families. I have in this paraphrase found myself obliged to pass over one word when you speak of God's mode of extending the truth of the Bible. This operation, I think, God had never anything to do with. I believe that 1,800 years ago, God did, by his only Son, institute a ministry as his mode of preserving the truth of the Bible, but extending the truth of the Bible is a very different sort of affair. These words, though rather obscure, yet seem to convey very felicitiously the idea of what the Gospel ministers of the present day have accomplished, that is, making the Bible truth so extensive as to embrace all the various contradictory systems—Church of England, High, Low, Evangelical, et hoc genus omne. But the time would fail me to tell a tenth part of the glorious variety which the spiritual bill of fare of the nineteenth century presents to the dainty taste of our countrymen. This plan of truth extension is a wonder which was reserved for the wisdom of our preachers to contrive and to develope, under the guidance of a wiser spirit than that of man, and yet certainly not the spirit of God. The ancient saints had no more idea of it than Archimedes had of a hydraulic press. I have taken the liberty of playing upon your exposition of authority, to show how vain it is to attempt to uphold anything like a legitimate authority, and the right of private judgment together. I do not wonder that you got rather into a perplexity in trying to explain how they may be reconciled. The Church of England has tried to explain this matter in her 20th Article, but finds it too hard. She just says, 'the Church hath authority in controversies of faith,' but leaves it to her children to guess whether this authority be divine or human, infallible or fallible, granted her by the King of Heaven or the king of England. She intimates, indeed, that it is not quite to be depended on, by the next words, in which it is said, 'it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything contrary to God's word written:' but again we are left to divine who the judge is, who is to keep the Church in order: is it the king, or every licensed preacher, or every single Christian? ..... Ah! these Articles are troublesome things. I have known what it is to be under those shackles, and what it is to be set free from them."
In the next letter, his opponent complains that Father Spencer has hurt his feelings, and made his heart sicken, which complaint the wily priest, as he was termed, began to answer thus:—
"I have heard of certain ladies who have recourse to a method something like this to escape being kept in order by their husbands, and who silence everything that is said against their humours by falling into hysterics. A tender husband will once or twice perhaps be melted by the alarming spectacle; he will run and fetch the smelling-bottle, ring for the servants, beg pardon, and say pretty things to compose his dear partner's mind again. But when he finds that as soon as she has gained her point she gets well directly, and is more saucy and wilful than before—if he wishes to be happy, or to make her so—he will be what she calls cruel next time, and let her get well by herself till she is tired of fainting fits. Now, sir, I have once been tender-hearted over you .... I apologized .... In the next letter you took advantage of this to make an impertinent remark. This discovered to me that your feelings need not be so tenderly dealt with, and I proceeded with my disagreeable questions, and shall still do so at the risk of your telling me in the next letter that I have not only sickened you, but made you quite faint away."
After thus sickening his delicate friend, he sums up in the last letter and answers the difficulties objected to him very well indeed. We forbear introducing purely controversial matter, except in as far as it bears upon the peculiar gifts or manner of Father Spencer. There is nothing but what any ordinary priest of fair acquirements could have said in defence of our doctrines in the remainder, except that the answer to the hackneyed objection about some councils being of doubtful authority is very clearly and forcibly given.
A third champion entered the lists before these had been "conquered" enough to think themselves qualified "to argue still." This was a Rev. W. Riland Bedford. Indeed, he was so impatient of distinguishing himself by the honour of having once engaged with so respectable a foe, that he could not wait until Mr. Dalton was ousted. Besides, it is very likely he thought Mr. Dalton was missing fine opportunities of giving clever strokes, by spending too much time in quarrelling with the ungenerous hits of his adversary or, perhaps, he thought he did not take the proper instruments of warfare. However, he made a grand stroke, and aimed also at what he believed to be the most vulnerable, as well as the most defenceless, spot in the person of F. Spencer's system. Here we might be corrected by the Maid of Lille, who said, very pertly, to Mr. Spencer once: "Catholics have no systems." They have doctrines. At all events, Mr. Riland Bedford did attack F. Spencer, and lest he might lose by being single-handed, a brace of them—Revs. Messrs. M'Ghee and himself—made an onslaught on Revs. Messrs. M'Donnel and Spencer, thereby intending, of course, to make a grand breach in Popery. The subject of their letters was the treating of certain sins by our moral theologians. F. Spencer made use of the usual line of defence here, but he added also an argumentum ad hominem. "St. Paul, in the chapter above referred to (Rom. i.), tells us that there were no sins more prevalent in his day, and none more destructive, than that grievous class of sins to which these questions relate. The afflicting experience of the pastors of the Church leads them to fear that no less awfully in these times and in this country, do habits of the like crimes make ruin of thousands of souls; and your own recollection of the University, where, I suppose, you were educated for holy orders, must convince you that our fears are not unfounded. For what must be expected in the body of the people, when, among those who are preparing to be their pastors, at the most critical time of their life, there are so few who dare openly to withstand the prevailing fashion of iniquity, and so many who profess to despise morality and chastity as a thing to be ashamed of." F. Spencer was tripped up in some allusions he made to a Protestant attempt at a prayer-book, of which there were two or three editions; but, since he happened not to be correct as to one edition, and to miss something about another, still, though his argument was not thereby weakened, but Rev. Mr. Riland Bedford thought it was, and so, or nearly so, the matter ended.