There are states of nervous excitement, when the noise of a light footstep is distracting. In such a condition were the authors of the Tracts in 1833, and all their subsequent proceedings have shown that the disorder was still upon them. Beset by their horror of the nineteenth century, they sought for something most opposite to it, and therefore they turned to what they called Christian antiquity. Had they judged of their own times fairly, had they appreciated the good of the nineteenth century as well as its evil, they would have looked for their remedy not to the second or third or fourth centuries, but the first; they would have tried to restore, not the Church of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or Augustine, but the Church of St. Paul and of St. John. Now, this it is most certain that they have not done. Their appeal has been not to Scripture, but to the opinions and practices of the dominant party in the ancient Church. They have endeavoured to set those opinions and practices, under the name of apostolical tradition, on a level with the authority of the Scriptures. But their unfortunate excitement has made them fail of doing even what they intended to do. It may be true that all their doctrines may be found in the writings of those whom they call the Fathers; but the effect of their teaching is different because its proportions are altered. Along with their doctrines, there are other points and another spirit prominent in the writings of the earlier Christians, which give to the whole a different complexion. The Tracts for the Times do not appear to me to represent faithfully the language of Christian antiquity; they are rather its caricature.
Still more is this the case, when we compare the language of Mr. Newman and his friends with that of the great divines of the Church of England. Granting that many of these believed firmly in apostolical succession; that one or two may have held general councils to be infallible; that some, provoked by the extravagances of the puritans, have spoken over-strongly about the authority of tradition; yet the whole works even of those who agree with. Mr. Newman in these points, give a view of Christianity different from that of the Tracts, because these points, which in the Tracts stand forward without relief, are in our old divines tempered by the admixture of other doctrines, which, without contradicting them, do in fact alter their effect. This applies most strongly, perhaps, to Hooker and Taylor; but it holds good also of Bull and Pearson. Pearson's exposition of the article in the Creed relating to the Holy Catholic Church is very different from the language of Mr. Newman: it is such as, with perhaps one single exception, might be subscribed by a man who did not believe in apostolical succession[2]. Again, Pearson is so far from making the creeds an independent authority, co-ordinate with Scripture, that he declares, contrary, I suppose, to all probability, that the Apostles' Creed itself was but a deduction from our present Scriptures of the New Testament[3]. Undoubtedly the divines of the seventeenth century are more in agreement with the Tracts than the Reformers are; but it is by no means true that this agreement is universal. There is but one set of writers whose minds are exactly represented by Mr. Newman and his friends, and these are the nonjurors.
[2] The sixth and last mark which he gives of the unity of the Church is, "the unity of discipline and government." "All the Churches of God have the same pastoral guides appointed, authorized, sanctified, and set apart by the appointment of God, by the direction of the Spirit, to direct and lead the people of God in the same way of eternal salvation; as, therefore, there is no Church where there is no order, no ministry, so where the same order and ministry is, there is the same Church. And this is the unity of regiment and discipline." Pearson on the Creed, Art. IX. p. 341, seventh edit. fol. 1701. It would be easy to put a construction upon this paragraph which I could agree with; but I suppose that Pearson meant what I hold to be an error. Yet how gently and generally is it expressed; and this doubtful paragraph stands alone amidst seventeen folio pages on the article of the Holy Catholic Church. And in his conclusion, where he delivers what "every one ought to intend when they profess to believe the Holy Catholic Church," there is not a word about its government; nor is Pearson one of those interpreters who pervert the perfectly certain meaning of the word "Catholic" to favour their own notions about episcopacy. I could cordially subscribe to every word of this conclusion.
[3] "To believe, therefore, as the word stands in the front of the Creed, ... is to assent to the whole and every part of it as to a certain and infallible truth revealed by God, ... and delivered unto us in the writings of the blessed apostles and prophets immediately inspired, moved, and acted by God, out of whose writings this brief sum of necessary points of faith was first collected." (P. 12.) And in the paragraph immediately preceding, Pearson had said, "The household of God is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, who are continued unto us only in their writings, and by them alone convoy unto us the truths which they received from God, upon whose testimony we believe." It appears, therefore, that Pearson not only subscribed the 6th Article of the Church of England, but also believed it.
Many reasons, therefore, concur to make it doubtful whether the authors of the Tracts have discovered the true remedy for the evils of their age; whether they have really inculcated "something better and deeper than satisfied the last century." The violent prejudice which previously possessed them, and the strong feelings of passion and fear which led immediately to their first systematic publications, must in the first instance awaken a suspicion as to their wisdom; and this suspicion becomes stronger when we find their writings different from the best of those which they profess to admire, and bearing a close resemblance only to those of the nonjurors. A third consideration is also of much weight--that their doctrines do not enforce any great points of moral or spiritual perfection which other Christians had neglected; nor do they, in any especial manner, "preach Christ." In this they offer a striking contrast to the religious movement, if I may so call it, which began some years since in the University at Cambridge. That movement, whatever human alloy might have mingled with it, bore on it most clear evidence that it was in the main God's work. It called upon men to turn from sin and be reconciled to God; it emphatically preached Christ crucified. But Mr. Newman and his friends have preached as their peculiar doctrine, not Christ but the Church; we must go even farther and say, not the Church, but themselves. What they teach has no moral or spiritual excellence in itself; but it tends greatly to their own exaltation. They exalt the sacraments highly, but all that they say of their virtue, all their admiration of them as so setting forth the excellence of faith, inasmuch as in them the whole work is of God, and man has only to receive and believe, would be quite as true, and quite as well-grounded, if they were to abandon altogether that doctrine which it is their avowed object especially to enforce--the doctrine of apostolical succession. Referring again to the preamble of their original resolutions, already quoted, we see that the two first articles alone relate to our Lord and to his Sacraments; the third, which is the great basis of their system, relates only to the Clergy. Doubtless, if apostolical succession be God's will, it is our duty to receive it and to teach it; but a number of clergymen, claiming themselves to have this succession, and insisting that, without it, neither Christ nor Christ's Sacraments will save us, do, beyond all contradiction, preach themselves, and magnify their own importance. They are quite right in doing so, if God has commanded it; but such preaching has no manifest warrant of God in it; if it be according to God, it stands alone amongst his dispensations; his prophets and his apostles had a different commission. "We preach," said St. Paul, "not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." It is certain that the enforcing apostolical succession as the great object of our teaching is precisely to do that very thing which St. Paul was commissioned not to do.
This, to my mind, affords a very great presumption that the peculiar doctrines of Mr. Newman and his friends, those which they make it their professed business to inculcate, are not of God. I am anxious not to be misunderstood in saying this. Mr. Newman and his friends preach many doctrines which are entirely of God; as Christians, as ministers of Christ's Church, they preach God's word; and thus, a very large portion of their teaching is of God, blessed both to their hearers and to themselves. Nay, even amongst the particular objects to which their own "Resolutions" pledge them, one is indeed most excellent--"the revival of daily common prayer, and more frequent participation of the Lord's Supper." This is their merit, not as Christians generally, but as a party, (I use the word in no offensive sense;) in this respect their efforts have done, and are doing great good. But they have themselves declared that they will especially set themselves to preach apostolical succession; and it is with reference to this, that I charge them with "preaching themselves;" it was of this I spoke, when I said that there was a very great presumption that their peculiar doctrines were not of God.
Again, the system which they hold up as "better and deeper than satisfied the last century" is a remedy which has been tried once already: and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil which this remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to cure. Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, the authority of the Church, were triumphantly maintained for several centuries; and their full development was coincident, to say the least, with the corruption alike of Christ's religion and Christ's Church. So far were they from tending to realize the promises of prophecy, to perfect Christ's body up to the measure of the stature of Christ's own fulness, that Christ's Church declined during their ascendancy more and more;--she fell alike from truth and from holiness; and these doctrines, if they did not cause the evil, were at least quite unable to restrain it. For, in whatever points the fifteenth century differed from the fourth, it cannot be said that it upheld the apostolical succession less peremptorily, or attached a less value to Church tradition, and Church authority. I am greatly understating the case, but I am content for the present to do so: I will not say that Mr. Newman's favourite doctrines were the very Antichrist which corrupted Christianity; I will only say that they did not prevent its corruption,--that when they were most exalted Christian truth and Christian goodness were most depressed.
After all, however, what has failed once may doubtless be successful on a second trial: it is within possibility, perhaps, that a doctrine, although destitute of all internal evidence showing it to come from God, may be divine notwithstanding;--revealed for some purposes which we cannot fathom, or simply as an exercise of our obedience. All this may be so; and if it can be shown to be so, there remains no other course than to believe God's word, and obey his commandments; only the strength of the external evidence must be in proportion to the weakness of the internal. A good man would ask for no sign from heaven to assure him that God commands judgment, mercy, and truth; whatsoever things are pure, and lovely, and of good report, bear in themselves the seal of their origin; a seal which to doubt were blasphemy. But the cloud and the lightnings and thunders, and all the signs and wonders wrought in Egypt and in the Red Sea, were justly required to give divine authority to mere positive ordinances, in which, without such external warrant, none could have recognised the voice of God. We ask of Mr. Newman and his friends to bring some warrant of Scripture for that which they declare to be God's will. They speak very positively and say, that "the security by our Lord no less expressly authorized for the continuance and due application of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is the apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them the presbyters of the Church." They say that our Lord has authorized this "no less expressly" than he has authorized the Holy Supper as the mean of partaking in his body and blood. What our Lord has said concerning the communion is not truly represented: he instituted it as one mean of grace among many; not asthe mean; neither the sole mean, nor the principal. But allow, for an instant, that it was instituted asthe mean; and give this sense to those well-known and ever-memorable words in which our Lord commanded his disciples to eat the bread and drink of the cup, in remembrance of him. His words commanding us to do this are express; "not less express," we are told, is his "sanction of the apostolical commission of the bishops, as the security for the continuance and due application of the Sacrament." Surely these writers allow themselves to pervert language so habitually, that they do not consider when, and with regard to whom, they are doing it. They say that our Lord has sanctioned the necessity of apostolical succession, in order to secure the continuance and efficacy of the sacrament, "no less expressly" than he instituted the sacrament itself. If they had merely asserted that he had sanctioned the necessity of apostolical succession, we might have supposed that, by some interpretation of their own, they implied his sanction of it, from words which, to other men, bore no such meaning. But in saying that he has "expressly sanctioned it," they have, most unconsciously, I trust, ascribed their own words to our Lord; they make Mm to say what he has not said, unless they can produce[4] some other credible record of his words besides the books of the four evangelists and the apostolical epistles.
[4] "Scripture alone contains what remains to us of our Lord's teaching. If there be a portion of revelation sacred beyond other portions, distinct and remote in its nature from the rest, it must be the words and works of the eternal Son Incarnate. He is the one Prophet of the Church, as he is our one Priest and King. His history is as far above any other possible revelation, as heaven is above earth: for in it we have literally the sight of Almighty God in his judgments, thoughts, attributes, and deeds, and his mode of dealing with us his creatures. Now, this special revelation is in Scripture, and in Scripture only: tradition has no part in it."--Newman's Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church. 1837. Pp. 347, 348.
That their statement was untrue, and being untrue, that it is a most grave matter to speak untruly of our Lord's commands, are points absolutely certain. But if they recall the assertion, as to the expressness of our Lord's sanction, and mean to say, that his sanction is implied, and may be reasonably deduced from what he has said, then I answer, that the deduction ought to be clear, because the doctrine in itself bears on it no marks of having had Christ for its author. Yet so far is it from true, that the necessity of apostolical succession, in order to give efficacy to the sacrament, may be clearly deduced from any recorded words of our Lord, that there are no words[5] of his from which it can be deduced, either probably or plausibly; none with which it has any, the faintest, connexion; none from which it could be even conjectured that such a tenet had ever been in existence. I am not speaking, it will be observed, of apostolical succession simply; but of the necessity of apostolical succession, as a security for the efficacy of the sacrament. That this doctrine comes from God, is a position altogether without evidence, probability, or presumption, either internal or external.