Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"Did your remarks, Sir, elicit any reply?"
Mr. Roscoe.—"O no, Sir; I saw by their looks and their significant movements that they regarded them as beneath their notice, because they were the remarks of a layman. Infallibles will not stoop to discussion; they merely dictate like an oracle, or command like a despot."
Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"Yes, Sir; our clergy who advocate high church principles talk like Papal priests, and breathe the same spirit; and, unless they can be checked, they will assimilate the Church of England to the Church of Rome. Regeneration and absolution, which the sacred writers ascribe to the grace of God, they pretend to effect by their own delegated authority and power; and, as a necessary consequence, they require the people to look to them as holding the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And some few of the order are gone so far on their way to Rome, that they require their penitents to enter the confessional and make a full confession of all their sins, before they perform the delusive act of absolution."
Mr. Stevens.—"One should suppose that the Papal-like extravagance of the Tractarian clergy would be so repugnant to the evangelical clergy as to keep them at an infinite distance from all adhesion to high church principles, and yet it has not this effect. They seem, with rare exceptions, as much attached to these principles as the priests are, whom they denounce as Papists in disguise. Hence they will allow no church to be a true church of Christ but the Episcopal Church of England, and no minister to be a true minister of Christ unless he has been episcopally ordained."
Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"Yes, I regret to say these opinions are becoming very popular, and the clergy of both orders are endeavouring to impress them on the laity, and, I fear, with some degree of success. Indeed, high church principles, which used to be confined to the studies of the clergy, or merely lurked about amongst a few grave thinkers of the monkish order, are now becoming popular; they are finding their way into the light reading of the day, in hymns, in tales, and in memoirs; the female sex is captivated by them, and they are employing their powerful influence in propagating them amongst the poor, in Sabbath-schools, in workhouses, and wherever they can track the foot-treads of a human being. The advocates of these principles are displaying an ardent and an untiring zeal, a zeal worthy of a better cause. They employ the same argument amongst all classes, and with an equal amount of success; the intelligent and the sentimental, the uneducated and the uncouth, are alike ensnared by it. Ours, they say, is the true church, which Jesus Christ has purchased by his blood; enter and keep in, and you will have nothing to fear at death or the day of judgment."
Mr. Roscoe.—"And this belief is rising in popularity, and is becoming a national delusion. It is an instrument of great power in the hands of our Tractarians, as well as in the hands of the priests of Rome, and it is to the members of both churches a refuge of lies. The infatuated Tractarians reason precisely on the same data as the Papists, and arrive at the same deceptive conclusion—We are members of the true church because we are members of the Church of England, and therefore we are safe—as safe, they think, as the family of Noah in the ark when the door was shut; and no argument, however scriptural or powerful, can shake their confidence in the belief of their safety."
Mr. Stevens.—"Yes; and so inveterate is this belief amongst a vast majority of the members of the Church of England, that they will resent, as a personal insult, any reference to the possibility of their labouring under a delusion. An intimate friend related to me the following anecdote, which is illustrative of the facility of self-deception when under the power of high church principles.—He had been, in the early period of his life, a gay man of fashion, but he was now become a new man in Christ Jesus; and he had been a Churchman, but he was now a Dissenter. An old friend, with whom he had lived on terms of very close intimacy when they were both gay men of the world, came to reside in his neighbourhood, and he went to see him. On his second visit he took an opportunity of referring to the progress they were both making towards old age, and to the importance of being prepared for an entrance into the eternal world. His old friend abruptly terminated the subject of reference, by saying, 'I am not disposed, Sir, to do as you have done—change my religion. I am a member of the Church of England, as my father was before me; and I mean to live and die in her communion. I offer no opinion about what will become of schismatics; but we know that the members of the true church will be saved; and such is the Church of England.' Yet this man very seldom went to church. He was gay in his old age—passionately fond of gay company and high living."
Mr. Lewellin.—"This is the common cant apology which Churchmen offer in defence of their utter neglect of the great salvation. I had formed, some short time ago, a slight commercial intimacy with a gentleman; and on one occasion I ventured to call his attention to the solemn interrogation of Jesus Christ—'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' (Mark viii. 36, 37). He replied, with an off-hand pleasantry, 'I am not disposed, Sir, to change my religion.' He knew I was a Dissenter. 'Why, Sir,' I remarked, 'I did not know that you had any religion to change, for I heard you say, not long since, that you had not been inside a church for several years.' 'True, Sir, but I am a member of the Church of England, as my forefathers were as far back as we can trace; and I shall live and die in her communion. You know, Sir (so the apostle says), our Saviour has purchased the church, and He will not let go any part of it; and therefore I am safe. Our rector, who is a very learned man, preached a sermon on that subject the very last time I heard him; and he satisfied me that I have nothing else to do, to propitiate the Deity, than to keep within the pale of the church.'"
Mr. Stevens.—"Last winter I went to visit a very old woman, whose grandson is my groom; she has attended (so she told me), all her life long, the parish church in which the Rev. Mr. Cole does duty. When I asked her if she thought she was prepared for death, she replied instanter, 'Yes, I be, Sir. I keeps to my church. There I was married, there I was confirmed, there I was christened, and there I had the holy sacrament many times. There my husband is buried, and my father and mother, and all the rest of them that lived before them; and there I shall be buried when I dies. I ant changed my religion, Sir. It has been in our family for upwards of a hundred years. We have all kept to our church. The Lord rest our souls.'"
Mr. Lewellin.—"I suppose, Sir, you could not lead her into another way of thinking?"