dience to a superiority which was merely conventional. There are separate arguments, held by a part of the Roman Catholics, against the validity of Anglican orders: but they are such as others are not likely to admit and they recognise the fact of the Succession. Upon that fact we stand. : 38. And now to sum up in a few words the foregoing argument. It is applicable mainly to those who admit that the Church of England, as a Church, is not chargeable either with heresy or with schism. It represents to them that she has a special claim which they may not yet have considered, in addition to those negative conditions which they have thus admitted. It is this, that she gives credibility to her doctrine, and clear authority to her ministrations, by the fact that she teaches no articles of faith but such as have been drawn out of Scripture by the universal consent of the Church from the beginning, and that she is at this day historically the same institution, through which the Gospel was originally preached to the English nation; preached then, as it is preached now, by the ascertained commission of the Apostles of Christ, and through them by the will of Christ Himself. CHAPTER VII. CHURCH PRINCIPLES IN RELATION TO PRESENT SECTION I.-INTRODUCTORY. 1. Summary--2. Objections-3. Nature of the issue-4. Meaning of "Church Principles"-5, 6. Not opinions-7. Nor peculiar. 1. ACCORDING then to the arguments of the foregoing chapters, we are to recognise in the Church that institution which historically connects us with the Messiah; the instrument, by means of which we acquire a title to the promises of His covenant; and the body in which, as in a form or mould, the religious life of the individual is to be cast. In her Sacraments we are to acknowledge both the highest and the most determinate means of vital incorporation with the Redeemer, and in Him of true and not merely conventional union with one another. In her Apostolically descended ministry, such as we receive it upon historical evidence, we are to acknowledge the organ of her collective action; the medium of the intercommunication of those subordinate yet also integral members, into which she is not separated but distributed or disposed; the first witness of her doctrine; the appointed channel of her Sacramental gifts; and the principal machinery for her actual administration. 2. But it is by some supposed that such a repre sentation and conception of the Church and of her functions, is calculated to lead us either into or at least towards the abuses of superstition, to the theory and practice of intolerance, to an uncharitable estimate of the other reformed communions, and to division among the members of our own. As far as the second of these charges refers to political and legislative intolerance, it is treated elsewhere:* in the residue it is comprised under the other three heads of imputation. With these it is now proposed to deal. 3. Far be it from me to assert or to give countenance even by implication to the principle, that we are to be governed in the examination of ethical and theological questions, and determined in the choice of our conclusions by the convenient or salutary consequences which, as we may imagine, follow upon their adoption, either with reference to particular times and circumstances, or even in a more general view. The immediate criteria of truth and duty are, in my opinion, not only more healthful, but likewise far more simple and generally available, than the indirect and hazardous process of judging them primarily from results. But when the first methods have been used with due diligence, and have produced adequate conviction, it is both necessary in order to meet the charges of mischievous consequence with which the adversaries of any given doctrine will endeavour to load it, and moreover eminently consolatory, if we find *The State in its Relations with the Church. Chapter II. § 72— 77, and VI. § 7. 3d ed. that the legitimacy of our conclusions is attested by their competency to solve the perplexing problems with which the state of society abounds. And this inferior province is that in which I have chosen generally to range, as the sphere best suited to a private capacity in the Church. Now, the foregoing chapters have been intended to exhibit the ethical tendencies, under a general view, of the ideas to which they relate. If the reasonings contained in them be in any degree just, in that same degree do they tend to establish a general rule, that the experimental results of those ideas will be found favourable in any given case. It remains then to consider the particular case immediately before us: namely, the immediate and specific tendencies of these ideas in connection with the necessities, the duties, and the circumstances at large, of our own time and country. 4. One more caution must however be given, before entering on the proper subject matter of this chapter. There may be occasion in its course to make frequent and very concise reference to the views which have been summed up in the first paragraph of this chapter, considered collectively and as a system: if for this purpose I still venture to refer to them by the appellation of Church principles, it is not as presuming to insinuate that no one can be devotedly attached to the Church of Christ, or to the portion of it existing among ourselves, who does not concur in this particular representation of its character. On the other hand I would beg emphatically, and once for all, to decline responsibility for any private sentiments other than those which I may for myself have enunciated, as belonging to the cause I desire to serve; while of course my argument would not allow me to deny, that the essential principles, here so faintly touched, do claim the assent of men, as being the primitive, the Catholic, the Scriptural, the true principles of an institution founded by Christ Himself, and therefore, of course, deriving its principles, whatever they may be, from Him: not as the indifferent notions of individuals, but as parts of what, by the very fact of our Christian profession, we are bound to hold. 66 5. I think that justice would entitle, nay perhaps that principle may require those, who are considered by some men peculiar, because they receive the doctrines of visibility and authority in the Church, of grace in the Sacraments, of succession in the ministry, of the anti-rationalistic handling of Christian truths at large, to protest altogether and in limine against applying to these religious principles the hazardous and seductive name of opinion. Opinion," properly designates something partaking of what is merely human and arbitrary in its formation, something which seems to testify of itself that it is not clearly revealed, that its reception is a matter of indifference, that it has a subjective existence alone, and therefore has no claim to reception except where it is actually received. Every sound Christian (for example) would be shocked at saying, it is my opinion that Jesus Christ is the Redeemer of the world: would feel that there is a real though not always a palpable dis |