on what practical point affecting the Christian life of her children can she be said to speak unanimously and distinctly?

LETTER III.

I REJOICE in your candid acknowledgment of the fact of disunion in the English Church, and of its extent, that it is "a rent to the very foundation;" though, at the same time, you plead that such disunion is not inherent in her essence, but only an accident, which proper Ecclesiastical discipline would remove. Be this as it may; that you confess the fact is enough for my present purpose; for I am only concerned to prove that, from whatever cause, the Church of England has not that essential note of the true Church, Unity; and this you have fully admitted. And, before I examine the plea you have put forward, let me just entreat you to weigh well the extent of this admission. What is it to confess that a Church has not unity of doctrine, but to confess by implication that she has not the true faith, or at least that she has it not for the practical benefit of her children? For, supposing that one of the antagonist systems within her be the truth, and, even further, that her formularies sanction that system rather than the other, still, how are the simple and

uneducated to know which it is, if they hear both alike taught by her accredited ministers? It is vain to refer such to the Prayer-book, telling them to judge for themselves, whose teaching is most in accordance with what they find there; this is to require from them what they have not mental training sufficient to enable them to do, while it encourages them also to place themselves in an attitude of mind, surely most undesirable, that of judges over their teachers. To the multitude, the teaching of the Church is, and always must be, the teaching of the individual clergy; if then these are divided, how are the people to learn the truth?

Only meditate upon this, which you cannot but admit, and then determine whether, considering that the teaching of the faith is one main office of the Church, a body which does not teach any distinct creed, can be of the true Church.

But, to turn to the examination of your plea,—do you honestly believe that unity would be the result of improved ecclesiastical discipline in the English Church? Are you not too painfully conscious, that the administrators of that ecclesiastical discipline are not themselves of the same mind; and that what has been triumphantly said by a writer already quoted* is most true, that to whatever point Anglicans direct their artillery, they find it protected by the Episcopate; the small arms of the Evangelicals are covered by the heavy metal of many Bishops ?" We did not need the recent scandal of Bishops or

*Mr. Close, p. 20.

Chancellors attacking one another in public charges, to assure us of this fact: have you not yourself often confessed that it is hopeless to attempt any reformation in the so-called Church Societies, as long as certain Bishops, whom you have named, have any influence in their councils? and is it not notorious that young men of one school of opinions crowd to the North for Holy Orders, whilst those of the opposite party, if they hope to be admitted to the same privileges, find themselves obliged to move towards the West? Surely, while the Rulers of the Church themselves are thus disagreed, an augmentation of their power, (which I suppose is involved in your idea of improved discipline,) would only tend to aggravate the evil. For, what would it be but simply a hardship, if the bishops were enabled by such augmented power to silence their dissentient clergy, unless, at the same time, their own opinions could be brought into harmony? Again, it is surely idle to seek for unity by strengthening the executive authority of the Church, until there are some means of ascertaining what her mind really is. Is there, at present, any one legitimate exponent of her doctrine recognized as such by all parties? If we quote the charges of the bishops as samples of her teaching, we are told that all these together will not make up the voice of the Church: the decisions of an Oxford Convocation reckon for nothing:-the highest judge in an Ecclesiastical Court, gives now a judgment seeming to tend in the Catholic direction, now another swaying back into Protestantism; and, in both instances, parties are found,-in the one case a Bishop, in the

other a Regius Professor,-to deprecate such decision being in any way attributed to the Church. Nay, if the Queen, the Supreme Governor of the Church herself, in concurrence with the Primate of all England, holds out the right hand of fellowship to heretical and schismatical bodies in the East, sending a Bishop to Jerusalem, who fraternizes with Lutherans or Nestorians,-even this, we are told, is in no sense the act of the Church of England. Surely the fact, that so great changes must take place in the system of the English Church, before increase of discipline would give her unity, is an argument against your plea, that her disunion is a mere accident; for that which it would require a remodelling of her whole constitution to rectify, must be something, at least, very intimately interwoven with her essence; and, indeed, the annals of the last three hundred years, that is, of the whole term of her separate existence, are enough to show, that, if division be not inherent in her system, it is an "accident" altogether "inseparable" from it.

But, in truth, that the real cause of the mischief lies deep in her very essence, is too manifest, whether we study the history of her origin, and the formation of her various symbols and offices, or her theory as stated in her own articles. There has been within her, from the very first, a contest between two irreconcileable principles, the Catholic and the Protestant; each of these has wrung from her what sanction it could; and utter inconsistency has been, of course, the result. Hence, she presents for the acceptance of her children, (as it has been well said,) Calvinist Articles

side-by-side with a Catholic Liturgy; and, of the two parties who have always been struggling to obtain the exclusive mastery within her, one has uniformly taken the Liturgy, the other the Articles, as the key-note, in their respective attempts to harmonize the conflicting portions of her formularies. That portions of her formularies are conflicting, each being taken in its obvious sense, none, I believe, attempt to deny; and many, who desire nothing more than to submit in unquestioning obedience to the teaching of their Church, feel the inconsistency very painfully. For instance, the Catechism teaches that "the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper." These words are plain and not Anti-Catholic; but how can they be reconciled with the declaration at the end of the Communion Service, which, apologizing for the practice of kneeling at that Sacrament, says that thereby no adoration is intended, for that "the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in heaven, and not here," (in the consecrated elements?) I have myself known young persons, who have been taught to understand the Catechism in its obvious meaning, greatly perplexed by this declaration, not knowing which of the two to receive, but feeling it quite impossible to receive both. Again, the 21st Article teaches distinctly enough, that "General Councils may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God;" and yet, by the laws of the English Church, not only is that to be adjudged for heresy, which 'hath been so adjudged by the authority of the

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