The present publication is an Introductory Address to a series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge. The peculiar circumstances under which Mr. Blunt enters upon the duties of the Margaret Professorship of Divinity are thus stated-the passage is a specimen of his style-a style always plain and almost homely, occasionally quaint and singular, but often vigorous in manner and spirited in expression. Until the Margaret Professorship of Divinity became actually vacant by the death of the distinguished Prelate who last held it, and I was called up to Cambridge as a candidate for the chair, and looked into the conditions of the endowment, I was not adequately aware of the character or extent of the duties it imposes. On perusing however the deed by which the Margaret Professor is bound, I could not but see that a state of things was contemplated by the Foundress very different from that which now obtains :-residence in the University, almost throughout the year; studies nearly unintermitted; the professors, the directors of those studies; hours, at their disposal; attendance at lectures, perhaps compulsory; the age of the pupils, tender; their attainments, moderate; books, scarce and costly-accordingly the Professor was to read some work on theology, approved by the authorities of the time, week after week, and term after term; and if to comment on it at all, his comment we must suppose to be such as would be consistent with perhaps a fortnight's preparation, (such being the whole interval which would sometimes elapse between his election and his commencement of lectures,) for a duty of almost daily recurrence and little cessation. It is clear, therefore, that at a period when the University is for a considerable part of the year deserted; its pursuits, for the season, suspended; when again College-lectures are more than co-ordinate with public lectures; when the students are men of mature age, free from constraint, and of great acquirements; when books are cheap and abundant, and as accessible to the hearers as to the lecturer;—it is clear, I say, that when the times are thus changed, there must be made some corresponding change in the system of the lectures; and that for a Professor to adhere strictly to the letter of the foundation-deed, would be to render his office utterly nugatory. In this case, as in other cases, circumstances must modify the interpretation of injunctions that are become out of date; and the spirit of them be chiefly looked to. For though it may be a very good maxim for England, that whenever a man finds himself with nothing to do, he should plant a tree; the precept would virtually be best followed in Canada by its direct infraction, and if there, in a similar event, he should cut one down.-Pp. 5—7. In adverting to the superficial and desultory course of reading into which young divines are too frequently drawn at the beginning of their ministerial career, we much regret that Professor Blunt was not induced to press upon the minds of his hearers, with all the weight which his high station and abilities must naturally carry, the absolute necessity of some alteration in the present system of the University itself. Let us not be misunderstood. We have no wish to interrupt the ordinary studies which are required at Cambridge for the first Academical degree. We believe that a General is the best foundation for a Professional education, and that the intellectual superiority of the Clergy of the Established Church is mainly to be ascribed to the enlarged system in which they have been trained-a system, which as it adorns the mind with the riches of classical excellence and strengthens it by the discipline of the severer studies, prepares its possessor for every condition, enables him to move with grace and dignity in every walk of life, and, in seasons of difficulty and danger, peculiarly fits him to wield with no unpractised hand the weapons of literary conflict. But, after all, this is but a noble apparatus of Means-the great end must be the Wisdom of Salvation, a deep knowledge of the Evidences and Doctrines-in all their vast and varied bearings—of that Religion which the majority of her sons will solemnly undertake to explain and preach. And how is this knowledge to be obtained, consistently with a due regard to the actual studies of the University, unless a longer period of residence and a more systematic course of theological instruction be required? It would be, at least, an important improvement in the several Divinity Lectures, delivered before the University, to combine Catechetical with Professorial Instruction, or, to require at the end of each course, and before any certificate were granted, a full and searching Examination of the Candidates. At present, where attendance is compulsory, it is often a mere form; where voluntary, it may awaken a transient interest and curiosity, but cannot command that continued attention and research, which the imposition of a test would naturally produce. We can testify, from no very limited experience, that the young candidates for orders have been known, on many occasions, to lament most bitterly that, although compelled to reside in the University, they had received no adequate assistance-it might be often correct to say, no assistance whatever-and that they were forced into the active duties of a parochial cure to teach before they had well begun to learn to act as the guides and directors of others while they were themselves obliged to grope about, as it were, at random, and to pick up mere fragments-unconnected, and, it may be, incorrect-of theological information. When we remember-and in none of her sons is that remembrance more vivid than in her present Margaret Professor-that it was within the walls of Cambridge-in the quiet groves of her " Holy and Religious House"-that Ridley committed to memory the Epistles of St. Paul-and reverted with deep expressions of gratitude to the blessed effects of that study, even in his last affecting appeals, when he was "about to be offered up, and the time of his departure was at hand"— we must surely feel something like a pang of reproach on finding that those sacred Epistles are but rarely-and most imperfectly-introduced into our Collegiate system-that but few private, and we believe no public Lectures, are devoted to the explanation of their numerous and complicated difficulties. These, we humbly conceive, are defects which require a decided remedy. Deeply indeed and unfeignedly do we grieve that the charge can be made-and cannot be refuted. Our enemies will rejoice-but be it our part to have pointed out these imperfections as we would look upon "the wounds of a father-with pious awe and trembling solicitude." The specific nature of his present course of Lectures is thus stated by Mr. Blunt : It is this; to set before you the substance of the Fathers of the three first centuries after Christ; the substance, as I shall have gathered it for myself by my own actual perusal of them-a fact which I do not refer to as a boast; but as a pledge for the trustworthiness of what I offer; and for the greater spirit and freshness of my matter, than if it had been communicated to you at second or third hand, I shall take the Fathers successively in their order: submitting to you the pith and body of each; some portions of them abridged; but much of them, especially such passages as seem to have a peculiar value and force, literally, and, as I believe, faithfully translated-I shall introduce from time to time such observations as suggested themselves whilst I read, or have occurred to me since, or may strike me hereafter, which bear on the canon of Scripture; the text of Scripture; the interpretation of Scripture; points of controversy; the doctrines and discipline of Churches; the evidences for the truth of Christianity in general; infidel objections; and the like;-indeed the plan I had sketched in my own mind, and to which I have already alluded, had there been time to execute it, was to have drawn out the substance of the Fathers of the three first centuries into these and similar general heads, and to have submitted them to you in that reduced form; instead of taking you along with me, as I must now do if I can, through each of them in succession. At the same time, it is not to be denied, that the latter plan, which necessity rather than choice causes me to adopt, will have the advantage of conveying to you the more complete idea of these writers themselves; and probably I shall so far graft the other upon it, as to conclude my investigation of each Father in detail, with a summary review of his writings, as they tell upon the several questions I have enumerated, or others akin to them. In either case my object would be, to give my hearers a notion of the state of religion, so far as we can discover it in the comparatively few authors which remain of that age, as it subsisted for the first three hundred years after Christ—a period of great interest at every season; and at this moment of the greatest; when to possess some knowledge of the Primitive Church is becoming more and more imperative; and learning, strictly ecclesiastical, which has so long been slumbering, is of necessity asserting itself once again. How curious are the ways of Providence in bringing what we may suppose its ends to pass! How far God fetches his purposes about! The contrivances of heaven,' says South, are as much above our politics, as beyond our arithmetic.' There was need perhaps of some revival of the Church of England; of some greater and more general knowledge throughout the kingdom of the principles on which it was constructed, and of its inestimable worth; a knowledge which, when once dispersed, would prepare the way for its adequate extension, and more hearty support. The admission of the Roman Catholics to greater political power; a measure, on which this is not the time or place to offer an opinion, and indeed the issues of which we cannot even yet foresee, has at least had this effect; it has given occasion to questions of controversy precisely such as demand an intimate acquaintance with antiquity to settle; it has sent divines once more to their books; to the writings of the Fathers, which had almost been suffered to perish out of remembrance; copies of their works, now so costly, having fallen to little more than a waste paper price; it has brought us back into something of the same position our reformers occupied when they regulated our Church; and as 'When we have lost one shaft We shoot his fellow of the self-same flight so are we now guided by passing events toward the resources they drew from; are led better to appreciate the use they made of them; and to understand once again, as a nation, the definite ground on which the Church of England rests; ground, from which her defenders must not, like the men of Ai, be tempted to descend, if they would contend against her many adversaries successfully.— Pp. 9-13. Mr. Blunt proceeds to show, by a long series of citations, the deep respect which was uniformly paid by the great authors of the Liturgy and Homilies of the Church of England to the opinions and usages of Christian antiquity. And, in an interesting and valuable note in p. 16, he has collected various passages from the early fathers, which contain minute and incidental notices of the Ritual of the Primitive Church. It is of the utmost importance in the present day to remember that it was by an appeal to Scripture and to the primitive Church,—the only true and safe mode of defence-that the leading divines of our own Church resisted the successive attacks of the Romanists and the Puritans. And indeed it stands to reason that it should be so. Thus to take the case of the Romanist. He finds in those texts of Scripture which relate to the Eucharist, and to the authority of which texts we, of course, bow no less than himself, his great doctrine of transubstantiation. We of the Church of England understand the expressions to which he refers, in a more figurative sense. Where can we turn for further light so well, as to the Primitive Church? The true interpretation of so important a tenet, must, we may suppose, have been received by those who were the immediate successors of the Apostles; and on finding their testimony in our favour, as I will make bold to affirm we do, we may be well content. Or again-if we take the case of the Puritan: he discovers in those texts of Scripture which relate to Church government, and by which texts we profess to be bound no less than he does, that the three orders of the ministry are not recognized. How can we test our respective opinions better than by recourse to the Primitive Church, in which if we find the three orders clearly prevailing, we may be satisfied that our exposition of these Scriptures is the sounder of the two?-Pp. 38, 39. And, we would add, it is necessary to bear in mind, that one of the great advantages of the study of the ancient fathers is of a negative character. It arises not from their actual testimony; not from their positive assertions; but from their silence on the subject of those supposed doctrines, with which, if true and generally prevalent in their times, they must necessarily have been acquainted. After having very properly drawn attention to the remarkable fact, that our declension in orthodoxy (properly so called) was coincident with our declension in churchmanship;" that "mere ethics encroached upon our pulpits as ecclesiastical antiquity was lost sight of"-Mr. Blunt concludes in the following words : I trust that in what I have said I have so expressed myself as not to lay myself open to the just animadversion of persons who have a competent knowledge of the subject before us. Nobody can enter with any thoughtfulness into the multitude of most delicate and difficult questions which the Reformation stirred, without learning to be temperate in all things appertaining to it; and if he is called upon to take part in the intricate controversies which those questions give rise to, without striving to beware, that 'he shoot not his arrow o'er the house, and hurt his brother.' The deeper he dives into the writings of the Primitive Church, with a view to elucidate the principles upon which that great crisis moved, the more, I think, will he be inclined to acquiesce in the discretion which on the whole guided our Reformers in their handling of antiquity; and the more will he perceive a call for the exercise of that virtue in himself, whilst he now calmly reviews and passes judgment on their wonderful work. And if there may be some particulars which he, as an individual, would be glad if they had adopted from the Primitive Church, or if, having adopted, they had held them fast, even at the risk of whatever abuse might have followed, and which the experience of past times had proved real, yet, considering how unspeakable a blessing it is for a people to have a form of faith and worship on which they repose, established for ages and hallowed by numberless associations; bearing in mind the caution of the preacher, but too little remembered in these days, 'whoso breaketh an hedge a serpent shall bite him, and whoso removeth stones shall be hurt therewith;' he will be slow to disturb that which is good by any attempt at a second reformation, even with a view to improve upon the first; content if he can raise the Church again something nearer to the platform on which Cranmer and Ridley left it; and from which, it must be confessed, it has insensibly settled down; who, treading in the steps of the old Fathers, were, at one and the same time, zealous Churchmen,-witness the Ritual they have left us-and Evangelical Teachers,-witness the Articles and Homilies, the portions of Scripture appointed by them for holy-days, and which days mark the sense in which they understood those passages; and in short, witness the whole of our Liturgical Services from the first line to the last. Rejoiced shall I be if any efforts of mine shall contribute to this consummation ever so little-nor do I despair of it—not from any presumptuous confidence in my own powers, but because I feel the vantage ground I here occupy; and that fountains, as our Universities are, from which the ministers of God are dispersed over the whole surface of the island, here, if any where, can the tree be cast in which shall flavour the waters. If, then, I had to express in a word the general effect which I am anxious these Lectures on ecclesiastical antiquity should produce, it would be this; that they may induce my hearers to say Amen to that part of the declaration of the good Bishop Ken, contained in his last will-' As for my religion, I die in the communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross.'— Pp. 48-51. Before we close this brief and imperfect notice, we would explain our reasons for qualifying the expression "original," as applied to Mr. Blunt's Sermons. We are well aware that he has never intentionally borrowed any of those instances, however striking, of undesigned Coincidences, which he has adduced with such singular acuteness and felicity. At the same time, it is scarcely possible in this, or indeed any other discussion on Christian evidences, to avoid being in some degree forestalled, and we beg to give the following curious proof of our assertion. Matt. xxvi. 67. "Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands, saying, 'Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, who is he that smote thee ?'" I think undesignedness may be traced in this passage, both in what is expressed and what is omitted. It is usual for one, who invents a story which he wishes to have believed, to be careful that its several parts hang well together- to make its conclusions follow from its premises, and to show how they follow. He naturally considers that he shall be suspected, unless his account is probable and consistent, and he labours to provide against that suspicion. On the other hand, he, who is telling the truth, is apt to state his facts and leave them to their fate; he speaks as one having authority, and cares not about the why or the wherefore, because it never occurs to him that such particulars are wanted to make his statement credible, and accordingly, if such particulars are discoverable at all, it is most commonly by inference and incidentally. Now in the verse of St. Matthew placed at the head of this paragraph, it is written, that "they smote him with the palms of their hands, saying, Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, who is he that smote thee.'" Had it happened that the records of the other evangelists had been lost, no critical acuteness could have possibly supplied by conjecture the omission which occurs in this passage, and yet, without that omission being supplied, the true meaning of the passage must for ever have lain hid; for where is the propriety of asking Christ to prophesy who smote him, when he had the offender before his eyes? But when we learn from St. Luke (xii. 64), that "the man that held Jesus blindfolded him" before they asked him to VOL. XXII. NO. VII. 3 G |