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it may-particularly in a question of theology,-to assume that he must necessarily be right; but it is unjust, and betrays a want of Christian charity, to assume that an adversary is not only wrong, but wilfully and wickedly blind to obvious truth.

An Apology for the Church of England, by the Right Rev. JOHN JEWELL, D. D. Lord Bishop of Salisbury: faithfully translated from the original Latin, and illustrated with copious notes, by the Reverend STEPHEN ISAACSON, B. A. of Christ's College, Cambridge: to which is prefixed a Memoir of his Life and Writings, and a preliminary discourse on the doctrine and discipline of the Church of Rome; in reply to some observations of Charles Butler, Esq. addressed to Dr. Southey, on his Book of the Church. 8vo. pp. 298. 14s.Hearne, 1825.

"THE questions of difference," says Bishop Taylor, "between our churches and the church of Rome have been so often disputed, and the evidences on both sides so often produced, that to those who are strangers to the present constitution of affairs, it may seem very unnecessary to say them over again"

"but we are not," he proceeds to say, "deterred from doing our duty by any such considerations, knowing that the same medicaments are with success applied to a returning or abiding ulcer, and the preachers of God's word must for ever be ready to put the people in mind of such things which they have already heard, and by the same scriptures and the same reasons endeavour to destroy their sin and prevent their danger."

Moved by these considerations, we view with pleasure the republication of many well known works, which the recent revival of the Popish controversy has produced, amongst the most valuable of which may certainly be reckoned Bishop Jewell's Apology for the Church of England, As it is reported to have been published with the consent of the Bishops, and was always understood to speak the sense of that church in whose cause it was written, Mr. Isaacson has rendered a valuable service to, the cause of Protestantism by presenting it in a new dress to the attention of the public at the present time. The translation is rather too idiomatic, and adheres too closely to the structure of the Latin; but what it loses in elegance it gains in faithfulness, and it is, upon the whole,

a correct copy of the venerable original. The notes are copious and instructive, and the Preliminary Discourse contains a number of valuable observations in answer to Mr. Butler's Book of the Roman Catholic Church.

We are, as is well known, no friends to controversy in general; we wish most sincerely that all parties would lay it aside; that all would, as far as possible, "hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace," and where they find this to be impossible, that they would pursue their own course without interfering unnecessarily with others. But while the dissenters persist in considering the triumph of their own party as incomplete until it prevail to the destruction of the Establishment, so long the clergy must have recourse to every means of defence which their enemies have left them; they must put on "the sword of the Spirit," as well as "the breast-plate of righteousness," and fight the battles of the Church with their own weapons, and those which the stoutest warriors of ancient days have put into their hands.

We have thought it fit to say thus much in excuse for controversy, because the adversaries of the clergy seem disposed in their mercy not only to rob, but to gag and bind them. Every thing which, as Christians and members of the Church of England, they are accustomed to venerate, even to the divine character of the Redeemer himself, is the constant subject of low and contumelious abuse. Their prelates are slandered, their institutions ridiculed, their persons mocked, their independence traduced; and if ever they lift up the voice of just indignation, or temperate complaint, they are branded with the stigma of bigotry by men who, from the open hostility with which they assail the tolerant religion of their country, seem to think that persecution consists in being deprived of the power of per secuting others.

In pursuance of this principle the clergy have been vehemently reprehended for their petitions against the Catholic bill: in most cases without the shadow of a reason; for if they had exerted themselves as zealously as they were accused of doing, they might have roused a spirit of opposition to it in every parish in England. Violent and intemperate petitions are always silly, impolitic, and discreditable; they injure the cause they are intended to serve, by exasperating enemies and alienating friends. But then, as the bishop of Chester is reported to have said in answer to Lord King, "The rash and intempe rate language of some hot-headed men is no more to be considered as a criterion of the sentiments of the clergy in general, than those expressions which certain Lords seem to cull from

the pot-house and the stable, were of the general sentiments of the House of Lords." With strictly political questions the clergy have certainly nothing to do, but where they think the interests of religion are at stake, they surely have a right to say so in gentle, temperate, and respectful language and with respect to the Roman Catholics, while they persist in neglecting the decent courtesies of civil society, so far as to call us Protestants "liars and dealers with the devil;"-while they think fit to brand those whom we hold in reverence with the odious appellations of "drunkards, liars, rebels, blasphemers, outlaws, and murderers," we must at least assume the right of attempting to prove that they are no such thing, and with regard to the highest dignitaries of the Roman church we may perhaps be excused if, with an occasional retrospect to former times, we sometimes venture to return the compliment.

Mr. Butler, the mildest and gentlest of controversialists, contents himself with saying that the clergy sign the thirty-nine articles with a sigh or a smile, and so put their names to a falsehood: but Bishop Challoner roundly asserts that all Protestants tell a lie every time they say the Apostles' Creed; and a writer, whose publication is so much to the taste of the English Roman Catholics that it has recently passed through three editions, after having compared the Reformation to "Pandora's box," and ascribed to it every flood, water-spout, tempest, plague, pestilence, and famine, which has happened since the year 1530, and even the national debt itself, concludes his elegant work by consigning us, whom he calls " an insolent nation and a people of bankrupts," to "that miserable eternity into which the unbelieving are to be cast for ever-to suffer all those dreadful torments which are described in the word of God: and this for no term of years, but for as many hundred thousand millions of ages as there are drops of water in the ocean, or atoms in the air, in a word, for a never-failing eternity!" Such are the publications with which the Roman Catholic population of this country are entertained; such are the terms in which their Protestant brethren are described; and these are the feelings with which they are taught by their priests to regard their fellow-christians and fellow-subjects-men who worship the same God, believe in the same Christ, and serve the same King; but who, because they cannot pay religious obedience to the same Bishop, or believe a wafer to be a mortal body, must be condemned to all eternity. To such misrepresentations and calumnies as these, it is our solemn bounden duty still to reply in a spirit of firm but courteous resistance; and although it is hardly credible that the errors of the Roman Church should

again universally prevail, yet we must not be too secure. "A little warm sun, and some indulgent showers of a softer rain, have made many seeds of erroneous doctrine to take root greatly, and spread themselves widely; and the bigots of the Roman church by their late importune boldness and indiscreet forwardness in making proselytes, have but too manifestly declared to all the world that if they were 'rerum potiti,' masters of our affairs, they would suffer nothing to grow but their own colocynths or gourds. And although the natural remedy for this were to take away that impurity upon the account of which alone they do increase, yet because we shall never be the authors of such counsels, but confidently rely upon God, the holy scriptures, right reason, and the most venerable and prime antiquity, which are the proper defensatives of truth for its support and maintenance; yet we must not conceal from the people committed to our charges, the great evils to which they are tempted by the Roman emissaries, that while the king and the parliament take care to secure all the public interests by instruments of their own, we also may by the word of our own proper ministry endeavour to stop the progression of such errors which we know to be destructive of the Christian religion, and consequently dangerous to the interest of souls." (Bp. Taylor's introduction to the Dissuasion from Popery.)

The doctrines of the Roman church have been so modified since the publication of Bp. Jewell's Apology, that a little fresh matter is occasionally necessary to meet the shifting politics of her advocates, and provide against the change and with this Mr. Isaacson has furnished us in his notes and preliminary discourse. By a reference to the records of their General Councils, the decrees of their Popes and the writing of their most learned doctors, we find that previous to the sixteenth century, as Plowden confesses in his memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, it was the universal doctrine of all Christendom (that is of Popish Christendom), that the Pope had "a limited temporal authority to be exercised only for the service of religion." Now, however, Mr. Butler tells us that "nobody believes this, that the transalpine and cisalpine divines are agreed upon this point, and do not think that the pope has any temporal authority at all."

Previous to the sixteenth century indulgencies were openly sold for money, and Claude D'Espense, an eminent doctor of the Sorbonne in 1540, says " Provided money can be extorted, every thing prohibited is permitted. Shameful to relate, they give permission to priests to have concubines and to live with harlots, and have children, on paying an annual tribute. From

the taxes of the apostolic chancery we may learn more enormities than from all the books of the summists, and of these there are some which persons may have liberty to commit for money while absolution from all when committed they may be bought." Now however, Mr. Butler tells us that the sums of money paid for indulgencies are only fees of office.

Previous to the sixteenth century, it was the universal opinion of Papal Christendom that it was lawful and right to burn heretics for the good of their souls; and even so late as 1570, Pope Pius V. who for his good deeds has received_spiritual knighthood, and is now Saint Pius V., made Donius Palearius whom he caused to be burnt for Lutheranism, sign two declarations to the following effect:

"1. Quod summus Pontifex potest instituere ministros qui occidant hereticos.

2. Quod ipsemet in casu aliquo potest etiam per se hereticos occidere ut legimus de Samuele et Petro."

Now however, Mr. Butler only allows that the Roman catholics have "sometimes been guilty of the crime of religious persecution!"

Previous to the sixteenth century it was the universal doctrine of Papal Christendom, that an oath prejudicial to the church was not binding, and consequently that faith was not to be kept with heretics. The doctrine was thus declared in the Decretals-" Juramentum contra ecclesiasticam utilitatem præstitum non tenet; " Decret. lib. ii. tit. 24. c. 27. and it was expounded and acted upon by various Popes and Councils. Martin V. speaking of the Hussites, said to the Duke of Lithuania, in a letter dated May 21, 1423, “Si tu aliquo modo inductus defensionem eorum suscipere promisisti, scito te dare fidem hereticis violatoribus fidei sanctæ non potuisse." Urban VI. also declared to Wincelaus king of Bohemia, "Quod ligæ factæ cum hæreticis sunt temerariæ et illicitæ etiamsi forent juramento vel fide datâ firmatæ." This doctrine moreover was confirmed and acted upon in the murder of John Huss by the infallible Council of Constance, which decreed in its nineteenth Session that by no safe conduct granted by an emperor, king, or prince, to heretics by whatever engagement they may have bound themselves must any prejudice be caused to the Catholic faith or the jurisdiction of the church. Now however, Mr. Butler and the modern doctor tell us that it not only is not, but never was the doctrine of the See or Church of Rome that faith was not to be kept with heretics: surely Mr. Butler and the doctor must think that we have neither eyes nor ears.

Mr. Butler also in repelling the charge of idolatry, says,

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