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IGNATIUS VINDICATED FROM ARROGANCY.

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quiet, and be ye not astounded by portion without hindrance through them.

Let us then be imitators of our Lord in meekness, and (emulous) as to who shall be injured, and oppressed, and defrauded more (than the rest.) The work is not of promise unless a man be found in the power of faith even to the end. It is better that a man be silent when he is something, than that he should be speaking when he is not; that by those things which he speaks he should act, and by those things of which he is silent he should be known.

My spirit boweth down to the Cross, which is an offence to those who do not believe, but to you salvation and life eternal.

There was concealed from the ruler of this world the virginity of Mary and the birth of our Lord, and the three mysteries of the shout, which were done in the quietness of God from the star.

And here, at the manifestation of the Son, magic began to be destroyed, and all bonds were loosed, and the ancient kingdom and the error of evil was destroyed. From hence all things were moved together, and the destruction of death was devised, and there was the commencement of that which is perfected in God.

EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. THE THIRD

EPISTLE OF THE SAME ST. IGNATIUS. Ignatius, who is Theophorus, to the Church which has been pitied in the greatness of the Father Most High, to her who presideth in the place of the country of the Romans, who is worthy of God and worthy of life, and happiness, and praise, and remembrance, and is worthy of prosperity, and presideth in love, and is perfected in the law of Christ blameless, much peace.

Long since have I prayed to God that I may be accounted worthy to behold your faces, which are worthy of God; now, therefore, being bound in Jesus Christ, I hope to meet you and salute you, if there be the will that I should be accounted worthy to the end. For the beginning is well disposed, if I be accounted worthy to attain the end, that I may receive my

For

suffering. For I am afraid of your love, lest it should injure me. you indeed, it is easy for you to do what you wish; but for me, it is difficult for me to be accounted worthy of God, if indeed you spare me not. For there is no other time like this, that I should be accounted worthy of God; neither will ye, if ye be silent, be found in a better work than this. If ye leave me, I shall be the word of God, but if ye love my flesh, again am I to myself a voice. Ye will not give me any thing better than this, that I should be sacrificed to God while the altar is ready; that ye may be in one concord in love, and may praise God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord, because He has accounted a bishop worthy to be God's, having called him from the east to the west. It is good that I should set from the world in God, that I may rise in Him to life.

Ye have never envied any one. Ye have taught others. Pray only for strength to be given unto me both from within and from without, that I may not only speak, but also may be willing, and not that I may be called a Christian only, but also that I may be found to be (one.) For if I am found to be (one,) I am also able to be called (so.) Then (indeed) shall I be faithful when I am no longer seen in the world. For there is nothing which is seen that is good. The work is not (a matter) of persuasion, but Christianity is great when the world hateth it. I write to all the Churches, and declare to all men that I die willingly for God, if it be that ye hinder me not. I entreat you be not (affected) towards me by love that is unseasonable. Leave me to be the beasts', that through them I may be accounted worthy of God. I am the wheat of God, and by the teeth of the beasts I am ground, that I may be found the pure bread of God. With provoking, provoke ye the beasts, that they may be a grave for me and leave nothing of my body, that even after I am fallen asleep I may not be a burden upon any one. Then shall I be in truth a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world seeth not

even my body. Entreat our Lord for me, that through these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God.

I do not charge you like Peter and Paul, who are Apostles; but I am one condemned. They indeed are free, but I am a slave even until now. But if I suffer, I shall be the freedman of Jesus Christ, and I shall rise from the dead in Him free. And now, being bound, I learn to desire nothing. From Syria, and even to Rome, I am cast among wild beasts; by sea and by land, by night and by day; being bound between ten leopards, which are the band of soldiers, who, even while I do good to them, do evil the more to me. But I am the rather instructed by their injury, but not on this account am I justified to myself. I rejoice in the beasts that are prepared for me, and I pray that they may be quickly found for me; and I will provoke them to devour me speedily; and not as that which is afraid of some other men, and does not approach them, even though they should not be willing to approach me, I will go with violence against them. Know me from myself. What is expedient for me? Let nothing envy me of those that are seen and that are not seen, that I should be accounted worthy of Jesus Christ. Fire and the cross, and the beasts that are prepared, amputation of the limbs and scattering of the bones, and crushing of the whole body; hard torments of the devil: let these come upon me, and only may I be accounted worthy of Jesus Christ. The pains of the birth stand over me, and

my love is crucified, and there is no fire in me for another love. I do not desire the food of corruption, neither the desires of this world. The bread of God I seek, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, and His blood I seek,— a drink which is love incorruptible. My spirit saluteth you, and the love of the Churches, which received me as the name of Jesus Christ, for even those who were near to the way in the flesh preceded me in every city. Now, therefore, being about to arrive shortly at Rome, I know many things in God; but I moderate myself, that I may not perish through boasting; for now it behoveth me to fear the more, and not to regard those who puff me up. For they who say to me such things, scourge me, for I love to suffer, but I do not know if I am worthy. For to many zeal is not seen; but with me it has war. I have need therefore of meekness, by which the ruler of this world is destroyed. I am able to write to you of heavenly things, but I fear lest I should do you an injury. Know me from myself; for I am cautious lest ye should not be able to receive it, and should be perplexed. For even I, not because I am bound, and am able to know heavenly things, and the places of angels, and the station of the powers that are seen and that are not seen, on this account am I a disciple: for I am far short of the perfection which is worthy of God.

Be ye perfectly safe in the patience of Jesus Christ our God.

[Here end the Three Epistles of Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr.]

THE QUEEN'S SUPREMACY.-STRICTURES ON THE OXFORD ADDRESS.

By the REV. HENRY WALTER, B.D.
[Continued from p. 68.]

THE compilers of the address must have intended, that the words any commission, in this statement,* should

For the reader's convenience, we reprint the statement here commented upon, as given in p.68, "That during thewhole reigns of KingHen. VIII. Edw.VI.,and Queen Elizabeth, there is no trace of any of the nobility or common law judges in ANY Commission, nor afterwards in one commission out of forty, until the overthrow of the royal authority in the great rebellion."

be understood to mean any commission for determining any questions respecting "the ability of a person presented unto a benefice," (statement five,) or 66 any cause of the law divine or spiritual learning," (st. 7,) or for taking "cognizance of heresies, errors, or schisms," (st. 8, 9.) For it has indisputably been their intention to pass

THE OXFORD ADDRESS.

off these statements upon her Majesty, as a series of affirmations constituting an accumulative proof that laymen cannot properly be authorized to sit in judgment on such questions; and that, in point of fact, they never were so authorized in the times which the addressers regard as those of sound churchmanship; nor even after our Church's separation from Rome, till the monarchy itself received a deadly blow.

No sensible man can have read this address, without perceiving that the words any commission must be so understood; and that to sign it, would consequently be affixing his name to a disgraceful untruth, if there were not merely traces, but well known and incontestible instances of noblemen and common law judges having been members of most important commissions for determining such questions, in the very reigns respecting which the addressers assure their sovereign of the contrary. Yet it is passing strange, if so large a number of English clergymen and gentlemen, educated at Oxford, are to be thought so marvellously ignorant of the history of institutions in which they profess to be deeply interested, as not to have remembered Henry the Eighth's constituting Thomas Cromwell his vicegerent and vicar-general in all ecclesiastical causes; and his consequently taking precedency of the archbishop in the memorable convocation of 1536, where the sacraments to be acknowledged by the Church were the subjects of debate, and its decisions were to go forth as rules for the nation's belief. Did the addressers indeed not remember the inquisitorial commission which sat in judgment on all the monasteries (then styled religious houses) in this kingdom, and Cromwell's share in that? Mr. Justice Coleridge and the Vinerian professor of common law could not be ignorant, though their co-addressers may have been, of the statute 25 Henry VIII., by which sixteen ecclesiastics and sixteen laymen were commissioned to sit in judgment on the ecclesiastical constitution of the Church, and to say what should be abolished and what should remain. They cannot

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be ignorant of the famous Six Articles Act, and of the power then given to common justices of the peace to sit in judgment on persons charged with heresy, nor of the conceded intervention of a jury. (Lord Herbert's Hen. VIII., under date of 1539.) Are we to suppose that the Bishops of Bath and Wells, and of Salisbury, thought it desirable to look out for examining chaplains whose indifference to Protestantism should be such, that they can never have read, or else they must be held capable of totally forgetting, one of the most pathetic narratives, and noblest examples of christian fortitude, in the annals of the Reformation, the martyrdom of Anne Ayscough? If that narrative had not been either utterly unknown, or to tally forgotten, by Mr. W. K. Hamilton and Mr. G. A. Denison, the record of her interrogation by the simple, lord mayor, and by the lords of the privy council, would have made it impossible for them to affix their names to the assertion that, "There is no trace of the nobility or common law judges in any commission," for judging of heresies. And as to the reign of Edward VI., is it possible that gentlemen learned in the law; that clergymen chosen by bishops to examine candidates for holy orders, can be ignorant of the Act 3 Edw. VI. and of the royal commission issued thereupon, authorizing eight persons, among whom are two esquires, to take the initiative in determining for our national Church, what should be its canons, what it should deem heresy or error, and what its ministers should be required to teach; and farther, authorizing thirty-two commissioners, subdivided into four committees, each consisting of two bishops, two divines, two civil and two common lawyers, to revise and sanction, jointly with the privy council, such a constitution for our national Church as the eight first named should have recommended. The result of the labours of this mixed commission is only unknown to those who read but little on such subjects; being put forth with the title of "Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum,"but eventually left unsanctioned by the State. Neither the commission nor

its results were unknown to the compilers of the Oxford address; for they have briefly described and cited "Reformat. Leg. Eccles. Præf." in their preceding statement; and in the preface of less than six pages which they have thus cited, and the subjoined royal letters patent, are contained those descriptions of these commissions under Hen. VIII. and Edw. VI. which prove statement twelve to be the assertion of an untruth. But where there is no love of truth, what shall be the limit to untruth?

At the first inspection of this Oxford address, I was certainly amazed at the extensive prevalence of ignorance on these topics, implied in the numerous list of subscribers to such an assertion; and seeing that the compilers of the address had appended the following note, as authority for statement twelve, viz., "Gibson's Codex, Introd. p. xxi., on the authority of the Reg. Car. Delegat.," I felt sure that this assertion could not extend so widely as to justify their use of it; still charity forbade my expecting to discover what I found to be the case on looking at the page cited as above, that the compiler, or compilers, of statement twelve, had fraudulently prefixed the word "any" to 66 commission," in their professed quotation from Gibson. Upon that one word, the force of any argument to the purpose for which they have obviously introduced this statement, will easily be seen to depend. Gibson is speaking exclusively of the court of delegates; and I will not press upon the addressers, that Blackstone has said of that court, as appointed by the king's commission, that "this commission is frequently filled with lords spiritual and temporal, and always with judges of the court of Westminster, aud doctors of the civil law," Comment. B. iii. p. 66; because, though Blackstone seems thus to give a direct contradiction to what Gibson has said of the same court, the learned judge and the bishop are speaking of its constitution at different times.

But if the examining chaplains who signed this address may be examined in their turn, one might venture to

inquire whether the famous case of Whittingham, Dean of Durham, never attracted their attention, turning, as it did, upon the necessity of episcopal ordination for ministers of our Church? Let them look at Strype's Annals, B. II. ch. xi. p. 520, where they may read that "in the year 1576, the Queen sent letters of commission to the Lord Archbishop, the Lord President of the Council in the north, and the Dean of York, for the hearing and determining divers matters complained of against Mr. Whittingham, the dean of the church, and misdemeanours there: one whereof, among others, seemed to be about that dean's orders; it being thought not lawful for him to hold that deanery in respect of his defect therein; and worthy of deprivation, because his ministry was not warranted by the law of the land; being ordained by a few lay persons in a house at Geneva." Was not this a court of delegates for the northern province? And Strype will tell them, from Rymer, under date May 14, 20 Elizab., how large an authority was given to this commission, and that amongst its members were, Henry Earl of Huntingdon, Thomas Lord Evers, Sir William Mallory and Sir Robert Stapleton, Knts.

But supposing Bishop Gibson had really said what the compilers of the address untruly quoted him as saying, it is still a strange thing, that either his word and character, or the influence of party, should have induced so many educated gentlemen and clergymen to sign an address containing such an assertion as that made in statement twelve, seeing that, to use a word now made familiar, it utterly ignores so remarkable a fact in the constitutional history of our country as the existence of the high commission court, from its establishment under Queen Elizabeth to its driving the nation mad under Laud's mismanagement. One would rather have expected high Churchmen to have spoken of that court, as affording them an opportunity of pressing their opponents with the ill results of a commission, for sitting in judgment on ecclesiastical causes, in which the privy councillors were more than

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH REFORM ILLUSTRATED.

the bishops. Hallam's Const. Hist. ch. iv.

I will now only farther notice statement nineteen,-"That the laxity of interpretation of the formularies of the Church, sanctioned by this judgment," namely, the Gorham decision, "would very seriously affect the good faith of subscription, the religious observance, and ultimately the soundness of faith in the Church and the University." And upon this statement I will only remark, that the address declaratory of this tender anxiety for the good faith of subscription, &c. was signed in 1850

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by Dr. Pusey; and by sundry other members of convocation, whose names also appeared against their University's condemning the famous Tract Ninety, expressly composed to propagate a most outrageous laxity of interpretation of the formularies of the Church; and as voting against its degrading Mr. Ward, for publicly teaching ministers of the Church to retain its emoluments, whilst putting a nonnatural sense both upon its formularies and the subscription to its Articles!! Hasilbury Bryan, Feb. 17th, 1851.

PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH REFORM ILLUSTRATED.
By REV. J. JORDAN, Vicar of Enstone, Oxon.
[Continued from p. 85.]

ONLY SO lately as this very time last
year, on the 11th of Feb., 1850, did
the Archbishop of Canterbury, in
his place in the House of Peers, make
this defence for the charge brought
against the Ecclesiastical Commission,
for their application of the funds that
had passed under their disposition.
His Grace spoke thus, "An impres-
sion has been produced upon the
minds of many of the clergy, natural
under the circumstances, but not the
less to be regretted. Many of the
clergy are in painfully straitened cir-
cumstances. Placed in insulated situa-
tions, and feeling the want of domes-
tic comfort, they are led to marry
early, often with no better provision
than a precarious curacy, or an ill-
paid incumbency, It cannot be mat-
ter of surprise that they soon find
themselves embarrassed; and they
naturally compare their incomes with
their labours, their talents, their edu-
cation, and think them very ill-requited.
My Lords, when men are distressed,
it is easy to persuade them that they
are ill-used.
But the supposition is
no less unfounded than it is injurious
to the Church. For it can be nothing
but injurious to the Church when the
feelings of the inferior clergy are
alienated from those who are above
them in rank and fortune, though often
in nothing else; and who, probably,

We

at the very moment when they lie
under the imputation of selfishness,
are employing their time, their
thoughts, their influence, and often not
sparing their purses, in promoting the
comfort and increasing the means of
usefulness of their humbler brethren,"
vide Record, Feb. 14, 1850.
grieve, as we have again and again
grieved, over this, the best-shaped
defence that can be framed of an
utterly indefensible system. Would it
not be concluded from it, that the
straitened circumstances of many of the
clergy were occasioned by their own
improvident marriages, and by pre-
carious incomes, for which none are
to blame? Would it not be supposed
that they only contrast their narrow
incomes with their own labours and
talents? Would it not appear that
they are persuaded they are ill-used,
without any cause of which they
could rightfully complain? And yet
who could believe that all the while,

one of the main causes of all the dis-
comfort and dissatisfaction of the
clergy is, that they live in parishes,
and zealously discharge their labours,
and know themselves worthy of their
hire, but they see the parochial funds,
the tithes given for the sustenance of
the parochial ministers, gathered be-
fore their eyes, and carried away to
form inordinate incomes for the

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