delivered by the apostles, he could not be mistaken; and any doctrine built upon an interpretation wholly unknown to, or directly contradicted by the Catholic Church from the beginning, must be a mere subsequent human invention. But, alas! how is the dispute any nearer to a settlement? "Forthwith begins the interminable tug of wordy war." Mr. Faber stoutly maintains that Clement means the Evangelical-Mr. Newman stoutly maintains he means the Roman or Tractarian view; it is found that it is as difficult to INTERPRET Clement as to interpret St. Paul; the Fathers as the New Testament; it is a mere shifting of the ground and scene of the combat from St. Paul's epistle to the Romans to Clement's epistle to the Corinthians. Allow me to add that there is little strength gained in the length of Mr. Faber's different catenas, when comprising the testimony of writers in the fourth and fifth and subsequent centuries, when many corruptions, and even idolatries, as he himself allows, had spread in the Church. I have already adverted to the scantiness of the documents preserved to us of the really primitive age. Allow me, in conclusion, to point out two small works which are extremely useful in showing the proper limits between private judgment, and the testimony and authority of the Church and of antiquity: I mean a treatise on Tradition by the late Bishop Shuttleworth, and another on the same subject by the Rev. George Holden; especially the latter, where the subject is reasoned out in the most masterly manner, and the fallacy of Mr. Faber's view on this particular point, as well as the Romanizing sentiments of the Rev. Edward Churton, now Archdeacon of Cleveland, acutely and convincingly pointed out. Private judgment in religious matters is, in the very nature of the case, unavoidable; used really and truly as well by those who pretend to reject, as in those who profess to use it; the true study is the means of exercising it in a healthy manner, making proper use of the means placed within its reach. It is evidently the dread of the abuse of private judgment (and I admit, with Mr. Faber, that when really "insulated " it is abused), which has led him to a morbid wish for a practically infallible interpreter, under the notion of a witness to matter of fact who could not be deceived; but he must surely now be convinced, that even did such exist, pride of intellect, vain speculation, unbridled imagination, selfish passions, may render it all nugatory, by misinterpreting the interpreter, and so making it necessary to call in another, and another, ad infinitum. I am, Sir, yours, Dec. 16, 1846. A LAY CHURCHMAN. TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCHMAN'S MONTHLY REVIEW. SIR, I suppose there is no man who would attempt to justify either the spirit or the actions of many of those persons, who profited by the confiscation of ecclesiastical property in this country, at the time of the Reformation. There are few, however, I trust, who will not be shocked with the republication of Sir Henry Spelman's "History of Sacrilege," with dissertations and additions, bringing it down, as far as possible, to the present time. One would imagine that our blessed Lord's instructions as to the interpretation of judgments (as they are popularly called,) in Luke xiii. 2, &c., and John ix. 3, would be sufficient to inspire caution in such matters into every believer in the truth of revelation: but this appears to be anything but the case with the editors (for they are two) of this, to my mind, most presumptuous and mischievous book. Every source, accurate and inaccurate, seems to have been ransacked by them, in order to prove that the possessors of church property, in whatever manner obtained, can never prosper; and county histories and county newspapers are alike brought in evidence to maintain their unscriptural position. An ancient house is burnt down-a noble family is extinct through the failure of male issue-a gallant young officer falls in battle-whatever calamity befals anybody, it sends them hunting in Dugdale for an explanation, and loud is the triumph if they can discover that a verdict of "death, or destruction by possession of abbey-property" may be returned. It is not my purpose to follow them into any of the details of slander, in which they indulge against persons, who, for all they know, may have died in the Lord, and whose memory is perhaps very sacred to their surviving friends. I will only assert what I am fully prepared to prove, that, as to families in my own neighbourhood, they adduce as facts, in some cases the mere unfounded gossip of the grossest superstition; in others, statements so incorrectly represented as to lose the very semblance of truth. It would not be very interesting to your readers, who may not (and I by no means desire that they should) have the book before them, to go into these. Let me rather give a sample of the doctrine and arguments upon which their conclusions are founded. In the preliminary Dissertation it is contended, that it is not merely because abbey property has once been devoted to the Lord's especial service, but also because a formal curse has been often pronounced against its spoliators, that evil must necessarily wait upon those who possess it. In the Appendix, a specimen of such a curse is given, and a very pretty specimen of a sacred rite it is. But now listen to the following reasoning: p. lxv. "But, granting what we deny, granting that a curse cannot be pronounced without sin: we yet assert, that an imprecation, thus pronounced, may bring misery on those against whom it is directed. For this is in complete analogy with the rest of God's dealings with mankind. "Thou shalt do no murder," is the command. Yet, if we disobey it, what then? God will not interfere with a miracle to protect the life of an enemy. "Speak every man truth with his neighbour," is the injunction: yet God will often permit the success of a lie. Even perjury has frequently gone down to the grave unpunished." Balaam was wiser than this: "How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed:" and so was that poor born-blind man to whom as yet the Lord Jesus was not revealed. With him it was an indisputable axiom, that God heareth not sinners, whilst our Editors maintain that even their imprecations may avail. Dark and confused indeed must be their minds, which see any analogy between God's permitting the sin that He condemns, and becoming Himself the minister of the sinner's blasphemy and wrath! It seems scarcely possible to believe that the Editors of this production can be members of the Church of England-as many passages would seem to infer, as well as the Dedication to a professing member of our Church-especially, when we find their holding out this only possible comfort to the holders of ecclesiastical property, which, however, they do not administer, viz. : "If the Church, speaking by the mouth of the Pope, or of any other, has rescinded the curse it pronounced on church-violators, they have no more to fear from its ill effects. p. cxliii. If these wholesale and anonymous slanderers could be exposed by you, or any of your correspondents, Mr. Editor, I conceive that you would be conferring a benefit on the public. Your obedient Servant, C. W. B. TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCHMAN'S MONTHLY REVIEW. SIR,-Your eulogy of Mr. Trench's preaching in the last number of your admirable Review leads me to suspect that you may not have seen a volume of poems which have issued from his pen, and which have been animadverted upon with just severity by a correspondent of "the Achill Herald.' I will extract a portion of the letter I refer to, with the sentiments of which I cannot but think you will thoroughly concur. "I hardly know a more humiliating spectacle than to contemplate men of Mr. Trench's talents and learning occupied in retailing at second-hand the anile puerilities of the middle ages and the Breviary; nor can I account for it otherwise than by the awful supposition of judicial blindness by which the heart, which once learns to look with complacency on Romish blasphemies, is more and more turned away from the truth, and turned unto fables. A few passages from Mr. Trench's poems will convince the reader that this criticism is not more severe than just. One of these poems is called "Genoveva," the story of which may be told in few words. She lived, it should seem, in the middle ages, and was married to a count, who was soon afterwards called to the wars. In his absence his faithful wife was slandered by a villain, and in consequence sent out to perish in a forest. How she was relieved in her distress, the following extract will shew : "Mourned this painful hermitess Lonely kneeling, mourned one day, Sunken; when she seemed to see, This angelic comforter: And her agony beguiled : With these soothing words and mild : Genoveva, take thou this, Take it for the boon it is, Choicest blessing, costliest boon That God's treasure-house doth own; Gift He keepeth for his friends, When thy soul with pangs is rent: This, together with other passages of a similar description, are worthy, as the Achill Herald's correspondent truly says, "to be held up to the scorn and indignation of the Christian public;" and, whatever may be the merits of Mr. T.'s Hulsean Lectures, I cannot but think that the author of verses such as these, is no fit man to be Examining Chaplain to a Bishop, and Professor of Divinity in King's College, London. It can hardly be supposed that the author of this poem would put doctrines such as these into an angel's lips, without meaning to intimate thereby that they are suited to those lips; and if such be his opinion, to what party in the Church does he belong? and how fearful to reflect that so many of our candidates for orders have to pass under his hands! Hoping that you will take some notice of these poems, I remain, yours faithfully, Woodrising Rectory, Norfolk. ARTHUR ROBERTS. |