In this plea the following points appear to me entirely overlooked :-(1.) The fact that no party in the Church attempts to keep the Law may be a strong ground for cherishing a policy of peace among the rival schools. existing within its own boundaries ;-civil war, under such circumstances, is a dangerous game to play. It does not touch, however, the position of those who, as citizens of the nation to which the Church belongs, ask that its public engagements should be strictly observed.

(2.) The declaration required of a clergyman is an expression of his own personal opinions. The words are "I assent to" and "I believe." The subscriber does not declare merely that he will submit to the verdict of an administrative body; he states what his own religious convictions are; and because that statement is accepted as satisfactory, receives his appointment.

(3.) When an office is held under specified conditions, those who administer the Law to which it may be subject, are neither solely nor chiefly responsible for the fulfilment of these conditions. A man's own conscience must be permitted to give a verdict. An officer of any service is bound to ask himself whether he is discharging the duties for which he was appointed. An "administration" may have scant means of detecting the doings of its servants; and the more confidential those duties are the less will they be capable of being watched. The Church cannot send spies into every place of worship, and is bound largely to trust to the faithfulness of its ministers to their Ordination

VOWS.

In no department of life can the plea that legal measures have never been taken against us, absolve us from our personal responsibilities.

(4.) If in no case a clergyman who cares to teach what he believes to be true religion need leave the Established Church until he is compelled-and this is the avowed result

of the doctrine I am criticising-it follows that men may irreverently assent to articles which in set terms they deny.*

A disbeliever in the bodily resurrection of Christ may be a devout teacher of religion. According to this view of Subscription he may say, "I assent" to the proposition that, "Christ did truly rise again from death and took again his body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature!" A Unitarian preacher may say, "I assent" to the statement in Article II., that Christ is "very God and very man!" A believer in the Lord's tender mercy may say, "I assent" to Article XVIII. and pronounce those "accursed" who presume to say, "That every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that law and the light of nature!"

What is to become of the Church (it is asked) if men are to be strictly bound down to the Articles of its Creed? Will it not lose its intellectual and its spiritual power? Will not all chance of widening its boundaries be gone?

I object to such appeals as irrelevant to the question at issue. The first point to be decided is one of personal responsibility. For myself, I dare not say, "I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer," when many statements they contain seem to me untrue; and I dare not say, "I believe" the doctrine "as therein set forth agreeable to the Word of God," when the propositions involved in this statement appear to me more than doubtful.

Without challenging the motives of any one, and with the profoundest reverence for many of those who do not regard the act of Subscription in the same light as I do, I ask consideration for the position, that when a Church

“But in no case need a clergyman who cares for true religion and who cares to teach what he believes to be true religion, leave the National Church." Vide letter of Rev. H. R. Haweis, M.A., to Daily News, as above.

has an authorised theological standard, only those who strictly conform to that standard should accept the tests it imposes, and enter into its ministry.

It is no reply to say that if this be done, the Church will suffer. Perchance, it ought to suffer. All the resources of the great Ruler of the world are not confined within its boundaries. Out of the very stones He may raise up children unto Abraham.

Judging from the past, the great epochs of the world's spiritual history have not been determined by conformists to existing institutions. The burden of Subscription will never be removed by those who subscribe, even although they protest against their own act. When men refuse in sufficient numbers to submit to Subscription, then, and not until then, will a non-subscribing Church be established. Whether the present Church of England, or one outside of its pale, will be that Church, is a secondary question.

At the present moment Subscription presents the greatest of all obstacles to the existence of a broad, generous, and comprehensive Church in this country.

It perplexes the consciences of young men and drives many of the ablest away from the ministry. It is a lifelong trouble and torment to the most delicately conscientious souls, who, having placed themselves beneath its yoke, can see no way of escape and know not what to do.

It checks the free study of theology, restricting, as it does, the pursuit of that sum of all sciences by conditions which neither astronomer, nor chemist, nor any other student of nature, would for one moment accept.

The spiritual power of Christianity suffers from the frequency and intensity of the dogmatic disputes which the practice of Subscription to articles of faith always generates.

I may be charged with placing too much stress upon this one feature of the constitution of the Church. The Church

is far more to many men, it is said, than the Thirty-nine Articles and the Athanasian Creed. It is the home of their life-long culture.*

Without doubt, it is so; but when a specific demand like that for Subscription is made, it must be judged on its own merits.

In olden times idols were to many far more than works of a graver's art. They could not be dissociated from reverent memories and solemn prayers. Not without a pang would many an early Christian decline to offer a libation to his ancient gods.

The Catholic Church in the fierce age of the Reformation was far more to many Protestants than a dispute about Transubstantiation. Through its mystic rites they had sought and found a living communion with the Unknown God.

There were, at least, six formulæ in which the doctrine of the Real Presence could be expressed, offering a large choice to subtle and ingenious minds. Nevertheless, the Reformation was accomplished because men were found who refused to call that Flesh which they knew to be Bread, and that Blood which they knew to be the juice of the Grape.

HENRY W. CROSSKEY.

N following the Rev. H. W. Crosskey on this interesting subject of Subscription, I feel very much like Balaam when called upon to curse the Israelites. Instead of opposing him, as I might have been expected to do, I feel constrained to endorse nearly every word he has said, and to heap malediction on a system which has proved as futile for its purpose as it is radically iniquitous. Nevertheless, as the question before the world just now is unfortunately Vide Fraser's Magazine, November, 1880, p. 760.

not as to how the evil of Subscription may be abolished, but how a particular section of the clergy ought to act under existing circumstances, I see a great deal to be said which has not been stated in the foregoing paper. Mr. Crosskey's view of the principle of Subscription as it ought to be is perfectly sound and good, and the warning he gives to would-be candidates for Holy Orders is a righteous one. In fact, many conscientious men in our age have refused to make declarations of assent to propositions which they believed to be false, and consequently the Church has lost some of the best-qualified men who could have served her.

But the main question suggested by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke's secession, put into plain words, is this: Is it right for clergymen who hold views like his to retain their offices in the Established Church?

And here it is necessary to state that this question is so entirely one for individual consciences to decide, that we have no right to decide it for them. If a man feels that he ought to go, and yet remains, he is to that extent unconscientious, and especially in a minister of religion this is a grave delinquency. But if he feels it to be his duty to stay and do his best, no one should dare to impugn his integrity on the ground of some abstract theory which is upset by actually existing conditions.

It is to the candid examination of these conditions that I desire to invite the reader; for I dispute the alleged parallel between the engagement undertaken by a clergyman and an ordinary contract in secular things.

In the first place, it makes a great difference that the formularies to which assent is required are not now prcpounded for the first time, are not the product of the age in which we live, but are three centuries old, and retain their place to-day only because it is so extremely difficult as to be all but impossible to remove or reform them.

Secondly, the formularies when carefully examined are