THE CHIEF DANGER OF THE CHURCH IN THESE TIMES. PROTESTANT A CHARGE DELIVERED TO THE CLERGY OF THE REVEREND BRETHREN, Ir is now four years since I delivered my last charge to the Clergy of my diocese. Perhaps, if you have considered the specially engrossing nature of my late engagements, and all the burden and anxiety of mind necessarily connected with my effort to rescue our diocesan College and Theological Seminary from their most threatening pecuniary difficulties, you have hardly expected that, even now, I would be prepared to address you in that form again. But, though pressed in mind almost above measure, there are circumstances which forbid me to keep silence under such a stewardship as mine, and with so large an assemblage of the watchmen and shepherds of Christ's flock before me. Four years ago, my subject was that cardinal doctrine of Christianity, the plain preaching of which, in the sixteenth century, raised, almost from the dead, the whole testimony of the Gospel, after centuries of papal darkness had covered its light from the sight of menJustification before God, in the righteousness of Christ alone, accounted unto us through faith only. At that time, the system of doctrinal evil, whose name we now know to be Legion, and which is now so threatening to our Protestant Churches, mocking all restraint, had just come up out of the tomb of the schoolmen.* Its name was not then declared. * It now calls Thomas Aquinas "the great prophet of the Church in all succeeding ages."-Brit. Crit. for July, 1843, p. 39. Its distinct form and position were not as yet avowed. It boasted great things of its attachment to the doctrinal peculiarities of the Anglican Protestant Church, and of its antipathy to the opposing peculiarities of the Church of Rome. It was not Protestant doctrine it then professed to oppose, but only Ultra-Protestant. It was not the unprotestantizing of the Church of England it then professed to aim at, but the bringing of all, both Romanists and Protestants, to unite in precisely that form of doctrine which it professed to believe to be at once the glory of the Church of England, and the Via Media between the two extremes of Romish corruption and Lutheran extravagance. To "recede farther and farther from the principles of the Reformation," so far from being, as now, publicly avowed as a distinct feature of the plan, and necessary to the carrying out of the system, was then, whenever laid to its account, repudiated as slander. How great has been the advance in the developing of tendencies, and confession of principles and objects, within the last four years, I need not here point out. To myself that advance has been in no wise unexpected. I confidently predicted it. I have been surprised at nothing but its rapidity. In no step of the progress, however, has there been any substantial addition to what was really exhibited, though cautiously, in the early efforts of the movement. What we have now in open avowal, we have had ever since the Tracts began under disguised insinuations. Long ago the seeds of all the recent growths of Romish heresy were carefully planted, and it needed only a practiced eye to see them skilfully and widely mingled, for concealment and protection, with various materials of a better, and often adverse character. The doctrine of "Reserve," of "the Secret," of what they called "Economy," of what, considering its bearings and applications, is nothing but the old sin of "pious frauds" revived, was employed most thoroughly, in order that, while men slept, the tares might be getting strength enough to mock all efforts to eradicate them. To minds skilled in the old contests of the truth against the corruptions of Rome, it was not difficult to see where they were making their main, though often masked, attack. To get away from the Church that palladium of her strength-the doctrine of justification by a righteousness external to us, and only in Christand to substitute the precise opposite-a justification by a righte ousness in us, and not in Christ, implanted by Sacraments and increased by good works-this was the first and main object. This gained, the citadel of Protestant faith was gained; their cause was gained; the Church was unprotestantized." It seemed, therefore, that the first thing, in setting up our defense, was to to secure the clear, well-defined understanding, and the decided holding and preaching of the doctrine of our Church, in her Articles and Homilies, on that subject. In aiming at that, by means of my last charge, there was little direct reference made to Tractarian publications. My next effort at the same object was the publication of a volume, inscribed to my reverend brethren of Ohio, in which the system of divinity attempted to be established among us, under the name of "Catholic Verity," was compared with the doctrines of the Church of which its chief advocates are presbyters, and with those of the apostate Church against which she protests at every angle and bastion of her fortress. When that work appeared, many thought it had come too late; that the spirit of evil was laid, and the danger over. I believed, on the contrary, that it was then continually gaining strength, and would be gaining, till, with its parent Popery, the Lord shall destroy it "with the brightness of his appearing," in the day when the cry shall be heard, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen!" * Since then, it has been continually enlarging its influence, multiplying disciples, infecting partially those whom it did not poison entirely, and enfeebling the hold of the truth upon those whom it did not wholly pervert. It is now fast preparing minds in which it has not yet effected a lodgment. Every new publication of its leading organs exhibits some new development of designs, of tendencies, of results. It displays a boldness in avowing its objects, and uncovering its principles and springs, which once would have been its death. The concentration of almost all questions of religious interest upon the great points involved in this system; the standing aside of almost all other forms of theological controversy till the issues of this be determined; the room devoted to the subject in the charges of bishops of the Church of England; the excitement of the public mind with regard to it, as evinced in all the religious, and in so many of the merely literary or political publications of the day; yea, the whole aspect of the literature of the age, attests the truth of what the Lord's faithful watchman on the towers of the Church in India declares, that the controversy connected with the Tractarian movement is "the most momentous struggle in which our Church has been engaged since the period of the * The preceding Work. blessed Reformation." It is precisely and avowedly the same struggle as that of the Reformation. The object of the one side is boastfully published, to "unprotestantize" the Church-to get back what the Reformation drove away. The main difference of circumstance is that the Reformers contended with Romanism in its dotage, with all its horrible corruption of morals around it, to shame it; with all Europe groaning under its oppression, and with all its poetic associations of antiquity drowned in the practical consciousness of its iniquity. The contest is now with Romanism revived in its early youthfulness. The great adversary of the Church would not lay aside an instrument so precisely to his mind, and for centuries so triumphant. He could transform the dry tree into the green as easily as his magicians did once change their dry rods into active serpents. The work has been done. The old root of Rome, dead at the top, has thrown up in the midst of us a youthful sapling, vigorous, aspiring, full of life, "heady, high minded." It is already a great tree. I believe most solemnly, that, under this new shape, we have a revival of antiChristian heresy and opposition to "the truth as it is in Jesus," which cannot be dreaded too seriously, or resisted too earnestly. There is no controversy of these times comparable with this. We have important controversies about the polity of the Church; this is about the very life of the Gospel. We have questions about the walls and courts of the temple; this is for the possession of the ark and the mercy seat. We have differences of opinion about this or that particular doctrine, while essentially agreeing in the main system. Here we have a difference about the whole system of faith, from fundamental principle, to minutest inference. Should we yield the ground, nothing would be unchanged, either in its nature, its application, its relative position, or in the basis on which it would rest. Even the Atonemeut, though retained, would be put back from front to rear; from its bold exhibition, as a City of Refuge set on a hill, to that of its ancient type, the brazen serpent, after it had done its work, and was put out of sight as useless. Even the doctrine of the Trinity, though left as the Church of Rome has left it, untouched in substance, would be moved from its broad basis of proof in the Scriptures, and set upon the support of man's tradition. In a word, the controversy is for Christianity. And with this most serious belief, dear brethren, I cannot but claim your attention while I endeavor, in this discourse to protect my diocese *Bishop Daniel Wilson's Metropolitan Charge. from the evils with which our whole Church is threatened. I know you are already sensible that there is great evil in the system of divinty alluded to. I wish to make you sensible that it is nothing but evil. I know you think it ought to be feared and opposed. I wish to make you duly sensible with what solemnity watchfulness, and prayerfulness, it should be feared, and with what uncompromising firmness, what patient zeal, what decided manifestation of the truth, it should be continually opposed. Let us consider some of the main points in the doctrinal aspects of religion which are brought into the controversy, and how the two sides are divided in relation to them. No question can be more fundamental than that of the Rule of Faith. It lies at the portal of the temple of truth. On this head there is entire disagreement between this system and the Protestant faith of our Church. The Reformation was erected on the distinct basis of the single authority and entire sufficiency of Scripture as a rule in matters of faith. The position of our Church in this respect is perfectly well defined. She maintains that Scripture "containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or thought necessary to salvation."* The application of this to the two creeds illustrates her position. She declares that the Nicene and Apostles' Creed "ought to be thoroughly received and believed, for they may be proved by most certain warrant of Holy Scripture." † Now in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds we have a summary of the most unquestionable articles of primitive tradition. They are the representatives of tradition in its most reverend and authoritative form. The doctrine of the Church concerning the Rule of Faith must stand or fall according to what she pronounces concerning the authority on which they are received. But she pronounces that they ought to be believed, not because the traditions of the Church assert them, but only because they may be proved by most certain warrant of Scripture. Thus, therefore, is the claim of all tradition to be settled. It must be tried by the warrant of Scripture-not Scripture tested by tradition, but tradition tested by Scripture-the Bible only being the ultimate arbiter of faith. Such is the precise position of our Church. But precisely the reverse is that of the system before us. There, whether we must believe an asserted doctrine depends not in the least upon the * Article 6th. † Article 8th. |