Subscription the disgrace of the English Church [1st edition] — Part 13

Supposing, however, the case were otherwise; suppose a real and unbounded deference to the least word of a Bishop to prevail amongst the clergy and people; suppose that they had each authority in controversies of faith; what unfortunately should we reap in the present state of things but increased perplexity? The judges—so to term them—are divided in opinion; and, though this in the parallel case of legal judges is stripped of injury by an appeal to a superior court, the Church possesses no such appeal. In the meanwhile two-thirds of our Bishops, perhaps, are ranged on one side in the present controversy, and have spoken strongly. The remainder have spoken with a leaning more or less strong in the opposite direction, or are as yet silent. As to _deciding_ then the true and proper interpretation of our Articles and Subscription nothing has been gained by Episcopal Charges. Only the unpleasing truth has been openly displayed that they may be treated like the pamphlet of any anonymous partizan. Thus the present state of the question as to Subscription operates in overthrowing respect to the office and authority of our Bishops, and this it cannot do without being discreditable to the Church.

9. They who have studied even cursorily the history of ecclesiastical affairs in England since the Reformation, may trace in Subscription another circumstance discreditable, if not disgraceful, to the English Church, and one which present times bring before our view. The most earnest and devoted section of the clergy, whatever their peculiar views in past or present times, have been frequently branded by the imputation of departing from the literal sense of the Articles, and of the Subscription required to them and the Book of Common Prayer. They have been censured also as disaffected to the Church, sometimes to its doctrines, sometimes to its rites and ceremonies. The next step has been to speak of them as unfit to remain in the ministry, and to desire their exclusion.

No candid man can doubt the piety, the ability, the zeal in their Master’s service, of the puritanical divines. Yet many of them were excluded at the Restoration, and thus the Church lost a large body of Christian men, and itself laid the foundation of a considerable portion of our present non-conformity. At the end of the seventeenth century, the eminent divines who attempted to repair by healing counsels the damage thus occasioned were branded as latitudinarians, and denounced as disaffected to the Church. In the last century no attempt was made to turn into a more regular channel the zeal of Wesley and Whitfield, and their associates. They were excluded as unsound in doctrine and dangerous to true religion. With difficulty for a long time did the evangelical clergy, who sprung from them, maintain their position as a proscribed race, condemned as disaffected to the Church.