6

MR. WARD'S INTERPRETATION OF IT.

of the word 'their,' which really seems to me at once to point to members of the Church of Rome, the general scope of the Article is quite sufficient for my purpose. For, as is plain, the Church of Rome is here asserted to have erred in matters of faith, exactly in the same sense as she is affirmed to have erred in living. Now there is literally no meaning in the assertion that the abstract Church of Rome has erred in their living;' it must by absolute necessity be certain of her concrete members who have so erred; certain of her concrete members then it is who are here asserted to have erred in matters of faith, i. e. of religious belief. . .

"I subscribe then the Article in the following sense. I take it to affirm, that whereas the visible Church of Christ is a certain congregation of faithful men, &c., every local Church included in that body will contain members not only who act wickedly, not only who are superstitiously addicted to outward observances, but also who err in one point or other of religious belief. If this appears the solemn enunciation of a mere truism, I quite admit that it is so; but so far am I from allowing that a probability thence follows of its not having been the sense intended by the Convocation at the time to be admissible, that on the contrary nothing seems so natural, as that when a large number of persons meet together, of most opposite opinions, each protesting against what clashes with his own, the result of the various eliminations shall be a formula which gives no offence to any, because it contains no specific meaning whatever."

Having then renewed his often made charge of disingenuousness against the Reformers, "of their fully tolerating the absence from the Articles of any real antiRoman determinations, so only they were allowed to preserve an apparent one," and having ventured a criticism upon the language of the Latin Article which I leave to the wonder of scholars; he goes on to say :

"I am, of course, quite aware, that the whole of the present argument will be considered as dishonest special pleading by those who

An abstract Church!' what is that? What a key these words furnish to the whole of Mr. Ward's "Ideal." The Church is simply a logical conception, a formula. Those who compose it, are not living stones of a building, not members of a body; but a set of individuals altogether constituting an abstraction.

will not give themselves the trouble to look candidly at the wording of our Articles, and fairly to examine the charge of disingenuousness brought against their framers. Nor do I deny, rather I have plainly said, that the first part of the Article appears to imply some reflection on the formal doctrine of the Church of Rome; this indeed will make it a more unexceptionable evidence for the truth of the view which I maintain. For I challenge (the italics are Mr. Ward's) any objector to give any meaning to the Article, word by word, which can by possibility bring the formal doctrine of the Church of Rome within its scope. For example, if the phrase had been 'their precepts,' although the pronoun 'their' would still have been a difficulty, it might have been plausibly enough contended that the formal teaching of Rome on moral points is condemned in the first clause, and, by parity of reasoning, the formal teaching in doctrinal points in the second. But the phrase being their living,' such an attempt is impossible."

Ideal of a Christian Church, p. 101, note.

A young student reading this passage is likely to say, 'There, you see, he has defied them. He has done it openly and emphatically; using italics because he is so sure that they will not dare to meet him-and they do meet him with a degradation.' But whatever Convocation may do, you and I, my dear friend, who have not its power in this kind, have the power of saying whether we signed in this sense or in some other; whether we considered the words as merely truistic, or if not, whether we can explain what other meaning is in them. I hold myself bound to answer these questions to any one who comes to ask them.

To depart as little as may be from Mr. Ward's hypothesis about the way in which the Article was composed, let us suppose the persons, from whose various eliminations the nonsense he discovers in it proceeded, met together to settle the form of it. The clause is proposed, 'As the Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred.' 'Erred,' exclaims one of the assessors, who doubts it?

8

ANOTHER SENSE OF IT.

Who will deny that no Church has fully presented the image of her Lord? that many of the persons who compose it have been grossly immoral; nay, that its moral standard has often been low? Many persons too will agree with you that portions of the ceremonial of particular Churches have been unwisely chosen in conformity with popular tastes and fancies, and that these ought to be removed. Is this all you mean to assert, when you say that different Churches in Asia and Africa, and also this Church in Italy, which pretends to be the guide and model of all the rest, have erred?' 'I see the force of your objections,' replies the original suggester. The wording must be more accurate. These Churches have erred not only in their living, (an error which may be predicated of individual members of a Church, even of the majority of its members, without impeaching the correctness of its authorized teaching,) and in manner of ceremonies, (possibly regulations of individual priests, which have crept in and became general practices by connivance, and without formal approbation,) but also in matters of faith (in that which is strictly and formally the expression of the mind of the corporate body).' Whether this sense of the Article be more or less agreeable to the wording of it than Mr. Ward's, I leave to the judgment of any competent Roman Catholic Doctor, of any Roman Catholic University, of any English lawyer used to examine the language of documents and give opinions upon them, of any unsophisticated person who has the slightest familiarity with English construction. At all events, this is my sense of the Article. In subscribing it, I do mean to condemn certain portions of the formal doctrine of the Church of Rome. 'Well!' the Undergraduate might say, to whom I offered this justification of my own signature; 'perhaps you are

HOW TO DEAL WITH CHEATING ARTICLES.

9

fortunate that you can find this meaning in the Article, and that you can acquiesce in it. But suppose you thought with Mr. Ward, that this condemnation of the formal doctrine of Rome was very presumptuous, how would you act? would not you be glad to see another meaning, even a merely truistic one, in the words then?' 'If I did find such a meaning,' I should answer, and I believed it to be the result of the causes to which Mr. Ward ascribes it, I should simply tell those who presented the book of Articles to me, that I looked upon it as a dishonest, shameful, immoral book, with which I could have nothing to do.' 'But then you could not have an Oxford education or become a clergyman.' 'No: but I could be brought up in some dame's school and become a dustman; a far preferable alternative to that of solemnly consenting, at the most solemn moments of my life,-when I am entering upon the three years which will have most influence on the formation of my character for all future time, when I am going forth to practise in the world the lessons which I have learnt in the schools, when I am taking authority to preach the Word of God, when I believe I am about to receive the Holy Spirit of Truth to qualify me for the office of a Priest-to a document which professes to treat of the most awful subjects, and which I believe in my soul to be a piece of impudent trifling, of base deception.' 'But speaking thus,' my Undergraduate friend would rejoin, 'you throw out insinuations against Mr. Ward of being indifferent to sacred things; a charge quite inconsistent with the tone of his book; the very sin which makes Protestants so offensive to him.' 'I impute nothing to Mr. Ward,' I should reply-'I am not his master-his judge. You asked me to say how I should feel in this case, and I have told you. If you had asked me further how I

10

THE CHARACTER OF THE ARTICLES.

would advise you to act, I should have said as plainly— Have nothing to do with any document-least of all, with a document concerning the relations of God with His creatures—which you do not inwardly respect! And have nothing to do with any man, who, talking much of conscience, morality, religion, tempts you to consider how nearly you can go in a spiritual transaction to what in an ordinary earthly transaction would be called double dealing. When any one teaches you to think every thing sacred and inviolable except truth, if you care to look your fellow-creatures in the face, if you do not wish to be ashamed when you kneel before God, Hunc tu Romane caveto.'

Now even for one person to bear this kind of testimony, seems to me better than for a whole University merely to punish. But if it were borne by different clergymen in all different parts of the country to the young men whom they might find disturbed by Mr. Ward's doctrine; above all, if the tutors of the colleges, availing themselves of their (it is to be hoped, even under present circumstances) greater opportunities, would bear it; I do not think there would be the least call for convocations and new tests".

II. But such a dialogue would almost certainly give rise to a new set of questions concerning the Articles themselves.-After all, how do you look upon them? Do you think they mean the same thing as the Creeds and the Prayer Book? Do you attach that rigid signification to them, which is by some declared

It is almost needless to say that these remarks are meant to meet the observation of Mr. Ward, that his argument will seem dishonest special pleading, to those who do not agree with him about the disingenuousness of the Reformers. What I say is, ' If these charges were true, the course he suggests would be-in us, it may not be in him-infinitely more dishonest.'