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THE VASTATION OF THE OLD AND THE DUTIES OF THE NEW CHURCH.

(Being the substance of an Address* to the Members of the Society for Printing and Publishing the Theological Writings of the Hon. E. Swedenborg, at its last Meeting in June. By the Rev. A. CLISSold, M.A.)

MY CHRISTIAN FRIENDS,

IN conformity to the motion now submitted to your notice, your attention is requested to the signs of the times, and to the duties suggested by a contemplation of their nature.

In regard to the signs of the times, it will be natural that we should look for them in the Church; and in the case of this country, principally in the Church of England.

Now, to understand the signs of the times in the Church of England, it will be requisite to go back to the period at which Swedenborg was born.

A little after this period, a considerable controversy upon the subject of the Trinity was carried on between Sherlock, South, Wallis, and other divines; and so furious was the contest, and so contradictory the views maintained, that it was admitted by numerous divines at that time, that the only result which could flow from it would be the unsettling of men's minds upon a fundamental doctrine of the Church Catholic, and the encouragement of heresy, schism, irreligion, profaneness, and immorality.

Accordingly, certain it is, that for many years afterwards there was a considerable increase in infidel and blasphemous works, which were sent

*The Address was made on the occasion of moving the following resolution :"That the signs of the times preeminently require that the most efficient aid be given to the Society for Printing and Publishing," &c. &c.

over to the Continent. Of these works the Roman Catholics affirm, that they mainly contributed to lay the foundation of that infidelity which we know preceded and accompanied the French Revolution. On the other hand, Protestants are more inclined to think that they only gave a stimulus to that infidel spirit which had been previously dormant, and had been fostered by the corruptions of the Church of Rome. However this may be, it is certain that Socinianism, Deism, Arianism, and what is called Unitarianism, considerably increased; and that about thirty years afterwards, the Convocation of the Church of England was ordered to lay before the Queen an account of the excessive growth of infidelity and heresy in the nation. At the same Convocation a work by Mr. Whiston, of Cambridge, was also taken into consideration, in which the Supreme Divinity of our Lord was denied. According to the 20th Article of the Church of England, the Church has authority in controversies concerning the faith. The general voice of the Church of England is expressed through the organ of Convocation; but the decisions of Convocation are of no avail except they are ratified by the royal authority. In the present case the Convocation passed a censure upon Mr. Whiston's work, but it failed to receive the sanction of royalty, and thus Mr. Whiston escaped

the censure.

Now these circumstances are mentioned only by way of prelude to a much more important event.

So completely had heresy eaten into the very vitals of the Church, that no sooner was one work condemned, than another rose up to defend it. About three or four years afterwards, Dr. Clarke, then Rector of St. James's, Piccadilly, published his work entitled The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. In this work the doctrine maintained is stated as

follows:

"There is," says Dr. Clarke, "One Supreme Cause and original of things; One simple, uncompounded, undivided, Intelligent Agent or Person, who is the Alone author of all being, and the Fountain of all Power."

"The Father alone is in the highest, strict, proper, and absolute sense, Supreme over all. The Father alone is, absolutely speaking, the God of the Universe; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of Israel, of Moses, of the Prophets and Apostles; and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

"The Scripture, when it mentions the one God or the only God, always means the Supreme Person of the Father."

"When the word God is mentioned in Scripture, with any high epithet, title, or attribute annexed to it, it generally, I think always, means the Person of the Father." "The Scripture, when it mentions God absolutely and by way of eminence, always means the Person of the Father."-Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, p. 233, &c.

It is easy to see that the whole tendency of this doctrine is to exclude

our Lord from all claims to divinity, taken in its strict and proper sense; and hence to exclude Him altogether from being the object of prayer, worship, and adoration, properly so called.

Here, then, was a clear case. First, the Church in council claiming to have authority in matters of faith. Secondly, the particular subject of controversy formally brought before the Church, and which was no other than the fundamental question, whether or not our Lord be the one true God. What, then, is the decision to which the Church of England in Convocation comes upon this subject? It refuses to come to any decision. The Upper House decline proceeding into the matter. What could be the reason of this? There is an ostensible reason, and a real one. The ostensible reason was, that Dr. Clarke had sent in a letter of apology and retractation. Now Dr. Clarke, hearing that his letter would be so interpreted, writes to the Bishop of London before the meeting of Convocation (and the letter was laid before some of the other Bishops), to the effect, that he had not retracted, that he would not retract, nor recede a single iota from what he had stated. The Lower House agreed in the same view of the subject, and maintained that Dr. Clarke's letter was no retractation. It is obvious, therefore, that the reason alleged for no further inquiry, was only an ostensible reason; in other words, an excuse to get rid of the subject.

What, then, could be the true reason for the Convocation declining to proceed with so important a question,-I mean rather the Upper House of Convocation? Perhaps the following considerations may suggest it. The leading authorities could not have forgotten the former controversy upon the Trinity, and the disastrous manner in which it was conducted. The Church of England came to no unanimous decision even upon that subject; so far from it, that the Church was rent asunder by it, and the dispute settled only by the interposition of royal authority. To go, therefore, into the question mooted by Dr. Clarke, was to re-open the whole controversy, and plunge the Church not only into the former disputes, but into the additional ones furnished by Dr. Clarke and his friends. Hence the earnest desire for peace. But besides this, Dr. Clarke's work, and others to the same purport, had doubtless produced a certain effect upon the minds of the learned, as may be inferred from the following narratives:

Mr. Whiston says that he waited upon Bishop Smallridge, who was considered to be a very learned and orthodox man in that day, and among other things, desired that his lordship, of whom both parties had so good an opinion, would do something to bring them out of that disorder in which they then were; and, particularly, that he would please to write a

little book to recommend a fair and impartial review of Christian antiquity to the world, in order to the correction of such errors and practices as might have crept into the Church since the first settlement of Christianity, which recommendation from him would, he believed, have a very good effect. "His lordship's answer," says Mr. Whiston, as near as I can remember the words, and that with great emotion of mind and body, was this:"

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"Mr. Whiston, I dare not examine; I dare not examine. For if we should examine, and find that you are in the right, the church has then been in an error so many hundred years." I asked him how he could say so and still be a Protestant. He replied: 'Yes, he could.' This I testify under my hand, Will. Whiston, June 14th, 1722.”— Historical Memoirs of Dr. Clarke, p. 142.

About this time Bishop Hoadly published his Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper; in which, says Mr. Lindsey, we find no intimation, in the most remote degree, that Jesus Christ was to be invoked in prayer, nor example of any divine worship addressed to him, but to the Father only. Now, if the bishop had believed Christ to have been an object of worship to Christians, it is hardly to be supposed that in set forms of prayer, drawn up with great care and deliberation, he should have taken no notice of Him in that character. The bishop, indeed, adopts some of the prayers of the Liturgy, which conclude with petitioning God for Christ's sake, and ascribing to Christ and the Holy Ghost all honour and glory. But nothing of the kind appears in the prayers of the bishop's own composing, nor in them, says Mr. Lindsey, does he ever ascribe glory to Christ or the Holy Ghost as Divine Persons, or in any sort put them upon a level with the Almighty Father.

In respect to Dr. Clarke, so little disposed had he been to qualify or retract the doctrines imputed to him by the Lower House of Convocation, that he afterwards proceeded to an emendation of the Liturgy of the Church of England, in which he erases every passage in which the Lord Jesus Christ is acknowledged as God. The manuscript containing these emendations was never published, but is now in the British Museum, and may, I believe, be consulted by any one who wishes to see it. The following will afford the reader some idea of the nature and extent of the emendations; and which I here quote from Mr. Lindsey's Apology, page 185:

The Doxology, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son," &c. is struck out, and changed into another form wherever it is ordered to be read. The passage in the Te Deum, "Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ," down to the end of the petition, "Make them to be numbered with thy