should be held; and thus in Church matters the μérov would seem to be somewhere between Newman's views and mine; whereas the truth is, that in our views of the importance of the Church, Newman and I are pretty well agreed, and therefore I stand as widely aloof as he can do from the language of "religion being an affair between God and a man's own conscience," and from all such persons who dispute the claims of the Church to obedience. But my quarrel with Newman and with the Romanists, and with the dominant party in the Church up to Cyprian,-(Ignatius, I firmly believe, is not to be classed with them, vehement as his language is,)—my quarrel with them all-and all that I have named are exactly in the same boat-is, that they have put a false Church in the place of the true, and through their counterfeit have destroyed the reality, as paper money drives away gold. And this false Church is the Priesthood, to which are ascribed all the powers really belonging to the true Church, with others which do not and cannot belong to any human power. But the Priesthood and the Succession are inseparable, the Succession having no meaning whatever if there be not a Priesthood, as W. Law saw and maintained; arguing, and I think plausibly enough, that the Succession was necessary to carry on the priestly virtue which alone makes the acts of the ministry available. Now as the authorized formularies of our Church are perfectly free from this notion, and as the twenty-third Article to my mind implies the contrary, -for no man, who believed in the necessity of a Succession, would have failed to omit that, to him, great criterion of the lawfulness of any ordination,-it has always vexed me to see our Clergy coquetting as they do with the doctrine of Succession, and clinging to it, even while they stoutly repudiate those notions of a Priesthood which the Succession doctrine really involves in it. And it is by this handle that the Newmanites have gained such ground, especially with the Evangelicals,-for they too have been

fond of the Succession notion, and when the doctrine has been pressed to its consequences, they have in many instances embraced them, however repugnant to their former general views of doctrine. You speak of persons who do not value Church privileges. I have no sympathy with such at all; but then you seem to connect Church privileges with the Succession, and to shrink from those who deny the Succession as if they undervalued the Church. Perhaps I understood you wrongly in this, and, if so, I shall be truly rejoiced, for, to my mind, he who holds to the Succession as necessary, should, consistently, adopt Newmanism to its full extent; for really and truly the meaning of the Succession is what one of the writers of the Tracts stated in one of the earliest of their numbers, "that no one otherwise appointed could be sure that he could give the people the real body of Christ." And this is a pure priestly and mediatorial power, rendered, according to this hypothesis, necessary to the Christian's salvation, over and above Christ's death, and his faith in it; a power which I am sure stands exactly on the same footing with Circumcision in the Galatian Church, and what St. Paul says of those who required circumcision applies exactly to those who so hold a Priesthood.

All this has been recalled to me now, for I dare say I have said it before, by your late sermon, and by my own rather increasing wish to write on the whole question; a wish strengthened by the incredible errors of Gladstone's last work. The vexation to me is, that while I hold very high Church doctrines, I am considered as one who dislikes the Church, whereas my whole hope for the advance and triumph of the Gospel looks to it only through the restoration of the Church. But the Christians were called ά00 because they respected not the idols which had transferred to themselves the name and worship of God. And so I am called a no-Church man, because I respect not the idol which has slipped not only into the Church's place, but into God's,-i. e. the notion of the Priesthood, which does

not seem to me to be false only in its excess, but altogether from the very beginning,-priestly power under the Gospel being reserved to Christ alone, and its character being quite distinct from those other powers of government, teaching, and ministration which the Church may have and must have. But from the natural confusion between government with ministration in a religious society and the notion of priesthood, the master falsehood gradually stole in unperceived, till long time had so sanctioned it, that when at last men saw and allowed its legitimate consequences, itself was still spared as a harmless and venerable error, if not as a sacred truth. But I have sent you a sermon in manuscript, a thing intolerable, and therefore I will end abruptly, as they say my sermons are apt to do. Thank you for your allusion to our visit to Oxford: we hope that we may at any rate see something of you, and you need not dread my coming up with any designs of arguing or entering into controversy; my visits to Oxford are always intended to be for peace, and not for war.

CCLIV. TO AN OLD PUPIL.

(G.)

Rugby, December 4, 1840.

I thank you for a certain pamphlet which

gave me a day or two ago; I most earnestly wish it success; and such moral reforms are among the purest delights which a man can ever enjoy in this life. I delight too, most heartily, that the change of profession is decided. May God's blessing be with your decision, through His Son now and ever.

CCLV. TO THE SAME.

Fox How, December 28, 1840.

I honour and sympathize with an anxiety to follow our Lord's will in matters of real moral importance, as much

as I shrink from the habit of exalting every notice of what was once done in matters of form into a law, that the same ought always to be done, and that Christ has commanded it. But I do not feel your objection to taking an oath when required by a lawful and public authority, nor do I quite see your distinction, between taking an oath when imposed by a magistrate and taking one voluntarily, in the sense in which alone the oath of supremacy, when taken at ordination, can be called voluntary. For, if the thing be unlawful, it must be as wrong to do it for the sake of avoiding a penalty, as of obtaining a good. But it is quite clear to me that the evil is in requiring an oath,—when we speak of solemn oaths, and not of those used gratuitously in conversation, to which I believe our Lord's words in the letter apply. I would not do any thing which would imply that I thought a Christian's word not sufficient, and required him to make a distinction between it and his oath. But if an authority in itself lawful says to me, “I require of you, though a Christian, that same assurance which men in general have agreed to look to as the highest," I do not see that I should object to give it him, although in my own case I feel it to be superfluous. And it appears to me clear that our Lord did Himself so comply with the adjuration of the High Priest. It is a grief to me that the Church in this, as in many other things, has not risen to the height designed for her; but it seems to me that the individual's business is not to require oaths, rather than not to take them when required by others. The difference seems to me to lie, as I think our Article implies, not between oaths voluntary and involuntary,—for no oath can be strictly speaking involuntary, "Commands being no constraints," but between oaths gratuitously proffered, where you are yourself enforcing the difference between affirmations and oaths, and oaths taken on the requisition of a lawful authority, where you incur no such responsibility.

VOL. II.

R

CCLVI. TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

Fox How, January 2, 1841.

If our minds were comprehensive enough, and life were long enough, to follow with pleasure every pursuit not sinful, I can fancy that it would be better to like shooting than not to like it; but as things are, all our life must be a selection, and pursuits must be neglected, because we have not time or mind to spare for them. So that I cannot but think, that shooting and fishing, in our state of society, must always be indulged at the expense of something better.

I feel quite as strongly as you do the extreme difficulty of giving to girls what really deserves the name of education intellectually. When was young, I used to teach her some Latin with her brothers, and that has been, I think, of real use to her, and she feels it now in reading and translating German, of which she does a great deal. But there is nothing for girls like the Degree Examination, which concentrates one's reading so beautifully, and makes one master a certain number of books perfectly. And unless we had a domestic examination for young ladies to be passed before they came out, and another like the great go, before they come of age, I do not see how the thing can ever be effected. Seriously, I do not see how we can supply sufficient encouragement for systematic and laborious reading, or how we can ensure many things being retained at once fully in the mind, when we are wholly without the machinery which we have for our boys. I do nothing now with my girls regularly, owing to want of time; once, for a little while, I used to examine in Guizot's Civilization of France, and I am inclined to think that few better books could be found for the purpose than this and his civilization of Europe. They embrace a great multitude of subjects and a great variety, and some philosophical questions amongst the rest, which would introduce a girl's mind a little to that world of thought to which we were introduced by our Aristotle.