sympathize with all the sentiments about Aristocracy, but I think, if you ever see the subsequent volumes, you will find that I have not spared the faults of democracy. Still I confess that Aristocracy as a predominant element in a government, whether it be aristocracy of skin, of race, of wealth, of nobility, or of priesthood, has been to my mind the greatest source of evil throughout the world, because it has been the most universal and the most enduring. Democracy and tyranny, if in themselves worse, have been, and I think ever will be, less prevalent, at least in Europe; they may be the Cholera, but aristocracy is Consumption; and you know that in our climate Consumption is a far worse scourge in the long run than Cholera. The great defect of the volume will be the want of individual characters, which was unavoidable, but yet must lower the interest and the value of a history. The generalities on which I have been obliged to dwell, from the total want of materials for painting portraits, are a sad contrast to those inimitable living pictures with which Carlyle's History of the French Revolution abounds.

[After speaking of the London University.] What the end will be I can scarcely tell, but I have no pleasure in remaining in the University, and yet I do not like to leave it till the very last moment. It makes me feel very lovingly to Rugby, where I seem to have, in principle at least, what I most like,—that is, a place neither like the University of London, nor yet like Oxford, . . . where we are not ashamed of Christianity or of the Church of England, while we have no sympathy with those opinions and feelings which possess the majority of the clergy..

CLXI.

TO THE BISHOP OF NORWICH.

Rugby, June 7, 1838.

I am much obliged to you for the information contained in your letter. I have always objected to the Rule which you have marked A; whereas I agree with Rule B, if by

"peculiarity of doctrinal views" be meant the peculiar opinions of any denomination of Christians. But Rule A seems to me to be needlessly offensive. As the theological examination is not necessary to the Degree, no one surely but Christians would wish to pass it; and why should we say that we do not intend it to imply any man's belief in Christianity? I, for one, could never examine any man in the New Testament, if I thought that he did not believe it, or was not in a state of mind in which he was honestly and respectfully acquiring a knowledge of it with a view to his religious belief. I have always thought that to examine in it merely as a matter of curious information was a very great profaneness.

Again, have you thought any thing more of what Archbishop Whately suggested to Dr. Jerrard, through Dr. Dickenson, that the certificate of a man's Degree should notice his having passed the theological Examination? Now I see that the theological Examination is to follow the Degree, so that this cannot be done; and the Degree is to all intents and purposes complete before the theological Examination even comes into question. And, when I find from Hugh Rose's letter to Hare, in answer to some inquiries of mine, that he will care little whether the students of King's College pass our Examination in theology or no, I am greatly afraid that our Examination will fail practically, as well as in principle, to make a marked distinction between the Christian and unchristian students of our University;-the one great point which Warburton dreads, and I deem essential.

I cannot disguise from myself that the University of London, in its public capacity, cannot be considered as a Christian institution, although it may happen that all its branches individually may be Christians; and therefore I must withdraw from it. Living at such a distance as I do, I can be of no practical use; and, if I could, I feel that the practical good to the extent which alone would be possible, would be dearly bought by my acquiescence in a principle which I so strongly disapprove.

To see my hopes for this new University thus frustrated, is one of the greatest disappointments I have ever met with. But I cannot be reconciled to such a total absence of all confession of the Lord Jesus, and such a total neglect of the command to do all things in His name, as seems to me to be hopelessly involved in the constitution of our University.

As to the manner of my resignation, I would fain do it in the quietest manner possible, consistent with the simple declaration of the reasons which led me to it. I suppose that the proper way would be to write a short letter to the Chancellor.

CLXII. TO AN OLD PUPIL. (D.)—ON DIFFICULTIES IN SUBSCRIPTION. Fox How, June 22, 1838.

a

My own answer must be clear to you from my own practice. I do not believe the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed, under any qualification given of them, except such as substitute for them propositions of a wholly different character. Those clauses proceed on a false notion, which I have elsewhere noticed, that the importance of all opinions touching God's nature is to be measured by His greatness; and that therefore erroneous notions about the Trinity are worse than erroneous notions about Church government, or pious frauds, or any other disputed point on which there is a right and a wrong, a true and a false, and on which the wrong and the false may indeed be highly sinful; but it does not follow that they must be; and their sinfulness does not depend upon their wrongness and falsehood, but on other circumstances in the particular mind of the person holding them. But I read the Athanasian Creed, and have and would again subscribe the Article about it, because I do not conceive the clauses in question to be essential parts of it, or

a Postscript to "Principles of Church Reform," p. 9. For the limitation to this statement, see, amongst other passages, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 140.

that they were retained deliberately by our Reformers after the propriety of retaining or expunging them had been distinctly submitted to their minds. They retained the Creed, I doubt not, deliberately: to show that they wished to keep the faith of the general Church in matters relating to the Arian, Macedonian, Nestorian, Eutychian, and Socinian controversies; and, as they did not scruple to burn Arians, so neither would they be likely to be shocked by the damnatory clauses against them; but I do not imagine that the Article about the Creed was intended in the least to refer to the clauses, as if they supposed that a man might embrace the rest of the Creed, and yet reject them. Nor do I think that the Reformers, or the best and wisest men of the Church since, would have objected to any man's subscription, if they had conceived such a case; but would have said, "What we mean you to embrace is the belief of the general Church, as expressed in the Three Creeds, with regard to the points, many of them having been much disputed,-on which those Creeds pronounce; the degree of blamableness in those who do not embrace this belief is another matter, on which we do not intend to speak particularly in this Article." I do not think that there is any thing evasive or unfair in this. I do not think that it even requires in its defence,—what is yet most true,—that Church subscriptions must be taken in their widest rather than in their strictest sense, except on points where they were especially intended to be stringent, and to express the opposite of some suspected opinion. Yet, when you speak of others throwing your subscription in your teeth, you may surely say that it does indeed require the utmost laxity of interpretation to reconcile Newmanism with a subscription to our Articles, because there, on points especially disputed, such as the Authority of Tradition, and the King's Supremacy, the Church of England and the Newmanites are directly at variance. As far as K or N are concerned, the most decided Socinian might subscribe the Articles as

consistently as they do; but this of course is not the point, and my opinion as to the damnatory clauses, as it is much older than the rise of Newmanism, so it stands on grounds far different from a mere argumentum ad hominem, and is, I think, perfectly right, considered simply on the merits of the case.

When the faults of the London University revive all my tenderness for Oxford, then the faults of Oxford repel me again, and make it impossible to sympathize with a spirit so uncongenial. Wherefore I wish the wish of Achilles, when he looked out upon the battle of the ships, and desired that the Greeks and Trojans might destroy one another, and leave the field open for better men.

We had a very prosperous journey, and arrived here yesterday evening about nine o'clock. The place is most beautiful; but the rain is falling thick.

CLXIII. TO T. F. ELLIS, ESQ.

Rugby, August 29, 1838.

Independently of the real pleasure which it would give me to be of any service to a friend of yours, I have that admiration of Mr. Macaulay's writings, and have derived so much pleasure from them, that it would be but a matter of simple gratitude to do any thing in my power towards facilitating his observations during his stay at Rome. I was there myself so very short a time, that I was able only to look at the mere outline of things; and it was my object to go to as many of the higher points as I could, in and about Rome, that by getting the landscape from a number of different points I might better understand the bearings of its several parts towards one another. For instance, I went to the top of the dome of St. Peter's; to that of the tower of the Capitol; to the Monte Mario; the terrace of the Church of St. Pietro in Montorio, (on the old Janiculum,) that of the Convent of S. Gregorio, I think it is, on the Cœlian, (from which you look upon