Page images
PDF
EPUB

but as it is, I am well content that you should so love Oxford at present, as to feel sympathy even for her extravagances it is such a symptom as I hail with very great satisfaction, and I exhibited it myself when I was in your situation. I should therefore be well enough inclined to let this right itself by and by; only in such turbulent times you must beware lest you are tempted, not only συμφιλεῖν τοῖς οξωνιάνοις ἀλλὰ καὶ συμμισεῖν, and that I think would be an injustice. I think also that the habit of making a man an offender for a word is most injurious to ourselves, remember the calumnies and insinuations against Niebuhr. Again, no man's mind can be fairly judged of by such a specimen as N has given of Hampden's. He has in several places omitted sentences in his quotations, which give exactly the soft and Christian effect to what, without them, sounds hard and cold. . Again, it will never do to judge a man, not for the opinions which he holds, but for the degree of condemnation which he passes on the opposite opinions, ὁ μὲν χαλεπάινων πίστος ἀεὶ ὁ δ ̓ ἀντιλέγων αὐτῷ ὑποπτος. But to whom are they πίστοι and ὑποπτοί? Not to the wise and good, but to the unprincipled or fanatical partisan, who knows not what truth and goodness are. Poor Jeremy Taylor understood well this intolerance of toleration, when he thought it necessary to append to his Liberty of Prophesying a long argument against the truth of the Baptist opinions, because he had been earnestly arguing that, although untrue, they were neither punishable nor damnable. You have always heard me, and I hope I shall always be heard, to insist upon the Divinity of Christ as the great point of Christianity; but it is because I think that the Scholastic Theology has obscured and excited a prejudice against it, that I am rather thankful myself for having been enabled to receive Scripture truth in spite of the wrapping which has been put around it, than I can condemn those who throw away the wrapping, and cannot conceive that beneath a shell so worthless there can lurk so divine a

kernel. Then as to "dangerousness." There is an immense danger in folly, or in the careless tone of a man who never seemed in earnest; or in the trash of a fanatic. Hampden is a good man, and an able one; a lover of truth and fairness; and I should think that the wholesome air of such a man's lectures would tend to freshen men's faith, and assure them that it had a foundation to rest upon, when the infinite dishonesty and foolery of such divinity, as I remember in the lecture rooms and pulpits in times past, would be enough to drive a man of sound mind. into any extravagances of unbelief. . . . . Hampden's

Bampton Lectures are a great work, entirely true in their main points, and I think most useful. . . . . . . But it is merely like the cry of Oxford a hundred and twenty years ago, when the lower House of Convocation condemned Burnet's Exposition of the Articles. So always, in the course of human things, the tail labours to sting the head.

CVII. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Rugby, March 17, 1836. The question about Hampden seems to me simple. If he has preached or published heresy, let him be tried by the proper judge or judges, either the Bishop or, as Hawkins says, the Vice-Chancellor, assisted by six Doctors of Divinity. What they are now doing is merely Lynch law; and they might just as well run down any other man who is unpopular with the dominant party in Oxford, and say that they have no confidence in him, and therefore pass a privilegium against him without giving him any trial. It is making the legislative power encroach on the judicial with a vengeance, and therefore I would go up to vote for Pusey, Newman, Vaughan Thomas, or any other whom I deem the most unfit man in Oxford, if a Tory ministry had appointed them, and a Whig majority in Convocation were to press for a similar stigma against them on a charge which has never been tried, and

which Convocation is not competent to try. I will add, however, that I agree for the most part with Hampden's views. Hawkins has stood the storm nobly by Hampden's side.

CVIII. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, June 11, 1836.

No man can object more than I do to the quoting Scripture language irreverently or lightly; but I see no impropriety in referring to Scripture examples, whether of sets of men or of individuals. Hophni and Phinehas are recorded as specimens of the worst class of ministers of an established religion. The Judaizers in the New Testament exhibit in the germ all the evils which have since most corrupted the Christian Church. I cannot but think it legitimate and right to refer to these examples, when the same evils are flaming in the face of day before our eyes. I do not say or think that

and

are

bad men. I do not think that John Gerson was a bad man; yet he was a principal party in the foul treachery and murder committed against John Huss at the Council of Constance.

CIX. TO THE REV. J. HEARN.

(In congratulation on his appointment to a living.)

[ocr errors]

Rugby, April 12, 1836.

I covet rest neither for my friends nor yet for myself, so long as we are able to work; but, when age or weakness comes on, and hard labour becomes an unendurable burthen, then the necessity of work is deeply painful, and it seems to me to imply an evil state of society wherever such a necessity generally exists. One's age should be tranquil as one's childhood should be playful: hard work, at either extremity of human existence, seems to me out of place; the morning and the evening should

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

be alike cool and peaceful; at midday the sun may burn, and men may labour under it. [After speaking of the Hampden controversy.] It is a curious case, and is completely, to my mind, a repetition of the scenes of the Reformation. When Peter Martyr went down as Divinity Professor to Oxford in Edward the Sixth's time, he was received by the Catholics with precisely the same outery with which Hampden has been received by the high Churchmen, and on the same grounds. I think that the Evangelicals have in some instances been led to join in the clamour against him, from their foolish fondness for their particular phraseology, and from their want of ability to recognise the real features of any movement of opinion.

About fifty or sixty years ago, when there was really a leaven of Socinianism in the Church, it showed itself in petitions to be relieved from the Articles, and in the absence of a strongly marked Christian character in the writings of the petitioning party. But Hampden is doing what real Christian reformers have ever done; what the Protestants did with Catholicism, and the Apostles with Judaism. He upholds the Articles as true in substance, he maintains their usefulness, and the truth and importance of their doctrines; but he sees that the time is come when their phraseology requires to be protested against, as having, in fact, obstructed and embarrassed the reception of the very truths which they intend to inculcate. He is engaged in that same battle against technical theological language, which you and I have, I believe, an equal dislike to; while he would join us thoroughly in condemning the errors against which the Articles were directed, and holds exactly the language and sentiments which Cranmer and Ridley, I believe, would hold if they were alive now.

CX. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Rugby, April 27, 1836.

Objections to my statement do not bring us

If you say othershall also stand on I think the Roman

to the point; my view stands on four legs, and I think meets all the difficulties of the case. wise, I want to see another view that four legs, and those legs good ones. Catholic system has the legs right in number, the system is consistent; but it is based on one or two great falsehoods. The English High Church system, I think both false and inconsistent. But I turn more gladly

to a point in which I think we heartily agree. I want to petition against the Jew Bill, but I believe I must petition alone; for you would not sign my preamble, nor would many others who will petition doubtless against the measure. I want to take my stand on my favourite principle, that the world is made up of Christians and non-Christians; with all the former we should be one, with none of the latter. I would thank the Parliament for having done away with distinctions between Christian and Christian; I would pray that distinctions be kept up between Christians and non-Christians. Then I think that the Jews have no claim whatever of political right. If I thought of Roman Catholicism as you do, I would petition for the Repeal of the Union to-morrow, because I think Ireland ought to have its own Church established in it; and, if I thought that Church antichristian, I should object to living in political union with a people belonging to it. But the Jews are strangers in England, and have no more claim to legislate for it, than a lodger has to share with the landlord in the management of his house. If we had brought them here by violence, and then kept them in an inferior condition, they would have just cause to complain; though even then, I think, we might lawfully deal with them on the Liberia systein, and remove them to a land where they might live by themselves independent; for England

« PreviousContinue »