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tic of a particular state of cultivation, which all people pass through at a certain stage in their progress. If I could do it well, I would give all the Legends at once in verse, in the style and measure of Chapman's Homer; and that would be the best and liveliest way of giving them, and liable to no possible charge of parodying the Bible. The next best way is that which I have tried and failed in executing; but I will try again; and if it is not too much trouble, I will ask you to look at the new attempt. I feel sure, and I really have thought a great deal upon this point,-that to give the story of the white sow, of the wolf suckling the twins, of Romulus being carried up to heaven, &c., in my own language, would be either merely flat and absurd, or else would contain so palpable an irony as to destroy the whole effect which one would wish to create by telling the stories at all.

For the other and greater matter of the University, I think it is very probable that I shall have to leave it; but I cannot believe that it is otherwise than a solemn duty to stand by it as long as I can hope to turn it to good. Undoubtedly we must not do evil that good may come; but we may and must bear much that is painful, and associate with those whom we disapprove of, in order to do good. What is the evil of belonging to the University à priori? There is no avowed principle in its foundation which I think wrong; the comprehension of all Christians, you know, I think most right; if more be meant, I think it most wrong; but this is the very point which I am trying to bring to issue; and, though my fears of the issue outweigh my hopes, yet while there is any hope I ought not to give up the battle.

CLXXV. TO REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Fox How, January 23, 1838.

I had intended to answer your kind letter of the 21st of November long before this time; I reserved it for the leisure of Fox How, and I have found, as is often the case, that the less I have to do, the less I do of anything. Now our holidays are fast wearing away, and in little more than a week we shall leave this most delightful home; a home indeed so peaceful and so delightful, that it would not be right to make it one's constant portion; but after the half-years at Rugby, which now begin to be quite as much as I can well bear, the rest seems to be allowed; and I drink it in with

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intense enjoyment, and I hope with something of the thankfulness which it claims.

To London I must go, on account of our meeting of the London University on the 7th, when the question of Scriptural Examination will again be discussed. It was curious to me, knowing my character at Oxford, to hear myself charged, at our last meeting in December, with wishing to engross the University of London for the Established Church, as the other Universities were engrossed by it already. The opposition is very fierce. . . . I could not

examine a Jew in a history of which he would not admit a single important fact, nor could I bear to abstain systematically from calling our Lord by any other name than Jesus, because I must not shock the Jew by implying that He was the Christ. . . . . . . The prevailing evils in the University of Oxford are, to be sure, rather of a different character from those of the University of London.

. . . But you have done much good with the statutes, and I delight to hear about the prospect of the six scholarships.

I have been engaged in tiresome disputes about my History with the booksellers, and they are only just settled. The first volume will now, I suppose, go to press speedily, and I have begun the second. It is delightful work, when I can get on with it without interruption, as is the case here. Besides this, I have done little except reading Newman's book about Romanism and Protestantism, and Bishop Sanderson's work on the Origin of Government, which Pusey refers to in the Preface to his Sermons. The latter work does not raise my opinion of its author; it contains divers startling assertions, admirably suited to the purposes of text quoters, which appear to advocate pure despotism; but then they are so qualified, that at last one finds nothing surprising in them, except the foolishness or the unfairness of putting them out at first in so paradoxical a forma. . . . . . . I think, by what I hear, the cold in Oxford must have been more severe than with us. I have not seen our thermometer lower than 14, at which it stood at 9 A.M. last Saturday, in a northern aspect. But we have had no snow in the valleys till Sunday, and the water in the house has never frozen. . . The hills have been very hard to walk on, all the streams being hard frozen, and the water which generally is steeping all the sur

* Of Mr. Newman's book he says, in another letter, "Parts of it I think very good,"-(the allusion here was especially to Lecture xii., Scripture the record of our Lord's teaching,]-" parts as bad as bad can be."

face of the slopes being now sheets of ice. But the waterfalls and the snowy mountain summits, backed by the clear blue sky, have been most beautiful.

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CLXXVI. TO THE CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

(On the affair of the Archbishop of Cologne.)

Fox How, January 27, 1838.

When I consider the question I am more and more at a loss to guess how it can be satisfactorily solved. How can truth and error be brought into harmony? This marriage question is admirably fitted for showing the absurdity of the favourite distinction between spiritual things and secular. Every voluntary moral action is to a Christian both the one and the other. "Spiritual" and "ritual" differ utterly. Mere ritual observances may be separated from secular actions, but ritual observances are not a Christian's religion. A Christian's religion is co-extensive with his life, and how can he in the general tenor of his life obey two masters, the King and the Pope; how can he at once obey the rightful authorities of the Christian Church and the usurped authority of Priestcraft ? I lament the very expressions in which the actual dispute is described. It is represented as a contest between the Church and the Government, or between the Church and the State; in which case I think that all Christians would be bound to obey the Church, and, if the State's commands are incompatible with such obedience, to submit to martyrdom. But in truth, you are the Church, and the Archbishop of Cologne represents the Church's worst enemy, the spirit of priesthood. It is Korah the Levite, falsely pretending to be a priest, and in that false pretension rebelling against Moses. But this mingled usurpation and rebellion,-this root of anarchy, fraud, and idolatry,-is the very main principle of all popery, whether Romish or Oxonian, whether of the Archbishop of Cologne, or of Pusey and Newman. How either you or we can preserve the Church from it, I do not see; but from the bottom of my heart do I "wish you good luck in the name of the Lord," in this most holy

cause.

Connected with this is Rothe's book, which I have read with great interest. His first position,-that the State and not the Church, (in the common and corrupt sense of the term,) is the perfect form under which Christianity is to be developed,―entirely

agrees with my notions. But his second position,-—that the Church in the corrupt sense, that is, a priestly government, transmitted by a mystical succession from one priest to another, is of apostolical origin, seems to me utterly groundless. It may be, that the Apostles, after the destruction of Jerusalem, if any of them survived it, made the government of the Church more monarchical, and less popular; and that they were very anxious to commit it to persons of their own choice, or chosen by those who had been so. But this does not touch the point. Different states of society require governments more or less despotic, and that the Church should be governed according to the principles of Christianity as set forth by the Apostles, is most certain. The mischief of the false Church notion consists in its substitution of the idea of priesthood for that of government, and as a consequence, deriving the notion of a mystical succession throughout all time, which does not and cannot preserve the spirit of the Apostles' principles, but paralyzes the free action of the Church, and introducing a principle incompatible with all sound notions of law and government, at one time crushes the Church with its tyranny, and at another distracts it with its anarchy. I am convinced that the whole mischief of the great Antichristian apostacy has for its root the tenet of "a priestly government transmitted by a mystical succession from the Apostles."

CLXXVII. *TO A. H. CLOUGH, ESQ.

Fox How, January 29, 1838.

I hope to see you before another week is over; still as in my short visits to Oxford I see everybody in some hurry, I wished to send these few lines by Hill to thank you for a very kind letter which I received from you in November, and which you might perhaps think I had altogether forgotten. I was very much obliged to you for it, and pray believe that, whenever you can write to me, your letters will give me the greatest interest and pleasure. I delight in your enjoyment of Oxford, and in what you say of the union amongst our Rugby men there. But I cannot think that you are yet thoroughly acquainted with the country about Oxford, as you prefer the Rugby fields to it. Not to mention Bagley Wood, do you know the little valleys that debouche on the Valley of the Thames behind the Hinkseys; do you know Horspath, nestling under Shotover; or Elsfield, on its green slope, or all the variety of Cumnor Hill; or the

wider skirmishing ground by Beckley, Stanton St. John's, and Foresthill, which we used to expatiate over on whole holidays?

As for the school, Tickell's success was most welcome and most beneficial; the railway and the multitude of coaches will I suppose bring with them their anxieties; but it is of no use to anticipate them beforehand. I trust with God's blessing we shall continue to go on doing some good, restraining some evil, but we shall ever do too little of the former, and leave too much of the latter in vigour, to allow of any feeling of self-satisfaction. But I have an unmixed pleasure in thinking of many of those who have been and who are still with us: and this pleasure more than makes up for many cares. I was very glad to have Burbidge here, and delighted to see how he enjoyed the country. You may be sure that we shall be very glad to have you and him in our neighbourhood in the summer, if his castle is ever built. I have been at work steadily, and have begun the second volume of my History: the first will I suppose now go to press without any farther delays. We are all well, and unite in kindest regards to you.

CLXXVIII.

TO SIR T. S. PASLEY, BART.

Rugby, February 16, 1838.

You may perhaps have seen in the papers an account of our meeting at the London University; but at any rate I will keep my promise, and give you my own report of it. Every single member of the Senate except myself was convinced of the necessity, according to the Charter, of giving the Jews Degrees; all were therefore inclined to make an exemption in their favour as to the New Testament Examination, and thus to make that Examination not in all cases indispensable. Most were disposed to make it altogether voluntary, and that was the course which was at last adopted. The Examination is not to be now restricted to any one part of the New Testament, and it is to be followed by a certificate of a man's having simply passed it, and a class paper for those who are distinguished in it. I think that it will be passed so generally, as to mark very much those who do not pass it; and in this way it will do good. It also saves the University from the reproach of neglecting Christianity altogether. But it does not maintain the principle which I wished; and as on the one hand I think it neither fair nor of any use to go on agitating the question with every one against

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