Reason for Speaking
The National Church—a Department of Government
Effect of Movement of 1833 on National Church
Position of Evangelical Party in National Church
Contrast with Position of Opposition Party
Baptism Decision Explained
Implications for Other Doctrines
Catholic Desire—Salvation of Souls1
There are those, my brethren, who may think it strange, and even shocking, that, at this moment, when the liberalism of the age, after many previous attempts, is apparently at length about to get possession of the Church and Universities of the nation, any one like myself, who is a zealous upholder of the dogmatic principle in all its bearings, should be doing what little in him lies to weaken, even indirectly, Institutions which, with whatever shortcomings or errors, are the only political bulwarks of that principle left to us by the changes of the sixteenth century. For to help forward members of the Established Church towards the Catholic Religion, as I propose to do in these Lectures, what is this but, so far, to co-operate with a levelling party, who are the enemies of God, and truth, and virtue? The Institutions in question, it may be said, uphold what is right and what is holy as far as they go, and, moreover, the duty of upholding it; they do not in their genuine workings harm the Church; they do but oppose themselves to sectarianism, free-thinking, infidelity, and lawlessness. They are her natural, though they may be her covert, allies; they are the faithful nurses and conservators of her spirit; they are glad, and proud, as far as they are allowed to do so, to throw her mantle over themselves, and they do her homage by attempting a mimic Catholicism. They have preserved through bad times our old churches, our forms, our rites, our customs, in a measure, our Creed; they are taunted by our enemies for their Catholic or Papistical tendency; and many of those who are submitted to their teaching, look wistfully to us, in their forlorn struggle with those enemies of ours, for encouragement and sympathy. Certainly, reviewing the history of the last three centuries, we cannot deny that those Institutions have uniformly repressed the extravagance, and diluted the virulence, of Protestantism. To the divines, to whom they have given birth, our country is indebted for Apologies in behalf of various of the great doctrines of the faith: to Bull for a defence of the Creed of Nicæa, nay, in a measure, of the true doctrine of justification, which the most accomplished Catholic theologians of this day, as well as of his own, treat with great consideration; to Pearson for a powerful argument in behalf of the Apostolical origin of Episcopacy; to Wall for a proof of the primitive use of Infant Baptism; to Hooker for a vindication of the great principle of religious order and worship; to Butler for a profound investigation into the connection of natural with revealed religion; to Paley and others for a series of elaborate evidences of the divinity of Christianity. It is cruel, it is impolitic, to cast off, if not altogether friends, yet at least those who are not our worst foes; nor can we afford to do so. If they usurp our name, yet they proclaim it in the ears of heretics all about; they have kept much error out of the country, if they have let much in; and if Neo-Platonism, though false, is more honourable than the philosophy of the academy or of the garden, by the same rule, surely, we ought, in comparison with other sects, to give our countenance to the Anglican Church to compassionate her in her hour of peril, “and spare the meek usurper’s hoary head.”
Well, and I do not know what natural inducement there is to urge me to be harsh with her in this her hour: I have only pleasant associations of those many years when I was within her pale; I have no theory to put forward, nor position to maintain; and I am come to a time of life, when men desire to be quiet and at peace;—moreover, I am in a communion which satisfies its members, and draws them into itself, and, by the objects which it presents to faith, and the influences which it exerts over the heart, leads them to forget the external world, and look forward more steadily to the future. No, my dear brethren, there is but one thing that forces me to speak,—and it is my intimate sense that the Catholic Church is the one ark of salvation, and my love for your souls; it is my fear lest you ought to submit yourselves to her, and do not; my fear lest I may perchance be able to persuade you, and not use my talent. It will be a miserable thing for you and for me, if I had been instrumental in bringing you but half-way, if I have cooperated in removing your invincible ignorance, but am able to do no more. It is this keen feeling that my life is wearing away, which overcomes the lassitude which possesses me, and scatters the excuses which I might plausibly urge to myself for not meddling with what I have left for ever, which subdues the recollection of past times, and which makes me do my best, with whatever success, to bring you to land from off your wreck, who have thrown yourselves from it upon the waves, or are clinging to its rigging, or are sitting in heaviness and despair upon its side. For this is the truth: the Establishment, whatever it be in the eyes of men, whatever its temporal greatness and its secular prospects, in the eyes of faith is a mere wreck. We must not indulge our imagination, we must not dream: we must look at things as they are; we must not confound the past with the present, or what is substantive with what is the accident of a period. Ridding our minds of these illusions, we shall see that the Established Church has no claims whatever on us, whether in memory or in hope; that they only have claims upon our commiseration and our charity whom she holds in bondage, separated from that faith and that Church in which alone is salvation. If I can do aught towards breaking their chains, and bringing them into the Truth, it will be an act of love towards their souls, and of piety towards God.