I.

INTRODUCTORY.

WHEN

THE CONTROVERSY WITH ROME.

WHEN I attended the Lectures of the Regius Professor of Divinity, now more than forty years ago, the prescribed division of his year's work was, that in one Term he gave a course of lectures on the Bible; in another, on the Articles; in the third, on the Liturgy. When I succeeded to the Chair myself, I found that, for several years previously, the subject of this Term's lectures, as set down in the University Calendar, had been, not the Articles, but the Roman Catholic Controversy. It is easy to understand how the change took place. It was, of course, impossible in the Lectures of one Term to treat of all the Articles; and, some selection being necessary, it was natural that the Professor, on whom the duty is imposed by statute of giving instruction on the controversies which our Church has to carry on with her adversaries, whether within or without the pale of Christianity, should select for consideration the Articles bearing on the controversy which in this country is most pressing, and in which the members of our Church took the deepest interest-the controversy with Rome. This limitation of my subject being only suggested by precedent, not imposed on me by authority, I was free to disregard it. As I have not done so, I think I ought to begin by telling you my reasons for agreeing with my predecessors in regarding the study of this controversy as profitable employment for the Lectures of this Term.

I readily own, indeed, that I have found, both inside and outside the University, that this controversy does not excite

B

the same interest now that it did even a dozen years ago. In your voluntary Society, in which the members read theological essays on subjects of their own selection, I notice that topics bearing on this controversy are now but rarely chosen ; whereas I can remember when they predominated, almost to the exclusion of other subjects. There are many reasons for this decline of interest.

One effect of Disestablishment, in not merely reviving the synodical action of the Church, but widely extending it, introducing the laity into Church councils, and entrusting to them a share in the determination of most important questions, has been to concentrate the interest of our people on the subjects discussed in such assemblies; and in this way our little disputes with each other have left us no time to think of the far wider differences that separate us from Rome on the one hand, and from various dissenting sects on the other. But besides this cause, special to ourselves, of decline of interest in the Roman Catholic controversy, there are others which have operated in England as well as here.

First, I may mention a reaction against certain extreme anti-Romanist over-statements. It was only to be expected that, at the time of the Reformation, men who had with a violent effort wrenched themselves away from beliefs in which they had been brought up, and who, for the exercise of this freedom of thought, were being persecuted to the death, should think far more of their points of difference from their persecutors than of the points on which they agreed with them. A considerable section of the men who had witnessed the bloody scenes of Queen Mary's reign scarcely thought of their adversaries as worshippers of the same God as themselves. The form in which one of the opponents of Queen Elizabeth's marriage with a French prince put the question as to the lawfulness of marriage with a Roman Catholic was, whether it was lawful for a child of God to wed with a son of the devil. When Fox, the Martyrologist, has to speak of the religious services, not merely of the Roman Catholics of his own day, but of the Church in the days before any reformation had been attempted, he seems to regard them as fit

subjects for ridicule and insult. It would be easy to quote specimens that would grate on the feelings of those of us who have least sympathy with Rome. When Fox has to tell of what he could well remember-the prayers which the Romanists offered up on the occasion of the supposed pregnancy of Queen Mary-he mocks them with the taunt of Elijah, 'Cry up louder, you priests, peradventure your god is asleep.' He does not seem to have reflected that the prayers in question were addressed, not to Baal, but to the same God whom he worshipped himself.

But modern conceptions of the proper attitude of mind of a historian require him to strive to enter impartially into the feelings of all his characters. We can now find apologies even for the magistrates who shed the blood. of the first Christians, and whom their victims regarded in no other light than as the instruments of Satan. We can now recognize that many of them were grave magistrates, simply anxious to do their duty in carrying out the law; some of them humane men, who were sincerely grieved by what they regarded as the unreasonable obstinacy of those who left them no option but to proceed to the last extremities. One of the most harrowing and most authentic tales now extant of Christian heroism and heathen cruelty relates things done with the express sanction of Marcus Aurelius, the man who, of all the heathen of whom we have knowledge, approached nearest to Christian excellence; nay, who surpassed many professors of a better creed in purity of life, in meekness, gentleness, unselfish anxiety at any cost to do his duty. No wonder, then, that we can find apologies, too, for Roman Catholic persecutors, and believe that many a judge who sent a heretic to the stake may have been a conscientious, good man, fulfilling what he regarded as an unpleasant duty, and no more a monster of inhumanity than one of the hanging judges of George the Third's reign, who at one assizes sent scores of criminals to the gallows. If we can judge less harshly of Roman Catholic persecutors, it is still easier to judge mildly of ordinary Roman Catholics. With some of them we may perhaps be personally acquainted,

and may know them to be not only just and honourable in the ordinary affairs of life, but, according to their lights, sincerely pious, living in the devout belief of the cardinal truths of our faith.

The feeling that there are many things in which we agree with Roman Catholics has been helped by the increased circulation among members of the Anglican Church of preReformation, or distinctly Roman Catholic, books of devotion. In England especially, where Roman Catholics are few, and where the controversy with dissent has been the most urgent, members of the Established Church, besides the natural disposition to indulgence towards the less formidable enemy, sympathize the more with those who share with them not only their common Christianity, but also attachment to Episcopacy and to an ancient liturgy. And I must not omit to mention that, with regard to Eucharistic doctrine, a great change has taken place during the last quarter of a century in the feelings of the English clergy. Views are held by men who pass as moderate which, when I was young, a man would be accounted violently extreme for maintaining; while the opinions put forward by men who now rank as extreme would, in days that I can remember, have been considered absolutely outside the limits imposed by our Church's teaching. Hence has naturally sprung an inclination to sympathize with those with whom unity exists on this important subject, to the disregard of differences perhaps in real truth more vital.

In addition to the causes I have mentioned, the struggle with unbelief has benefited the cause of Romanism. In the first place, some of the minds less docile to authority, less inclined to mysticism, who, had they remained among us, would have been ranged strongly on the anti-Romanist side, have been lost to Christianity altogether; and this fact has increased the proportion of sympathizers with Romanism among those who still remain. Again, there are many whose temptations are altogether on the side of scepticism, and who, feeling themselves in danger of being worsted in the cruel conflict with doubt, have recoiled towards Rome, under the idea that there they would be safer. Distressed at

results to which free inquiry seemed to lead them, they have determined to attempt no more to think for themselves, but submit themselves resignedly to the yoke of authority; and where can authority be found which gives more promise of relieving men of the responsibility of self-direction than that of a Church which claims to be infallible? In point of fact, a majority of the perverts which Rome has made in later years have been made through the road of scepticism; and I have known Romish advocates unscrupulously use sceptical arguments, in order that their victims, despairing of finding elsewhere a solution of their doubts, might be so glad tó welcome a Church which offered them certainty, as to be disinclined to make too minute an examination of her power to fulfil her promises.

Once more, the growth of scepticism has produced in another way disinclination to the Roman controversy. There are many nominal members of our Church who adhere to the profession of a creed which was that of their fathers, but who have little concern for religious truth; who are apt to think that a man's religion is his own affair, with which other people have no business to concern themselves; and that whether his belief be true or false does not really much matter. Such persons are apt to regard any attempt to show that Roman teaching is false as a wanton attack on poor, harmless Roman Catholics, and as little different from personal abuse of unoffending people. I fear it will be a long time before men are so philosophic as to understand that a man is not your enemy because he tries to correct errors in your opinions, and that the more important the subject the greater the service he will render you if he makes you change your false opinion for a true one.

I have enumerated causes enough (and more might be added, if I were to speak of the influence of political changes) to explain the undoubted fact, that less interest is generally felt in the Roman Catholic controversy now than was felt twenty or thirty years ago. Yet I have no hesitation in presenting it to you as a subject, in acquiring a knowledge of which your time will be well spent. What use you are