which history affirms, and which required nothing more than simple statement to be conceded. It will be seen that we have gone even a step farther; and have presented it to our Readers, ominously triumphant in the great Council of the nation, during the reign of the martyred Charles, while among the Clergy devoted to the Established Church, all debate on these subjects was so effectually suppressed, that the controversy was buried in silence.(s) But, while we concur with the Author of the Inquiry, in this statement of the private sentiments of the Divines of our Church of that day, we distinctly repeat, that our liberty is not in the slighest degree compromised by their sentiments.

How far we have redeemed our pledge of assigning the predominance of this doctrine upon abundant evidence to the oracular authority of Calvin, we leave to the candid Reader to decide. If he coincide in this opinion with us, he will say whether we are not fully justified in making the deduction which we required, from the influence to which the names of the Divines of that day might be entitled, had they given the credit of an unbiassed authority to this "Genevan form of doctrine." But while we are deprecating the influence of opinions, adopted under circumstances unpropitious to free inquiry, let us, at the same time, offer a tribute of just applause to the genuine legislatorial spirit of those men, who, so far from following the example of one of the Universities, in binding down the Clergy to an unequivocal subscription to this doctrine, continued to leave to it a latitude of interpretation suitable to the imperfection of human knowledge, and indulgent to the tenderness of scrupulous consciences.

(s) The happy and long-continued effects of the Royal Interposition will be noticed in the next Chapter.

CHAPTER IV,

The Inquiry, in asserting that the United Church of England and Ireland demands from her Clergy and Laity "an unfeigned belief of her doctrines, and enjoins it "as the only way of salvation," ascribes to this Reformed Church pretensions not more injurious to her character, which has been distinguished for moderation, than repugnant. to the principles by which she vindicated her own dissent from the erroneous determinations of Councils.

THE consequences derivable from principles have, not unfrequently, been made the test of the principles themselves. The justice of this mode of argumentation is exposed to suspicion: when consequences are drawn by an opponent, they may not be fair, they are possibly uncharitable. Had we therefore affirmed, as the result of the positions of the Inquiry, that by the Fifth Canon all the members of our Church must be concluded to an unfeigned belief, not only of Articles of Faith, but of Articles of Doctrine; and that the conscientious assent expressed by subscription to the propositions contained in the Articles of our Church, by which she guarantees the unanimity of the Clergy, and

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"the avoiding of diversities of opinions touching true Religion," must be construed into the unfeigned belief of them all equally. Had we gone farther; had we first constituted a partial construction of an Article to be the object of that unfeigned belief; and then denounced any deviation from that construction to be the violation of that highest possible species of assent, either implied by the sanction of the Canon, or expressed by subscription to the Articles: had we, enlarging upon the practical consequences of withholding that unfeigned belief,' implicated in charges which involve the deepest morál turpitude, a body of men called to the exercise of the most sublime duties, and whose efficiency depends upon the unspotted purity of their conduct: had we upbraided the Candidates for Orders who declined that construction, with equivocation, subterfuge, or falsehood, in connexion with the most sacred rites of religion, and the most solemn appeals to Heaven: had we inculpated the Clergy who continued to decline it, in the profane violation of the most solemn guarantees of their fidelity; in the most treacherous abuse of the most sacred trust which can be confided to a human being; in the unprincipled wresting of the authority with which they were invested, to purposes the very opposite to those for which they were conferred: had we presented them decrying the truths which the Church commissioned them to enforce, and inculcating the errors which she renounced, because they were corruptions of Christianity, and incompatible with salvation: had we ascended to her Prelates, the execu tive Ministers of her enactments, and, infixing upon them, for a similar offence, the guilt of ruined souls, exposed them to the hottest fury of the divine vengeance:(a) had WE insisted that these were

(a) See the concluding pages of the first Chapter of this Apology.

the awful charges which necessarily resulted from the positions maintained by the Inquiry:-had WE resorted to this method of exposing the character of the positions, by annexing to them this hideous train of practical consequences; what might be asserted, but that the absence of argument was to be supplied by obloquy; that a malignant catalogue of virulent accusations, never once contemplated by a Christian writer, was to be substituted for a confutation; that public disgust was to be excited, and the passions to be enlisted in our cause, to which we trusted for a victory, not to be obtained by the force of truth. These hideous consequences have been drawn, but not by an opponent; they emanate from the Inquiry itself; and we must say, that it is not a little surprising that they did not startle the Author, and awake him to a more careful examination of the premisses with which they are connected. He would have perceived that in confounding the different degrees of assent, which should be proportioned to the importance of the subject of each Article, the evidence on which it rests, and the clearness of its enunciation, with the highest term by which an internal persuasion of the unshaken certainty of the most clearly revealed divine truth is intimated, he had given to precipitation what was due to calmness; and had injuriously represented our Church as upholding in practice an infallibility, which she expressly reprobates in every human assembly.(b) The desire of truth, and the anxiety which we feel for vindicating our Church from the imputation of want of modesty and moderation, are our motives for entering into the disquisition which the following sheets will contain. We can have no partial interest in opening the terms of admission prescribed by our

(b) Article xxi.

Church, or enlarging the latitude permitted by the Articles; for we feel, be the presumption well or ill founded, that we have demonstrated those sentiments of the Inquiry, which we combated, not to be the private sentiments of the framers of our Articles and Liturgy; not to be the sentiments of the public monuments of our Church; and, with this feeling, we can have no fear for ourselves. To our apprehension, we are pleading against the rigorous exclusion of the opinions of the Author of the Inquiry, when we maintain this moderation; and we may therefore assume, without presumption, that we shall enter upon the investigation with an unprejudiced mind.

To the consequences stated above, we have had already frequent occasion to advert: they, with their premisses, are at present the formal object of discussion; and we must therefore be excused if we bring them again into notice.

The consequences drawn by the Inquiry are, "That the Church requires from all her Members the unfeigned belief of these doctrines, as necessary to salvation," (c) from the Laity, as well as from the Clergy;-all are included.-From the Laity; for the Layman who withholds it, in his attendance on public worship, exposes himself to the guilt of avowing before God, what he does not believe; and if the Church to which he professes to belong be not in a most dangerous error, he is, for he rejects as false, what she teaches as the truth of God, and the only way of salvation."(d) -From the Clergy; for "they cannot withhold this belief, and be free from the weighty charges of violating promises which they most solemnly made; of denouncing as error what the Church commissioned them to preach as truth; and finally,