PUSEYISM EXAMINED.

GENEVA AND OXFORD

"Two systems of doctrine are now, and probably for the last time, in conflict-the Catholic and Genevan." Dr. Pusey's Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

GENTLEMEN:

I am in the practice, at the opening of the course of lectures in our School, to call your attention to some subject peculiarly appropriate to the wants and the circumstances of the times. Several such subjects now present themselves to our consideration.

And first of all, there is one which is appropriate to every year and to every day, it is that which concerns the very nature of this school. It has none of those temporal sources of prosperity, of endowment, and of power, which nourish other institutions; it can exist only as a plant of God; it can be nothing excepting just as the Spirit of God-like the sap-diffuses itself, without cessation, through the principal branches, and through even the least of its twigs; adorning the whole tree with leaves, with flowers, and with fruits. Gentlemen, Professors, and Students, we are those twigs and branches. Oh! that we may not be barren and withered branches!

There is another subject which begins greatly to occupy the most distinguished minds; it is the question whether the Church ought to depend upon the civil government, or ought to have a government of its own, having no dependence, in the last resort, but upon Christ and his Word. Without entering here into this important subject, I would indicate two opposite movements, which are at this moment simultaneously taking place under our eyes in the world; the one in theory, the other in practice. On the one hand, an admirable work, the production of one of the most profound thinkers of our age, Mr. Vinet,* leads some reflecting minds to acknowledge the independence of the Church; and, on the other, many people are uniting themselves with new zeal around the institutions of the government; so that there are all around us convictions and movements which seem to carry away the people of our day by contrary currents. It is thus that a student of Geneva has just written to us, that the refusal to grant to him the exemption from military duty which the law stipulates in favor of students in Theology, will oblige him to quit our school. * Essai sur la Manifestation des Convictions Religieuses-Paris, 1842.

We will always respect authority, but we cannot refrain from remarking that if, as all parties maintain, there has been a radical revolution in Geneva this year, that revolution has not, assuredly, tended to establish among us that equality and that religious liberty, without which all other liberty is but a useless and dangerous plaything. However, it is in France above all that this movement is taking place. A French student writes to us, with regrets which have touched us, that he has united himself again to the Established Church. When young men, after, having pursued in our Preparatory School those first studies which present so many difficulties, desire to secure to themselves, by certain measures, á future more easy; or even to abandon our Institution for the purpose of placing themselves in one sustained by government, from which Unitarian and Rationalist doctrines have been banished, we shall be happy to think that we have been able to prepare them in part, with the aid of God our Saviour, for the work of the ministry, and we shall follow them in their career with the same affection, and we hope, with the same prayers. But we ourselves, Gentlemen, will make no advances to the political governments; we believe that our sole resource is with the Government from above, and knowing the faithfulness of Christ towards those who seek only His glory, assured that there is a place for whomsoever He calls to preach His Gospel, we will ask of Him the confidence that we, teachers and pupils, ought to have in His love, and to make us all continue to walk by faith and not by sight.

The circumstances even of the Church in our country might also occupy our attention. Alas! we have played this year the part of Cassandra. In vain have we presented, as well as we could, the correct principles of Ecclesiastical Government; in vain, in particular, have we shown that the elders of the Church ought to be chosen by the people of the parishes assembled in their places of worship, with their pastors, after having invoked the name of God, and not by municipal councils, over which magistrates preside; our words for a moment heard, have in the end been in vain. We have seen among us, a very strange spectacle; we have seen ecclesiastics, men in other respects truly enlightened, and possessing undoubted talent, appear to fear their parishes, and employ their powerful influence to cause the rulers of the Church to be elected, not by the Church, but by the magistrates charged to watch over the maintenance of the roads and public edifices. And now that this election has been made, what do people say surprising thing! Exclamations of astonishment and grief are heard, that the political bodies to which some have wished at all price to entrust the ecclesiastical elections, have made those elections political; the fall of the Church is predicted, men are now occupied with those who are destined infallibly to share the spoils, and nothing can equal the zeal which has been employed to obtain this change, unless it be the grief which has been manifested when, as we predicted, its inevitable results have been discovered. Behold, Gentlemen, whither ignorance of the

* See the Courier of Geneva of the 24th Sept., 1842.

first principles of ecclesiastical government, on the part of those who administer the Church, whatever may be, in other respects, their illumination, their morality, their patriotism, inevitably conducts.

If we look beyond this School, beyond this city, into the religious world in general, there are, Gentlemen, other subjects which present themselves. It is thus that we see pious men, seduced, without doubt, by many truths mixed up with strange errors, receive a system come from a city in England,* according to which there is no more Church, although Jesus has promised (Matt. xvi.) that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it;" and that there ought to be no more pastors and teachers, although revelation declares to us that Christ himself has established "pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." (Ephes. iv. 11, 12.)

But, Gentlemen, there is another error; it is that which is found in the other extremity of the theological line, that I intend now to indicate to you. In the bosom of a University in England, that of Oxford, has grown up an ecclesiastical system which interests and justly grieves all Christendom. It is now some time since some laymen, whom I love and respect, came to me to ask me to write against that dangerous error. I answered that I had neither the time nor the capacity, nor the documents necessary for the task. But if I am incapable of composing a dissertation, I can at least show in few words how I regard it. It is with me even a duty, since respectable Christians ask it of me; and it is that which has determined me to choose this subject for the present occasion.

Let us comprehend well, Gentlemen, the position which Evangelical Christian Theology occupies.

At the epoch of the Reformation, if I may so speak, three distinct eras had occurred in the history of the Church.

1. That of Evangelical Christianity, which, having its focus in the times of the Apostles, extended its rays throughout the first and second centuries of the Church.

2. That of Ecclesiastical Catholicism, which, commencing its existence in the third century, reigned till the seventh.

3. That of the Papacy, which reigned from the seventh to the fifteenth century.

Such were the three grand eras in the then past history of the Church; let us see what characterized each one of them.

In the first period, the supreme authority was attributed to the revealed Word of God.

In the second, it was, according to some, ascribed to the Church as represented by its bishops.

In the third, to the Pope.

We acknowledge cheerfully that the second of these systems is much superior to the third; but it is inferior to the first!

* Plymouth. (Dr. Merle here refers to those who are called "Plymouth Brethren.")

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In fact, in the first of these systems it is God who rules.

In the second, it is MAN.

In the third, it is, to speak after the Apostle, "THAT WORKING OF SATAN, with all power, and signs and lying wonders" (2 Thess. ii. 9).

The Reformation, in abandoning the Papacy, might have returned to the second of these systems, that is, to Ecclesiastical Catholicism; or to the first, that is, to Evangelical Christianity.

In returning to the second, it would have made half the way. Ecclesiastical Catholicism is, in effect, a middle system-a via media, as one of the Oxford Doctors has termed it, in a sermon which he has just published. On the one hand, it approaches much to Papacy, for it contains, in the germ, all the principles which are there found, On the other, however, it diverges from it, for it rejects the Papacy itself.

The Reformation was not a system of pretended juste milieu. It went the whole way; and rebounding with that force which God gives, it fell, as at one single leap, into the Evangelical Christianity of the Apostles.

But there is now, Gentlemen, a numerous and powerful party in England, supported even by some Bishops (whose Charges have filled us with astonishment and grief), which would, according to its adversaries, quit the ground of Evangelical Christianity to plant itself upon that of Ecclesiastical Catholicism, with a marked tendency towards the Papacy; or which, according to what it pretends, would faithfully maintain itself on that hierarchical and semi-Romish ground, which is, according to it, the true, native and legitimate foundation of the Church of England. It is this movement which is, from the name of one of its principal chiefs, called Puseyism.

"The task of the true children of the Catholic Church," says the British Critic (one of the Journals which are the organs of the Oxford party), "is to unprotestantize the Church.” "It is necessary," says one of these doctors,* "to reject entirely and to anathematize the principle of Protestantism, as being that of a heresy, with all its form, its sects and its denominations." "It is necessary," says another in his posthumous writings,t" to hate more and more the Reformation and the Reformers."

In separating the Church from the Reformation, this party pretends to wish not to bring back the Papacy, but to retain the church in the juste milieu of Ecclesiastical Catholicism. However, the fact is not to be disguised, that if it were forced to choose between what it considers two evils, it would greatly prefer Rome to the Reformation.

Men highly respectable for their knowledge, their talents, and their moral character, are found among these theologians. And, let us acknowledge it, the fundamental want which seems to have decided this movement is a legitimate one.

There has been felt in England, in the midst of all the waves ↑ Mr. Froude.

*Mr. Palmer.