fellowship with us. Our objection is not that they cannot prove their title to the office, but that they do not attempt to prove it, and that they treat it as a thing of no value; while some even venture to pronounce it an usurpation, or an imposture.

The sum, then, of the doctrine upon this, as upon many other controverted points, is this, that where absolute demonstration is not to be had, the very same rule which bids us seek for demonstration where it is to be found, equally bids us make as near an approach to it as can be made in our search after truth. If this be done the call of duty is satisfied. It is not enough to say, "I have left the rule of the Church, because I could not prove that it must be right." Unless you can prove the rule to be wrong which has the prescription of ages in its favour, you are bound to observe it, or you take upon yourself a risk, which no disciple of Christ ought to take,— that of despising those whom He has sent, because it is possible that the universal Church for the first 1500 years may have been in error, in maintaining this form of government.

In all cases, however, when the cause of separation is some difference in fundamental doctrine, or some ordinance of the Church thought to be either not agreeable to Scripture or to right reason, we ought candidly to inquire, whether the alleged objection be really a scruple of conscience, or only a disap

proval of some rite or ceremony, which is not a matter of necessary observance, and which might therefore be changed for the better.

Various objec

tions of this kind may be honestly entertained by communicants with the Church, and are regarded as open to discussion, and possibly to future correction by lawful authority. Our Church lays no claim to infallibility. Neither does it exact from all its members a concurrent sentiment as to what is best, but requires only for the sake of peace and decency an orderly conformity in things where the conscience is not offended by this submission.

With the clergy, however, a different rule is observed. For the sake of the whole body of the Church, and especially as a safeguard against the return of papal corruptions, not only is a declaration of assent from the heart required to be made to the Thirty-nine Articles of religion, in terms which no honest man can evade, but a declaration also of assent to the Book of Common Prayer, and to all that it contains, with a promise that its ritual and its directions shall be observed in the public ministrations. Whoever among us refuses to make good this engagement when required by authority, even in points of secondary importance, offends against order, and is liable to punishment; and he cannot conscientiously continue to enjoy the privileges he has obtained by making that engagement.

There is, however, a material distinction to be made between the one engagement and the other. Any departure from the Articles of religion, or any wilful resistance to the canonical rule of the Church, is an offence for which the law provides a remedy. The offence being proved before a competent tribunal, the offender must either submit or be removed from his office; and the records of Ecclesiastical Courts furnish in general a guide sufficient for the decision of each case as it occurs. But the assent to all doctrines expressed or implied in the formularies of the Church, is an engagement of conscience, equally binding indeed, or even more binding on the individual than submission to the law; but the violation of which is not equally capable of correction, or of proof. There is a latitude or comprehensiveness of meaning in words that denote abstract truths and religious mysteries, which cannot be reduced to an exact definition excluding all possible variation. Let me instance only the disputes respecting predestination, election, and reprobation, which have unhappily distracted the Church ever since the Reformation, and which still remain unsettled. But the same character belongs, as I endeavoured to explain in my recent circular on Confirmation', to almost every term liable, according to the context or according to the kind of argument in which

See Appendix.

it is used, to a more general or a more confined signification. I might specify absolution, inspiration, justification, regeneration, as examples of this kind; and although it is well that these points should be accurately studied, and erroneous opinions reproved, yet to fix one sense in which they must always be understood, whatever be the context, and to make these niceties the object of legal adjudication, after forensic pleading in which the temporal interests of the accused are involved, would, I think, introduce more discord into the Church, and give occasion to more extensive evils, than the permission of some latitude of opinion as to the precise signification of the terms through which religious doctrines can alone be conveyed. The limits of what is essential or non-essential, of what is literal or figurative, of what is technical or substantial, cannot be exactly prescribed, even in the various transactions of life, still less are they capable of being ascertained in the abstruse questions of religion.

As a high authority for the just principle of interpretation in these cases, I would refer to the candid and judicious commentary of Bishop Burnet on our Seventeenth Article'. The soundness of his judgment in that particular instance is now seldom called in question. His principle is equally applicable in many of the disputes concerning parts of our Liturgy, where different shades of opinion are magnified into positive contradictions, and dogmatical rules of interpretation 'See also his general preface to the work, especially p. xiv.

B

are asserted, which are utterly irreconcileable with the nature of language as the medium of human thought.

Nevertheless, though we hesitate to define precisely and peremptorily the sense in which certain doctrinal terms must always be received, yet when the difference of opinion amounts to an absolute denial of the doctrine of the Church, under any legitimate sense, we scruple not to declare that the assent professed is a prevarication which no casuistry can justify. For instance, in the much agitated dispute concerning Infant Baptism-if the objection be that an infant is incapable of spiritual regeneration, because it has no knowledge of what is doing, such an objector is disqualified for the ministration in our Church, and can by no ingenuity reconcile the baptismal form to his own persuasion. He cannot exercise the office, nay, he absolutely precludes himself from it.

Still the Church does not exclude from her communion those who have doubts on this point, but has provided a form of baptism applicable to such cases, charitably declaring at the same time her own judgment, and warning parents against the risk they run in yielding to this scruple. I will dwell no farther then upon this cause of separation, prominent as it is in our part of the country, than to observe, that the proper age for baptism is, according to the doctrine of these dissenters, never to be ascertained. "Years of discretion," is as vague a phrase as can be imagined. It is an arbitrary rule of man's making, imposed