EARLY YEARS AND LATE REFLECTIONS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. THE opinions respecting some very important matters brought forward in former volumes of my "Early Years and Late Reflections," are pretty generally known; and it is on account of their great importance that I feel it to be due to the public to show, that years of further consideration have served but to strengthen my belief of their correctness. Since the publication of the notorious "Tracts for the Times," Protestants have had to defend themselves from a Church-party which, under the equivocal denomination of 'Anglo-Catholic,' would bring back our reformed church into a state little superior to that of Papal Rome. It therefore becomes, more than ever, the duty of enlightened members of the Church of England to take care that her boasted state of Protestant preeminency be not impaired by the retention of any thing not sanctioned by the Bible in her Canons, her Articles, her Creeds, her Liturgy, or in any of her appointed services. For surely this is a safer course than that which Newman and others have taken, who, because they cannot reconcile their church principles with the exercise of private judgment, insist upon making the authority of the Church paramount to conscience; and as our Church not only permits, but enjoins her members to search the sacred Scriptures, it follows necessarily that every consistent advocate for the so-called Church principles must take refuge in Papal infallibility. "Why," it has been asked, "in spite of enormous doctrinal differences, is Rome the only refuge to which men leaving the Church of England are forced to go ?" Simply the answer is, because, on the principles from which they start, the authority of a priesthood is more essential than the truth of its doctrinal teaching; or, which comes to the same thing, the truth can only be determined under the guidance of its authority. How lamentable is it to find earnest and good men, such as Dr. Hook, struggling with all their might to bring their flocks as nearly as possible under the subjection of such principles! He assumes, in his well known sermon preached at the Chapel Royal, in St. James's Palace, of which the nineteenth edition lies before me, that the Church of England is identical with the pure Church of Christ; that Episcopacy is its essential attribute; and that, having thrown off the adventitious errors of the Church of Rome, it is "The Church." Now supposing the Episcopal form of church government to be of apostolical descent, and as such entitled to our utmost respect, still if no exclusive charter can be shown in its favour; if, on the contrary, the Anglo-Catholic theory has been learnedly and dispassionately considered, and, as many think, irresistibly disproved; if, moreover, church history supplies such abundant and overwhelming evidence of the fragility of the connecting links of the chain of Episcopacy, as deprives it of the internal evidence of exclusive divine appointment, it surely becomes the considerate Christian to make the prominent truths of the Bible, and not the dogmas of a National Church, his polar star. There is certainly not any general wish in this country to disparage the Episcopal Church, but the contrary; nevertheless, like our monarchical form of civil polity, it may not be equally suited to all countries, times, and circumstances. Dr. Hook's sermon is very far from containing a fair and unprejudiced statement of the case; and I am constrained to say, after reading it with great attention, that I cannot think so disparagingly as he does of the Scotch Kirk, and of all Presbyterian Churches. Neither can I consider the Queen as not exercising a sound discretion in conforming occasionally with the service of the Church of Scotland, when residing there. In her Majesty's so doing, there is no departure from the true intent and meaning of the Coronation Oath. What her Majesty promises is, "to maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion, established by the law, and to preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the |