A COMPLETE

VIEW OF PUSEYISM.

CHAPTER I.

THE ORIGIN OF PUSEYISM, CAUSES OF ITS SUCCESS, WITH SOME NECESSARY CAUTIONS.

IN the year 1833, a spirit of liberality having been evinced by government towards Dissenters and Catholics, a part at least of the Established Church of England began to take alarm, imagining that encroachments were made upon it by the civil power. This alarm was taken particularly by the Oxford clergy; who even feared that, at length, "the Apostolical Church would be for→ saken, degraded, nay trampled on and despoiled by the state and people of England." And since it appeared to have been much in accordance with public opinion, such state of things was considered by them as nothing less than "National Apostasy." We have before us at this moment, a sermon preached by the Rev. John Keble, M.A., a fellow of Oriel College, in the Univer sity of Oxford, preached in St. Mary's, before His Majesty's Judge of Assize, on Sunday, July 14, 1833,

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with this as its title, and containing in the sermon the words before quoted. As in the time of Queen Anne, it was judged requisite therefore again to have recourse to the doctrines of primitive tradition, apostolical succession, the exclusive right of the clergy to administer the word and sacraments, the apostolic church, and the efficacy of the sacraments. Nor were such doctrines inappropriate to the occasion; for, if men, because they have been ordained by the hand of a bishop, become the only true successors of the apostles; and as the only true successors of the apostles have alone the right of preaching the word and administering the sacraments; of course, it behoves us all to sit under their ministrations: and if they, by ministering the sacraments, can minister salvation and grace to our souls, then, what men so worthy of being regarded as our spiritual guides, and whose official regards and attentions so important for us to secure? Dissenting teachers of every name are then, of course, to be repudiated, as intruders into the sacred office, and their ministrations will be treated as invalid. To propagate such opinions, therefore, was the object of that class of the clergy, now called "Puseyites," from Dr. Pusey; with whom are to be attached the names of Newman, Keble, Palmer, Cary, &c. the authors of those tracts which for many years have been put into circulation from Oxford. These sentiments, with others bordering upon Popery, have been industriously propagated; and have obtained such a hold on the public mind, as to excite alarm in the breasts of the friends of evangelic truth, not only among Dissenters, but among a considerable portion of

the Established Church itself: and, as we shall hereafter see, not without reason.

We said just now, that these dogmas of " apostolical succession, &c." were broached "in the time of Queen Anne," for much as they may appear to some as novelties, they are not really so; for at the beginning of the eighteenth century they were maintained with great assiduity by Hicks, and Dodwell, and Brett, apparently too with the same views as now, to secure the Church of England against its supposed danger. And, as it may throw light upon our subject, and be gratifying to some of our readers, we will extract Burnet's account of this affair. "There appeared at this time an inclination in many of the clergy to a nearer approach towards the church of Rome; Hicks, an ill-tempered man, who was now at the head of the Jacobite party, had in several books promoted a notion, that there was a proper sacrifice made in the Eucharist, and had on many occasions studied to lessen our aversion to Popery. The supremacy of the Crown in ecclesiastical matters, and the method in which the Reformation was carried, was openly condemned. One Brett had preached a sermon, in several of the pulpits of London, which he afterwards printed, in which he pressed the necessity of priestly absolution, in a strain beyond what was pretended to even in the church of Rome: he said, no repentance could serve without it, and affirmed that the priest was vested with the same power of pardoning that our Saviour himself had. A motion was made in the lower house of convocation to censure this; but it was so ill-supported, that it was let fall. Another conceit was taken up, of the

invalidity of lay-baptism, on which several books have been writ. Nor was the dispute a trifling one, since by this notion, the teachers among Dissenters passing for laymen, this went to re-baptizing them and their congregations. Dodwell gave the rise to this conceit; he was a very learned man, and led a strict life; he seemed to hunt after paradoxes in all his writings, and broached not a few; he thought none could be saved, but those who, by the sacraments, had a federal right to it; and that these were the seals of the covenant: so that he left all who died without the sacraments to the uncovenanted mercies of God. And to this he added,

that none had a right to give the sacraments, but those who were commissioned to it, and those were the apostles, and after them bishops and priests ordained by them. It followed upon this that sacraments administered by others were of no value. He pursued these notions so far that he asserted that the souls of men were naturally mortal, but that the immortalizing virtue was conveyed by baptism, given by persons episcopally ordained. And yet, after all this, which carried the episcopal function so high, he did not lay the original of that government on any instruction or warrant in Scripture, but thought it was set up in the beginning of the second century, after the apostles were dead. He wrote very doubtfully of the time in which the canon of the New Testament was settled; he thought it was not before the second century, and that an extraordinary inspiration was continued in the churches to that very time to which he ascribed the original of episcoрасу. This strange and precarious system was in

great credit among us; and the necessity of the sacrament, and the invalidity of ecclesiastical functions, when performed by persons who were not episcopally ordained, were entertained by many with great applause. This made the Dissenters pass for no Christians, and put all thoughts of reconciling them to us far out of view : and several little books were spread about the nation to prove the necessity of re-baptizing them, and that they were in a state of damnation till that was done. But few were by these arguments prevailed upon to be rebaptized. This struck even at the baptism by midwives in the church of Rome; which was practised and connived at here in England, till it was objected (to) in the conference held at Hampton Court, soon after King James the First's accession to the crown, and baptism was not till then limited to persons in orders. Nothing of this kind was so much as mentioned in the year 1660, when a great part of the nation had been baptized by Dissenters; but it was now promoted with much heat.”1 Who can read this extract without recognising in it the history of our own times?

But the public, in general, have considered these doctrines as novel, particularly as being mixed up with those Roman Catholic tenets which the Protestant church has so long impugned. This apparent novelty, and the circumstance of such tenets originating with men of literature and science, with men matured in our halls of religion and learning, have caused them to attract a more than ordinary degree of attention. And, while the pulpit and the press, our fountains of Bp. Burnet's History of his Own Time, vol. ii. 603, 604.

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