TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
least, an intelligible charge; they appeal to the Articles, and maintain that the Clergy have departed from the doctrine therein contained. They may be right or wrong; but at least they give us the means of judging for ourselves.
C. This surely is beside the point. We were speaking of probabilities. I observed that change of opinion was probable. Probable in itself you can hardly deny, considering the history of the universal Church; not extravagantly improbable, moreover, in spite of articles, as the extensively prevailing opinion to which I alluded, that the clergy have departed from them, sufficiently proves. Now consider the course of religion and politics, domestic and foreign, during the last three centuries, and tell me whether events have not occurred to increase this probability almost to a certainty; the probability, I mean, that the members of the English Church of the present day differ from the principles of the Church of Rome more than our forefathers differed. First, consider the history of the Puritans from first to last. Without pronouncing any opinion on the truth or unsoundness of their principles, were they not evidently further removed from Rome than were our Reformers? Was not their influence all on the side of leading the English Church farther from Rome than our Reformers placed it? Think of the fall of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Reflect upon the separation and extinction of the Nonjurors, of the rise of Methodism, of our political alliances with foreign Protestant communities. Consider especially the history and the school of Hoadley. That man, whom a high authority of the present day does not hesitate to call a Socinian[1], was for near fifty years a bishop in our Church.
L. You tell me to think on these facts. I wish I were versed enough in our ecclesiastical history to do so.
C. But you are as well versed in it as the generality of educated men; as those whose opinions you are now maintaining. And they surely must be well acquainted with our history, and the doctrines taught in the different schools and eras, who scruple not to charge such as me with a declension from the true Anti-popish doctrine of our Church. For what the doctrine of the Church is,
- ↑ "It is true he was a Bishop, though a Socinian."— Bp. Blomfield's Letter to C. Butler, Esq. 1825.
