TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
system of ours. I will not stop to quarrel with you for calling it ours, as if it were not rather the Church's; but explain to me in what you consider it to consist.
L. The following are some of its doctrines: that the Church has an existence independent of the State; that the State may not religiously interfere with its internal concerns; that none may engage in ministerial works except such as are episcopally ordained; that the consecration of the Eucharist is especially entrusted to Bishops and Priests. Where do you find these doctrines in the formularies of the Church, so prominently set forth, as to sanction you in urging them at all, or at least so strongly as you are used to urge them?
C. As to urging them at all, we might be free to urge them even though not mentioned in the Articles; unless indeed the Articles are our rule of faith. Were the Church first set up at the Reformation, then indeed it might be right so to exalt its Articles as to forbid to teach "whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby." I cannot consent, I am sure the Reformers did not wish me, to deprive myself of the Church's dowry, the doctrines which the Apostles spoke in Scripture, and impressed upon the early Church. I receive the Church as a messenger from Christ, rich in treasures old and new, rich with the accumulated wealth of ages.
L. Accumulated?
C. As you will yourself allow. Our articles are one portion of that accumulation. Age after age, fresh battles have been fought with heresy, fresh monuments of truth set up. As I will not consent to be deprived of the records of the Reformation, so neither will I part with those of former times. I look upon our Articles as in one sense an addition to the Creeds; and at the same time the Romanists added their Tridentine articles. Theirs I consider unchristian; ours as true.
L. The Articles have surely an especial claim upon you; you have subscribed these, and are therefore more bound to them, than other truths, whatever or wherever they be.
C. There is a popular confusion on this subject. Our Articles are not a body of divinity, but in great measure only protests against certain errors of a certain period of the Church. Now I will preach the whole counsel of God, whether set down in the
