ments which we have not, which there appears no reason to believe, we are as competent judges of the facts as they were. Possibly they knew only the accounts of Regenvolsch and Comenius, and had not noted the totally different accounts to be found in the earlier histories and documents collected and published by Camerarius. As to the recognition obtained of Archbishop Potter and the British Parliament, in the middle of the last century, through the exertions of Zinzendorf the leader of their body; it was obtained on the strength of a collection of papers, most of which, and a list of them all, we have now in print, in the well-known folio volume: than which, according to the accounts of those who carefully examined into the matter, a grosser mass of imposition was never palmed upon the public. The following extract from Rimius' "Animadversions on sundry flagrant untruths advanced by Mr. Zinzendorf,” p. 15, bears upon the point before us.

“A world of arguments and facts having been brought against Mr. Zinzendorf by several authors, to prove from history, from the nature of the thing itself, and from his own and his people's printed confession, that the pretended episcopal succession he boasts of is a mere phantom or, ens rationis; instead of refuting these arguments and facts, we find the following remarkable answer, contrived between him and Mr. Spangenberg.

Mr. Spangenberg's Query.

'How is it with the episcopal succession? Some adversaries say, that it is only an invention of the Brethren.'

Mr. Zinzendorf's answer hereupon.

'This invention, the old Bohemian, Moravian, Polanian and English Bishops should be charged with and not us. For we were not then present; relata referimus.””

In Rimius's "Supplement to the Candid Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Herrnhuters,” (p. xxxi.) we have the following note on the same point.

"Notwithstanding Mr. Zinzendorf has had the assurance by his deputies, to make an honourable parliament believe, that there is a Moravian Brethren Church subsisting at Lissa in Poland, it is notorious that it is a Presbyterian one, and that those Moravians and Bohemians, who escaped the cruelties of the war in 1620, and the following years, incorporated in it. Moreover, a Polish nobleman, a protestant residing in London, whose father in a manner has protected these Calvinists, reports of them, 'that all their ministers are on an equal footing; that the oldest of them, without having respect to the importance of his cure, is always chosen a senior or elder, for the sake of performing ordination; that he is nothing else but primus inter pares, having not the least jurisdiction or authority over the other clergy; and that he never heard there a minister presume to give himself out for a bishop, which besides was inconsistent with the Polish constitution.' But what need have I of foreign testimony, as Mr. Zinzendorf, in the above act of acceptation of the high office conferred on him, speaking of these presbyterians in Poland, himself tells his brethren that they are Calvinists, and that the title of senior (which the oldest of their ministers bears) neither implies, nor can imply, nor is that of bishop. Creutzreich, p. 223. It is to be observed, that this passage

likewise has been left out by him in the abstract of the act of acceptation laid before the Parliament."

Jablonsky and Sitkovius, from whom Zinzendorf claimed to have received consecration, from the former by imposition of hands, from the latter by signing his letters of orders, were seniors of this Polish community. Concerning their claims generally, the conclusion to which one of our bishops, after a careful examination and attempt at verification of their documents, arrived was this, that "the settlement of the Moravians in these kiugdoms, seems to have been surreptitiously obtained." See Bishop Lavington's "Moravians compared and detected," preface, p. xiv: and no wonder when the University of Tubingen, a testimonial from whom, dated 1733, appears in the folio volume, p. 22, among those presented to Parliament, in answer to Bishop Lavington's inquiries, returned him a letter explaining that the testimonial of 1733 had been obtained under false impressions, and that a very contrary act had subsequently been taken by the University, of which Zinzendorf had said nothing. They conclude as follows:

“We cannot in any wise believe that the illustrious Parliament of England hath by its act received into the bosom of the English Church, the Zinzendorfians, but to have solely indulged it a civil toleration like that of the Quakers. May God Almighty preserve the English Church, that most noble Body of the Protestant Church, against this cancer, which spreads by little and little." Dated at Tubingen, 1755.

Among other testimonials, Zinzendorf had produced one from the Dean and Faculty of Divines at Copenhagen: in Rimius's Collection we have the following from that body.

"We have been informed that Count Zinzendorf boasts in Germany that he has been examined in the month of May, 1735, by the theological faculty at Copenhagen, and has obtained testimonials of orthodoxy; and we are asked whether these things are so or not? Wherefore, as such testimonials have never been given, nor any examination set on foot, nor we to our knowledge have ever been petitioned that the same might be undertaken, and whereas Count Stolberg has desired that we might attest this in a public and legal manner: we have thought it to be our duty in no manner to dissimulate, but rather on the faith of a public certificate to own the truth. Copenhagen, April 8, 1747." Thus much may suffice to show the degree of credit that was really due to the allegations of these men at that time; and by consequence the little value to be set upon a recognition obtained by such means.

There is no need to say more upon the subject; all that the writer purposed was to inquire into the facts of the case; and to lay the result of his inquiries before the world. This he has now done. Different persons will perhaps arrive at different conclusions But he does not see how it can be deemed

otherwise than reasonable to consider, that the claims of the Moravians, Herrnhuters, or United Brethren are not so supported, as to entitle them to recognition by the Catholic Church.

CHAPTER X.

On the Principles to be applied in interpreting the Articles of the Church of England.

In determining the rule to be observed in interpreting the Articles of the Church of England, a consideration of the deference and respect so strongly and frequently paid by the promulgators of those Articles to the voice of the Primitive Church, as the secondary test of sound doctrine, would lead to the following conclusion: that "If in any instances, it can be shown that the strict letter of the Articles is necessarily and absolutely condemnatory of any opinion or practices received and approved in those ages of the Church, which the reformers counted 'most pure,' and by those godly fathers, to whose instructions their rules direct us to have recourse,' we are bound, in charity to the reformers, to suppose that this was most unintentional on their parts, and for ourselves must confess, that we are placed in a situation of very perplexing difficulty, from which, whether the best way would be to do violence to their Articles for the integrity of their principles, or to do violence to their principles for the sake of abiding by what one must needs consider a mere oversight or error on their part in framing the Articles, is so nice a point of casuistry, that it may suffice to say, that it does not readily appear, why a man should be blamed who thinks the latter the greater evil of the two." This position I put forward last year, and added the following words: "If there be one thing more clear than another, it is this; that the framers of the Articles of the Church of England never intended to condemn any opinion or practice which had been received and unreproved in the Church of the first seven centuries; and that if in any thing they have seemed to express themselves otherwise, it was most contrary to their intention, and would have been utterly repudiated by them; so that if in any Article such condemnation seems to be expressed, it is to be understood of the abuse, and not of the legitimate use of the thing spoken of." Vindication of the Principles of the Authors of the Tracts for the Times, pp. 17. 31, 32.

Dr. Faussett, in his lecture before the University of Oxford, has set aside this suggestion, as something preposterous, in the following manner :

"As if, forsooth, it were possible for one moment to believe, that scattered opinions, collected indiscriminately from histories, and canons, and homilies, or even from some of the reformers individually, as uttered on unconnected occasions, are more to be depended on, for their deliberate verdict on special points, than the Articles themselves, which passed through every ordeal of cautious adoption and careful revisal, which their collective wisdom could suggest." Lecture, p. 16.

The Archbishop of Dublin, in his Essays on "the Kingdom of Christ," speaking, apparently in allusion to the same, says:

"Some individuals among the reformers have in some places used language which may be understood as implying a more strict obligation to conform to ancient precedents than is acknowledged in the Articles. But the Articles, being deliberately and jointly drawn up for the very purpose of precisely determining what it was designed should be determined respecting the points they treat of; and in order to supply to the Anglican Church their confession of faith on those points, it seems impossible that any man of ingenuous mind can appeal from the Articles, Liturgy, and Rubric, put forth as the authoritative declarations of the Church, to any other writings, whether by the same or by other authors. On the contrary, the very circumstance that opinions going far beyond what the Articles express, or in other respects considerably differing from them did exist, and were well known and current in the days of our reformers, gives even the more force to their deliberate omissions of these, and their distinct declaration of what they do mean to maintain." Kingdom of Christ, pp. 149. 152.

Now, in reply to the allegation, that the Articles are to be looked upon as containing a more deliberate expression of the reformers' opinions, than their declarations on their trials, their homilies, and their canons, I would ask, if the declaration of the individual reformers on their trials, for which they suffered death, are not to be regarded as expressive of their deliberate opinions, what value can we attach to their testimony? or in what light regard their dying for opinions not duly deliberated on? It would be an abuse of language to call death so incurred a martyrdom; it would savour rather of unwarrantable self-destruction. I would ask, further, if the homilies and canons set forth by the reformers collectively, for the instruction and government of the whole Church, are not to be regarded as expressing their deliberate opinion, what becomes of their reputation as ministers of God's word, and rulers of His people?

Once more, in one of these very Articles (35th), these very homilies are recommended and enjoined to be read to the people. Now, I ask, was this Article drawn up with or without due deliberation? If with due deliberation, then what becomes of the exception to the homilies which the Margaret Professor has taken? If without due consideration, what becomes of the appeal to the Articles which both the Professor and the Archbishop have made? It seems to me, that if both these divines had sought to disparage the authority of the reformers, they could not more effectually have done so, than by the course of argument which they have taken. But it seems probable, that neither the Archbishop nor the Professor would have written what they have upon the

subject, had they well considered the synod of 1571', in which, as Dr. Faussett remarks, "the Articles were once more deliberately revised, and formally ratified," and when, for the first time, they were erected into a term of clerical communion, which they have ever since continued to be. In the first canon of this synod we find an injunction to the Bishops to require of every preacher a subscription to the Articles, and a pledge that he is willing to maintain and defend the doctrine contained in them as most agreeable to the truth of the Divine Word. In the third canon we have a requisition, that every minister of the Church, before he enter upon the sacred function, shall subscribe all the Articles of the Christian religion agreed to in the synod; and publicly before the people, whenever the Bishop shall enjoin him, declare his conscientious opinion concerning the said Articles, and the whole doctrine."

"In

In the fourth Canon we have another charge concerning preachers: the first place, they shall take care that they teach nothing to be religiously held and believed by the people, but what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and which the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have gathered out of that same doctrine." Now, if we suppose with Dr. Faussett, that the reformers intended in these Articles to condemn any of the opinions or practices of the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops, or that if any such condemnation could be proved they would have maintained and justified it, we must be brought to these apparently strange conclusions concerning them: viz. 1. that they assumed to themselves a licence, which they forbade the clergy to exercise: 2. that they enjoined in one Canon what they forbade in another: 3. that they set up their Articles above the Holy Scriptures, subjecting doctrine drawn from the latter to a test, from which they exempted that drawn from their own articles. Surely it is at once more reasonable and charitable to believe, that they regarded the Articles as a summary of Scriptural doctrine in accordance with the teaching of the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops; and that if in any respect they happen or appear to be otherwise, that such was quite beyond and contrary to their intention; that they would have been the last persons in the world to justify it; and the first to desire that their words should be taken in that sense, which would bring them most into accordance with the teaching of the said Fathers and Bishops.

But now, though in defence of " the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops," and, as I think also, of the Reformers themselves, I have put forward, and am prepared to defend this principle of interpreting the Articles, should the necessity arise; I beg both the Archbishop of Dublin and Dr. Faussett to observe, that for aught that has appeared as yet, no necessity for the application of this principle exists: and that the former might have spared his insinuation of want of ingenuousness, the latter his more open imputation of dishonest purpose 2, at least until they had discovered some instance in which

1 Archbishop Parker, presided at this synod; and its acts are subscribed, among other great men, by Bishop Jewel, probably the last public act of his life, for he died soon afterwards.

2 "The common object of both these persons (Mr. Newman and myself) is to obtain an emancipation from the well-understood restraints which our Articles