genius and present circumstances, without reflecting upon this preferment as a very particular blessing of the Divine Providence towards me. And, accordingly, I cannot but in all sincerity profess, that, as it has pleased God, so, in getting me this, your grace has been a greater benefactor to me than if you can procure me the best deanery in England. I have everything I want; and, what I value above all things, leisure to study. And, if God give me life and health, I hope your grace shall see the fruits of your benefaction. I daily remember your grace in my prayers, and remain, with all possible gratitude, your grace's most obliged and most obedient faithful servant, 'Jo. MILL.' 'Oron, Nov. 14, 1704.''* "In Feb. 1704-5, Dr. Bull was made acquainted with her majesty's gracious intentions of conferring upon him the bishopric of St. David's, the news whereof he received with great surprise, and with no less concern. And considering the great weight of that high station in the church, and how much work is required to a conscientious discharge of that administration, and withal, the ill state of health, under which he then laboured, and the evening of life to which he was now arrived, being in the 71st year of his age, I do not wonder that he did at first decline engaging in that important office. But though Dr. Bull was very unwilling, for the reasons I have already mentioned, to enter into the episcopal college; yet being importuned by his friends, who understood the distressed state and condition of his family; and what most prevailed, being earnestly solicited by several of the governors of the church, which he looked upon as the call of Providence, he was at last prevailed upon to accept of that elevated station which he never sought. • ... "But, however difficult the employment might prove to Dr. Bull, in the decline of his strength and vigour, it certainly concerned the honour of the nation, not to suffer a person to die in an obscure retirement, who upon the account of his learned performances, had shined with so much lustre in a neighbouring nation, where he had received the united thanks of her bishops, for the great service he had done to the cause of Christianity, Accordingly he was consecrated Bishop of St. David's, in Lambeth Chapel, the 29th of April, 1705; upon which occasion there was a very good sermon preached by the rector of St. Peter's Cornhill, Dr. Waugh. . . . . This worthy clergyman succeeded Bishop Beveridge in the care of that parish;† and, among his other excellences, it may be mentioned with honour, that he treadeth in the steps of that pious prelate in the government of it; and that congregation continueth still distinguished, as exemplary for devotion in the city of London."+ "The queen had, a little before this, promoted Dr. Beveridge to the see of St. Asaph, who had shewed himself very learned in ecclesiastical knowledge. They were both [Bull and Beveridge] pious and devout men, but were now declining; both of them being old, and not like to hold out long. Soon after this, the see of Lincoln became vacant by that bishop's death. Dr. Wake was, after some time, promoted to it; a man eminently learned, an excellent writer, a good preacher, and, which is above all, a man of an exemplary life."§ Ibid. vol. ii. [In the gift of the crown by Beveridge's appointment to a bishopric.] § Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 78. (ed. 1818.) VOL. XVII.-Jun. 1840. E CORRESPONDENCE. The Editor begs to remind his readers that he is not responsible for the opinions ON THE NONJURING BISHOPS. SIR,--In the last Number of "Fraser's Magazine" appears an article entitled "The Oxford Nonjurors," which the author at least considers to demand an answer. His estimate of it may be gathered from some of his concluding words :-" In this dilemma we now leave them," (the Oxford divines;) "let them extricate themselves if they are able. No; they cannot extricate themselves. It will require more jesuitism and sophistry than even they possess to extricate them. We have unmasked their pretences, and the effects will not soon be forgotten." This quotation will prepare those who have not read the article for the announcement that it is a very angry one. Indeed, there is little conceivable or inconceivable folly and wickedness of which the author does not imagine his Oxford nonjurors to be capable. And what is his charge against them? It is even this, that in some of their catena patrum they have designated Drs. Hickes and Collier as bishops, which office they held and exercised among that division of the nonjurors which continued in separation from the great body of the Anglican church. Start not at the apparent smallness of the offence. The author has a train of dire consequences which he considers necessarily to follow from such ascription of dignity to those learned and pious doctors. For he argues, that if they were other than schismatic, then that imputation must belong to the established bishops, as there cannot be two Catholic churches in the same place; that, consequently, the ordinations of these latter were null and void, and that, the nonjuring succession having ceased, there is no legitimate ministry at present in the English church. Let me first set this writer's mind at ease about myself. I would not, I confess, have bestowed the titles of bishop and confessor on Hickes and Collier, because their conduct, viewed as an historical question, seems to me one of great difficulty; and I have a strong objection to startling the public by usages to which they are not accustomed, unless I am confident of the strict propriety of such usages. But this is beside our main business. I proceed to shew that the Oxford catena patrum do not, by their practice, leave the existing church in the gloomy condition our author imagines. Throughout his essay, which he must excuse my telling is written in a style of pretension in no way justified by the performance, he overlooks the important distinction between mission and orders. Both are requisite to the due exercise, but not both to the very existence, of the ministerial office. Thus, if I, as a duly ordained priest, officiate in my own parish, and in strict subordination to my diocesan, my acts are guaranteed both by orders and mission. If I intrude into the vineyard of another, I have orders, but not mission-i. e., I am capable of performing ministerial acts, but have no right to perform them then and there. The same principle applies to a bishop administering ordination. If he ordain in the diocese of another, without that other's authority, he acts schismatically, and the ordination is uncanonical. Similarly, a bishop consecrated to a see canonically filled (which is not precisely the case of Hickes or Collier) is unlawfully consecrated. But it will not follow that such ordinations and consecrations are mere nullities. To make this out, I apprehend that it would be requisite to prove that the persons who performed them were not bishops. No doubt the language of some of the canons quoted in Fraser's seems at first sight to pronounce uncanonical and schismatical ordinations, performed even by a true bishop, to be altogether invalid. But this must be understood in point of church law, not in the nature of the thing; and this, 1st, because the canons could only regulate, not constitute ordination, which derives its essence from the Saviour's ordinance. But they might for the good of the church for ever debar certain persons from the exercise of an office which had been impressed upon them in true form, in form so true as only to stand in need of the church's approbation to be quickened and made effective; 2ndly, because the church made exceptions as she saw fit. No cases come more clearly under the canons quoted than those of the Novatians and Donatists. And yet their clergy on coming over to the Catholic church were received as such without any fresh ordination. Again, the patriarchate of Antioch was kept in a state of melancholy schism by the rival pretensions of the Eustathians and Meletians, which terminated, through the instrumentality of St. Chrysostom, in the occupation of Flavian, notwithstanding that his orders came to him by the less canonical succession of the two. I will venture to say that our case in respect of succession is far more endangered by our author's principles than by the practice on which he is so severe; for, while there is no reason to think that the line of bishops has been broken, we know that the canons have been continually violated; and probably were so by the consecration of Tillotson and his associates. It thus appears that an uncanonically ordained bishop is not therefore no bishop, and that the church has never considered herself so strictly bound by her own canons as by the Saviour's ordinance. She has not scrupled in case of need to violate the one, so long as the essentials of the other were carefully preserved. She has often received men as bishops and priests who were made so in schism, but were, notwithstanding, made so in true descent from the apostles. From this, two things will follow, fatal to our author's unconcealed exultation: 1st. That one who believes Hickes and his coadjutors to have acted schismatically may, notwithstanding, quite innocently call the former a bishop. 2ndly. That another, considering Tillotson and his associates to have been the schismatics, or thinking the question between the two parties to be one of great difficulty, may yet, now that the one succession has died off, and the other remains, have no scruple in adher ing to the latter, being fully persuaded of its essential validity, whatever canonical shade may rest on a portion of its history. Under which head the Oxford writers may class themselves in regard to the historical question is a matter of little moment, so long as they do adhere in a spirit of obedience and faith to the present church of England, a duty which I believe they perform themselves not less fully than they preach it to others. I believe this myself, and what is of much more consequence, their ecclesiastical superiors believe it too. Amid all his wrath at their conduct in regard to Hickes, our author has a tolerable stock to expend on another enormity,-a deed, according to him, of foul dishonour and deceit, though to what purpose directed I am unable to discover. They have styled the bishops of Edinburgh, and of Ross, and Argyle, as the "Lord" bishops of their respective dioceses; and their opponent imagines (with abundance of company in his error I allow) that our bishops take the title of "Lord" only in virtue of their temporal baronies, which source of honour the Scottish bishops are plainly without. He will find, however, that the title of AEσTOTηs, Dominus, or Lord, has appertained to the office of bishop from the earliest times; and that, accordingly, it is given as readily to our colonial prelates who have no baronies, as to our native ones who have. With three pieces of advice, I will bid farewell to this writer of an article of which "the effects will not soon be forgotten." One is, that while literature is sufficiently dishonoured by the modern spirit of personality and gossip, theology altogether revolts from the contact. Among the objects of his ire and suspicion (for he seems full of suspicions) is an article in a recent number of the "Quarterly Review" on Oxford Theology. Here, too, he has found the obnoxious phrase "Bishop Hickes," and therefore, in true newspaper spirit, he infers that it proceeds from one of the Oxford divines, that they have taken to reviewing themselves, &c. What does it signify who wrote it, to a mind really in search of truth? That it is the work of one who does not in all things coincide with the leaders of what is called the Oxford Tract party, is evident from its contents; and rumour assigns it to one of the most valuable contributors to the "Quarterly," who has never, so far as I know, been more mixed up with the writers of the Tracts than any one else who gives them his general approbation. 2ndly. A man should be cautious of thinking that he has made a discovery. Had our author, when the question "which were the schismatics?" dawned upon his mind, but reflected on the circumstance that he was not the first to consider it,-that the consequences which seemed to him to hang upon it must therefore have probably presented themselves to the attention of those who had been beforehand with him, that it was of all things the most unlikely that they should have escaped the notice of the learned and acute divines against whom his attack is directed, or that such zealous advocates of the Anglican succession should have failed to provide against them, it is probable that we should have been spared his lucubrations. 3rdly. Let him remember the invaluable rule, "in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, et in omnibus caritas." Dare he affirm that any accredited high-church writer, whether in Oxford or out of it, has contradicted a single clause of a catholic creed, or a single article of the Anglican church? If not, then surely we may be satisfied as to the first article in the rule. Under the second head may well be ranged such points as the precise amount of esteem due to the primitive ages, the value of some early practices now discontinued, (the discontinuance being obediently submitted to,) nay more, by way of climax, whether or not Hickes and Collier should be designated as bishops. It remains for our author, and others like him, to remember the third point. Has he done so? Not most assuredly in the paper before us. Does he not know that it is sin to bring rash accusations against, or indulge in causeless anger with, a Christian brother? And if that brother be in the grace and favour of God, then may not the man who helps to swell a popular outcry against him be haply found to be "fighting against God"? F. G. THOUGHTS ON MISSIONS.- No. I.* REVEREND SIR,-Among the many evils which have taken their rise from the decay of a godly discipline and self-regulating power in the Anglican church, that is not the least whereby efforts to extend her boundaries, however well intended, have not been in unison either with our own church's principles or in imitation of the practice of antiquity. This is a grave charge, involving, as it does, both of our so-called church societies in the imputation of unfaithfulness to the church which they profess to represent. I believe, however, it is too well founded. In the first place, what is the object proposed by the Church Missionary Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, leaving out of the question the various other societies not connected with the church, with whom of course I have nothing to do? I will limit the question to India, since with that country my duty lies connected; what, then, is the design of these two societies with respect to India? The name of one suggests an answer for both the propagation of the gospel." The name is good, the design benevolent, the object transcendently glorious. But this is no novelty, as some persons seem disposed to imagine; it is no invention of the nineteenth, nor yet of the seventeenth, century; it is coetaneous with the commencement, and will be coincident with the duration, of the gospel itself. The first efforts were of an extraordinary kind, and assisted by means which we now can barely hope for. Still, however, much was left for human agency to effect after the withdrawal of the miraculous gifts. Missions have been conducted by men of like passions with ourselves, assisted as we are, or may be, with the ordinary operations of The Editor inserts this letter under the impression that it may be both interesting and useful to his readers in Great Britain to see the views entertained by a clergyman resident in India, though they may not entirely concur in them. |