Mayow Wynell Mayow

“ But nevertheless she must do all she can, according to the means she has, or she will not be clear in this matter; and the most evident of all the steps for her to take is at once, and in earnest, and with her whole heart, to petition the throne to be permitted to meet in convocation to take these points into practical consideration. If she do all she can, she will not be to be judged, that she can do no more; but at any rate, I think any one of us may, nay every one of us should, suspend our judgment as to her being committed to heresy until we see what it is she will do. ”

“ A point of great weight surely is this:—that they are (even if really ambiguous when subjected to the searching eyes and acute minds of the most subtle lawyers: I use the word in no ill sense; yet) to all ordinary men, and ordinary unbiassed minds, so clearly on the catholic side, and so plainly to such minds convey nothing but the ancient doctrine of regeneration in baptism, that it is much more easy and natural to believe the Church never contemplated the ambiguity than that she did. ”

“ But shall we on this account blame the judges in the case? Assuredly not; they have but done their necessary duty in interpretation. Shall we say the court was not competent, or the decision not binding, or in any way attempt to resist its legal effect? Assuredly not; or we overthrow all principles of law and order. Nevertheless shall we say that this judgment convicts of cruelty or double dealing the framers of the measure, or the parliament which passed it? Assuredly not; because it is much easier; much more accordant with common sense and experience ”

“ It is not an impossible nor an unheard of case for a judge to give a right judgment, yet upon wrong grounds. The grounds are merely his opinion which challenge no authority beyond their intrinsic weight, and which any man may canvas; the judgement is authoritative, and of course in a court from which there is no appeal, is assumed ex necessitate rei, to be sound.
Let us then next proceed with one or two considerations which may be of service in determining for ourselves what animus we shall attribute to the Church in drawing up those of her formularies which bear upon the doctrine of baptism. ”

“ If we are in doubt, yet he may have no cloud upon his mind. If we almost fail and faint, yet he is one to rally us. If we know not how to take or interpret the signs of the times, and question what is the path of duty, yet is he one most able to enlighten and to guide us: most fitted (who in our time so much?) ”

“ Though as a Church we cannot meet in synod until called together by the Crown, yet as Englishmen, as mere subjects of the empire we may meet and petition the throne that convocation may be licensed to deliberate upon the momentous questions which now affect the Church. ”

“ And those judges, as the event shewed did come to the conclusion that the terms in which the act was couched were not sufficient to make the system which had been used, illegal: and therefore judgment went in favour of the mill-owners.
Now let it be granted that this, in its effect, destroys the bill as a measure of humanity: that so to legislate is in fact cruelty, whatever the intention of the act may have been. ”

“ If the Church of this our day, knowing all the circumstances of such an interpretation as we have been supposing in the matter of baptismal regeneration, do not use the powers she may have to correct the ambiguity which permits heresy to be lodged within her, she will acquiesce in and adopt that heresy as her own. ”

“ Fielden cruelty to the factory children. But this, however it might clear the respective characters of men of another day, would be nothing at all as to establishing a claim to soundness now, or preserving the Church of England as a living branch of the Church of Christ. If we now adopt the heretical interpretation: if we now knowingly and wilfully continue the ambiguity; if we do not strive to remove the blot on the face of the Spouse of Christ; we shall be answerable as a body for the heresy, and must take the consequences both here and hereafter. ”

“ The crisis and exigence of the time is, as it appears to me, too great to allow us to stand upon niceties, or permit any thing to be kept back which may even by possibility be found of service in indicating the line of duty. ”

“ All Churchmen who feel in these dangerous days it would be a great comfort and advantage to hear the Church’s voice distinctly indicating the course to be pursued, within any reasonable reach of that gathering, ay, and beyond it, would, it is to be hoped, attend. ”

“ Such liberality (with what is not our own to give,) is, in my estimation, a giving away God’s honour, and so, mere and absolute treason against p. 6Him: therefore is a giving away our place in His Church, and a blotting out it’s name from the book of life.
Let me explain further: that in what I am about to write, I am going to admit, at any rate for the sake of argument, the authority and jurisdiction of the Committee of Council as a tribunal in this case. ”

“ In spite of all the sorrow which one cannot but feel that at his time of life when there should be the rest and repose which in less trying times, and to less true soldiers “should accompany old age,” he should be called upon still to stand in the battle’s front, and bear its fiercest shock ”

“ One whose name will add no weight to any thing he may say, might well shrink under ordinary circumstances from commenting upon your recent letter, and appear, even to himself, over-bold in supposing he can add any thing to the views therein expounded. ”

“ But even should the court proceed so far as to say it gives its judgment on the latitudinarian side, expressly on the ground that it believes the Church in drawing up her formularies intended such comprehension, even that declaration would have no judicial authority to impose itself on any man as the truth. p. 11The grounds of a judge’s sentence are a different thing from the sentence itself ”

“ The resting them an hour, or two hours, in the middle of the day, whilst others took their place, to be also rested for the same time, at another period, did not secure to those young persons what was at any rate supposed to be the humane object of the framers of the bill, and the legislature which passed it ”