Mayow Wynell Mayow

“ Oh! what heart can exaggerate the beauty with which our Church shall again shine forth, if she can retain the good that is in her and discard the evil! How nobly will then appear the characteristic virtues of the English mind;—its love of honesty and truth;—its conscientiousness and repudiation of pious frauds;—its loathing disbelief in the avail of expiation of sin by mere formal observances, the sinner remaining unrepentant all the while! ”

“ Oh! then, let him who would deserve well of the Church of England, pray yet for such a day; and set forward constantly and continually the mind and temper which shall first long for, and next be prepared for, such a council. The temper which would not presumptuously reject, but gladly accept such appeal to smooth our differences and sharp contentions, is perhaps our best defence against the danger, or the charge of schism; and when we are in such a mind, let us not fear, but rather let us humbly hope, that the general council will come. ”

“ My dear Maskell,
One who has known you so long and loved you so well as I have, cannot fail to experience much sorrow of heart in now addressing you. But private sorrows, and private feelings have little place in the great crisis in which we live. I do not mean that we are required to be stoically indifferent; but that our duties to God and God’s truth, are so paramount over any regard to earthly ties, or private griefs, that we must needs put them by—so far at least as that they be no hindrance or impediment to the doing His will. ”

“ I am quite prepared to have these remarks called visionary and unreal; and all dependence on, nay all reference to, the Universal Church, unpractical and absurd. But “none of these things move me,” and I am, though I trust, no fanatic, yet hopeful of the help of God for those who will try to help themselves. As I have said before, I cannot think the expectation of a general council is chimerical. I cannot believe if it come it will be useless. I agree with you in saying, “we have no right to expect an audible or visible interposition of Almighty God,” to direct us in our difficulties. ”

“ I fear those who talk most of peace and quiet, who are, more than anything else, afraid lest Churchmen should do too mush, forget, or it may be have never realized, that it is no less than the faith which is now endangered. And if there is one thing more than another which now disquiets and disheartens thoughtful, earnest-minded, far-seeing men, it is this;—to perceive that there are numbers who are not themselves in the least heretical on baptism, who yet say that all we need is rest ”

“ Even in the mean time the thought of such a council is neither impertinent, nor unpractical: for I suppose no one will hold that a national synod or convocation may determine anything as to its Church’s doctrine, and yet no man be justified in leaving her communion. Such course however must be taken, to be taken rightly, not on the impulse of a man’s own will, or the bent of his own mind; but only in obedience to what Christendom has definitely ruled, and in implicit submission to what she would now say, could she meet in free and general council. ”

“ It works even unconsciously to ourselves, and is not inconsistent with the most upright intention, nay, sometimes, not with the most earnest endeavour after truth. But certainly he only is to be called a great judge who can master this habit; whose mental discipline is such, that he can abstract himself from these circumstances of his wishes, and in spite of all the promptings of his heart, preserve the coolness of his head; who can divest himself, when he takes his place on his judicial throne, almost of his personal existence, and pass judgment as if the world would end to-morrow. ”

“ Will you say? “I allow you have the old teaching upon points not mentioned at the reformation, but on no others: where any thing is treated of at all, it is definitely settled by whatever is set down; and thereupon no regard must be paid to any complement of doctrine derived from earlier teaching.” I answer, on what authority are we to receive this arbitrary distinction? Surely not upon the shewing of any direct evidence: if so, produce it. Not on the implied injunction or animus of the Church at the reformation, for she is full of appeals to precedent teaching on all points. ”

“ I am not content to think the interpretation which I insist upon is but one of many which may or may not, according to individual caprice or individual ignorance be held without rebuke by our people, and taught by our clergy. If any one of the above theories is the true one, all the rest are false. And are we for ever to remain disputing? Is there no voice by which we may learn the truth? I believe that there is a voice, long neglected and long forgotten, the voice of the Church of England. ”

“ The first view too, would not really have agreed with my argument; for, I said, “The only postulate I ask is, that the Church shall not, and cannot stand committed to heresy, without proof that her crime is something not accidental but wilful and deliberate; something more than a mistake which she is ready and willing to clear up the moment opportunity is given her to do so. In short, that as a man is not a liar without the intention to deceive, so a Church is not heretical, unless the animus of heresy be proved against her.” ”

“ Badeley, is this,—that his mode of meeting the attack on the Catholic doctrine of baptism is precisely the just mode, and the right mode for us to meet any assault upon the faith of the Church of England; because those considerations of the nature of her rule of faith, and those proofs of her appeal to antiquity, and to the unrepealed dogmas of preceding ages, connecting herself with them, and showing her mind to retain the same teaching, are general, and apply not merely to baptism, or to any one doctrine, but to all our doctrines. ”

“ What is the Church to do in missions and promotion of Christian knowledge, if such a plan be put in execution?” I can but answer, if things come to that point, that we must break communion with the archbishop, in order to save our name and keep our place in Christendom, then these consequences necessarily follow, and we have no choice. We shall never come to such resolve but upon the weightiest grounds:—grounds that will leave us no option as to following them out. We shall have no right to make matters of principle into matters of expediency or calculation of consequences. ”

“ There are, no doubt, difficulties on the side of action, lest we be not sufficiently observant of the “powers that be.” There are difficulties on the side of inaction, lest, while we sleep, “tares may be sown” which we shall never be able to eradicate. So we come to be obliged, even against our will, to consider what deference, what authority, what guidance of affairs, must needs be given to a chief ruler, simply for his office’ sake. And the first thought which meets one is, that undoubtedly no Archbishop in the English Church can claim to be to us a Pope ”

“ If even the reasons of a court of law on which it founds its sentence are really no formal part of the judgment, much less can the mere overlooking or ignoring a particular line of argument, disable or disfranchise that line of argument, so as to render it for ever unavailable. ”

“ Gorham is fit to hold a benefice with cure of souls in the Church of England; determined as they may be to leave nothing undone which may be done to shake off the grasp of state interference with her spiritual rights and jurisdiction; yet what can they do more than uselessly agitate, or hopelessly complain? I know well,” you may say, “you are looking to the revival of the Church’s synodical functions; to the restoration of her convocation, to set all these matters right; to clear her doctrine, and consolidate her freedom. ”

“ Then will there be, either a return to the Roman communion such as “neither their fathers nor they” have ever dreamed of, or a free Episcopacy, which shall cast aside the establishment as an “accursed thing,” throw itself upon Christendom for communion, and appeal to a general council of Christendom for approval, and, shaking to the very centre the whole religion of this country, shall gather into its own bosom, I will not say all that is good and holy, but all that is good and holy, and has with this goodness and this holiness any distinctive Church knowledge or Church feeling. ”

“ Rather is it not—that we are not humbled: we are not ashamed: we are not alarmed. We are in evil case, but we see it not. We are in awful blindness; and yet so blinded, we find not our want of eyes. We are dull and heavy with sleep, yet so inapprehensive, that we think ourselves in light and vigour: we cannot see the signs of woe, nor hear the sounds of warning!
And where are our means or hope of our remedy? The remedy for such a state of things? ”

“ A writ of error would lie in that case to correct any opinion that might be shown on more discussion to be erroneous. But every judge must act on his own conviction. I own that my opinion is so entirely settled, and, I must say, so entirely unchanged by what I have heard of the argument to-day, that feeling the utmost disposition to do all that can be done to show my respect for my learned brothers, I do not think that I can consent to say for my part that this writ ought to go. ”

“ The only thing which would really harm us, would be absolute contradiction of the truth, or positive assertion that such or such essential points were intended to be left vague and ambiguous. But this would be harmful, because in fact such declarations would not be merely declarations of vagueness or ambiguity, but would be heresy; would not be to assert, of two conflicting doctrines, that the Church teaches both, but, in fact, to rule that she teaches neither. ”

“ Nay, on the contrary, we have not feared; we have not mourned; we have not humbled ourselves; rather we have boasted, and been puffed up, as if we were better than our neighbours! Oh! I ask again, where indeed are our prayers; where our sorrows; where our fastings, for the sin and misery of our state? ”

“ To assemble the Church in Convocation or Synod, for such a purpose as this, would be to place her in a most undignified position, that of exhibiting herself for approbation. We should be treating her as a mob would treat a popular leader ”

“ Thus they say, “The doctrine held by Mr. Gorham appears to us to be this: . . . that the grace of regeneration does not so necessarily accompany the act of baptism that regeneration invariably takes place in baptism: that the grace may be granted before, in, or after baptism: . . . that infants baptized, and dying before actual sin, are undoubtedly saved, but that in no case is regeneration in baptism unconditional;” ”

“ Surely it is not wholly our people’s fault that they do not know the sinfulness of sin; nor our ministers’ fault that they cannot make them believe it, when the weapon with which they should smite they are obliged to leave rusting in the scabbard, and the pen with which they should write on a man’s forehead the penalty of his sin, (that he is excluded from the house of God, and cut off from Christian brotherhood,) is cast aside, and never used. Our people sin, and no note is taken of it! Our people sin, and the Church does not bear her witness against them! ”

“ Whether is it better for us all that we be stopped in a career of sin, or that we run on in it, in a seeming prosperity perhaps, but in reality spreading wherever we go, and whatever we do, the heresy that the Church in which we live and serve, has no doctrine on baptism, and we think it best to take no notice of the fact ”

“ For then, history, and the uniform tradition of the Church, alike teach us that it is not merely the right, but the duty, not merely of the priest, but of the lay people also, to contend for the faith openly and uncompromisingly, by whomsoever it may have been assailed, and under whatever circumstances. ”

“ How, then, shall the mass of the careless and self-willed, be persuaded the Church thinks ill of the state in which those have lived, who have received no public censure, who have made their claim, and had it, at least passively allowed, to be buried, as her faithful children? ”

“ If our archbishops or archbishop should bring things to that pass that no early Church would have communicated with them, then, no doubt, if we cannot escape from implication with what they have done, we shall be ourselves involved in the desert of excommunication; but if we can do what those very Churches would have done, we may hope this will avail to show we should not have been cast out of the communion of Christendom. ”

“ We are but a part of Christendom, but this claim to allow no appeal from our convocation, seems to arrogate to ourselves to be either the whole, or so capable of standing by ourselves, that we desire to be freed from any subordination to the whole, which would be, in fact, no less than to make ourselves “guilty of a formal schism from the universal Church of Christ.” [126] We must not allow ourselves to forget there is such a thing as an œcumenical council of Christendom, and whatever the difficulties in the way of its assembling, yet to it, as I believe, all true hearts should turn. ”

“ But neither can it be admitted that if the justification of the reformers is to rest on such grounds as the foregoing, their reputation can owe thanks to those who would now persuade the Church to acquiesce in a disgraceful servitude, and to surrender to the organs of the secular power the solemn charge which she has received from Christ, to feed his sheep and his lambs: for the real feeder of those sheep, and those lambs, is the power that determines the doctrine with which they shall be fed. ”

“ Some deference is due to those who certify the fitness of Bishop Hampden for the office to which he is elected. Still more deference is due to the peace of the Church, and to the tranquillity of the State. It seems to me that we should be putting every thing to hazard and leading to consequences which it is impossible to foresee, if we, who are firmly convinced that there is no such law as that upon which these parties seek to act, encouraged the smallest doubt as to its existence. ”