19 NOVEMBER 1853, Page 13

KING'S COLLEGE COUNCIL AND THE FORTIETH ARTICLE.

WHEN Theodore Hook went up to Oxford, and presented himself before the Vice-Chancellor to be formally admitted to the Uni- versity, that dignitary asked him whether he was prepared to sign the Thirty-nine Articles; and was profoundly outraged by the ready reply, " Oh ! certainly—forty if you please." How amused Theo- dore would have been, and how his comments would have amused the select circle of Bishops, Deans, and other Church celebrities that used to gather round his corner at the Athenceum, had he lived to see his saucy rejoinder adopted by a solemn semi-eccle- siastical synod, as the test of orthodoxy to which theological teachers were hereafter to be subjected! It appears, however, from Mr. Maurice's letter to the Council of King's College, inserted in our last week's Postscript, that, though ready practically to enact a fortieth Article, that respectable body shrinks from the re- sponsibility of formally divulging its terms. Mr. Maurice com- plained that his sentence of deposition did not inform him of his offence ; did not specify the formulary of the Church of England which his teaching had contradicted ; and demanded as an act of justice to himself, and in behalf of the liberties of the Church of which he is a priest, that the Council, "if they pronounce a theo- logical sentence upon me at all, should declare what article of our faith condemns my teaching." The Council, remembering Lord I Mansfield's advice to a Colonial judge not eminent for legal learn- ing, contents itself with passing sentence, declines to state reasons or to define the offence, and declares that the chairs lately held by Mr. Maurice are vacant. Of course, this plan of proceeding is vastly convenient, especially for the prelate who presides over the Council, and who thereby avoids the responsibility of declaring a new article of the faith, which others of his right reverend brethren might hereafter pronounce to be no article of the faith at all, but a proposition subject to private opinion. We already hear it said that the Bishop of Lichfield, late Principal of King's College, has behaved in this matter more like an angel than a bishop; from which phrase we conclude, that, whatever be his Lordship's private opinion on the proposition in question, he has manfully stated his conviction that the belief of it is not bind- ing upon Christians or Churchmen. However that may be, and whether the bench of Bishops holds one or twenty opinions on the duration of future punishment, and its importance as an article of Christian belief, Mr. Manriee's right to have the offence for which he is condemned stated in distinct terms, accompanied by citation of the words of the formularies which justify his condemnation, would seem to us to be undeniable. Convenient as the con- trary course may be to prelates who desire to stand well with the religious public, without committing themselves to rash decisions that may bring them into collision with their spiritual peers, or the more dreaded tribunals of ecclesiastical law and doctrine, it is unfortunately opposed to those usages and maxims of our courts of law which are especially intended for the protection of accused individuals. There, the strictest definitions are essential to the validity of an indictment, the slightest verbal inaccuracy is held fatal, and even a sentence following a verdict of guilty is quashed if it fail to specify the counts of the indictment for which it is awarded. So strongly are the courts convinced of the necessity of carefully guarding individual rights, so keenly alive are we as a nation to the danger of sacrificing individuals to a vague rough sense of public convenience or to private caprice. If Mr. Maurice were accused of civil sedition, the acts constituting the offence must be distinctly specified in phraseology strictly limited; the jury must determine which of these acts were proved, and whether they amounted to sedition ; and the judges must declare for which of the acts proved and pronounced to be seditious they awarded him punishment He is accused of what may be termed ecclesi- astical sedition: the charge is preferred in the most informal man- ner conceivable, the defence is equally informal, the proceedings of the judges, if possible, more informal. Everything is conducted exactly as it ought to have been in a preliminary investigation, for the purpose of determining whether there were grounds for further proceedings. But heresy is, we presume, so much easier to pronounce upon than sedition, theological truth so much simpler to arrive at than facts of common life, that it needs but a score of gentlemen to chat for an hour over the contents of a couple of pamphlets, and they have no difficulty in deciding that one of the subtlest thinkers of the age, propounding a theory resting on profound metaphysical, philological, historical, and theological grounds, and put forward expressly as that view which best har- monizes with Scripture and the formularies of the Church, is utterly mistaken ; and when he appeals to them, as Churchmen and English gentlemen, to point to the formulary that condemns his teaching, they take refuge in silence, declare the discussion closed, and inform him he may consider himself turned out. Car- lyle says, speech is silvern but silence is golden ; in this ease the silence of the Council should rather be termed brazen.

If the Council of King's College were a committee of gentlemen managing a private institution for its supporters, however we might regret that a popular educational establishment was deprived of a teacher likely to inspire the highest principles into his pupils, we should have no business to complain of the act. But the Council of King's College holds its functions as a trust from the na- tion, to be administered, so far as religious and ecclesiastical con- siderations enter at all, on the broad rule of the Church of England. Any man who is an ordained minister of the Church of England is, qua Churchman, qualified to be one of the theological teachers of King's College ; the only principle limiting the theological teaching of the College is that the Articles and formularies of the Church of England shall constitute its standard ; it was not set up and vested with peculiar privileges to teach the peculiar dogmas or interpretations of Low Church, High Church, or Broad Church, but to teach the theology of the Church of England simply. If the principle does not please parents, they need not send their sons there; if it does not please clergymen, they need not occupy professional shahs there ; if it does not please bishops, they can refuse the testi- monials of candidates for orders who are educated there ; finally, if it does not please Dr. Self and the Council, Dr. Jelf and the Council may resign : all which results would be lament- able, but not so grievous, to our minds, as any infringement of the largeness of the principle on which the College was founded. We have seen the tendency to narrow the comprehension of the Church of England too frequently and too strongly manifested of late years not to be impatient at each renewal of the attempt. A party at Oxford tried to exclude Dr. Hampden; the opposite party censured Dr. Pusey ; the Bishop of Exeter would put Mr. Gor- , ham out of the pale ; the Bishop of Manchester will not let a High- , Church Vicar have the additional curate needed to second his noble efforts for a pauperized and demoralized parish ; even at Cam- bridge, where theological strife is comparatively tame, strenuous efforts were made to prevent the accomplished Professor of Modern History from bestowing his learning and eloquence upon the stu- dents, because he too, somewhat after the manner of Mr. Maurice, doubted as to the meaning of the word aiOnnag ; and now we wit- ness an institution remarkable for its excellent organization, its rapid progress, and its striking success, sacrificing one of its ablest teachers to a party cry, to the amour propre of that "reli- gious world" with whose hollowness and insincerity he has devoted himself to wage war,—a war which, by the confession of its own organs, has shaken it to its centre. The Council of King's Col- lege has struck its heaviest blow, not at Mr. Maurice, but at the foundations of education on Church principles, and thereby at the foundations of the Church itself.

We insist the more earnestly upon the responsibility of the Council as a body representative of the national Church, and upon the duty that results of shaping its conduct by the simple formularies of that church, without any admixture of or bias from theories of religious truth not included in those formularies, because we observe an inclination among some who admire Mr. Maurice without sharing his opinions, and wouldrepeLany attego to narrow the terms of communion in the Church of England; to draw a distinction betwcen Mr. Maurice as qualified to be a preacher in Lincoln's Inn, and Professor Maurice as qualified to conduct the theological instruction of students, and to half justify the Council on the ground that a purer orthodoxy is required for the latter than for the former office. Mr. Maurice himself, for himself, utterly repudiated this distinction, when Dr. Self urges it upon him as a reason why he ought to have resigned his Profes. sorship before publishing the Theological Essays. And we con- ceive it to be quite untenable in regard to King's College, on the ground that the theological department of King's College has pre- cisely the same breadth of basis that the Church of England has. Whatever is heres3 in the College lecture-room is heresy in any Church pulpit ; whatever latitude is conceded to the preacher in regard to doctrine, is by the principle of the College conceded to its lecturers. We think the Council would hardly have been de- fended on this distinction, but for a fallacy that lurks in its mode of statement It is true, that many a clergyman who is admirably qualified for a preacher would not be at all qualified for a theo- logical lecturer, simply from want of the necessary scientific know- ledge of his subject, or from want of the teaching faculty, or many other defects that might not at all interfere with his usefulness as a preacher. But the doctrines which ought to be preached from pulpits are the doctrines which ought to be taught and demon- strated in the lecture-room : here an error disqualifying for the one sphere disqualifies for the other. Moreover, another fallacy appears to lie in the application of the distinction to Mr. Maurice's expulsion. It may be admitted that the Council would have been justified in deposing Mr. Maurice for an injudicious prominence given to his private religions theories, while he kept in the back- ground the broad and universally admitted truths of Christianity. But the Council has not deposed him on any such charge. Their act can be translated into nothing short of a declaration on their art that it is heresy to hold and publish the doctrine he holds and as published respecting future punishment It was not with teaching this doctrine too exclusively, or even with teaching it at all, to the students, that Dr. Self charged him, but with having published it in a book addressed specially to Unitarians. Of course Mr. Maurice refused to shelter himself under the plea that his book was not a lecture at King's College; but he did explain, that he carefully avoided alluding in his College lectures to his differences from the popular theology on the question of endless damnation. It is therefore simply as a heretic, and not as an incapable or an injudicious teacher, that the Council has condemned him; and therefore the distinction set up on their behalf is not available, and their act remains, what we characterized it a fortnight since, an audacious violation of the authority both of the Church and of the State, and a grievous wrong to an eminent individual.