ON SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES.
To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."
Sia,—A writer who has maintained an opposite doctrine on the subject of subscription to that which Dr. Stanley and you have maintained, wishes to explain why he adopted that doctrine, and how he has at length been induced to accept your conclusion. I can add nothing to the weight of Dr. Stanley's arguments. I may weaken his cause in the minds of many of your readers by supporting it; but I owe it to him and to my own conscience to retract an opinion which, after an experience of thirty years, I am convinced is untenable.
Having had some knowledge of those bodies in which there is no subscription to Articles, I was strongly persuaded that the security to freedom of investigation among them is not what discontented Churchmen suppose that it is. A public opinion— often a very narrow public opinion—holds them bound to the decisions of certain teachers of their own or of some former day. This opinion is enforced as sharply, often cruelly, as the State permits it to be enforced. The protection comes from that, not from the sect, let it boast of liberality as much as it may, let it even maintain as much as it may a real protest against the injustice of a dominant hierarchy. Articles, known, recog- nized, written down—Articles controlling the opinion of the day —a bit in the mouths of those who were trying to enforce that— seemed to me a provision which we could not afford to part with. Subscription was the acknowledgment that we were bound by such Articles ; that we might appeal to them against the violence of special parties. I believed that they had actually rendered this service to the Church of England, that they had actually pre- vented precious truths which one party had asserted, another rejected, from being strangled. This good they had done when the Bishops and the public opinion of the day sought to stifle the Evangelical movement of the last century. This good they were doing in my day in the University of Oxford, when the Evangelical party were trying to extinguish the High Church movement. Those who conducted this movement could appeal to the Articles on their own behalf, and the Bishops were again forced in a great measure to admit the plea. But if the members of this party advanced further, if they sought to silence their opponents, the same obstacle interfered. They might champ the bit very angrily, but it was there.
In the interest of toleration, then, in the interest of that free investigation which is impossible when any school asserts its own decrees as paramount, in the interest of truth, to which all schools may contribute, I believed this subscription to be useful. I was strengthened in this opinion by the kind of substitute which was proposed for it by the Liberal party in Oxford. What this was a gentleman who wrote last month to the Times from the Reform Club, and signed himself " Oxoniensis," told us very distinctly. He complained of Dr. Stanley and others of the younger School of Liberals, for acting as Marplots when the older and wiser school had devised an admirable plan for exclud- ing the High Church party from their offices in the University. By proposing a comprehensive declaration of attachment to certain fundamental principles of Christianity they would have got rid of Dr. Pusey and his friends. A favourite project with Liberals of most " shades of opinion!" By help of it the triumphan t party in the Canton de Vaud sought to banish every strong positive conviction—every belief that really speaks to the heart of human beings—every maxim which is not dull, flat, insignificant—out of the realm of their theo-
hey would have silenced Vinet as much as Malan. I no finer apology for persecution than that which this t plausible imposition of fundamentals has afforded, does rd, and must always afford, to those who are in want of one. Why should these noisy people trouble the peace of the land ? Why should those who have turned the world upside down come hither also ? For the sake of liberality and toleration silence them, banish them, hang them, if you can."
All these reasons seemed to me very strong for retaining that which exists among us. They seem to me strong now. Cer- tainly the evidence which is furnished by Mr. Stephen's speech of the liberty which the Articles give to investigation of Scrip- ture, and which modern opinion would take away, has not weakened them. Certainly the desire of Mr. Hebert to re- enact an Article about future punishment which the compilers of the Articles deliberately omitted has not weakened them. Cer- tainly Bishop Lee's assertion that our hopes and consolations depend on the security of every line in the Scriptures has not weakened them. But there are reasons on the other side which must overbalance these, even were they ten times as weighty as they are. No calculations about what is good for opposing the violence of public opinion, or the intolerance of Liberals, or the narrowness of Bishops, can stand for a moment against the evidence that subscription to the Articles tempts men to dis- honest evasions, tempts them to suppose that they are bound by an oath at twenty-three to shut out any light from their minds,—in other words, to quench that Spirit who promises to guide them into truth—tempts them, therefore, to hate the very documents which ought to be the greatest help to them in seek- ing for light, in escaping from the mists and fogs of their own intellects and of the world around them. I can set up no pleas for subscription that do not seem to me weak and con- temptible beside these facts which are accumulating about us, which it is impossible to gainsay. Some of us may miss the protection which the " bonds " you speak of have afforded us. We may be left more to the mercy of the religious journal- ists, and of the Bishops who enforce their decrees. And greatly as I respect lawyers—much safer as I believe we are in their hands, than in the hands of most ecclesiastics, I cannot pretend that I derive any the slightest comfort from your assurance that when subscription is gone, we shall be left to depend on their interpretations of our formularies. But these are trifles. Truth cannot be maintained by endangering truthfulness. The truth will stand and make itself manifest,
with or without subscriptions, ecclesiastics, or lawyers. If we do not care enough for it to be ready to incur risks for the sake of it, the sooner we are swept away the better.—Yours logy kno me
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