AN APOLOGY FOR DR. HAMPDEN'S OPPONENTS. [TO THE EDITOR OF
THE "SPEOTAT0R.1 Sin,—Allow me to say a few words in defence of the opposition made to the appointment of Dr. Hampden as Regius Professor of Divinity in Oxford in 1836; I was active in it, and although I feel as strongly as Mr. Gladstone that the mode of proceeding against him (for which his leading opponents were in no degree responsible) was very objectionable, yet there are few acts of my life to which I look back with more sincere thankfulness than to my doing what I could to oppose him.
What I chiefly appeal against is the severity of your judgment upon us, his opponents. For instance, you accept Miss Hampden's representation (received, of course, by her from her father) that the Bampton Lectures were only the pretext for our opposition, and that our real reason was his declaration in favour of admitting Dissenters to Oxford. I can most solemnly declare, of my own knowledge, that this was not the case. We really believed (and I, for one, believe as firmly now as I did then) that the statements in the Bampton Lectures were utterly subversive of Christianity. Believing this, were we not bound in duty to protest against his being entrusted with the religious education of half the clergymen in England ?
What Dr. Hampden had maintained in his Bampton Lectures has been stated in few words by a man as conspicuous for candour and fairness towards those who differ from him as for earnest piety and intellectual acumen. Dr. Newman published in 1836 a pam- phlet in which he states Dr. Hampden's theory to be "that there is only one truth, and that truth is the record of facts, historical and moral, contained in the text of Scripture ; that whatever is beyond that text, even to the classifying of its sentences, is human opinion and unrevealed ; that though a thoughtful person cannot help forming opinions and theories upon the Scripture Record, and is bound to act upon and coufets those opinions which he considers to be true, yet he has no right to identify his own opinion on any point, however sacred in itself, with the fact of the revealed his- tory, or to assume that belief in it is necessary to the salvation of another, or to impose it as a condition for union with another that, though he considers that he cannot be more sure of being right than another, and does not hold his own opinions to be more pious than another's, and will not pronounce heretical opinions (so called) to be dangerous to any being in the world except to those who do not hold them, yet he himself firmly believes the Church's dogmatic statements concerning the Trinity, &c., and at a proper season would contend as zealously against Arian or Socinian doc- trines, as those who think that, in the case of others, belief in them is of importance to eternal salvation ; and this, although he considers these statements as such, and so far forth as they are distinct from those Scripture facts which Arians and Socinians hold as religiously as himself, to be "a system of technical theology by which we are guarded" only "in some measure, from the exorbitance of theoretic enthusiasm," a system of phrases borrowed from those who differ from us, and useful only in ex- cluding their use of them.
Dr. Newman ends by declaring his belief "that ten years hence those who are in no way protesting against his appointment now, would if then alive feel that they had upon them a respon- sibility greater than has been incurred by members of this University for many centuries."
Now, Sir, assuming Dr. Hampden to be consistent, what answer must he have made to any one of his pupils who, admitting the authority of the New Testament, obstinately denied the divinity of our blessed Lord? Must he not have said, "You and I are wholly agreed upon all revealed truth, and you, therefore, are just as good a Christian as I. We differ only on the inferences which we draw from it. It would be better if we could both of us abstain from drawing any, but we cannot help it as it is. I consider mine right and yours wrong ; still I admit that both one and the other are equally mere unrevealed opinions, the accept- ance of which neither of us has any right to urge on the other " ? Unquestionably he must. Many persons in the present day will say, "A very good answer" (although I incline to think that very few of them will agree with Dr. Hampden in requiring the abso- lute admission of every word of the Old and New Testament as inspired infallible truth). But the question is not whether this would be good teaching, but whether in 1830, when such opinions were quite new, men who sincerely believed the necessity of dogma were not bound in conscience to oppose, as far as they could, the appointment of a man bound in consistency to teach thus, to the Chair of Divinity in Oxford. Is it necessary, is it fair, to devise for them other motives than those which they professed?
Your supposition that they were influenced by "Dr. Hampden's firm attitude against the Oxford party" is most natural to one who now looks back. I assure you that no one who was then in Oxford could entertain it. For Dr. Hampden never manifested any such opposition until after he had become Regius Professor. Then, indeed, he attacked the Oxford school with great virulence, and, I must add, with equal inconsistency ; for, on his own principles, he was bound to believe that their "theological .opinions" were as good as his own. But he was by no means a =solitary instance of a man who united the maintenance of the broadest toleration in theory, with the narrowest bigotry in prac- tice, against those whose opinions he disliked.—I am, Sir, &c., SEXAGENARIUS.
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