more than
once, that such a course must rob us of all our present strength. Dr.
Manning sings his paean with wild and premature delight, as if the evil
was already accomplished. In his first letter he triumphed in the
silence of Convocation, but that silence has since been broken. A solemn
synodical judgment, couched in the most explicit language, has condemned
the false teaching which had been our Church's scandal. But because a
"very exalted person in the House of Lords"[1] (p. 4), with an ignorance
or an ignoring of law, as was shown in the debate, which was simply
astonishing, chose, in a manner which even Dr. Manning condemns, to
assert, without a particle of real evidence, that the Convocation had
exceeded its legitimate powers, Dr. Manning is in ecstasies. The "very
exalted person" becomes "a righteous judge, a learned judge, a Daniel
come to judgment--yea, a Daniel." These shouts of joy ought to be enough
to show men where the real danger lies. Our present position is
impregnable. But if we abandon it for the new one proposed to us by the
Rationalist party, how shall we be able to stand? How could a national
religious Establishment which should seek to rest its foundations--not
on God's Word; on the ancient Creeds; on a true Apostolic ministry; on
valid Sacraments; on a living, even though it be an obscured, unity with
the Universal Church, and so on the presence with her of her Lord, and
on the gifts of His Spirit--but upon the critical reason of individuals,
and the support of Acts of Parliament--ever stand in the coming
struggle? How could it meet Rationalism on the one hand? How could it
withstand Popery on the other? After such a fatal change its career
might be easily foreshadowed. Under the assaults of Rationalism, it
would year by year lose some parts of the great deposit of the Catholic
faith. Under the attacks of Rome, it would lose many of those whom it
can ill spare, because they believe most firmly in the verities for
which she is ready to witness. Thus it might continue until our ministry
were filled with the time-serving, the ignorant, and the unbelieving;
and, when this has come to pass, the day of final doom cannot be far
distant. How such evils are to be averted is the anxious question of the
present day. The great practical question seems to us to be that to
which we have before this alluded,[2]--How the Supreme Court of Appeal
can be made fitter for the due discharge of its momentous functions