evidences of natural and revealed religion, and the duties resulting from both. We may only mention further in anticipation of controversies of which we shall have to speak, what Paley has said on conversion, repentance, regeneration, and their relation to baptism.1 In the primitive Church these things were identified. When anyone was baptised his conversion was assumed to be genuine. St Peter wished the converts on the day of Pentecost to be baptised for the remission of sins. St Paul calls baptism the washing of regeneration. This language we continue to use when there is no supposition of conversion, and when it is not even possible. To speak of such persons as converted or regenerated should be done with. extreme qualification and reserve. Such expressions as 'born of God,'' new creatures and sons of God,' were full of meaning when applied to those who had come from heathenism to Christianity, but in our circumstances they mean perhaps nothing at all. The object of this sermon was to recommend caution in the use of Scripture language, especially to those who imagine they have perceptible influences of the Holy Spirit, and identify those influences with regeneration. In a later sermon the reality of regeneration or conversion is admitted, but not as necessary for all. Those who have never been indifferent to religion, nor alienated from it, do nɔt stand in need of such a radical change as is generally understood by regeneration or conversion. The change may be sensible and sudden, but not of necessity. The wind bloweth where it listeth. The effect may exist though there be no knowledge of the day or the hour of the operation of the Spirit. Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, was another Cambridge man, likeminded with Paley. He was a Whig in politics, a Church reformer, a liberal theologian, tolerant of Nonconformists and of all men who thought honestly for themselves. He engaged early and eagerly in the controversies about subscription and Church reform. He avowed his intention to purge the Church from 'all the common dregs of Popery' and to effect 'the final abolition of spiritual 1 See a Sermon at the Visitation of the Bishop of Carlisle in 1777 tyranny.' He doubted if subscription to Articles of Religion was necessary for the maintenance of an established Church. There are certain things which the civil ruler might require of the teachers of religion, such as that they should not teach Atheism, Deism, Popery, or passive obedience, but he should not require subscription to speculative doctrines. The clergy should no more be bound to the theology of Fathers, Schoolmen or Reformers, than university tutors and lecturers are bound to the problems of Aristotle, the metaphysics of Plato, or the astronomy of Ptolemy. The Liturgy needed revision. To speak of the danger of innovation was 'stale and contemptible cant.' The reign of his present Majesty, George III, had seen great innovations for the public good. There were many things in the Liturgy which tended to make men unbelievers. Such were the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed, which, though believed by no one, still continue to be repeated in that conservative spirit which clings to what is exploded and obsolete. This spirit was incarnate in the clergy, who as a body were always the enemies of progress. The Pagans worshipped their gods long after they knew them to be but idols. The people of England supported the Church of Rome long after Wycliffe had convinced them of its errors and corruptions. No one age has a right to prescribe what is to be believed by the ages that are to follow it, or to bind men to interpret the Scriptures as they have been interpreted in past times. If we must have human creeds let them be in the words of Locke or Clarke or Tillotson, and not made by councils of contentious bishops. In a National Church there should be the greatest possible freedom. The disciples of Calvin should be tolerated as well as the disciples of Arminius, and if the prevailing belief of the country should become Unitarian, the Church should be the same, and Trinitarians should then have that toleration which is now the right of Unitarians. It has often happened that when church reformers were made bishops, the spirit of reform has died within them. It 1 'Letters to members of the House of Commons by a Whig Churchman.' 2 Considerations on the Expediency of revising the Liturgy by was not so with Richard Watson. His development was never arrested. Though he wished to see the nation in one Church, he recognised in Dissent the offspring of that religious liberty which no one would now wish to see abolished. He advocated the civil rights of Roman Catholics, though he believed that in this there was possible danger to the cause of liberty itself, but he hoped that even the Church of Rome would yet be leavened with the spirit of toleration.' Samuel Horsley,'' successively Bishop of St David's, Rochester, and St Asaph's, was the opposite of Richard Watson in politics and in theology. He had a great name as a scholar, a preacher, and a champion of the rights of the Church. Imperious and impetuous, he stamped the intensity of his character on everything which he either said or did. His charges were not merely advice and exhortation to his clergy, but discharges of fire and fury on his enemies. One of them3 might be described as a discourse against morality if not founded on dogma. Against those whose sermons were mainly on 'practice and on morals' he rolled his Olympian thunder. The apes of Epictetus,' he said, 'thought their only commission was to step abroad once in the week in the garb of holiness to preach morality.' The revealed will of God is the ground of practice. This is the source and spring of all right action. The Bishop's words are that a man 'may be in danger of being cast into outer darkness with the whole load of moral merit on his back." Works done before the grace of Christ and the inspiration of His Spirit have the nature of sin. Such are the good work of infidels and atheists as Hobbes, Spinoza and Hume, or of Sectarians like Priestley and Lindsey. Their moral works are not done as God has willed and commanded them to be done, and their religion, consisting of private opinion and will worship, is sin, for it is heresy.'" The Evangelicals in the Church and the Methodists out of it tended in the opposite direction. In avoiding the errors 1 For Watson's Defences of Christianity against Paine and Gibbon, see vol. iii of 'Religious Thought in England from the Reformation.' 3 That of 1790. 2 B. 1733, d. 1806. tyranny.' He doubted if subscription to Articles of Religion was necessary for the maintenance of an established Church. There are certain things which the civil ruler might require of the teachers of religion, such as that they should not teach Atheism, Deism, Popery, or passive obedience, but he should not require subscription to speculative doctrines. The clergy should no more be bound to the theology of Fathers, Schoolmen or Reformers, than university tutors and lecturers are bound to the problems of Aristotle, the metaphysics of Plato, or the astronomy of Ptolemy. The Liturgy needed revision. To speak of the danger of innovation was 'stale and contemptible cant.' The reign of his present Majesty, George III, had seen great innovations for the public good. There were many things in the Liturgy which tended to make men unbelievers. Such were the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed, which, though believed by no one, still continue to be repeated in that conservative spirit which clings to what is exploded and obsolete. This spirit was incarnate in the clergy, who as a body were always the enemies of progress. The Pagans worshipped their gods long after they knew them to be but idols. The people of England supported the Church of Rome long after Wycliffe had convinced them of its errors and corruptions. No one age has a right to prescribe what is to be believed by the ages that are to follow it, or to bind men to interpret the Scriptures as they have been interpreted in past times. If we must have human creeds let them be in the words of Locke or Clarke or Tillotson, and not made by councils of contentious bishops. In a National Church there should be the greatest possible freedom. The disciples of Calvin should be tolerated as well as the disciples of Arminius, and if the prevailing belief of the country should become Unitarian, the Church should be the same, and Trinitarians should then have that toleration which is now the right of Unitarians. It has often happened that when church reformers were made bishops, the spirit of reform has died within them. It 1 'Letters to members of the House of Commons by a Whig Churchman.' 2 Considerations on the Expediency of revising the Liturgy by was not so with Richard Watson. His development was never arrested. Though he wished to see the nation in one Church, he recognised in Dissent the offspring of that religious liberty which no one would now wish to see abolished. He advocated the civil rights of Roman Catholics, though he believed that in this there was possible danger to the cause of liberty itself, but he hoped that even the Church of Rome would yet be leavened with the spirit of toleration.' Samuel Horsley,'' successively Bishop of St David's, Rochester, and St Asaph's, was the opposite of Richard Watson in politics and in theology. He had a great name as a scholar, a preacher, and a champion of the rights of the Church. Imperious and impetuous, he stamped the intensity of his character on everything which he either said or did. His charges were not merely advice and exhortation to his clergy, but discharges of fire and fury on his enemies. One of them3 might be described as a discourse against morality if not founded on dogma. Against those whose sermons were mainly on 'practice and on morals' he rolled his Olympian thunder. The apes of Epictetus,' he said, 'thought their only commission was to step abroad once in the week in the garb of holiness to preach morality.' The revealed will of God is the ground of practice. This is the source and spring of all right action. The Bishop's words are that a man 'may be in danger of being cast into outer darkness with the whole load of moral merit on his back.'4 Works done before the grace of Christ and the inspiration of His Spirit have the nature of sin. Such are the good work of infidels and atheists as Hobbes, Spinoza and Hume, or of Sectarians like Priestley and Lindsey. Their moral works are not done as God has willed and commanded them to be done, and their religion, consisting of private opinion and will worship, is sin, for it is heresy.' 5 The Evangelicals in the Church and the Methodists out of it tended in the opposite direction. In avoiding the errors 1 For Watson's Defences of Christianity against Paine and Gibbon, see vol. iii of 'Religious Thought in England from the Reformation.' 3 That of 1790. 2 B. 1733, d. 1806. |