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UNIVERSITY SELECT PREACHERS.

The Dean of Norwich has addressed the following letter to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford:—

“The Deanery, Norwich, Dec. 12, 1872.

“Very Reverend and Dear Sir,—I beg to resign into your hands, as chief resident officer of the University of Oxford, the select preachership which was conferred upon me the year before last, and which I hold at present. In doing so, I beg to express to you my grateful sense of the honour which you have done me, and the confidence you have reposed in me, by nominating me to a post so important and so interesting.

“That post I now resign, as the most forcible protest I can make against (what I must consider to be) the unfaithfulness to the truth of God which the University manifested by its vote of yesterday in favour of Dean Stanley. I desire entirely to purge myself from all complicity with that proceeding.

“It will be seen from what I have already said that I regard this vote as having a very serious significance; and I shall be obliged to you to allow me to explain and justify this view, so that I may not seem to have acted from prejudice or without ground in reason. In doing so it will be my object to say as little about Dean Stanley as possible, and to confine myself as much as possible to the principle of the opposition which I offer to him.

“Let me say, then, most emphatically that I am not one of those who wish to circumscribe the just and lawful comprehensiveness of the Church of England. She is at once Catholic and Reformed; her Prayer-book and her Articles do no doubt exhibit (not indeed two truths, but) two sides of one and the same truth; and these facts alone (patent upon the surface of her history and her formularies) make her probably the most comprehensive communion in Christendom. And I will add, Sir (pardon a little necessary egotism in explaining my views), that in any question as to who is or who is not to be considered an orthodox Church-of-England Churchman I should be disposed to err (if err one must) on the side of latitude rather than on that of exclusiveness. Believe me, Sir, I would not make a man an offender for a word, nor withhold my entire sympathy from professing Churchmen, who view the truth from a side different from, yet not contradictory to, my own.

“But I conceive that there must be a definable limit somewhere, which, if any man transgresses, he thereby ceases to be a Churchman (perhaps, to be a Christian) altogether. Nor can I think that I am singular in this opinion. To take a crucial instance, the better to exemplify the principle. If a man should teach and preach in so many words that Our Lord Jesus Christ is not God, but merely a man, born into the world in the ordinary manner, you, Sir, I am persuaded, no less than myself, would regard such a person as really beyond the pale of our communion, however a defectiveness in our system of discipline or a tardiness in the operation of the law might still suffer him to be a nominal member of it. And I think, Sir, we should both of us go further, and regard such a man as virtually out of the pale of our communion, if, while admitting Our Lord Jesus Christ to be divine, he yet made it clear that he considered Him to be no otherwise divine than as all human excellence (and therefore especially the highest) is from God. In short, nearly every serious and thoughtful person is agreed that, however wide our Church's circumference, a line must be drawn somewhere in the interests of truth. You, Sir, might possibly embrace a larger area in drawing it, I a smaller; but both of us would exclude a considerable number of persons, and leave them outside our line; and the persons so excluded would of course take offence and call us narrow. This cannot be helped; it is the necessary condition of our maintaining a definite creed. The Church holds the truth in love. She does not seek love at the expense of truth. Love at truth's expense is no love at all; it is not even liberality; if is only a sorry Liberalism.

“Now, Sir, the charge I bring against the Dean Stanley (expressed in the most general and least offensive terms I can find) is, that he seems by his actions and his writings to draw the line nowhere, and to hold out the hand of fellowship to all religionists indifferently, however condemned by the plain letter of our formularies; and that he thus muffles the Church's protest in favour of the faith.

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“The pulpit is, or ought to be, the chair of truth. Can he be worthy to sit in the chair of truth, who (while I doubt not he clings to the truth in his heart of hearts) virtually demolishes the wall of truth, which girds in the Church's citadel, and cries aloud, “Enter who will?’ I decline, Sir, to enter into particulars; for it is ungenerous to rake up old charges; Dean Stanley is the last person I would willing wound; nor, in fact, am I impeaching his actions at present, but only seeking to justify my own. Every one acquainted with the circumstances is aware to what part of the dean's conduct I am making allusion.

“But it may be said, ‘Even allowing Dean Stanley's conduct and writings to be open to objection, the step you are taking and the style in which you are writing about him is greatly disproportionate to the occasion.’ Sir, I respectfully submit that this is not the case. If Dean Stanley stood alone and occupied an isolated position, even his talents, amiabilities, and honesty of character, though they might enable him to do a certain measure of mischief, would hardly make him formidable enough for such a protest as was entered against him by the minority yesterday. But he is essentially a representative man. He is well known to be the mouthpiece and exponent of a school which is daily numbering more and more adherents among both clergy and laity; a school which, having no real faith at all, surrenders bit by bit the Holy Scriptures, the miracles, the doctrines of Christianity, until nothing remains (as is frankly admitted by some of the farthest advanced) save the sublime morality of the Gospel recommended by the example of Christ. I know not how it comes to pass, Sir, that this school is tolerated among us with such equanimity—allowed to broach even from the pulpits of the Church of England its cold speculations, its maudlin sentimentalism, its miserable disparagements of any definite doctrine, in place of the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I only know that, partly through the timidity of our rulers, partly through the laxity of public opinion, partly through a weak desire to make religion (what Bible religion never was and never can be) acceptable to all men, and the Church universally comprehensive, our communion is becoming perfectly lawless; there is no King in our Israel, every man does (and thinks) what is right in his own eyes.

“It will be said, perhaps, when we complain of lawlessness, that our real remedy lies in the application of the law; that resort may always be had to the ecclesiastical courts, and in the second instance to the Judicial Committee, who can hear charges alleged against doctrine out of harmony with the formularies, and where such charges are made out can suspend or censure. But independently of the fact that the jurisdiction of these courts practically extends over the clergy only, I should like to ask how long it takes to put the Judicial Committee in motion, and how many are the fortunate orthodox, who have purses long enough to do it, or how often we may be expected to obtain from such a tribunal a verdict against a defendant, however obviously guilty, who has taken care to word himself craftily? I remember a rare stroke of humourous sarcasm in one of Archdeacon Sinclair's noble charges to the clergy of Middlesex, in which he imagined the case of David Hume's holding a benefice in the Church and being indicted for Atheistical writings, and with what ingenuity ‘my lords’ would make out that there were two modes of proving the existence of a Deity (an a priori and a posteriori), and that the Reverend David Hume had sinned only against one of these, and therefore was at perfect liberty to hold his benefice—an avowal coming from no mean dignitary of the Church of England that very little remedy for our evils is to be looked for from judicial committees.

“No, Sir, a better remedy will be found in every Churchman's showing all fidelity, and making his own protest bravely in his own little sphere. At all events I will try to do so in mind. A select preachership in my view is a very sacred trust, but when I was appointed to it it was not saddled with certain conditions under which it has since been laid.

“We are now associated in our office with the leading contributor to a work lying under synodical condemnation, and more recently with a dignitary to whom (whatever excellences of heart and head he may have, and he has many) installation in the decanal chair of Westminster was refused by the canon on whom 0003 devolved the execution of the Queen's mandate. For myself I can no longer hold office under such conditions. If the pulpit of the University is to be turned into a vehicle for conveying to our youth a nerveless religion, without the sinew and bone of doctrine, a religion which can hardly be called Faith so much as a mere Christianised morality, I for one must decline to stand there—a less obnoxious way, I think, of expressing my sentiments (at all events a more peaceable one) than if, standing there, I should direct my sermons against Rationalism, and thus take advantage of my position to attach my colleagues in office, and to foment an unseemly strife amongst members of the University.—I remain, Very Reverend and Dear Sir, with great respect, your faithful servant, “E. M. GOULBURN. “The Very Reverend the Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford,” &c.