1
10
1
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/a4314eadc181476d82780166c1796a0a.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=nB1C13ey%7Erem8G3C8x9HvUUxIbV-ILaauNWawX0XZwSuXXLrYfLneblu7FDOYC2m7WZ8UIR%7EvB3uwt2beVB8fMIENw84dMK836H495hql-5IJVradXGzx6RVRH1AbK8qbnRm3xKpt%7EGQm-l7ycvsTO0OUcdZbAYTnUukZGZxeJST2DvVCbkXAX6AQRGDBfMsa61Dxlz8zrcVOuun81VzgRh2-ZyMxS22DsElR-NStkLsjKx2TJ1JLmWKvbvjPf9%7ETM9UnlN6cCD2iTz8jZc0X0Sv3-%7EHbQVWrW4stV6096D0TZ9m%7Eqn59BSERuBSiiQ6K81rmhnI0JSzpmu-qWLHEQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
9dff332f2021db82e91eed15b0013478
PDF Text
Text
MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD AND THE NONCON
FORMISTS.
R. ARNOLD has recently shown so much solicitude for the
moral and spiritual welfare of the Nonconformists, that I trust
he will not think it’a sign of sectarian presumption and conceit, if I
express the regret that he has not written a book for our exclusive
benefit. As he told us several months ago, he is no enemy of ours,
though at times he rebukes us sharply; what he aims at is our “ per
fection.” But if his estimate of us is just, the errors into which we
have fallen are so fatal, our faults are so grave, and our separation
from the National Church is so serious an obstacle to the free
development of our Christian thought and life, that he can hardly
render us the service on which he has set his heart, unless he devotes
himself to his kindly task a little more seriously. In his essay on
“ St. Paul and Protestantism,” though he intended to address himself
specially to the Puritans, he has raised innumerable questions in which
Puritans have no separate interest. Any one of them would have
been large enough for a volume—for half-a-dozen volumes. He
reconstructs the theology of St. Paul; presents us with a perfectly
original and very surprising account of the ultimate principle which
constitutes the foundation of the English Church ; speculates on the
science of theological method, and on the relations between theology
and philosophy; and, in the course of a very few paragraphs, lands us
M
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 541
in the very melancholy conclusion that the creeds and formularies
of all Churches—the Nicene Creed and the Westminster Confession,
the decrees of the Council of Trent, and the Thirty-nine Articles—are
all equally worthless, as being the results of premature attempts to
solve problems which are likely to remain insoluble for several
centuries to come. It is disheartening to a Nonconformist to find his
own small affairs overshadowed and suppressed by such vast discus
sions as these.
Nor is it easy to separate what Mr. Arnold has said about English
Dissent from those bold speculations of his, which affect the dogmatic
creed of all Christendom. This, he will probably reply, is not his
fault. It is, no doubt, impossible to touch any question relating to
the spiritual life of a Church or even of an individual man, without
assuming or appealing to principles which determine our whole con
ception of the history and destiny of our race, and of its relations to
truth and to God. So far as I can, however, I intend to limit myself
in this paper to what Mr. Arnold has said about Puritanism and
Nonconformity.
Mr. Arnold tells us that his one qualification for his attempt to re
construct the theology of St. Paul, and so to rescue the great Apostle
from the hands of the Puritans, is that belief of his “ so much
contested by our countrymen, of the primary needfulness of seeing
things as they really are, and of the greater importance of ideas than
of the machinery which exists for them.” He would probably say
that this is his chief qualification for criticising the history, traditions,
policy, creed, and institutions of the Nonconformists. Like most
other Englishmen, we are in danger, ho thinks, of following staunchly,
but mechanically, certain stock notions and habits, “ vainly imagining
that there is a virtue in following them staunchly, which makes up
for the mischief of following them mechanically.” lie wishes to
assist us to turn “ a stream of fresh and free thought ” upon our
theory of religious establishments, which appears to him to have
become a mere fetish, and upon our theological dogmas to which we
seem to be holding with a blind and superstitious fidelity. For him
self he is resolved to look at the Nonconformist Churches—their life,
their practices, their creed—with his own eyes, to see them “ as they
really are; ” and he has frankly told the world what he has dis
covered.
To Mr. Arnold the Evangelical Nonconformists arc the true heirs
and representatives of the Puritans. The Nonconformist Churches
are the Puritan Churches. He discusses the grounds on which our
theological and ecclesiastical ancestors separated from the National
Church, and the grounds on which the separation is perpetuated.
The theory which he has formed of us and of our history is definite
�542
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
and intelligible. I will give it as far as I can in his own felicitous
language. He believes that the main title on which Puritan
Churches rest their right of existing is the aim at setting forth
purely and integrally the “ three notable tenets of predestination,
original sin, and justification.” “ With historic churches like those
of England and Rome it is otherwise ; these doctrines may be in
them, may be part of their traditions, their theological stock ; but
certainly no one will say that either of these Churches was made
for the express purpose of upholding these three theological doctrines
jointly or severally.” But it was precisely for the sake of these
dogmas that the Puritan Churches were founded ; and now that the
dogmas—at least in the form in which the Puritan theologians
stated them—are no longer credible, “ Protestant Dissent has to
execute an entire change of front and to present us with a new
reason for existing.” It is admitted that the Evangelical party in
the Church of England holds the same scheme of doctrine as the
Puritans ; “ but the Evangelicals have not added to the first error
of holding this unsound body of opinions, the second error of
separating for them.” Nonconformist Churches are built on dogma ;
and to build on dogma is to build on sand. The Church exists for
the culture of perfection, and rests on “ the foundation of God, which
standeth sure, having this seal—Let every one that nameth the name
of Christ depart from iniquity.”
This is Mr. Arnold’s account of the Nonconformists. That to most
Nonconformists it has all the novelty of a discovery, that we never
had the slightest suspicion that we and our Churches exist simply
for the purpose of upholding the doctrines of predestination, original
sin, and justification by faith, will be to him no proof that his theory
is unsound. He thinks that he understands us better than we
understand ourselves, and will ask us for some account of ourselves
and of our ecclesiastical position which shall be truer than his own
to history and to fact. Claiming no authority to speak for any one
but myself, I will attempt to satisfy him. I think it can be shown
that he has altogether missed the true “ idea ” of Puritanism; that
he has misread our history ; and that his capital charge against us—
that of separating for opinions—rests either upon a misapprehension
of facts, or upon a principle destructive of all morality.
I shall have something to say further on about Mr. Arnold’s new
explanation of the controversy between Puritanism and the Church
of England—Mr. Arnold’s history is, if anything, more original
than his philosophy—but it may be well to consider at starting the
“ error ” by which we are discriminated from the Evangelicals of the
English Church. They remain in the Establishment; this is their
virtue. We have left it; this is our offence. But our only reason
�MR. ARNOLD AND' THE NONCONFORMISTS. 543
for leaving it was that we could not remain in it honestly. Are we
to be blamed for this ? There were Nonconformists before the Act
of Uniformity, but modern Nonconformity dates from St. Bartho
lomew’s Day, 1662. It is notorious that the “ Two Thousand ” did
not secede from the National Establishment; they were “ejected”
from it. Their Calvinism was not more rigid than that of the men
who drew up the Articles. Nor were they very zealous for any par
ticular form of ecclesiastical polity. The majority of them had been
Presbyterians ; they were willing to accept Episcopalianism; most
of them soon became, in practice if not in theory, Independents.
They had no desire, as Mr. Arnold suggests, to invent new organiza
tions for enforcing more purely and thoroughly any schemes of
theological doctrine. What they wanted was to remain where they
were, and to continue to minister to the congregations they loved ;
but they were resolved not to lie either to man or God, and it was
this resolution which forced them to a separation. They did not
believe that every baptized child is regenerated of the Holy Ghost,
and therefore they refused to say over every child they baptized,
“We yield Thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath
pleased Thee to regenerate this infant with Thy Holy Spirit, to
receive him for Thine own child by adoption, and to incorporate
him into Thy holy Church.” They interpreted the service for the
Visitation of the Sick as compelling them to address to the impeni
tent as well as the penitent the words, “ I absolve thee from all thy
sins ; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost; ” they refused to say such words as these to men whose sins,
as they feared, God had not pardoned; and they doubted whether
such authority as these words imply had been entrusted by Christ
to His ministers. They believed that there are some men who at
death pass into outer darkness, and suffer eternal destruction ; and
when they were asked to say at the mouth of every grave, “ For
asmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to
take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed,” they
answered that it was impossible for them to say this honestly. Nor
could they truthfully declare “ their unfeigned assent and consent to
all and everything contained and prescribed in and by the book
intituled the Book of Common Prayer.”
The modern Evangelicals, who are favourably contrasted by Mr.
Arnold with the Nonconformists, hold that same body of opinions—
sound or unsound—which seemed to the ejected, and which seems to
us, inconsistent with the services of the Prayer-Book. In this, the
“ first error,” of which we are guilty, they have their full share; in
the “ second error,” of refusing to use the services, we standalone. I
do not mean to censure Evangelicals for using the formularies which
vol. xiv.
o o
�544
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
appear to us inconsistent with the creed which they and we hold in
common. I am quite sure that vast numbers of them have discovered
some subtle method, satisfactory to themselves, of reconciling their
formularies and their faith. But arc our fathers to be very severely
blamed for not being equally subtle—for not seeing how they could
honestly thank God for the spiritual regeneration of all baptized
infants, though they believed that all baptized infants were not
spiritually regenerate ? Was it a crime to suffer the loss of home
and income, and honourable place and great opportunities for doing
the work for which they most cared, rather than thank God for the
eternal salvation of people who, as they feared, might be eternally
lost ? It seems to me that the principle which, Mr. Arnold tells us,
lies at the foundation of the National Church, Let every one that
nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity, lies at the foundation
of Nonconformity.
Mr. Arnold admits that separation from a Church “ on plain points
of morals ” is right and reasonable, “ for these involve the very
essence of the Christian Gospel; ” but he does not appear to think
that it would be immoral for Dr. Cumming to celebrate the service of
the mass, or for Mr. Spurgeon to baptize infants, or for Mr. Martineau
to profess his unfeigned assent and consent to the Athanasiau Creed.
For the true elucidation and final solution of questions about the
Beal Presence, about Baptism, about the Trinity, he argues that
“ time and favourable conditions are necessary,” and no such condi
tions have as yet been fulfilled since the apostolic age. The con
troversy between the Nominalists and the Bcalists has not yet been
determined; and since that controversy has very much to do with
the doctrine of Transubstantiation, the Pope is precipitate in insist
ing on the adoration of the Host. But if Dr. Cumming, with all his
present convictions, had happened to have been born in the Church
of Borne, he would be just as precipitate in refusing to adore ; it
would be his duty to remain in the Church, and so to leave “the
way least closed to the admission of true developments of speculative
thought when the time is come for them; ” for the Church does not
rest on opinions, and “ the foundation of God standeth sure, having
this seal—Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from
iniquity.”
Mr. Spurgeon may believe that it is a lie to say that every
baptized infant is regenerate. lie may believe that to baptize
infants at all is contrary to the will of Christ, and to the practice of
the apostles ; but “ the happy moment ” for solving these questions
has not yet arrived ; the science of historical criticism is as yet
hardly constituted, and none of us can be quite sure what the will
of Christ was on such a matter as this, or about any of the
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 545
practices of the apostolic Church. Mr. Spurgeon’s opinions, there
fore, are no “ valid reason for breaking unity; ” he ought to use
the baptismal service as it stands, and to remember that “ the founda
tion of God standeth sure, having this seal—'Let every one that
nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”
The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere expressly taught
in Holy Scripture ; it is a development of what is revealed concern
ing God in our sacred books; it is, moreover, a philosophical de
velopment, and therefore “ of a kind which the Church has never
yet had the conditions for making adequately.” This may seem to
Mr. Martineau a very valid reason for not accepting Athanasianism ;
but to Mr. Arnold it seems a reason for not rejecting Athanasianism,
and he would, therefore, if I understand him aright, recommend Mr.
Martineau not to remain “ shut up in sectarian ideas ” of his own,
but to return to the National Church, join in the worship of Christ
as God—because practice, not doctrine, is of the essence of the Gospel,
and “ the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal—
every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”
It is only just to Mr. Arnold to say that he has expressly told us
that “ the object of this essay is not religious edification.”
Perhaps Mr. Arnold might reply that all that he means by his
theory of development is, that as yet no man can be quite sure that
he has discovered the very truth of God, and that therefore Churches
should be very careful of imposing creeds and enforcing the use of
doctrinal formularies. But if this is his meaning, his homily should
be addressed to the Church of England, not to the Nonconformists.
Its “ first error ” was in holding with presumptuous confidence the
absolute truth of the dogmas contained in its services ; its “ second
error ” was in resolving that the Puritans should either use the
services or leave the Church.
But may not Mr. Arnold be right after all in his main thesis ?
Though the Nonconformists came out of the Church in 1662 simply
because they could not remain there and yet remain on “ the
foundation of God, which standeth sure, having this seal—Let
every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity,” the
“ejectment” may have only liberated an impulse which the whole
some influence and discipline of the Establishment had repressed.
From the first, the true instinct of Puritanism may have been
to separate for the sake of the “ three notable tenets.” Its cha
racteristic spirit—so it may be argued—could find adequate
expression only in Churches resting on a basis of dogma, instead of
a basis of Christian morals. That the Puritans were forced into
Nonconformity by the rigid imposition of formularies which they
could not use honestly, was an accident; for the free development of
o02
�546
THE CONTEMPORARY RE VIE IV.
Puritanism, separate Churches, founded not for the culture of Chris
tian perfection, but for the maintenance of the doctrines of election,
original sin, and justification by faith, were a necessity. To Mr.
Arnold, at least, it appears that modern Nonconformity can give no
better or more rational explanation of its existence.
There is some excuse for his error ; though the excuse should avail
him less than any other man. Nonconformists themselves have often
declared that it is their special function to maintain the true theology
of the Reformation. Such statements have been sufficiently common
both in popular meetings and in ecclesiastical assemblies. But if the
speakers had been pressed for an explanation, very few of them
would have admitted that their Churches had no surer, deeper
foundation than the Westminster Confession. They never meant
that their Churches were mere theological schools. Or even if some
Nonconformists have honestly believed that Calvinistic dogma con
stitutes part, at least, of the very foundation of a Nonconformist
Church, Mr. Arnold had no right to believe it on their bare autho
rity. He is no Philistine, and he ought to maintain “ a watchful
jealousy ” against the mistakes into which it is so natural for Philis
tines to be betrayed. Is it not our great peril—the very peril to
deliver us from which he has been raised up—that we are always
forgetting the difference between the mere machinery of religious
life and its inner spirit and power ? Should he not, therefore-, have
received with great suspicion any account that we may have given of
ourselves ? It was more likely to be wrong than right. When
orators and controversialists exulted in the unswerving loyalty of the
Independents and Baptists to the Calvinistic creed, ought he not to
have said to himself, “ Perhaps these men are wrong after all, and
the true ‘idea’ of Nonconformity, and of the Puritanism from
which it sprung, may be something very different from what they
suppose ? ” Neither individual men, nor nations, nor Churches, are
always distinctly conscious of the true significance and value of their
position and history. “ We know not ” what we are, any better than
“ what we shall be.” It is only as the characteristic life and princi
ples of any spiritual movement are manifested under a great variety
of conditions, and in a long succession of prosperous and disastrous
circumstances, that any trustworthy theory of it becomes possible.
Looking back, then, upon the last three centuries of English eccle
siastical history, what is it that constitutes the unity, originality, and
powei’ of that great movement which Mr. Arnold has tried to
interpret ?
It is an historical blunder to suppose that the characteristic element
of Puritanism has been any exceptional zeal for Calvinistic doctrine.
Goodwin, the illustrious Arminian of the Commonwealth, was as
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 547
good a Puritan every whit as John Owen. In Elizabeth’s reign
Calvinistic doctrine was dominant in the English Church, but the
Puritans were subjected to pains and penalties. Whitgift, their
chief enemy, approved the Lambeth Articles, in which the Calvinistic
theology is expressed in its most offensive form. With a fine and
true instinct, Mr. Arnold recognises the old Puritan spirit in the
various communities of Methodists, who have always denounced the
Calvinistic dogmas as a blasphemous libel on the character of God.
The Methodists are Puritans, he says, because of their excessive zeal
for the doctrine of justification by faith. But this is the explana
tion of a mere Philistine, who mistakes “machinery” for “ideas;”
and it is an explanation with which a moderately enlightened Philis
tine would not be quite satisfied. For surely the antagonism between
Methodism and Calvinism on such capital doctrines as predestination,
a limited atonement, and the perseverance of the saints, more than
annuls what at first sight appears to be a merely accidental agree
ment on the doctrine of justification by faith.
Puritanism can hardly have its roots in any theological creed, for
there have been Arminian Puritans and Calvinistic Puritans; the
Puritans have been persecuted by Arminian Conformists, and they
have been persecuted by Calvinistic Conformists; and on the con
troversy between Arminians and Calvinists, the living representatives
of Puritanism arc widely divided. The only doctrine not included
in the confessions of all the great churches of Christendom in which
the Puritans seem to have agreed—and they have not been perfectly
agreed in that—is the doctrine of justification by faith.
I believe that the ultimate secret of Puritanism is to be found in the
intensity and vividness with which it has apprehended the immediate
relationship of the regenerate soul to God. To the ideal Puritan,
God is “nigh at hand.” He has seen God, and is wholly possessed
with a sense of the divine greatness, holiness, and love. For him old
things have already passed away, and all things have become new.
His salvation is not remote ; he is already reconciled to God, and his
citizenship is in heaven. He is akin to God through a supernatural
birth, and is a partaker of the divine nature. All interference between
himself and God he resents. He can speak to God face to face.
This consciousness of the intimacy of the soul’s present relationship
to God underlies the Calvinistic Puritanism which destroyed the
Church of England in the seventeenth century, and the Arminian
Puritanism which was expelled from it in the eighteenth. It is
this which explains that zeal for the Calvinistic discipline which
divided so sharply the Elizabethan Puritans from the Conformists,
though both were equally zealous for Calvinistic doctrine; and it is
this which is the spiritual root of Independency. The true function
�548
THE CONTEMPORARY RE VIE W.
of Puritanism in the religious life of this country has not been to set
forth “certain Protestant doctrines
but to assert and vindicate the
reality, the greatness, the completeness of the redemption that is in
Christ, and the nearness of God to the soul of man.
It is not surprising that Mr. Arnold should have misinterpreted
English Puritanism, for he has failed to apprehend the true spirit
and scope of a still greater movement. He appears to suppose that
the only ground and justification of what it is becoming fashionable
to describe as the Protestant schism of the sixteenth century, lay
in the moral corruptions of the Church of Pome. Separation for
opinions on points of discipline and dogma would in his judgment
have been neither right nor reasonable. “ The sale of indulgences,
if deliberately instituted and persisted in by the main body of the
Church, afforded a valid reason for breaking unity; the doctrine of
purgatory, or of the real presence, did not.” But though Luther’s
moral indignation at the sale of indulgences was the accidental cause
of his ultimate breach with Pome, the supreme force of Protestantism
was spiritual, not ethical. Eor centuries the religious life of Christen
dom had been stifled and crushed. A vast mechanical system of
“ means of grace ” came between the soul and the Fountain of mercy,
life, and blessedness. Of immediate access to God men were taught
to despair. Between Him and them there were sacraments, priests,
and a constantly increasing crowd of interceding saints. The free
grace of God had been so obscured by the portentous dogmas which
the Church had developed from the simpler faith of earlier times,
that salvation could never be anything more than a probability. The
penitent could never be sure that he had finally done with his sin.
Penances in this world were to be followed by purgatory in the next.
Nor was it possible to learn the thought and will of God at first
hand. It was not to the individual soul that God spoke; no man
could hear the divine voice for himself. The teaching of Christ and
the supernatural illumination of the Holy Ghost, belonged to “ the
Church,” and men were told to listen not to God, but to councils and
popes.
Luther broke through all this. He declared that God was near
enough to man to be spoken to without the intervention of saint or
priest. Sacraments had their significance and worth ; but the grace
of God came directly into the soul of man. Men were not to depend
on external rites for the pardon of sins and for the nourishment
and strength of the supernatural life. From God’s own lips every
man who desired absolution might have it, and have it at once.
Between the penitent child and his Father no elder brother, be
he saint or angel, can be permitted to come. No intercession is
needed to move the Father’s heart to mercy—no good work to
placate His anger. Let the prodigal who has wasted his substance
�MR. ARNOLD AND TILE NONCONFORMISTS. 549
in riotous living come home, and while he is yet afar off the Father
will see him, and go out to meet him, and at once the best robe shall
be put upon him, and there shall be a ring for his finger and shoes
for his feet, and the house shall be filled with music and dancing.
Do you want salvation ?—this was the gospel which Luther preached
to Europe,—you may learn from God Himself how you are to be
saved. The parables of Christ, and the Epistles of St. Paul, and the
supernatural teaching of the Holy Ghost are within every man’s
reach. God is nigh at hand, and not afar off. Every man may speak
to God for himself. God’s mercy is so large and free, that all He
asks for from those who desire to be saved is that they should have
the courage and the faith to leave themselves in His hands.
The doctrine of justification by faith, as Luther preached it, was
no mere dogma. It was the assertion of a most vital spiritual fact.
To receive it was to pass out of bondage into freedom, and out of
darkness into light. * Its power lay in this, that it represented God
as appealing directly to every human heart, and appealing to it for
absolute trust. At a stroke it swept away priests, and popes, and
councils, and saints, and penances, and purgatory, and left the soul
alone with God. The terms in which the doctrine was defined may
be very open to criticism. The human analogies by which it was
illustrated may be very imperfect. The theological method of those
days, common to the lieformers and to the Romanists, may have led
theologians to draw out from the doctrine technical inferences which
the moral sense vehemently rejects, and which the spirit pronounces
absolutely unreal. But the world knew what Luther and the
Reformers meant; Rome knew what they meant; and the real con
troversy was not about the form in which the fact was to be stated,
but about the fact itself. I am very willing to leave Luther’s
“ machinery ” to Mr. Arnold’s criticism, if he thinks it worth his
while to criticise it; but Luther’s “ idea ” seems to me to have been
even a more valid ground of separation from Rome, when Rome
rejected it, than Luther’s moral wrath at the sale of indulgences. To
make it possible once more for the human soul to stand face to face
with God was a work worth doing at any cost. It is the very
greatest work that any religious reformer can attempt. To accom
plish it, is indeed the true aim of every religious reformation.
When the Reformers began to construct a scientific expression of
the vital spiritual truths which had been committed to their trust, it
was almost inevitable that they should revert to the doctrines of
Augustine.
The dogmatic system, which appeared to them to
obscure the vision of God, was but another form of Pelagianism.
The spirit of Pelagianism, as well as its creed, had taken possession
of the Church. The work of the great African doctor had to be done
over again. Between themselves and him, the Reformers felt that
�550
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
there was the most perfect spiritual sympathy. His inspiration was
essentially the same as their own. The mystical theology might
have afforded a still more perfect expression than Augustinianism of
the transcendent facts which they desired to vindicate ; and a few of
the less conspicuous Reformers became Mystics; but mysticism does
not take kindly to the rigid definitions and the severe logical method
which the scholastic training and habits of the Reformers compelled
them to introduce into their theological system. The Augustinian
theory was their only choice; and it was no slight controversial
al vantage for them to be able to appeal to the authority of one of the
most illustrious of the fathers.
The Puritans strove hard, according1 to the light which was in
them, to complete the work of the Reformation. They accepted
the Calvinistic theology, and appear to have found in it a com
plete and satisfactory interpretation of the most appalling and the
most glorious experiences and discoveries of the spiritual life. To
many of us, in these days, Calvinism may be incredible. It
seems very easy to demnstrate that its theory of moral inability
annihilates moral obligation ; that its dogma of imputed righteous
ness renders the solemnities of the final judgment an unmeaning
pageant; that its confident assertion of the perseverance of the
saints must take off the edge of the most urgent exhortations
contained in the New Testament to spiritual vigilance and the
repression of the lusts of the flesh; that its eternal decrees of
election and reprobation must paralyze all human energy by re
ducing human effort to absolute insignificance ; and that its unquali
fied and daring representations of the divine sovereignty, and its
reference of all good and evil to the determination of the divine will,
are destructive of the moral character of God, and render it irrational
and impossible to claim for Him the love, and trust, and reverence
of the human heart on the ground of His moral perfections. Cal
vinism—so most of us are accustomed to think—cuts away the roots
both of morality and religion. And yet the Calvinistic Puritans,
with their dogma of moral inability, were stern and vehement in
their denunciation of sin ; with their doctrine of imputed righteous
ness and the perseverance of the saints, they wrought out their own
salvation with fear and trembling; with a theory of the universe
which represents the whole course of events as predetermined by the
eternal counsels of God, they were men of an iron will and of
inexhaustible energy; and with a conception of God which sur
rounds His moral character with impenetrable mystery and a
darkness that might be felt, they were not only filled with awe when
they confessed His majesty and greatness, but they loved Him with a
passionate affection.
The paradox is not inexplicable. Calvinism may be approached
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 551
from two precisely opposite points. It is the theological form of
the philosophy of necessity. Let a man come to the conclusion that
the will is determined by the forces which act upon it, and that
every volition is the result of the sum of the motives which preceded
it, and the logical result of his theory will be the denial of the
reality of moral distinctions and a blind surrender of human destiny
to the irresistible laws by which its development is controlled. If
he adopts any form of Christian theology, he will call these laws
the divine decrees, and will imagine that he is a Calvinist.
But the Puritans did not arrive at the Calvinistic theology
through the philosophy of necessity. They began, not with .Man
but with God. Their philosophy was an accident; they learnt it
from others ; but their theology was their own. With their clear
and immediate vision of God, their own nature and the nature of
every man appeared to them altogether corrupt, a thing to be
despised, and loathed, and cursed. Remembering their own un
regenerate days, when their “ carnal mind ” was “ enmity against
God,” the very virtues and good "works of the unregenerate seemed
to them deserving of no praise; “ yea, rather,” they said, “ for
that they are not done as God hath commanded them to be done,
we doubt not but that they have the nature of sin.” That a nature
so infected with evil could have come in its present condition imme
diately from the hands of God they did not believe, and they ex
plained “the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that
naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam ” by ascribing it to
Adam’s sin. Through that offence “ man is very far gone from
original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so
that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit, and therefore in
every person born into this world it [the infection of our nature—Original Sin] deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.”
To the
philosophy of necessity the utter inability of man to escape from the
law of his nature is a reason for denying human responsibility; but
to Calvinism, filled with the vision of God, man’s inability to keep
God’s commandments is the supreme crime. The moral instincts
quickened into intense activity by the immediate presence of the
personal God, refuse to be suppressed for the sake of preserving the
coherence of a theological system. They insist on asserting human
responsibility and guilt. The logical faculty, working under the
control of a method in which moral ideas can find no legitimate
place, is forced to yield, and the result is hideous confusion.
It is a common saying that all men are Calvinists when they pray.
In the presence of God the regenerate soul claims nothing for itself.
His infinite mercy pardoned its sin. Its perverse reluctance to
receive salvation was overborne by his grace. The supernatural
life is his free gift. It confidently relies on Ills compassions which
�552
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
fail not and Idis mercy which endureth for ever, to preserve it from
apostasy. Calvinism, with its noble incapacity to escape from the
glory of the Divine presence, endeavoured to translate these intuitions
of the soul into the language and forms of a mechanical philosophy.
The doctrines of election, of irresistible grace, and of the perse
verance of the saints, are but the best logical expressions it could
find for the deepest truth of all philosophy and of all religion. Our
highest life is a life in God. It is not we who live, but God that •
“liveth in us.” Some day we may reach that “ happy moment” in
the intellectual history of the human race in which all the conditions
will be fulfilled for the adequate scientific expression of this truth. But
it is the great merit of Calvinism that however ignominiously it may
have failed in a scientific task reserved for other centuries, it strove
with sublime faith and magnificent courage and energy to assert the
truth itself; and in asserting it Calvinism gave a fresh inspiration to
the religious life of Europe.
Mr. Arnold says that “ what essentially characterizes a religious
teacher, and gives him his permanent worth and vitality, is, after
all, just the scientific value of his teaching, its correspondence with
important facts, and the light it throws upon them.” Whether this
proposition is true or false depends upon what he means by it. Does
“ the scientific value ” of any religious teaching depend upon its
11 machinery ” or upon its “ ideas,” upon its intuitions of divine and
spiritual truths, or upon its expression of them ? The Calvinism of
the Westminster Assembly, with its “ machinery of covenants, con
ditions, bargains, and parties—contractors,” was trying to make
men feel and believe that God is “ nigh at hand ;” it succeeded in
making men feel and believe it. Notwithstanding its clumsy formu
laries, with which alone a shallow scientific and philosophical criticism
occupies itself, Calvinism brought men face to face with God Himself,
taught them to find their life in Him, to trust with immovable con
fidence in his mercy, and to suffer gladly the loss of all things rather
than wilfully break any of his commandments. The formularies
were powerless to destroy the supernatural virtue of the Truth
which lay behind them. It was for the Truth that the Puritans
cared; the formularies were dear only for its sake.
I have already said that Mr. Arnold has the penetration to recog
nise the essential unity of Methodism and Calvinistic Puritanism,
notwithstanding striking divergencies of theological opinion. In
his vindication of that unity, he touches for a moment the ultimate
principle of the whole Puritan movement. He says that:—
“ The foremost place, which in the Calvinistic scheme belongs to the
doctrine of predestination, belongs in the Methodist scheme to the doctrine
of justification by faith. . . . This doctrine, like the Calvinist doctrine of
predestination, involves a whole history of God’s proceedings, and gives also,
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS.
553
first, and almost sole place to what God does with disregard to what man does.
It has thus an essential affinity with Calvinism. . . . The word’ solifidian
points precisely to that which is common to both Calvinism and Methodism,
and which has made both these halves of Puritanism so popular—their sen
sational side, as it may be called, their laying all stress on what God wondrously gives and works for its, not on what we bring or do for ourselves.”
It is hardly accurate, I think, to say that justification by faith
occupies a position in Methodist theology quite analogous to that
which is occupied by predestination in the theology of Calvinism.
The theological characteristic of Methodism is, perhaps, the emphasis
with which it has insisted on the necessity and the instantaneousness
of the new birth. But in the present discussion this question is
unimportant. Mr. Arnold might, however, have given us a very diffe
rent account of Puritanism had he followed the clue on which he laid
his hand when he tried to discover the hidden spirit which makes the
A rm ini an Methodist one with the Calvinistic Puritan. His essay
would have taken altogether a different form had he seen clearly
that the great and constant endeavour of Puritanism, has been to
proclaim and exalt “ what God wondrously gives and works for us,”
disregarding “ what we bring or do for ourselves.” This would have
been a spiritual, not a mechanical interpretation of the movement,
and it might have led him to the conclusion that the essential and
permanent element of Puritanism is not zeal for the “ three notable
tenets,” nor a blind attachment to any system of church order, but
a vivid and intense sense of God’s nearness to the regenerate soul.
The theology of Methodism, like the theology of the Calvinistic
Puritans, begins not with Man, not with the Church, but with God.
Like Calvinism, its basis is theological, not philosophical. It affirms
the freedom of the will; but this is an accident, or holds at most a
merely secondary position. Had Methodism commenced with the
freedom of the will, it is doubtful whether it would have reached its
great doctrines of the new birth, assurance, and sinless perfection.
It began with God; but Wesley was happily free to accept some
other conception of God’s ways to man than that which had been
forced upon Augustine and Calvin. Wesley’s religious life had
received a powerful stimulus from the mysticism of William Law
and of the Moravians. The triumph of Calvinism at the Synod of
Dort, early in the seventeenth century, had proved fatal to its power
over Continental Protestantism, and his intercourse with Continental
Protestants had very much to do with the development of his
theological system. In England itself, Calvinism was sinking
rapidly into decay even among the spiritual descendants of the
Puritans.
It was not the Anglican divines alone who had
contributed to its fall. John Goodwin’s “ Redemption Redeemed ”
had not been written in vain. It had become possible for a
man whose vision of God was as clear and as immediate as that
�554
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
of any of the Puritans, to adopt an Arminian theology. But
Wesley’s Arminianism was penetrated and transfigured by the
Puritan spirit. He can never claim enough for God. With him,
as with the Puritans, God is all. He concedes that man has power
to resist Divine grace, but only because the concession is necessary
to explain why it is that the infinite love, of which he has so bright
and rapturous a vision, does not rescue all men from sin and destruc
tion. But when grace has once subdued the stubborn soul to peni
tence and inspired trust—for with Wesley, as with Calvin, it is God
who seeks man, not man who seeks God—its triumphs are illimitable.
Between the soul and God there is at once the most intimate union.
It is made partaker of the Divine nature, and it is not wonderful if
the sudden influx of a supernatural life floods the soul with unutter
able joy. The change is so great, that for its reality to remain doubtful
appeared to Wesley almost impossible. Immediate inspiration is
among the prerogatives of the regenerate, and they receive the
witness of the Spirit that they are the sons of God. All sin may
not be expelled from the soul in the moment of regeneration, but
to deny the possibility of perfect sanctification would be to dis
honour the Holy Ghost. The regenerate man may, even in this
world, be filled with God, and be perfectly restored to the image of
God’s holiness. Methodism takes little account of what man does
for his own redemption. Like Calvinistic Puritanism it has seen
God, and all its hope is in Him.
That the passion of the Puritans for plainness and severe simplicity
in the external forms of worship, and for “ the Geneva discipline,”
had its deepest root in the same spiritual experiences as their
theology, appears to me incontestable. No doubt they were in
tolerant of everything that seemed to them to belong to Romanism.
They dreaded altars because they dreaded the mass. They feared
that priestly vestments might perpetuate the infection of the priestly
spirit. Diocesan bishops might grow into patriarchs and popes.
They fought against what roused their suspicion and their hostility
in the English Church, with the same weapons with which Luther
and Calvin, and the English Reformers, had fought against Rome.
They appealed to the Scriptures. Texts were quoted with uncritical
recklessness ; but on neither side was there any intelligent apprecia
tion of the value and limits of Scriptural precedents or precepts in
a controversy like this. Passages from Leviticus and from the books
of Kings, and the boldest images of the Apocalypse, were tossed
about in astonishing profusion, and with inexhaustible energy.
Whatever came to hand was good enough to fling at an opponent.
Hooker appears to stand almost alone in his manner of conducting
the argument.
But the struggle had a moral and spiritual meaning. It was not
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 555
to be decided by texts. The policy of the Conformists was controlled
by the exigences of their position, by their solicitude to make sure
of the ground which the Reformation had already won, by their
sao-acious estimate of the strong hold which the ancient forms still
retained on the imagination and the sentiment of the great masses
of the people. The spell of the ancient worship and stately organiza
tion of the Church was still unbroken. Their own hearts confessed
its power. The practical task which they had in hand—the task of
maintaining and defending Protestant doctrine, and of subduing
to something like order the religious confusion and irregularities
caused by the violent separation from Rome—was enough for their
strength. They did not wish to provoke unnecessary difficulties,
and they therefore endeavoured to avoid all unnecessary changes in
the ceremonial of the Church and its government. They determined
to accept and retain whatever was not flagrantly inconsistent with
the Protestant faith. The Puritans were men of a different tem
perament. They were disposed to treat very lightly the suggestions
of expediency and the common infirmities of human nature. For
them, what they believed to be the divine voice had absolute
authority, and in the organization of the Church, it was their great
endeavour “ to make reason and the will of God prevail.” Conces
sions to unreasoning superstition they could not tolerate ; and they
believed that mere human inventions had no place in a divine
kingdom. The Church was the very palace and temple of God ; He
had founded it; He dwelt in it; it was treason to Him to allow any
authority but His to determine the most insignificant details of its
polity or worship. In the Church, the Puritan wanted to stand face
to face with God. The instinct which impelled him to acknowledge
God always and everywhere, his abiding conviction that between
the regenerate soul and God nothing should be permitted to inter
fere, made him impatient of rites which appeared to him to corrupt
the simplicity of spiritual worship, and of ecclesiastical authorities
which could claim no direct divine sanction. No doubt he was
blindly prejudiced against the most innocent ceremonies and symbols
which perpetuated the remembrance of the days of darkness. No
doubt he was the victim of the Protestant habit of appealing to the
letter of Scripture for the decision of all controversies. But the
instinct which governed the Puritan movement for a reformation of
discipline and worship, and which revealed itself, after the manner
of the age, in vehement and violent hostility against diocesan
episcopacy, altars, vestments, the use of the ring in marriage, and
the sign of the cross in baptism, painted windows, and other legacies
from the old Romish days, was a real spiritual force; and was
striving, often perhaps very blindly, to translate into a visible
and organic form, a great spiritual “ idea.”
�556
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
What this “ idea ” was may be best understood by considering the
Church government and the modes of religious worship of the
Independents, among whom Mr. Arnold would probably admit that
the characteristic spirit of Puritanism has received its most complete
expression.
The Independents believe that a man’s conscious surrender of
himself to Christ is an act of transcendent significance. It is
the critical moment in the history of the soul. It secures the gift of
that supernatural life which the Lord Jesus Christ came to confer
upon the human race, and as soon as this life is received a man
passes into the kingdom of God. His moral habits may be faulty.
His knowledge of spiritual truth may be very elementary. There
may be little fervour or intensity in his spiritual affections. But the
difference between himself and other men is infinite. He has received
the Holy Ghost, and has become partaker of the divine nature.
For the development and perfect realization of this life it is neces
sary, or if not unconditionally necessary, it is something more than
expedient—that there should be free fellowship between himself and
those who have received the same supernatural gift. He and they
have a common life. He is one not only with God but with them.
In the absence of any mechanical bonds of union, and of all external
signs of mutual recognition, and of all acts of common worship, the
union is real and indestructible. But it requires expression, if the
spiritual life is to attain all its possibilities of vigour and joy. God
is hardly less solicitous to restore us to each other than to restore us
to Himself, and He has made the nobler and more gracious forms of
spiritual experience and perfection almost as dependent upon the
influences and gifts which reach us through our brethren as upon
those which come directly from his own hand. Churches exist
by virtue of this law.
The idea of a Church requires that it should be constituted of re
generate men, for the purpose of united worship and free spiritual com
munion. The true condition of membership is not profession of any
human creed, or of any rule of moral discipline, but possession of
supernatural life. When an Independent Church receives a man into
membership it acknowledges, therefore, his regeneration of God. It
has a right to ask him for nothing beyond the evidence which
ascertains the reality of this inward fact; it will imperil the realiza
tion of its “ idea ” if it is content with less. The right of excluding
from the society is inseparable from the right of admitting
into it.
A Church so constituted fulfils, according to the faith of the Inde
pendents, Christ’s conception of an assembly of His disciples gathered
in His name, and may therefore confidently rely on the promise that
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS.
557
He will be “ in the midst of them.” No recognition or assistance
from without is necessary for the validity of its ecclesiastical acts,
the efficacy of its sacraments, or the acceptableness of its worship. It
is enough that He, the Lord of the Church, is with His disciples, and
that they have received the Holy Ghost. As no society can exist
without officers, and as the supernatural gifts of the Spirit for the
instruction and edification of the Church are conferred on men
according to the divine will, the Church appoints to office those
who appear to be divinely qualified to fulfil the various functions and
ministries necessary to the development of its life. It finds such men
either among its own members or among the members of kindred
societies. That the right qf appointing a man to be its spiritual
teacher should vest in a patron, and be a marketable commodity, that
it should be the privilege of any Minister of State, appears too
monstrous to require discussion. The Church has the special presence
of Christ and the immediate inspiration of the Spirit; the interference
of any external and merely secular power is a violation of its prero
gatives, to be resisted at any peril.
On the same grounds Independency refuses to acknowledge the
authority of diocesan bishops and of Presbyterian synods and general
assemblies. The supernatural qualifications of ministers come direct
from the Holy Ghost, and may be recognised by those in whom the
Holy Ghost dwells. The intervention of Episcopal ordination, or of
synodical authority, as though it were necessary either to confer
ministerial gifts or to secure the Church from mistakes in ministerial
appointments, is rejected as being a direct or implicit denial of the
immediate intercourse between the Church and Christ, and of the
direct action of the Spirit. Independents arc in the habit of inviting
the ministers and members of neighbouring churches to be present at
the ordination of a minister, but their presence is not necessary to
make the ordination valid.
Churches in the same county associate for mutual counsel, and for
co-operation in various good works, but the “Association” has no
ecclesiastical authority. It cannot appoint or remove a minister, or
interfere in the internal discipline of any of the associated Churches.
The Congregational Union of England and Wales is equally power
less. It is an Assembly for the discussion of questions in which
Congregational Churches are interested ; but the utmost care has
been taken to prevent it from becoming a Court of Appeal. The
principle of the Independent polity is the characteristic principle of
Puritanism. Independency is an attempt to give form and expres
sion to a vivid sense of God’s nearness to every regenerate soul.
It is an obvious consequence of this principle that Independents
should repudiate the fancy that buildings erected for Public
�558
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
Worship have any peculiar sanctity. The revival during the last
thirty years of a taste for ecclesiastical architecture has affected the
style of their chapels; the old square “meeting-houses” are every
where disappearing; their new “ churches ’’—many of them, at
least — have spires and transepts and chancels and apses and
windows bright with angelsand gorgeous with saints; but it is a mis
take to suppose that there is any meaning in it all. There are some
Independents who find a sentimental gratification in trying to make
the buildings in which they worship as nearly like, as they can, the
venerable churches around which cluster the solemn and pathetic
associations of centuries ; there are some who have an honest love
and admiration for the beauty and grandeur of which Gothic is
capable; there are others who think they show their freedom
from prejudice against the Establishment, and their brotherly kind
ness for Episcopalians, by copying their architecture; there are
others, again, and these, perhaps, are the most numerous, who accept
Gothic because, as yet, architects seem to want either the courage or
the genius to erect a building that would be really suitable for Inde
pendent preaching and worship ; there are none, so far as I know,
who have renounced the old Puritan contempt for the consecration of
stone and mortar.
The hymns which are found in all Nonconformist Hymn Books, and
which are sung at the opening of all Nonconformist Chapels, hymns
in which chapels arc called “ Temples,” and are dedicated to God,
Ilis presence being solemnly invoked, and the building presented as
an offering to Himself, are never meant to be rigidly interpreted.
It is quite understood that the “machinery” of Judaism, of which
the hymn writers are thankful to avail themselves, is obsolete.
The true Independent conviction is as strong as ever, that God’s
presence is promised, not to consecrated places, but to consecrated
persons.
It is often alleged by Independents themselves that there is
nothing in their ecclesiastical principles to prevent them from using
a liturgy, the liturgy of the Church of England, or a liturgy com
posed by themselves, or compiled from the prayers of the saints of
all churches and all ages. This is true in a certain sense. But it
would be a departure from our traditions, and from the spirit of the
movement from which we have sprung. It belongs to the “idea”
of Independency that we arc as near to God to-day as were any of
the saints of former centuries. The Holy Ghost rests upon us
and “ helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should
pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession
for us, with groans which cannot be uttered.”
And if it is suggested that there may be a true and deep and
�MR. ARNOLD AND TILE NONCONFORMISTS. 559
inspired yearning for fellowship with God, and for all spiritual
blessings, where the “ gift,” which is necessary for expressing the
devotional life of others, is not conferred, the reply is obvious; the
“ gift ” may not be possessed by the head of every Christian house
hold, and this may be a reason for tolerating the use of a prayer
book in the family. But to admit the possibility of its not being
present in a Church—to despair of its recovery if it has been lost
—is a surrender of the Independent idea of the Church. “ Gifts ”
of teaching and “ gifts ” of prayer and intercession appear to be
necessary to a Church which claims to stand in the immediate
presence of God, and to be filled with the inspiration of the Holy
Ghost. That, as a rule, there will be more to appeal to refined
religious sentiment in a liturgy than in free prayer—that a liturgy is
likely to be more stately and impressive, is no argument to a true
Independent for a change in his mode of worship. When he prays
he- is thinking of God and speaking to God. His desire is to be
absorbed in that high intercourse. He regards with jealousy and
distrust whatever would invest worship with any charm for those
elements of our nature which are not purely spiritual. To care for
what men may think of the form in ■which the soul is expressing
its reverence for the majesty and holiness of God, and imploring
His mercy, appears an indignity to God himself. To try to give
delight to a cultivated taste while he ought to be struggling
for deliverance from sin and eternal destruction, would destroy
the simplicity and energy of the supreme act of the soul. It is no
concern of his whether men who are not as intent as himself upon
glory, honour, and immortality, are charmed or repelled.
I am not vindicating the traditional severity and plainness of the
religious services of the Independents—severity and plainness
which are rapidly disappearing—but trying to explain how it was
that they rejected the noble liturgy which had been enriched by
the penitence, the trust, the sorrow, and the gladness of the saints of
many ages and many lands. They were sure that the Spirit, who
had dwelt in the great doctors and martyrs of the Church, dwelt in
themselves. And if they were unable to confess their sin, invoke the
divine grace, and give thanks for the divine goodness in forms of
devotion which even the unregenerate might admire for their
solemnity and beauty, this was a matter which Puritans and Inde
pendents regarded with perfect indifference.
Those who charge Puritanism with caring more for the “machinery ”
of the religious life than for “ ideas,” misunderstand and misrepre
sent it. It rejected the theology of Home for Calvinism because in
Calvinism it found a truer and fuller expression of its great discovery,
vol. xiv.
p p
�560
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
that the strength and glory of man come from the immediate inspira
tion of God. It accepted the Arminianism of John Wesley because
Wesleyan Arminianism is a vindication, under other forms, of the
same vital spiritual truth. It was restless under the restraints of
Episcopacy, and the rites and ceremonies which Episcopacy had
inherited from the Mediaeval Church, because they seemed to inter
fere with the direct access of God to the soul. If it has found its
highest ecclesiastical expression in the polity of the Independents,
and if, disregarding all the suggestions of aestheticism and religious
“ sentiment,” it has created among us what maybe an unreasonable
preference for extreme simplicity and bareness in the circumstances
of public worship, its justification is to be found in this,—that in the
Independent polity there is less of mere “ machinery ” than in any
other form of church government—the Church stands almost un
clothed in the presence of God,—and in its services the soul is left to
the solitary aid of the Spirit, and is unsustained in its acts of prayer,
of thanksgiving, and of adoration by the resources of Art, or by the
more legitimate stimulus which it might derive from the devotion
and genius of the saints of other generations.
To investigate the validity of Mr. Arnold’s statement, that the
Puritans were guilty of attempting to narrow the doctrinal freedom
of the English Church, an attempt which the Church in the spirit of
charity resisted, would require more space than I can command in
this paper. “ Everybody knows,” he says, “how far Nonconformity
is due to the Church of England’s rigour in imposing an explicit de
claration of adherence to hei’ formularies. But only a few who have
searched out the matter know how far Nonconformity is due also to
the Church of England’s invincible reluctance to narrow her large
and loose formularies to the strict Calvinistic sense dear to Puritanism.”
That the Puritans were very zealous for Calvinistic doctrine is
admitted. That they were very likely to desire that these doctrines
should be maintained and defended by all those instruments of secular
and ecclesiastical authority in which the members of an Episcopal
and Established Church were, once at least, in danger of placing a
blind reliance, may be admitted too. But some stronger proof of
Mr. Arnold’s charge is necessary than that which is contained in his
essay.
“From the very commencement the Church, as regards doctrine,
was for opening; Puritanism was for narrowing.” This is the
charge. How is it sustained ?
We are reminded that though the Lambeth Articles of 1595
exhibit Calvinism as potent in the Church of England itself, and
among the bishops of the Church, Calvinism could not establish
itself there. The Lambeth Articles were recalled and suppressed,
�AIR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 561
and Archbishop Whitgift was threatened with the penalties of a
prwmunire for having published them. These Articles consisted of
nine propositions :—
(1) . God hath from eternity predestinated certain persons to life, and
hath reprobated certain persons unto death.
(2) . The moving or efficient cause of predestination unto life is not the
foresight of faith, or of perseverance, or of good works, or of anything that
is in the persons predestinated, but the alone will of God’s good pleasure.
(3) . The predestinate are a pre-determined and certain number, which
can neither be lessened nor increased.
(4) . Such as are not predestinated to salvation shall inevitably be con
demned on account of their sins.
(5) . The true, lively, and justifying faith, and the Spirit of God justifying,
is not extinguished, doth not utterly fail, doth not vanish away in the elect,
either finally or totally.
(6) . A true believer, that is, one endued with justifying faith, is certified,
by the full assurance of faith, that his sins are forgiven, and that he shall be
everlastingly saved by Christ.
(7) . Saving grace is not allowed, is not imparted, is not granted to all
men, by which they may be saved if they will.
(8) . No man is able to come to Christ unless it be given him, and unless
the Father draw him, and all men are not drawn by the Father that they
may come to His Son.
(9) . It is not in the will and power of every man to be saved.
But are the Puritans to be held responsible for this terrible
Calvinistic manifesto ? Was it the production of a knot of sour
and rigid fanatics, who, although they may accidentally have
found a refuge in the Church—for which, from the commencement of
its history, Mr. Arnold has claimed the credit of generous doctrinal
toleration—had no sympathy with her large and catholic spirit ?
The Lambeth Articles were drawn up by a Conference at Lambeth,
assembled by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and consisting of the
Bishop of London, the Bishop of Bangor, Tindal, the Dean of Ely,
Dr. Whitaker, the Queen’s Divinity Professor, and other learned
men from Cambridge. They were framed in opposition to the
teaching of William Barrett, a Fellow of Caius College, who had
preached against predestination, and who appears to have been
forced to make a public recantation.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift, as is well known, hated
Puritanism, and did his best to extirpate it. His severity inspired
Lord Burleigh with indignation. The “ oath ex officio,” which was
tendered by the Archbishop to such of the clergy as were suspected
of Puritanical tendencies, was described by the treasurer as “ so
curiously penned, so full of branches and circumstances, as he
thought the inquisitors of Spain used not so many questions to
comprehend and to trap their preys.” And yet Mr. Arnold pro
duces a series of doctrinal Articles drawn, up by Whitgift as proof
pp2
�562
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
that “ from the very commencement, as regards doctrine, the
Church was for opening, Puritanism was for narrowing.”
It is true that at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, when
Armimanism was beginning to find its way into the Church of
England, the Puritans proposed that the Lambeth Articles might
be inserted in the Book of Articles, and that the bishops resisted.
But if any value is to be at'ached to the imperfect reports which we
have of that Conference, the whole pressure of the Puritan demand
was for relaxation in the stringency of regulations touching rites
and ceremonies. The suggestion that the Thirty-nine Articles
should be “ explained in places obscure, and enlarged where some
things are defective and that “ the nine assertions orthodoxal . .
concluded upon at Lambeth ” should be added to them, appears to
have been made only to be dropped. However this may have been,
the worst that can be said about the Puritan demands at the Hamp
ton Court Conference is that the Puritans were guilty of forgetting
their old grudge against Whitgift, and of accepting the scheme of
their inveterate enemy for narrowing the doctrine of the Church.
The complaints of the Committee appointed by the House of Lords
in 1G41 amount to little more than this, that the Calvinistic doctrines
which the Articles of the Church were plainly intended to maintain
were being preached against by many of the clergy. Opinions were
held by Laud and his party which Whitgift would have punished
with the utmost severity. In condemning them the Puritan Com
mittee showed no greater zeal for “ the two cardinal doctrines of
predestination and justification by faith” than their enemies had
shown before them. The alterations in the Prayer-Book which the
Committee suggested would not have made the formularies more
Calvinistic, but only less Romish.*
* Cardwell gives the following summary of the changes which the Committee pro
posed, p. 240: —
“They advised that the Psalms, sentences, epistles, and Gospels should be printed
according to the new translation ; that fewer lessons should be taken from the Apocry
pha ; that the words ‘ with my body I thee worship,’ should be made more intelligible ;
that the immersion of the infant at the time of baptism should not be required in case
of extremity ; that some saints which they called legendaries should be excluded from
the calendar; that the ‘ Benedicite ’ should be omitted; that the words ‘ which only
workest great marvels,’ should be omitted; that ‘ deadly sins,’ as used in the Litany,
should be altered to ‘grievous sins;’ that the words ‘ sanctify the flood Jordan,’and
‘ in sure and certain hope of resurrection,' in the two forms of baptism and burial,
should be altered to, ‘ sanctify the element of water,’ and ‘ knowing assuredly that the
dead shall rise again.’ To these and other changes of a like nature they added the
following more difficult concessions :—‘ That the rubric with regard to vestments should
be altered; that a rubric be added to explain that the kneeling at the communion was
solely in reference to the prayer contained in the words, ‘ preserve thy body and soul: ’
that the cross in baptism should be explained or discontinued ; that the words in the form
of confirmation, declaring that infants baptized are undoubtedly saved, should be omitted ;
and that the form of absolution provided for the sick should be made declaratory instead
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 563
Mr. Arnold thinks, of course, that the Church has much to blame
herself for in the Act of Uniformity. “ Blame she deserves, and she
has had it plentifully ; but what has not been enough perceived is,
that really the conviction of her own moderation, openness, and lati
tude, as far as regards doctrine, seems to have filled her mind during
her dealings with the Puritans, and that her impatience with them
was in great measure impatience at seeing these so ill appreciated
by them.” His account of the Savoy Conference in 16G1 leaves the
impression on one’s mind that in his belief the Puritans left the
Church, not merely because other men insisted that they should use
formularies which they could not use honestly, but also because they
did not succeed in so narrowing the formularies that other men,
with an equal right to be in the Church with themselves, would be
unable to use them honestly ; that the struggle of Baxter and his
party was, therefore, not merely to obtain freedom for themselves, but
also to impose bondage on others. To sustain this original representa
tion of the transactions immediately preceding the ejectment, no better
proof is given than that the Puritans complained that “ the confes
sion is very defective, not clearly expressing original sin.” This is
surely very inadequate ground on which to rest so grave a charge.
The doctrine or the fact which the Puritans desired to recognise in
the confession may be true or false, but it was not the characteristic
tenet of a party. None of their enemies, so far as I know, denied
it; it was expressed in the Articles with all the vigour and decisive
ness which they could desire; and no man who signed the articles
could have objected on doctrinal grounds to Baxter’s proposal to
insert it in the confession. The real nature of the proposal would
have been explained had Mr. Arnold given the whole of the para
graph from the “ Exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer,”
in which it occurs, which reads thus, “ The confession is very defec
tive, not clearly expressing original sin, nor sufficiently enumerating
actual sins, with their aggravations, but consisting only of generals ;
whereas confession, being the exercise of repentance, ought to be more
particularT The same ground of exception is taken in a subsequent
paragraph against “ the whole body of the Common Prayer.” The
Puritans contended that “ it consisteth very much of mere generals,
as ‘ to have our prayers heard, to be kept from all evil, and from all
enemies, and all adversity, that we might do God’s will,’ without any
mention of the particulars in which these generals exist.”
of being authoritative.’ These concessions, surrendering by implication some of the
most solemn convictions of a great portion of the clergy, on the authority of the Church,
the nature of the two sacraments, and the sanctity of the priesthood, would meet with
the most strenuous opposition, and tend to increase the causes of discontent, instead of
abating them.”
�5^4
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
Towards the end of the Conference, Bishop Cosins offered a paper
drawn up by “ some considerable person,” and intended to lead to a
reconciliation. In their answer to the proposals contained in this
Eirenicon, Baxter and his friends made this statement:—“ Though
we find by your papers and conferences that in your own personal
doctrines there is something that we take to be against the Word of
God, and perceive that we understand not the doctrine of the Church
in all things alike; yet we find nothing contrary to the Word of
God in that which is indeed the doctrine of the Church, as it comprehendeth the matters of faith, distinct from matters of discipline,
ceremonies, and modes of worship.” From this it appears that to
the doctrine of the Church the Puritans made no objection. It is
remarkable that in many of the trust-deeds of early Presbyterian
chapels it is provided that the doctrine preached in them should be
in harmony with the doctrinal Articles of the Church of England ;
and in the “Heads of Agreement,” drawn up in 1691, as the basis
of a union between the Presbyterians and Independents, it is declared
to be sufficient if a Church acknowledges the divine origin of the
Scriptures, and accepts the doctrinal part of the Articles, or the
Westminster or Savoy Confessions.
It is possible that those “ who have searched out the matter ” may
be able to allege more substantial evidence of the contrast between
the catholic moderation of the Church and the narrowness of
Puritanism than Mr. Arnold has thought it worth while to adduce ;
but to persons like myself, who have not made it their special business
to study the unfamiliar aspects of the Puritan controversy, Mr. Arnold’s
discovery appears to be very inconsistent with facts. Neither Puritans
nor Conformists—this has been the general impression—could claim
much credit for their generous treatment of theological adversaries.
There may seem to be better ground for Mr. Arnold’s allegation
that the free development of religious thought is possible only in a
National Establishment, and that separatist Churches are by their
very position rigidly bound to the theological system and formularies
of their founders.
But it should never be forgotten that the Independents have from
the first protested against the imposition of creeds and articles of
faith, and that one of the very earliest and noblest of them declared,
in words which are familiar to all English Congregationalists, the
inalienable right and duty of the Church of every age to listen for
itself to the Divine teaching. John Robinson, preaching in 1620 to
the Independents who were about to leave Delft Ilavcn to found the
Puritan colonies of New England, “charged us,” writes Winslow,
“ to follow him no farther than he followed Christ; and if God
should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of His, to be
�J77?. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 565
as ready to receive it as ever we were to receive any truth by his
ministry: for he was very confident that the Lord had more truth and
tight yet to break forth out of His holy Word............. Here also he put
us in mind of our Church covenant, at least that part of it whereby
we promise and covenant with God and one with another to receive
whatsoever light or truth shall be made known to us from His written
Word; but, withal, exhorted us to take heed what we received for
truth, and well to examine and compare it and weigh it with other
scriptures of truth before we received it. For, saith he, it is not
possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick
anti-Christian darkness, and that full perfection of knowledge should
break forth at once.” John Robinson was not alone in his assertion
of the principle of “ development,” and his repudiation of all human
authority that might thrust itself between the soul and the Fountain
of all Truth. In 1658 the ministers and delegates of the Independent
Churches met at the Savoy, and drew up the well-known Savoy
“Declaration of the Faith and Order owned and practised in the
Congregational Churches in England.” In the preface they say,
“Such a transaction” [as a confession of faith] “is to be looked upon
but as a meet or fit medium or means whereby to express their
(common faith and salvation,’ and no way to be made use of as
an imposition upon any. Whatever is of force or constraint in
matters of this nature of confessions causeth them to degenerate from
the name and nature, and turns them, from being confessions of faith,
into exactions and impositions of faith.” Mr. Thomas S. James, in
his curious and learned “ History of the Litigation and Legislation
respecting Presbyterian Chapels and Charities,” makes the following
pertinent comment on this passage :—
“ They declare that they published and recorded in the face of Christen
dom, ‘ the faith and order which they owned and practised ’ for the infor
mation of their fellow Christians, and not for any practical use for
themselves. That such a document was necessary to defend them from
the attacks of the enemies of their religious and political opinions may be
learnt from the calumnies against them noticed by Mosheim and Rapin. If
they had followed the example of all other bodies they would have legislated
for their infant Churches under the notion of giving definiteness and per
manence to their opinions, but they trusted their Churches, and the truths
they held, to the blessing and protection of God, being satisfied that they
were according to His will, and they disregarded the devices and safeguards
which human affection and foresight could supply. It should be remem
bered that the declaration copied above is to be found in a synopsis of
Calvinistic doctrine, published in the middle of the seventeenth century, by
men on the one hand supported by the party then in power, and on the
other fully convinced that the belief of great part of what they stated
was necessary to salvation, and that no part of it could even be doubted
without peril to the soul. The non-use of creeds by such men is a very
different matter from the rejection of them by persons who hold that there
�566
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
are no essential and fundamental doctrines of Christianity. With the latter
it is a matter of course ; with the former it is a proof of the highest wisdom.”
It is also a singular fact that, so far as published accounts go, the
trust-deeds of the Independent chapels founded during the twenty
years following the Toleration Act—a period within which the
Independents were of course very active in chapel-building—did not
contain any provisions as to the doctrines to be preached in them.
Mr. James thinks that this shows that the Independents “trusted to
the rule of law, that the simplest form of trust for the benefit of a
particular denomination is tantamount to a detailed statement of the
principles and practices by which it is characterized.” I agree with
him that the absence of doctrinal provision from the trust-deeds does
not prove that the Independents of those times regarded definite
theological doctrine with indifference ; this is contradicted by their
whole history. But is not the true explanation to be found in their
traditional hostility to the authoritative imposition of human creeds?
I believe that they held, with John Robinson, that “ the Lord had
more truth and light yet to break forth out of Ilis holy Word.”
It was in this spirit that the men who seceded in the middle of
the last century from the Presbyterian congregation in Birmingham
on the election of an Arian minister, and founded the Independent
Church which still worships in Carr’s Lane, made no attempt to secure
the orthodoxy of their successors by inserting any doctrinal safe
guards in the trust-deed of their new “ meeting-house.” For the
maintenance of what they believed to be the truth of the Gospel,
the instincts and traditions of the Independents have led them to
rely not on parchments and courts of equity, but on the promise of
Christ that the Spirit of Truth should abide in the Church for ever.
The practice which has grown up among us, and become almost
universal within the last sixty or seventy years, of appending a doc
trinal schedule to the deeds of our chapels, is a departure from the
habits of our fathers. It should, however, be understood that this
schedule, except in cases in which the deeds have been drawn up by
solicitors absolutely ignorant of our principles and usages, never
touches the “ Church ” directly; it simply provides that the trustees
are not to permit the building to be used for the propagation’ of
doctrines contrary to those determined by the trust. The provision
is defended on the principle that people who contribute money to
create a property have a right to control to the end of time the pur
poses to which it shall be devoted. The principle is as bad as any
principle can be ; and the particular application of the principle is a
violation of the fundamental idea of Independent- No true Inde
pendent will desire to impose any pecuniary penalties on a Church
for the defence of his own conception of Christian doctrine. That
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 567
doctrinal trust-deeds should have been adopted by Independent
Churches is a proof, I think, that Independency has lost something
of the ardour of its “ first love ” for perfect religious freedom.
But doctrinal trust-deeds are not of the essence of Independency
They are hardly less contrary to its spirit than authoritative con
fessions and creeds. Our principles and traditions require us to
leave the theological development of our Churches unrestrained by
any human tests, formularies, or articles of faith ; and practically
that development is absolutely free.
Can equal freedom be claimed for the religious thought of the
English Church ? Its Articles it might dispense with. I am not
sure that their authority has not already disappeared under the
influence of what I think is described in law books as the law of
obsolescence. But every religious community must have some bond
of union, and in the Establishment this bond is the enforced use of
the services of the Book of Common Prayer—services which have
great merits, but which perpetuate the theological conceptions of
centuries which have vanished away. Every fresh movement of
thought in the English Church has to accommodate itself, as best it
can, to the formularies. The new wine must be put into the old
bottles. The new doctrine must express itself in the old techni
calities. The first task of every man who believes that God has
revealed to him any truth which has not already vindicated for itself
a secure position in the Establishment, is to show how it can be
made to agree with the Services ; or, if he finds this difficult, he
takes refuge in the Articles. Dr. Newman has to write Tract
Ninety, and Dean Goode his treatise on Baptism. The sensitive
spirit of Rowland Williams was stung to the quick, not so much
because men thought that his free criticism of Holy Scripture was
illegitimate in itself, as because they charged him with a dishonest
violation of the obligations of subscription.
What real “ development ” of theological thought has there been
in the Establishment since its separation from Rome ? There has
been a succession of theological movements, but they have never
found their highest expression in the English Church itself.
Calvinism was triumphant for two generations ; but in the Church
its growth was repressed, and it had to leave the Church to reveal
its true spiritual genius, and to obtain a visible embodiment of its
essential principle. The High Church movement in the reign of
Charles I. was brought to a premature end by the Puritan revolt
against the bishops and the throne ; but it reappeared in 1833, and
for a time seemed likely to take complete possession of the Church.
What was its fate ? It had no room for growth in the Establish
ment. It found itself “cribb’d, cabin’d, and confin’d” by the
�568
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
Articles, and by what it regarded as the poverty of the Services.
To breathe free air, the true chiefs of the Anglo-Catholic party,
those in whom the spirit of the movement was strongest, went over
to Rome. Methodism was born in the English Church, but it hardly
began to feel its limbs before it discovered that they were fettered ;
and for the “development” of Methodism, the Methodists had to
become Nonconformists. Will Mr. Arnold explain this paradox ?
The Church, he alleges, is eminently favourable to the free develop
ment of theological thought and religious life, and yet every fresh
growth, whether of thought or life, appears to want air and sunlight
and soil and room to expand, so long as it remains in the Church;
and just when it promises to flower, it either dies off, or has to be
transplanted.
lie may say that the very function of the Church is to regulate
the excesses of religious movements, and by its moderation to dis
cipline their strength to practical religious uses. But this is to
remove the whole question to another ground—a ground on which
a Nonconformist need not fear to continue the discussion. If, how
ever, the plea is to be maintained that in the English National
Church the principle of development has fairer play than among the
Nonconformists, it requires explanation how that principle is recog
nised in a system which refuses to grant to any new religious forces
freedom to create an organization and a ritual in which they might
reveal the fulness of their strength. For perfect development every
living “ seed ” must have “ its own body.” This condition of growth
the English Church refuses to- any new ideas or impulses which may
struggle to assert themselves within the limits of its communion.
It cannot be said that there has been in the English Church a con
tinuous unfolding of any great theological and spiritual ideas. Not
a single movement of religious thought has had time to work itself
fairly out. No sooner has any spiritual impulse begun to make itself
felt than there has been a reaction against it. The history of the
Church has not been a history of development, but of revolutions.
It has not been so with Nonconformity. Whatever life there has
been in the Churches outside the Establishment has had freedom to
grow. For good or for evil, the intellectual tendencies and spiritual
forces which have revealed themselves among us have been able to
assert themselves without restraint. Within a few years- after the
ejectment, “the irresistible breath of the Zcit-Geist” began to make
itself felt in a very large number of the Presbyterian Churches in
England, and under the disastrous guidance of the unspiritual
philosophy of Locke, they made a rapid descent, first into Arianism,
and then into Socinianism. The Independents, for the most part,
continued faithful to Calvinism; but since among them Calvinism
was not a mere system of dogmas, but the expression of a vital faith,
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 569
it gradually alleviated the severity of its doctrinal definitions, and,
without losing its characteristic life, embodied itself in new intel
lectual forms. The transformation was assisted by the writings of
theologians who are almost unknown to the divines of the Established
Church, but who exerted in their day a very powerful influence on
the thought of the Nonconformists. Pre-eminent among them are
Andrew Fuller and Dr. Edward Williams. Within the present
century it has gone on still more rapidly, and received a powerful
impulse from the controversies which thirty or forty years ago divided
the Presbyterians of the United States. Methodism developed a new
type of Arminianism, and created for itself a new ecclesiastical
organization—admirable, notwithstanding all its imperfections, for
the union of extraordinary elasticity with the solidity and strength
derived from an almost imperial centralization of authority—a system
equally effective for defence and for aggression.
The modern Nonconformist “idea”—I venture to call it so with
all deference to Mr. Arnold—touching the true relations between
the Church and the State, is not an after-thought suggested to us by
the necessity of discovering some new ground for our ecclesiastical
position, now that what he supposes to have been the old ground is
melting away under our feet. Nor docs our proposal to disestablish
the English Church originate, as he seems to think, in any feeling
of discomfort, like that of the fox who had lost his own tail, and who
proposed to put all the other; foxes in the same boat, bv a general
cutting off of tails. Our conviction that there should be a clear sepa
ration between the organization of the State and the organization of
the Church, and that the separation would make the Church less
worldly and the State more Christian, is a genuine spiritual
“ development.” It is one of the growths of our freedom. Men
must be virtuous before they create theories of virtue. Science
had already begun to work on the inductive method before Bacon
could write the “Novum Organum.”
The early Nonconformists
believed in religious establishments. Had we remained in the
Church, we might have continued to believe in them too ; and the
“ idea of ecclesiastical freedom which has now taken possession of
Nonconformity might never have been revealed to us. Many
Churchmen are beginning to receive it; but we think that this is
partly owing to the illustration it has had in our own history—an
illustration which, though necessarily incomplete, and on a very
inconsiderable scale, has contributed something to the wealth of
the common thought of Christendom. For two centuries our
Churches have been free from the control of politicians; we have
not been dependent on the will of Parliament for any modifications
we have desired in the form of our worship and in our ecclesiastical
polity ; we have had to rely for the support of our religious institu-
�5/0
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
tions on the unforced contributions of those who love Christ and
desire the salvation of men ; and we have come to learn that there
is a strength and blessedness in liberty of which our fathers never
dreamed.
The more entertaining passages in Mr. Arnold’s recent animad
versions on us, which I had marked for notice, must be dismissed
with a word. The two main types of Nonconformist provincialism
of which he speaks—the “ bitter type ” and the “ smug type ”—are
they quite unknown among those adherents of the English Church
who belong to the same social rank as ourselves ? I quite admit that
what Joubert says of the Romish services—“ Les cérémonies du
Catholicisme plient à la politesse,” an aphorism verified in the manners
of the common people of all Catholic countries—is true in a measure
of the ritual of the English Church ; but is not something of the
alleged difference between ourselves and Churchmen due to the fact
that Nonconformity is strongest among the rough and vigorous
people of the great towns who live together in masses, and whose
social habits are not controlled by intercourse with those who inherit
the traditions of many generations of culture ? And if in villages
and small towns there is something more of self-assertion and hard
ness in the Dissenter than in the Churchman, is not this also partly
due to the long exclusion of Dissenters from all free intercourse with
the “ gentry,” who have had the advantage of a university education,
of foreign travel, and of the refining influence of the recreations and
intellectual pursuits which are at the command of leisure and wealth?
That “ watchful jealousy ” of the Establishment with which he
reproaches us—whose fault is it ? When farmers are refused a
renewal of their leases because they are Nonconformists, when the
day-school is closed against a child on Monday because it was at the
Methodist Sunday-school the day before, when in the settlement of
great properties it is provided that no site shall be sold or let for a
Dissenting chapel, and that if a tenant permits his premises to be
used for a Dissenting service his lease shall be void, can Mr. Arnold
wonder that we are “ watchful ? ” Does he think that the uniform
conduct of the clergy has been calculated to encourage an unsuspect
ing confidence in their fairness and generosity ? Have we not had
reasons enough for maintaining a “ watchful jealousy ” against the
growth of their power ? If sometimes we speak roughly and harshly,
and bear ourselves ungraciously, does all the blame lie with us ? It
might be more creditable to ourselves and more agreeable to others
if we could always “ writhe with grace and groan with melody ; ” but
our critics should remember the infirmity of human nature.
Nor does it seem to us quite true, as Mr. Arnold seems to imply,
that all “ strife, jealousy, and self-assertion ” come from breaking
with the Church. The literature of the controversies which have
�MR. ARNOLD AND THE NONCONFORMISTS. 571
disturbed the Church itself as long as we have known it, does not
appear to us to be more distinguished for “ mildness and sweet reason
ableness ” than the pamphlets of the Liberation Society. Prosecutions
for heresy and for the introduction of unauthorized innovations into
the service of the Church, do not confirm Mr. Arnold’s theory that
if we had only remained in the Establishment, the religious peace of the
country might never have been disturbed. In the Record and in the
Church Times, Aie evangelical asserts his “ ordinary self,” and the
ritualist asserts his “ ordinary self,” with quite as much vigour as
the Dissenting Philistine displays in the Nonconformist or the English
Independent.
Mr. Arnold-thinks that it is a special failing of the mind of a
Dissenter that it is “pleased at hearing no opinion but its own,
by having all disputed opinions taken for granted in its own
favour, by being urged to no return upon itself, no develop
ment.” But surely this is a vice of nature for which the Esta
blishment has discovered no specific. The evangelical Church
man drives by the Church of the ritualist on Sunday morning and
travels four or five miles to hear a clergyman appointed by Simeon’s
trustees, and the ritualist trudges into a neighbouring parish to
delight himself in the “People’s Hymnal,” in vestments, and in
a fervent, passionate sermon on Penance, thinking with bitter con
tempt of the Protestant baldness of the service and the Protestant
coldness of the sermon in the Church which stands within a stone’s
throw from his own door.
Mr. Arnold’s representations of us are too much like the engravings
in some of the cheap illustrated papers. The blocks are kept ready for
all emergencies. A few slight touches will make them available for
a railway accident in France or a similar catastrophe in America, for
a yacht race at New York or at the Isle of Wight, for the “ Derby ”
or for the “ Grand Prix ” at Paris. lie has not given us descrip
tions of the characteristic vices of Nonconformity,—perhaps I could
assist him with a few confidential hints about these if ho wishes to
try his hand at work of this kind again,—he has only amused us
with a collection of clever but unfinished sketches of faults and follies
common to men of all churches and all creeds.
Let us part good friends. Mr. Arnold bears a name which Non
conformists regard with affection and veneration. From his own
writings we have received intellectual stimulus and delight, for which
we are grateful to him. Nor is this all. Every man wTho is striving
to know at first hand the truth which most concerns the higher life
of the soul is the friend and ally of all who, with whatever resources
and whatever success, are attempting the same great task. We can
but bid each other God-speed.
R. W. Dale.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mr. Matthew Arnold and the nonconformists
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dale, Robert William [1827-1895]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: [540]-571 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Contemporary Review 14, July 1870.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1870]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5403
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nonconformism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Mr. Matthew Arnold and the nonconformists), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Matthew Arnold
Nonconformism
Nonconformist Churches