he entertained, respecting both the giving the Scriptures to the people, and the folly of imagining that the ignorant mechanic and peasant, because he reads his Bible, or hears it read in the Churches, is able to form conclusions respecting God and the soul, which shall be right and acceptable to God-to vindicate the wise and holy decisions of Bishop Bonner, who endeavoured to restore to the country, that service of the Mass, which we, the Tractarian British Critics, deem, in spite of modern popular prejudice, to be worthy of such restoration*-to defend, in short, the general conduct of a Bishop, whose opinions were nearly the same as our own, and whose principles we generally approve; might perhaps be expected from us, by those who have read our Oxford Tracts, and our Articles in the British Critic, or Quarterly Theological Review. Some of our number, it is true, will shrink from encountering the abundant prejudice which envelopes the name of Bishop Bonner. I am not one of them. I perceive that there is a very extraordinary agreement between the conclusions and opinions of Bishop Bonner, and ourselves. Others

* Froude's Remains, vol. I., p. 387.

may shrink from declaring this. I shall not. I am prepared to carry out my principles. We have already made a considerable sensation in the country. We have astonished some, and confounded others. Though the Bishops of Chester, Winchester, Durham, Ripon, Lichfield, Ohio, Virginia, the Archishop, we grieve to say, and even the present successor of Bishop Bonner himself, have condemned the chief of our conclusions; we have convinced many, of the expediency and necessity of so reforming our Church, that it shall again adopt the principles of the illustrious Bonner. If it be asked who I am-I answer in the words of the first of those Tracts which have produced so much controversy-" I am but one of your-selves, a Presbyter; and therefore I conceal my name, lest I take too much on myself, by speaking in my own person-yet speak I must, for the times are very evil, yet no one speaks against them."* The knowledge of my name cannot be necessary to the more effectual reception of the Truths I wish to inculcate. From Tract 1 to Tract 90—and in very many of the Articles in the British Critic, I have endeavoured to remove the evil of the times in

* Tract 1, Sept. 9, 1833.

which I live, and to speak against them. I shall continue these efforts. By shewing that Jewell, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, were, as bad as "irreverend dissenters," wavering apostates, rude preachers, and inconsistent religionists, I have, already, weakened the pillars of the Reformation; and I shall now proceed to strengthen the principles to which these persons were opposed, by shewing that Bonner, the great enemy of them all, was neither an "irreverend dissenter," nor in any respect like these men; but that he was a learned civilian, a profound Canonist, a strenuous supporter of the traditions and commandments of the Church, and worthy of as much approbation as any other of his learned, grave, reverend, and episcopal coadjutors. The "Reformation is a broken limb,” as my as my friend Froude says, "badly set"+-and we require such surgeons as Bonner to break this limb again, and to set it once more, though the patient may suffer much in the operation. Not only, too, am I actuated by a just and holy zeal for the credit of the apostolic succession, and of

* My dear friend Froude applies this name, justly, to Jewell. Remains, vol. 1, p. 380.

+ Froude's Remains, vol. 1, p. 483.

the succession of those Bishops of London, who were very different men from the present and late occupiers of that See; but I am jealous for the honor and credit of the noble University of Oxford, of which Bishop Bonner was a learned and eminent member. The chief of the Reformers were Cambridge men. Wycliffe, it is true, was of Oxford, as were many others. others. But the principal portion of the disgrace of giving such men as Cranmer and Latimer to the world, proceeds from Cambridge. The great difference between the religious and philosophical education which is given at Oxford, and that which is given at Cambridge, consists in this. At Oxford the tutors endeavour to bias the mind by authority -at Cambridge by evidence. At Oxford we have much of Aristotle, and less of Locke and Paley-at Cambridge the modern Christian metaphysicians are preferred to the antient Pagan. At Oxford we laudably endeavour to repress the exercise of private judgment: for the reasons which I have given already in the pages of the British Critic*-at Cambridge they so teach young men to think freely, that their tutors may be said to be responsible for

* No. 59, July, 1841. Article, Private Judgment.

the very errors which result from the mistaken liberty. At Oxford we remember that " an act of private judgment is in its very idea an act of individual responsibility, and that this is a consideration which will come with especial force on a conscientious mind when it is to have so fearful an issue as a change of religion-for-a religious man will say to himself' If I am in error at present, I am IN ERROR BY A DISPOSITION OF PROVIDENCE, which has placed me where I am : and if I change into an error this is my own act— it is much less fearful to be born at disadvantage, than to place myself at disadvantage'"*. We dare not, therefore, increase the fearfulness of Man's responsibility. We teach our young men, if they are born in error, to remain in error, rather than incur the risk of going wrong, if God has not placed them right at the time of their birth+-whereas, at Cambridge, the Tutors are prevented by no scruples of this kind, from inculcating on the minds of their pupils, that Christianity is so founded upon evidence, and the Church is so capable of defence because of its intrinsic value, that every man may be safely left to his own bold and free judgment, on the merits both of

*

British Critic, No. 51, page 105.

+ Ibid.