papers upon it in the then palmy days of the 'British Magazine.' He not only analyzed the whole process, and dwelt with burning indignation on its details of oppression and absurdity, but he actually foresaw that this choice instrument of tyranny would be selected by Whig statesmen as the means of introducing the principle of Latitudinarian Bishops into the Church, to be nominated and selected simply as Latitudinarians, and as a premium upon Latitudinarianism. Forewarned, forearmed, as soon as this Statute was known, its ultimate fall was sealed. The age could not endure the hateful presence. And yet we all knew in what quarter the storm would burst; the weakest part in the old walls being once known, it required but little seership to guess where the fabric would first break down. Everybody saw that the ancient arrangement must sooner or later give way, and that the mind of the English Church could not live for ever on the dry husks of a Tudor Supremacy, especially if entrusted to the tender mercies of a Whig-possibly a SocinianPremier. That the relations of Church and State must before long be remodelled, and that in no inconsiderable degree, all men knew, and many felt that if this reconstruction was forced upon either party in a hostile form, the Statute of Election of Bishops would be the first point of assault. And so it has turned out. We are either too earnest, or too sensible, or too stupid, or too liberal, or too practical, or too impracticable, to go on with puerile abstract theories, with grotesque contradictions to common honesty and common sense; and so the end of præmunire and provisors has begun. Its three-hundredth anniversary saw its death-blow struck-was it unawares?-by that solitary man in a solitary room at Oxford. It had prolonged its hateful and deceitful reign of compromise and shallow cold hypocrisy from 1533 to 1833: violated oaths, blasted consciences, vows bartered for pelf, the loss of Grace, the sneer of enemies, the sorrow of friends, duty explained away, and the pleadings of the Spirit, stifled, smothered, choked; these were its triumphs and its trophies. It has run its weary course of wickedness, and even now the day breaks. The prophetic period has come :

Hic jam ter centum totos regnabitur annos,
Gente sub Hectorea: donec regina sacerdos,'

our own anointed Sovereign, shall erase from the Statute Book the foulest mockery which ever contaminated the name of Law. Nor must we forget-what has been elsewhere noticed under what remarkable associations the ancestral names of Russell and Hampden once more achieve notoriety. The name of Russell,' Lord John has been told, ought to be a security to us against the application by him of a phrase so

6

sacred as the "rights of the Crown," to a matter so foul, as the Statute of Præmunire.' It is something more than significant that the grisly phantom of King Henry's tyranny should be evoked by a Russell in behalf of a Hampden. The cycle is about complete. One Russell shed his blood in what was called patriotism; another Russell forfeits his name for the 'Magna Charta of tyranny.' One Hampden died as a rebel and a traitor; another who bears the name, will be handed down to posterity as the voluntary champion of secular tyranny, and as the hired violator of the rights of conscience. Truly modern liberalism unites the most opposite paradoxes: the wildest license in speculation with the most arbitrary exercise of unconstitutional power. It is not for nothing that the righteous blood of More and Fisher will be avenged, in this futile attempt to revive their murderer's despotism, in the person of one whose race was first ennobled and enriched by that murderer's sacrilege and spoliation of the Church.

But what of him whose name is so prominently connected with these proceedings? Where is Dr. Hampden all this time? We have traced him as the secret spring and centre of Oxford troubles through the last dozen years; and we have found him Bishop-designate of Hereford. The prize for which he has laboured is at length within his grasp. He 'retracts nothing and disclaims nothing.' The Hampden of 1833 is the Hampden of 1847. He is at least consistent. As soon as the first sign of commotion was heard, Dr. Hampden advertised a letter to the Premier. It was to appear immediately. It was advertised in November. It is dated 9th December. It was published, a meagre seventeen pages, on 16th December. We beg to remark that the date 9th December is purely arbitrary. The Bishops' Remonstrance was in Lord John Russell's possession at least before the 8th, for his reply bears that date. Does Dr. Hampden pretend that he published his pamphlet in ignorance of the address of the thirteen Bishops? No; he assigned an early date to his letter in order that it might pass for being written antecedently to the Bishops' appeal. And yet even this clever device was rather too clever: it was transparent. Is the Oxford press so slow-by the way the letter bears no imprint-that it took seven days to print, and stitch, and publish a single sheet ? Everybody knows what printers can do when the author has the will. The Bishop of Exeter could not have seen-did not see-Lord John's reply to the laity till the morning of the 13th, and yet his vigorous postscript was written for it bears that date-and, together with the whole pamphlet, was set up, worked off, and published, before seven o'clock on the evening of this very 13th. Dr. Hampden must have seen the Bishops' letter before his own was published, we believe before it was even in type. But that document was a fact either too inconvenient to grapple with, or too trivial to notice. At any rate, he condescends to pass it over sub silentio. These details are characteristic, and display temper.

Of the substance of Dr. Hampden's Letter we hardly trust ourselves to speak with patience. Even his friends such as the 'Daily News'-condemned it as poor and unsatisfactory. In composition it is only a frigid repetition of the inaugural lecture; in language it is hesitating and perplexed. It is written under the ugly necessity of saying something with actually nothing to say. In substance, it may be divided into three parts-a vindication of himself as personally orthodox; a Pharisaic recapitulation of his own many virtues and claims to preferment; and a bitter personal attack upon his enemies.

As to Dr. Hampden's personal orthodoxy, we have not a word to say. The charge against him-it has never varied, or betrayed itself into inconsistency-is, not that he is a Socinian, but that he has advocated a theory more mischievous and wider than Socinianism itself. It is not the simple vice of heresy on this or that article of the Creed that he is charged with, but the larger principle of the non-necessity of any creeds. He is accused not of a false dogmatism, but of anti-dogmatism, which is a far heavier imputation. He denies the saving necessity of any strict theological doctrine. Like his friend and apologist, Mr. Winstanley Hull, Dr. Hampden may say, 'I fully believe, ' after a long and careful investigation, the Catholic faith to be 'what is commonly stated in the Creed commonly called the Creed ' of Athanasius; but,' he will add, 'it is most positively false ' that he who does not keep that faith whole and undefiled shall, ' without doubt, perish everlastingly.' For, 'the damnatory ' clauses are not in the Bible, nor can they be proved thereby.' So. Dr. Hampden may say (p. 9), 'Most sincerely and most 'firmly do I believe that there is but one Catholic faith-one ' invariable standard of orthodox truth; and that all departures 'from this, consequently, are Errors of Doctrine and Corrup'tions of the Truth, and not that "form of sound words" which God has set forth to us in his Revelation.' Probably :-Dr. Hampden and Mr. Hull are very fortunate. By a happy accident their personal convictions happen to be exactly coincident and identical with the Athanasian statements. But this is not the question: the ignoratio elenchi is too wilful and patent. What of those whose 'long and careful investigation,' just as honest, and as scrupulous, and as patient as Dr. Hampden's, has led them

11845. The month of January. Oxford, p. 15.

to an opposite conclusion? What, for example, of Dr. Hampden's friend and guide, Mr. Blanco White? Was he dishonest, or careless, or ignorant, or superficial? What of the common run of Socinians? Why, as he has 'nothing to retract, nothing to disclaim,' he still 'ventures to call Unitarians' not only 'Christians,' but 'our brethren in the faith, although 'they will not assent to his metaphysical conclusions.' The question is, not about Dr. Hampden's faith, but, about the saving efficacy of these very 'metaphysical conclusions.' And it is in this way that we think the quotations and extracts from Dr. Hampden's works do not adequately state the charge against him. It is not in the nature of the case that they can do so. It is not that they are garbled and one-sided, but they are insufficient. Bad as Dr. Hampden's theology may appear by a series of extracts, infinitely worse is it by a steady perusal of his Bampton Lectures. The book is not a counter argument against any decision of the Church, but a long elaborate argument to show that the Church had no inherent right to conclude, infer, state, prove, or impose at all. He passes by this or that dogmatic assertion with contemptuous indifference: he may happen, by his own private process of reasoning, to agree with it; others may not. There is neither merit nor blame on either side; for 'no conclusions ' of human reason, however correctly deduced, however logically 'sound, are properly religious truths,' and 'it by no means 'follows, that what can be proved out of Scripture, must, there'fore, be truth of Revelation,' since 'all belief as such is invo'luntary.' If a man 'professes and calls himself' a Christian, he is a Christian 'in the charitable sense of the term,' a sense in which he may be reckoned among our brethren in the faith,' a sense in which his 'mode of reasoning' will not hurt him.

But a view of Dr. Hampden's theology is incomplete without adverting to its tendencies. The name of Mr. Blanco White suggests something more than an anticipation of what it would run to with a free course for its development. Dr. Hampden's own career can only be fairly judged by a careful attention to that of his friend and monitor, Mr. Blanco White. This gentleman supplies the practical conclusion to Dr. Hampden's theoretical premises. We avail ourselves of the opportunity of placing, in a more permanent and accessible position, the facts contained in an able article which appeared in the Times' of Christmas Day:

We do not know who are Dr. Hampden's present advisers, or whether that gentleman is open to counsel at all, but we think it must strike everybody how much service they would render to him and to the Church, if they could induce him to publish, not a retractation, but just a candid review of his Bampton Lectures. There are not many men who will retract when they have once been put on their mettle. But there are many men, many living men, who have committed themselves on theological, political, economical, and even on physical questions, and have afterwards "told truth and shamed the devil" by avowing the results of maturer and more deliberate inquiry. There is, indeed, scarcely any man of any mark in the kingdom who has not given that last proof of sincerity which is implied in a frank renunciation of error. Opinion is a matter not only of intuitive perception, or immediate inspiration, but of the school, of the society, of friends, of books, of particular incidents, of accidental meetings, of casual occupations, of innumerable other disposing circumstances. A man may be very truthful, but struggling as yet with accidental error, and clouded with the medium in which he happens to live, or he may, unawares, have adopted arguments or expressions which are far from doing justice to his character and sentiments. Now, if there ever was a man of whom this was probable, it is Dr. Hampden. His friends are constantly reminding us that he has not written, either before or since, anything like his Bampton Lectures, and the two or three lesser publications which followed immediately in the wake of that celebrated volume. That itself proves that he could now bestow upon his work that nine years' castigation recommended by the Roman critic, without any very serious sacrifice of his theological identity and credit.

In point of fact Dr. Hampden wrote those lectures under very peculiar stimulus, suggestion, and aid. We very much question whether they can correctly be called his own. As far as regards the selection of the subject, the mode in which it is treated, the authors used and worked into the text, the scrutiny applied to the creeds and other formularies of the Church, and, above all, the tendency of the work, it has more claim to be considered Mr. Blanco White's than Dr. Hampden's. During the latter end of 1831 and the early part of 1832-that is, for eight or nine months preceding the delivery of the lectures-Dr. Hampden was a frequent, it was said at the time an almost daily, visitor at the lodgings of that singular and most interesting person. It so happened that both had become very much separated from the college of which they were members. The gulf of controversy which afterwards so fearfully expanded then already yawned. Indeed, controversy was at an end between poor Mr. Blanco White and the leading members of the common room of his college. They too well understood one another's position. Illness, nervousness, bodily and mental torture, nourished by a strange mixture of harrowing self-scrutinies and petty vexations of a less dignified character, kept that amiable and most unfortunate gentleman for many months a prisoner to his room. Dr. Whately went to Dublin in October 1831, taking with him Dr. Hinds, and breaking up the bright little circle of which he was the sun, if a character so eccentric can be associated with ideas of unity and order. Mr. Blanco White was then solitary indeed, as the few who relieved his solitude well knew.

'Dr. Hampden was one of them. He had attached himself to what used to be called the Oriel School, before it was eclipsed by a more serious and extensive development. It is natural to suppose, that he did not feel that positive antipathy to poor Blanco White's speculations, and that slender respect for his critical and philosophical acumen, which by this time prevailed in that college. He felt a qualified confidence in his guide. When the tendency and inner meaning of Mr. Blanco White's conversation had long been evident, even to the most youthful of his acquaintance, it is difficult to suppose that Dr. Hampden did not see the precipice on which he was treading. Indeed, it subsequently appeared from Mr. Blanco White's own strictures on the result, that Dr. Hampden must have been frequently conscious of a point at which he and his Gamaliel could no longer keep company. Dr. Hampden, probably saw in Mr. Blanco White what others saw too clearly-a mind shaken, unhinged, perplexed, wounded, never to be