TRIALS, LAW BY ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES.-THE GORHAM CASE. Y the wisdom of the fathers of the Protestant Church in England, to whom at the Reformation fell the momentous duty of framing a scheme of Church polity, the Articles, Formularies, and Rubrics of our Church were made large and comprehensive enough in matters of doctrine, and sufficiently open in respect of forms, to include within her pale all who, protesting against the corruptions of the Church of Rome, were agreed upon the leading points of the Christian faith, although they might differ upon some matters, doctrinal and formular, to which the minds of men have attached great importance:-and thus it has happened that at all times, in the history of our Church, there have been found large bodies of the laity, and ministers of undoubted learning and piety, who hold contrary opinions in relation to some given points of doctrine. In the nature of things it has also occurred that prelates of the Church (many of them held in succeeding times in almost apostolic reverence) have been freely charged, by those whose views upon some points of teaching were diverse, with holding opinions not perfectly orthodox. In recent times the great division of Churchmen has been into High Church and Low Church, although the precise line of demarcation is not easily defined; these divisions containing within themselves various subdivisions, each approaching more or less the boundaries of their own party. Of late years, as is well known, a large, most learned, and most exemplary section of the High Church party, who have been popularly designated" Puseyites," or "Tractarians," have become very prominent, from the extreme views they have enunciated in respect of many points relating to the Sacraments of the Church, the sacred elements of the Communion, confession, and absolution, the authority of the Church, Church ceremonials, and religious life. The extreme zeal and earnestness with which the Tractarians have pushed their doctrines and practices have caused them to be viewed with suspicion by the large body of members of the Church, and with absolute aversion by the Low Church party, and by the Protestant Dissenters generally, all of whom charged them with being in their hearts no other than Roman Catholics-a charge to which the secession to that Church of many clergymen and laymen, who had adopted their views, gave unhappy countenance. To these grounds of distrust is to be added the evident extent to which the Roman Catholics now exercise their worship in this country, which, though perhaps not more than they are entitled to in the enjoyment of their civil and religious liberties, yet they certainly have exercised with a degree of openness, and, in some cases, of obtrusiveness, which could not fail to alarm timid Churchmen, and exasperate those who retained the somewhat old-fashioned horror of Popery in every form. There existed, therefore, at this time in the Church very strong and uneasy feelings on the part of the Tractarians, in respect of the laxity of view to which they held the Church of England to have fallen in many of its doctrines and practices, and of their desire to inculcate their own more exalted opinionson the part of the rest of the Church (a feeling experienced still more strongly by the Dissenting bodies), of alarm and distrust as to the extent to which the Tractarians were (as they alleged) endeavouring to Romanize the Church by their teaching and practices, wherever they had gained a footing. To these causes of disquiet and uneasiness a new controversy was now added, by which the moderate party in the Church was equally disturbed, and by which parties, and, to some extent, principles, were reversed, and fresh elements of discord introduced. A doctrine respecting baptismal regeneration, predestination, and election, unequivocally assignable to the views of the Low Church party, was put forward by a clergyman of the Church of England, in answer to his diocesan (a prelate who was known to hold High Church views), who was worsted in the issue, the obnoxious minister instituted to a benefice in his own diocese, and the self-contained authority asserted for the Church set at nought by the supreme jurisdiction of a temporal tribunal, whose decision overruled and reversed that of the Ecclesiastical Court. It was now the turn of the Tractarian party to feel the alarm. Not only had the civil power interfered in a subject on which they held the Church to have inherent and exclusive authority, but it had decided in opposition to one of their most cherished dogmas. They accordingly made strenuous endeavours to enlist on their side those Churchmen who viewed with suspicion the interference of the temporal Court in matters ecclesiastical, and who held the controverted doctrine to be Calvinistic, and contrary to what is taught by the Church of England. The consequences of these events were very unhappy, leading to violent controversy, with its usual accompaniments of misunderstanding, uncharitableness, and doubt. Some of the most zealous disputants of the High Church party, exasperated at the interposition of the civil authority in Church matters, and at the powerlessness of the Church, unable to rely on their own strength of faith and judgment, sought refuge in the Church of Rome, which not only recognises no secular interference, but arrogates to itself and exercises dogmatic and infallible authority in matters of faith and discipline. Thus there existed at the opposite extremes of the Church causes of discontent and uncertainty, and the minds of men no longer rested in quiet assurance of the efficacy of the doctrines and polity of the Church, under which, with God's blessing, the faith of Christ has for three centuries been exercised in purity and simplicity, in freedom alike of body and mind, with the ample enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, within these realms. It is necessary to dwell upon these unhappy circumstances at some length, since they appear to have been among the principal incentives to the open avowal of the designs of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church which produced such startling effects upon the people of England towards the close of the year. As far as this subject is matter of theological controversy it is not the province of this work to deal with it, but to record simply the facts of the case, and here only in the form in which they were presented before the constituted tribunals. The controversy was followed up from Court to Court with such tenacity, and the proceedings extended to such length, that no more than an abstract can be given in these pages. This is compiled from the recognised reports. It professes to be a fair digest of those documents, and not in any degree an expression of opinion. GORHAM V. THE BISHOP OF EXETER. The first appearance of this case was in the Court of Arches, in which the Reverend George Cornelius Gorham instituted a proceeding in the form of a duplex querela, as his remedy against the Bishop of Exeter for refusing to institute him to a benefice within his diocese. The duplex querela is the form in which the patron or clerk seeks his remedy against a Bishop who has refused to institute the presentee, by an appeal to the Archbishop, and if he also reVOL. XCII. fuses, then to the Queen in Council. This form of proceeding is so antiquated that there has been no instance of it for 130 years; and the form upon which the monition in this case was drawn was older still, being in Latin, and of date between 1662 and 1670. A monition calling on the Bishop to show cause why he refused so to institute Mr. Gorham was issued on the 15th of June, 1848. The return to that monition, made on behalf of the Bishop, alleged, in substance, that in August, 1847, Mr. Gorham was presented by the Crown to the benefice of Brampford Speke, and applied to the Bishop for institution, who thereupon proceeded to examine him as to his sufficiency and fitness, as of right entitled and of duty bound to do; and it appearing, in the course of the examination, that Mr. Gorham was of unsound doctrine respecting the efficacy of the sacrament of baptism, inasmuch as he held that spiritual regeneration is not given or conferred in that holy sacrament-in particular that infants are not made therein members of Christ and children of God, contrary to the plain teaching of the Church of England in her Articles and Liturgy, and especially contrary to the divers Offices of Baptism, the Office of Confirmation, and the Catechism, severally contained in the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the United Church of England and Irelandthe Bishop refused on that account to institute him to the vicarage. To this Mr. Gorham put in a technical objection, denying the right of the Bishop to examine him at all, the twentyX eight days after presentation ten dered, limited by the 95th Canon, having expired; denying unsoundness of doctrine in respect of baptism; and denying the particular doctrine imputed. This preliminary objection was overruled, and the Court proceeded to the whole merits of the cause, which was argued at great length, on several days, between the 17th of February and the 1st of August, 1849. From the judgment delivered by Sir H. Jenner Fust it appeared that the history of the case was this:-That in January, 1846, the Rev. Mr. Gorham, an ordained minister of the Church of England, a Bachelor of Divinity, was presented to the vicarage of St. Just by the Lord Chancellor. On that occasion Mr. Gorham, on presenting himself for institution by the Bishop, produced such testimonials as to his learning, ability, moral conduct, and sound religious principles, that the Bishop did not think it necessary to subject him to any personal examination, and he was accordingly instituted. In 1847 Mr. Gorham was presented by the Lord Chancellor to the vicarage of Brampford Speke (in lieu of that of St. Just), and on the 2nd of December applied to the Bishop, requesting an early appointment for admission to the benefice. A correspondence took place between Mr. Gorham and the Bishop's secretary, and in consequence of some expressions contained in the letters of the former the Bishop declined to institute Mr. Gorham without examination; at the same time the Bishop refused to countersign the testimonial of three beneficed clergymen as to the qualifications of the presentee, which is the very proper formula required by the Lord Chancellor, preliminary to his bestowal of the patronage within his gift;—and, indeed, added to his refusal a memorandum, assigning as his reason that Mr. Gorham had maintained what is contrary to the discipline, and, he apprehended, held also what is contrary to the doctrine, of the Church. The Lord Chancellor, notwithstanding this refusal, issued his fiat for Mr. Gorham's presentation. Mr. Gorham submitted to the examination required by the Bishop, under protest. It commenced on the 17th of December, 1847, and was continued on the 18th, 20th, 21st, and 22nd of December, and on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of March. On the 11th of March Mr. Gorham was informed that the Bishop would decline to institute him, and on the 20th the formal notice was delivered to him assigning for reasons for that refusal that Mr. Gorham held unsound doctrines. There the matter rested until June, 1848, when the monition issued out of the Court of Arches, on behalf of Mr. Gorham, and those proceedings were had in the matter, on which judgment was now delivered. Sir H. Jenner Fust (Dean of the Arches, or Judge of the Archbishop of Canterbury), in pronouncing judgment, first repeated the facts of the case, and then complained of the mode of proceeding which had been adopted. The evidence was most unsatisfactory, and the manner in which it was brought in was still more unsatisfactory. It consisted of two short affidavits, and a book annexed to the act on petition, containing 149 questions addressed to Mr. Gorham, together with his answers to them, on which the whole question before the Court turned *. The Court was to labour through this book, and find its way among these questions and answers, in order to come to a decision whether Mr. Gorham's opinion was contrary to the doctrines of the Church. Upon the whole the conclusion drawn was, that the question between the parties was as to the efficacy of baptismal regeneration in the case of infants only. The Court was not called upon to pronounce an opinion whether the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is or is not a clearly Christian doctrine; all the Court was called upon to do was to endeavour to ascertain whether the Church had determined anything on this subject, and, having done so, to pronounce its decision accordingly. Now, the first question which presented itself to the observation of the Court was, whether the Church had pronounced any opinion on the point, and if so, what? And this gave rise to another questionfrom what source was the Court to derive information as to the doctrines of the Church of England? The Bishop of Exeter imputed to Mr. Gorham that he held and avowed opinions on the subject of the efficacy of baptism which were opposed to the doctrines of the Church of England as contained in the Articles and Formulæ. Mr. Gorham denied this, and contended that his opinions were in exact conformity with those of the Church, as contained in her Articles, and in perfect accordance with the intentions of the Formulæ of the Church. Mr. Gorham declared that he took his stand principally on the Articles, and that *This was a volume containing the examination, which Mr. Gorham had published. he would not be driven from them; that he would go so far only as the Church had expressed an opinion, and that when the Church was silent he would not speak. Prima facie the Thirty-nine Articles were the standard of doctrine. They were framed for the express purpose of preventing diversity of opinion, and certainly they were first to be considered and applied to in endeavouring to ascertain the doctrine of the Church. But if they fell short or were silent upon any particular point, what then should be resorted to? Should we resort to the opinions of those by whom the Articles had been framed, or to other declarations of the Church? The best authorities showed that the public declarations of the Church are to be the test, and that the private opinions of individuals, however eminent for their piety, learning, and station, were not to have any weight with the Court. The learned Judge proceeded to examine the Articles. The 25th Article was that into which the Court was now about to inquire. This Article, which relates to the sacrament, says, "and in such only as worthily receive the same they have a wholesome effect or operation;" but the Article left it doubtful what a worthy reception was. This must, therefore, be sought elsewhere. The 27th Article left the point equally unexplained. It was upon a comparison of these two Articles that the doubt arose; and this doubt was to be solved by a reference to some other authority. What, then, was that authority to be? The first authority was undoubtedly the Public Office of Baptism for Infants. The declarations in the Public Office of Baptism for Infants are clear and distinct. A prayer is |