THE JUDGMENT OF THE BISHOPS UPON TRACTARIAN THEOLOGY. A COMPLETE ANALYTICAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE CHARGES DELIVERED BY THE PRELATES OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH, WITH NOTES AND APPENDICES. BY THE REV. W. SIMCOX BRICKNELL, M.A., OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, INCUMBENT OF GROVE, BERKS, AND ONE OF THE OXFORD CITY LECTURers. OXFORD: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. VINCENT. SIMPKIN AND MARSHALL, LONDON; GRANT AND BOLTON, DUBLIN. 1845. ADVERTISEMENT. THE following Work was originally undertaken for the purpose of illustrating the important fact adverted to in a Charge of my own Ecclesiastical Superior,* as a singular and significant circumstance in the history of Tractarianism,-that "in no one instance has the System which it is the great object of the Movement to advocate and restore, received the formal and avowed sanction and approval of any Member of the Episcopal Bench ;"..... but that "the Authors and Defenders of the Oxford Tracts are left destitute of that high contemporaneous and authoritative support of which, if deserved, no incidental considerations of propriety or expediency would have deprived them." As an Argumentum ad hominem, the value of the Publication has been materially diminished by the more recent development of the principles and practices of the Tractarian School;+ but as a faithful Record of the ex cathedrâ Judgments of the Prelates of the English Church, "at the commencement of one of the most eventful epochs in her history," it will, I trust, be found to possess no inconsiderable interest and importance. With this view I have anxiously endeavoured to render it as complete as possible; and venture to assert, that neither in the Charges themselves, nor in the Notes and Appendices attached to them by their Authors, has a single syllable been omitted which can be said to bear directly or indirectly§ upon the controversy in question. The CHARGES are arranged alphabetically, according to the years in which they were delivered,-under the heads which form the subject of the several Chapters; while to avoid the imputation of having done violence to the context, a Synthetical Index has been added, by reference to which the paragraphs of every Charge may be read consecutively, as they stand in the documents from which they are taken. The italics are, in every instance, copied from the original, unless the contrary is intimated * Vide Charge of the DEAN OF SALISBURY, infra, p. 127, par. 6-8. + Witness the following estimates of the amount of deference due to Episcopal Charges, at different periods of the Movement: 1844. "According the very proper understanding at which we all seem, for various reasons, to have arrived, we should not have thought it right to say much of this or any other Episcopal Charge. The time seems to have come for complaining of this mode of harassing the Church by publishing these little addresses. "Mr. Newman, with much reverence, once said that a Bishop's lightest word was heavy ;' some of the Bishops seem to be anxious to shew that their words are not always to be looked at under this air of authority."-English Church man. Additional illustrations of Tractarian Reverence for Episcopacy will be found in Appendix G, infra, p. 693. Vide Charge of the BISHOP OF OXFORD, 1842, infra, p. 11. Several subjects have been included which have only an indirect connection with the Tract. arian Movement; such as the Validity of Lay Baptism, the Restoration of Convocation, &c. :. the learned dissertations of the Bishops of AUSTRALIA and EXETER on the former of these topics, occupy a considerable space in the present volume. |