He dwelt upon the leading moral
characteristics of the English Episcopal Church, their intrinsic value
and their adaptation to the circumstances of the times, and defined
these characteristics to be the doctrine of the visibility of the
Church, the apostolic succession in the ministry, the authority of the
Church in matters of faith and the truths symbolized in the sacraments.
In one chapter he strongly attacks Rationalism as a reference of the
gospel to the depraved standard of the actual human natures and by no
means to its understanding properly so called, as its measure and
criterion. He says: "That therefore to rely upon the understanding,
misinformed as it is by depraved affections, as our adequate instructor
in matters of religion, is most highly irrational." Nevertheless, "the
understanding has a great function in religion and is a medium to the
affections, and may even correct their particular impulses."
In reference to the question of the reconversion of England to
Catholicism, earnestly desired by some, Mr. Gladstone forcibly remarked:
"England, which with ill grace and ceaseless efforts at remonstrance,
endured the yoke when Rome was in her zenith, and when her powers were
but here and there evoked; will the same England, afraid of the truth
which she has vindicated, or even with the license which has mingled
like a weed with its growth, recur to that system in its decrepitude
which she repudiated in its vigor?" If the Church of England ever lost
her power, it would never be by submission to Rome, "but by that
principle of religions insubordination and self-dependence which, if it
refuse her tempered rule and succeed in its overthrow, will much more
surely refuse and much more easily succeed in resisting the
unequivocally arbitrary impositions of the Roman scheme.
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