THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Quarterly Review. APRIL, MDCCCXLV. ART. I.-An Enquiry into the Means of Grace, their Mutual Connexion and Combined Use, with especial reference to the Church of England; in Eight Sermons, preached before the University of Oxford, at the Bampton Lecture for the year 1844. By R. W. Jelf, D.D., Principal of King's College, London. Rivingtons. 1844. IT is a trite observation, which passes current from lip to lip, that the acknowledgment of Christ, or its omission, constitutes the difference between a true and a false Church. That the true Church acknowledges Christ in all things by ascribing everything it has, and referring everything it does, to him alone while the false Church, without openly denying Christ, and even while professedly acknowledging him, really neglects and often denies him, by keeping Christ out of sight, or making him only secondary, and ascribing to ordinances or sacraments, or priests or intercessors, either on earth or in heaven, the blessings which he alone has power to bestow; and, by thus deriving them from any other source, or expecting them through any other channel than Christ, men always dishonour, and may be even denying, him-the Fountain of lifehim ever present in the stream. In all observations which have become thus common there is a deep truth, which we are apt to overlook and let slip, when they drop from the mouth of those who themselves attach little meaning to their words, or are accustomed to speak of all things in a strained and exaggerated sense; yet as common VOL. XVII.-S sense is found to be the perfection of wisdom, so common observations embody the perfection of experience, if we will take the trouble of examining that which lies beneath the surface -if we will note what gave occasion to, and consider all that is contained in such remarks-will understand in short what is really meant by these proverbial expressions. The main difference between the Church of England and that of Rome is, that we make Christ to be all in all, which the Church of Rome does not. For, setting aside the Pope, whom they put in the place of Christ on earth, and whom we wholly reject in any such character; in those things which both these Churches acknowledge-such as mediation and intercession-we acknowledge but one Mediator between God and man-the Man Christ Jesus; but the Church of Rome acknowledges as many mediators as saints or angels; and all in place of, some in preference to, Christ himself. The practical effect of which, in the Roman Church, is that these are addressed by her in coming to God; generally without any reference to the mediation of Christ-sometimes even represented as mitigating his holy indignation, as though he were less tender and compassionate than saints and angels would be. The Church of England, again, in sacraments and ordinances, looks to the presence of Christ the institutor, as alone rendering them efficacious; which presence is to be realized only by faith, being the gift of God to the true Church-the faithful followers of Christ; and is experienced through the abiding presence of the Holy Ghost-the promised Comforter. Thus keeping clear of the Roman error, which consists in undue exaltation of the sacramental things, making them to be all in all, to the dishonour and forgetfulness of Christ: and also keeping clear of the opposite error in all Dissenters, and in too many Churchmen, of thinking that we can obtain sacramental blessings without sacraments; or spiritually, as they falsely call it, meaning thereby independent of those means which Christ has ordained for these ends. The Church was not intended to be a mere school of philosophy, in which one man might do his best to teach, and others to learn, things most agreeable to the mind of man, and of which all, as men, are already quite competent to understand the meaning and pass judgment upon; but it was designed to raise men far higher than before, and to give them spiritual apprehension of divine truths of which they were before ignorant, and to which, as men, both by nature and habit, they are wholly averse. The Church does not even stop at having reached the spirit of man through the understanding; but, having thus reached the spirit, uses the ascendancy thus acquired, to point to the sacraments and ordinances as means of grace, designed by God, to accomplish that special work for which the Church is set, for which Christ came; to lift man from the ruins of the fall, and to make him meet for the kingdom of heaven, where Christ, who is both the redeemer and the forerunner, is for us entered. It is to bring out the sense in which the Church of England regards these means of grace that Dr. Jelf addresses himself; showing their mutual coherence, and combined operation to the one end which they all have in view; and that " as sure as God is one, these helps to holiness were intended not to be divorced, but to lend each other mutual support and light; and inasmuch as, though made up of several parts, they yet constitute one whole in the economy of God's grace, so it is as unphilosophical as it is perilous, to put asunder in theology what he has joined in fact.......... The treatment of these means, with especial reference to the branch of Christ's Church of which we are members, was forced upon the author by the circumstances of our times. The days are upon us, when every religious system is being sifted as wheat. It is, doubtless, good for us that we are so tried; it will shake us from the slumbers of indifferentism; it will remind us that there is a right or a wrong in everything; it will help us to distinguish our friends from our enemies, internal as well as external; above all it will bring the Church upon her knees, as the only attitude beseeming a mother, who, for our sins, is traduced, scoffed at, and hated by her own children, even while they cling to her breasts; it will drive her, in humiliation and in prayer, to repent of and to amend her deficiencies; to make her practice commensurate with her theory. ......... He would entreat the reader to ponder the words of a writer who was quite sufficiently alive to the genuine ideal of a Church, and who is much oftener quoted than understood."―(Thorndike). "In fine, if anything may have been defective or amiss in that order which the Church of England establisheth, it is but justice to compare it in gross with both extremes which it avoideth ......... so necessary is it for me to continue in the resolution of my non-age; as being convinced, on a new enquiry, that the means of salvation are more sufficient, more agreeable for substance to the Scriptures, expounded by the original practice of the whole Church in that mean, than in either extreme."-(PREFACE). In regarding all the means of grace as one whole, though made up of many parts, we have to bear in mind at all times what is the full import of their being one whole of many parts; which is, that they all have one end in view, which can only be attained by all these means, each one of which is the channel for its appropriate grace, and any one channel being stopped, a mean of grace is frustrated-something is wanting in the one whole-there is a falling-short of the one end which God had in view when he instituted these means of grace, for his own glory, and the blessing of the Church. The word of God is one of these means; each sacrament is another; prayer is another; pastoral care, and all that is comprehended in oversight of the Church, and priestly ministrations, are so many means of grace, which are not reiterations of the same blessing under another form; but are severally instituted to impart distinct blessings, though all conducive to the fuller and more perfect attainment of the one end, and the higher blessedness of the Church. Until the Gospel came-until the Church was brought out in Christian ordinances-the escape from present misery was the highest ambition of man: to avert, or to mitigate, or to prevent the recurrence of evil. But Christianity has opened heaven and eternity to our view; and that, not as a speculation or probability, but as a certainty and a reality so much so, that we actually receive the earnest and first fruits of that inheritance now, in the sacraments of the Church, which are the seal of our purchased possession, in being the channels for the Holy Ghost; and for rightly receiving which, in order that we may through them receive this seal of our faith, and this earnest of our inheritance, all the other means are subsidiary, though each in its degree indispensable. The heathen wondered at the preternatural hopes and expectations of the Church, and the supernatural faith and power of endurance, and contempt of terrestrial objects of fear and desire; not knowing how vast, and yet at the same time real, was the object presented to and apprehended by the Church; in comparison with which treasure all other things are dross; and all time, but a moment of affliction, obliterated by the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. When St. Paul reasoned on Christian topics before the most august and enlightened assembly that the heathen world had ever known, and spake, in the midst of Mars' hill, concerning the true God, and repentance, and the day of judgment, whereof assurance hath been given unto all men, in the resurrection from the dead; some mocked-some said, "what will this babbler say ?"-other some," he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods:" because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. Yet St. Paul had only approached the threshold of the Church-had only touched upon the preliminary doctrines of repentance, and faith in the fact which lies at the foundation of Christianity; he had not spoken of the higher doctrines held within the Church, by those who, through the sacraments and other means of grace, had been advanced to the standing of Christians; and from that platform, having, as it were, ascended above the earth, and drawn nearer to heaven, could look down on the former, and look up to the latter, with steady undistracted gaze with hopes growing brighter, and confidence growing stronger, as they draw nearer and nearer, and become more and more meet for the heavenly possession. And in reading such passages as these we should remember that St. Paul was speaking to a heathen audience; which may teach us not only how necessary it is, in speaking to such an audience, to limit our teaching by only introducing such elementary topics as they can understand, and ought to believe; but also, that the Church should be so firmly grounded in such doctrines as these as not to require their repetition; but that, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, we ought to be going on unto perfection: not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith towards God, and the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment: all of which may be held, and yet we may fall short of the perfection St. Paul speaks of-all of which he regards as first principles of the oracles of God; belonging rather to those who are unskilful in the word of righteousness, than to those who, by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. We have to remember that Christianity is designed not only to remedy all the evils of the world, and so to lift man out of the evil condition into which he has been brought by the fall, but to lift him into a far higher condition than before he fell : to place man in a condition in which a second fall will be impossible, not only by the new nature being sustained by the Divine power of the Holy Ghost, and thus constitutionally becoming infallible; but by its being a condition in which man shall know all that it is possible for creatures to know, and, therefore, all that creatures can desire to know: and thus, the very ground of the former temptation being removed, man will become spiritually, and intellectually, as well as constitutionally infallible. And thus the boast of the Roman Church, which is only arrogant pretension now, will be realized in |