_I maintain communion with the Church of England_, _because her doctrines
are fixed by articles of Religion_, _which appear to me to be derived
from and perfectly conformable to the Scriptures of Truth_.
I AM fully aware that some among the ministers of the church to which I
belong, may have entered into her service without understanding or fully
approving the articles to which they subscribed their assent and consent,
and consequently may preach doctrines differing from those of the church
whose ministers they are. The possibility of the supposed case appears
from the painful necessity, under which a late Bishop of London was laid,
of depriving an unsound clergyman of his office. But such ministers
cannot do this without exposing their own ignorance or hypocrisy; nor can
their own unbelief make the faith of the church of no effect. These
articles I consider to be the bulwark of orthodoxy or true doctrine in
our church,—the means of her preservation from apostacy in the lowest
state of spiritual life to which she has been or may be reduced, and of
providing for her recovery from such a state whenever God is pleased to
breathe upon her. A declaration or subscription to the truth of the
Bible would afford no security, as all who bear the Christian name,
however heretical or unsound in opinion, pretend to derive their creed
from the word of God. I conceive therefore that it is of high importance
to have the principal articles of the Christian faith embodied in such a
way, that no heretic can, without manifest dishonesty, subscribe to them.
If the incumbent or minister of any parish be thus dishonest, having
subscribed to what he never cordially believed, and preaching doctrines
contrary to the articles he has subscribed, when his incumbency or
ministry in that parish ceases by death or any other cause, the articles
of the church remain in full force. But if no such test existed, and if
the election to church preferment were vested in the people, a single
incumbency might so corrupt the opinions of the congregation as to
perpetuate heresy from generation to generation.
I continue therefore in the communion of the Church of England, because
she has fixed principles, and those principles are, in my judgment,
scriptural and “according to godliness.”