usual display of sectarian rancour, we are sure to find some pamphlet of Bishop Philpott's at the bottom of it. If there be any topic which has excited peculiar bigotry and intolerance in the lowest order of clerical minds, that topic has been started by Bishop Philpotts. If a frantic country parson summons his churchwardens to his vestry that he may renounce the Queen's supremacy in their presence, his zeal has been set on fire by the invectives of Bishop Philpotts against the Privy Council. If a clique of High Churchmen see fit to show their reverence for Church principles by stigmatising their anti-Tractarian bishop as a heretic, they justify themselves by appealing to a Pastoral of Bishop Philpotts against the Archbishop. On the other hand, whatever improvement has been wrought in the machinery and practical working of the Church during the last twenty years, has been effected in spite of the active opposition, and violent reclamations of the Bishop of Exeter. The commutation of tithes has removed a fruitful source of quarrels between incumbents and their flocks, which formerly very much prevented the spiritual usefulness of the clergy. This great improvement was resisted, as might have been anticipated, by Bishop Philpotts. An English bishopric has been founded at Jerusalem, for the purpose of uniting us more closely with the Protestants of Ger many on the one side, and the Greek and Syrian Churches on the other; a measure of such genuine catholicity was of course anathematised by Bishop Philpotts.* The population of our large towns was found to be utterly beyond the reach of the few clergy placed in the midst of heathen multitudes, and an attempt was made to strengthen the hands of these overtasked ministers by supplying them with Scripture Readers,' who might act as lay assistants under their direction, and bring the ministrations of the Church into the cottages of the poor; the other bishops warmly supported this work of Christian love; we need not say that it was condemned, and its supporters vilified by Bishop Philpotts. But why should we weary our readers by specifying particular instances of a general rule with

not so acceptable as he had expected to the Bishop of London, the superior to whom he had appealed; who replied to his mediæval manifesto by a very severe reprimand.

* The manner in which Bishop Philpotts opposed the late Archbishop Howley, on the subject of the Jerusalem Bishopric, will be remembered by many of our readers. Immediately after the Bishop of Jerusalem was consecrated by the Archbishop, he was excommunicated by Bishop Philpotts. So that Archbishop Sumner is not the only archbishop who has been subjected to the insults of this domineering Prelate.

1852.

Mischievous Results of his Policy.

69

which their own observation must have made them familiar? It has been said that one might form a good library by merely procuring the books prohibited by the Index Expurgatorius of the Inquisition; and in like manner we may assert, that if a man were seeking for good objects whereon to bestow his charitable contributions, or useful designs wherein to co-operate, he could scarcely form a better selection than by choosing those objects and designs which the Bishop of Exeter has most bitterly denounced.

But this is not all, nor even the worst. Had Bishop Philpotts done nothing more than might have been done by an intemperate zealot, or an unreasoning bigot, our task would have been less painful, and also less necessary. It is not of intemperate zeal, it is not of unreasoning bigotry, that we accuse him. We have no quarrel on this occasion with the theological opinions which he professes to hold. Those opinions are not our own; but they are the opinions of many whom we regard with veneration and affection, of many whose piety and sincerity it would be blasphemous to doubt. The Anglo-Catholic doctrine was the creed of Bishop Andrews, and Bishop Ken; of George Herbert, of Mrs. Godolphin, of the mother of the Wesleys; it is now the creed of Gladstone and Sidney Herbert, among our Laity; of Pusey and of Keble among our Clergy; it was, till lately, the creed of that lamented band of Roman converts, whose devotedness we honour while we deplore their errors; many of whom have renounced friends and prospects at the call of duty; some of whom, if any ever did, have suffered the loss of all things that they might win Christ. In such men we see the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 'meekness, temperance:' and God forbid that we should question the reality of a piety which is thus witnessed. No odium theologicum divides us from men like these; we trust that the bond which joins us to them is greater than the gulf which separates us; though they may isolate themselves from us, we will not be isolated from them; they cannot. forbid our reverence; they shall not repel our love.

It is true indeed, that great harm may be done if the government of the Church be entrusted to the partisans of an extreme school of theological opinion, however sincere may be their piety. Bishop Sanderson*, and Bishop Cosins were men of saintly life,

*

Bishop Sanderson died at the beginning of 1662, and therefore was not actually a party to the enactment of the Act of Uniformity, which was passed later in the year; but in the Savoy Conference, and the Convocation of 1661, he concurred in the preliminary measures of which the Act of Uniformity was the necessary conclusion.

yet they joined in driving out 2000 of the ablest and most conscientious of the clergy from the ministry of the establishment, and co-operated in measures which have made Non-Conformity the hereditary religion of thousands who might else have lived and died in the communion of the national Church. Dr. Pusey and Mr. Keble are men of unquestionable piety; yet if they were elevated to the Bench, we cannot doubt that the genuine intolerance of Bishop Pusey and Bishop Keble would produce some of the same evils which we have already described as springing from the assumed intolerance of Bishop Philpotts. But such is the power of sincerity and goodness, that we believe, with all their mistakes, such men would, in the end, do more good than harm. In our days they would have comparatively little power to persecute, and therefore a mistaken view of the duty of persecution could not mislead them so fatally as it misled some of the best prelates of the Restoration. Their creed might teach bitterness, but their life would preach charity; their tongue might utter anathemas, but their hearts would be filled with blessings; their very opponents would be won to love them by the heavenly nature of their aims, and the manifest simplicity of their purpose. But the result is But the result is very differ ent, if men see their bishop adopting intolerance as a cloak for self-interest, and mixing the most exalted spiritual pretensions with the most tortuous secular intrigues; if they see him exaggerating the sanctity of the clerical office, yet violating it by the most scandalous acts of nepotism; assuming the loftiest tone of an apostle, to mask the sharpest practice of an attorney; stirring up a tempest of agitation, only that the turbid. atmosphere may veil his transgressions from the public eye. In such a case they will most surely measure his words by his deeds, his professions by his practice. And too often their estimate of religion itself will be lowered by their knowledge of him as its representative. Thus he will do all the mischief of the genuine fanatic, and far more besides. He will lead men to distrust the appearance of sanctity, to suspect the very semblance of virtue. And much more will this be the case, if he has made himself the head of a religious party, and consequently is defended by religious partisans. These, if they are really devout and unworldly, will be all the more unlikely to suspect the true character of their leader. Thinking no evil themselves, they will defend what is evil in him; their ignorance of the world will blind them to his worldly craft; their singleness of purpose will screen his double dealing from their view. But the mass of mankind will not give them credit for their simplicity; the world will think them accomplices, when they are only dupes;

1852.

Mischievous Results of his Policy.

71

and too many will pass to the fatal conclusion, that a profession of piety is as much a pretext in one man as in another; that all religious men are insincere alike; that even the best will justify the means by the end; and other such fallacies as these, which tend to destroy all belief in virtue, and turn the enthusiastic admiration of goodness into a heartless scepticism. Hence it is most important to enlighten the minds of such worthy and unsuspicious men, by giving them, if possible, a real knowledge of those who aspire to lead them. And the more so if there is reason to suppose that the character of a party-leader has been misunderstood, not only by his admirers, but by many of his enemies also. This is especially the case with the subject of our present Article: it is surprising how often we find men, otherwise well-informed in Ecclesiastical Politics, yet ignorant of the most palpable facts in the history of so notorious a person. Indeed his very notoriety dazzles the eyes of all but close observers; the glare of artificial light which falls on certain features, throws the rest of the countenance into the shade. A general view of him drawn from nature, and free alike from exaggeration and from disguise, is still a desideratum.

This conviction has led us to attempt the historical portrait of Bishop Philpotts. We shall endeavour to paint him, not as he is pictured by the enthusiastic dreams of the Anglo-Catholic young ladies, who oscillate between the ballet at the Opera House and the morning service at St. Barnabas; nor yet as he is represented in the darker visions of their aunts or grandmothers, who derive their theology from the columns of the Record.' Our picture will be a simple and prosaic likeness, in which soberness of colouring must be excused in consideration of the photographic process by which it is taken. In short, our delineation of the Bishop will consist of a mere collection of facts, combined together in one general view; the materials being richly supplied by his published writings, his official acts, the reported debates of Parliament, and the authentic records of courts of law. The representation thus produced will, we fear, disappoint the warmest both of his worshippers and of his denouncers. The former will look in vain for the Athanasius of the West, on whom their fancy has so fondly dwelt, the Champion of the Faith,--the Pillar of the tottering Church,' alone among the faithless, faithful found.' The latter will not see the blinded bigot, raging with misguided zeal against gospel truth. Neither will easily bring down their high raised imaginations to the sober reality; neither will recognise their hero in the shrewd and worldly churchman, violent by calculation, intemperate by policy, selfish in his ends, and un

scrupulous in his means, whose acquaintance they will form in the following pages.

Henry Philpotts is perhaps descended from that celebrated Archdeacon Philpott, who published, in the reign of Edward VI., his Reasons for Spitting upon an Arian;' a work, the spirit of which bears some analogy to the Pastorals' of the Bishop of Exeter.* We offer this, however, only as a conjectural pedigree, for we have not been able to trace his descent beyond his father, John Philpotts, who was landlord of a respectable tavern, in the city of Gloucester. Some of the most coarse and vulgar of the Bishop's assailants have been in the habit of alluding to this circumstance as though it were matter of reproach. Our readers will not suspect us of imitating their example. Yet we cannot but regret that the conduct and language of Bishop Philpotts too often remind us painfully of the least pleasing associations connected with the traffic of the vintner, and the rhetoric of the stable yard. Even his partisans are obliged to excuse him by recalling to our remembrance the circumstances of his early life; and to exclaim with vexation, Quin omnia malit

Quæcunque immundâ fervent allata popinâ.†

Nevertheless, the earliest portion of Henry Philpotts' life is not the least creditable. His industry and ability, aided by a good grammar-school education, enabled him to obtain, while yet a lad, one of those open scholarships of Corpus Christi College at Oxford, which have so often proved the door of entrance to eminent talents in their career of distinction. thus became a member of the same society which was adorned, at a later period, by the simultaneous presence of Arnold, Coleridget, and Keble: we cannot but rejoice that those noble

He

* It is but justice, however, to the worthy old divine to say that he explains the cause why I did spit,' more clearly and satisfactorily than his supposed descendant, whose reasons for spitting on an Archbishop are more caustic than convincing. The Archdeacon seems further to have resembled the Bishop in the fluent exuberance of his rhetoric, if we may trust the following compliment paid him by his friend John Careless: Oh, good Master Philpott, which art a principal pot indeed, filled with most precious liquor, as it appeareth by 'the plenteous pouring forth of the same; oh pot most happy, which 'dost contain such heavenly treasure in the earthen vessel!" (Coverdale's Letters of the Martyrs.)

† Hor. Sat. II. 4. 62.

See the interesting account of their college companionship, by Mr. Justice Coleridge, in the Life of Dr. Arnold.