1853
Here’s something I need to do a proper entry about (but don’t have the time today). The first round in the C of E Victorian conflict about eternal damnation occurred when F.D, Maurice, clergyman and Professor of Divinity at King’s College London. His wide hope opinions stated in his Theological Essays of 1853 were viewed as being heterodox by R.W. Jeff the College Principal who, after some tedious correspondence by letter, had Maurice evicted from his Professorship in the same year. But below is an interesting excerpt from one of Maurice’s replies to Jeff – set out by me to make it an easier read:
Maurice’s opening remarks
**‘’You have alluded (in your last letter) to the absence of a dogmatic statement on the meaning of the word Eternal in our Articles, and to the evidence which the existence of such an Article among the original 42 affords that the omission was deliberate. I hope that the reasons you assign for the course which our Reformers pursued are satisfactory to your own mind. I am most anxious that they should be carefully weighed by the Council of King’s College and by the whole Church, as being the very best which, after a long consideration, a learned apologist was able to produce’’. **
Point 1: Jeff’s argument (as summarized by Maurice)
**‘’… the doctrine on the subject of punishment…was an Anabaptist doctrine, and therefore needed not to be condemned after the first vehemence of the Anabaptist fever had subsided’’ **
Maurice’s reply
‘’To the first reason you have replied yourself in other parts of the letter; for you have stated that Origen in the third century, and not any Anabaptist in the sixteenth, was the author of the tenet which you disapprove’’.
Point 2: Jeff’s argument (as summarized by Maurice)
‘’… the question had already been settled by the adoption of the Athanasian Creed in the 8th Article’’
Maurice’s reply
‘‘…the sense of the words ‘Eternal Life’ and ‘Eternal Death’ which identifies them respectively with the knowledge of God and the absence of that knowledge, is the one which is directly suggested by the Athanasian Creed… the chief objections to it have arisen from the refusal to give the words that force; that unless we did tacitly acknowledge it, the expression “He who does not thus think concerning the Trinity” would become intolerable to the conscience of every minister and every hearer.’’
Point 3: Jeff’s argument (as summarized by Maurice)
‘‘… some of the Reformers–Jewel, for instance–were very strong in condemning Origen’’
*Maurice’s reply *
‘’…if the Reformers did personally concur in your opinion and denounce the opposite, it is all the more remarkable that they were withheld (some might say by their good sense, I should say by a higher wisdom) from enforcing that opinion on the Church’’
Point 4: Jeff’s argument (as summarized by Maurice)
‘’…that there may be many theological propositions which ought thoroughly to be received and believed though they are not contained in the Formulary [that is, the 39 Articles]which we have subscribed’.
*Maurice’s reply *
‘’…the general notion which you encourage–that the King’s College Council may demand of its professors an assent to a number of et caeteras not included in the Formularies [that is, the 39 Articles] to which, as churchmen and clergymen, they have set their hand–is one for which I own I was not prepared. It will alarm, I believe, many persons who differ very widely with me. I do not see how it can fail to alarm every man who attaches any sacredness to his oaths or his subscriptions’’
Lots of things are interesting here. I note that here is another instance of a clergyman of Universalist leanings using the pedigree of the abrogation as his defense against charges of heterodoxy. I note that Jeff obviously produced evidence in his letter that John Jewell, the powerful Bishop of Salisbury – one of the original signatories to the 39 articles – was strong in condemning Origen. I need to check this out by somehow getting hold of Jeff’s letter – but if true (which I do not doubt) it does make the Abrogation of the 42nd even more remarkable.
Will do a proper post on this when I can