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V

THE TEMPTATION OF THE REVEREND STEPHEN HOLDFAST.

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BY DIONYSIUS DIAMOND, M.D.

IN TWO PARTS.-PART II.

TESTRY of St. Lazarus r. Holdfast,' said a dapper little clerk, coming up to Mr. Limpet, the junior counsel who had been retained for the Vestry. Mr. Limpet was an Evangelical busybody. Though a man of strict piety (hence the retainer), he liked the world, and he liked even better to hear what was doing in the world. As he looked at you through his gold spectacles you saw that he was in a state of chronic curiosity.

The noble Hall-rich with legal trophies-was crowded, and there was some difficulty in arresting the seniors-Serjeant Puddle and Sir Godfrey Mallet, Q.C. Mallet's name is still widely remembered-no man of higher intellectual endowments, or of more classical perfectness of speech, has of recent years adorned the English Bar. But he was armed with a lavish faculty of scorn, and his descriptions (of his own friends even) could be on occasion more emphatic and vivacious than polite. 'I can't come,' he said to Limpet, when the junior approached him. 'I am in the very middle of my speech in Brown . Buggins, and that idiot Marley will talk about eternal justice! Eternal justice be hanged!' said the great leader, suddenly stopping on the floor, and confronting poor Limpet, who literally shivered. No man,' he continued, as he resumed his leisurely pace, 'should be put on the bench who hasn't practised at the bar. A heavy bar practice does not blunt a man's conscience, as you fellows suppose, but it shows him in the most convincing way how uncommonly difficult it is to do justice in

this world, what a ravelled web the whole business is, and how very apt you are to come to grief when you leave the beaten path and trust to divine illumination-doubling the confusion-intensifying the wrong. Give up eternal justice, my friend, if you are wise, and stick to the Judicature Act!-Yes, I'm just coming,' he said to a clerk who hurried up to announce that Brown v. Buggins was called; and then, turning to Limpet, he added, 'Who have you with you? Puddle, is it? Well, you're quite safe to pull through, if you can only get him to hold his d-d tongue!

With which piece of advice (it was all the Vestry got for the fee they sent him) the senior departed, and left Limpet to ferret out Puddle from a dingy bar, where he was stating a dilatory plea to a puisne judge (who had already mentally repelled it). Puddle was not exactly the sort of leader whom Limpet admired-for, to do the junior justice, he was scrupulously clean. I have no doubt that if, twenty years ago, you passed much of your time in Westminster Hall you must have known Puddle by sight. He was a loud, violent, blustering, incoherent sort of mortal, who had entered a gentlemanly profession in the hope that it would make him a gentleman. The expectation was not realised.

Then the two got into a cab and drove across to the Synod Hall, which Holdfast and his counsel had already reached.

II

THE General Council of the Calvinistic Synod met in a building that was not improperly devoted to

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the purposes of controversy church. It was one of the old churches which had belonged to the Establishment in the days of its supremacy, and the speakers were in the habit of appealing to the scenes which it had witnessed and the testimonies to which it had listened very curious scenes and very singular testimonies. Here in the old days persecution had been extolled and intolerance justifiedhere in the later time the sins of the fathers had been visited upon the children, and the Church which had invoked the secular arm to put its enemies to silence had been silenced in turn.

The President, or Moderator (as he is called), occupied a seat in the centre of the assemblage-similar in position and style to that which is occupied by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The body of the hall was filled by members, the galleries were appropriated to the public (which was characteristically feminine), and to the divinity students of the United Church, who were sometimes rather noisy in their manifestations of welcome or dislike. The Highs' sat on the right hand of the Moderator, the 'Drys' on his left. The former, who in this Synod (and since the Union of the Churches) were in overpowering force, represented the extreme orthodoxy of the body, its narrowness, its exclusiveness, its fierce earnestness, its implacable devotion to the Calvinistic formulas. Dr. Gregory sat at its head. He was the trusted leader under whose generalship the party had achieved so many of the victories which are more damaging than defeats. His fine, classical, cleanly-chiselled face was the face of a scholar, of a gentleman, and of a-fanatic. Velasquez has pictures of Grand Inquisitors for which Dr. Gregory might have sat-pictures (the glow of lighted faggots lighting up the sombre background) which immortalise the courtly arrogance and sublime condescension of

the medieval priest. Dr. Gregory certainly would not have winced when the fire was applied to the end of an obstinate heretic-to do him justice, he would not have winced had it been applied to his own. Most lovers of the fine arts admired this refined and thoroughbred ecclesiastic. They admired him as they admired a fine and wellpreserved fossil. It belongs to a different world, we know; but then, what a capital specimen it is! The leader was a scholar and a gentleman, but those who sat on the benches beside him and behind him betrayed few signs of culture or refinement. There were pleasant old gentlemen among them-pleasant, shaggy, honest-faced gentlemen, with the bloom of the country upon their cheeks, and the air of the country about their clean-starched linen and carefully-brushed black coats-but these modestly occupied the back benches, and listened in silence to the eloquence of their chiefs. Dr. Gregory was supported on the right hand (as the reporters say) by Dr. Butterwell and Mr. Brass, on the left by Dr. Downie and Professor Drumstick. The occupants of this front bench, however, were constantly moving about (as if they were not sufficiently conspicuous) and keeping up a fussy conversation with the clerks and the Moderator himself, whose gratified sense of dignity was not superior, one might observe, to an occasional yawn. The numbers of the 'Left' were insufficient to fill the benches allotted to them, and they looked chilly, depressed, and conscious of defeat. Yet on the halfdozen benches immediately opposite the table were congregated a body of theologians, critics, and orators who would have graced any assembly in the world. The general feeling of depression did not appear to have infected the leaders the totus, teres atque rotundus of Dr. Goodfellow had suffered no abridgment, and the Dean's mirth-pro

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THE LIBEL.

WHEREAS the Orthodox Standards of the Christian Faith were duly approven by the General Council of the Protestant Calvinistic Church in 1647, and ratified by the Lords of Parliament in 1649, yet true it is and of verity that you, the said Stephen Holdfast, have contravened and contradicted the doctrine and teaching of the Standards duly approven and ratified as aforesaid, in respect that:

(1) In Article One of said Stan

dards it is set forth and declared as follows: 'It pleased God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good:

But you, the said Stephen Holdfast, maintain and have maintained on divers occasions that God did not create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days.

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(3) In Article Five of said Standards it is declared and set forth as follows: All persons publishing opinions contrary to the principles of Christianity, whether concerning faith, worship, or conversation, may be lawfully proceeded against by the civil magistrate, who hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order that the truth of God be preserved pure and entire, and that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed: '

But you, the said Stephen Holdfast, maintain and have maintained on divers occasions that the civil magistrate cannot lawfully take order that heresy be suppressed, and that he hath no authority to proceed against persons who are known to entertain opinions contrary to the principles of Christianity and the Standards of the Church, and that when he does so he is guilty of persecution and inquisition.

(4) In Article Ten of said Standards it is set forth and declared as follows: None are redeemed in Christ but the elect only. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice:

But you, the said Stephen Holdfast, maintain and have maintained on divers occasions that it did not please God to pass by and to ordain to dishonour and wrath for their sin all mankind with the exception of the elect.

(5) In Article Twelve of said Standards it is set forth and declared as follows: 'Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who worketh when and where and how He pleaseth. Others not elected cannot be saved; much less can men not professing the Christian religion,

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But you, the said Stephen Holdfast, maintain and have maintained on divers occasions that the punishments of non-elect persons in the world to come are not everlasting, and that the words 'shall suffer grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, in hell-fire for ever' (which comfortable doctrine is most explicitly and fully expounded in Holy Scripture and the said Standards) is a damnable doctrine, or words to that effect.

ALL WHICH being instructed by competent evidence, or admitted by the judicial confession of you, the said Stephen Holdfast; THEREFORE you, the said Stephen Holdfast, should be deposed from the office of the holy ministry, and prohibited and discharged from exercising the same or any part thereof in all time coming under pain of the highest censures of the Church.

The discussion on what is called the relevancy of the libel was opened by Mr. Erskine, who appeared for Holdfast, and who argued with great ingenuity that the passages selected from the sermons did not contradict the Standards. To the memory of my dear friend, Alexander Erskine, I must be permitted

to dedicate a simple word of regret. A universal favourite-his pleasant and genial manner being the natural expression of a character singularly pure, unselfish, and warmhearted; essentially a good man—a man animated by simple conscientiousness, steady rectitude, and a brave but unobtrusive determination to do what he held to be right in all places and under all discouragements; a man of fine natural abilities, peculiarly fitted to excel at the bar, for his intellect was rapid and inventive (mastering the most intricate case with surprising ease and readiness), and he spoke with a clearness, picturesqueness, and point, that have grown rare in our courts of law-he died before. he was forty, at the very head of his profession. His speech this day was one of his finest efforts-witty, argumentative, subtle, incisive, pathetic.

The Church-lawyers (of whom there were nearly a dozen in the Synod) maintained that the indictment was relevant, and Mr. Thistle Down proposed a motion to that effect. An eruptive, irascible member used to declare that a speech from Mr. Thistle Down was an insult to the Synod. The airy impertinence and easy swagger of a man of the world who had been kind enough to become a man of God, was more than the corrupt human temper could stand. Mr. Thistle Down undoubtedly felt that he was condescending when he mixed with the poor ministers and homely elders of an impoverished Church, and these in their turn could not help showing by their manner that they were quite aware that he had ten thousand a-year, and religion and its Author were indebted to him for attending their meetings.

The Opposition, although they contended that the indictment was ill drawn, did not see their way to divide the House, holding that the matter belonged to the Law rather

than to the Gospel, and that the opinion of the legal members must be allowed to settle the point. Then Holdfast rose.

THE SPEECH OF THE REVEREND STEPHEN HOLDFAST.

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MR. HOLDFAST said: It is with feeling of deep depression that I rise to address the Synod, and I know that I should have acted more prudently hal I left my defence in the hands of my learned friend. Bat the time has come, as it seems to me, when it is needful that I should disclose, in the plainest and most explicit language, the motives which have induced me to remain in the Church in which my forefathers lived and died, and in which I was bred. That I have ceased to hold certain of the doctrines which the Church at one time taught, I am ready, with the utmost frankness, to own; and it will be for this assembly, by their vote to-night, to declare whether such liberty of opinion among her clergy is, or is not, admissible.

Let me say at once that, to the best of my understanding, I am truly attached to the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith. To me, belief in the eternal power and goodness of God, belief that that eternal power and goodness was incarnated in the person of our Redeemer, belief in the fact of sin and of God's power to release us from sin, belief in the resurrection of the dead-are as real as they can be to any of you. The libel which has been read specifies in detail the particular doctrines regarding which I am said to entertain opinions more or less inconsistent with the explanations contained in the Confession. The questions, the only questions, therefore, which I propose to discuss with this venerable assembly are these: In what sense and to what extent is the Church committed to the explanations of the Standards? To what extent and in what sense am I myself committed?

The theologians of a keenly speculative age threw their convictions about dogma into a written creed. These were the barest convictions of the age. That I am willing to admit. But since the creed was penned, well-nigh three hundred years have passed, three hundred years of wonderful change in the moral, spiritual, and material world. Is the national Church the Church of the dead or of the living nation? Of the living, surely, and while we may regard with interest, nay with veneration, the religious manifestoes which our ancestors issued, and which answered the particular emergency and served the immediate purpose, can you reasonably ask us to do more--unless indeed our own convictions assent ? And if they do not assent, what then? Are we to relinquish our connection with your great missionary institute, and look upon it as an historical curiosity only--a monument to the dead?

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I signed the Standards-I subscribed the Confession. I was neither doctor nor dialectician. was a plain soldier, ignorant of the technical language of philosophy and theology, when I quitted the service of the Sovereign and entered the service of the Church. I only asked to be allowed to do some work, however humble, in what seemed to me the cause of God and godliness. Alas! (and yet why should I lament the change?) the time arrived when I learned, as all of us must learn, that there is something greater than good works. Yes; Truth is greater than good works. Far be it from me, most venerable fathers and brethren, to assert that I have found the Truth: but I can honestly say that since the day when I discovered that the search after Truth is man's noblest prerogative in this world, since the day when in her severe majesty she surprised me at my evangelistic work, I have sought her diligently.

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