NATIONAL APOSTASY
CONSIDERED
IN
A SERMON
PREACHED IN ST. MARY’S, OXFORD,
BEFORE
HIS MAJESTY’S JUDGES OF ASSIZE,
ON SUNDAY, JULY 14, 1833.

BY
JOHN KEBLE, M. A.

FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, AND POETRY PROFESSOR
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

OXFORD,
PRINTED BY S. COLLINGWOOD, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY,
FOR J. H. PARKER.
SOLD ALSO BY J. G. AND F. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD,
AND WATERLOO-PLACE, LONDON.
MDCCCXXXIII.

ADVERTISEMENT.

Since the following pages were prepared for the press, the calamity, in anticipation of which they were written, has actually overtaken this portion of the Church of God.  The Legislature of England and Ireland, (the members of which are not even bound to profess belief in the Atonement,) this body has virtually usurped the commission of those whom our Saviour entrusted with at least one voice in making ecclesiastical laws, on matters wholly or partly spiritual.  The same Legislature has also ratified, to its full extent, this principle;—that the Apostolical Church in this realm is henceforth only to stand, in the eye of the State, as one sect among many, depending, for any preeminence she may still appear to retain, merely upon the accident of her having a strong party in the country.

It is a moment, surely, full of deep solicitude to all those members of the Church who still believe her authority divine, and the oaths and obligations, by which they are bound to her, undissolved and indissoluble by calculations of human expediency.  Their anxiety turns not so much on the consequences, to the State, of what has been done, (they are but too evident,) as on the line of conduct which they are bound themselves to pursue.  How may they continue their communion with the Church established, (hitherto the pride and comfort of their lives,) without any taint of those Erastian Principles on which she is now avowedly to be governed?  What answer can we make henceforth to the partisans of the Bishop of Rome, when they taunt us with being a mere Parliamentarian Church?  And how, consistently with our present relations to the State, can even the doctrinal purity and integrity of the most Sacred Order be preserved?

The attention of all who love the Church is most earnestly solicited to these questions.  They are such, it will be observed, as cannot be answered by appealing to precedents in English History, because, at most, such could only shew, that the difficulty might have been raised before.  It is believed, that there are hundreds, nay thousands of Christians, and that soon there will be tens of thousands, unaffectedly anxious to be rightly guided with regard to these and similar points.  And they are mooted thus publicly, for the chance of eliciting, from competent judges, a correct and early opinion.

If, under such trying and delicate circumstances, one could venture to be positive about any thing, it would seem safe to say, that in such measure as it may be thought incumbent on the Church, or on Churchmen, to submit to any profane intrusion, it must at least be their sacred duty, to declare, promulgate, and record, their full conviction,