In regard to _church polity_, they maintain that the church is an empire and government of its own,—a government appointed by God,—and that its laws, as they are to be found in the Book of Common Prayer, ought to be implicitly obeyed. They deprecate the neglect of the _daily service_, the desecration of festivals, and the scanty administration of the eucharist.
With respect to _sacraments_, the Puseyites hold that they are not subjects of discussion, or for speculation; but “high, mysterious, awful Christian privileges—to be _felt_, reverenced, embraced, realized, acted.”
With respect to _church authority_, they hold that human tradition has no place in revelation; that no individuals, since the apostles, can be regarded as expositors of the will of Christ; that the _unanimous witness_ of Christendom, as to the teaching of the apostles, is the only and the fully-sufficient guaranty of the whole revealed faith, and that we do possess historically such a guaranty in the remains of the primitive church.
The Puseyites inculcate the necessity of dispensing religious truth with caution and reverence, not throwing it promiscuously before minds ill suited to receive it.
A characteristic feature of the Oxford school of theology, is its opposition to what is called the “popular religionism of the day.” The masters of the school grieve that men are sent from the seat of their education with the belief that they are to _think_, not _read_; _judge_, rather than _learn_; and look to their own minds for truth, rather than to some permanent external standard.
At the head of this school are Dr. Pusey, Regius professor of Hebrew, and canon of Christ Church, Rev. J. Keble, professor of poetry, Rev. J. H. Newman, Rev. J. Williams, and Rev. W. Sewall, professor of moral philosophy.
This denomination of Christians dissent from the regular Baptists on the point that immersion is a prerequisite to the privileges of a church relation, and permit Christians of all denominations, in regular church standing, to partake with them at the Lord’s table.
The Rev. Robert Hall, of England, one of the most learned and eloquent Baptist ministers of the age, was an unflinching opposer of the practice of “close communion,” which he denounced as “unchristian and unnatural.” In a tract written in defence of his views on this subject, he remarks, “It is too much to expect an enlightened public will be eager to enroll themselves among the members of a sect which displays much of the intolerance of Popery, without any portion of its splendor, and prescribes, as the pledge of conversion, the renunciation of the whole Christian world.”