ESSAYS . CHIEFLY ON QUESTIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. HISTORICAL MEMORIALS OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 21s. HISTORICAL MEMORIALS OF CANTERBURY. 7s. 6d. SINAI AND PALESTINE, in Connection with their History. 14s. THE BIBLE IN THE HOLY LAND: being Extracts from the above "Work, for Village Schools, &c. 2s. 6d. SERMONS PREACHED AT CANTERBURY. 7*. 6d. LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE EASTERN CHURCH. 12s. LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. 2 vols. ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS, with Critical Notes and Dissertations. 18s. SERMONS IN THE EAST. 9s. BISHOP STANLEY'S ADDRESSES AND CHARGES ; with a Memoir. 10s. 6d. ESSAYS CHIEFLY ON QUESTIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE FROM 185O TO 187O By AETHUE PENEHYN STANLEY, D.D. DEAN OF WESTMINSTER CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OP FRANCE LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1870 Tiir right 0/ translation is reserved LONDON: PRINTED Br SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET PREFACE. It is not without hesitation that I have collected and republished these 'Essays/ scattered over a period of nearly twenty years. Not only do several of them relate to events which have almost passed away from memory, but they belong to the successive phases of theological conflict, which, however absorbing for the moment, are of all subjects the most fugitive. Nor can I forbear to call to mind a solemn warning which, at one of those moments in life when even slight things are remembered, fell from a distinguished preacher — afterwards a dear and honoured friend — who, addressing a band of youthful candidates for ordi- nation in the Cathedral of Oxford, after enumerating the great realities of theological study and of practi- cal life which ought to occupy the thoughts of an English clergyman, added impressive words to this effect : — 4 Avoid controversy, if possible. Few have 4 ever entered into controversy without repenting of c it. I might enforce this by many arguments. But 4 1 will content myself with repeating what I have 4 already said, Few have entered into controversy 4 without repenting of it.' I cannot plead in my own case an exception to this rule. Even if, in these vi PREFACE. occasional ' Essays,' there had not been words written which I could have wished to recall, and (I may add) which I have in this republication recalled, — the mere expenditure of time and labour on things which perish with the using can never cease to be a matter of regret to anyone who feels the duty and the pri- vilege of labouring not merely for the present hour, but (as far as may be) for the time that shall follow. And it might have seemed better to let i the dead 4 bury their dead,' and not revive again the ashes of extinguished fires. Still there were reasons which suggested to me that having been, I may truly say, against all my natural inclinations, forced into conflicts which I would fain have shunned, I might render some service to the Church by collecting in one volume a series of utterances, which, though relating for the most part to temporary agitations, involve permanent principles, and have a continuous purpose, which could not be urged with equal force in any other shape. Perhaps, too, it may be well to leave on record the grounds on which a long battle has been maintained, even if in some instances , the battle has been lost, or if the cause in behalf of which it was fought may fail to commend itself to some who yet may care to read its story. It is my wish in this Preface to sum up the reflec- tions which I trust will be borne in mind in the perusal of the following pages. 1. There is a sentence of Burke quoted in the first of these 4 Essays,' which indicates, with his usual PREFACE. vii felicity, the compensation to be derived from that apparent waste of energy to which, in all times of its history, the polemics of the Church have given occa- sion : — 4 Old religious factions are volcanoes burned The ad- 4 out ; on the lava, and ashes, and squalid scoriae of of extmct 4 old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering versies. 4 vine, and the sustaining corn/ Those who have seen the sides of Vesuvius can well appreciate the force of this image. There indeed may be seen tracts of desolation, bare, black, and lurid, beyond any other which earth can show. These are where the sulphur still lingers and repels every effort of vege- tation. But there are also tracts, close adjoining to them, and even in the midst of them, where the green vineyard, the grey olive, the golden orange, and the springing herb, mark that, out of the attrition and decomposition of the ancient streams of lava, the vital forces of nature can assert themselves with double vigour, and create a new life under the very ribs of death. So it is with extinct theological controver- sies. So far, indeed, as they retain the bitterness, the fire and brimstone of personal rancour and ma- lignity, they are, and will be to the end of time, the most barren and profitless of all the works of man. But if this can be eliminated or corrected, it is un- deniable not only that truths of various kinds take root and spring up in the soil thus formed, but that there is a fruitful and useful result produced by the contemplation of the transitory character of the volcanic eruptions which once seemed to shake the earth. This is in the highest degree true of the viii PEEFACE. controversies of former ages. The controversies con- cerning the mode of observing Easter in the early Church, and again in the seventh century, the contro- versy concerning the Light of Tabor, concerning the oath of the Burghers and Antiburghers in Scotland, concerning the sermons of Dr. Sacheverel and Bishop Hoadley in England, are all so many examples of convulsions by which for the time the whole Empire, or Church, or community was agitated, but which are now so entirely dead as to be almost unintelligible ; and yet from that very cause they have furnished a detritus in which a more philosophic and Christian belief has sprung up. The elaborate anathemas which were once appended to the Nicene Creed, even the fierce denunciations which are still the very bone and marrow of the Athanasian Creed, are indeed in- teresting only as the dreary records of a sulphureous flame, which has long ceased to burn in the better heart of Christendom. But the other portions of those Creeds, even when their phraseology has become inapplicable to modern thought, are not without value to the true theological student. Even though the words 'Person' and 'Substance' have changed their original meaning, yet in the history of that very change is a world of instruction ; and the process of the bitter agitation and almost entire extinction of the contest on the Double Procession is one of the most consoling passages of ecclesiastical experience. In like manner it is not unprofitable to call at- tention to similar phenomena in the controversies which have occurred in our own lifetime. Every PREFACE. ix such phenomenon illustrates and explains its fellow. If, even in the conflicts out of which these succes- sive c Essays 1 have arisen, there is an almost mono- tonous recurrence of the same features, — of a wild panic, a reckless agitation, an eager litigation, and a total subsidence, it may tend to reassure the minds of those who, in their turn, will have to pass through similar tempests in the times that are yet before us. Conflicts doubtless may arise, and grave issues may be at stake in each of them ; but the ex- perience of those which we have already seen, the mere reperusal in succession of their immediate results, the endeavour to distinguish between the temporary and the permanent elements in the phrases or the thoughts which occasioned them, may induce a calmer and more hopeful view than we should otherwise have dared to indulge. Our prospects may be dark, but they are not darker than they seemed to many during each triennial or septennial agitation from which we have hitherto emerged. The words of Teucer to his companions, as they started together after trying vicissitudes on their fresh career of danger and difficulty, may often sound cheeringly in the wearied ear of the anxious and perplexed : — 1 0 fortes, pejoraque passi Mecum sa>pe viri Cras ingens iterabimus aequor.' . II. The thought of those wide waters which we have still to traverse brings me to a further object which I have had in view beyond the mere collecting of the dry bones of forgotten battle-fields. It has been X PREFACE. my hope, that in these 4 Essays ' I might impress on some of my readers, however imperfectly, the aim which, if not to all, at any rate to one or other section of the English Chnrch, may fairly be presented as a legitimate object, through all the shifting phases of The ad- ecclesiastical polemics. That aim has been to main- vantages L of a , tain the advantages which flow from the Church as National .... Church. a national institution, comprehending the largest va- riety of religious life which it is possible practically to comprehend, and claiming the utmost elasticity which 4 the will of our Lord Jesus Christ and the 4 order of this realm n will permit. The principle urged in the following pages finds at present its most congenial soil in the school which dates from Hooker and Falkland, and the tendency against which it is chiefly maintained is that derived from the influence of Laud; but its permanent im- portance is irrespective of the exigencies of any special opinions. It so happens that the substance of much of the argument in the first of these 4 Essays,' that on 4 the Gorham Controversy,' which contains the germ of almost all that follows, was written though not pub- lished, several years before,2 in the hope of averting 1 From the Ordination Service. ' tims of 1845. The victors of 2 It may be worth while to add * 1845 are the victims of 1836. an extract from a broadside issued ' The assailants are the assailed, during that crisis in Oxford, which, 1 The assailed are the assailants, after drawing out some curious co- ' The condemned are the con- incidences between the attack on i demners. The condemners are Dr. Newman in 1845 and the attack ' the condemned. on Dr. Hampden in 1886, thus * The wheel is come full circle, pointed the moral : — ' How soon may it come round ' The wheel is come full circle. ' again ! Remember that the surest 1 The victors of 1836 are the vie- ' hope of obtaining mercy and jus- PREFACE. xi the catastrophe which drove out from the Church of England some of the finest spirits of the powerful school that had become dominant in Oxford under the banner of the 4 Tracts for the Times.' We often hear it said, that the co-existence of the various schools which are now developed with such strength within the English Church is an inevitable sign of approaching disruption. That it would be extremely difficult for the Church of England to maintain its cohesion, with such divergent elements in its midst, were its present legal constitution to be materi ally- altered, is indeed more than probable. If it were to cease to exist as a national institution, it would almost certainly cease to exist altogether. The centrifugal forces would then become as strong as are now the centripetal, and the different fragments would have no closer connection with each other than the other English religious communities. But so long as the national bond, which, of all outward bonds, ought to be the strongest, continues unbroken, there is no reason why the divergences which it in- cludes should of themselves rend it asunder. And the multiform character of the English Church, its connection with the complex development of English society and English institutions, is certainly no new i ticethen is by showing justice and ' ration then -who have refused to- ' mercy now. Judge by 1836 what ' leration now ; or protest against • should be your conduct in 1845 ; ' a mob-tribunal then, if they have ' and by your conduct in 1845 ' used it now ; or deprecate the 'what should be your opponents' ' madness of a popular clamour then, ' conduct in 1856 ; when your op- ' if they have kindled or yielded to ' ponents may be as triumphant ■ it now.' The history of the last i then as they are now depressed, twenty years is a curious comment ' None will be able to cry for tole- on this fugitive prophecy. xii PREFACE. peculiarity in its history. It is truly observed by a candid and learned Nonconformist historian of the Church1 under the Commonwealth and the Restora- tion, that 1 although legal questions touching Church 4 matters were not raised in the seventeenth century 4 as at present, yet the same radical differences existed 4 between one section and another then as now.' I do not underrate the danger to which such an institution is exposed from the hostile attitudes of opposing forces, united in this alone. But its chief danger arises from the faintheartedness which regards an imperilled cause as hopelessly lost. If the objec- tions to the national character of a Church and, I may add, to the possibility of a higher and more common Christianity, are now urged with more than usual vehe- mence, the advantages of both have been urged with more than usual ability;2 and difficult as it may be to parry the attacks of powerful combinations against any part of so elaborate a mechanism as the English constitution, or against an idea at once so elevated and so practical, as Religion in its freer and purer aspect, I cannot consent to think so unworthily of our 1 Dr. Stougliton's Ecclesiastical fully in his Essay on 1 St. Paul History of England, iv. 273. ' and Protestantism.' The case was 2 Besides the general arguments also stated with much ability in a of Hallam and Macaulay, and of series of Essays on ' Church Po- most leading statesmen, I may refer ' licy,' published in 1808. I would more especially to the elaborate also add the testimony, rendered reasoning of Dr. Arnold in almost with singular grace and power, from all his works, repeated again from an unsuspicious quarter — in the a totally different point of view, but Charges and Addresses of Bishop with no less force, by his distin- Ewing, in the unendowed and hardly guished son, Mr. Matthew Arnold, recognised Episcopal Church iu in his work on 'Culture and Anar- Scotland. * chy,' and again still more power- PREFACE. xiii leading statesmen, as to believe that they will, from the mere pressure of a fanaticism which they do not share, surrender instruments of good so powerful as the Established Churches, whether of England or Scotland, with their large principles of action, have proved themselves to be, and may still more prove themselves in time to come. 'Difficile negotium, 1 propter studia partium, gliscentibus in dies odiis c inflammata ; sed tantis viris nihil dignum nisi quod 4 difficile, nisi quod ab aliis omnibus desperatum.' 1 An eminent French writer openly urges on the State the total abnegation of its higher control over the affairs of religion, because he believes that such a course will the more rapidly and violently precipitate the irreconcilable separation between the religious and the scientific world. He avowedly advocates a policy which is to subject 4 the least 1 unreasonable and the least illiberal of the clergy ' to the combined and unchecked extravagance of the Papal Court and of the inferior priesthood. If any additional confirmation were needed of the apprehensions and the hopes expressed in these pages, it is the fact that in the Council now sitting at Rome, whilst some of the most servile adherents to a doctrine which their own most learned theologians have denounced as false and mischievous are drawn from the so- called free and voluntary sections of the Catholic Churches of England, Ireland, and America, its most determined opponents are found in the independent 1 Dedication of Grotius' Jan Guitium to Louis XIIL xiv PREFACE. spirit manifested by the national, endowed, and esta- blished Churches of Germany, Hungar}T, and France. III. Combined with the main argument of these 1 Essays,' another aim which, partly from the stress of circumstances, partly from deep conviction, has been put forward as both desirable and capable of attainment, is so to maintain the balance of power, and to suspend the operation of exclusive legislation, as to give full scope for the natural development of the free inquiry which science and history suggest within the bosom of the ancient religious institutions of the country. Ad- This struggle is not confined to the Church of Eng- of allowing land. It exists in the Church of Scotland. It exists, opinion, to some degree, amongst the English Nonconformist Churches. It is seen on a restricted ground, but on a prominent stage, in the desperate contest now raging between the two parties in the Eoman Council, on a question which divides the members of that great Church more deeply asunder than any corre- sponding question can be supposed to divide the Churches of the Reformation. No just view can be taken of any one of these struggles, which does not include the phases which the tendency assumes in other countries and communions. The School of Dollinger, and Gratry, and Strossmeyer, in the Roman Catholic Church, is aiming at the same object as the corresponding schools in the National Protestant Churches of France and of Scotland, — that of maintaining a position within their respective communities which shall permit a free development PREFACE. XV of religious thought during this age of flux and tran- sition. Amongst Nonconformist Churches, the idea of exclusive discipline and precise tests of faith, which was till recently the chief basis of their separation from the wider and laxer rule of a national Church, is gradually melting away ; and it is beginning to be asked how far it is possible 4 to approve a system ' which meets the soul at the very beginning of its 4 pilgrimage with demands so onerous that the timid 1 and sensitive are sure to recoil from them.' 1 The minds of men, still more the minds of Churches, especially in our time, are so complex, so unequally and variously constructed, that the outward divisions of Christendom entirely fail to coincide with the union and division even in smaller matters of agree- ment, much less with the union in moral purposes, which 4 has always traversed, and always will tra- 1 verse, their differences, without superseding their 4 several creeds and special constitutions.'2 It has been often said, sometimes on the extreme right, sometimes on the extreme left, of the contend- ing forces of ecclesiastical warfare, that the ranks on either side will eventually be closed up ; that all on one side will be extreme Roman Catholics ; on the other, extreme Protestants, or total unbelievers. It is perhaps idle to forecast the future. But if our augury be drawn from experience, this expectation seems to proceed on an entire misconception of the 1 See a very interesting essay on forraist essays recently published 1 The Congregationalism of the Fu- under the name of Ecdesia, tare,' by a well-known Independent 2 Wilson's Bampton Lectures on minister, in a volume of Noncon- the Communion of Saints, p. 27€. a xvi PREFACE. history of Christendom, past and present. Take any of the questions which now divide the Theology of the different Churches. Take the belief in the spirit, as distinct from the letter, of the Biblical re- cords. Protestant Germany, no doubt, has taken the lead. But, next to Germany, the impulse came more directly from the Church of France in the seven- teenth century than from any other branch of Chris- tendom. Even in our own country it was what may be called the Catholicising rather than the Protest- antising party, which lent in former times a friendly ear to the claims of criticism and general literature, until that fatal turn by which in our own day it re- nounced its ancient position, and passed under the same eclipse which has darkened the Roman Churches also. Take, again, the popular theology which is involved in more than one of the litigations which have dis- tracted the Church on the questions of Justification and the Atonement. It is true that out of the scholastic views of Thomas Aquinas came in great measure that distorted forensic theory which took so strong a hold on the Protestant Churches at the time of the Refor- mation, and has clung to them ever since. But still a large mass of Catholic sentiment and doctrine has frequently leaned to the other side. And in our day one of the books which has most warmly adopted the view of the more philosophic and critical disciples of the Protestant communities in England has been a treatise on the Catholic doctrine of the Atonement, composed under the inspiration and sanction of Pro- lessor Dollinger. PKEFACE. xvii Or look to the Greek Church, still further away, bv its general sentiments and usages, from ourselves — in some respects more stagnant, more retrograde even than the Church of Eome. Yet there is no Church which has so well conceived the idea of tole- ration ; none which so fully recognises the Christian sacredness of other religions, which yet it does not adopt ; none again which has less encouraged the ex- travagant pretensions of ecclesiastical power, or has less involved itself in the inventions of the later schools.1 Speaking therefore to Protestants — speaking espe- cially to the more enlightened and free thought of Protestantism — it may be urged, 'In the coming 4 future you cannot dispense with the special elements ' of progress and of catholicity which exist in the 4 older churches.' And in like manner, to those older churches it might equally be said, 4 You can- ' not dispense either with those forms of art and cul- * ture, or with the acknowledged spirit of freedom and 4 toleration, which have grown up in the bosom of the ' Protestant Churches.' Wherever, on the one hand, a single cathedral — one might almost say, a single church — is left in a country, there will always be the root of that ceremonial form of Christianity, which in its more refined shape is seen in Italy and Spain, in its more savage shape in Abyssinia. Wherever, on 1 ' What is the general belief of words, 1 They have a good know- common Greek peasants ? ' I asked ledge of the Gospel history, but two excellent Presbyterian minis- they know nothing whatever of the tew — one at Damascus, one at Corfu, doctrine of substitution.' Both answered, almost in the same a 3 xviii PREFACE. the other hand, a single book of criticism, science, or history — or a single copy of the New Testament is allowed to circulate, there is the germ of free and independent inquiry, which will spring up into the Protestantism, the critical analysis, the latitudinarian- ism of Germany, France, and England. 4 Pull down 4 the nests,' it may be said by the extreme destructives on either side, ' and the rooks will fly away.' This is most true ; but the nests have hardly ever been entirely pulled down, and the rooks, therefore, always come back. It is sometimes lamented that there are in every Episcopalian and every Catholic Church those who are Episcopalians by mistake ; and in every Pres- byterian Church those who are Presbyterians by mistake ; but, as has been well said, these cha- racters, so far from being misfortunes to their re- spective Churches, on the contrary, are amongst * their chief gains. Dollinger and Father Hyacinth in the Roman Church are twice what they could be in the Protestant Churches. Dr. Lee in the Pres- byterian Church was twice what he would have been in the Roman Catholic or the English Church. What is most needed in every religious community is, not that there shall be a perpetual migration from one to the other, but that each should retain those elements which enrich and diversify the life of each. 4 Leave,' said Bossuet to Leibnitz, with a natural desire of repose, ' leave on earth some Christians who 4 will not render impossible infallible decrees on faith, 4 who venture to place religion on a sure foundation, PREFACE. xix 4 and expect from Jesus Christ, according to His word, an infallible assistance on these matters.' 4 Let me entreat you, in your turn,' said Leibnitz, with a higher and nobler aspiration, 1 to leave on earth 1 some Christians who resist the torrent of abuses, who 4 will not permit the authority of the Church to be de- 4 graded by evil practices, and the promises of Jesus 4 Christ to be abused for the establishment of the idol 4 of error.' Such remnants of the two opposing forces must be left, and in leaving them, the zealots of each party are obliged, against their will, to leave insur- mountable obstacles in the way of carrying out the war of internecine extermination which each has nursed as its favourite dream. It has sometimes seemed as if, in the changing fashions of the world, the cause for which Bossuet pleaded was likely to win its way against the cause of Leibnitz. But never was it more clear than at the present moment, in the face of the bitter divisions and extravagant positions of the Latin Clergy, that as Christianity is the salt of the world, so, in some important respects, Protestantism is the salt of Chris- tendom, and in each case by virtue of its impreg- nating with its own spirit much that is best even in those religious communities which do not out- wardly rally under its banner. Only let it be re- membered that the one condition necessary for the genuine growth of free and sound opinion in any church is that the minority shall have not only the power but the courage and the will to persevere to the end in publicly denouncing as false what they XX PREFACE. have declared to be false — in publicly proclaiming as true what they know or believe to be true. IY. In endeavouring to apply these principles to the Church of England, it will be obvious that there have been two serious restrictions which have tended to exclude from its service those whom on all grounds, alike of national and religious policy, it should have desired to retain. One has been the practice of requiring a rigid subscription to its formularies. In looking back over the struggles of the last twenty years, it is satisfactory to think that something has at last been done to break down tagesof or remove these vexatious and useless barriers of Subscript ancient party warfare. By the recent Act for the tlon' amendment of Clerical Subscription, a change was made so considerable as to reduce the evil to a mini- mum. It is disappointing to find, that some con- scientious men seem so little satisfied with the re- medy as almost to ignore the fact that it has been achieved. But the change is not the less important, whether we regard it in the light of the actual relief which it affords, or as a proof of the facility with which what was once deemed a necessary bulwark of the Church could be removed. If those who think the recent remedial measure insufficient press their objections, there can be no question that the change from the present form of test to the entire removal of any form, would be less than the change from the stringent and elaborate system which existed for- merly to the test as now modified. Another re- striction is one which, though in principle far less PREFACE. xxi objectionable than subscription, and though, in fact, hardly felt at all, yet might become extremely op- pressive. It is the facility which the law allows, perhaps to every individual, certainly to every Bishop, of obtaining, by legal proceedings, j udgments which, unless constructed on the largest and most liberal principles of interpretation, might sweep from the Church almost every person who ministers in its service. This general restraint of the law is, as I have said, quite independent of subscription, and is, both in theory and practice, open to fewer ob- jections. But it is well to bear in mind what are its possible bearings on the condition of the clergy. Under a strictly literal construction of the *nd.°t . cv J dimmish- Articles, untempered by general considerations, any jj^J^" clergyman might be prosecuted and deprived of his litigation, benefice for holding (to give a few palpable and un- deniable cases) that the Apocalypse is part of Holy Scripture that any member of the Greek Church can be saved ; 2 that Christ came to reconcile men to God;3 that oaths and wars are unlawful.4 The prin- ciples laid down in the Gorham Judgment would, no doubt, override so strict an interpretation. But in the Heath Judgment it was acted upon, and might be acted upon again, in cases less isolated or peculiar ; and it is often assumed as the rule in clerical controversy. For this evil, which has been intensified by the precedent 1 As against the Sixth Article. 3 As against the Second Article. See Essay II. and IV. See Essay VII. 2 As against the Eighth Article. 4 As against the Thirty-seventh See Essay XI. and the Thirty-ninth Articles. xxii PREFACE. now set for constituting the Bishop of the Metropolis the censor or prosecutor of all clerical works issuing from any London publisher, it is not so easy to devise the proper remedy as in the case of subscription. Few would wish to undertake the thankless and profit- less task of remodelling the Articles into a new con- fession of faith, which would probably be found in not many years or generations as stringent as the old. The alleviation of the evil seems rather to lie in the com- mon sense and Christian judgment, which has in by far the larger part of our experience forborne to press the logical or legal consequences to extremes. In point of fact, until the revival of the more active po- lemics of our own time, theological litigation has been exceedingly rare ; and the present Primate has justly and gravely remarked, that ' a wise son of .the Church 4 of England will be very jealous of any sort of prose- 4 cution for opinions, unless demanded by some over- 4 whelming or incontestable necessity.' That the final appeal should be to such a supreme tribunal as that at present constituted in the J udicial Committee of the Privy Council is indispensable to the security of freedom and independence in the Church ; and that this is a fact acknowledged by all parties is evident from the failure of every attempt to substitute another in its place. When the agitations against it reached a climax in the debates of Convocation in 1865, their efforts broke to pieces from the impossibility of agreeing on an improvement. Each set or school had its own favourite scheme. But the Judicial Committee occu- PREFACE. xxiii pied the same place in the judgment of all — it was Themistocles ; and Themistocles prevailed, and will always prevail. There is no question that, on the whole, its decisions have tended to widen rather than to narrow the basis of the Church. But, nevertheless, they have been procured at the risk of much agitation and heart- burning ; there is always the chance of even its judgments being shaken by the popular feeling of the moment ; there have been judgments delivered, and there may be yet again, of which the avowed purpose was not to include, but to exclude unpopular persons or opinions; there is the certainty of its being called upon to decide questions which, in point of fact, were not intended to be brought before it. It so happens that at the present moment two questions are in the process of trial, which are so nearly similar in character that they have, in fact, been confounded by a well-informed contributor to a foreign journal. The English correspondent of the c Univers ' of January 29, 1870, thus writes: 'Ainsi ' M. Charles Voysey, suspendu par son Eveque, con- ' damne plus tard par la Cour des Arches pour cere- 1 monies ritualistes, a interjete appel devant le Conseil 4 PriveV It is evident that the writer has inextri- cably blended together the cases of two individuals, alike only in the hardihood of their statements, one in the north, the other in the west,1 of England. But the identification, which he has made by inadvertence, may be used for the practical purpose ot illustrating 1 See Essay XVI. XXIV PREFACE. the inconvenience of the modern passion for eccle- siastical litigation. Whatever may have been the intention of the inferior prosecutors, no one can suppose that the prelates who sanctioned or instituted either of these proceedings had the intention of procuring from the Supreme Court a definition, in the one case, of the theories permissible on Justification or on Biblical Interpretation ; or, in the other case, on the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Had this been their intention, some person would have been selected who had broached theories analogous or similar to those attacked, in a form calculated to draw out the desired definition in the most lucid and unambiguous manner. But it is well known that in neither of the cases now in question can this be done. The statement of the theories that are to be defined is in each case in- volved in an atmosphere which tends to foster stormy passions, obscure the vision, and perplex the judgment. In short, in each case, it is not the doctrine, but the mode of propounding the doctrine, which has been the cause of the litigation ; and yet in each case it will be, not the mode of propounding the doctrine, but the doctrine itself, that will be or can be judged by the Supreme Court of Appeal. The prosecutors have set on foot the prosecution in order to procure the settlement of one question, and that a question which never will come before the Supreme Court at all. The Supreme Court will in all probability be called to decide on another question, and that a question PREFACE. XXV which, in the first instance, hardly entered into the minds of the prosecutors. The same may be said of all the cases on which, in latter years, adjudica- tion has been in the first instance pronounced. It was probably far from the intention of Bishop Phil- potts to procure a definition of Baptismal Regenera- tion; all that he desired was to repress Mr. Gorham. But the Privy Council could neither repress nor rein- state Mr. Gorham without deciding the lawfulness of holding or not holding the literal view of Baptismal Regeneration. In almost every case, there is a con- trariety between the means employed and the end pro- duced. The end may be good or evil, but it is not the end intended by those who have brought it about. It is surely conceivable that if, in any one of these cases, the accuser and the accused could have met, face to face, with friends chosen by each on either side, the litigation would have been stopped. The late Bishop of Exeter would have found out at the time what he found out after Mr. Gorham had settled in his diocese, that they could perfectly agree together to minister in the same Church. The incumbents of some of the churches in which an open war has broken out between the pastors and then congregations mighc perhaps have come to terms if once they could have met in a fair court of arbitration, consisting of rea- sonable men, whom each would have trusted. The 7 tc late Bishop of Salisbury might easily have discovered before his prosecution of the late Vicar of Broad- chalk what he discovered afterwards, and what we trust both have discovered in a still deeper and truer XXVI PREFACE. sense now, that there was no impediment to his living in the same communion with one whose chief theological crime consisted in adhering with too partial enthusiasm to the opinions of the two dis- tinguished friends ol Bishop Hamilton's earlier years, Arnold and Bunsen. There would of course, in any case, have been left a residuum of disagree- ment. But it would have become a serious question whether, on that residuum, it was worth while to continue the litigation; and at any rate, if it was, they would probably have agreed between them as to the exact points which they wished to refer for the decision of the Supreme Tribunal. If it be urged that such pacific conferences would, in the present inflamed state of the theological mind, be imprac- ticable, I venture to doubt the fact. It surely is not too much to hope, that our prelates and our clergy would fairly try to look each other's difficulties in the face ; and that is all which is needed. The accused party must always be protected, and, in the last resort, have the same appeal that he has now. The eccle- siastical authority may fairly claim that there should not be a reckless defiance of the public sentiment of the parish or the community. But it is such cases as these, if any, which give the legitimate opening for iust episcopal influence, as distinguished from mere legal rules on one side, or mere clerical prejudices on the other. As with regard to the Supreme Court in matters of litigation, so with regard to the Supreme Legis- lature in matters of legislation, — the English Church PREFACE. xxvii possesses a strong guarantee of justice, freedom, and enlightenment in the circumstance that all changes in the doctrine and ritual of the Church should in the last resort be determined by the voice of the whole nation as expressed in Parliament. But here again there are innumerable smaller matters which are constantly needing to be accommodated to the exigencies of the time, which ought not to be left simply to the discretion of individual clergymen, and which yet are too trivial to be brought before the Legislature. A Church, in order to be national, must be flexible as well as comprehensive. In the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity there was an express provision for some such intermediate body as is here indicated to take counsel on matters of this kind. In that Act the statutable regulations for ecclesiastical ceremonies and ornaments are to be retained and to be in use 1 until other order shall be therein taken by 4 the authority of the Queen's Majesty, with the 1 advice of her commissioners, appointed and autho- 4 rised under the Great Seal of England for causes * ecclesiastical, or of the Metropolitan of this realm. 4 And the Queen's Majesty may, by the like advice of 4 the said Commissioners or Metropolitan, ordain and 6 publish such further ceremonies or rites as may be 4 most needed for the advancement of God's glory, the 4 edifying of His Church, and the due reverence of 1 Christ's holy mysteries and sacraments.''1 The form of this ancient provision would probably need considerable change ; but its principle is per- 1 1 Eliz. c. 2. §§ 25, 26. xxviii PREFACE. fectly sound, as reserving for the Executive of the nation the decision of those trivial questions which ought to be kept aloof alike from the excitement of a turbulent clerical assembly, and from the iron rule of an organic law. It expresses the sublime adi- aphorism which forms one of the best features of the policy of the first founders of the Keformed Church of England. No doubt the success of any such conciliatory ex- periment would depend on the entrance of a very different spirit into the ecclesiastical world from that by which it has often been actuated. It will be a melancholy thought if, as in 1662 and 1689, so in 1870, in spite of the pressure of the practical exi- gencies of the time, in spite of the declared wishes of the chiefs of the State and of public opinion at large, — the leaders of ecclesiastical parties shall be found to have thrown away opportunities, which lay close to their hands, of strengthening the Church by enlarging its borders and relaxing its stiffness. By such acts it is that great institutions are undermined, and re- ligious faith and sentiment are set at variance with the claims alike of charity and of increasing knowledge. On the other hand, it is but reasonable that those who press their scruples to the extremity of re- fusing to hold office in a Church which contains any points of doctrine or practice with which they do not agree, should recognise the real difficulty of the position of which they complain. That difficulty is occasioned not so much by the actual diver- gence of opinion amongst educated, or amongst un- PREFACE. XXIX educated men, as by the combination in the same religious and the same social community of dif- ferent levels of education, and it exists altogether irrespectively of the actual organisation of the National Church, or of any defects of detail in its creeds or its prayers. To create a new Church, con- sisting exclusively of liberal or conservative, of Ger- manising, or Puritanising, or Romanising tendencies, would be alike impracticable and mischievous. Unless it were so small and circumscribed as virtually to ex- communicate and be excommunicated by all others, socially as well as ecclesiastically, the divergences would again spring up on a scale more or less exten- sive, and, it may be, without the same power of dealing with them. The choice is between absolute individual separation from every conceivable outward form of organisation, and continuance in one or other of those which exist, in the hope of modifying and improving it. There are doubtless advantages in the former alternative. The path of a theologian or eccle- siastic, who in any existing system loves truth and seeks charity, is indeed difficult at the best. Many a time would such a one gladly exchange the thank- less labour, the bitter taunts, the 4 law's delay,' ' the 4 insolence of office/ the waste of energy, that belong to the friction of public duties, for the hope of a few tranquil years of independent research or studious leisure, where he need consult no scruples, contend with no prejudices, entangle himself with no party, travel far and wide over the earth, with nothing to check the constant increase of knowledge which such XXX PREFACE. experience alone can fully give. But there is a counterbalancing attraction, which may well be felt bv those who shrink from sacrificing their love of country to a sense of momentary relief or the hopes of the future to the pressure of the present. To serve a great institution, and by serving it to endea- vour to promote within it a vitality which shall secure it as the shelter for such as will have to continue the same struggle after they are gone, is an object for which much may be and ought to be endured which otherwise would be intolerable. It would appear, then, to be the obvious duty of every thinking man to strive to avert any such catas- trophe, in the ecclesiastical or academical institutions with which he is connected, as should render impos- sible the continuance of the more intelligent and in- quiring minds within its pale. In the Roman Church it has been of late the tendency, when any nobler spirit has protested against its modern exaggerations, not, as of old, to retain his services, but to rejoice in his secession. 4 The Gospel maxim,' it has been well said by one of themselves, c is now reversed ' in the Roman Court. There is more joy over 4 one sinner that is lost, than over ninety and 4 nine just persons, that need no repentance, or even 4 ninety and nine sinners that repent.' There is too much of the same spirit with us also; and it is against the indulgence of a temptation appa- rently so fascinating to many that, in these pages and elsewhere, an earnest protest, at the almost certain risk of misconstruction, has been constantly JPKEFACE. xxxi maintained. Such a school of wider thought and loftier life has never altogether died out of the Church of England, we may almost say, from the days of Colet to the days of Milman. But at no period, if we can but have patience with ourselves and others, has there been such an opportunity as at present for a wise and pacific solution of the problems which, ecclesiastically and theologically, have been pressing on the world with ever-increasing force, till they almost seem to have reached the eve of a second reformation. If I may so apply the striking lines of Lucan, quoted in this sense by an eminent Nonconformist, to whom I have more than once referred in the following pages : — ' Spe trepido : Laud unquam vidi tarn magna daturos ' Tarn prope me Superos ; camporum limite parvo ' Absumus a votis.' V. Finally, whilst labouring in this volume to indicate some general courses of policy which seem to be open to ecclesiastical statesmen, or thoughtful ecclesiastics of the present day, I have not forgotten that there exist other far graver questions, both in practice and speculation, which have hardly been touched. Bat this omission has been chiefly occa- sioned by the fact that these questions are either too abstract or too profound to have been brought into the arena of ordinary disputation or litigation. And along with this conclusion is another of the same kind, which the various agitations of the time must impress on any careful observer — namely, the vast and probably increasing amount of common religious b XXX11 PREFACE. belief and practice which lies altogether outside the Ad vortex of controversy. In a passage which has been tages of recently quoted on the Education Question, Dr. subjects of Newman bears testimony to the fact that the re- interest.8 ligious belief of the English nation is something quite independent, not only of the party war-cries, but even of the creeds and catechisms, of the different Churches. The noise of the leaders of parties is usually out of all proportion to the large masses who follow them with a divided allegiance, or the inde- pendent minds who follow no one.1 It may almost be taken for granted that 4 the religious difficulty ' felt in Parliaments, or Convocations, or platforms, is one which will not be felt in the practical work of life, or in the sincere search after truth. There will always be an ample sphere in which the problems of Christian thought and life will be best 4 solved/ according to the old proverb, by those who, instead of fighting or of sitting still, have the courage to walk straight onwards. There will always be the class, so well described by Burke, as 4 the strength 4 and glory of the field, silently ruminating under 4 their own majestic shades,' to whom the transitory 1 This was remarkably exemplified bishop was received in his diocese, on a recent admirable appointment but by the fact that, out of the to an English bishopric, which was 20,000 English clergy and millions seriously denounced ' as the most of English laity, the ultimate peti- ' frightful enormity that had ever tion against it was supported by ' been perpetrated by a Prime Mi- not more than 1,500 signatures, ' nister.' The amount of active some of which consisted of names opposition inaugurated by such a written two or three times over, formidable blast may be measured and others were taken in a mass not merely by the unexampled from the most illiterate classes of enthusiasm with which the new society. PREFACE. xxxiii clamour of the moment is as unwelcome as the more enduring topics of thought are congenial. For such as these it may be hoped that, even in this volume, there may be found, especially at its close, some subjects of more general interest. To such in the future I would fain address myself on topics akin to these — akin, I may also say, to those on which I have hitherto laboured, and to which, however I may still be engaged by less agreeable avocations, I trust to return in the years that may still be granted. Westminster : June 2?, 1870. b 2 EEEATA. Page 452, margin, for seventeenth read nineteenth. Page 483, line 6, for representations read representatives. CONTENTS ESSAY I. THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. PAGE I. The Court of Appeal ...... 4 II. The Gorham Judgment ..... 2-14 III. Its Advantages ...... 15-24 IV. The Doctrine of Baptismal Eegeneration . . . 25-33 History of Baptism . . 34-43 ESSAY II. ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Eeligious Panics ....... 46 I. Publication of Essays and Keyiews . . . .48 Agitation ....... 50-59 II. Nature of the Work 59 III. Questions involved : — 1. Biblical Criticism ..... 70-77 2. Value of Internal Evidence . . . .77 3. Dogmatic Theology ..... 83 IV. Liberty of the Clergy to inquire . . . .83 ESSAY III. JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Judgment of the Court of Arches . . . . .99 Judgment of the Privy Council ..... 100 Decision on Inspiration . . . . . .121 On Future Punishment . . . . . .127 On Imputed Righteousness ..... 132 In Conformity with the Decisions of the Ancient Church . . 135 Corresponding Struggle in the Roman Catholic Church . . 142 XXX VI CONTENTS. ESSAY IV. LETTER ON THE STATE OF SUBSCRIPTION IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IN THE UN ITERS ITT OF OXFORD. PAGE Subscription to the XXXIX Articles .... 153 Subscription to the Prayer Book ..... 159 Evils of the Practice . . . . . .162 Conclusion ........ 190 Note I. Declarations in the Formularies of the Church of England 199 Note II. Subscriptions of the Church of England before 1865 . 206 Note III. Subscriptions of the Church of Scotland . . 208 Note IV. History of the Change in 1865 . . . .212 ESSAY V. UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM AND DR. PUSEY's ' EIRENICON.' Reunion of Christendom . . ^ . . . 223 Indirect Advantages of the i Eirenicon ' . ' . . 228 ESSAY VI. RITUALISM. I. General Artistic Character . . . . . 253 The Vestments . . . . . .258 II. Collision with Congregations . . . . . 263 III. Sacerdotal Tendencies . . . . 265 IV. Exaggerated Views of the Eucharist .... 268 V. Jealousy of the Civil Power ..... 278 Conclusion ....... 285 ESSAY VII. THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. (Speech in the Lower House of Convocation, June 29, 1866.) Its Legal Aspect . ..... 297-309 Its Theological Aspect ..... 310-326 Postscript. Bishop of Natal's Hymn Book ..... 333 Nature of the Controversy .... 336-340 CONTENTS. XXXVll ESSAY VIII. CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. PAGE I. Its Advantages ...... 347 1. Supremacy of Law . . . . 357 2. Development of Religious Freedom1 . . . 358 3. Elasticity . . . . .360 II. Its defects . . . ■ . • . . .363 Conclusion . . . 370 Note. — Social Eelation of the Established Church to Noncon- formists ....... 372 ESSAY IX. THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. 1. The Celtic Church . . . . 379-390 2. The Established Church of the English Settlers . .391 The Norman Church . . . . .393 The Protestant Church . . . . .397 3. The Presbyterian Church . . . . .402 Connexion with Scotland ..... 403 The Mutual Relations of the Three Churches . . . 415 Conclusion ....... 425 ESSAY X. Note on the Reconstruction of the Irish Church . . . 431 The efFects of the Compromise ..... 432 The Prospect of the Church of Ireland .... 440 ESSAY XI. THEOLOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. I. Its relation to the Bible . . . . 455 II. Its^relation to History and Philosophy . . . 463 III. Its relation to Doctrines ..... 471 IV. Its hopes of success as founded on 1. Its Antiquity ...... 479 2. Its Universality ...... 480 3. Its Transitional Character .... 481 4. Its Calmness ...... 482 5. Its Appeal to all Truth . . . . .483 6. Its Appeal to the Bible . . . . .484 7. Its Study of the Life of Christ . . . .485 xxxviii CONTENTS, ESSAY XII. RECOLLECTIONS OP PHILARET, METROPOLITAN OF MOSCOW. PAGE His Conversation ....... 491 His Ministrations ....... 493 His Sermons ....... 496 Conclusion ....... 501 ESSAY XIII. THE AMMERGATJ MYSTERY ; OR, SACRED DRAMA OP 1860. Its History ....... 603 Its Details 609 The Chorus 512 The Tableaux ....... 513 The First Part ....... 515 The Second Part 525 Conclusion ...... 531-535 ESSAY XIV. ARCHDEACON HARE. His Education and Life His Scholarship ... His Theology .... ESSAY XV. DEAN MILMAN. His Poetry ....... 574 His Historical Works ...... 575 His Ecclesiastical Position ..... 579 His Annals of St. Paul's . . . . . p 585 ESSAY XVI. JOHN KEP.LE. I. His Pastoral Life . . . . . .593 II. His Poetry ....... 595 III. His Polemics 006-610 Conclusion . . . . , . .611 538-555 . 557 563-571 ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND STATE. 1850-1870, The Rev. George Cornelius Gorham, vicar of St. Just, was in 1847 presented by Lord Chancellor Cottenham to the living of Brampford Speke, in the diocese of Exeter. The Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Philpotts), upon proceeding to institute him in the living, put him through an examination of 149 questions, lasting for six days, and being dissatisfied -with Mr. Gorham's answers on Baptismal Regeneration (which Mr. Gorham held to be conditional and not absolute), refused institution. On this Mr. Gorham proceeded to compel the Bishop by legal proceedings. The case, after various stages, came before the Dean of the Court of Arches (Sir Herbert Jenner Eust), who pronounced against Mr. Gorham. The appeal was then carried to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, consisting of Lord Langdale. Lord Campbell, Sir James Parke (afterwards Lord Wensleydale), Dr. Lushington, Mr. Pemberton Leigh (after- wards Lord Kingsdown), and Vice-Chancellor Knight Bruce. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York (Sumner and Musgrave), and the Bishop of London (Blomfield), assisted, by special summons of the Crown. The case was decided in Mr. Gorham's favour on March 8, 1850, Vice-Chancellor Knight Bruce and Bishop Blomfield dissenting. There were attempts by the Bishop of Exeter to reverse the decision in the Courts of Queen's Bench, the Exchequer, and the Common Pleas, but without success. The agitation continued for the whole of that year. Eorthe Judgment see Broderick and Fremantle's 'Judgments of the Privy Council,' pp. 80-107. THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY.1 6 It is a bad business/ said Abu Musa, in the sedition at Evils of Mecca, 6 and lie that meddles least with it has less chance trovSsy. 6 of doing wrong. For what says the Prophet touching * an evil affair of the kind ? He who sleepeth in it is 6 better than he that waketh — lie that lieth than he that ' sitteth — he that sitteth than he that standeth — he that 6 standeth than he that walketh — he that walketh than he fc that rideth.' The words of the Prophet are still true ; and we would gladly have spared ourselves and our readers the anno}T- ance of passing through even the outskirts of the Gorhani controversy. The impossibility of fully sympathising with either party — the unmeaning character of most of the points in dispute — the elaborate tediousness with which the case has dragged its slow length along — would have justified us in putting it aside at once, and forgetting it now, as we trust that it will be forgotten not many months hence. 6 As for these Sacramentarian quarrels,' says good Bishop Hall, fi Lord ! how bitter have they been ! — how 'frequent! — how long! — in six several successions of 6 learned conflicts. In these cases the very victory is ' miserable — such, as Pyrrhus said of his, as is enough to 'undo the conqueror.' 1 Edinburgh Review. July 1850. b 2 4 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. What are But although in itself the controversy deserves little points at consideration, it has grown into such colossal dimensions, as to suggest, even where it does not invite, topics of great interest and instruction. We may safely leave to themselves the personalities with which the Primate has been assailed by the Bishop, and the vengeance with which the Bishop has been visited by the Presbyter — not to speak of the separate ingredients of discord and confusion thrown into the boiling cauldron by the controversies of Mr. Badeley, Mr. Maskell, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Irons, Mr. Allies, and Mr. Dodsworth, with one another, and with every one else ; and proceed at once to the great question at issue in the whole struggle. That question, when stripped of all accessories and dis- guises, is no less than the question, whether the Church of England is now, and is to continue, a national insti- tution. It is involved in both the points in dispute — to a certain extent in that which relates to the Court of Appeal which has decided the case — to a much greater extent in that which relates to the judgment which the Court has pronounced. The Court 1- A moment's glance at the past history of the Church of Appeal. Qf j]ng]an(j wiU best explain our meaning. Even before the era of the Keformation, the Anglican hierarchy had, in spite of the peculiar interests of their order, struck deep root into the affections of the people and the genius of the country. The intimate connexion of the secular with the ecclesiastical element, which survived the convulsions of the sixteenth century, and which still is stamped on the face of our legislature, our monarchy, our universities, our clergy, is a living result of that old and early union which, like the rest of our constitution, was slowly matur- ing itself in the struggles of the Middle Ages, and had just reached the most critical point of its development Essay I. JULY 1850. when it was overtaken by the tempest of the Reformation. That great event, which in many countries caused the nation and the clergy to start asunder more widely than before, in England riveted their union, at least politically speaking, more strongly than ever. The form which this The union took expressed itself, as everyone knows, in the 0f the establishment of the great principle of what was then Crowi] called the Supremacy of the Crown, but what is now in reality the Supremacy of the Law. We bring these two phrases together advisedly, because it has been often over- looked that the latter is of necessity, in our own days, the only intelligible translation of the former ; and hence it is that the wise and beneficeut institutions which, out of the strong will and strong sense of the Tudor sovereigns, have grown into the bulwarks of the constitution of Queen Victoria, often labour most unjustly under the odium which rightly attaches, in many points, to the personal character of Henry and Elizabeth. It is as unreasonable to refuse the benefits of the Statutes of Praemunire and of the Royal Supremacy, because they remind us of the divorce of Catherine of Arragon and of the persecutions of Puritans and Catholics, as it would be to refuse the benefits of the Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights, because they remind us of the wicked statesmen who figure in the pages of Macaulay. Of this intimate connexion between the various ele- ments, secular and ecclesiastical, of our body politic, one amongst a thousand results has been the fact, which to some has seemed so strange — the decision of an eccle- siastical controversy by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. It is not necessary to enter into a detailed defence of the composition of that high tribunal. In answer to the clamour against the anomaly of submitting spiritual 6 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. causes to the judgment of a court of laymen, it is enough to reply that this anomaly, if anomaly it be, is the direct consequence of that theory, or, to speak more correctly, of that constitution of the relations of Church and State, which has been the especial object of the praise of Cran- mer, and Hooker, and Selden, and Burke, and Coleridge, and Arnold. In answer to the clamour for the rights of the clergy against the tyranny of the State, it is sufficient to reply that that is no tyranny which protects the mino- rity, or it may be the majority, of the clergy from the inquisition of arbitrary prelates, and of tumultuous synods. Let churchmen listen to the warning voice of S. Gregory Nazianzen : — 6 To say the truth, I have utterly determined 6 never to come to any council of bishops ; for I never yet ' saw good end of any councils ; for councils abate not ill ' things, but rather increase them.' Let Englishmen listen to the sober judgment of their great statesman : — £ We 1 know that the convocation of the clergy had formerly ' been called and sate with nearly as much regularity and ' business as Parliament itself. It is now called for form ' only. It sits for the purpose of making some polite ' ecclesiastical compliments to the king ; and when that 4 grace is said, retires, and is heard of no more. It is, ' however, a part of the constitution, and may be called ' out into act and energy whenever there is occasion, and ' — we call particular attention to the conclusion which follows upon this lucid statement — 'whenever those who i conjure up that spirit will choose to abide the consequences. 6 It is wise to permit its legal existence ; it is wiser to 6 continue it a legal existence only. So truly has prudence 1 the entire dominion over any exercise of power committed ' into its hands ; and yet I have lived to see prudence and i conformity to circumstances wholly set at nought in our late Essay I. JULY 1850. 7 £ controversies, and treated as if they were the most con- c temptible and irrational of all things.' 1 2. But it is not on the composition of the tribunal that The we would chiefly dwell. The judgment itself is, after all, JudSment- its best justification ; and whenever any purely clerical court shall deliver a decision equally wise, and just, and dispassionate, the nation might look with more composure on the transference of the jurisdiction of the Privy Council from its present administrators. The correctness of the judgment may now be safely left to fall or stand by its own merits. Its mode of procedure has been admirably vindicated by Archdeacon Hare.2 Its arguments have been triumphantly defended by Mr. Goode.3 Its con- clusion has received, from the honourable confession of Mr. Maskell,4 a testimony in its favour which leaves nothing more to be added. It was, in fact, no new controversy which was brought Compre- before the Judicial Committee, and it is no new discovery Calvinism which they have made. It was but a subordinate branch Q^l^f of the question, often asked in former times, and as often England, answered in the affirmative, — whether Calvinism was ad- missible within the Church of England. The judgment of Lord Langdale did but announce, in terms of legal precision and judicial gravity, the same undoubted fact which Lord Chatham expressed when he spoke of 6 the 6 Popish Liturgy, the Calvinistic Articles, and the Arminian c Clergy ; ' which Bishop Horsley expressed when he c as- £ serted what he had often before asserted, and by Glod's 6 grace declared that he would assert to his dying day,' 1 Burke's Letter to the Sheriff's of Cavendish. Bristol. [The warning of Burke has 3 Letter to the Bishop of Exeter, been neglected. Let us hope that by the Rev. W. Goode, afterwards his prediction has not been fulfilled. Dean of Ripon. 1870.] 4 The Rev. W. Maskell, who in ''Letter to Mr. (now Lord R.) 1850 joined tho Church of Romo. o THE GrOKHAM CONTEOVERSY. Essay I. 4 that upon the principal points in dispute between the ' Arminians and Calvinists — on all the points characteristic 6 of the two sects — the Church of England maintains an ( absolute neutrality ; ' and 6 that there is nothing to 6 hinder the Arminian and the highest supra-lapsarian 6 Calvinist from walking together in the CLurch of Eng- 6 land and Ireland as friends and brothers, if they both 6 approve the discipline of the Church, and both are willing fi to submit to it,' And every reader of the 6 Edinburgh 4 Review ' will remember the irresistible humour and not less irresistible logic which, in 182 2, 1 lent its powerful aid to the burst of public indignation against the prelate who endeavoured, by the 87 questions of Peterborough, to extort the same conformity to his own opinions from the Calvinistic curate of Blatherwycke that is now claimed by the 140 questions of the Bishop of Exeter from the Cal- vinistic vicar of St. Just. It is instructive to notice how the Peterborough controversy has died away in silence, whilst the Gorham controversy has been thought of suffi- cient importance to convulse the Church to its centre. Compre- But it is not merely on the well-known inclusion of nessTof "the Calvinism and Arminianism within the Church of England England^ ^e Jus^ee °^ *ne recen^ judgment reposes. It rests on a wider basis, on a more impregnable position, — the very foundation of the Church of England, as represented by the most indubitable testimony of historical facts. There is no need — although if need there were it could be amply satisfied — for minute comparison of the particular formularies of the Church to prove the general truth that it is, by the very conditions of its being, not High, or Low, but Broad.2 The wonder is how anyone who knows 1 Ed. Rev. 1822. since applied in a more restricted sense. 2 [I believe that this is the first oc- The particular form was suggested to casion of the use of this expression, me by my friend Arthur Clough. 1 870-3 Essay I. JULY 1850. 9 anything of the English Reformation can have hesitated for a moment in acknowledging that the Church of Eng- land, like every other institution which came out of that momentous crisis, bore upon its features the impress of the contradictory elements which were contending for the mastery. Two principles — the principles of Rome and of In its origin Geneva — were struggling for life and death in England, as in every other country in Europe, for a triumph, which in England alone was in part lost, in part won, by both alike. If even in Germany, proverbial for the precision and fearlessness of her eminent men, the confessions and apologies of the Protestant Churches retain traces of the conflict, how much more in England, well called the native country of compromise, whose distinguishing excellence has always been a strong sense of practical unity amidst the utmost confusion of theoretical contradictions. Never was there a contest in which parties were so equally balanced, — in which the weight of external circumstances so instantly turned the scale. We cannot look steadily at any one scene or view in those eventful times without finding that it is dissolving into its opposite. At the accession of Edward the nation is Protestant. At the accession of Mary it is Roman Catholic. The very same proxies which the year before Edward's death were in the hands of Cranmer appear the next year in the hands of Bonner. It could not but be that every public act and document of the Reformers was marked by signs of the struggle through which they had passed : they had to build up their system sword in hand, with the axe of Henry behind them, and the fires of Mary before them ; and, like the walls of Athens, after the Persian war, the whole fabric, strong as it has been in defence of the citadel, yet naturally 6 exhibits in its irregular structure ' a lasting monument of the clashing interests and jarring 10 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. 6 passions by which the ill-assorted parts were brought ' together.' 1 In its for- Nor must the peculiar disposition of those chiefly con- cerned be forgotten. If ever there were characters who would naturally have been inclined to gather within the sweep of their institutions as large a mass of supporters as £>ossible, they were the two first Protestant Primates, Cranmer and Parker, and, above all, the great Protestant Queen, under whom the whole system was first compacted together. Without ascribing to them any remote -pre- vision, or even any deliberate intention, they could hardly fail, by the very force of their nature, to accomplish the purpose which Puller ascribes to their work, in language not inapposite to the circumstances of the present day. c Some,' says that quaint and original writer, in speaking of the Thirty-nine Articles, c have unjustly taxed the 6 composers for too much favour extended in their large 6 expressions, clean through the contexture of these Arti- 6 cles, which should have tied men's consciences up closer c in stricter and more particularising propositions : which, 6 indeed, proceeded from their commendable moderation : c children's clothes ought to be made of the biggest, because c afterwards their bodies will grow up to their garments. 6 Thus the Articles of the English Protestant Church, in 6 the infancy thereof, they thought good to draw up in 6 general terms, foreseeing that posterity would grow up 4 to fill the same. I mean, these holy men did prudently ' prediscover that differences in judgments would unavoid- ( ably happen in the Church, and were loth to unchurch 6 any and drive them off from an ecclesiastical communion 6 for such petty differences ; which made them plan the ' Articles in comprehensive words, to take in all who, differ- 1 Thirlwall's Greece, vol. iii. p. S6o. Essay I. JULY 1850. 11 ' ing in the branches, meet in the root of the same religion? (Church History, b. ix. § 52.) To this mixed origin of our formularies corresponds the In its mixed history of our ecclesiastical parties ever since. paitle There was force enough in the purely Protestant element to eject the Eoman Catholic bishops at the accession of Elizabeth ; there was not force enough to eject the great mass of Eoman Catholic communicants till the memorable twelfth year of the same reign, from which some modern ecclesiastical purists date the beginning of what they call 6 the Roman Catholic schism ' in England. There was force enough in the Roman, or (so called) Catholic element, to roll back the principles of Cranmer and Abbott, in the time of Charles I. and Charles II. ; there was not force enough to prevent the return of those principles in 1688, with the additional strength of the yet more hostile in- fluences of the eighteenth century. The character of the spotted 6 panther ' by Dryden is but an enemy's represen- tation of 6 the mean between the two extremes, — of too fi much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness in 6 admitting variations,' which the Church of England claims as its own peculiar c wisdom.' Jeremy Taylor, whose writings present, as in a many-sided mirror, all opinions that Christian divines ever held, — Hooker, the judicious champion of moderation against the exclusive- ness of Rome on the one hand, and Geneva on the other, — are but the natural types of a Church, of which they have ever been regarded as amongst the greatest ornaments. The very existence of the 6 Via Media,' so long the pride of Anglican theology, is a testimony to the twofold aspect which the English ecclesiastical system has always worn alike in the eyes of its friends and its enemies. But, in fact, this double character is not peculiar to the Church of England — it is the characteristic feature of 12 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. England itself. It runs through the whole course of the English character and history, from the time when Eng- land itself first became a nation down to the present moment. We do not mean that our national character is the sole cause of the peculiarity which marks our National Reformation, but it contributed largely to the complex character of that great movement, and it illustrates, even where it does not form, the breadth and comprehensive- ness of our ecclesiastical institutions. Everywhere we are met by the cross of our first parentage — we are not Normans merely, nor Saxons, but Englishmen — the two theological elements in our Liturgy are not more strongly contrasted than the two elements of speech so prominently brought out in the language of its first Exhortation. Our revolutions, unlike those of foreign nations, have been conducted not in single, sudden, abrupt convulsions, but by long struggles, by ancient precedent, through action and reaction, of two mighty principles, each as distinct now as when they were brought face to face in King and Baron, Cavalier and Roundhead, Jacobite and Orangeman. Our universities are constructed, at least nominally, on the combination of two opposite institutions — the collegiate and the professorial. Our political constitution is worked for the most part by the union of a theory and practice utterly at variance with each other. Our judicial courts, civil and ecclesiastical, vie with each other in the mass of irreconcilable doctrines which are involved in almost every turn of their most solemn forms. Such considerations, even if not strictly applicable to the case in question, yet tend to indicate the inconsistency of reproaching the recent Judgment, or the Church of England, for the very qualities which, in the rest of our national institutions, we honour with the highest commen- dation, and which, in our general history, have led to such Essay I. JULY 1850. 13 beneficial results. The wisest Germans feel, that to un- settle the equal relations established between the Roman Catholics and Protestants at the Peace of Westphalia, would be to undo the work which Providence has wrought among them by the infallible signs of thirty years of misery and bloodshed. The wisest Englishmen should feel no less, that to cast either of the existing parties out of the Church of England, is to act in despite of that Pro- vidence which, through three hundred years of war and peace, has never allowed either of the two parties entirely to succumb to the other. ' What God has joined, let no ' man put asunder.' 6 Happy that country,' was the ex- pression of a European sovereign who some years past visited this island, and surveyed with delight our ancient ecclesiastical institutions — 6 happy that country where the 6 new is intertwined with the old — where the old is ever 6 new, and the new is ever old.' And woe to that genera- tion (it may well be said, in continuation of the same thought), which shall dissever the old from the new — which shall make the old for ever old, and the new for ever new. Even if it were no more than the fear of disturbing a Adyan- system which is in a wonderful manner the expression of tj^judg. the national mind, we might well pause before we pro- ment* nounced ourselves equal to the performance of a duty, if it were a duty, so awful as this task would involve. But there is a higher motive than the natural desire to defend our existing system, which should make us rejoice in the peaceable settlement of any question like that which has called forth these remarks. It is because the system of the Church of England has endured so long and, on the whole, so successfully, that we ought to hesitate before we join even the conscientious malcontents who wish to destroy it. But it is because it contains germs of good untold for 14 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. generations yet to come, that we are bound not only to acquiesce in its continuance, but to cling to it as the best hope for the future. Never was there a case in which the 6 Spartam nactus es ' of the oracle was so immediately followed up by the 6 Hanc exoma.' Advan- 3. Beginning from the humblest grounds, it is worth the compre- consideration of every well-wisher to the energy as well hension. ag ^0 ^ peace 0f the Established Church, to take warn- ing from the sad pages of our history, which tell us how far more we have lost than gained by those instances — happily few and far between — in which the equilibrium of the two parties has been for a time overthrown. It is surely no matter of boasting to the Church of England that the author of the Saints' Eest, and the author of the Morning and Evening Hymn, died in exile from its com- munion. It was surely no gain in the period after the Restoration, when the Church needed all the forces which it could muster to contend against the licentiousness of the times, that it had, by Sheldon and the Cavaliers, been deprived of the services of 2,000 of its most zealous ministers — nor, in the dryness which followed the Revolution, that Tillotson and Tenison lived apart from the fervour and animation, misplaced though it might be, of their Non- juring brethren. Least of all should the High Church party of the present day presume to demand the ejection of the school, to whose devotion and activity in the close of the last and the beginning of this century the Church of England may almost be said to owe its very existence. Had the advocates of the High Church view of baptism during the last generation succeeded in expelling their Evangelical opponents from the Church as summarily as their modern representatives desire to expel the same opponents now, it may well be asked by what means (humanly speaking) the religious life of the Establishment KSSAY I. JULY 1850. 15 could have been preserved ? Had the same test been enforced fifty years ago which so many are labouring to enforce now, it is enough to say, that it would have driven from the Church (to mention two names only out of hundreds) Wilberforce and Simeon. There is, however, a yet nearer case which might induce oain to High Churchmen in the present controversy to pause ^hurcl before they complain, that ' the bona fides of subscrip- party. ' tion is shaken ' by the judgment of the Privy Council. When we read the list of names attached to the resolu- tions and the memorials of March 1850, and then con- sider how many of those very names were attached to the famous address of March 1845,1 which thanked the Oxford proctors for preventing a censure on the 90th Tract for the Times, we confess that it is with difficulty that we can repress the astonishment which must arise in every reasonable mind at conduct involving such extra- ordinary inconsistency. Who were then so eager to claim the protection of 'the stammering lips of ambiguous ' formularies ' in behalf of themselves or their friends, as those who now think it essential to the existence of a Church that it should express itself dogmatically and precisely on one of the most controverted points that theology contains ? Who were then so vehement against the theological decisions of Sir Herbert Jenner Fust as those who now regard him as a second Daniel come to judgment ? Who were then so reluctant to appeal to the excited tribunal of an assembly of clergy at Oxford as those who are now moving heaven and earth to obtain a Provincial S}rnod in London ? It may be that no extent of liberal interpretation could have admitted within the meaning of our formularies the latitude of Tract XC, and of Mr. Ward's Ideal ; but this is certain, that not 1 See Preface to this Work. 16 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. only those who claim that extreme latitude but also the vast section of High Church clergy who differ as widely from the letter of the Articles as, on the most unfavourable construc- tion, Mr. Gorham can be said to differ from the letter of the Liturgy, ought not to utter one word against the only principle of interpretation which enables the Church to receive their own subscription. Once apply a rigid rule of construction, and the Articles on General Councils, on the Royal Supremacy, on the Sacraments, on Justification, must close the gates as effectually against all the fol- lowers of Bishop Philpotts, as the words of the Bap- tismal Thanksgiving would close them against Arch- bishop Musgrave, and Mr. Gorham. Once allow the Romanising and Catholicising party to breathe freely, and the same admission opens the door to the vast mass of their Evangelical brethren whom they are now trying to exclude. Let c the wheel ' of theological contro- versy again 6 come full cycle,' and we shall see the High Church body clamouring as fiercely against strict inter- pretations and clerical synods then, as they are clamour- ing for them now, and as they did, in fact, clamour against them five years ago. We believe that the Church of England and the nation of England gain by the com- prehension of various elements within its pale ; and we should be the last to deal harshly with men so able, so zealous, and so devout, as many of the High Church party have proved themselves to be. But they cannot be too often reminded that all parties, in all their shades, need the protection of the principle laid down in the judgment of Lord Langdale — a principle so amply con- firmed and sanctioned by their own position and claims, both heretofore and now. If that judgment be latitudi- narian, it is a latitudinarianism of which the example has been set in other points of doctrine by Archbishop Howley, Essay T. JULY 1850. 17 no less than by Archbishop Sumner — by Bishop Bagot when he tolerated, and wisely tolerated, the Anglo- Catholic party at Oxford, no less than by Bishop Thirlwall, when he labours to vindicate the same liberty of conscience for the poor clergy who have been en- trusted to his pastoral care among the mountains of Wales. But, in truth, the position which we claim for the Gain to the Church of England, as it is far above any passing emer- natlon' gency, so neither does it stand in need of any personal recriminations. It secures not only the inestimable ad- vantage of retaining within the pale of the Establishment both the rival schools of theology — in this particular in- stance the school of Jewell, and Usher, and Bedell, and Leighton, and Wilberforce, and Sumner, side by side with that of Laud, and Ken, and Pusey — but it also is the only guarantee for the general moderation and comprehensive- ness Avhich are essential to the very idea of a great national institution in a country like this. There may have been those amongst us who, in their lofty aspira- tions after Christian perfection, have dreamed of a time when the noble theory of the first English Reformers should be realised in a sense even higher than that in which it was conceived by the eminent statesmen and divines of that period, when the English Church should indeed be co-extensive with the English nation. That the precincts of the Church of England should furnish room for such a hope, even in the remote future, and that in the present crisis they have not been (as they might have been) so narrowed as to stifle that hope for ever, is a matter of deep thankfulness. Yet, happy as* such a prospect may be, and delightful as it is to contemplate its possible accomplishment, not by the crude attempts of hasty speculators — not by the premature application of c 18 THE GOBHAM COKTEOVEESY, Essay L uncertain theories — not by the external pressure of liberal governments, but by the slow march of ages, by the un- certain conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- times, by grave judicial decisions, and by the wise mode- ration of dignified ecclesiastics — there is a nearer and more urgent service which the Church of England may render, unless its first principles are trampled under foot by the violence or the misunderstanding of its own pro- fessed supporters. There were interests to be secured by the Judgment of the Privy Council as far removed from Puritan and Latitudinarian theories as either of those theories are from each other — interests never to be slighted by a Christian minister, least of all to be slighted in times like our own. Everyone acknowledges the fact that we are thrown upon an age of unusual fermentation in thought and speculation. The vast convulsion, of which our fathers saw the first beginnings, still continues ; the great thaw which broke up the long frost of the eighteenth century is still in every quarter dissolving the existing fabric of opinion; principles long dormant are springing into life ; forms long unmeaning are either perishing or acquiring new animation ; the ancient Giants Pope and Pagan, whom Bunyan saw crippled and shackled in their caves, are beginning once again to rattle their chains and exhibit unwonted signs of activity. Now, who are they that most suffer, and most require the aid of external institutions, at such a period as this ? Not surely those who, taking a prominent part in such discussions, have the support of their own convictions, and the sympathy of their own partisans — not the Puritan, or the Romanising, or the philosophical schools, even if such schools can be fairly eliminated from each other's ranks — but those whose natural disposition withdraws them from the strife of tongues, into which they are cast by the lot Essay I. JULY 1850. 19 of their age, and who shrink from taking an active part in a contest in which they feel they have little or no con- cern, and long to repose in truths which they hold as certain and essential, instead of dwelling on those which their natural character leads them to regard as doubtful and comparatively indifferent. These are precisely the bruised reeds which a National Church-institution is bound to abstain from crushing — the smoking flax which it should be most careful not to quench ; and these are precisely the characters which the actual state of the Church of England, as handed down from the Reforma- tion, as confirmed by the Judgment of the Privy Council, is, above every other similar institution in the world, cal- culated to protect and console. The class which Isaac Walton describes as his own still occupies the chief place in the community, namely, those whom, by way of dis- tinction from 'the active Romanists,' and 'the restless 6 nonconformists,' he calls 6 the passive peaceable Protes- ' tants.' 6 These last,' adds the gentle angler, ' pleaded ' and defended their cause by established laws both eccle- ' siastical and civil, and, if they were active, it was to ' prevent the other two from destroying what was by ' those known laws happily established to them and their ' posterity.' 1 To this class belonged, in his rustic retire- ment, the great Hooker ; to this class, in a later age, Isaac Walton himself ; to this class, in our own time, the great mass of the nation, rich and poor, male and female, who are members of the Church of England, because they wish to be religious without being members of a party or a sect. More speculative minds may long for the professorial chairs of Germany, or the elaborate sys- tems of Aquinas or Bellarmine; more resolute minds may long for greater simplicity of principle, for greater 1 Walton's Lives, i. 354. c 2 20 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. vigour in the enforcement of ecclesiastical discipline. But those of whom we just now spoke — the little ones, whom to offend is to incur a greater guilt than to be drowned in the depths of the sea, — who in Protestant Germany might have been driven to distraction by the unbounded liberty of speculation, or, in Roman Catholic Italy, have been driven to infidelity by the iron yoke of authority, — these are the very persons who seek and find in the bosom of the Church of England the very refuge they want. Let anyone look at a rustic congregation, and ask what it is which is expected from the Church of England by the rude farmer, the simple labourer, the hard shopkeeper, the timid woman, the ignorant child, that come to worship under that sacred roof. Do they wish to know whether their pastor has authority to teach them dogmatically the doctrines of Absolution and the Real Presence ? Do they wish to be told whether Re- generation takes place in, before, or after Baptism? — whether their children have been regenerated by preve- nient grace or by the sprinkling of water ? — whether the 'Decades of Bullinger' or the 6 Savoy Conference' con- tain the truest exposition of Christian doctrine ? Every- one knows that they want no such thing. Everyone knows that a clergyman who was constantly insisting on such matters in his pulpit would be regarded as hardly in his right mind. Everyone knows that what they desire, and what from any good pastor they will receive, is the permission and the help to worship God as their fathers worshipped Him — to serve Him truly in those various stations in which He has placed them — to be strength- ened and built up in that holy faith which is indeed, in every sense, beyond and ' without controversy.' Such is the true end of a Church Establishment, — such is the end which, even after the disastrous secession of Essay I. JULY 1850. 21 many of its most distinguished members, is still to a great extent answered by the Established Church of Scotland, — such is the end which, down to this time, has been, with more or less effect, answered by the Church of England, and which might be answered with still greater effect if it would, in the solemn language of its Ordination Service, c wholly apply itself to this one thing, and draw all its ' cares and studies this way ; ' but such is not the end which is either pursued or attained by convocations and synods, by dogmatic statements and stringent subscrip- tions, by farious letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury, or by a hundred and forty questions to aged Calvinists. We know how the Hampden 1 controversy, even at the very height of its terrors, withered and died in a moment before the blaze of the Eevolution of February. We know how the Gorham controversy would be extinguished, in like manner, by any similar catastrophe, whether at home or abroad. Would that the greatness. of our daily duties, of our ordinary dangers and privileges, could reveal to our clergy what the sudden convulsions of public life always do reveal, — the nothingness of these verbal dis- putes, when compared with the stirring interests of national and individual welfare. It may be the sign of a healthy political state that our only revolution, as a French traveller is said facetiously to have expressed it, is the revolution of 'le pere Gorham.' It is not the mark of a healthy moral state that £ le pere Gorham ' should concentre upon himself and his doctrine that energy of hatred which we have been taught by our baptismal vows to reserve for moral evil, or that we should labour to turn our artisans into dogmatic theologians more than to make them good citizens and good Christians. 1 [The opposition to the appointment ford, which began in November 1847, of Dr. Hampden to the see of Here- and ended in February 1848.] 22 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. We have dwelt on the historical certainty of the fact that the Church of England was meant to include, and that it has always included, opposite and contradictory opinions, not only on the point now in dispute, but on other points, as important or more important than this. We have dwelt also on the inestimable value, if not absolute necessity, of maintaining this position, as the best means of dealing with the peculiar mission of a National Church, especially of a National Church in Eng- land, above all, of the Church of England in these times. But we feel that there is a yet higher ground to be taken — that there is a sanction and an example of our position almost too solemn to be insisted upon in a temporary argument, were it not for the greatness of the interests at stake, and for the sincerity, in many instances, of the scruples which such a position excites in those who have not considered it from its true point of view. Example In the second of those vigorous, though mistaken letters, Apostoli- which have drawn down upon Mr. Maskell the anger of calChurch. hundreds less plain-spoken or less clear-sighted than him- self,— after an examination of the various points on which he truly conceives the Church of England to have expressed no dogmatic opinion, there occurs this (in his view) final and fatal question, — c Has the world ever before seen, — 4 does there now exist anywhere — another example of a e religious sect or community which does not take one ' side or the other clearly and distinctly, upon at least a * very large proportion of the doctrines of which we have 6 been speaking ? ' 1 Yes : the world has seen one example, at least, of a religious community, whose highest authorities did refuse to take one side or the other clearly and distinctly on the 1 A Second Letter on the present the Church of England, p. 40, by the Position of the High Church Party in Rev. W. Maskell. Essay I. JULY 1850. 23 questions which were brought for their decision. There was once a council, in which, c after much disputing/ it was determined not to 6 put a yoke upon the neck of the ' disciples, which neither their fathers nor they were able ' to bear ; ' and to whom c it seemed good to lay upon the 6 Church no greater burden than these necessary things, 6 from which if the brethren kept themselves they should ' do well.'1 There was once a conference of those who * seemed to be the pillars of the Church 5 to decide the claims between the two rival sections of the Christian community, of whom we are told, that ' when they per- c ceived that He who wrought effectually' on one side, 6 the same was mighty ' also on the other side, they c gave ' to both 6 the right hand of fellowship/ that each should ' go unto 5 his own peculiar sphere.2 There was once a controversy which distracted the Church with 6 doubtful e disputations/ and the answer which came from an au- thority, now revered by the whole Christian world, was a decision which decided nothing, except that each party might be left to its own convictions, however opposite and contradictory they might be. 6 Let every man be fully 6 persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day ' regardeth it unto the Lord, and he that regardeth not the £ day, to the Lord he doth not regard it ; he that eateth, 6 eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks ; and he 6 that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth ' God thanks.53 It is to the principle, not the subject- matter, of such decisions, that our attention is directed. The controversy to which they related, different as it was from those of modern times, agitated the Apostolical Church no less fiercely, and was invested by the con- tending parties with no less importance. It is enough for our purpose to learn that the Church of the first 1 Acts xv. 7, 10, 28. 2 Gal. ii. 8, 9. 3 Rom. xiv. 1, 5, 6. 24 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. century gloried in the freedom which is now regarded as a disgrace, and directed its earliest and most energetic efforts, not to the enforcement of a rigid conformity, but to the toleration of wide diversities. It was, indeed, no empty figure of speech which in that early age of Chris- tianity recalled the image of the ark prepared against the flood. It is not an empty boast, that we have now within our reach — and it will be no imaginary guilt if we, of our own accord, refuse to maintain — a system which shares, in however imperfect a measure, one characteristic attri- bute of that perfect Church which was to float visibly upon the stormy Avaters, and gather within itself the characters of various conditions, opinions, and tempers, who fled to it for shelter from the waves of this trouble- some world. The Church of England, however, in this respect, unlike the Churches of Rome or of Geneva, may console itself with the reflection that it presents a likeness, however faint, of the Church of the Apostolic age. It is with reluctance that we descend from that sacred atmosphere to the earth-born mists of modern controversy. We might well be content to leave the question as it reposes on the general principle so amply justified by the most solemn precedents which the world can furnish, and in this particular case so clearly enunciated by our highest legal functionaries, so wisely sanctioned by the silence of our highest ecclesiastical authorities, so irrefragably justi- fied by the facts of history, so directly applicable to every party in the Church of England. We feel that, whilst taking the question on this its highest ground, we are not only occupying a position impregnable in the present con- troversy, but that we are defending interests far wider and far more sacred than those which that controversy in- volves, and are resting under the shade of an authority Essay I. HISTORY OF THE BAPTISMAL QUESTION. 25 which the Bishop of Exeter himself will not dare to ex- communicate. Long after the Gorham Case has been forgotten, the Church and nation will, we confidently trust, reap the fruits of that calmness and moderation which serve to protect from persecution the very party which is now indignant at being restrained from persecuting others. 6 Old religious factions,' according to the felicitous image of Burke, c are volcanoes burnt out ; on the lava and ashes e and squalid scoria? of old eruptions grow the peaceful £ olive, the cheering vine, and the sustaining corn.' But a few words must, before we conclude, be devoted Contro- to the subject of the controversy itself, which has given Baptismal rise for the present to so much unhappy division, — for the J^enera~ future let us trust to so happy a prospect of ultimate union. Into the details of the question it is not our in- tention to venture. Of this, with perhaps even greater truth than of the kindred controversy on the Eucharist, we may well say, with Jeremy Taylor, ' Men have turned £ the key in this lock so often, till it cannot be either ' opened or shut, and they have unravelled the clue so 6 long, till they have entangled it.' In the present instance its am- such a task is rendered doubly hopeless by the shifting blgU1^- character of the dispute in its various stages. No sooner do we grapple with an argument or a statement in this Protean contest, than it suddenly turns into something else. Down to the moment of the Judgment, 'Regene- 6 ration' was the word on which the whole question hinged. The moment that the Judgment was pronounced, 'Re- c generation ' was discarded, and a totally different phrase and idea, — 6 the Remission of Sins,' was substituted for it. When we ask what is meant by £ Remission of Sins ?s that expression itself changes into the 'Remission of c Original Sin ; ' and if we ask further, whether that phrase is used in the sense of the early Church for the 26 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. everlasting loss of unbaptized infants, we are warned that it means no such thing, and some equally ambiguous test is given us in its place. Again and again the statements crumble in our grasp. Again and again we find that they are either so unmeaning that all parties alike conform to them, or so revolting that all alike repudiate them. Or if from words we turn to persons, the chase is still after a phantom. The conflict is like the midnight battle at Syracuse, where each party mistakes the watchword of the other, where Ionian pseans and Dorian paeans are heard alike on either side, where no one is able to draw the line between friends and enemies in the shadowy strife. The extremes, no doubt, differ from each other, but the intermediate stages which unite the extremes are absolutely indistinguishable. Can Mr. Gorham fall with- out involving Mr. Goode in his ruin ? And yet, if Mr. Goode is to be lost, how shall we' save the venerable Primate, who has so conspicuously marked him out for honour, and who has so frankly and generously thrown his shield over the oppressed party in the Church? And, then, is it possible to believe that the chasm between the Primate and the Bishop of London1 is really so vast as to prevent that eminent prelate from holding communion with his most reverend friend ? And who shall venture to divide the innumerable shades of opinion which follow? If Archdeacon Manning 2 maintains that ' Baptism with- £ out repentance avails nothing,' how is he to be reconciled with Archdeacon Wilberforce, or how is he to be separated from Archdeacon Hare ? Are those, who maintain the change in baptism to be an unconditional change of rela- tion, divisible by more than a hair's-breadth distance from those who believe it to be a conditional change of nature? 1 [Archbishop Sumner and Birehop 2 Manning's Sermons, vol. iv. p. Blomfield.] 339. Essay I. HISTORY OF THE BAPTISMAL QUESTION. 27 Are those who believe in the conditional regeneration of adults so essentially different from those who believe in the conditional regeneration of infants that the same Church cannot contain them both ? How shall we dis- tinguish the view of the Bishop of Exeter, who asserts the former, from the view of Mr. Gorham, who asserts the latter ? How can we compile a doctrine of baptism which is to exclude the Vicar, and retain the Bishop ? What becomes of all the horror at the slightest variation from the literal sense of our formularies, if the Bishop is allowed to apply the very same interpretation to the service for adults which Mr. Gorham is precluded from applying to the very same words in the service for infants ? In short, when those who have signed resolutions and remonstrances in behalf of precise dogmatic statements can themselves draw up a statement precise, dogmatic, and intelligible, which shall neither contradict itself nor themselves, nor each other, then, and not till then, will be the time to enter into the details of a controversy, of which the most remarkable feature is the marked absence of precision or unity in those who are endeavouring to en- force precise uniformity on the whole Church of England. There are, however, two general considerations which may fairly be pressed even on the attention of the dis- putants themselves : I. It is important to observe that, SO The ques- far from the question of the efficacy of Infant Baptism essemkl being an exception to the general comprehensiveness of j?^setian the Church, it has, down to this time, been held to be one faith, of its most signal exemplifications. The doctrine may be perfectly true : all that we are now maintaining is, that it has never been authoritatively regarded as essential. To those who are not well acquainted with ecclesiastical history, and who listen only to the numerous declarations and protests which speak as if ' unconditional regeneration 28 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. 6 in and by baptism ' was the one article of a falling or a standing Church, it might appear as if in no age or country had there ever been any doubt on the subject — as if the doctrine in question had alwa}^s stood in the very front of every creed and confession that ever was com- posed. The very reverse is the fact. We will pass over the first century. No one will venture to claim from that sacred age the semblance of a ground for the colossal im- In the portance of this new test. But what is true of the creeds of the first century is true also of the creeds of later ages. In the Apostles' Creed, the great confession of faith through the whole Western Church 1 — the most venerable monument of primitive antiquity — the symbol at this moment of membership with the Church of Eng- land— there is not one word on the Sacrament of Baptism, infant or adult. In the Athanasian Creed, — carefully and awfully as it guards the doctrine of the Catholic faith, and precisely as it states wherein that Catholic faith consists, descending even into the minute question of c the double 6 Procession,' 6 which, unless a man do keep whole and un- ' defiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly ' — there is not one word on what is now maintained, in direct contradiction to that celebrated confession, to be ' an c essential article of the Catholic faith.' In the Nicene Creed, or rather in that later edition of it which appeared at the Council of Constantinople, there is a clause which acknowledges 'one baptism for the remission of sins.' But that clause is worded, not in the terminology of eccle- 1 It may here be noticed by the adults the Bishop of Exeter has ex- way, that in the exposition of this pressed his entire concurrence with creed by Bishop Pearson, although he Mr. Gorham ; and, therefore, on the connects 1 the remission of sins ' with only point at issue, Bishop Pearson the baptism of adults, so far as to use has expressed no opinion at all, and the two expressions in juxtaposition, has declared that no opinion need there is no mention whatever of the be expressed. (Pearson on the Creed, baptism of infants — a material omis- Art. X.) sion, inasmuch as on the question of Essay I. HISTORY OF THE BAPTISMAL QUESTION. 29 siastical controversy, but is taken direct from the large and general language of Scripture itself. Whatever sense is to be attached to it in the only two passages in the New Testament, where the phrase occurs — one relating to the baptism of John the Baptist, the other to the baptism by Peter on the day of Pentecost, — may be, or rather must be, attached to it in the Creed. The context of those passages, the words employed, the belief of the earlier Greek Fathers, the state of theological controversy at the time, — all not only do not enjoin, but almost forbid, the extension of the phrase (as originally intended) from the baptism of adults to that of infants, — from the remission of actual sins to the remission of that original sin of infants which could only by the most violent distortion of language be forced into connexion with the words of the Creed ; and even if it were so forced, the question of the mode of remission, whether conditional or unconditional, is still left as open as ever. And what the Creeds omit to declare as necessary to be in the believed, neither did the Councils enjoin. One only ex- Counci ception has been drawn up from the abyss of antiquity, which might at first sight seem to give the support of one General Council to something like the 'dogma now put forward. In that awful and menacing language, of which the Bishop of Exeter is so perfect a master, the Primate was presented ' with a canon of the Fourth Council of 'Carthage, a council received generally, and one whose ' laws were adopted by the General Council of Chalcedon. ' The first canon of the Fourth Council of Carthage, ' which is thus seen to have had the authority of the ' whole Catholic Church, in giving rules for the examina- * tion of one elected to be a bishop, directs, amongst other 6 things, as follows : — " Quserendum etiam ab eo si credat, ' " &c, si in baptismo omnia peccata, id est, tarn originale 30 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. ' " con tr actum, quam ilia quse voluntarie admissa sunt, f " dimittantur." Thus it appears that no one in the 8 Primitive Church could possibly be ordained a bishop c without its being first ascertained that he believed original £ sin to be remitted in baptism.' 1 We will not now en- quire how far this alleged requisition from the ancient bishops agrees with the requisition by modern bishops from their clergy. It is sufficient to state, first, that there is much reason to believe that the canons of the Fourth Council of Carthage are, from beginning to end, a com- plete forgery ; secondly, that, even were they genuine, there is no proof that they were adopted by the General Council of Chalcedon; thirdly, that, had they been so adopted, and thus 6 have had the authority of the whole c Catholic Church,' they contain, ' amongst other things,' these two regulations : 6 That no bishop shall read a Gentile £ booh ; ' that ' no bishop, on pain of deprivation of the ' right of ordination, shall ever ordain a clergyman who 6 has been tvAce married or who has married a widow.9 Such is the result of the only instance alleged from the Primitive Church in behalf of an authoritative statement of * the doctrine of Holy Baptism.' Through the tomes of the Mediseval Church we confess that we have not thought it necessary to search. To one work, however, of the Middle Ages we will refer, because it is in everybody's hands, and because it refutes, more decisively even than the authority of Creeds and Councils, the alleged neces- sity for practically pressing forward this doctrine. If there be any one manual of devotion used with universal edification through the whole Catholic Church, it is c The ( Imitation of Christ,' by Thomas a Kempis. From one end to the other of that admirable book, of which the very object is to build up the soul of the believer, there is 1 Letter of the Bishop of Exeter to the Archhishop of Canterbury, p. 15. Essay t HISTORY OF THE BAPTISMAL QUESTION. 31 not the remotest allusion to the doctrine which is now said to be the indispensable basis — the ever-recurring topic — in all Christian education. From the Church of the Middle Ages we turn to the Church of England. We have already, to a certain extent, anticipated all that could be said. If our Reformed in the Church has not thought it right to decide authoritatively £nghl on the great questions of Calvinism and Arminianism, it must, a fortiori, have declined to decide on the subor- dinate question of grace in the baptism of children. From the mass of evidence to prove that on this point diversities of opinion were always regarded as admissible, we will select two facts. The first shall be given in the forcible language of Mr. Maskell : — 4 Perhaps without two excep- ' tions all the divines, bishops and archbishops, doctors and c professors, of the Elizabethan age, — the age, be it re- 1 membered, of the present Common Prayer-book in its ' chief particulars, and of the Book of Homilies, and of ' the Thirty-nine Articles, — held and taught doctrines ' inconsistent with the [High Church] doctrine of Bap- ' tisin.' 1 The second shall be a quotation from Wall's * History of Infant Baptism,' — a book which is, as every one knows, recommended throughout the English Church as the standard work on that subject, and in which the author had every inducement to exaggerate the importance of a topic, to the investigation of which he had devoted the best years of his life : — ' Baptism itself does, indeed, ' make an article in several old creeds, as, for example, in ' the Constantinopolitan, which is now received in all 6 Christendom, — " I acknowledge one baptism for the re- c " mission of sins." But the determination of the age or 1 manner of receiving it was never thought fit to make an ' article of faith. ,' (Vol. ii. p. 549.) And he adds, in a few 1 Second Letter, cfr., by Rev. W. Maskell, p. 15. 32 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. pages afterwards, with a moderation which would almost seem to be directly aimed at the extraordinary positions maintained by some of onr modern writers on the same subject : — 6 The sophist ers in logic have a way by which, 6 if any man do hold any the least error in philosophy, 6 they will, by a long train of consequences, prove that he 6 denies the first maxims of common sense. And some ' would bring that spiteful art into religion, whereby they ' will prove him that is mistaken in the least point to be ' that Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. If 6 the Psedobaptist and the Anti-Psedobaptist be mistaken, ' yet let them not make heathens of one another. The * denial of the Quakers to be Christians, — those of them 6 I mean that believe the Scriptures, — has such a dreadful £ consequence with it, that one would not willingly admit ' it (though they deny all baptism), because they, however, c possess that which is the chief thing signified and in- ' tended by baptism.' (Vol. ii. p. 570.) Statements to the same effect might be multiplied in- definitely, but enough has been adduced to show that whatever heresy attaches (as Mr. Denison and his sup- porters declare that it does attach) to the Judicial Com- mittee of the Privy Council, for leaving this doctrine an open question, attaches also to the Church of England, as represented in the compilers of its formularies, and in the work which its bishops and archbishops have for the last hundred years recommended as the one complete statement of the whole controversy ; and not only to the Church of England, but to the Creeds and Councils of the Primitive Church itself ; above all to the authors of the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed ; and to all Churches, ancient and modern, which accept those confessions as adequate expressions of Christian truth. II. Such is a brief survey of the view which the Chris- Essay I. HISTORY OF BAPTISM. 33 tian Church from the earliest to the latest times has taken of the importance of the doctrines connected with Infant Baptism. It would be a more instructive enquiry to un- fold the view which in different ages has been taken of those doctrines themselves ; instructive not merely for the purposes of the present controversy, but as illustrating some of the most important features in the history of the Church itself. It would exhibit in striking relief the impassable gulf which exists between all modern views, Catholic and Protestant alike, on the one hand, and those of the ancient Church, to which so many zealots in the recent conflicts profess themselves adherents. It would show the immense elevation of the Apostolic times above those which immediately succeeded, and the long toil by which subsequent ages have laboured, consciously or un- consciously, to work back to that divine original from which the Church so suddenly and sadly fell. It would mark at once the weakness and the strength of that Church through all its later stages, — its weakness in allowing the peculiar influences of successive ages to colour and mould its form of belief, — its strength in con- stantly asserting, even against the most prevalent corrup- tions and amidst the most painful self-contradictions, the moral and spiritual element, which in any other religion than Christianity would have died away under the weight of heterogeneous materials, but which has always re- mained, dimly burning, yet never extinguished, and illu- minating even the darkest recesses in which it was buried. It would show, lastly, how great is the agreement amongst all serious persons, certainly in this age, and, probably, in most ages, on the only point which really affects their practice, and how needless is the clamour for a precision of statement, which the nature of the subject either pre- cludes or renders superfluous. D 34 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. To treat such a subject worthily of its interest would fill a volume. Our present limits will only allow us to indicate abruptly and imperfectly its chief landmarks. Baptism in What, then, was Baptism in the Apostolic Age? The stolic Age. fewest words will most reverently tell what indeed it re- quires but few words to describe. We must place before our minds the greatest religious change which the world has seen or can see. Imagine thousands of men and women seized with one common impulse, — abandoning, by the irresistible conviction of a day, an hour, a moment, their former habits, friends, associates, to be enrolled in a new society under the banner of a new faith. Conceive what that new society was — a society of ' brothers ;' bound by ties closer than any earthly brotherhood — filled with life and energy such as fall to the lot of none but the most ardent enthusiasts, yet tempered by a moderation, a wisdom, and a holiness such as mere enthusiasts have never possessed. Picture that society, swayed by the pre- sence of men whose very names seem too sacred for the converse of ordinary mortals, and by the recent recollec- tions of One, whom 6 not seeing they loved with love un- 6 speakable.' Into this society they passed by an act as natural as it was expressive. The plunge into the bath of purification, long known among the Jewish nation as the symbol of a change of life, was still retained as the pledge of entrance into this new and universal communion — re- tained under the express sanction of Him, into whose most holy name they were by that solemn rite 6 baptized.' The water in those Eastern regions, so doubly significant of all that was pure and refreshing, closed over the heads of the converts, and they rose into the light of heaven, new and altered beings. Can we wonder if on such an act were lavished all the figures which language could tarnish to express the mighty change: 'Regeneration,' Essay I. HISTORY OF BAPTISM. 35 ( Illumination,' 6 Burial/ 6 Resurrection,' c A new creation,' c Forgiveness of sins,' ' Salvation ' ? Well might the Apostle say, 6 Baptism doth even now save us,' even had he left his statement in its unrestricted strength to express what in that age no one could misunderstand. But no less well was he led to add, as if with a divine prescience of coming evils, 'Not the putting away the 6 filth of the flesh, but — the answer of a good conscience 6 towards God.' 1 Such was the Apostolic baptism. It is startling to Baptism witness the abrupt descent from the first century to the first three third, the fourth, the fifth. The rite was, indeed, still in centuries- great measure what in its origin it had been almost uni- versally, the great change from darkness to light, from evil to good ; the ( second birth ' of men from the corrupt society of the dying Roman Empire into the purifying and elevating influence of the living Christian Church.2 Nay, in some respects the deep moral responsibility of the act must have been impressed upon the converts by the severe, sometimes the life-long, preparation for the final pledge, even more than by the sudden and almost in- stantaneous transition which characterised the baptism of the Apostolic age. But gradually the consciousness of this ' answer of the good conscience towards God ' was lost in the stress laid with greater and greater emphasis on the ' putting away the filth of the flesh.' Let us con- ceive ourselves present at those extraordinary scenes, to which no existing ritual of any European Church offers the slightest likeness ; when, between Easter and Pente- 1 1 Pet. iii. 21. that in the earlier Fathers it is used 2 As a general rule, in the writings for Repentance, or, as we should now of the later Fathers, there is no doubt say, Conversion. See Clem. Rom. i. 9. that the word which we translate Justin. Dial, in Tryph. p. 231, b. d. ' Regeneration,' is used exclusively for Clemens Alex, (apud Eus. U.K. iii. Baptism. But it is equally certain 23.) Strom, lib. ii. 8, 425, A. D 2 36 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. cost, the crowds of catechumens poured into the baptis- teries of the great basilicas ; let us figure to our minds the strange ceremonies handed down to us in the minutest details by contemporary documents : the exorcism and exsufflation — the torch-light of the midnight hour, — the naked figures, plunging into the deep waters of the bath, — the bishop, always present to receive them as they emerged, — the white robes, — the anointing with oil, — the laying on of hands. Among the accompaniments of these scenes there were practices and signs which we have long ago discarded as inexpedient or indifferent, but which were then regarded as essential. Immersion, which is now retained only in the half- civilised churches of the East, or by the insignificant sect of Baptists, 1 was then, even on death-beds, deemed all but absolutely necessary. The whole modern Church of Western Europe, according to the belief of those times, would be condemned as ' unbaptized because it has received, without the excuse of a sick-bed, nothing but the clinical or sick-bed asper- sion— ' Totus orbis miratur se non esse Christianum, sed ' Clinicum.' It was not the effect of divine grace upon the soul, but of the actual water upon the body, on which those ancient Baptists built their hopes of immortality. Let but the person of a human being be wrapt in the purifying element, and he was redeemed from the unclean- ness of his birth. The boy Athanasius throwing water in jest over his playmate on the sea-shore in the name of the Holy Trinity, performed as it was believed a valid baptism : the Apostles in the spray of the storm on the sea of Galilee ; the penitent thief in the water that rushed from the wound of the Crucified — (such were the wild excesses to which some ventured without censure to carry the 1 The cathedral of Milan is the soli- West where the old practice still con- tary exception in the churches of the tinues. Bhai I. HISTORY OF BAPTISM. 37 doctrine) — received the baptism -which had else been with- held from them. And this ' washing of water ' was now deemed absolutely necessary for salvation. No human being could pass into the presence of God hereafter unless he had passed through the waters of baptism here. i This/ Condemna- says the learned Tossius, ' is the judgment of all antiquity, nnbap- 6 that they perish everlastingly who will not be baptized, tlzed' ' when they may.' From this belief followed gradually, but surely, the dreadful conclusion that the natural end, not only of all heathens, but of all the patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament, was in the realms of perdi- tion. And, last of all, the Pelagian controversy drew out the mournful doctrine, that infants, dying before baptism, were excluded from the face of Him whose presence we are solemnly told 6 their angels do always behold / — the doctrine when expressed (as it was expressed) in its darkest form, that they are consigned to the everlasting fire pre- pared for the Devil and his angels. There is no escape from the fact that at the close of the fifth century this belief had become universal, chiefly through the means of the great Augustine. It was the turning-point of his contest with Pelagius. It was the dogma from which nothing could induce him to part. It was this which he nieifnt by insisting on 6 the remission of original sin in 6 infant baptism.* In his earlier years he had doubted whether, possibly, he might not leave it an open question ; but in his full age, 6 God forbid/ said he, 6 that I should 6 leave the matter so/ The extremest case of a child dvinor beyond the reach of baptism is put to him, and he decides against it. in the Fifth Council of Carthage, doubtless under his auspices, the milder view is mentioned of those who, reposing on the gracious promise, ' In my Father's ' house are many mansions/ trusted that among those many mansions there might still be found, even for those 38 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. infants who, by want of baptism, were shut out from the Divine presence, some place of shelter. That milder view is anathematised. Happily, this dark doctrine was, as we have already observed, never sanctioned by the universal creeds of the Church. On this, as on every other point connected with the doctrine of Baptism, they preserved a strange, we might almost say a providential silence. But among the individual Fathers we fear that from the time of Augustine the confession of Wall 1 is but too true : ' How hard soever this opinion may seem, it is the ' constant opinion of the ancients.' It is from no wish to disparage those c ancients/ or the interesting character of Augustine himself, that we have insisted on this melancholy fact. ' I am sorry,' says Bishop Hall, and we share his sorrow, 6 that so harsh an opinion 6 should be graced with the name of a Father so reverend, 6 so divine — whose sentence yet let no man plead by 6 halves.' But the interests of truth demand that we should be reminded of what was the 'precise and dog- 4 matic ' doctrine of Baptism held by those to whom High Churchmen of the present day are for ever appealing in behalf of views which are really as far removed from those of Augustine as the nineteenth century is from the fifth, and as London is from Hippo. Do they or do they not believe that immersion is essential to the efficacy of baptism ? Do they or do they not hold that unbaptized infants must be lost for ever ? Do they or do they not hold that baptized infants must receive the Eucharist, or be lost in like manner ? For this, too, strange as it may seem, was yet a necessary consequence of the same mate- rialising system. 6 He who held it impossible ' (we again 1 Wall's History of Infant Baptism, most of the authorities for the state- vol. i. p. 200. In this work, and in ments in the text. Bingham's Antiquities, will be found Essay I. HISTORY 01< BAPTISM. 39 use the words cf Bishpp Hall) ' for a child to be saved • unless the baptismal water were poured on his face, held • it also as impossible for the same infant, unless the ' sacramental bread were received in his mouth. And, ' lest any should plead different interpretations, the same 6 St. Augustine avers this later opinion also, touching the ' necessary communicating of children, to have been once ' the common judgment of the Church of Rome.' 1 Such were the doctrines of the Fathers on Infant Baptism ; — doctrines so deeply affecting our whole conceptions of God and of man, that, in comparison, the gravest ques- tions now in dispute shrink into utter insignificance ; — doctrines so wholly different from those professed by any English, we may almost add any European, clergymen of the present day, that had the Bishop of Exeter or the Pope of Rome himself appeared for consecration before the Bishop of Hippo, he would have been rejected at once as an unbaptized heretic. It is a more pleasing task to trace the struggle of Change to Christian goodness and wisdom, by which the Church was ^wTof " gradually delivered from this iron yoke. Even in the baptism. Patristic age itself (in its earlier stage) the subjugation had not been complete Tertullian and Chrysostom must have accepted with hesitation, if they accepted at all, the universal condemnation of unbaptized children. No general or provincial council, except the Fifth of Car- nage, ventured to affirm it. The exception in behalf of nartyrs left an opening, at least in principle, which would by logical consequence no less admit other exceptions, of which the Fathers never dreamed. The saints of the Old Testament were rescued from their long prison-house by the hypothesis of a liberation effected for them through the Descent into Hell. But these were contradictions and 1 Bishop Hall's I.eiier to the Lady Honor ia Hay. 40 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. exceptions to the prevailing doctrine ; and the gloomy period which immediately followed the death of Augus- tine, fraught as it was with every imaginable horror of a falling empire, was not likely to soften the harsh creed which he had bequeathed to it ; and the chains which the 6 durus pater infantum ' had thrown round the souls of children were riveted by Gregory the Great. At last, however, with the new birth of the European nations the humanity of Christendom revived. One by one the chief strongholds of the ancient belief yielded to the purer and loftier instincts (to use no higher name) which guided the Christian Church in its onward progress, dawning more and more unto the perfect day. First disappeared the necessity of immersion. Then, to the Master of the Sen- tences we owe the decisive change of doctrine which deli- vered the souls of infants from the everlasting fire to which they had been handed over by Augustine and Eul- gentius, and placed them, with the heroes of the heathen world, in that mild Limbo or Elysium which everyone knows in the pages of Dante. Next fell the practice of administering to them the Eucharistic elements. Last of all, in the fourteenth century, the great though silent protest against the magical theory of Baptism itself was effected in the postponement of the rite of Confirmation, which, down to that time, had been regarded as an essen- tial part of Baptism, and, as such, was administered simul- taneously with it. An ineffectual stand was made in behalf of the receding doctrine of Augustine by Gregory of Rimini, known amongst his ' seraphic ' and 6 angelic ' colleagues by the unenviable title of 6 Tormentor Infan- tum ; ' and some of the severer Reformers, both in Eng- land and Germany, for a few years clung to the sterner view. But the victory was really won ; and the Council of Trent, no less than the Confession of Augsburg and Essay I. HISTORY OF BAPTISM. 41 the Thirty-nine Articles, has virtually abandoned the position, by which Popes and Fathers once maintained the absolute, unconditional, mystical efficacy of sacramental elements on the body and soul of the unconscious infant. The Eastern Church, indeed, with its usual tenacity of ancient forms, still immerses, still communicates, and still confirms its infant members — a living image of the Patristic practice. But in the Western Church the Christian religion has taken its free and natural course ; and in the boldness which substituted a few drops of water for the ancient bath, which pronounced a charitable judgment on the innocent babes who died without the sacraments, which restored to the Eucharist its original intention, and gave to Confirmation a meaning of its own, by deferring both these solemn rites to years of dis- cretion, we have at once the best proof of the total and necessary divergence of modern from ancient doctrine, and the best guarantee that surely, though slowly, the true wisdom of Christianity will be justified of all her children. It is unnecessary for any practical purpose to pursue the history of Baptism further. That unconditional efficacy which was once believed by the Eathers, and is still believed by the Eastern Church, to flow from both the sacraments alike to infants and adults, has been re- strained within narrower and narrower limits, till, in this country at least, it has (except by a very few individuals) been withheld from infant communion, from adult com- munion, from adult baptism, and lingers only in the now disputed region of the baptism of infants. But, although it is foreign to our purpose to enter into that dispute itself, it is satisfactory to be assured how genuine and almost universal is the agreement which, after all this toil and conflict, prevails upon the practice around which the 42 THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay L dispute rages. All Christian parents feel that in bringing their children to the font they are obeying the natural in- stincts of a Christian heart, by dedicating their new-born offspring to, the service of God, in the hope and prayer that the rest of his life may be led according to this be- Infant ginning. And, whatever may be the response which par- baptism m ticular portions of the service of the Church of England modern ^ 0 times. may awaken in their minds, yet with its main spirit, with its fundamental idea, they recognise in themselves the most entire sympathy. They may be perplexed or in- structed, exasperated or soothed, as the case may be, by those passages which crowd together, by a perhaps not unnatural anachronism and accommodation, into one brief act, at the commencement of life, the' various forms which once expressed a long preparation, a deliberate intention, a complete reformation of character at the most critical mo- ment of mature years. But they can all alike enter into the solemn words in which the Church recalls their thoughts to the touching scene in the Gospel narrative, on which, and on which alone, the Liturgy rests the practice of In- fant Baptism, — when they are reminded of 4 the words of 6 out Saviour Christ,' £ how He commanded the children to 6 be brought unto Him ; how He blamed those that would * have kept them from Him ; how He exhorted all men to 6 follow their innocency.' This is the true basis of Infant Baptism, as it appears in the New Testament. This is the doctrine of the Church of England, as it exists on the face of the Liturgy. This is the blessing which Christian parents seek and find in that sacred ordinance. On this immoveable basis they may rest, without fear of disturb- ance from any modern speculation. In this wise, and wholesome, and holy doctrine, and in its application to Christian education, they may find enough to occupy their thoughts and their energies, without craving for an autho- Essay I. CONCLUSION. 43 ritative statement on points which can be apprehended bv the wisest and best of men only in faint and partial glimpses, and which, for the most part, lie altogether beyond the province of human discernment, certainly be- yond the ordinary limits of religious edification. In the favour of Him who ' embraced little children in His arms, ' and laid His hands upon them, and blessed them,' there is enough to satisfy the longings of every truly Christian heart, without insisting upon Mr. Gorham's 6 prevenient ' grace ' on the one hand, or on the Bishop of Exeter's 6 unconditional change of nature ' on the other hand. We have now gone through the main points of interest Conclu- in this controversy. Many topics have necessarily been blon' omitted altogether ; many treated most imperfectly. But there is one misconstruction which we would deprecate before we bid farewell to the subject. We have spoken of the dispute as a strife of words, rather than of realities, — we have spoken of its social effects and of its historical origin, rather than of the doctrine which it is supposed to involve. Such a view of the matter constantly exposes its advo- cates to taunts of indifference to truth, or of insensibility to the feelings of those whose interests and sympathies are warmly enlisted in the struggle. Against these insinua- tions, from whatever quarter they come, we most solemnly protest. We have spoken as we have spoken, in part from our profound conviction that the importance with which the controversy has been invested is adventitious only, not real. But we have spoken also from a conviction no less profound that there is a truth as lofty as ever Council decreed, — an image of Christianity as holy as ever won the admiration of Saint or Martyr, — which by such controversies is obscured, corrupted, denied. It is not this or that tenet of any particular school, but the moral and spiritual character of religion itself which suffers in THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Essay I. struggles like these. It is not in behalf of any party in the National Church, but in behalf of the Church itself, in this its truly Christian and apostolic mission, that we have endeavoured, however faintly and humbly, to lift up our voice. The end of the controversy is still unknown. It has already, we are told, filled four octavo volumes, and may fill many more. Court after Court has been, and may yet again be, called to adjudicate the tortuous case. The effects of the Judgment, to which we have endea- voured to render its deserved tribute, may be marred by some new turn in this labyrinth of litigation. The mal- contents of the Church may, from some mistaken point of honour, some imaginary grievance, some desperate step of their own choice, precipitate a rupture for which none but themselves will be answerable. But, whatever be the result, it will still be a satisfaction for those who have laboured to set forth the higher considerations of justice, mercy, and truth, in this disastrous agitation, that they have done what in them lay, faithfully to keep the deposit committed to their trust for future generations, — truly to build up the Church that is amongst us for the great and holy purposes for which it was established in these realms. Such purposes it may still accomplish, if it is but true to itself. And if, after all, it should lose — not by its own fault, but by their fancy — some who would else have been amongst its most distinguished ornaments, there will still be left for those who remain, the noble task of proving, by greater energy and devotion, that zeal is not inconsistent with toleration, nor the love of good- ness incompatible with the love of truth. c These things,' — may we thus venture with due humi- lity to conclude in the words of the great Chancellor ? — ' these things have we, in all sincerity and simplicity, set £ down, touching the controversies which now trouble the Essay I. CONCLUSION. 45 c Church of England, and that without all art and insinua- 6 tion; and therefore not like to be grateful to either part. ' Notwithstanding, we trust what hath been said shall ' find a correspondence in their minds which are not em- 4 barked in partiality, and which like the whole better * than a part : wherefore we are not out of hope that it * may do good : at least, we shall not repent ourselves 6 of the meditation.' 1 1 Bacon, On Church Controversies, vol. iii. p. 60. 46 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS.1 Religious The history of religious panics would form a curious chapter in the annals of mankind — a chapter conveying many lessons, both of humiliation and of consolation. The memory of the scholar leaps back to the earliest on record, the agitation which seized the Athenian people on the morning after the mutilation of the Hermse. 6 When ' we review the whole course of these proceedings,' says the Bishop of St. David's,2 ( at a distance which secures ' us from the passions that agitated the actors, we may ' be apt to exclaim : " In all history it will be difficult to ' " find another such instance of popular frenzy." ' The Bishop, however, immediately corrects himself by the re- collection that ' these are the very words in which Hume ' spoke of our own Popish Plot.' He might correct him- self still further by recalling the various panics through which the religious public of England has passed during his own lifetime. He must remember the wild alarm which pervaded the academical and ecclesiastical world in 1834, at the prospect of the admission of Dissenters to the Universities, and which deprived the greatest college in Cambridge of the services of her most illustrious scholar and teacher. He must remember the consternation occa- sioned by the schemes for Church Reform, which agitated the public mind from 1833 to 1836, and almost drove from his position the most eminent schoolmaster of our 1 Edinburgh Review, April, 1861. 2 Thirlwall's Rut. of Greece, vol. iii. p. 397. Essay II. APRIL 1861. 47 time. He must remember the two Hampden controversies of 1836 and 1847, which, but for the firmness of the Prime Minister of the day, would have succeeded in excluding first from the Chair of Divinity at Oxford and then from the episcopal throne of Hereford, one of the most Conser- vative bishops of the present bench. He must remember the Gorham controversy, which threatened to expel first one section and then the other of the two main sections of the clergy from the pale of the Establishment in 1850. He must remember the panic of the Papal Aggression in 1851, when bishops and chapters were deluged with ad- dresses, and responded with unanimous protests, against the Pastoral of the Flaminian Gate. He will remember, and every one of our readers, on looking back to the journals, periodicals, and placards of the time, will see, how in each of these cases the Church of England, if not Christianity itself, was declared to be shaken to its foun- dations. He may thankfully reflect that from each suc- cessive conflict both the Church and the Christian religion have emerged, certainly not destroyed, in most cases purified and strengthened. Through one of these hurricane latitudes, we have just been passing, during the last two months. It will be our object calmly to review the rise of the storm, from 'the little cloud not bigger than a man's 6 hand ' to the black and portentous tempest which has swept across the whole heaven. And if, as may be in- ferred from our recital of the like meteorological pheno- mena in the annals of past time, it may be inferred that we take a less excited view of the present emergency than some of our contemporaries, it must not be inferred that we regard it with indifference or with levity. In most of the panics at which we have glanced, there was a serious as well as a trivial side of the agitation. The mutilation 48 ESSAYS AUD REVIEWS. Essay II. of the Heruise might be an accident. But it was connected with the same train of events which led on the one hand to the Thirty Tyrants, and on the other to the death of Socrates. Titus Oates was an impostor ; but the designs of James II. were real. The Bampton Lectures of Dr. Hampden were not what they were represented to be. But they indicated a change in the relations of dogmatic theology to religion, which has since that time become a recognised and accomplished fact. The Papal Aggression was a mere nourish of Italian rhetoric. But the general reaction of a large part of the religions sentiment of England and of Europe towards Eome was undoubted. It will be our duty on the present occasion first to dis- tinguish the historical elements of the actual state of the case from the mythical accretions which have grown up around it ; and then to offer such general considerations as the whole transaction suggests to an impartial spec- tator. Publica- I. In 1854 an enterprising publisher in London, with Essays and that unfortunate passion (as we cannot but think) which Reviews, exists at present for the multiplication of periodical litera- ture, started a series of 6 Oxford' and £ Cambridge Essays,' to be contributed, with their names, by members of the two Universities. The speculation answered for a time. But after the appearance of four volumes, the demand or the supply failed, and the series came to an end. In this conjuncture it occurred, we believe, to one of the contri- butors that the publication might be continued, but in a more contracted form. For many years past there had floated before the minds of the more liberal-minded English Churchmen the vision of a journal which should treat of theological subjects in a manner resembling the free and scientific tone in which they are handled in France and Germany. Such a scheme was discussed Essay II. THEIR PUBLICATION. 49 iii 1835 1 between Dr. Arnold and Archdeacon Hare. Whately, Hampden, and Pusey were proposed as possible contributors. One of its main objects was £to make some 6 beginnings of Biblical criticism, which, as far as relates 4 to the Old Testament, was in England almost non- 6 existent.' The scheme of a liberal Theological Keview, thus long delayed, fructified in the minds of three or four of those who had already furnished essays to the extinct series, and the result was a volume which appeared in the early spring of 1860, under the title of 6 Essays and Ee- * views.' 2 Many scholars and divines were invited to con- tribute ; but the number was, through various causes, reduced to seven — who were mostly unacquainted with each other. The first Essay having been preached, in substance, as an Oxford University sermon in the previous year, was thus ready to be placed in the peculiar position which the Editor assigned to it. The last in the volume owed its place, no doubt, to the delays arising from the scantiness of leisure at the command of its able but overtasked author. The order of the rest was equally accidental. The volume, as we shall afterwards have occasion to remark, was as varied in character and as unequal in exe- cution as might have been anticipated from a series pub- lished under these auspices. It was read at once by those students who took interest either in the subjects or the writers of the respective essays ; and a few notices of it, 1 Arnolds Life and Correspond', nec, 'or comparison. The volume, it is 8th ed. vol. i. p. 331. ' hoped, will be received as an attempt 1 [The object of the work is thus ' to illustrate the advantage derivable stated in the preface : — ' It will readily 'to the cause of religious and moral 1 be understood that the authors of the ' truth, from a free handling, in a be- ' ensuing Essays are responsible for ' coming spirit, of subjects peculiarly 1 their respective articles only. They 1 liable to suffer by the repetition of ' have written in entire independence ' conventional language, and. from tra- ' of each other, and without concert ' ditioual methods of treatment.'] E 50 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. containing the usual mild admixture of praise and blame, appeared in some of the weekly journals. So passed the spring and summer. No sound of alarm broke the peace either of the Universities or of the Church. It was not till the close of the autumn that there was heard from an unexpected quarter the first mutter of a coming whirlwind. In a w ell- known Eeview1 advocating the extremest opinions, both theological and political, an article appeared, on which we do not hesitate to fix the main responsibility of the whole subsequent agitation. This article assumed the absolute unity of the book, dwelt entirely on its negative character, treated its appearance as a new and isolated phenomenon, without regard to the numerous expressions of a similar character which had preceded it in England or Germany, and proceeded with impassioned earnestness to implore the several writers to renounce their positions in the English Church and embrace the philosophic and religious system of M. Comte. But, although the appeal of the Westminster Reviewer fell, as was to be expected, powerless on the ears of those to whom it was addressed, it found ready listeners elsewhei'e. Partly in genuine alarm, partly in delight in finding such an unlooked-for confirmation of their own uneasy sus- 1 [Westminster Review, of October 1860. In reprinting the notice of this article, I have struck out a passage containing some severe re- marks upon the writer, which subse- quent information convinced me was unjust. Of all the remonstrances pro- voked by the criticisms which I had been compelled to make, that which was made to me by the Westminster Reviewer was at once the most Chris- tian and the most convincing. I still consider — and he would probably agree with me — that it was this article which fired the train and gave direc- tion to the subsequent explosion. But the appearance of a malignant or sinister intention — such as elicited the strong remarks which I have with- drawn— was, I am assured, occasioned in chief part by an unforeseen acci- dent, through which the article had been unexpectedly curtailed, and the author thus lost the opportunity of fully developing his argument. 1870.] Essay II. AGITATION AGAINST THE BOOK, 51 picions and dislikes, the partisans of the two chief theolo- gical schools in the country caught up and eagerly echoed the note of the hostile journal. They extolled the elo- quence and ability of the article ; they made its conclu- sions their own ; they discerned, through its inquisitorial gaze, tendencies which down to that moment had escaped even their own keen scent for the track of heresy. Gradu- ally the heterogeneous series began to assume that mysti- fied form which it has worn ever since in the public eye. The Essayists were discovered to be seven in number. They were the 6 seven stars in a new constellation,' — or 6 the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the Apoca- 4 lypse,' — or 6 the seven champions not of Christendom/ — or by the title which unhappily its blasphemous levity and its wicked uncharitableness have not excluded from journals professing to write in the name of religion, 6 the Septem c contra Christum.' Every part of the volume was now seen to have a close interdependence. In spite of the solemn disclaimer of joint responsibility and concert with which the volume was prefaced, every writer was assumed to have been acquainted with the production of every other. The first essa}r was supposed to contain in its suc- cessive pages the key-notes of the successive dissertations which followed, closing in the last, the climax and con- clusion of the whole. It is believed that these scattered polemics gathered Dec. 7, head at the meeting of a large number of clergy "and laity which took place at Oxford for the election to the Sanskrit Chair. On that occasion, when the University rejected the services of the most eminent scholar within her walls, there was arrayed against him a vast mass of the Conser- vative elements of the country, both theological and poli- tical. The well-known anathema issued on that occasion against £ the intellectuals,' a fit precursor of the swarm of E 2 52 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. curses which have followed in its wake, admirably ex- pressed the feeling of many who recorded their votes on the 7th of December, against the illustrious German philologer. In the fermentation naturally engendered by the victorious combination of bodies of men for any common purpose arose, it is said, the first distinct conception of an or- ganised attack on the volume with which Professor Miiller's friends or country had been connected in the public mind. A meeting was held before the final dis- persion of the electors, in one of the Oxford hotels ; and there was breathed the earliest whisper of a public de- monstration against the book, which still remained in the comparative obscurity of a modest academic circu- lation. At tick in The first decisive signal that the rising hostility had terly.' "ar" penetrated into a higher sphere was given by the 6 Quar- terly Eeview ' reviewer, which, passing beyond the region of indistinct innuendoes, or fantastic allusions, or pro- fane jests, proceeded to challenge the several authors of the book to abandon their positions in the Church of England. From this moment it became apparent that a powerful ecclesiastical influence was at work, eager to seize the opportunity of crushing not merely the book, but the writers themselves, and all who, in any degree, shared their views. Like the article in the ' Westminster,' the article in the c Quarterly ' overlooked all that had passed in theological literature, in this and other coun- tries, since the beginning of this century. It abounded in curious inaccuracies. But these and like imperfections were not regarded in consideration of an elaborate invec- tive aimed against high reputations, and stimulated by the dread lest inquiry into any single part of theological truth should overturn the whole of the popular religious systems of the day. Essay II. AGITATION AGAINST THE BOOK. 53 From this time the artillery of controversial warfare was brought fully into play. Meetings of clergy were held to condemn the book which most of them had never read. Preachers rising from a Saturday's perusal of the ' Quar- The terly,' denounced the writers the next morning from the pam pulpit as Atheists. Every qualification of harsh expres- sions, eveiw sentiment of orthodoxy or piety, which the book contained, was carefully kept out of view ; c apparent c earnestness ' was denounced as 6 insidious,' ' combining ' hellebore with honey ; ' 6 caution ' was stigmatised as c as- ' tute ; ' c the more dangerous because the more guarded.' Extracts were circulated so framed or so prefaced as en- tirely to conceal the real purpose of the writers, — often exactly inverting their meaning, often quoting passages of undisputed truth for the sake of giving them some wicked or heretical signification. Not, we firmly believe, from wilful suppression or deception, but from that blind- ness or obliquity of vision which, coming to a volume with a foregone conclusion, sees only what it wishes or expects to find, and reads backwards what if read naturally and straightforwardly would contradict the fixed predeter- mination with which the eye glances over pages fore- doomed to perdition. No doubt there must have been many who were suffi- ciently familiar with the subjects discussed, and with the book itself, to have judged more calmly and more chari- tably. But the panic had now reached that point so well indicated in Hooker's 1 celebrated description of the perse- cution of Athanasius by the Arians, — the enforced silence of friends, the strong temptation, almost impossible to resist, of attacking, or at least avoiding, those who stand a few steps in advance of ourselves There is another class of which we must speak more at 1 Hooker, Ecc. Pol. v. 42. 54 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. length hereafter, — those, namely, of the laity, who cannot endure that any one should speak the truth but them- selves, and who hate it above all when spoken by a clergy- man. To such, an invective like that of the 6 Quarterly ' is doubly sweet. It enables them to indulge their hosti- lity to the sacred profession at both ends. They rejoice almost equally in the discredit done to the assailer, and the injury done to the assailed. c It is unfair, retrograde, 6 unjust, but it is what the book deserves, and what a c bishop or a priest is bound to say.' With a third class we have far more sympathy than with either of the two preceding. The burst of indigna- tion and terror from the ignorant and unthinking, who must always compose the great bulk both of the clergy and laity, was not more than might have been expected from the extracts laid before them, and from the general representation made to them that here was a conspiracy of clergymen banded together to undermine the Christian faith. We must confess that (groundless as was this representation, and mischievous, in proportion, as was the alarm which it awakened) we have had a positive satis- faction in witnessing the amount of sturdy belief, and of honest reverence for the Bible, which the recent panic has disclosed. The Essayists themselves must allow that, had the description of their intentions been as true as in fact it was false, the alarm excited was well-nigh justified. Seven infidels, in the disguise of clergymen, asserting that the whole Bible was a fable, denying the truth of Chris- tianity and repudiating the existence of God, — this was the portent which was supposed to have appeared. As in the case of the delusions which pervaded the popular mind in 1854 respecting the treason of the Prince Consort, our wonder is not that (believing what they were led to believe) the half- educated or uneducated Essay II. AGITATION AGAINST THE BOOK. 55 classes received this terrible announcement so passion- ately, but rather that they received it so patiently. We are inclined, as we gaze at the innocent frenzy of a large part of 'the religious world,' to join in the charitable exclamation of John Huss, when he saw a pious old woman bringing a faggot to his stake, £ O sancta sim- * plicitas ! ' Down to this time, however, there were still circles proof against the panic. The Universities maintained a dignified reserve, worthy of their present high position in public estimation. Cambridge lay in her usual attitude of magnificent repose. Oxford, though taking a livelier interest in these questions, was not likely, under the arti- ficial stimulus of an external pressure, to break the silence which she had kept, when her more studious sons had read the book on its first appearance. The Bishops also, as a body, had hitherto been faithful to the duty so incumbent on high-minded Christian men in great stations, of pro- tecting the cause of free and fair discussion from the in- discriminate violence of popular agitation, and the pre- sence of six or seven names of real weight and learning in their number gave every guarantee for the continuance of such a wise forbearance. Only here and there isolated Episcopal warnings were heard. But the calm of the Episcopal mind, when 'the public was sober,' had un- fortunately been no earnest of its proceedings when 6 the 4 public was drunk.' It was about a month after the appearance of the Episcopal c Quarterly ' article that the world was startled by a docu- mamfest0, ment, we believe without precedent in the history of the English Eeformed Church. We allude to the Episcopal Letter of unknown authorship, signed by every member of the then Bench of Bishops, and published by a clergy- man in Buckinghamshire. That in such an emergency as 56 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. that occasioned by a general and exaggerated excitement, the Primate, or his brethren on the Bench, should have given expression to some opinion, calculated to allay the alarm, would have been natural and fitting. Such a manifesto was issued by Archbishop Howley in the height of the anti-Tractarian agitation. But Archbishop Howley had a caution, rising almost to genius, which would have foreseen long in advance the evils of a document such as that of which we now speak. With every allowance that must be made for the personal difficulties and for the well-founded objections to parts of the volume, which must have been felt by those who signed it, and dismissing the special defects in its composition and the strange irregularity of its mode of publication, there were two main objections to it which time has rather increased than diminished.1 It involved those who gave their ad- hesion to it in a fierce attack on the ecclesiastical posi- tion of five distinguished clergymen (and by implication of hundreds), yet brought no precise charges against any of them, and intimated that none such could be brought. It was an unqualified censure of a book, of which the varied sentiments and unequal merits required the most discriminating judgment. It is impossible not to regret a step which entangled the whole Episcopal order for a time in a false position which it took years to rectify. !N~o true Englishman can afford that the heads of the clergy should lose any part of their prestige. Every 1 [The whole of this passage has on record the main grounds of com- been recast in the light of subsequent plaint against the Episcopal move- events. If at the time it contained ment, which many then severely felt, animadversions which did not take whilst expressing also my grateful adequately into account the delicacy sense of a kindness and forbearance of the situation of several of those to from some of those chiefly concerned, whom allusion was made, I would such as, perhaps, could hardly have here express my sincere regret. But been expected after the vehement lan- I have still thought it better to leave guage used. 1870.] Essay II. AGITATION AGAINST THE BOOK. 57 bishop of the Church of England has still a noble part to play. Within our own memory, even before this, we have known more than once how one courageous prelate has broken through the bonds of professional prejudice, and rallied round him the juster and more generous feel- ing of the clergy and the Church. ' I would tear the * lawn from my shoulders, and sink my seal deeper than 6 ever plummet sounded, before I would consent to hold c rank and wealth on the disgraceful tenure of " always ' u swimming with the stream," and never contradicting 6 " public opinion." ' So on a late occasion an Irish bishop spoke out his mind in language worthy of himself and of his order.1 And so in effect the most distin- guished of the prelates who seemed to countenance this indiscriminate attack have one by one come boldly for- ward to vindicate their own consistency and the cause of truth and freedom. A true explanation, doubtless, of this, as of many simi- lar ecclesiastical documents in all times, is that phrases in themselves ambiguous and indefensible, were accepted from the more extreme by the more moderate as the only escape from greater difficulties, and with the prudent, even the generous, wish to recede for the moment from the cause which they would naturally defend, in order to advance more successfully in defence of it afterwards. This, however, was as yet in the future, and we must re- turn to the history of events. After this extraordinary expression on the part of the Proceed- Episcopal Bench, the proceedings of Convocation, which ConVoea- met in the ensuing fortnight, were of comparatively slight tlon> 18G importance. It was curious to observe how carefully the Lower House avoided all allusion to the censure of Bur- net's Exposition of the Articles, which had signalised their 1 Letter of the Bishop of Cork (Dr. Fitzgerald) to his Clergy, Feb. 7, 1860. 58 ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS. Essay II. latest proceedings in this direction. Still, looking at the speakers rather than the votes, and the absent and silent as well as the present and the speakers, they certainly showed to advantage. Many of the leading divines of the Lower House expressed disapprobation or indifference by absence. Most of the great names amongst the English dignitaries were wanting — Canterbury, Westminster, St. Paul's, Christchurch, Chichester. Others, such as the Dean of Ely,1 and (with the exception of the Archdeacon of Taunton, whose zeal for persecuting others seemed to be only whetted by his recent and narrow escape from his own long persecution) the leading Archdeacons, were all on the side of toleration, and the only 2 Academical dignitary who addressed the House, protested, with a chivalry worthy of the best days of the Church, against the iniquity and inexpediency of the whole proceeding. The more tur- bulent spirits, however, as was natural, were the majority, and carried a vote of thanks to the Upper House for an indiscriminate censure directed against a book whose contents they claimed the privilege of never having read, and which, having thus condemned, they subsequently pro- ceeded to examine through a committee, the chairman of which had barely saved his own clerical position through the happy ambiguities of ecclesiastical law. A Memo- rial condemning, as inconsistent with the teaching of the Church of England, extracts — some of which contained the first axioms of theology — was shortly afterwards pre- sented at Lambeth. This Address is valuable as contain- ing the measure of the agitation. After the most active canvass of the country, it was signed only by half of the 20,000 clergy, by only five, we believe, out of the thirty deans, by three out of the forty heads of colleges, by three 1 [Deans Trench, Milman, Alford, 2 [Dr. Williams, Principal of Jesus, Licldell, Hook, Goodwin.] Oxford.] Essay II. CONTENTS OF ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. 59 out of the twelve theological professors in Oxford, Cam- bridge, and Durham, by hardly any of the head-masters of our great schools, or of the educational staff of our Universities. The names of the absent, in a case like this, form the real protest of the wise and thoughtful part of the community against a rash and violent excitement. At this point we leave the history. The consequence of all this agitation and anathematising has hitherto been — that a book which naturally would have been read by a few scholars, has been thrown broadcast by thousands over the world, each edition increasing in magnitude, in proportion to the vehemence of the outcry.1 II. This then is the point where we may consider the real nature of the volume, and the questions which it raises, irrespectively of the temporary excitement which has given it such disproportioned celebrity. We have expressed ourselves freely on the reception Effect of which the book has encountered. We shall not be mis- tion of understood if we proceed to express ourselves as frankly essays- on the book itself. The project of such a composite work was, as we have thought from the very first, a decided blunder. It was a combination almost sure to produce an illusion of a kind most fatal to a just and calm con- sideration of the subjects discussed. The joint appear- ance of the ' Essays ' was certain to excite the suspicion of an identity of sentiment, where no such identity really existed. Combined action is useful only in cases where each name in the combination gives strength to every other ; but, in this case, with perhaps one exception, every name out of the seven, in the eyes of those who most needed to be conciliated, added not strength but 1 [Between March I860 and January tween January and June 1861 above 1861, before the attack in the Quar- 13,000 were sold.] terly, 3,000 copies were sold, Be- 60 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. weakness to the rest. It may be argued, that a combined effort was more likely to produce an effect, than a hun- dred isolated efforts ; and the result has gone far to prove that there is a certain amount of truth in the remark. But it is not so much the combination, as the double and treble misrepresentation of the combination, which has given the book its celebrity. The public mind has been excited because it believes in a conspiracy, which the writers themselves justly disclaim, and have always, and on the first page of their volume, most emphatically dis- claimed. The whole panic is based on a falsehood ; and, though even by falsehood Truth sometimes gains admis- sion, where by her own unaided efforts she would knock in vain, yet this is not a consequence which the Essayists ought seriously to have contemplated. Their protest against joint liabilities has been shamefully disregarded ; and they cannot, as it seems to us, in good faith or con- sistency, add to its force by any further disclaimer, such as the animosity of insidious foes, or the timidity of anxious friends, has so eagerly pressed upon them. Diffi- cult as it would have been under any circumstances to have parted company at any moment after the publication of the volume, it became absolutely impossible to do so after the rise of the clamour. Xo men of spirit or honour could do that, under the influence of calumny or compul- sion, which they had not done on calm reflection. Still, we repeat, the very fact of the necessity of the original protest was a testimony against the expediency of the volume. Exactly in proportion as it severed their joint action, it rendered that joint action superfluous or mis- leading. Effect of Another defect, not inherent in the original conception the nega- ' . tive cha- of the work, but perhaps naturally flowing from a general Ttictcr of • • • • the book, consciousness of antagonism to existing views, — is its Essay II. CONTENTS OF ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. 61 negative character. No book which treats of religious questions, hardly any book which treats of any important questions, can hope to make its way to the heart of the English nation, unless it gives at the same time that it takes away, builds up at the same time that it destroys. We are far from denying that there are many passages of a constructive character in the volume. Almost the whole of the first, and a large portion of the seventh Essay, are eminently conservative. Still there is a disparaging tone throughout the work as a whole which provokes opposi- tion, and excites distrust, even where it does not actually shake some received opinion ; and we cannot but lament that out of treatises written with so much ability, so little can be extracted of solid accession to our theological knowledge or biblical literature. The sixth Essay, on c English Religious Thought in the last Century,' has, in this respect, the chief claims on our gratitude, though, even here, we desire more of a history and less of a dis- sertation. Any illustration of an obscure period of Church history or theology, any scholarlike exposition or descrip- tion of any one of the books either of the Old or New Testament, would, we are convinced, have conciliated the popular mind far more than even the noble expressions of religious sentiment that breathe through the general, and therefore superficial, sketches of the present volume. For real information, for substantial instruction, it is amazing what a heavy price the uninstructed masses are content to pay even out of the most cherished of their preconceived opinions. Akin to this is another mistake, which it is perhaps Effect of hard to charge upon the writers, because it is in fact charaeu'r rather the fault or the misfortune of the readers. It was a great advantage in the last century that almost all books on the vexed questions of theology were written in Latin. 62 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. Even in this century, the same reserve is to a certain de- gree maintained by the use of German, which in all coun- tries, except its own, is practically the language of the learned. German books incomparably more startling than the present volume have been and are constantly read by English students, though to the public at large hermeti- cally sealed. But the c Essays and Reviews,' by their language, by their title, by their form, were addressed to the public promiscuously. 'For whom,' it has been asked,1 in a tone of indignation, exaggerated, no doubt, yet we think not without foundation, — c for whom is this c book intended ? Is it written for the mass of general * readers ? Is it designed for students at the universi- 6 ties ? ' Is it addressed to men or to women ? to the young or the old ? to the poor and ignorant, or to learned scholars? We do not doubt that the authors would say £ chiefly to the class just named.' And it is certainly true that for its vast extension beyond that circle, it is not they, but their assailants, who are responsible. It was not till the Reviewers had opened fire upon them that the book reached its third edition. It was not till the Bishops had condemned it that it leaped, week by week, into the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth gigantic editions which have crowded Paternoster Row. Nay, even more, the public impression is formed, not so much from the book itself, as from the hostile Reviews which, though at unequal paces, are springing after it in successive editions, and from the quotations contained in circulars and protests, sometimes true, sometimes false, but always torn away from their qualifying and moderating context. By these Extracts, and not by the c Essays,' it is that the country has been deluged with the c unproved, unargued 6 assertions, the random suggestions,' of which complaint 1 Di\ Moberly, Pref. p. xxii. Essay II. CONTEXTS OF ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. 63 is made, and which have been caught up, like the Arian and Athanasian disputes of the fourth century, by the half- educated or the wholly uneducated, by unprincipled infidel lecturers, by Puritan preachers as unprincipled and as ignorant, till the air is poisoned with doubts that have been instilled by the very persons who are denouncing all doubt as sin, and all inquiry as impiety. Still, though far less blainable in this respect than their reviewers and slan- derers, we must charge the Essayists, if not with having intended, yet at least with having overlooked, this natural consequence of such a publication. Particularly we think that this applies to the second and fourth of the Essays. Conclusions arrived at by the life-long labours of a great German theologian are thrown before the English public, who never heard of them before, without any argument to support or recommend them. Assertions which even the learned and sceptical would hesitate to receive after long discussion, are assumed as certain without a word of proof, and without any connection with the context in which they occur. We do not defend the madness of the bull, but we must bestow some indignation on the man who shakes the red flag in its face. We reprobate with all our might the brutal mob of ruffians and fanatics who took possession of St. George's-in-the-East, but we cannot acquit the ceremonialists who quickened the mob into action. We will not do the Essayists the injustice of comparing them to the unfortunate clergy who were the provoking causes of those disturbances ; nor has the fear of Germany as yet led to popular excesses so deplorable as those produced by the fear of Eome. But there is a limit of common sense and charity, which has been trangressed in both cases, and which cannot be trans- gressed with impunity. One of the Essayists at least will acknowledge the force of the following impressive 64 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. words which closed a series of discourses heard at the time of their delivery with profound and ever-increasing attention by a vast academical andience. ' No member of a communion or society is bound, either by public or private duty, to unsettle received opinions, where they may seem to be erroneous, unless he have a reasonable hope, as it appears to him, that he shall be able to supply something better in their place. We should not rob weak wayfarers in this worldly scene, of the reeds on which they lean, unless we can strengthen their feeble knees, or supply into their right hands stronger staves to lean on.'1 Whatever other faults appear in the book must be con- sidered with reference to the individual writers. To view any one of them in the light of any other is simply a delusion. Not only were they written, as their preface declares, without concert or comparison, but it is evident on their very face that there is as little connection be- tween their writers, in style or character, as between the several contributors to any other of the numerous joint works which the division of labour is constantly throwing forth upon the world. Of two of the Essayists we think it needless to speak at length. What may have been the exact purport of Professor Powell's argument it is difficult to determine.2 1 Wilson's Hampton Lectures, p. 281, volume in question. But as his re- 1851. moral by death has rather increased 2 [Professor Baden Powell died of than diminished the vehemence of heart disease in the spring of 1860, personal attacks upon his memory, shortly after the appearance of the it may be well briefly to notice at Essay. As the object of the above least one remarkable instance. Not statement was not to give an account only have general expressions been of the opinions of the writers of the used, implying that he was a con- Essays, but of their position as affected demned and hopeless infidel, but a by the outcry against the book, it was specific public statement has appeared, thought unnecessary at the time to to the effect that 'he died without enter on the character or creed of a ' any ministrations of religion.' This distinguished man, whose sentiments statement has been four times publicly could be much better learned from his contradicted, in the last instance by elaborate treatises, than from a hasty an intimate friend who attended sketch like that contained in the him in his last illness. His actual Essay II. WRITERS OF ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. 65 He has passed beyond the reach not only of literary criti- cism but of ecclesiastical censure. The fact is that Professor Professor Powell ought to be judged, not by this brief Essay, but by Powe11, his other larger writings. His Essay stands in no direct relation to the others, and may be treated as belonging altogether to the past. Mr. Goodwin's contribution may also be considered as Mr. Good- practically defunct. Now that he is discovered not to be wm" his brother the Dean of Ely, the applause which has been heaped upon him by the assailants of the rest of the volume is quite sufficient to indemnify him for any dis- praise which he received when he was thought to be a clergyman. Whatever objections may be raised to certain peculiarities of expression in the language of his Essay, there is nothing in it which needs further notice than any of the other attempts which have been made to adjust the relations of Genesis and geology. ' No one now contends ' (says Mr. Goodwin, p. 253) i that the Mosaic cosmogony ' can be used as a basis of astronomical or geological c teaching.' ' It is not the object of Scripture ' (says Dr. Pusey, in 1828,1) " to teach men astronomical and geo- ' logical, but religious and moral truth.5 With this posi- tion, which has been incontrovertibly fixed, ever since the reception of the Copernican system destroyed the literal interpretation of the Sacred Text, the controversy falls to the ground. The five remaining Essayists stand on a different ground. Not only have they attracted more attention death, like that of all sudden deaths, conscious was he of having provoked such as was his, was of course with- any violent theological animosity, that out religious or other ministrations, in the same year as that in which his But within a few days of his last ill- Essay was published, he applied for ness he preached, worshipped, and permission to deliver the Bampton communicated as usual, in the London Lectures at Oxford.] church (S. Andrew's, "Well Street) 1 Inquiry into German Theology, p. which he usually attended, and so un- 6 1 . F 66 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. from their positions in the Church, but their antecedents are all such as deserve, in different degrees, a respectful consideration from all who take an interest in the future welfare of the English Church. Dr. Dr. Temple, after years spent in self-denying labour, Temple. ^nations which brought him into contact with various classes of our countrymen rarely known to the scholastic or clerical profession, has been for three years head-master of Rugby School. He sits in the chair of Arnold, and his successful career, even in this short space, has gone far to realise the joyful anticipations with which all who revered the memory of his great predecessor hailed his election to that important post. 1 Professor The position of Professor Jowett has a significance of its own. Since the termination of the great movement of the 'Tracts for the Times/ he is the only man in the University of Oxford who has exercised a moral or spi- ritual influence at all corresponding to that which was once wielded by John Henry Newman. It is not merely his genius and learning which have won for him this high place amongst the teachers of Oxford : it is the daily and hourly devotion of his time and thoughts to the improve- ment of those with whom, whether as Professor or Tutor, he has been brought into contact.2 The three others are less known, but still are amongst those few who have a claim to be heard, even before they 1 [These anticipations were amply changed since this article appeared, fulfilled in the years that followed. The long straggle to obtain an ade- The fame of Rugby reached its highest quate, salary for his professorship, to pitch under Dr. Temple's administra- which reference was made in the tion which terminated in his elevation original article, after being long denied in 1869 to the See of Exeter.] by the University, was at last sup- 2 [I have felt that, in speaking of a plied by the munificence of Christ dear personal friend, it was necessary, Church. To his work on St. Paul will, when republishing thia Essay with my in a few weeks, it is hoped, be added name, to limit myself as closely as the still more laborious work on possible to facts. Some of these have Plato. 1870.] Essay II. THE WRITERS. speak. No student can have read the volumes of the 6 Quarterly Eeview ' during the last ten years, without pausing on the learned sketches of the great scholars of the seventeenth century — Casaubou, Scaliger, and Huet. The recent election of the author of these essays to the vacant Rectorship of Lincoln College has been (or would, but for the present agitation, have been) a delight to all who rejoice in the connection of academic dignities and energy and ability. Dr. Rowland Williams has come Dr. before the world in more questionable colours in the Wl11 recent controversy between himself and the Bishop of St. David's.1 Still it is no slight honour to Dr. Wil- liams to have produced a work which is acknowledged by competent and even by unwilling witnesses to be the best defence of the excellences, claims,2 and autho- rity of Christianity in the great controversy with Hin- duism. Mr. Wilson is known chiefly as the author of a Mr. Wil volume of Bampton Lectures, on 'the Communion of ' Saints.' Its effect, like that of his present Essay, is marred at times by harsh technical phraseology. But those who have turned over the dreary series of volumes amongst which it stands, will find oases in it of such 1 [This notice of Dr. Williams ori- ginally contained a somewhat severe censure, which a personal acquaintance with his amiable qualities would pro- bably have removed. At any rate, his recent death (January 1870) dis- arms hostile criticism. Let it there- fore be only said here that, with a keen sense of the duty of inquiry and a love of varied scholarship, he combined the vivacity, and, in contro- versy, the pugnacity, of his Welsh lineage. He lived to seo his parochial labours in Wiltshire commended by two prelates — one a long- tried per- sonal friend, the other the pious Bishop of his diocese, who, after hav- ing thought it his duty to endeavour to remove him from his charge, had the magnanimity to bear no further ill-will towards him. His last work, on which he was engaged during his last illness, was a biographical drama on Owen Glendower.] 2 Christianity and Hinduism, 1856. See a very favourable review of it in the Christian Remembrancer, No. xxxv. pp. 81-129. ' We have never seen in ' any of the writings of the Latitudi- 1 narian party, so much to demand our ' admiration and our sympathy, as in * this volume.' (P. 1 28.) 2 68 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. originality and beauty as to recompense them for many a weary stage in their theological pilgrimage. No other Bampton Lectures of our time (if, for a different reason, we except those of Mr. Mansel) made so deep an impression on the religious mind of Oxford as those of Mr. Wilson. From the Essayists we descend to the Essays. We agree in the general judgment that most of them fail in reaching quite to the level of the reputation of their respective authors, and that the first and the last stand far above the others. Dr. Temple's Essay was, in fact, a sermon on the Ful- ness of Time, and must be so viewed. When preached before the authorities and the students of Oxford, it was heard with approbation, it might be said, with enthusiasm, by most of his hearers, with acquiescence by all. We do not undertake to justify the somewhat too elaborate ana- logy between the individual and the race, but the general theological position of the writer can only be shaken by impugning the sacred text1 on which the sermon was founded : £ The Advent took place in the form and at the * time most fitted for the production of the effect in- * tended.' This is the substance of the whole argument. The only fault which can be found with it, as one of its assailants has well observed, is that it is c as old as 6 St. Paul.' It can be disputed only by maintaining that the great event which it vindicates occurred in a wrong shape and on a wrong occasion — not in the fulness but in the immaturity of time. Professor Jowett has furnished what may be termed a valuable supplement to his work on St. Paul. It is in- tended to clear away some of the misconceptions which have prevented Biblical students from deriving the full advantages to be reaped from the sacred records, and to 1 Galatians iv. 4. Essay II. THEIR CONTENTS. 69 point out what those advantages are. It shares the usual excellences, and, though in a less degree, the usual faults of his writings, — their tendency to negation rather than construction, their meditative, and therefore somewhat indirect, style. But we do not envy the man who can read through the Essay, and particularly its closing pages, unimpressed by the lofty tone which breathes through its expositions of the power of our Lord's words, and its incul- cation of the love of truth as the first of religious duties. Mr. Pattison's Essay, in point of style and thought, is a natural sequel to those which appeared, as we have just The Ten- observed, in the £ Quarterly Review.' No lens less power- Rg"^ °uS ful than the microscope for detecting heresies, could have ?h°Jj|ht discovered any dangerous tendencies in it, had it ap- Eighteenth peared under a brown instead of a purple cover. We ^entury' wish that the learned author had brought out more pro- minently the individual divines of this period. Butler, especially, deserved a far more elaborate and comprehen- sive treatment. Dr. Williams's contribution is not an Essay, but a Re- view of the writings of Baron Bunsen. It was published Writings before their distinguished author had set his last seal °fBaroa & Jbmnsen. upon them by the remarkable death, which has been made known to us through the pen of M. de Pressense. To discuss the contents of this review, therefore, would be in fact to discuss the multifarious researches of one of the most voluminous of German authors. But we cannot avoid observing that the flippant and contemptuous tone of the reviewer often amounts to what might appear a breach of the compact with which the volume opens, that the subjects therein touched should be handled * in a be- c coming spirit.' Such, at least, was the impression left even on those who were disposed to regard his abstract conclusions with favour. 70 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. The Mr. Wilson comes forward with a powerful though often National r & Church. rash defence of the general principle of a national church (called by him, in the strange nomenclature which he has adopted from the French writers whom he reviews, Multi- tudinism,) as opposed to that of sectarianism (or as he calls it, ' individualism ') . It is in laying down this posi- tion that he has been led, apparently with the view of try- ing the principle to the uttermost, to make those extreme statements of which we have already complained. III. We pass on to the consideration of the general questions involved in the whole phenomenon, both of the volume and of the alarm that it has excited. Long after it and they have passed away, these questions will con- tinue. It is of the highest interest to ascertain what they are, and how they affect the prospect of religion in this country. They relate mainly to two subjects — the proper mode of studying and interpreting the Bible, and, closely allied with it, the relative value of the internal and ex- ternal evidences of Eeligion. To which may perhaps be added a third, of less general interest, the relation of dog- matical theology to the Bible and to history. Biblical 1. On all these points, but specially on the first, it has been a prodigious mistake to suppose that this volume contains anything new. By friends and foes alike this illusion has been propagated — £ a new Reformation,' * a ' neo- Christianity,' 6 a new Religion, of Christianity with- 6 out Christ, without the Holy Ghost, without a Bible, and ' without a Church.' 1 We will venture to say, that with the possible exception of Professor Powell's Essay, and a few words of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson, there is no statement of doctrine or fact in this volume which has not been repeatedly set forth by divines whose deep and sincere faith in the Christian religion cannot be denied 1 Quart. Rev., No. ccxvii. p. 287. Criticism. Essay II. BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 71 without the worst uncharitableness, and some of whom are actually regarded as luminaries of the Church. Even if the volume could be regarded as an epoch in the Church of England, it cannot possibly be regarded as an epoch in Christendom. If the Westminster or the Quarterly Examples Eeviewer had looked ever so cursorily through the works ^any!" of Herder, Schleiermacher, Liicke, Neander, De Wette, Ewald, or even Tholuck, Olshausen, and Hengstenberg, they would see that the greater part of the passages which have oiven so much cause for exultation or for offence in this volume have their counterpart in those distinguished theologians whom we have just cited, and therefore, if they were destined to overthroAv Christianity, ought to have done so long ago. But neither is it an epoch in England. The style, the manner, the composition of this book may be offensive or peculiar. But facts and creeds are not revolutionised by manner and style. The prin- ciples, even the words, of the Essayists have been known for the last fifty years, through writings popular amongst all English students of the higher branches of theology. In Eng- If there be a conspiracy, it is one far more formidable than n that of the seven Essayists. For it is a conspiracy in which half the rising generation, one quarter of the Bench of Bishops, the most leading spirits of our clergy, have been, and are, and will be engaged, whatever be the results of the present controversy. Coleridge led the way. A whole generation arose under his Germanising influence. Even Dr. Pusey swelled the ranks for a time, and still retains in his teaching traces of his former associates. The translation of Niebuhr's ' Histoiy of Rome,' with its speculations on the origin of mankind, by Hare and Thiil- wall, called down the thunders of the ' Quarterly Review ' of that day, which were answered with burning indigna- tion and withering scorn by the two divines who had 72 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. undertaken that labour of love.1 The critical Essay of Schleiermacher on St. Luke's Gospel was ushered into the world by a Preface of the translator, which bears on every page the unmistakable stamp of the masterly hand of the Bishop of St. David's. Arnold's c Life and Letters ' has been allowed to pass through as many editions as the c Essays and Be views,' and yet contains not only all the fundamental principles of the present volume, which have been so much attacked, but particular passages almost verbally coincident with the language of Professor Jowett or Dr. Williams on the £ Book of Daniel,' or even of Mr. Wilson on the early Jewish history. Dean Alford's edition of the Greek Testament abounds with passages on inspira- tion and on the biblical discrepancies, similar in substance to those to which allusion is made in the second, fourth, and seventh 6 Essays.'2 Dean Milman's successive works, with all their weight of eloquence and learning, point in the same direction ; and he, we are sure, will not think that his present high station exempts him from the duty and the privilege of sympathising with those who are now struggling with the obloquy which he has triumphantly surmounted. Mr. Westcott's cautious and valuable treatise on the ' Canon ' contains, it has been truly said, more startling (and, if we choose so to regard them, more dan- gerous) facts about the origin of the ISFew Testament, than are to be found in the whole of the doomed volume. Lord Arthur Hervey's work on the ' Genealogies of Christ ' contains speculations on the books of Joshua and Judges, more inconsistent with their literally historical character than any theory started by Baron Bunsen or his Welsh admirer. It is by excellent and indispensable works of 1 ' Vindication of Niebubr from the like passages from living divines in 1 Charges of the Quarterly lieview.' See the seasonable Dcfuice of Essays and especially pp. 62, 63, 64. lieviews, by Mr. Wild. 2 See a collection of these and other Essay II. BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 73 this kind that the facts, if not the conclusions, of the Essayists are circulated for the edification of theological students. And Christianity still remains unshaken, and the Church of England is proud — and justly proud — of sending forth her choicest labourers to this noble field. Nor is it the more latitudinarian divines who must be Nor in the ignored in order to represent the Essayists as revolutionists church, and atheists. The Fathers of the Church of England, the Fathers of the Church Catholic, nay, even some of the modern champions of a rigid orthodoxy, have committed themselves irretrievably to the doctrines which in the recent agitation have been so recklessly condemned. Let us take one or two obvious instances : — k The Epistle to the Hebrews is not written by the same ' author that wrote the other epistles bearing the name of ' Paul, but is of later date.' Such is one of the specimens of the book given by the £ National Keformer,' the infidel1 organ, the oracle of the Quarterly reviewer, as a proof of the approaching overthrow of Christianity. We are almost ashamed to repeat for the thousandth time the well-known fact that the authorship of this epistle was a question kept open for 400 years : that its non -Pauline origin is the accepted doctrine of all the orthodox divines of Ger- many, and of most educated3 divines of England; and that Archbishop Howley, not the most revolutionary of modern prelates, admitted to ordination a distinguished clergyman3 who expressed to him doubts, not only of the apostolicity but of the canonicity of this great epistle. ' The Book of Zechariah is of three dates.' So one of his assailants, with strong expressions of alarm, transcribes the sentence from Dr. Williams's essay. Yet the divided 1 National Reformer, vol. i. Xo. vol. iv. ' Prolegomena.' xxii. Dec. 22, 1860. 3 Arnold's Life, 8th edition, vol. ii. 2 See Dean AlfonTs Greek Test., p. 118. 74 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. authorship of Zechariah was an acknowledged fact in the view of Mede, Hammond, Kidder, Seeker, Newcome, Pye Smith, and perhaps even of the Evangelist St. Matthew. Inspira- But, abandoning these lesser points, and mounting to the question of Inspiration itself, there is nothing in the present volume which ought to excite surprise beyond what has been said a hundred times before. The Essayists require no precise theory of Inspiration. It is only their opponents who demand this from them, or calumniously assert this of them. Most certainly must we maintain, with Professor Jowett, that our only idea of Inspiration is that which we form from our knowledge of the Bible itself. It is a question to be solved not by speculating what the Bible ought to be, but by seeing what it actually is. The Bible might have been uniform, perfect, without varieties of text or statement, without faults of grammar or diction, without difference of style or progress of doctrine.1 The Bible is nothing of the kind. It is full of inequalities, variations, pauses, silences, lights, and shades, which in- dicate the hand of God in Creation, and which indicate it no less in the multiform diversity of His own express Revelation. In this lies its inexhaustible strength, its boundless versatility, its unbroken hold on the hearts and consciences of men — the true signs of a Book wherein resides the voice of Him whose voice is as the voice of many waters, the language in which we all of us hear, ' every man' — as it were — 'in the tongue wherein we 1 Amongst the many proposals ' sanction given to it by the Apostles, which are floating about for essays 'and to its variations, by way of addi- and counter-essays to vindicate the 'tion or omission, from the received doctrines supposed to be combated in 'Text of the Canonical Scriptures.' this volume, let us be allowed to sug- The conclusions of such an investiga- gest this one: — 'The Nature of Biblical tion would be worth a hundred eager ' Inspiration, as tested by a careful declamations on one side or the other, 'Examination of the Septuagint Ver- and would be absolutely decisive of ' siun with special reference to the the chief questions at issue. Essay II. BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 75 ' were born, the wonderful works of God.' And, if in this Book the divine and human be necessarily intermingled, is it (we do not say rational, but is it) pious, is it reve- rential, to deny the human in order to exalt the divine ? The same microscope of criticism that reveals to us the depths of the inner meaning* of the divine message in all its manifold fulness, reveals to us also the imperfections, the contradictions, of the human messenger. We cannot have the one without the other. It is because we so prize the kernel that we are content to break the shell, and yet even in the shell to recognise and to value the roughnesses and the flaws which prove it to be a genuine and not an artificial product. To that recognition, we are persuaded that every student of the sacred text and history must sooner or later be brought. It is a striking proof of the true unanimity of biblical scholars on these subjects, that the very few attacks on the present volume written with anything like candour or learning, exactly, though unconsciously, harmonise with it on the points which have provoked the most violent excitement. c Is such a thing as a mistake in a matter ' of fact inconceivable in Holy Scripture ? ' is the perti- nent question put alike by the Essayists and by one of their most earnest opponents. £ Surely it is not in £ itself inconceivable ' (answers the cautious theologian, in exact accordance with those whom he is attack- ing), 6 and equally surely if it should be made, such 6 mistakes must needs be the prophet's and not God's. * . . . . What certainty have we that the prophet is alto- c gether honest and faithful to his sacred light P We 4 know that he can, if he will, stifle or corrupt the word s of God within him ' — [the exact counterpart of Mr. Wilson's forcible expression of i the dark crust of human 'passion on the bright luminous centre within'] — 'the 76 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. 6 light given, in what way or degree we know not,' — c the ' message sent, the man empowered, be he Balaam or ' Isaiah, Caiaphas or St. Paul — the rest seems to be left 6 to ordinary human causes.' It is for this free admission of ordinary human agencies, that the Essayists have contended.1 ' The Bible is unlike all other books.' So Essayist after Essayist emphatically asserts or constantly implies. The very sacrifices which they have made in order to inculcate its study — be their notions of it true or false — are sacri- fices which neither they nor any one else would make for any other book in the world. It is unlike in its variety, unlike in its unity, unlike in its high morality, unlike in its pure theology, unlike in its general accuracy, and in its tone of truthfulness, unlike in its clear representation of the mind of God, in its constant and fearless appeals to the highest conscience and reason of man. But it is a collection of books written in the language of men, through the thoughts of men, with the same varieties of text, with the same difficulties and discrepancies of state- ment and of style, with the same dependence on and illustrations from geography, history, chronology, philo- sophy, which we find in other books ; and, therefore, in exact proportion to our belief in its divine inspiration and authority, in exact proportion as we wish to understand its real meaning, and not to substitute for it our own or other men's fancies, — in that proportion we must 6 inter- 1 We subjoin from Mr. Cazenove's ' not left to the nineteenth century to Characteristics of Holy Scripture, a ' make such a discovery as this. It like concession to truth, though but ' might be supposed that the Professor for a moment. 'There is,' says Pro- 'had borrowed from the language of fessor Jowett, 'but one literal sense ' the chief among the schoolmen, "sen- ' of Scripture, namely, that intended ' sv.s Uteralis est quern auctor inte?idit" 'by the writer.' A cry of horror ' And Aquinas here is only laying down has been raised at this maxim. But ' what his great master Augustine had Mr. Cazenove justly rejoins: 'It was evidently taught before him.' (P. 31.) Essay II. INTERNAL EVIDENCE, 77 ( pret the Bible as we would interpret any other book.' On this principle, from the days of Chrysostom down to Professor Jowett, all sound interpretation of Holy Scrip- ture has always been founded, and must always be carried on. 2. Another question raised in the volume before us, is Value of the relative value of External and Internal Evidence as g^ence applied to Revelation. There have on this subject been constant fluctuations of opinion in the Christian Church. In some minds and some ages of the world, the passion for external signs has been so engrossing as to put aside all appeals to conscience and to the moral beauty of the Gospel, either as useless or heretical. Such was pre- eminently the case in the last century, as has been well described by the Rector of Lincoln in his Essay on that period. But this tendency has by no means been uni- versal. In the early ages of the Church, Justin Martyr, in his 6 Apology,' rarely, if ever, appeals to the miracles of the Gospel as the proof of its divinity. In the middle ages, the doctrine of Internal Evidence had what may be called its high scientific value attached to it by the great Anselm. At the beginning of the last century, Cudworth and his school condemned in the strongest language c the ' assertion that good and evil, just and unjust, depend on ? the arbitrary will of God.' 1 At the beginning of this century, a vigorous protest was raised by Coleridge and his disciples against Paley's argument from miracles, and it was eagerly caught up and echoed, though from a somewhat different noint of view, by the leaders of Oxford theology twenty years ago.2 A reaction has now set in once more in favour of the coarser doctrine, and the 1 Cudworth's Immutable Morality, in principle identical with any fair and book i. c. 2, 3. charitable construction of the main 2 The chapter of Dean Trench on argument of Professor Powell, the 1 Apologetic Worth of Miracles,' is 78 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. argument which rests religion on mere power as opposed to moral fitness, has been pushed to the extent of seem- ing to deny altogether the moral nature of the Divine Attributes. The Essayists have endeavoured to thrust the pendulum back— it may be with too violent a swing — to the position which it occupied under the influence of the great divines in early and modern times, whom we have just cited. A statement of Dr. Temple, which lies at the root of the whole matter, and which has been branded as ' annihilating the authority of the Bible,' is really taken from (what ought to be called, in conformity with the present style of controversy) £ a feeble and fanciful work ' by a Bishop of Durham some hundred years since, entitled 6 The Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed ' to the course of Nature.' (Part II. ch. 1.) 4 If in Revela- 6 tion there be found any passages the seeming meaning ' of which is contrary to natural religion, we may most c certainly conclude such seeming meaning not to be the 6 real one.' This, and not any antagonism to the super- natural as such, is the true origin of those expressions of the Essayists which have been so elaborately misun- derstood and misrepresented. They do not deny miracles, but they feel the increasing difficulty which scientific and historical criticism places in the way of the old, unreason- ing reception of mere wonders as interferences with na- tural law, or as absolute proofs of a Divine Revelation, irrespectively of its contents. They would fain maintain, with St. Augustine, that we are to believe the miracles for the sake of the doctrine, rather than the doctrine for the sake of the miracles. Feeling and knowing this, they have done their utmost to lessen this collision between the religious belief and the scientific conclusions of mankind. They have endeavoured to show how miracles may be removed altogether out of the sphere of logic into that of Essay II. INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 79 faith ; or how what we call interferences may, as Bishop Butler observed long ago, be fulfilments of general laws not perfectly apprehended by us ; or how, in some in- stances at least, the Biblical narrative has been misunder- stood, and a figurative, or a primitive, or a rhetorical expression has been turned, by later ages, into a matter of fact. They have attempted, in short — mistakenly or not — to place Christianity beyond the reach of accidents, whether of science or criticism ; to rest its claims on those moral and spiritual truths which, after all, are what have really won an entrance for it into the heart, not merely of the highly educated but of the poor, the igno- rant, the afflicted, in every age of the world. Not Anselm only, or Coleridge, but the humblest peasant who feels that the Gospel is an answer to all his needs ; — not Dr. Temple only, or Professor Jowett, but the Wesleyan missionary or preacher who appeals to the natural sense of sin and the natural need of a Saviour, — build alike, not on any outward signs, but on the immutable relations between the moral law of God and the moral conscience of man. We are aware that we tread here on difficult and shifting ground. The outward and the inward are so closely interwoven in human nature, the facts and the doctrines are so closely connected in the sacred narratives, that it requires a delicate handling to deal with one apart from the other. Many parts, indeed, of those records are confessedly figurative or parabolical. To deny this is to fly in the face of the Bible itself. Lazarus and Dives, the Apocalypse, the first chapters of Genesis,1 the book of 1 For a useful though hostile sum- Herder and the pious Julius Miiller, mary of the interpreters who, through have placed a parabolical meaning on Josephus, Clement of Alexandria, the early chapters of Genesis, see the Scotus Erigena, down to the philosophic preface to a work ' On the Creation,' 80 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. Job, are instances on which all well-instructed divines are either perfectly agreed in acknowledging this parabolical character, or are well contented to allow diversity of opinion. But one chief value of the Biblical records is their essentially historical character ; 1 and after all de- ductions, there still remain events in which the garb of flesh seems to be so indispensable a vehicle for the spirit within, that we can hardly conceive how the one could have sustained itself in the world unless it had been from the beginning allied to the other. And in the culmi- nating instance of the Resurrection of Christ, the whole subsequent history of the rise of Religion, — the whole of that cheerful, hopeful, victorious aspect, which so charac- Miracles. terises both its actual triumph over the world, and its leading turn of mind and doctrine, — appear to us living testimonies both to the historic truth, and to the endless moral significance, of that greatest of all events which profane or sacred annals record. But our own assurance of this, and of like occurrences far less important, ought not to blind us to the fact that the very events and won- ders which to us are helps, to others are stumbling- blocks : and, though we shrink from abandoning anything which to us seems necessary or true, yet we are bound to treat those who prefer to lean on other and, as they think, more secure foundations, with the tenderness with which we cannot doubt that they would have been treated by Him who blessed with His sacred presence the sincere inquiry of the doubting Apostle,2 — and to whom the craving for signs and wonders was a mark, not of love and faith, but of perverseness and unbelief. And if in our studies we find that the limits of the natural and the by tho Rev. J. Macdonald, pp. 11-17. 2 John xx. 29 (see Keble's Hymn [See also Mr. Rorison's Essay in on S. Thomas's Day), and John iv. Replies to Essays and Reviews.'] 48, Matt. xii. 39. 1 [Sinai and Palestine, p. lo,0.] Essay II. INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 81 supernatural are less definite than was once imagined, this may well be a cause, not of fear and regret, but of thankfulness and hope. Doubtless the Eevelation con- tained in the Sacred Records would be more surprising if the waters of the Red Sea, the mountain of Olivet, the city of Jerusalem, the influences of Egypt, Chaldsea, and Rome, were found to have had no real existence, but to have been, one and all, called into existence by miraculous interposition, to meet the special occasions described in the Biblical narrative. But no one will be rash enough to maintain that Religion would gain by such a process. Rather by the natural links which all these objects furnish between the present and the past, the Sacred History becomes not only more credible, but more edifying, more attractive, more humane (in whichever sense we take that word), and therefore more Divine. The Professor of Hebrew in Oxford, the eminent founder of the school of theology which bears his name, has, we believe, been accused of Rationalism because he prefers to show that fishes actually existed which could have swallowed the prophet Jonah, rather than that the fish was created solely for that purpose. The charge is true, if by Ration- alism is meant any attempt to render the events of the Bible more probable. The excellent Dr. Macbride, who represents the Puritan section of opinion in that ancient University, has published his belief that the Pentecostal wonders were ' the effect probably of electric fluid.' 1 We do not defend the venerable theorist ; but he doubtless was guided by the same general principle as that which led to the identification of the destroying angel with the Midianite host, by Baron Bunsen, or with the ravages of a pestilence, by the author of the seventy-eighth Psalm.2 1 Macbride's 'Acts of the Apostles,' 2 'He gave their life over to the p. 20. pestilence? Ps. lxxviii. 50. G 82 ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS. Essay II. The old hypothesis that the last chapter of Deuteronomy was a prediction which Moses made of his own death, is now universally surrendered ; but it is surrendered on precisely the same grounds as those which have induced the vast majority of German, and many of our best Eng- lish critics, to believe that the second portion of the pro- phecies of Isaiah belongs to the period of the Captivity, and not to that of Hezekiah. The relative importance of the moral and predictive elements in prophecy, and again of the historical circumstances to which, in the first instance, the predictions were applied, have been discussed by Davison and Arnold in a style hardly less repugnant to the literal views of Dr. M'Caul or Dr. Keith, than anything in Professor Jowett or Dr. Williams. One of the passages deemed most fatal to the orthodoxy of the Essayist just named (' only two texts in the Prophets ' directly Messianic '), was anticipated almost verbally even by Bishop Pearson : — c Wherever He is spoken of as the c Anointed One (or the Messiah) it may well be first 6 understood of some other person, except it be in one place 6 in Daniel.' 1 6 The typical ideas of patience and glory 6 in the Old Testament,' says Dr. Williams, c find their cul- 6 minating fulfilment in the New.' This is the positive side of his view of prophecy, and it is, in fact, coincident with all that the best interpreters have said since the Reformation. 3. The remaining topic which this volume raises, — that of the relation of dogmatic theology to the simpler forms of scriptural truth, — need not be discussed at length. Hey's ' Lectures on the Articles,' — recommended (till lately) to candidates for orders by Bishop Sumner — and the celebrated Bampton Lectures, on which rests the fame of Bishop Hampden, advance positions so entirely identical 1 Pearson On the Creed, art. 2. Essay II. LIBERTY OF THE ENGLISH CLERGY. 83 with those of the Essayists, that it ought to have been deemed an impertinence to those prelates to regard con- clusions so recommended as heretical and anti-Christian.1 IV. There remains one question, in its practical aspect, graver than any we have discussed. It may be said that the mere fact of these doctrines having been held by some of our most eminent divines justifies their free discussion within the pale of our national Church. Still this is the first time in which the public attention has been directly and expressly called to the fact. This common challenge is unquestionably the one common ground between the seven authors. Every one of them by lending his name to the book at least implied that, however much he may differ from the views contained in any other essay than his own, he yet vindicates the lawfulness of holding those views within the English Church. In justice to all those who avowedly or tacitly hold the Liberty principles which are here stated, we must consider the English grounds for that right of speech which has been vehe- clersy- mently disputed both by the assailants and the defenders of the book. The ' Westminster ' and 6 National,' hardly less than the c Quarterly ' and the ' Record,' demand the withdrawal of the Essayists, and, we may add, by impli- cation, of the other eminent persons just named, and of all who agree with them, from their position as English clergymen. The truth or falsehood of the views main- tained is treated as a matter almost of indifference. The lay contributor, however offensive his statements, is dis- missed k as comparatively blameless.' But the Christian minister, it is said, has 6 parted with his natural liberty.' It is almost openly avowed (and we are sorry to see this tendency as much amongst free-thinking laymen as amongst fanatical clergymen) that Truth was made for the 1 See Essay III, 84 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. laity and Falsehood for the clergy — that Truth is toler- able everywhere except in the months of the ministers of the Grod of Truth — that Falsehood, driven from every other quarter of the educated world, may find an honoured refuge behind the consecrated bulwarks of the Sanctuary. Against this godless theory of a national Church we solemnly protest. It is a theoiy tainted with a far deeper unbelief than any that has ever been charged against the Essayists and Reviewers. We do not, indeed, deny — we fully believe, that the whole state of subscription to the Formularies of the Church, as now maintained, is fraught with evil, and we have often indicated methods by which the evil might be mitigated, and some of the advantages which, from its mitigation, would accrue to the scrupu- lous consciences that, whether within or without the Church, are repelled from the sacred office by these need- less obstacles. Restraints too of a certain kind, from which laymen are free, unquestionably are imposed on the clerical profession — restraints of decorum, restraints of regard for public opinion, restraints, above all, of that common prudence and sense of congruity which alone can hold Churches and communities together, and which ought to be more powerful than any positive obligation or legal enactment. In the recent High Church developments, for example, the exasperation and the difficulties which ensued arose not from any breach of rubrics or subscrip- tions, but from a disregard of the general propriety and harmony of ecclesiastical life. But still, as regards his own religious belief, the main question for a clergyman to consider is whether he can sincerely accept as a whole the constitution and the worship of the Church of which he is a minister. Those to whom, as a whole, it is repugnant will spontaneously drop off, in one direction or another, without any pressure from without. Those to whom, as Essay II. LIBERTY OF THE ENGLISH CLERGY. 85 a whole, it commends itself as the best mode of serving God and their brethren, will, in spite of any lesser diffe- rences, count it treason to the Church, and to its Divine Head, to depart either from its ministry or its communion. If indeed there were anything in the obligations of the clergy which created insuperable barriers between their belief and that of the educated laity, it would be the duty of both, in the name of religion and of common sense, to rise as one man and tear to shreds such barriers between the teachers and the taught, between Him whose name is Truth and those whose worship is only acceptable if offered to Him in spirit and in truth. In this case, however, we may be thankful that no such violent convulsion is needed. The questions raised by the Essayists, with very few ex- ceptions, are of a kind altogether beside and beyond the range over which the Formularies extend. It would almost seem as if, providentially, the confessions of most Protestant — indeed, we may say, of most Christian Churches, had been drawn up at a time when, public and ecclesiastical attention being fixed on other matters, the doors had been left wide open to the questions which a later and critical age was sure to raise into high import- ance. In spite of all the declamations on the subject, no silence of passage has ever yet been pointed out in any of the five J^e^£lkal clerical Essayists which contradicts any of the Formularies criticism, of the Church in a degree at all comparable to the direct collision which exists between the High Church party and the Articles, between the Low Church party and the Prayer- book.1 Dr. Pusey was for three years suspended by the ' Six Doctors ' of Oxford from preaching, Archdeacon Deni- son was for three years pursued into the courts of law by 1 As before, so here, we except from stance, but that we desire to simplify our consideration the lay and the de- the case by reducing it to a practical ceased contributors : not that we wish result, to prejudge the question in either in- 86 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. a brother clergyman, as having departed, the one from the Thirty-first, and the other from the Twenty-ninth Article, respectively aimed against the Encharistic Sacrifice and the Encharistic Presence. The Baptismal Service and the Collects never conld have been written by those who hold the ordinary Puritanical language on Baptism or on Justi- fication. On these points the standards of the Church have given us its mind in express, if not in distinct, terms, and (in the case of the High Church party) with a special view to their particular case. But on the questions now debated, Articles and Prayerbook are alike silent. There is no Article on Inspiration. The word occurs only twice throughout the Eormularies, where it is used in the sense (in which alone it could be considered in a Court of Law) of the Divine Influence on the hearts of all believers. The technical use of the word as equivalent to supernatural dictation was not even known at the time when the English For- mularies were composed. It first appears in this sense in the Helvetic Confession of 1675. The one Article on the subject of the Bible (the Sixth) excludes other authorities from a rank co-ordinate with Scripture, but of Scripture itself asserts no more than all the English Essayists and all the German theologians have gladly — we will not say conceded to it, but — claimed for it. The fact of the preservation of the ancient Jewish Canon, which no modern scholar has ever doubted, is recognised, but with- out a word on the date, authority, or interpretation of any one of the books. On the question whether Job and Jonah be historical or allegorical, theologians may dispute as they have always disputed ; but the Church of England has not spoken, any more than the Catholic Church of old spoke in the Four Councils, or (we may add) any more than the Church of Rome has spoken in the Council of Trent. Scholars such as the various schools in the Church Essay II. LIBERTY OF THE ENGLISH CLERGY. 87 liave of late produced, may dissect the chronology of the books of Judges or of Chronicles through and through ; we may condemn them as critics, we may rebuke them as rashly unsettling the preconceived opinions of their less edu- cated brethren, but we cannot charge them with unfaithful- ness to a Church which has given to all its sons free play in these questions, in which, above all others, freedom is essential to healthy action and sound conclusions. On the New Testament the language of the Formularies is, if possible, even more open. Mr. Westcott,1 whose learning and candour on the subject of the Canon of Scripture give to his opinion unusual weight, well observes that the Sixth Article distinctly recognises books of whose au- thority there was, and others, ' of whose authority there ' was never any doubt in the Church,' and promotes the latter alone to the full rank of 1 Holy Scripture,' though in a later clause and in a looser sense of the word, it concedes the title of Canonical to all such c as are com- c monly received and believed.' 6 It seems impossible,' says Mr. Westcott, 'to avoid the conclusion that the c framers of the Articles intended to leave a freedom of ( judgment on a point on which the greatest of the con- c tinental reformers and even of Eomish scholars were c divided.' .... ' Of this freedom,' he continues, c the ' great writers of the Church of England have not availed 6 themselves.' But it is a freedom which does not lapse by neglect. It is a freedom which, even according to the strictest letter of the law, justified Archbishop Howley, as we have seen, in receiving Arnold, though he rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews, and which would have justi- fied Archbishop Parker in receiving Calvin, though he doubted the authenticity of the Second Epistle of St. Peter. 1 Dictionary of the Bible, p. 2G8. its only mode of escape from a grave This interpretation of the Article is historical error. 88 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. Filence of On the subject of External and Internal Evidence, the mularies silence of the Formularies is still more impressive. There on Internal js n0 Article which bears even remotely on tbese most Evidence. interesting topics. There is no definition of a miracle. There is no definition of a prophecy. Philosophical ques- tions of the highest consequence may be raised concerning both. Paley and Coleridge, Davison and Elliott, may con- tradict each other and everyone else. They are free to do so. The Reformers of the sixteenth century were wiser in their generation than the clerical leaders of the nineteenth century have been in ours. They knew, or they were guided by a Higher Wisdom than their own to the con- clusion, that these are subjects which ecclesiastical decrees cannot control or touch ; that what commends itself as proof to one age is repulsive to another ; that the processes by which the human mind and the human race hold com- munion with the Infinite are too delicate, too complex, too subtle, to be comprised within the formula of any single age or any single school. We have not thought it worth while to enter into the alleged dogmatical differences between the Essays and the Articles. The book does not profess to treat of dogmatic Theology, and contradictions to the Formularies cannot be elicited from remote allusions, still less from omissions. On these main questions, therefore, the clamour that has been raised against the writers as having contravened the Formularies of the Church, has been raised with as little regard to those Formularies as to the past history and present condition both of English and continental theology. A dim sense, however, of the true state of the case has made itself felt at times during the controversy. 'The difficulties of ecclesiastical courts/ 'the grave de- ' liberations,' the ' guarded ' and ' cautious ' 4 language of * the Essayists,' are all so many forms for expressing an Essay II. LIBERTY OF THE ENGLISH CLERGY. 89 imperfectly realised conviction that there is, after all, no opposition between the Articles and the doctrines of the book, which only has remained nnassailed by legal weapons because its adversaries doubt whether by such weapons it is in fact assailable. Flippancy of style, and rash part- nership, are the chief specific charges that remain ; and on these points we have concurred with its censors. But there is no liturgical condemnation of bad taste, except by the example of contrast ; there is no Article against joint liability, unless it be the Thirty- eighth (c Of Christian 6 men's goods not common ') . In making these statements as to the general tendency Detailed contradic- of the volume, we freely grant that, in detail, it contains tions with occasional contradictions, real or apparent, to the language f^fs0^£" of some of the Formularies. When, for example, Mr. ycrsal and inevitable. Wilson speaks of the Athanasian Creed as 6 unhappy,' this expression is doubtless not less (or more) repugnant to the Eighth Article than Archbishop Tillotson's celebrated 'wish that we were well rid of it.' When he expresses his belief that virtuous heathens will be saved, it is not less (or more) repugnant to the Eighteenth Article than St. Peter's declaration that e in every nation he that 6 feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of 6 Him,' and the numerous confirmations of that inspired truth, from Justin Martyr downwards. But we should like to see the man who for such contradictions as these will venture to call his brother to account. Let him who agrees with every word and statement of the Formularies cast the first stone at these variations. All clergymen, of whatever school, who have the slightest knowledge of their own opinions and of the letter of the Prayerbook and Articles, must go out one by one, beginning at the Archbishop of Canterbury in his palace at Lambeth, even down to the humblest curate in the wilds of Cumber- 90 ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS. Essay II. land. All laymen, too, who by virtue of their sub- scriptions in either University hold any office of trust or emolument therein, will remember that they also are bound by precisely the same obligations in this respect as the highest dignitary in the land. Almost all Professors and almost all Fellows of either University, yet live in houses of crystal as fragile and as transparent as those which encase bishops, priests, and deacons. In this respect the clergy and a large section of our educated laymen speak and think under the same conditions.1 What is open to the Professors of History and of Natural Science is open no less to the Professors of Divinity. What is closed to the Professors of Divinity is no less closed to the Professors of History and of Natural Science. It is no new claim of liberty either in a larger or a smaller sense, that we are putting forward for the Essay- ists, or for those whom, as an advanced guard, they repre- sent. We and (with one exception) they have uniformly held the same language of toleration towards all the divisions of the Church. Mr. Wilson, indeed, by his on- slaught on the ninetieth c Tract for the Times,' twenty years ago, may perhaps be cited as an example to the contrary. But the most distinguished of his colleagues may challenge their opponents to name a single instance in which they have endeavoured to abridge for others the freedom which they demand for themselves. In the successive attacks which have been directed against Mr. Ward and Dr. Newman in 1845, against Dr. Hampden in 1847, against Mr. Gorham in 1850, against Archdeacon Denison in 1856, against Mr. Bryan King in 1860, no name, con- nected with the Essayists or their supporters, will be found 1 [Viz. The declaration that the These have all been since repealed, Articles arc agreeable to the Word of both for clergy and laity, and a gene- God, and that the PrayerbooJc contains ral declaration substituted. See Essay nothing contrary to the Word of God. IV. 1870.] Essay II. LIBERTY OF THE CLERGY. 91 in the ranks of the persecutors — some will be found to have always thrown their whole weight into the scale of the depressed and weaker side. We may ourselves trium- phantly appeal to a former number of the 'Edinburgh Keview,' 1 for a vindication of this right of free speech to that very party, who then, as it was thought, on the eve of expulsion from the Church, are now bent on trampling down those by whose aid they were themselves preserved, thus to requite evil for good, and hatred for our good will. Great indeed would have been the calamity to the Church Danger of and country, if the recent agitation had succeeded in the ing^ee3 attempt to stifle free discussion and research on theo- en(iuuT- logical subjects. There is danger in all such enquiries, but there is a still greater danger in the suppression of enquiry. There is the rashness of the moth that flies into the fire ; but there is the rashness, no less, as Archbishop Whately has well said, of the horse that is burnt to death because it refuses to leave its accustomed stall. There is an advantage in caution and silence ; but there is an ad- vantage also in courage and in speaking out. 6 Doubt,' says Professor Jowett, £ comes in at the window when 6 Enquiry is denied at the door.' It is a parable worthy of John Bunyan. We almost see the venerable Sage, worn with anxious reverential research, rudely repelled by the sturdy guardians of orthodoxy from the wide portals at which he humbly knocks for admittance, whilst, aloft and behind, the grinning, chattering Imp has climbed in through the lattice and occupied the innermost chamber of the house. The Areo\3agitica of Milton still speaks to us with a living eloquence, of which a few words may here suffice : — 1 Our faith and knowledge thrive by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming 1 Ed. T?ev. July 1850. See Essay I. 02 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, Essay II. fountain ; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.' ' If it come to inquisitions again and licensing, and that we are so timorous of ourselves and so suspicious of all men, as to fear each bush, and the shaking of every leaf, — if some who but of late were little better than silenced from preaching, shall come now to silence us from reading, except what they please, it cannot be guessed what is in- tended by some, but a second tyranny over learning.' . . . 'And if it be feared that infection of errors may spread, then all human controversy in religious points must remove out of the world ; yea, and the Bible itself, for that ofttimes relates blasphemy not nicely, it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus ; in other great disputes it answers dubiously and darkly to the common reader. For all these causes we know that the Bible itself is put by the Papists into the first rank of prohibited books.' If the leaders of the recent outcry had been successful in terrifying or driving out of the Church those whom they themselves confess to be amongst its chief ornaments, not only would the individual loss have been irreparable, but the heavy blow and discouragement to all Biblical study — the breach between religion and science, between devo- tion and truth — the repulsion (already sufficiently alarm- ing) of the higher intelligences and more generous spirits of the rising generation from the sacred profession — would have gone far to have reduced the National Church to the level of an illiterate sect or a mere satellite of the Church of Rome. This danger has been averted, not merely by the failure of the assailants, but by the silent resistance of the assailed. Had they wavered under the storm which burst upon them, the cause of Religion and of religious freedom might have suffered a portentous eclipse. In that calm attitude we trust that they will hold their ground, ' in the quietness and confidence ' which for the present is their best strength. Essay II. LIBERTY OF THE CLERGY. 93 We have spoken freely of the shortcomings of the writers which, for the time at least, have retarded the progress of religions thought and knowledge, by awakening needless clamonr, and presenting great truths in repulsive forms. But the future is now in their hands. It is not less true of them now than it was fourteen years ago, that — 1 They are amongst the few leading spirits who unite an under- standing of the present state of feeling in the rising generation, to a real knowledge of that attractive theology which, coming from the early seat of the Reformation, was likely for good or for evil so deeply to affect the highest interests of our own Church ; and who sanctify their acuteness and learning by an earnest love of Gospel truth. Humanly speaking, it is only to such men, if perchance they may be found among us, that we look with any confidence as fitted to be the guides of an enquiring age.' 1 So spoke, years ago, a prelate distinguished for that just and serene view of the prospects of our Church, which is alone worthy of his high ecclesiastical position and of his own generous nature. They themselves will not have passed through this tempest without gaining some useful experience. They will have learned the necessity of speaking the truth not only, as they have done, boldly, but in wisdom and in love. In the presence of this crisis of their lives, they are called to ' dedicate themselves ' afresh to the service of their Master,' by fulfilling with renewed energy the duty which their peculiar position has laid upon them of £ building up ' where they have de- stroyed— of 4 repairing the breaches ' which they them- selves have broken, it may be, in zeal for Divine Truth, and 6 restoring the paths to dwell in ' to which they have hitherto only pointed the way. They have by this unex- pected turn of events been thrust into an eminence, not of 1 Suggestions to the Tlicological Stu- p. x. 1846 : reprinted in Dangers and dent, by A. C. Tait, D.C.L, Preface, Safeguards. (1861.) 94 ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS. Essay II. their own seeking, but from which their voices will be heard far and near by those who will listen to few besides. Amongst all the correctives which zealous enemies and anxious friends may wish to supply to anything erroneous or dangerous in their present teaching, none will be so effective as the sight of their own self-devotion, the sound of their own call to duty, to faith, to charity. Judging by the usual course of events, it is probable that before twenty years are past, they will be seated in the high places of the Church, now occupied by those who twenty years ago were suffering under the obloquy which at present rests on them. But, meanwhile, they have before them the grand opportunities which the peculiar position of an English clergyman commands, even in the most secluded parish. Some of them have, over and above this general opening for Christian energy, special fields of usefulness, the fairest that man could desire. The School of Arnold, the College of Wesley, the great University whence has already issued within our own recollection a spiritual influence which, for good or evil, has penetrated the whole country — these are spheres which, filled as they have been filled and may be filled again, may satisfy the loftiest aspirations that ever fired ecclesiastical ambition or apo- stolical devotion. It will be theirs to show, not for the first time, that the widest range of enquiry and knowledge is not inconsistent with the most practical usefulness and the purest piety. There have no doubt been cold Latitu- dinarians, as there have been worldly High Churchmen and self-seeking Puritans. But history has again and again recorded the noblest examples of Christian life and teaching amongst those who offended and rose above the theological prejudices of their contemporaries. The great divines of the Revolution were assailed by the Convoca- tion of that day as c rationalists,' c Socinians,' 'infidels, Essay II. LIBERTY OF THE CLERGY. 95 c atheists.' 1 Yet no one now doubts the pastoral goodness of Burnet, the blameless sanctity of Cud worth or of Which- cote, the loving orthodoxy of Tillotson, the indomitable vigour of Barrow. And in our own time it would be easy to point either to those who are recently departed from us, or to those who still live amongst us, of whom it may be truly said that ' the zeal of God's house has eaten them 6 up,' and who yet have all their life long laboured under the cruel imputations of heresy which men, immeasurably their inferiors in power and in holiness, have ventured to cast against them. There may be troubled times before us. We know not what trials are in store for the Church or for Religion. But if the Church of England is to hold its place as a national institution — if Christianity is to hold its place as the religion of the world — it must be by the fulfilment of hopes such as that which breathes through the chief Essay in this now celebrated volume, and with which we gladly conclude. 1 Time was when the Gospel was before the age ; when it breathed a new life into a decaying world, — when the difficulties of Chris- tianity were difficulties of the heart only, and the highest minds found in its truths not only the rule of their lives, but a wellspring of intellectual delight. Is it to be held a thing impossible that the Christian Eeligion, instead of shrinking into itself, may again em- 1 See the attacks of the Nonjurors on Archbishop Tillotson. * His reli- 'gion is latitudinarian, which is none; 1 that is, nothing that is positive, but 1 against everything that is positive in 1 other religions. He is owned by the ' atheistical wits of all England as their ' true primate and apostle. They glory ' and rejoice in him, and make their 1 public boasts of him. He leads them ' not only the length of Socinianism, ' but to call in question all Revelation, 4 turn Genesis into a romance,' &c. (Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 297.) ' A ' considerable cause of our divisions ' hath been the broaching scandalous 1 names and employing them to blast 1 the reputation of worthy men ; be- 1 spattering and aspersing them with ' insinuations and injuries devised by 1 spiteful and applied by simple people ; 1 latitudinarians, rationalists, and I ' know not what other names, intended ' for reproach, although imparting £ better signification than those dull 1 detractors can, it seems, discern.' {Sermons and Fragments of Barrow, p. 245, published in 1834, by Dr. Lee, afterwards Bishop of Manchester.) 96 ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay II. brace the thoughts of men upon the earth ? . . . . Those who hold the possibility of such a reconcilement or restoration of belief are anxious to disengage Christianity from all suspicion of disguise or unfairness. They wish to preserve the historical use of Scrip- ture as the continuous witness in all ages of the higher things in the heart of man, as the inspired source of truth, and the way to the better life. They are willing to take away some of the external supports, because they are not needed and do harm ; also because they interfere with the meaning. They have a faith, not that after a period of transition all things will remain just as they were before, but that they will all come round again to the use of man and to the glory of God. When interpreted like any other book, by the same rules of evidence and by the fame canons of criticism, the Bible will still remain unlike any other book ; its beauty will be freshly seen, as of a picture which is restored after many ages to its original state ; it will create a new interest, and make for itself a new kind of authority by the life which is in it. It will be a spirit and not a letter ; as it was in the beginning, having an influence like that of the spoken word; or the book newly found. The purer the light in the human heart, the more it will have an expression of itself in the mind of Christ ; the greater the know- ledge of the development of man, the truer wTill be the insight gained into " the increasing purpose " of Revelation. In which also the individual soul has a practical part, finding a sympathy with its own imperfect feelings in the broken utterance of the Psalmist or the Prophet, as well as in the fulness of Christ. The harmony between Scripture and the life of man in all its stages, may be far greater than appears at present. No one can form any notion, from what we see around us, of the power which Chris- tianity might have if it were at one with the conscience of man, and not at variance with his intellectual convictions. There a world, weary of the heat and dust of controversy, — of speculations about God and man, — weary too of the rapidity of its own motion, would return home and find rest.' {Essay on the Interpretation of Scrip- hire, p. 375.) 97 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND TIE VIEWS.1 6 The questions raised by " Essays and Reviews " are, 6 with a very few exceptions, of a kind altogether beside ' and beyond the range over which the formularies of the 6 Church of England extend. It would almost seem as if, ' providentially, the confessions of most Protestant, and 6 indeed, we may say, of most Christian Churches, had e been drawn up at a time when, public and ecclesiastical c attention being fixed on other matters, the doors had ' been left wide open to the questions which a later and ' critical age was sure to raise into high importance. In 6 spite of all the declarations on the subject, no passage 6 has ever yet been pointed out in any of the five clerical ' Essayists which contradicts any of the formularies of ' the Church in a degree at all comparable to the direct ' collision which exists between the High Church party 6 and the Articles, between the Low Church party and the * Prayer Book. On the questions now debated, Articles 6 and Prayer Book are alike silent.52 So we spoke, with a confidence which many at the time thought premature, but which was founded on a deliberate conviction that the facts of the case admitted of no other conclusion. The Bishop of Salisbury, with a gallantry worthy of a better cause — in spite of the remonstrances of the most influential organs of his party, and of a large majority of the episcopal bench — was determined to try 1 'The Three Pastorals.' Ed. Bev., July 1864. a Ed. Rev., April 1861. H 98 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. the question raised in the challenge thus thrown out bj ourselves and others, and to give, if possible, legal force to the stigma which others had fixed on the obnoxious opinions by insinuations and personal invectives. His example was followed by an adventurous clergyman from the diocese of Ely, and a public prosecution was set on foot, and has for the last two years been carried on with that stately march which seems to belong to ecclesiastical litigation, and which, we remember, was in the last great suit of the kind — the duplex querela of Mr. Gorham — compared to the passage of a solemn procession, whose advance is marked at its different halts even by those who do not take the trouble to follow the whole of its winding course. The first halt was in the Court of Arches, before that venerable Judge who, after a youth and manhood spent in the stormy struggles of kings and queens, of emancipation and reform, of adjudications of shipwrecks and the rights of empires, has enjoyed the singular lot, between his seventieth and eighty-third years, of being called four times over to preside as arbiter of the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. No one can impeach the zeal and activity with which the promoters of the suit discharged the duties of the office which they had undertaken. The two Essayists selected were, of all those who were within the reach of the law, confessedly the most obnoxious. We ourselves had been constrained to speak severely of the tone and manner of their publications, and to the public at large they had been made almost the scapegoats of the seven. And if there was a peculiar fitness in the selection of the two on whom public odium had most unquestionably fastened, an activity not less remarkable appeared in the care with which every single passage that was open to attack or misconstruction was brought to light. As many as twenty-six extracts Essay III. JUDGMENT OF DR. LUSHING TON. 99 from one Essay, and twelve from the other, were adduced as contravening the law ; and in case these should be insufficient to convict the authors, 4 the general scope, ' tendency, or design ' of the whole Essay of each, and of the whole book of which they formed a part, were added to intercept any possible retreat. Over these extracts, and over this general design of the Essays, the battle was fought with a determination and force which brought the whole case into the strongest relief. Whatever could be done for the popular views of the disputed doctrines, was done by the attack, conducted in the most uncompromising form by Sir E. Phillimore, in the most moderate form, and, at the same time, with consummate eloquence and skill, by Mr. Coleridge ; 1 and whatever could be said in behalf of the t*vo appellants, was urged by Mr. Stephen, with a solidity of knowledge and a strength of argument which turns his 6 defence ' of the two accused divines into an apology for the Church of England — 6 for the learning ' of the most learned, for the freedom of the freest, and 6 for the reason of the most rational, Church in the world.' On this case, so argued, Dr. Lushington, on the 25th of Judgment June, 1862, delivered his memorable judgment. There Lushhig- are many points in that judgment which are open to ton- criticism, and which have been clearly pointed out in an able pamphlet by Professor Grote of Cambridge. But, taking it as a whole, and considering the subtlety of the questions on the one hand, and on the other the great age and multifarious avocations of the Judge, it is a document deserving of warm admiration and serious atten- tion. Guiding himself by the principles laid down in the Gorham Judgment— the Magna Charta, as it has been truly called, of the liberties of the English Church — he at once discarded all questions of Biblical interpretation and 1 [Now Sir John Coleridge.] h 2 100 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. criticism as entirely beyond and beside the range of the Articles or Prayer Book. All charges of heresy founded on questions of authorship or date, of parabolical or his- torical construction, of prediction or of prophecy — all charges founded on general impressions of the scope and design of the book — he set aside with an impartial courage the more remarkable, because it was evident that he him- self to some degree shared the popular alarm which the book had awakened. On the only passage in the Formu- laries (the answer of the Deacon in the Ordination Service) that might have seemed to bear on the extent of belief to be required in the various parts of the Canonical Scrip- tures, he placed a construction which admits the widest latitude that the extremest Essayist ever claimed.1 When he left the judgment- seat, out of thirty-two charges, five alone remained ; and for those five trans- gressions of the law, as he deemed them, he pronounced no heavier penalty than that of a year's suspension. It might have seemed that, with a victory so nearly com- plete, and a punishment so slight, the accused parties, thus acquitted of by far the greater number of charges which had roused the most inveterate prejudice against them, would have found it the safest course to have rested on the judgment of the Court of Arches, without incurring the risk of further appeal. It was determined otherwise ; and the five remaining charges were brought before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The Law Lords2 in this great appeal were the Lord Chancellor Westbury, Lord Cran worth, Lord Chelmsford, and Lord Kingsdown, 1 Eor the Judgments both of the moned by Her Majest""'0 command, be- Dean of Arches and of the Privy cause they are the four acting Members Council, see Broderick and Fremantle's of the Committee highest in rank ; each Judgments of the Privy Council, pp. of them has held or might have held 2.03-280, pp. 281-290. the Great Seal ; two are Equity and two 1 It appears that these Members of may be considered Common lawyers ; the Judicial Committee were sum- two are Whigs and two are Tories. Essay III. JUDGMENT OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL. 101 with the two Primates, and the Bishop of London,1 sitting, not as in the case of Mr. Gorham, as assessors, but as judges.2 The appellants took what many thought the hazardous course of pleading their own case. Their danger was increased by the circumstance that two of the judges — the Archbishop of Canterbury in his Charge and on other public occasions, and the Archbishop of York by having edited a volume expressly intended to attack their views — had already pledged themselves to an adverse opinion on the main questions stirred by the inculpated Essays ; and the Bishop of London had also joined in the general censure pronounced by the Episcopal Manifesto of 1861. The pleadings were concluded in July, 1863. The de- fence of Mr. Wilson remains on record, he having taken the precaution of confining himself to a written statement. Whatever may be thought of the truth or falsehood of his theological tenets, there was, we believe, but one opinion amongst friends and foes as to the force of the masterly, yet dignified and pathetic argument with which he pleaded for his own freedom and for the freedom of the English Church against the new yoke which, as he contended, was for the first time attempted to be imposed. In the course of those pleadings two of the five charges were dismissed or withdrawn, and there remained but three ; these, how- ever, as we shall see, each involving issues of the largest consequence. After six months' delay, the Judgment, to Judgment which the Church, not of England only, but of foreign nations also, had been looking forward with intense ex- Council, ° Feb. 8, pectation, was at last pronounced. No one who was 1864. present can forget the interest with which the audience in that crowded Council Chamber listened to sentence after sentence as they rolled along from the smooth and silveiy 1 [Archbishops Longlcy, Thomson, 2 Under the terms of 3 & 4 Vict. c. and Tait.] 86. 102 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. tongue of the Lord Chancellor, enunciating with a lucidity which made it seem impossible that any other statement of the case was conceivable, and with a studied moderation of language which, at times, seemed to border on irony — first the principles on which the judgment was to proceed, and then the examination, part by part, and word byword, of each of the three charges that remained, till, at the close, not one was left, and the appellants remained in possession of the field. As in the acquittal by Dr. Lushington, so in the ac- quittal by the final Court of Appeal, fresh force was added to the Judgment by the constant disclaimers of sympathy with the appellants ; and also by the fact that the Bishop of London completely adhered to the Judgment, and that there was a partial adhesion, much to their credit, even of the two Primates whose bias against the Essayists had been so openly and strongly avowed. We have thought it necessary to recapitulate the course of these proceedings, in order to put on record in these pages the most important event which has taken place in the settlement of the English Church since the Gorham controversy. As the Gorham Judgment established beyond question the legal position of the Puritan or so-called Evangelical party in the Church of England ; as the Denison Judgment would, had it turned on the merits of the case instead of a technical flaw, have established the legal position of the High Church or Sacramental party ; so the Judgment in the case of Mr. Wilson and Dr. Williams established the legal position of those who have always claimed the right of free enquiry and latitude of opinion equally for themselves and for both the other sections of the Church ; and it therefore becomes neces- sary to state at this point precisely the questions on which this liberty of opinion has been won. Essay III. JUDGMENT OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL. 103 We have seen that by Dr. Lushington's Judgment ample freedom was left to all detailed criticism of the Sacred Text, so long as it did not go to the length of denying the eanonicity of any one of the Canonical Books. The questions, whether there be one Isaiah or two — two Ze- chariahs or three — who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, and who wrote the Pentateuch — whether Job and Jonah be historical or parabolical — whether the 53rd chapter of Isaiah and the 2nd Psalm be directly or indirectly pro- phetic— what are the precise limits of the natural and preternatural — what is the relative weight of internal and external evidence — whether the Apocalypse refers to the Emperor Xero or the Pope of Home, — are determined to be all alike open to all clergymen of the English Church. In the course of the pleadings before the Privy Council, two charges were abandoned by the prosecutors themselves — one, that which insisted on the necessity of a distinction between the covenanted and uncovenanted mercies of God; the other, turning on a phase of the controversy of Justi- fication. But three important questions were still left ; and, al- though, as the Judicial Committee frequently and justly observed, all the charges on which they were called to pronounce were contained in a few meagre and disjointed sentences, those few meagre sentences did, in fact, involve the settlement of doctrines containing the pith and mar- row of the recent controversy. The first question raised was as to the doctrine of the Judgment Church of England on the Divine authority and inspira- ratiou pl" tion of the Bible. The general fact of their Divine autho- rity and inspiration was admitted by both parties.1 Bat 1 This is fully acknowledged by one ' tion in reference to the Scriptures, and of the opponents of the Essayists in his ' we are further agreed that the Scrip- answer to them in the Aids to Faith ' tures themselves are the best sources (p. 404) : ' We are agreed on both sides ' of information on the subject.' 1 that there it such a thing as Inspira- 104 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. the doctrine maintained by the prosecutors, and alleged to have been contradicted by the Essayists, amounted to this (we quote the perspicuous language in which it is drawn out by the Judicial Committee) : — ' Every part of 6 the canonical Books of the Old and New Testaments, ' upon any subject whatever, however unconnected with 6 religious faith and moral duty, was written under the in- £ spiration of the Holy Spirit.' The doctrine maintained by the Essayists (again we sum up their position in the same lucid language) is this : — £ The Bible was inspired by 6 the Holy Spirit that has ever dwelt and still dwells in the £ Church, which dwelt also in the Sacred Writers of Holy c Scripture, and which will aid and illuminate the minds c of those who read Holy Scripture, trusting to receive the ' guidance and assistance of that Spirit.' And again, that, c inasmuch as Holy Scripture containeth all things neces- c sary for salvation from the revelations of the Holy Spirit, * the Bible may well be denominated " Holy," and said to < be "the Word of God," "God's Word written," or "Holy ( (( "V\rrit " » — yet that 6 those terms cannot be affirmed to be * clearly predicated of every statement and representation £ contained in every part of the Old and New Testament.' It was maintained by the Court that the doctrine alleged by the prosecutors to be the doctrine of the Church was not found either in its Articles or in any of its formu- laries, and that the doctrine maintained by the appel- lants was not contradicted by or plainly inconsistent with the Articles or formularies which the accusers al- leged against them. 6 The framers of the Articles have 6 not used the word " Inspiration " as applied to the Holy c Scriptures ; nor have they laid down anything as to the c fitness, extent, or limits of that operation of the Holy ' Spirit. The caution of the framers of our Articles pro- 6 hibits our treating their language as implying more than Essay III. JUDGMENT OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL. 105 ' is expressed ; nor are we warranted in ascribing to them ( corollaries expressed in new forms of words, involving 6 minute and subtle matters of controversy.' The two remaining charges differed from that which we have just noticed, in that they relate not to the main question stirred by the appearance of the volume of 6 Es- ' says and Beviews,' but to questions which were hardly thought of in connexion with this peculiar controversy, and were only brought into this trial from the extreme anxiety of the prosecutors to leave no sentence or phrase unturned which could by any possibility bring the Essay- ists within reach of the law. But they are not the less important on this account. Judgment One of them turned on a hope expressed that, at the Day pu^g^. of Judgment, those men who are not admitted to happi- ment- ness may be so dealt with as that £ the perverted may be 4 restored,' and c all, both small and great, may ultimately ' find a refuge in the bosom of the Universal Parent.' The Judges came to their conclusion after a few weighty arguments, founded on the well-known ambiguity of the original words translated by the English wTord ' everlast- ' ing,' on the liberty of opinion which has always existed without restraint among eminent English divines on this subject, and on the fact that the Thirty-nine Articles, as now established, omitted that which in the original Arti- cles of 1552 had stood as the Forty-second, and con- demned the doctrine, that £ all men will be saved at the ' length.' Their conclusion was that 6 they do not find in 4 the formularies any such distinct declaration of our c Church upon the subject as to require them to condemn ' as penal the expression of hope by a clergyman, that even ' the ultimate pardon of the wicked, who are condemned ' in the Day of Judgment, may be consistent with the will c of Almighty God.' 10G JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. Judgment on Justifi- cation. Panic oc- casioned by the Judg- ment. The last charge to be noticed was that extracted from an ambiguous hint, that 6 Justification by Faith might 6 mean the peace of mind or sense of Divine approval 6 which comes of trust in a righteous God, rather than a 6 fiction of merit by transfer.' The Judges are in doubt as to what was actually meant, but they declare that the important Eleventh Article — the only one which treats directly of Justification by Faith, 'is wholly silent as to ' the merits of Jesus Christ being transferred to us ; that, ' therefore, they cannot declare it to be penal for a clergy- ' man to speak of merit by transfer as a fiction, however ' unseemly that word may be when used in connexion with c such a subject.' Such was this famous Judgment. The Judges, indeed, still maintained a prudent reticence on the design and general tendency of the book called 4 Essays and Reviews,' and on the effect or aim of the whole Essay of Dr. Wil- liams, or of the whole Essay of Mr. Wilson. They even in one passage leave the impression that they concur in the alarm excited by the appearance of the volume, as a whole. They express no opinion on the theological merits of the case. But every particular charge of contravening the Formularies of the Church, was by the Court of Arches or by the Judicial Committee declared to be untenable. Everything had been staked by the prosecuting party on the issue of this trial, and everything, as it seemed, was lost. We cannot wonder that the result of this Judgment, after its first stunning effect, should have been a wide- spread panic. Those who remember the Gorham Judg- ment will call to mind all the same features of alarm and of agitation. There was one important difference — that whereas in the Gorham Judgment only one great party in the Church was aggrieved at being obliged to tolerate its Essay III. AGITATION AGAINST THE JUDGMENT. 107 adversary, in this case two parties were combined against a third. By the skilful guidance of the mysterious oracle, which spoke through the lips of the ' Quarterly Review,' the suggestion of a close alliance founded on a common antipathy to persons whom both alike dreaded or disliked had marvellously succeeded. And this bond of union, which had been formed in a moment of triumph, was tightened by the sense of the common misery of unex- pected defeat, such as proverbially unites the strangest bedfellows. But what the opposition to the recent Judgment thus gained in numerical strength, above the opposition to the Gorham Judgment, it lost in force and consistency. It is impossible not to be struck by the sincerity and conviction with which the opponents of the Gorham Judgment drew up the Resolutions respecting the doctrine1 of Baptismal Regeneration, on the maintenance of which, as they sup- posed, the salvation of the English Church depended. The interest of those Resolutions has now passed by. But they remain as a monument of what could be said and done by a party which knew its own mind, and could act freely, without regard to ulterior consequences. Far other was the conduct of the allied forces on the Alliance present occasion. The anger of the leaders, the alarm of Record, the followers, as we have said, was indeed extreme, and, we doubt not, conscientious. The ecclesiastical world was first startled by the unwonted apparition of a letter of Dr. Pusey to the editor of the ' Record ' newspaper, calling for united action against the c recent miserable, soul-destroying * Judgment.' Such an adhesion to a journal which not only denounces in the strongest terms the doctrines which he and his party have habitually represented as essential to Christianity, but has been conspicuous even amongst 1 They are given in Dr. Manning's Letter on The Crown in Council, p. 4. 108 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. its own partisans for its incessant attacks on all who do not adopt its own peculiar creed, was, no doubt, a signifi- cant fact. It was followed almost immediately by a meeting hastily called in the Music Hall at Oxford (on occasion of a Convocation convened to determine a matter of Academical Examinations), in which, amidst much confusion and disorder, a committee was appointed con- sisting of seven clergymen, selected from the extreme sections of the two aggrieved parties of the Church, to draw up a protest in accordance with Dr. Pusey's letter. Vote Before the results of their labours were distinctly made the Greek known to the world, another event occurred, which served professor. to gll0w the passions which agitated the theological mind. The too celebrated vote b}r which the non-residents of Oxford threw out a statute for the endowment of its most eminent Professor and its most useful Chair, against the feelings of the vast majority of residents, and, we may add, of the whole intelligence of the country, including even Dr. Pusey himself — was ascribed, and justly no doubt, to the determination of the leading agitators, and of the clergy who acted under the terror of the moment, to mark their displeasure at the recent Judgment by condemn- ing a Professor whose opinions could only be assailed by such an oblique blow. We note this curious act as a proof of the vehemence of party feeling roused, and as forming one episode of the irregular warfare which a large portion of the clergy has been led to wage against the Judgment which they had themselves invoked. Of the vote itself we need say no more than to refer to the strong expression of public opinion on the subject in the House of Lords, during the discussions on the endowment of the Greek Professorship by a Canonry, which the Lord Chan- cellor had for this object generously proposed to surrender, Essay III. AGITATION AGAINST THE JUDGMENT. 109 with the view of rectifying this acknowledged wrong. In the face of the severest censures, hardly a voice was raised in defence of the vote of the University — not a Bishop or Archbishop rose to vindicate an act which, if right at all, required the most positive expression of sympathy from the Episcopal Bench. Close upon this act of ' wild justice/ or ' injustice,' fol- Declara- lowed the publication of the Declaration, drawn up by the the Oxford Committee, and sent to every clergyman of the clergy. Established Church of England and Ireland, with an adjuration, * for the love of God,' to sign it.1 We are unwilling to weaken, by any words of our own, the weighty judgment pronounced by two of the most eminent members of the Episcopal Order, on 6 this melan- 4 choly Declaration,' to which signatures have been ob- tained 6 by a kind of moral torture,' and 6 in a way quite 4 unworthy of the character of those who put it forth, and ' deserving of the gravest reprobation.' 2 We do not call in question the sincerity or the ability jfs of those who drew up this Declaration. The sinister ap- absurdlty« pearance which it bears was the almost inevitable result of their embarking on an impossible enterprise. They wished to controvert and contradict what Dr. Pusey had called ' the miserable and soul-destroying Judgment ' of the Privy Council, and yet they were unwilling— justly unwilling — to state openly their opposition to the declared 1 See Essay II., p. 55. 1 We, the ' of the -whole Canonical Scriptures, as ' undersigned. Presbyters and DeacoDs, 1 not only containing but being the Word 4 in Huly Orders of the Church of ' of God, and further teaches, in the ' England and Ireland, hold it to be ' words of Our Blessed Lord, that the 1 our bounden duty to the Church 1 " punishment " of the " cursed," 1 and to the souls of men to declare ' equally with " the life " of " the 1 our firm belief that the Church ' righteous," is " everlasting." ' ' of England and Ireland, in common 2 The speeches of Bishop Tait and ' with the whole Catholic Church, main- of Bishop Thirhvall in the Upper ' tains without reserve or qualification House of Convocation, as reported in ' the Inspiration and Divine Authority the Guardian of April 27. 1So4. 110 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. law of the Church. Hence followed the palpable absurdity of signatures being attached to the protest against the Judgment by clergymen who confessed that nothing could induce them to sign if the Declaration were meant to con- travene the Judgment, or who insisted as a special con- dition of signing that they must be understood not to impugn its legal correctness. They wished to re-afiirm as the doctrine of the Church the opinion of verbal in- spiration and of the hopeless torments of future punish- ment, which the Judgment had declared not to be the doctrine of the Church, and yet they did not venture to state distinctly what that opinion was. Hence came forth a document, of which the intention indeed was manifest from the language of its framers and the occasion of its publication, but of which the language was so signally ambiguous, that, but for its obvious intention, it might have been signed by those against whom it was intended to protest, and was in fact signed by persons who, agreeing substantially with the doctrines which the Judgment had asserted, yet were able, under the cover of this ambiguity, to give their names to a protest really aimed against themselves. The pointed expression, that 6 the Church c maintains without reserve or qualification the inspiration 6 of the whole Canonical Scriptures,' was explained under the pressure of enquiry to mean that signatures might be given by those who did make large 6 reserves and qualifi- 6 cations ' in the inspiration of Scripture, provided only that they would assert their belief that the doctrine of inspiration, however qualified and reserved, was main- tained by the Church bond fide, and without evasion. The Declaration was intended to be a precise test against heterodox opinions ; yet being composed by two contending parties, each of whom had a few years ago believed each other to be fundamentally heterodox, it had to be so framed Essay III. AGITATION AGAINST THE JUDGMENT. Ill as to conceal the differences wliicli smouldered under this apparent agreement. The High Church framers were obliged to keep out of view their belief in the Divine authority of tradition, and of the Inspiration of the Apocrypha. The Low Church framers were obliged to sur- render altogether their doctrine of imputed righteousness and transfer of merit. The only point on which they were really at one with each other was that of endless future punishment, and even on this the High Church party were obliged to suppress their own solution of the matter, as furnished in the Purgatorial views sanctioned by Tract XC. and its adherents. No wonder that amidst such a complication of diffi- culties, the ambiguity of this new Fortieth Article far exceeded the ambiguity even of the celebrated Thirty- nine, to which it was to be an adjunct. No wonder that, 6 though unmistakable in its intention,' it should have been considered, even by its own admirers, as ' awkward 6 in form, construction, and language.'1 No wonder that it should exhibit in its vacillation and feebleness of state- ment a strong contrast to the decisive and vigorous, if not altogether lucid, enunciation of the High Church dogma of Baptismal Regeneration, to which we just now re- ferred, before the leaders of that party had condescended, for the sake of crushing a common antagonist, to dilute their strength by union with their own mortal foes. 6 1 ' have,' writes an able and learned ecclesiastic, 6 another 6 sufficient reason for refusing to sign the Declaration. ' I do not understand it. Or rather, since it may be ' answered that this is my misfortune, I must venture to ' say that I understand it sufficiently to be satisfied that ' it is unintelligible.' 2 1 Quart. Rev., April 1864, p. 539. Declaration, by Robert Anchor Thomp- * An able pamphlet on The Oxford son, M.A. 112 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. Its signa- What amount of authority would hang on even the most distinguished names, attached to such a nullity as this document, may be seen from the fact that the Bishop of St. David's, than whom no one has spoken of it with stronger condemnation, declares that he himself could have subscribed it, if taken with the qualification which even the actual subscribers had forced upon the framers. What amount of authority hangs on the names which are in fact attached to it, we will presently show. The longer the catalogue is, the more it calls to mind the memorable image so felicitously applied by the eminent Prelate whom we have just cited : e I cannot 1 consider them in the light 6 of so many ciphers which add to the value of the figures ' which they follow ; but I consider them in the light of a 6 row of figures preceded by a decimal point, so that how- 6 ever far the series may be prolonged, it can never rise to ' the value of a single unit.' The famous slaughter of St. Ursula and her 11,000 companions at Cologne has been by modern critics resolved into the misfortune of a single princess, accompanied by a single handmaid named Un- decemilla; and it is much to be apprehended that the procession of the 11,000 clergy would in like manner, as far as mere authority is concerned, resolve themselves into the seven names which headed the movement. Indeed, considering the extreme ambiguity of the document, and the powerful inducements, temporal, social, and spiritual, brought to bear specially on the younger country clergy, the number is less than we should have expected. A mo- ment's reflection will elucidate the real value even of the signatures thus obtained. Every one will acknowledge that on matters requiring so much thought, study, and experi- ence of life, the opinion of the Academical and Metro- politan clergy would far outweigh that of the rural districts. 1 Guardian newspaper, April 27, 18G4. Essay III. AGITATION AGAINST THE JUDGMENT. 113 The opinion of those who preside over our seats of education and of the most learned dignitaries, both in the cathedrals and the universities, would outweigh them all. What is the actual case ? We believe, in point of fact, that out of the London clergy, the signatures amount only to one-third ; out of the Professors at Oxford, nine, of those at Cam- bridge, one only, have signed ; out of the thirty English deans, eight only ; out of all the head-masters of our public schools, two only; out of the fifty clerical con- tributors to the Biblical Dictionary only six names appear attached to a document so sternly requiring an exact knowledge of the Sacred Volume ; and, in spite of the system of terrorism set on foot in the provinces, there are still more than half the clergy who have stood aloof altogether, and when the document was presented at Lam- beth, only four out of the twenty-eight Bishops lent their countenance to its formal reception. The next attempt of the defeated party was to attack Censure of their opponents by a condemnation in the Convocation of tion of Canterbury — a measure of doubtful legality, which goes far £^er" to justify the apprehensions excited by the remembrance of the history of that body in the years preceding its long suspension. That branch of Convocation consists of two Houses, — the Upper containingthe Archbishop and Bishops of the Southern Province, the Lower containing the repre- sentatives of its different dioceses and chapters, as well as its Deans and Archdeacons. In both Houses, the question of this condemnation was debated with an animation and vigour unequalled since the revival of the body in 1852. In the Upper House the discussion called forth those re- markable speeches of the Bishops of London and St. David's which we have already quoted. In spite of their energetic remonstrances, backed by the moderate and judicious support of the Bishops of Lichfield, Lincoln, and I 114 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. Ely,1 it was determined by the casting" vote of the Presi- dent, that a Committee should be appointed to revive the dying embers of the controversy, and the result was a general censure of the book, in which the Lower House was invited to express its concurrence. It was evidently expected that this censure would be carried by a stroke of hand without discussion. A vote of thanks and approval was proposed, even before the Report had been read, on which the act of condemnation was founded, and was pressed on the Lower House with all the impassioned eagerness natural in those who thought that the welfare of the Church depended on the repudiation, by whatever means, of the obnoxious opinions which the Supreme Court of Appeal had acquitted. But instead of submis- sion, there came the most determined resistance which the Lower House has in these latter days offered to their episcopal brethren of the Upper House. At every turn the Synodical Condemnation was opposed by Deans, Arch- deacons, Canons, — on every conceivable ground, of justice, decorum, precedent, law, reason, and charity, — by argu- ments which were, in great part, conceded by their op- ponents, who, it is only fair to say, listened to these unpalatable truths with a praiseworthy forbearance and courtesy. But to minds already pledged to condemn be- fore they heard, and despite of whatever they could hear, argument was addressed in vain. 6 For the sake of repu- 6 diating these opinions,' it had been said, Sve must sacrifice ' all minor considerations.' 6 All minor considerations,' replied one of the speakers in language worthy alike of his sacred profession 2 and of his own high character, 6 1 ' would sacrifice for such an object. But not " the minor 6 " considerations " of justice, mercy, and truth.' It was 1 [Bishops Lonsdale, Jackson, and 2 [Lord Arthur Hervey, now Bishop Browne.] of Bath and Wells.] Essay III. AGITATION AGAINST THE JUDGMENT. 115 urged still more emphatically, 6 All that has been said 6 against the censure is true. It is ambiguous, indis- ' criminate, unfair. But the men have been acquitted by * the highest legal Court ; and hanged they must be — and 4 if they cannot be hanged by Law, they shall be hanged 6 by Lynch Law.' This outspoken sentiment of one of the most respected and straightforward of the supporters of the censure, expressed, in fact, the sentiments of nearly all : and in the uncompromising determination, which it implied, to secure victims at any cost, we are reminded of the passage in Holy Writ which Archbishop Whately used to give as the best example of the dogged pertinacity of mistaken zeal : c We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, ' nor of his house. . . . Let seven men of his sons be 6 delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the * Lord in Gibeah of Saul.' With the close of these proceedings in Convocation, in all probability this long controversy will have reached its conclusion — and the thrice slain and thrice revived book, which has cost such oceans of gall, will be allowed to sleep in quiet — and the Protests and Declarations and Sy nodical Judgments will pass with it into the same grave as that to which during the last two hundred years have descended so many other Protests against imaginary dangers which have themselves passed away in like manner. But what happily will not pass away, will be the perma- Legal nent blessings bestowed on the Church and country by theJudg. this timely decision of the highest Court of Appeal. And ment* first, let us clearly ascertain its legal effect. The Judicial Committee, on this occasion as always, has distinctly laid down that 1 This Court has no jurisdiction or authority to settle matters of faith, or to determine what ought in any particular to be the 116 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. doctrine of the Church of England. Its duty extends only to the consideration of that which is by law established to be the doctrine of the Church of England, upon the true and legal construction of her Articles and Formularies.' This in fact is the highest point to which any authority in any existing Church, at least any existing Protestant Church, can attain. Individual bishops, individual theo- logians, may declare their own belief as to the truth or the theological importance of any particular doctrine. But not any bishop, nor all the bishops together, even if they had the legal power, can authoritatively do more than declare as binding that which is already incorporated in the Formularies, unless they make or procure to be made a new law to increase or to diminish the stock of the existing legal doctrines. Even in the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope himself has not, unless in exceptional instances, pretended to any larger power than to enforce dogmas already received by the Church, or to give a new legal sanction (as in the case of the Immaculate Concep- tion) to an opinion floating in the minds of men, but hitherto unauthorised by any such formal sanction. The Judicial Committee, acting in the name of the Sovereign and under the authority of the Legislature, has had this charge entrusted to it; and for this purpose its de- cision, until repealed, becomes at once the law of the Church. It is not surprising that Western ecclesiastics, with that impatience of the civil power which they have inherited from the Roman clergy, should be unwilling to acknow- ledge this exercise of the Royal Supremacy. We regret to see that even the two Primates who concurred in the larger part of the Judgment, allowed themselves to be car- ried away for the moment by the current of clerical agita- tion. One of them is reported to have stated in a public Essay III. ITS LEGAL EFFECT. 117 speech 1 that, whilst the Judgment of the Judicial Com- mittee had 'some shadow of colour from authority' — - ' the real authority of the Church of England is the voice ' of the clergy of the Church of " England." ' Such declarations, however well meant, are, if not ab- solutely 'groundless, exceedingly misleading. There are solemn declarations of the Church of England to the effect that, not the voice of its clergy, but the Crown (that is the Law) is supreme over all cases, ecclesiastical as well as civil. The first Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Worship in the Church, the foundation of all ecclesias- tical legislation in England, is one of the few Acts, if it be not the only one, that bears on its face the mark of having passed through Parliament without the concurrence of the spiritual peers.2 In a yet more important Act of the same momentous period — the only Act which declares what heresy is — the sole authority in this realm to which it assigns the adjudication of this question, is the High Court of Parliament (not by the judgment, but) with the assent of the clergy in Convocation.3 Even in the Church of Rome, as we have just observed, so dangerous a doc- trine has never been openly avowed, as that the opinion, even though unanimous, of the clergy on any given ques- tion is the real authority of the Church. The opinion of the Immaculate Conception was held, as the Bishop of St. David's has well pointed out, with at least as much unanimity amongst the Roman Catholic clergy as the opinion of verbal inspiration is by the English clergy at this moment — yet it was never received as a dogma till it had received the legal sanction of the highest Court of Appeal in that Church, on December 8, 1850. 1 Speech at the Church Missionary 2 Stat. 1 Eliz. c. 2. ss. 3, 15. AH Society, on May 2nd, 1864. (Guardian the bishops present dissented, newspaper, May 11, 1864. 3 Stat, 1 Eliz. c. 1. s. 36. 118 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. It is of some importance to remove these misapprehen- sions, because this is the only mode in which, in such matters, the Queen's supremacy over the Church can be exercised.1 When by the Act of the first year of Elizabeth the preeminence and jurisdiction spiritual and ecclesiasti- cal was reannexed to the Crown, it was provided* that the kings or queens of this realm should have authority to name commissioners to exercise this ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The appeals formerly addressed to Borne lay to the King in Chancery, that is to the Court of Delegates ; and it de- serves notice, that if this jurisdiction had not been trans- ferred in 1832 to the King in Council, the Delegates alone would have decided the very causes now under discussion. But it is a far more decorous and constitutional arrange- ment to vest in the judicial portion of the Privy Council the duty of advising and guiding the Crown in the exercise of this branch of its ecclesiastical authority. By a subse- quent Act, the prelates, being Privy Councillors, were added to the Court, and are bound in this capacity to tender their advice to their Sovereign. Unless it be contended that an irreconcilable difference is to prevail between the theo- logical opinions of the episcopate and the propositions of theology legally established by the Articles and Formularies of the Church of England — so that the Sovereign is to be assailed by the terrors of heresy on the one hand, and bound by strict legal obligations on the other — it is not easy to devise any safer mode of dealing with these disputes. 1 1 Eliz. cap. 1, sect. 17. ' All such 'correction of the same, and of all 'jurisdictions, privileges, superiorities 'manner of errors, heresies, schisms, ' and preeminences spiritual and ec- ' abuses, offences, contempts, and enor- * clesiastical, as by any spiritual or ' mities, shall for ever by authority of ' ecclesiastical person or authority hath ' this present Parliament be united and '■heretofore been, or may lawfully be ' annexed to the Imperial Crown of this 'exercised or xised, for the visitation * Bedim* [See Preface to Broderick and ' of the ecclesiastical state and per- Fremantle's Judgments of the Privy ' sons, and for reformation, order, and Council, pp. x.-lxxv.] Essay III. ITS LEGAL EFFECT. 119 Any attempt to remove the Bishops from the Judicial Committee would be a direct slight on the Episcopal order, as though they were incapable of taking a calm and judicial view of what under any circumstances must be a legal and not a theological question. And it would also directly tend to encourage that mischievous separation of the civil and ecclesiastical powers, which it has been the object of all wise statesmanship to conciliate, and which the whole constitution of the Church of England, as ex- pressed in its formal acts, and defended by its greatest writers, has hitherto tended to bind together in indissoluble union. We have not cited the proceedings of Convoca- tion for the sake of pointing any inference against the permission tacitly conceded by the Crown for the exercise rrf speech in the English Convocations. In a certain point of view these proceedings even serve a useful pur- pose as a safety-valve for the free expression and collision of opinion amongst the clergy. But they show conclu- sively what amount of justice and moderation, might be expected if 6 the voice of the clergy is really the voice of 6 the Church of England,' — if, as was claimed by one of the disputants in Convocation, 4 the House of Convo- c cation was really the highest Court of Appeal ' in the Church. We have learned from these proceedings to know that c the minor considerations ? — of justice and equity — would go at once to the wall ; that accused parties would be condemned without being heard ; that condemnations for opinions expressed with impunity by others would be passed against them, without any definite statement of that wherein their offence consisted. In the presence of such dangers,. we cannot but observe with regret and surprise that some distinguished laymen, as well as clergymen, have signed an address to the two Primates, expressing their deep gratitude for the Pastorals 120 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND EEVIEWS. Essay III. on which we have felt it our duty to animadvert. But our regret, if not our surprise, is greatly diminished by the reflection that, unless it means to express a concur- rence in the opinions of these Pastorals (which one of the most respectable subscribers has openly repudiated), this pompous address means absolutely nothing. It asserts merely that the subscribers believe in the Christian Faith, and it asserts this in terms so general, that not only all members whosoever of the English Church, but all persons professing the Christian Faith at all — Roman Catholics, Quakers, and Unitarians — might equally have adopted the language used. It is strange that persons of such exalted station should wish to receive, or should consent to sign, a document which either exposes itself to the grave charge of saying one thing and meaning another, or else is entirely futile. We trust that in the freedom of these remarks we have said nothing inconsistent with our respect for the high public position and the private worth of the persons concerned. And we are thankful to know, that if the distinguished occupants of the two metropolitical sees have for the time been led into an ap- parent opposition to the law, and an apparent acquiescence in these questionable compliments, the sounder feeling of the English Church has found its expression in the Bishop of London. He may rest satisfied with the assurance that his just and courageous conduct on this occasion has won the esteem and admiration of thousands whose voice will never reach him ; and we trust that in the blessings which will descend on his labours for the good of his great diocese, he will receive his best reward and com- pensation. Such being the legal character of the Judgment, there remains still the important question, what are the advan- tages which will accrue to the Church of England, and Essay III. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECT. 121 to the Christian faith itself, from the whole situation in which it leaves the doctrines at issue ? • When the Spartan general Brasidas, within the besieged city of Amphipolis, looked out on the approaching enemy, his keen eye caught through the gates the sight of the uncertain desultory movement of the troops without. 6 The * day is ours,' he exclaimed — i I see the shaking of the ' spears.' We, too, have seen c the shaking of the spears.' The resistance to the Judgment, formidable as it may appear at first sight, is really an acquiescence in it. The unsteady vacillating motion which has marked the advance of the phalanx, shows that the alarm and the animosity engendered has no deep seat in the convictions of the Church and the nation, but will pass away when the real merits of the case are more fully appreciated. We have been compelled to state clearly the nature of Theolo- the Judgment and the close of the legal process, which has wound up the long personal controversy of the last three years ; but God forbid that we should regard it as the triumph of a party. In the civil wars of ancient Eome there were no triumphs ; and in this case, so far as it is a triumph at all, it is a triumph, not of a party but of the whole Church, in which we are convinced that, sooner or later, the whole Church will thankfully ac- quiesce. Cast a rapid glance over the three questions on which Doctrine the Privy Council was called to decide. It is now de- J?£/spka" clared to be no doctrine of the Church of England that ' every part of the Bible is inspired, or is the Word of ' God.' Surely this is the actual doctrine of every intelli- gent and devout Christian, who has not committed himself irretrievably to the narrow trammels of a school. ' In- ' spired ' in the general sense in which our Liturgy uses the word, in the only passages where it uses the word at 122 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. all — ' inspired ' with a peculiar fulness by the Divine Spirit, by whose inspiration every good thought comes into the heart of man — in this sense, the Bible,1 taken as a whole, is 6 inspired ' from Genesis to Revelation. 6 The ' Word of God ' it is, in the same general sense, as con- taining the Divine revelation ; as we speak of a church as 6 the House of God,' or a prophet as c the Man of God.' In this wide and obvious sense it is used occasionally for the Bible in our Formularies. But in order to give to this general sense of inspiration, and this general appli- cation of the phrase 6 the Word of God 5 a meaning which shall contravene the position declared by the Judgment to be admissible within the Church of England, the two phrases have been extended to mean the exact and literal truth of every verse of the Bible, indeed we fear that we must add, every verse of the Received Text of the Autho- rised Version. For, unless it means this, the dreaded alternative which is put forth by the opponents of the Judgment meets us at every turn — namely, that 6 there is i no touchstone which shall test for us whether a given ' passage is part of the Word of God or of the word of ' man therewith entangled.' These are the express words in which this alternative has been put forward, But in actual fact it is accepted by hardly any educated man. Even the Pastoral of the Archbishop of Canterbury allows an unquestioned right of rejecting spurious passages. The ' touchstone ' which rejects the verse of the Three Witnesses is neither more 1 It is satisfactory to observe that earlier -work on German Theology in one passage of his letter to the had again taken possession of a mind Becord this general sense of inspira- too widely and deeply learned, to suc- tion, as given in the Judgment, is mit, without a struggle, to the tram- adopted by Dr. Pusey as 1 expressing mels of the modern schools of thought, ' our common faith.' 0 si sic omnia ! with which he has allowed himself of It is as if for a moment the free gene- late to be shackled, rous spirit which breathed through his Essay III. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECT. 123 nor less than c the verifying faculty ' of Biblical criticism ; and unless each single word of the Authorised Text is protected by the law from criticism, each student of the sacred text must apply, and does apply, that touchstone for himself. The able writer in the ' Quarterly,'1 who ap- pears to speak with all but episcopal authority, and who has adopted a far more reasonable ground since the com- mencement of his first attack, has no scruple in applying the touchstone further still. ' Christianity,' he says, 6 no more ' looks to the Bible for scientific teaching than it searches 1 for the Articles of Faith in Algebra.' ' Nothing is less ' to be encouraged than the nervous shrinking from the 6 discovery of the truth which marks some feeble re- ' ligionists, unless, indeed, it be the fussy anxiety with 6 which others rush eagerly about to invent schemes for e the hasty reconciliation of every seeming contradiction/ etc. He condemns ' passionate assertions of the absolute 6 verbal inspiration of the sacred text, which, in fact, ex- k' elude altogether the human element, and hazard the c truth of Eevelation on the correctness of Biblical state- c ments as to science and history. He agrees with the Judgment that 6 there may be parts of the Canonical ' Books . . . not written under the inspiration of the c Holy Spirit.' In like manner, many even of the sub- scribers to the Oxford Declaration claim the right of believing that there must be a reserve and qualification in the inspiration of Scripture. There are, we will venture to say, not above fifty clergymen in England who fully and from their heart believe the precepts of Leviticus or the pedigrees in the Book of Chronicles, the description of the hare as a ruminant animal, or the imprecations of Nehemiah on his enemies, to be immediately and ab- solutely the Word of God, in the same sense, or anything • April 1864, pp. 530, 561, 552. 124 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. like the same sense, as they believe this of the Sermon on the Mount or the farewell Discourses in St. John's Gospel. What the Privy Council has done is to legalise the latent — our enemies would say 4 heterodoxy,' but we boldly say — the latent c orthodoxy,' of the great mass of English opinion on this subject. Had it determined otherwise, it would, for the sake of courting a momentary popularity, have closed the doors of the Church of Eng- land against the belief held, we freely admit inconsis- tently and imperfectly, but still held by all those who have ' The not a theory to defend or a party to accuse. c The Word God.' 6 of God,' as the Bishop of St. David's well observes in that powerful Charge which must both by friends and foes be acknowledged to be fully worthy of his ancient fame — ' cannot in any passage 1 of the New Testament, be sub- ' stituted for the Bible without manifest absurdity.' And what Scripture nowhere enjoins, and hardly allows, a church or an individual must be very bold to assert without reserve or qualification. 'The Word of God' is the Divine Effluence which visited the patriarchs, which inspired the prophets, which spake by the Evangelists and Apostles, which is uttered and expressed in all the forms of Eevelation and of Eeason, which in its highest and most perfect sense is applied by St. John to the Eternal Son. The Articles speak quite correctly of c God's Word written,' that is, ' God's word as far as it is expressed in writing.' Bat this is but one form — and a very limited form — of the Word of God — a sense in which it is never, as we have seen, used in Scripture, very rarely, we believe, by the Fathers of the Church. And nothing is more debasing to the true conception of that exalted term, which may be traced through all the religions annals of the world, than to apply it to the Bible so as to 1 Charge of the Bishop of St. David's, p. 102. Essay III. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECT. 125 identify the Bible with it, as if it were that and nothing else. Still less can any argument for the absolute correctness Canonical of every part of the sacred books be drawn from the Scnptures expression 6 Canonical Scriptures.' True it is that the Scriptures, as a whole, contain the rule of faith and prac- tice, yet this is not the meaning of the word Canonical, nor can any inference be drawn from it as to the character of the books so designated. The highest, because the most learned, authority on this subject in England — we allude to Mr. Westcott 1 — has proved beyond all question that the words as applied to the Scriptures, mean not the books which rule, or contain the rule, but the books which are ruled, or placed in the rule, by the Church. It de- scribes simply an historical fact that certain books have been so received by Christendom. What those books are has been ruled differently by different portions of the Christian world. The Church of the first centuries often included the Book of Baruch, and excluded the Book of Esther, or included the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas, and ex- cluded the Apocalypse. The Church of Rome excludes the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas, and includes the Apocrypha. The Church of Armenia includes the History of Joseph and Asenath, and the Third Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. The Church of England, before the Reformation, included for several centuries the Epistle to the Laodiceans, and since the Reformation has excluded the Apocryphal books in its Articles, though describing two of them in its Homilies as of Diviue authority. But nothing has been determined either in Articles, Prayer- book, or Homilies, as to the precise nature of this autho- rity, save only that the books named in the Sixth Article contain all things necessary to salvation ; in other words i - ee article 1 Canon ' in the Dictionary of the Bible. 126 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. contain, but are not coextensive with, the Word of God, in that exalted and exact sense in which alone it can be recognised in theological definitions or legal obligations. We might multiply quotations from English divines past and present, but we will confine ourselves to one from a useful but unpretending little work by a well-known clergyman of the so-called Evangelical School, which incorporates some of the most decisive from former times.1 1 I do earnestly plead in behalf of Holy Scripture, that instead of demands for it which end in outrages upon it, we abide by the doctrine of the Sixth Article, and the Homilies of our Church. Of the Sixth Article, when it declares " Holy Scripture containeth all i£ things necessary to Salvation." Of the Homilies, when they say, " Unto a Christian man there can be nothing either more necessary u or profitable than the knowledge of Holy Scripture ; forasmuch as " in it is contained God's true Word, setting forth His glory, and " also man's duty." " For in Holy Scripture is fully contained what " we ought to do and what to eschew, what to believe, what to Jove, "and what to look for at God's hands." (Homily 1.) " For the " Holy Scriptures are God's treasure-house, wherein are found all " things needful for us to see, to hear, to learn, and to believe, " necessary for the attaining of eternal life." ' And this principle is re-echoed by Hooker : " The principal " intent of Scripture is to deliver the laws of duties supernatural."' (I. 14.) And again, " Scripture teaches us that saving truth which " God hath discovered unto the world by revelation." (iii. 8.) And still more emphatically, " The main drift of the whole New Testa- " ment is that which St. John setteth down as the purpose of his " own history, ' These things are written that ye might believe that " ' Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that believing ye might have " ' life through His name.' The drift of the Old, that which the " Apostle mentioneth to Timothy, 4 The Holy Scriptures are able to " 4 make thee wise unto salvation.'1 So that the general end both of " Old and New is one." With which accord the deeply suggestive words of Bacon, 44 Some have pretended to find the truth of all 11 natural philosophy in the Scriptures. . . . But neither do 1 A Plea for Holy Scripture. By Thomas Griffith, A.M., Prebendary of St. Paul's. Essay III. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECT. 127 " they give lionour to the Scriptures, as they suppose, but much " embase them. For to seek heaven and earth in the Word of God, " is to seek temporary things amongst eternal: to seek philosophy " in divinity is to seek the dead among the living ; neither are the. "pots or lavers, whose place was in the outward part of the temple, " to be sought in the holiest place of all, where the ark of the testi- " mony was seated. The scope or purpose of the Spirit of God is " not to express matters of nature in the Scriptures otherwise than " in passage, and for application to man's capacity and to matters " moral or divine. For it is a true rule, c Auctoris aliud agentis " ' parva auctoritas.' " 'The sufficiency of Scripture is not asserted as to anything else but this. It has not to do with settling matters of Science, or Phi- losophy, or History, or Ethnology : it has to do only with the Keve- lation of the one True God in His relation to man. 1 There are indeed other things in Scripture, of infinite truth and beauty, but they are all subordinate to this. There are its his- torical elements, its poetical, its legal, its political, its prophetical, its philosophical, its moral, its mystical. It has something to tell us about everything that has interested or can interest the human mind. But the one thing which makes it to us emphatically " God's " Treasure-house " is its Disclosure, amidst all these accessory mat- ters, of the otherwise unknown and unknowable God — His character, *His works, His ways.' Still more conducive to the interests of religion has been the refusal of the Supreme Court of Appeal to pledge itself and the Church to any popular theory of the future punishment of the wicked or of the mode of justification. These questions were not, properly speaking, part of the original controversy which has precipitated this decision. But they are not less momentous in their bearings on Chris- tian Theology ; and of these, no less than of the question of Inspiration, it is obvious that the opinion of the clergy is : not sufficiently matured to require any definition, beyond that which has been given. The doctrine of the endless- Doctrine of I ness of future punishment might, indeed, at first seem to pJJn"^ have a stronger hold, and in a more precise form, than ment- that of verbal inspiration. But here, again, the moment 128 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. we press the prevalent belief, we feel that it is either altogether fluctuating, or else expresses itself in forms wholly untenable. The ' tacit repugnance • 1 with which, from the days of Origen downwards, some of the leading spirits of the Christian Church have rejected the sterner dogma, has constantly kept alive a protest which no tra- ditional weight has been able entirely to smother. Perhaps of all the secondary arguments that Mr. Wilson used in his defence, none was more effective than that in which he cited the well-known sermon of Archbishop Tillotson, and then asked whether, after elaborately preaching such a doctrine, one man should have been raised to the Primacy of this great Church, whilst for merely expressing a hope that there may be conditions of restoration and recovery for God's erring creatures, another should be suspended from his functions — ' Ille crucem sceleris pretium tulit, hie diadema.' But it is more to our present point to observe that the doctrine of endless torments, if held, is not practically taught by the vast majority of the English clergy. How rarely in these modern days have our pulpits resounded with the detailed descriptions of future punishments, which abound in the writings of the seventeenth century ! How rarely does any one even of the strictest sect venture to apply such descriptions to any one that he has personally known ! And when we read the actual grounds on which the belief is rested by those who now put it forth as one of the essential articles of the faith, we find that it reposes almost entirely on the doubtful interpretation, in a single passage, of a single word, which in far the larger propor- tion of passages where it occurs in the Bible, cannot possibly bear the meaning commonly put upon it in this 1 Dean Milmau's History of Latin Christianity, vi. 2,33. Essay III. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECT. 129 particular text. We must, we are told, believe in the endless punishment of the wicked, because in one verse in St. Matthew's Gospel, ' the punishment of the cursed ' equally with the life of the righteous is called everlast- 6 ing.' We do not now dwell on the real meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words translated c everlasting ' in this or in any other passages. We do admit as the obvious fact that the true meaning of Our Lord's parable where this solemn warning occurs is not to determine the nature of the future state, but to recognise the just deserts of those who, however unconsciously, have served Him by serving His brethren, and of those who, amidst whatever profes- sions, have neglected the practical duties of life. However this may be, it is certain that the true Christian belief in the blessedness of the good rests not on the sense of any single word, or of any single text, but on the conviction pressed upon us alike by conscience and by the whole tenour of Scripture, that God's essential attributes are unchangeable — that of all His attributes none is more essential or more unchangeable than His love for those who love Him, and His desire to recover those who have gone astray from Him. It is the love of God and the fear of God, the love of goodness and the hatred of sin, not the hope of heaven or the fear of hell, that in the Bible are made the foundations of human action — the way to eternal life. The excellent men who put forward the Oxford Declaration could hardly have weighed the whole force of their expression when they entreated their younger brethren, c for the love of God,' and 6 in common with the ' whole Catholic Church,' to sign a statement which, if taken literally, was (as they were reminded in a remark- able letter from a High Churchman of no wavering faith), £ making private and heretical opinions the measure of ' the Church's faith — defining where neither the Catholic 130 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. 6 Church nor the Scriptures have defined.' 6 You assert,' 1 he proceeds, 6 that eternity — ' must be understood in precisely the same sense of the creature as of the Creator, of evil as of good, of union to Satan as of union to God. Surely a very little thought might have taught you better. The words " eternal " and " everlasting," or phrases answering to these, are constantly used in a relative sense in the Old Testament Scriptures with reference to Jewish ordinances designed to pass away, and they signify " indefinite and continuous," until super- seded by a higher law or principle, never tending to come to an end of themselves. Is it necessary to teach learned men like you that whatever begins in time may also know an end in time ; that there is this essential and infinite difference between the eternity of good and of evil — that the one has never begun, but was from all eternity; that the other has begun, and may therefore end ; that it is nothing less than blasphemous to draw comparisons between the eternity of the everlasting Son of God and the relative eternity of his sinful creatures ; that evil having nothing Divine in it is essentially finite, not infinite ; that it consists in rebellion to the will of God, and has no inherent endless vitality ; that the happiness of the blessed rests not on a word, or a syllable, but on their perfect union with God, who is infinite life and joy ; that we have no " data " whatever on which to ground the assertion that the eternity of sin, of pain, and of evil, is equally unlimited, absolute, and infinite; that these are " the deep things of God " which really wise men will not seek to fathom or define too closely ; that Catholics content themselves with using the language of Scripture and the creeds without attempting to do what the whole Catholic Church never has done, sound the limits and take the accurate measure of that love of Christ con- cerning whicli an inspired Apostle prays for his brethren that they might be able to comprehend " what is the breadth, and length, " and depth, and height, and know that love of Christ which passeth " knowledge ? " ' ' All honour to the wise laymen, therefore, who, in our highest court of appeal, with the assistance of the three highest ecclesiastical assessors in the land, have delivered on these grave questions a sound and Catholic judgment, against which you are now urging an heretical, a disloyal, and a most unhappy movement; disturbing the hearts and minds of Christ's people, exciting the weak, practi- 1 Letter of the Rev. Archer Guruey to the Editor of the Daily News. Essay III. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECT. 131 cally to the desertion of our communion, and driving all young, generous and noble spirits into scepticism and open infidelity.' It was no sceptical philosopher, no rationalist theologian, but the most devout and saintly of the t most Christian 4 kings/ to whom, as it was believed by his contemporaries, was vouchsafed the vision, in which his envoys met, by the shores of Palestine, a woman of stately form ap- proaching them, with a brazier of burning coals in one hand, and a vase of water in the other. They asked her who she was, and what she bore in her hand. ' I am,' she answered, ' the Christian Religion — and I come with 6 these burning coals to dry up the rivers of Paradise, and ' with these streams of water to quench the fires of hell, ' that henceforth mankind may serve me for myself alone — ' may hate sin and cleave to good, for the love of God 6 and for the love of goodness.' A bold, perhaps too bold, conception, but representing a truth on which all Christian teachers would do well to meditate. It is not in the interests of philosophy, but in the interests of Religion herself, that we are bound to avoid exaggerated statements of the details of that future state, which transcends all human thought. It is from relying not on the dictates of a presumptuous reason, but on the revelations of the nature of God made in the Bible itself, that we shrink from closing for ever that door of hope which He in His infinite mercy, not in one passage only, but in many of the sacred Scriptures, has appeared to some of the holiest and purest Christians to leave open. The Bible is either silent, or speaks with a voice which conveys to some the brighter, as to others the darker, conclusion. The Church in its formal documents is silent altogether. The Forty- second Article, affirming the harsher doctrine, has been long ago struck out of the Articles of the English Church. The clergy waver in their K 2 132 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND KEVIEWS. Essay III. own teaching respecting it. Those (if any there be) who really hold it, and really teach it, can hold and teach it now more effectively, from the fact that they will be known to do so, not from any imaginary compulsion of the law, but from their own unbiassed convictions. Now that the liberty to teach and to think freely on this mysterious subject is openly allowed and avowed, we doubt not that the true Biblical doctrine, whatever it is, will, through the manifold fluctuations of human belief respecting it, be at last clearly and consistently set forth. Liberty There remains the question, perhaps in itself the most question of "thorny of all — and that which appeared most directly to Imputed infringe on the language of the Articles — the doctrine of Eighteous- b . . ness. c transfer by merit ; ' or as it is sometimes called, of 6 sub- ' stitution,' or of 6 imputed righteousness.' Unlike the questions of Inspiration, and of Future Punishment — on which subjects no one has pretended that any Article has expressly spoken, and on which all the allegations in the recent controversies were drawn only by way of remote inference — here was a doctrine, to which one Article at least distinctly and exclusively refers. There is no Article on Inspiration. There is no Article on Hell Fire. But there is an Article on the doctrine of Justification by Faith only. In this great Article, however, the Judgment has ruled that we must not, or we need not, interpret its language beyond the exact letter of what it lays down. It asserts, so say all the Judges, that we are justified 6 for the merits,' it does not assert that we are justified 6 by the transfer of the ' merits of Christ.' We might have thought that no part of the Judgment would have provoked a more determined resistance from the whole Puritanical party in the Church, than this announcement that no theory of transferred or imputed righteousness is involved in the 'Article of a Essay III. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECT. 133 4 falling or standing Church.' But here came in the advantage of the union between the two contending parties. To High Churchmen as to Roman Catholics, imputed righteousness is a heresy. Their cooperation could be secured by their ancient enemies only at the cost of not raising once more this ancient feud. Not entirely without a struggle, but with a struggle so faint as to have left no traces behind, every protest on this point was abandoned. This part, perhaps the most important part of the whole Judgment, has been received without a mur- mur ; and the voice, or the silence, of the whole English clergy has acquiesced in the clearance of these entangling and vexatious theories from the great doctrine of the Redemption of man. Yvre will not dwell on the lasting benefits of this particular result of the Judgment ; but we are satisfied that they will, in a few years, be acknow- ledged even by that party, or, more properly speaking, that class of mind, which has hitherto most eagerly caught at such theories, as though they were the very bulwarks of the Faith. Firmly compacted as the popular theology seemed to be on this special point, on none, we are con- vinced, is it more entirely (to use the sacred phrase) c ready to wax old and vanish away ; ' and we are, there- fore, proportionably thankful that nothing has occurred in the recent Judgment to stand in the way of this peaceful and gradual disappearance of scholastic forms, which only commended themselves to the truly devout mind because of the Eternal Truth which those forms represented, and which will shine out more clearly than ever, now that it is disencumbered, in law as well as in fact, from the theories which disfigured and concealed it. That on each of these three questions, the conclusions of the clergy, at present so fluctuating and unsettled, should thus be left free to form themselves, is in itself an immense 134 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. boon. As our great historian describes the unconscious benefits of the Peace of Kyswick,1 so we doubt not that when the immediate pressure and panic of the moment have passed away, every English clergyman, even in the most secluded parish, or amidst the most arduous pastoral work, will find his course easier, and be made aware, with- out knowing the cause, that the atmosphere has become lighter and the heavens brighter. He will find weapons of attack against his neighbours not so ready at hand as they used to be ; he will find the means of agreement and mutual cooperation increased tenfold. Controversy perhaps will still roll on, but it will not be embittered by the taunts of dishonesty and unfaithfulness to a Church which has now proclaimed itself able and willing to bear the shock of free enquiry. It will be recognised that the Articles which would have admitted the doubts of Calvin, and the difficulties of Luther, on the Sacred Books, and the Prayer-book, which was read with a safe conscience by Archbishop Tillotson, have not closed the doors against their spiritual descendants. We shall have lost the ex- pensive luxury of prosecutions, but we shall have gained the blessings of truth and peace. ' And the land had rest 6 forty years.' No Judg- There is a yet wider benefit conferred by this decision thTandent than anything which merely affects the interests of a single KMcal°n Cnm'cn- Had the Privy Council stereotyped the theory Criticism. 0f Literal Inspiration, of Endless Punishment, and of Merit by Transfer, it would have done more to separate the English Church from universal Christendom than any act of our Church since the Eeformation. Down to this time, these questions have been, by God's good providence, kept open in all the great and ancient Churches of the 1 Macaulay's Hist, of England, vol. iv. p. 810. Essay III. IN RELATION TO THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 135 world. Take them in order. Look first at the subject of Biblical Inspiration and Interpretation. There is not a word respecting it in the ancient creeds. There has not been a decree respecting it in any single Council, ancient or modern. The question of what was or was not to be a part of Scripture clamoured for solution in the first four centuries even more imperatively than it does now. Not merely individual against individual, but Church against Church, maintained a different Canon of Scripture. Books received by the Church ' of Eome were rejected by the Church of Alexandria, and books received by the Church of Alexandria were rejected by the Church of Rome. Interpretations resolving nearly the whole of the Old Testament history into allegory, obtained a predominance and authority such as they have never obtained since, even in Germany. During this crisis were convened the first, second, third, and fourth General Councils, the only authorities external to itself in any way recognised by the Church of England, as competent to determine what is and what is not heresy. By them not a decree was framed, not a word was uttered, on this urgent question. From the question even of defining the limits of the Canon, those august authorities seem to have shrunk almost as if in terror. A legend, which ascribes such a determination to the Council of Mcsea, shows how natural would have been the temptation, whilst its fabulousness proves how suc- cessfully the temptation was resisted. Even Provincial Councils hung back. The famous decree of the Council of Laodicea is now known to be a forgery, and even were it genuine, the Council was but a small and (as it seems) heretical 1 synod. The only decree really passed by any ancient Council on the subject of the Canon was by the 1 Westcott's Bible in the Church, p. 1 70. 136 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. Provincial Council of Carthage, which included amongst the Canonical Books as of equal authority, the Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament. The only decree passed by any Council, ancient or modern, professing to be a General Council, was that of Trent, which followed the Council of Carthage in including the Apocrypha, and c received tra- 6 ditions of the Church pertaining to faith and practice,' c with an equal feeling of devotion and reverence ; ' and this decree, the first of any authority ever passed, was 6 ratified by only fifty-three prelates,1 amongst whom there 6 was not one scholar distinguished for historical learning, ' not one who was fitted by special study for the examina- ■ 6 tion of a subject in which the truth could only be de- ' ter mined by the voice of antiquity.' Yet not even in the Council of Trent was any decree or opinion passed on the inspiration, or authorship, or interpretation of any of those books. On all these points the Roman Catholic divine is as free as the Protestant — freer (as far as their authorised confessions go) than the Protestant divines of Scotland or Prance, as free as the freest divine in the English Church, to whom the Privy Council has accorded the same liberty that has been accorded by the solemn decrees of the whole Catholic Church, Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, alike. No Judg- Similar to the history of the freedom of thought on the ancient Canon and Inspiration of Scripture in Christendom at HeH Tor-n large> ^s ^ne history of the freedom of thought on the ments. question of the future Punishment of the Wicked. We need not for this purpose go into the dark caverns of theology. There is not a more widely renowned name in the Early Church than that of Origen. ' I love the name 6 of Origen,' says a distinguished theologian of the Roman Catholic Church : 6 1 will not listen to the notion that so 1 Westcott's Bible in the Church, p. 257. Essay III. EN RELATION TO THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 137 6 great a soul was lost.' 1 If there is any opinion more closely than another connected with this splendid memory, it is that of the final restoration of the wicked. Nor did the opinions of Origen die with him. They continued to form the backbone, so to say, of a vast school of thought. They emerged all along the horizon of the Church, at the very time when the four General Councils met. They were the battlefield of rival factions. Yet not till the sixth century is there any hint of their condemnation by any supreme authority. Then not by any General Council, but by a small ecclesiastical synod convened in the Palace at Constantinople, not through the inspiration of any illustrious Father of the Church, but at the absolute com- mand of the most worldly Emperor and the most wicked Empress that ever sat on the imperial throne, the opinions of Origen were censured, and his name cast out as here- tical. We can hardly wonder that no General Council has ever sanctioned a decree so passed. ' I had rather be 6 with Origen wherever he is, than with Justinian and * Theodora wherever they are,' is the instinctive feeling, not only of the generous and devout spirit from whom this exclamation was wrung in a moment of harsh treat- ment by his theological adversaries, but of all who have ever thought at all on the awful question on which these two contending parties took the opposing sides. From that time downwards, although the belief in the Eternity of Hell Fire took a deeper and more universal hold on the minds of men, yet it received the sanction only of general sentiment, not of Catholic authority. Whatever value we attach to the decree of Justinian's Synod, even if we con- cede the bare possibility that it may have received the sanction of the Fifth General Council — yet it remains certain that no creed of any ancient Church entered on Dr. Newman {Apologia pro Vita sua, part vii. p. 399). 138 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. the question at all. The Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed are absolutely silent.1 Neither in any of the Councils binding on the Greek Church, nor in the Coun- cil of Trent, nor in the Creed of Pope Pius IV., is there any opinion expressed on the nature or duration of Hell Torments. Even in popular belief, the severity of the doctrine, and the immense difficulties which it suggests in its application to the actual complications of human character, were softened in the Eastern Church by a theory of sudden purification at the moment of death, or at the Judgment Day — and in the Latin Church by the vast variety of punishment, allowed in the lower world, (witness Dante's identification of the highest circle of the Inferno with the Paradise, the Elysian fields of heathen poets,) and still more by the theory of a Limbo for heathens and children, and of a Purgatory for all but the very worst — a doctrine which in fact covers almost all the cases which render the popular doctrine of Hell so appalling to re- flecting minds. No Judg- Of the third question before the Privy Council — that of ment of the an- 4 the transfer of merit ' or 6 imputed righteousness ' — it is Church on narc^J necessary to say, that not only this particular theory, ^Slteous ^e w^°^e subject to which it relates, is passed over by ness. the ancient Councils and Creeds, as though it did not exist. They simply declare in the most general terms that ' Christ lived and died for the salvation of man,' and thus leave the grandest theme of religious thought in its native unadorned impressiveness. We grant that in this question, unlike the case of the two others we just noticed, this silence may be accounted for by the fact, that such theories were at that early age unknown. Dionysius of Alexandria, 1 With reference to the ' Athanasian word which it uses to express them Creed ' (which is not properly a Creed is open to the same ambiguity as where at all), though the savage intention of it occurs in Scripture, its curses can hardly be doubted, the Essay III. IN RELATION TO THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 139 and Theodore of Mopsuestia, had stirred to its depths the controversy of the Canon and of the authority and author- ship of the Sacred Books. Origen had fixed the attention of the whole Christian world on the question of the dura- tion of Hell Torments. Those opinions, therefore, when tolerated by the Councils, were tolerated deliberately and with open eyes. But the question of 6 Imputed Righteous- * ness ' and its correlative controversies could hardly have been noticed at all till Anselm and Thomas Aquinas began to put into shape the floating scholastic schemes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and these schemes could not be noticed authoritatively till they had sprung into dogmatic importance, under the disproportionate influence of Luther and Calvin. Then, and not till then, were they noticed by the Council of Trent. We — knowing the true Christian feeling which is often enshrined in those strange, exaggerated, unwarranted theories — might think that the wisest course would have been to pass them by and let them insensibly assume the gentler shape which they have put on in the best men of all parties in the Lutheran and Anglican communions. But the Council of Trent, hi the zeal of polemics, went further, and the imputation of Christ's righteousness, which Dr. Williams merely condemned as an unphilosophical statement of the truth, is in the eleventh Canon of its sixth Session condemned as a theological heresy. Had the Privy Council given its sanction to the popular view, it would have thus run directly counter to the only decree which has ever been pronounced on this mysterious question by any Council claiming the name of (Ecumenical or revered by any large body of Christians. It will have been observed that the Oxford Declaration claims the countenance of ' the whole Catholic Church ' for its dogma of Literal Inspiration, and of the identity of th e meaning of Eternity as applied to future blessedness 140 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. and future misery. It does not claim any such sanction for the doctrine of Merit by Transfer. But, in fact, on each one of these points the whole Catholic Church is, as we have seen, with the Privy Council and against the modern dogmatists. The Catholic Church refuses to de- cide, exactly as the Church of England has refused to decide. Its individual theologians — perhaps the vast majority of its members — may agree with the sentiments of the Declaration. But in its corporate capacity, whether through Council, through Creed, or through Pope, it is as silent as the Judicial Committee. We do not wish to exaggerate the importance of this wise reticence of the ancient Universal Church, knowing, as we do, how often its judgments and decrees were mis- taken. Nor do we look forward, with any confident or definite hope, to a formal reunion between the divided branches of Christendom. Such a vision may be reserved for remote posterity. For us, and for our children, its realisation is hardly probable. But we have the firmest belief that there is now, and will increasingly be, a far better understanding between the various Churches than was pos- sible in former times ; and we cannot endure the thought that through any temporary excitement, permanent ob- stacles should be raised in any of the greater Churches which should make our estrangements wider, and our hopes of mutual association and cooperation feebler. Such a bar would unquestionably have been raised had the Church of England, through its highest Court of Appeal, taken upon itself to decide on those important questions which are left entirely open throughout the authoritative de- cisions of the whole ancient Catholic Church. T., . What is true of the Universal Church in its more .Liberal movement primitive times, is still, in great measure, true of its best land. developments in modern times. The smaller sects and Essay III. IN RELATION TO OTHER CHURCHES. 141 Churches may have ruled those matters according to their own peculiar fancies, but even in them we feel sure that the tendency of Christian consciousness moves towards the same result as that which we have attained. The most active and intelligent members of the Church of Scotland, through all its .branches, are feeling their way through enormous difficulties towards the light of a freer, wider, more Evan- gelical, more Catholic Gospel than satisfied Andrew Melville or Ebenezer Erskine. The leaders of the most enlightened of our English Nonconformists — the chief of the 6 Inde- In English Noncon- 4 pendent ' ministers — are gradually adopting a theology formity. more worthy of their noble name, and of the capacious minds of the powerful Ruler and the illustrious Poet whom they count amongst their first founders. And when we turn from the authoritative decrees to the indi- vidual theologians of the more ancient Churches, though the prospect is there less cheering, yet there also the strains we hear are of a higher mood than the mere clamour of popular theologians or terrified politicians would lead us to expect. We cannob doubt that there will arise in In Russia, the Church of Russia some who may still carry on the echo of those marvellous letters of the Chretien orthodoxe, in which the lamented Khamiakoff poured forth his aspi- rations after the future through a union of tenacious adherence to ancient orthodoxy with a firm confidence in the results of Biblical criticism and Christian charity, such j as we have never seen surpassed. And in the Roman in the Catholic Church, amidst much that is calculated to dis- 5°Tav 7 Catholic courage the boldest hopes, recent events have revealed to us Church, a movement of importance (if importance is to be measured by solidity of argument and depth of knowledge) equal (to any that has ever heaved the bosom of that mighty organisation. We know indeed that, as we thus write, we incur 142 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. an anathema of even loftier assumptions and severer language than those which we have cited with reluctance from the Primates of our own Church. To the Pastorals of Canterbury and of York has been added the Pastoral1 of a third prelate bearing a more ambiguous title, who has seized the occasion for claiming for his own Church a decisive authority, which he sees to have been refused in ours, on the two questions (of inspiration and the dura- tion of Hell Fire), which he has ventured to call ' vital ' doctrines ' of 6 the sacred deposit.' But he too speaks on this occasion only as an individual theologian, and not with the authority of his Church. It is true that the Decrees of Trent, like our own Formularies, recognise the canonicity of the Sacred Books, and certain passing allusions to Eternal Punishment. But neither in the one nor in the other is there any definition of the extent of Inspiration, or of the limits of the Divine Mercy; and those who at Cardinal Wiseman's rhetorical appeal pass on these grounds from us to him, will not find in the Church of Rome any more than in the Church of England, the authoritative decision which they seek. 'Home and gut it is impossible not to perceive that it is not to us Foreign Review.' alone that this Westminster Pastoral, with all its power of diction and all its gravity of statement, is addressed. It evidently attacks, through the sides of the Church of England, that noble movement, of which we just now spoke, of which the centre is the focus of Roman Catholic learning in Germany, and of which the chief organ has been one of the most learned and able of all our English contemporary journals. We know not any sight more commanding the respectful sympathy of Pro- testant theologians at the present moment, or more in- structive as bearing on our own present difficulties and > Pastoral Letter of His Excellency Cardinal Wiseman, MDCCCLXIV. Essay III. IN RELATION TO OTHER CHURCHES. 143 speculations, than the history of the late Eoman Catholic Congress at Munich, and of the 'Home and Foreign Eeview ' in England. In the pages of that Eeview — which, now that it is unhappily extinguished, we may treat as a separate work of independent authorship — there will be found matter more calculated than anything else that could be named to allay the fears of those who have been agitated amongst ourselves. There they will see how the spirit in which the recent Judgment was con- ceived, and the spirit of those inquiries which have called it forth, is shared by the most devout and faithful ad- herents of the most dogmatic Church in the world. A glance at its last theological article (on Dr. Smith's ' Dictionary of the Bible ') will show that on every one of the great Biblical questions which have so vexed the minds of English Churchmen — the authorship of the Pen- tateuch, the authorship of the second part of Isaiah, the authority of the Septuagint, the date of the Book of Daniel, the speech of Stephen, the Noachian deluge — the writer, from the most orthodox point of view, decides fearlessly on all these questions, and decides on what (for want of a better word) we must call the liberal side — on the side of the Essayists, against the Oxford Declaration and the Bishop of Salisbury. In the pages of an earlier number of that same Review is told, in language as forcible as its information is exact and its knowledge wide, the story of that memorable meeting of German Catholic divines summoned in the capital of Bavaria under the presidency of their distinguished Professor, Munic Dr. Dollinger. Were we to search the pages of all our Congr contemporary literature for a just delineation of the situation of parties in our own Church during the last five years, and for the warnings and consolations which that situation suggests, we could not wish for anything 144 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. more apposite than the remarks contained in the address with which Dr. Dollinger closed the proceedings of that august assembly. 1 I remember a time, when there prevailed amongst German theo- logians a spirit of concord and a brotherly striving after a common end, for which for some years past we look in vain — which, if we may trust more than one serious indication, threatens more and more to vanish entirely from amongst us. It is especially striking that every attempt to handle theories of philosophy or principles of knowledge in theological matters immediately provokes a bitter peace- hating tone, a mania for denunciations and censures, which must fill the quiet observer who cares only for the welfare of the Church and of science, with grief and disgust. How often in the reading of our ecclesiastical journals and controversial writings are we reminded of the truth of the saying, " Qui pauca considerat "facile pronunciat." But even worse than those rash and hasty judgments is the passion which, within the last few years, has grown up for an organised system of religious suspicion. One is tempted to believe that amongst certain divines the old rule, " quilibet prcesu- 1 mitur esse bonus, donee probetur malus " is reversed in all cases where ecclesiastical orthodoxy is in dispute. ... It would be far better for us, if we could but always remember, that no theolo- gian has the right to give out a mere theological opinion, or the doctrine of a particular school, as an article of faith sanctioned by the Church. The great scholastic theologians maintained that it was not less heretical to declare that to be an article of faith which was not de fide, than to deny an article of faith altogether.1 ' What we need in our theological discussions is to allow the unbroken dominion of a spirit of mutual justice, and of brotherly* considerate, forbearing charity. The cause of the Church, which our zealots profess to serve, would be best secured, if they would but give the first place to the great virtues — the characteristic vir- tues of the Church — Humility and Charity — and abstain from assuming the office of judges over others, who to their own Master must stand or fall. That there are now in Germany two theolo- gical tendencies is an acknowledged fact, which no individuals can hope to alter. The methods of these two tendencies must be dif- ferent from each other. The one, we may say, fights with the bows and arrows of a past age, the other with the firearms of the present. What is so earnestly to be desired, so absolutely necessary, is, that 1 Compare S. Basil, quoted by Jeremy Taylor, vol. viii. p. 25. Essay III. IN RELATION TO OTHER CHURCHES. 145 as they both aim at a common object, each should endeavour to interpret the other's expressions from the other's circle of thought. There may be many, to whom, from their natural want of spiritual and mental elasticity, this may seem an impossible demand. So much the more urgent is the duty of always taking for granted that the writer of whom we complain is in accordance with Catholic doctrine, and that his views, though expressed in other terms than those familiar to his opponents, must be taken in an orthodox sense, unless the opposite is self-evident. I entreat you for the future in all theological and philosophical questions to contend only with scien- tific weapons, and to banish all denunciations and all suspicions from our literature as alike alien to the spirit of our country and our religion ; and much rather take for our pattern the noble and truly evangelical mildness with which the enlightened teachers of the ancient Church, as Augustine in his dispute with Jerome, dealt with the differing views of their opponents.' The Congress, which had been opened under the bless- ing of the Pope, and with the concurrence of the highest ecclesiastical authorities, has been overtaken by a storm of Pontifical displeasure. In exact accordance with the clamour of the less enlightened of our own clergy, a Papal Brief has been issued, refusing to acknowledge the claims of scientific truth, and endeavouring to exalt the floating unauthorised opinions of small bodies, or popu- lar theologians, to the level of dogmatic authority, ' not ' altogether denying the distinction between dogma and ' opinion, but reducing the practical recognition of it to ' the smallest possible limits.' Prom this conflict thus instituted between the Papal See and the principles advocated by the Congress of Munich, the distinguished editor of the * Home and * Foreign Review ' has thought it right to withdraw, by submitting to an authority which he considers legitimate, though he wholly declines to accept its principles. We will not insist on contrasting the dignified and manly attitude of this submission with the wavering alterna- L 146 JUDGMENT ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Essay III. tion of defiance and surrender held out by too many of our own divines in the presence of the decision of our own Supreme Court of Appeal. It is more profitable to dwell on the elevated sentiments with which the Review is closed, and which apply to all those who, whether within or without the Church of Rome, within or without the Church of England, refuse to abandon the hope of a reconciliation between Religion and Science, or delight to cherish, amidst whatever discouragements, the light which still lives and burns, and will live and burn with ever- increasing brilliance, ' in the hearts of 6 the silent thinkers of the Church.' It is consoling to feel 6 that the principles which have been upheld in ' that or any other organ of Christian freedom will not 6 die with it ; but will find their destined advocates and c will triumph in their appointed time.' It is consoling to be assured that 6 from the beginning of the Church, it 6 has been a law of her nature, that the truths which 6 naturally proved themselves the legitimate products of 6 her doctrines have had to make their slow way upwards ' through a phalanx of hostile habits and traditions, and 6 to be rescued, not only from open enemies, but also ' from friendly hands that were not worthy to defend < them.' Hopes of The gallant champion of these truths in the Roman theok>-eral Catholic Church turns with confidence to the belief that Somarf *n ^e P*ety> *n smcernty? 1X1 ^ne learning of the great Catholic writers of his own creed, 6 practice will compel an assent 6 which is denied to theory, and men will learn to value ' in the fruit what the germ did not reveal to them.' Our confidence is the same, but founded, we trust, on a still firmer basis. We cannot but believe that in the Church of England the spirit of Hooker and of Butler will again revive, in those new forms which the change of Essay III. IN RELATION TO OTHER CHURCHES. 147 times and circumstances requires. We see already the possibility of a Christian union based on other grounds than those of a mistaken antipathy to Christian progress and enlightenment. We know that genius and know- ledge and freedom have a uniting tendency, as surely as narrowness and dullness and ignorance have a sectarian and dividing tendency. We believe that what Professor Dollinger has well said of the contending Churches in Germany, is still more true of the contending parties within our own communion: 1 — 1 The future union cannot be looked for in the form of a simple, immediate, and, as it were, material reincorporation of the divided confessions. There must be first a certain introductory process of purification on both sides, and knowledge must pioneer the way ; each of the two communities, though in different measure, has advantages to receive from the other ; each has to free itself from faults and onesidedness with the help of the other, to fill up gaps in its religious and ecclesiastical life, and to heal its wounds — while neither could be asked to give up anything which had been found to be a real good. . . . And thus the domain of his- torical science [and we may add of biblical criticism] appears like the Truce of God in the middle ages, or like a consecrated place, where those elsewhere religiously divided have come together and carry on their enquiries and their work in harmony ; where all, im- pelled by the same thirst of knowledge, and drinking out of the same sacred fountains of Truth, grow together in one common fellowship ; and from this fellowship and brotherhood of knowledge there will one day proceed a higher unity and conciliation embrac- ing the whole domain of historical and then of religious truth, when under the influence of a milder atmosphere the crust of polemical and sectarian ice thaws and melts away, as the patriot and Christian hopes and prays.' 1 These remarks are taken from the the Professor's hopes no less than the eulogium delivered by Professor D61- King's (Konig Maximilian II. und die linger on the late King of Bavaria. Wissenschaft, pp. 32-34.). But it is evident that they represent 148 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. A LETTER ON TEE STATE OF SUBSCRIPTION IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.1 My dear Lord Bishop, I have asked your permission to address tliis letter to you, not with the view of making your Lordship in any way responsible for its contents, which I have pur- posely forborne from submitting to your perusal before- hand, but because your eminent position in the Church will be the best explanation of my motives in calling public attention to a state of things which demands the serious consideration of those who are most interested in the welfare of the Church of England, and which has, both in former times and recently, engaged your own attention. That such a task as I here undertake is not of my own seeking you will readily understand. It diverts me from pressing and far more inviting occupations ; and brings me across conflicts which I would gladly avoid. But I know that the sentiments which are here expressed are shared by many both amongst clergy and laity. My office as one of the Theological Professors in our great University, and as Examining Chaplain in the diocese of London, brings these questions directly before my notice ; and 6 the signs of the times point not obscurely ' in the 1 [This Letter, addressed to the given in the Notes appended to the Bishop of London (Dr. Tait) 1863, Letter. There are obvious reasons preceded by a year the Article which why the Letter may still have an in- it here follows for the sake of conve- terest beyond the particular occasion nience. The ' state of subscription ' is which called it forth. 1870.] Essay IV. FORMER AGITATIONS. 149 direction which was indicated in your Lordship's memor- able charge of last year, when yon gladdened many hearts by declaring that ' the whole subject of what our Sub- ' scriptions ought to be requires, and must receive, ( immediate attention. ' You will not need any assurance from me that my in- terest in this subject, and the necessity of considering it, are quite independent of the controversies, which during the last three years have so vehemently agitated the Church on the questions of Biblical Criticism and the relations of Theology to Science. Important as these questions are, they are only in the most indirect and casual manner (as I shall presently show) affected by our present subscriptions. However important may seem en- quiries into the authorship of the disputed or anonymous books of the Bible, they are enquiries on which the Articles and Liturgy1 have expressed no opinion. How- ever eagerly the natural history, the geology, and the astronomy of the Bible may be discussed, these are dis- cussions of which the Formularies of the English Church offer no solution. However numerous may be the theories of Inspiration, they are almost all of them subsequent in date to the time when the Articles and Liturgy were composed. On these points the Church of England has maintained so entire a silence that, as far as they are concerned, no change in the present forms of subscription would be needed. But your Lordship is well aware that the diffi- culty is of an older date, and of a more general nature. My own interest in it dates as far back as when five-and- twenty years ago we discussed these questions together, 1 Except in the ascription to S. Paul 137th Psalms,) in the title The Psalms of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the of David — and in speaking of ' the service for the Visitation of the Sick; Prophet David' as the author of the and the ascription of the whole Psalter 119th Psalm, to David, (including the 90th and 150 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. in relation to the scruples which then tormented young men respecting the Athanasian Creed, and the phrases respecting Absolution in the Service for the Ordination of Priests. It has been revived again in each successive controversy which has swept over the Church. You will bear witness to the urgency with which I have again and again pleaded for a latitude of subscription in favour of opinions with which I had no special sympathy, when many highly esteemed friends were inclined to take a more rigid view. On these general grounds I joined in a petition to this effect, presented by the Archbishop of Dublin to the House of Lords in 1840. On like grounds I always protested against the endeavour to press the obvious meaning of the Articles against the High Church party at Oxford in 1841, and again in 1845. On like grounds I urged, as your Lordship will doubtless remember, the necessity of a lenient construction of the 29th Article, which had been contradicted by a well-known Archdeacon in 1856. On like grounds I welcomed the immense lati- tude conceded by the Judgment of the Privy Council in 1850, to the opposite party in the Church, then repre- sented by Mr. Gorham in his struggle against the Bishop of Exeter. On the same grounds I shall always be ready to protest against any construction which nar- rows the liberty of the Church, whether against those with whom I agree, or those whose opinions I should deprecate, and who would feel it their duty to exterminate opinions which, in my judgment, ought at least to be tolerated as lawful, if not accepted as true. I shall always desire, even at the risk of misapprehension, to support any measure for removing from the efficiency of the Church a stumbling-block of which the mischief has by every one of those controversies been rendered more glaring. The immediate occasion for my entering into the matter Essay IV. FORMER AGITATIONS. 151 at all is the desire which now prevails amongst many in this place for the removal of the subscriptions required from Masters of Arts. But this question runs up so in- stantly into the general requirement of the same subscrip- tions from all clergymen, that I have considered it best to treat them together. There is no intention on the part of any of us, by asking for this or any similar relief, to revolutionise the Church of England. Whatever 6 revolution ' the Church may be destined to undergo, must be by quite other means — by the increased activity and wisdom of its clergy, by the increased zeal of its laity, by a more ardent love of truth and justice in our religious controversies, by a pro- founder knowledge of the Bible, by a wider study of Theology, by a stronger sense of the importance of Charity, by a deeper and more living faith in God and in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. It is to a much humbler task that I now address myself with as much brevity as the case will admit. 6 I have always had a true zeal for the Church of Opinion of c England. I have lived in its communion with great jg^et 6 joy, and have pursued its interests with an unfeigned ( affection. Yet I must say there are majiy things in it c that have been very uneasy to me. 6 The requiring subscription to the XXXIX Articles 6 is a great imposition : I believe them all myself, but as c there are some which might be expressed more unex- 6 ceptionably, so I think it a better way to let such 6 matters continue to be still the standard of doctrine ' and to censure those who teach any contrary tenets, * than to oblige all who serve in the Church to subscribe them. The greater part subscribe without ever examin- 152 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. ' ing them, and others do it because they must do it, c though they can hardly satisfy their consciences about ' some things in them. Churches and societies are much 6 better secured by laws than by subscriptions : it is a more i reasonable as well as a more easy mode of government.' So wrote Bishop Burnet,1 at the conclusion of the ' History of his own Times.' He wrote in the recollection of the crisis, when, fifteen years before, the Church of England had been all but delivered from the evil of which Compre- he complains by the passing of the Comprehension Act. hension Act. That Act dispensed all the ministers of the Established Church from the necessity of subscribing the XXXIX Articles. In the place of the present forms of subscrip- tion were substituted, in different stages of the Bill, two declarations. The first ran thus: — c I do approve of the 6 doctrine and worship and government of the Church ' of England by law established, as containing all things ' necessary to salvation ; and I promise in the exercise of 6 my ministry to preach and practise thereto.' Another clause granted similar indulgence to the members of the two Universities. In the latter stage of the Bill the following was substituted : — ' 1 do submit to the doctrine, ' discipline, and worship of the Church of England as it is ' or shall be established by law, and promise to teach and 6 practise accordingly.' Concerning this Act the Bishop of London of that time wrote to Archbishop Sancroft : — c This and the 6 Toleration Act are two great works in which the being £ of our Church is concerned.' The Toleration Act was carried. The Comprehension Act, as regarded the abo- lition of Subscription, was carried through the House of Lords. 6 Not a single High Churchman raised his voice 1 Burnet's Own Times, ii. 644. I have omitted a few "words for the sake of greater perspicuity. Essay IV. THE ARTICLES. 153 ' against the clause which relieved the clergy from the ' necessity of subscribing the Articles.' It was lost in the House of Commons, chiefly through the opposition of the Dissenters.1 Since that time, the remedy which had received the approbation not only of such men as Halifax, Tillotson, Burnet, and Walpole, but of the leaders of the High Church party, such as Nottingham, who himself took charge of the Bill, has not been attempted by the Legislature. But the evil which it was intended to remove has been left in undiminished magnitude, and with results more damaging to the welfare of the Church than even Burnet or Tillotson anticipated. It will be my endeavour briefly to explain wherein the evil consists, and why the remedy which was vainly attempted in 1689, ought at least to be reconsidered now. By an irregular and anomalous machinery growing out of the ecclesiastical and political struggles of the last three hundred years, a network of obligations and pledges has been drawn across the entrance to the degree of Master of Arts in one of our two great Universities, and to the Ministry of our National Church. These pledges are made in a considerable variety of forms,2 some as stringent as human language can devise, some with con- siderable laxity, to two different documents. The first and most general subscription is to the XXXIX Articles ; the second is to the Book of Common Prayer. Let us take each of these documents separately. No- thing can be further from my intention than to disparage the XXXIX Articles as an exposition of the faith of the The Church of England. Historically they are a valuable Articles index to the chief points of controversy which engaged 1 Macaulay, Hist, of England, iii. 2 [These forms, since repealed, are 91-100. subjoined in the Appendix.] 154 LETTEE ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. the attention of the English Reformers, as against the Chnrch of Rome on the one side, and against the more revolutionary sects of the Reformation on the other side. Read in the light of the ab]e (and alas ! neglected) com- mentary of Hey, they rise to a still higher level, and may be taken as a convenient framework of theological instruc- tion. Some of them pass beyond the bitter contentions of the time into the regions of pure history and theology. The 1st, 2nd, and 5th, with the exception of a few subor- dinate phrases, are redolent of the high Christian culture of the early centuries of the Eastern Church. The loth, on 6 Christ alone without Sin,' emerges with a simple and natural pathos out of the sphere of polemics into that of reverence and devotion. The 17th, on Predestination, has a double merit of no ordinary value. Unlike most of the others, it aims at a distinct definition of the doc- trine which it proposes to set forth, and at the same time it is possessed by a consciousness rare in theo- logical writers, especially at that time, of the difference between the dogmatic style of its own propositions and the more comprehensive language in which ' the same 6 truths are generally set forth in Holy Scripture.' The 21st Article conveys in a few rough and simple phrases the main substance of the principles historically involved in the convention of General Councils. The 34th may be said to contain by implication the germ of the great idea of Church and State so nobly worked out in Hooker's ' Ecclesiastical Polity.' In a purely controversial point of view, the Articles against the Roman Catholic view of the Sacraments are full of instruction. In some of the Articles the conflict of jarring opinions has produced a balance of statement which renders them singularly well adapted for the purposes of a national confession. In others the same effect is brought about by the Essay IV. THE ARTICLES. 155 ambiguity of language, especially of language in a state of transition so unformed and lax as was that of English, literature in the middle of the sixteenth century. They are favourably distinguished from most of the Protestant Confessions : less rhetorical than that of Augsburg, less dogmatic than that of Westminster, more Catholic than those of France and Switzerland. They are probably superior to Articles which would be likely to be drawn up by any of the dominant factions now to be found in the English Church and Commonwealth. It is enough to refer to the freedom and moderation of the Thirty-nine Articles as contrasted with the narrowness and rigidity of the Mne Articles drawn up, with excellent intentions, by the Evangelical Alliance in 1846. But, with all these advantages possessed by the Eng- Difficulties lish Articles, which we thankfully acknowledge, whether scription we are bound to them by subscription or not, they do, on their very face, repel the notion of subscriptions to them, such as are now required by law both from graduates and from clergymen. They consist of a num- ber of complicated propositions on many intricate and difficult questions — propositions drawn up by men who lived three hundred years ago, in the heat of vehement struggles which have long since passed away — by men who, venerable as they were in station, and some of them estimable in character, and distinguished in ability and learning, were still not the foremost even of the age in which they lived, and therefore not the men whose expressions on these subjects we should most naturally expect to be permanent. Whilst there is perhaps no Article which does not con- tain some great truth to which every Christian, or at least every Protestant, would assent, there can be little doubt that many of them state the truth in terms which to the Articles. 156 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. by large sections in the Church of England as now con- stituted, would naturally be regarded as exaggerated and one-sided. There are very few clergymen of the present day who, however firmly they may believe the general doctrine of Original Sin, would willingly express them- selves exactly in the words of the 9th Article, which announces that man ' originali justitia quam longissime c distat.' There are very few who, whether from a hos- tile or a friendly point of view, would feel so strongly against the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice as wil- lingly to say with the 31st Article, that ' The Sacrifices ' of Masses .... were blasphemous fables and dangerous 6 deceits.' The conflicts of the compilers of which, as I said, the traces are still visible in their framework, the mistakes in matters of fact 1 which they contain, the contradictions between their different editions, and between their Eng- lish and Latin forms,2 both equally authentic, render them still more impracticable as a definite rule of faith and practice. In four instances the struggle out of which they rose is actually seen through the official reserve which has elsewhere concealed it. In the 20th Article,3 the insertion of the first clause by Queen Elizabeth has changed the drift of the Article as it originally stood, 1 For example, in the 8th Article the Creed (falsely entitled Athanasian) is called in accordance with the then belief, ' Athanasiv.s's Creed.' In the 29th Article a quotation is ascribed to St. Augustine which is not Augus- tine's. 2 In the 37th Article the permission ' to serve in the wars' is in the English left open, in the Latin confined to 'just wars.' See also the 9th and 18th articles in Latin. 1 The original 20th Article began, ' It is not lawful for the Church to 1 ordain anything contrary to Gods 1 Word written] and continues in the same strain of restriction on the Church's power. Elizabeth, who added the first clause seemingly by her own personal authority, made the power of the Church the leading principle, and the restriction the secondary qualification : ' The Church hath power to decree ritrs '■and ceremonies, and authority in con- ' troversies of faith. And yet,' &c. It is difficult to imagine a more complete change of the spirit of any composi- tion. Essay IV. THE ARTICLES. 157 and yet the words which were intended to express the contrary doctrine are still left unaltered at the end. In the 28th Article the insertion of the word ' given ' 1 has the effect of throwing the whole of the argument into confusion. The 29th Article was actually struck out of one edition, and that edition the one which, according to some authorities, is the only one now legally in force.2 In the 31st Article, the doctrine of the Atonement is in oil e edition expressed in the simple language of the Bible,3 in the other in the extregnest theological language of a particular school in reference to this sacred subject. To this document so venerable, yet so full of acknow- ledged imperfections, the law now requires the willing subscription of all young men who are to become clergy- men, and of all (at Oxford) who wish to take their degree of Master of Arts. That any number of educated men, amounting to several hundreds every year, should make this subscription without considerable reservation is almost a moral impossibility. The story of Charles V. and the clocks is well known. An illustration of the same difficulty occurred not long ago in this place, when a celebrated theologian, by no means disposed to relax the general obligations of tests, expressed his ' utter 6 amazement ' that eighty men of various sentiments 1 ' The Body of Christ is taken and ' Supper.' In the edition of (38) ' eaten only after a heavenly andspiri- Articles authorised by 13 Eliz. c. 12, tual manner.' This was no doubt this Article does not appear. In the intended to be Zuinglian or Calvinistic. edition of (39) Articles authorised by ' The Body of Christ is given ' was no the Canons of 1603, and by the Act of doubt intended to be Lutheran or Ro- Uniformity in 1662, it is enforced, man Catholic. The conjunction of the 3 In ' the 39 Articles ' (see previous two can hardly be said to be either note) the word is 'propitiation' a Catholic or Protestant — the better phrase accepted by all Christians. In perhaps for that reason, but not the ' the 38 Articles' it is 'pacifying God's more suited to be treated as an exact wrath^ a phrase if not actually repug- profession of verbal agreement. nant, certainly not welcome, to large 2 ' The wicked which cat not the masses of sincere Churchmen. 4 Body of Christ in the use of the Lords 158 LETTER OX SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. should have been able to subscribe their assent to three or four brief propositions contained in a memorial on an academical examination. What would he have said had he for the first time heard not of eighty, but of 20,000 persons subscribing their assent to at least 600 proposi- tions on the most intricate and complex subjects that can engage the human mind ? The hardship of these sub- scriptions is considerably increased by the time of life at which the subscribers make them. They are imposed not in mature age, when the mjnd has usually come to its final resolves on most of those great questions, but exactly at that moment of a young man's career when his opinions are in the act of formation, when they are least likely to be depended upon, when the lapse of a few years is most likely to change them entirely, when his conscience is most tender, most likely to be alive to scruples, most likely to be hardened by resisting or ex- plaining them away. They are required, further, not from the illiterate, not from those who having once turned their attention to these matters are not likely to study them again, but from those who by the very pro- fession, for which those subscriptions are a qualification, are continually led to think, and write, and preach on the topics to which their subscriptions relate, and from whom a truthful, and sincere, and unbiassed consideration of such subjects is even more important than it would be in any other profession; in proportion as the suspicion of untruth in one whose office is to seek out and speak the truth is more mischievous than in the case of those who are simply engaged in the mechanical, or literary, or legal, or commercial struggles of common life. But this is only half the evil. Besides the subscription by which every English clergyman and every full Oxford graduate is made to declare that 4 all and every the Essay IV. THE PRAYER-BOOK. 159 ' XXXIX Articles are agreeable to the Word of God,' they are also made to declare of another document totally different, emanating mostly from a different age, from authors widely distinct in feeling and opinions from those who drew up the Articles, that in this also there is ' nothing contrary to the Word of God and every bene- ficed clergyman is bound to go a step further and declare that ' to all and everything in this Book he gives his un- 6 feigned assent and consent.' This second document, I need not say, is the Book of Common Prayer. Towards The the Book of Common Prayer in a still higher degree than book, towards the Articles I wish to express the reverence which I believe every true Churchman, I had almost said every educated Englishman, must feel. I have said that it comes from authors of a different age, and of habits and characters very different from those who compiled the Articles. The prayers of the Liturgy are for the most part the product of an age anterior to the dogmatic and sectarian tendencies of the Calvinistic, and in some measure even of the Scholastic, period. Though thrown into their present shape by the Reformers, they are for the most part derived from the ancient Breviaries and Mis- sals. The work which the Reformers accomplished in the Prayer-book was far more in the way of judicious revision and omission, than of actual composition. What they did compose they composed as nearly as possible in the spirit of that which they were revising. What they added, namely the English form of the prayers, is the very best of its kind : so that instead of losing by trans- lation into English, the Liturgy has actually gained by the process. The Articles certainly would not be selected as standards of style : but the Liturgy ranks amongst the highest models of English literature, by the side of Shakespeare or Milton, of Bacon or Hooker. ' The 160 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. ' essential qualities of devotional eloquence, conciseness, 6 majestic simplicity, pathetic earnestness of supplication, 6 sobered by a profound reverence, are common between 6 the English Liturgy and those fine ancient Liturgies 6 from which it is to a great extent taken. But in the * subordinate graces of diction the originals must be ' allowed to be far inferior to the translations. . . . The ' English of our services is English in all the vigour ' and suppleness of youth, and has directly or indirectly ' contributed to form the diction of almost every great ' English writer, and has extorted the admiration of the ( most accomplished infidels, and of the most accomplished 6 Nonconformists — of such men as David Hume and Robert 4 Hall.' So wrote an impartial judge, himself a perfect master of the English language.1 A.nd if, from the outward form, we pass to the spirit of the Prayer-book, let me quote the judgment of another historian, not less capable of appreciating it than the great writer whom I have just cited, and not more liable to be suspected of partiality : — ' While the Church of 6 England remains, the image of Cranmer will be ever ' reflected on the calm surface of the Liturgy. The most ' beautiful parts are translations from the Breviary ; yet 6 the same prayers translated by others would not be * those which chime like church bells in the ears of the ' English child. The translations, and the addresses ' which are original, have the same silvery melody of 6 language and breathe the same simplicity of spirit. . . . c From amidst the foul weeds in which its roots were ' buried, the Liturgy stands up beautiful, the one admi- ' rable thing which the reign of Edward produced. Pre- 6 maturely born and too violently forced upon the country, * it was nevertheless the right thing, the thing which 1 Macaulay, iii. 475. Essay IV. THE PRAYER BOOK. 161 c essentially answered to the spiritual demands of the na- ' tion. . . . Services which have overlived so many storms £ speak for their own excellence, and speak for the merit ' of the workmen.' 1 The theology of most of the prayers soars so high above the popular opinions of the present day, as to fur- nish the very best escape that exists from the peculiar views which have threatened to degrade the Church into a narrow sect. The wide charity of the Burial Service is a perpetual protest against the limited conceptions in which many religious persons indulge respecting the future state. The Collects, the Communion Office, above all, the Collects for Good Friday and Easter-day, express in terms as touching as they are significant, the doctrine of Eedemption in its Biblical and Catholic as distinct from its scholastic and Puritanical forms. Throughout, the great truths of Christianity are, almost with the sole ex- ception of the Athanasian Creed, presented in forms as con- ciliatory and attractive as they are impressive and sublime. For myself and for many who feel with me, I can truly say that the sentiments and the language of the Prayer-book are, for the most part, the best protection which I could wish for the cause of Christian freedom, no less than for the cause of Christian truth. Give us the general spirit of the Prayer-book, and you give us all that we need. But this unrivalled excellence of the Liturgy is still no reason for requiring to every portion of it a subscrip- tion of assent and consent, which if not actually intended as a declaration of agreement with the dogmatic truth of every statement that it contains or implies, is certainly so understood by hundreds of conscientious clergymen. No doubt as a correction of the subscription to the 1 Froude, v. 391. 393. M 162 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. Subscrip- tion to the Prayer- book. Latitude of inter- pretation required. Articles it is most valuable. There is hardly a statement to which any objection can be raised, in the Articles, which is not neutralised by some countervailing expres- sion in the Prayer-book. Most valuable is this as a check to the evil of subscription, but from another point of view a cogent reason against the practice at all. If it is incredible beforehand that vast masses of young men should agree in the literal and dogmatic sense of pro- positions so numerous and elaborate as those contained in the Articles; if it is equally incredible that the same number should agree in the literal and dogmatic sense of all the sentences in the Prayer-book, many of them poetical and devotional in form, but, according to the terms in which the subscription is often understood, to be received in their most prosaic and matter-of-fact signi- fication— it becomes doubly incredible that the same number of youths should receive with the same unquali- fied and unhesitating confidence, both these sets of pro- positions, emanating, as each does emanate, from ages unlike to each other, and each no less unlike to our own. I gladly acknowledge that from time to time the strange anomaly of these exact and literal, yet conflict- ing, subscriptions has been considerably qualified by the wide and liberal construction which both in Church and State has been put upon them. In the University of Oxford, so long as the subscription to the Articles was required from Undergraduates and all Bachelors of Arts, the most various and contradictory interpretations were put upon the act. Even under the present regulations of the University, according to which all Masters of Arts are compelled to make the same subscriptions as the clergy, (c that there is nothing contrary in the Prayer- ' book to the Word of God,' and ' that all and every of Essay IV. LATITUDE OF INTERPRETATION. 163 ' the Articles are agreeable to the Word of God/) a general persuasion exists that these words are not to be pressed in their literal and obvious sense. With re- gard to the clerical subscriptions, many high authorities have declared that the subscription to the Liturgy is merely a subscription to the use of it ; and that subscrip- tion to the Articles is simply an acknowledgment of them as Articles of peace, not to be impugned, but not of necessity to be believed by the subscriber. Such was the well-known opinion of Archbishop Bramhall,1 and Bishop Bull,2 and Mr. Burke,3 and, to a considerable degree, of Bishop Burnet4 and Professor Hey,5 and has within our own memory been forcibly expressed both in public journals and by leading Prelates. Others, again, have felt that the mere fact of the enormous scope of the subscriptions, involving assent to documents so various in kind, and in part so contra- dictory to each other in spirit, if not in form, must by the very force of the terms imply a general and not a par- ticular assent, — a reception of the whole, not a reception of each particular part. Others (as the so-called Low Churchmen) have insisted on interpreting the subscrip- tion to the Liturgy entirely by the subscription to the Articles. Others (as the so-called High Churchmen, especially since the adoption of the principles of Tract XC. as the rule of construction), have insisted on inter- preting the subscription to the Articles entirely by the subscription to the Liturgy, or on interpreting the Ar- ticles not by the obvious intention of each Article, but by any Catholic meaning which the literal and gram- matical sense of the words will bear ; not by the meaning 1 Schism Guarded, p. 245. 4 Burnet on the XXXIX Articles, - Bull's Works, vol. ii. p. 211. p. 7. 3 Speeches, i. 94. 5 Preface to Lectures on the Articles.' 164 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. put upon them by their first framers in 1552 and 1571, but by the meaning which must have been put upon them by the Arminian and High Church divines who repub- lished them in 1628 and 1662. 1 If we pay due regard to the mind of the imposers, due regard to the counteracting qualifications of the different parts of the Formularies themselves, due regard to the common sense of mankind, and the opinions of English divines, due regard to the sense of Holy Scripture, at least wherever its expressions are used in the Formularies, there is not any section of the English Church, lay or clerical, which might not innocently subscribe to the present forms. But if once we press these subscriptions in their rigid and literal sense, as they have been, especially of late, so often pressed, without regard to all or any of these qualifications, then it may be safely asserted that in this respect there is not one clergyman in the Church who can venture to cast a stone at another — they must all go out, from the greatest to the least, from the Primates at Lambeth and Bishopsthorpe to the humblest curates of Wales or West- moreland. That they have not done so ; that the Church of Eng- land has been held together at all, is doubtless owing to the frequent, though unfortunately not constant, main- tenance of these wide interpretations. Had interpreta- tions such as these been universally received and acted upon, subscription, like so many other legal fictions in this country, would not have been a practical grievance of serious magnitude. It would have been an evil, but 1 It is the avowal of this doctrine To put the sense of Laud and Sheldon, which alone suffices as a proof that or of the Fathers and Schoolmen, into many High Churchmen ' subscribe the the words of Cranmer, Ridley, and ' Articles in a sense, in their judgment, Jewell, is (it may be, under the pecu- • different from that in which the liar circumstances, quite properly) ' Articles were originally put forth.' 1 winning new senses fcr old words.' Essay IV. EVILS OF SUBSCRIPTION. 165 still it would have been a tolerable evil. It would have been an awkward, anomalous, incongruous incumbrance of our system; but I for one, knowing the difficulty of procuring alteration even of innocent anomalies — knowing also (to use the homely but forcible illustration of King James I.) how 'much easier old shoes are than new ones,' — recognising the actual value of the counteracting in- fluence of those multiplied forms of subscription, should not have thought it worth while to call attention either to the evil or to its remedy. But everyone knows that these generous constructions Evils of of the acts of subscription have never been entirely satis- tion atP factory, have never prevailed universally, and have, in our 0xford- time, been continually on the decrease. Even with re- gard to the subscription formerly required from Under- graduates, the effect on their minds was, at times, most pernicious. Bentham, from whom this requirement was made at the early age of twelve, declared that it left a stain upon his conscience which was never effaced in after life, and with this feeling he dissuaded the late illustrious Marquis of Lansdowne from coming to Oxford on the ground that it was 6 a nest of perjury.' The subscriptions made by Masters of Arts at present hang heavily on the consciences of many who cannot per- suade themselves that it is right to assume obligations which they are told that they need not construe literally and according to the obvious meaning of the words, but which they know may be any day thrown in their teeth by some malignant or narrow-minded partisan ; and which, from the stringency of the terms used, seem to them only too capable of such a rigid construction as they repudiate with their whole hearts and souls. Of the whole practice it was well said by the late Oxford Com- missioners in 1852 : — 166 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. e This subscription is found practically neither to ex- 6 elude all who are not members of the Church of England, ' nor to include all who are. 6 On the one hand, it is no obstacle to the admission of 6 some persons who are known to be members of other com- c munions, such as the Evangelical Church of Prussia, the c Evangelical Society of Geneva, the Wesleyan body, and 6 the Established Church of Scotland. On the other hand, s there are persons who, though members of the Church of c England, are unwilling to declare that they adopt all 6 that is contained in the Articles, and therefore feel c themselves excluded from taking the higher Degrees. ' It certainly is singular that a lay corporation should 6 require from laymen, simply as a condition of member- 6 ship, that which the Church of England does not require c for participation in its most sacred ordinance. . . . c We do not offer any suggestion as to the manner in c which the evil should be remedied, but we must express 6 our conviction that the imposition of subscription, in 6 the manner in which it is now imposed in the University 6 of Oxford, habituates the mind to give a careless assent to 6 truths which it has never considered, and naturally leads c to sophistry in the interpretation of solemn obligations.' With regard to the clergy, the application of the more liberal construction is still more unequal and uncertain. Evils of When controversy is asleep, then the subscription sleeps scription a^so# -But moment that controversy starts into life, the opponents on either side never fail to rattle up the sleeping lions, heedless of the reflection that when aroused they will devour with equal indiscrimination on the right hand and on the left. No phrase of the Articles is too parenthetical, no term of the Liturgy too rhetorical, to be pressed into the service. The large and liberal construc- tions which are generally admitted in times of peace, and of the Clergy. Essay IV. EVILS OF SUBSCRIPTION. 167 which every party in the Church is obliged to claim for its own interpretation of subscription, are, when used by theological opponents, branded as sophistry or disingenu- ous subtlety. To the general evils of controversy is thus added the great and peculiar aggravation of the embitter- ment and exasperation caused by constant mutual impu- tations of dishonesty and bad faith. We need only recall the usual language employed by High Churchmen against Low Churchmen in the Gorham controversy, by Low Churchmen against High Churchmen in the controversy of the 6 Tracts for the Times/ by the extreme partisans of both these sections against Broad Churchmen in the con- troversy of the last few years. I do not mean that the larger view has never been conceded by the mutual opponents. In the great struggle of 1845 for enforcing the obvious historical sense of the Articles against High Churchmen at Oxford, Mr. Ward on the one hand freely granted, in his able address on that occasion, that his adversaries were entitled to the same latitude of interpretation as that which he and his party claimed for themselves ; and on the other hand, amongst his theological adversaries there were some who have since been themselves attacked by those whom they then defended, but who then eagerly claimed for them the latitude required by the original compromise of the Church of England. But the general scandal of these exhibitions of interne- cine warfare and attempts at extermination is undeniable, and of late years the severe and rigid construction has been constantly on the increase. Twenty or thirty years ago there was a general disposition on the part of those in authority to ease to the utmost the scruples and diffi- culties of those who undertook the obligations of the sacred profession, The attempt of Bishop Marsh to ex- 1G8 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. elude even the unpopular Calvinists by the eighty-seven Peterborough questions was repressed by a burst of gene- ral indignation. Archbishop Howley, a prelate of no lax or revolutionary tendency, admitted Arnold to Priest's Orders, though professing doubts not merely on the authorship but the canonicity of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Since that time the gradual tendency (it may be from a sense of necessity) in our Episcopal and Ec- clesiastical administration has been to strain the terms of subscription against each successive party that has at- tracted attention in the Church. It is in these attempts to turn the Articles and Liturgy into weapons of bitter recrimination and exclusion, that the true inherent mischief of subscription is brought to light. The rigid interpreters can always say that the literal sense of subscription, especially of subscription expressed in such cogent terms as those in use with us, is the one, if not intended by the imposers, at least expressed in the words or in the act ; and the conflict which then arises between the practical accommodation of the in- stitutions to the necessities of the case, and these various interpretations, be they one or many, cannot fail to arrest the attention both of the public and of those who are called to make the subscriptions. To what degree the subscriptions thus enforced amount to a tangible grievance, how many conscientious persons are actually excluded thereby from academical degrees and privileges, or from Holy Orders, may not be easy to ascertain, nor, if ascertained, would it be a measure of the whole extent of the evil. There can be no question that most thoughtful candidates for Holy Orders shrink in the first instance from the act of subscribing to forms compli- cated and in terms so stringent or so liable to misinterpre- tation. There can be no question that the number is very Essay IV. EVILS OF SUBSCRIPTION. 1G9 small indeed of those who subscribe willingly and heartily — ex animo — with the same ready zeal and active con- currence of heart and soul, as that with which they give themselves to the sacred service of their new profession, and throw themselves into its duties. There can be no question that of those who make the same subscriptions on taking their degrees at Oxford, the reluctance, it is hardly too strong a word in many instances to say, the in- dignation, is such as must effectually counterbalance any good effect which can be expected from it. It was so formerly, when these subscriptions were required from Undergraduates and from Bachelors of Arts. It is so still, now that they are required from Masters of Arts. And al- though the harsh and narrow interpretation of the act is much less frequently urged against academical than against clerical subscribers, yet from the more eager and restless intelligence, that prevails and must always prevail amongst the lay students of a University, this act of adhesion to propositions in which they do not intend to profess, and in which they are not expected to profess, their detailed belief, becomes hardly less irksome to them than to the clergy who are constantly taunted with it. I have said that it would be difficult to ascertain the number of those who are actually excluded from Acade- mical degrees or from Holy Orders by the existing sub- scriptions. In the case of the Academical degrees, the amount perhaps is not large. The number of Noncon- formists who have availed themselves of the privilege recently afforded to them by the Legislature of coming to Oxford, is very much below what might have been expected from the eagerness with which their claims were pressed — very much below what might take place with great advantage to themselves, to the University, and to the Church. Each would gain by contact with the other, 170 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. and any practical difficulties could be easily obviated by University regulations, sucli as either do exist, or could be established for that object. But it is not the object of these pages to consider the case of Nonconformists, but of ourselves. For academical members of the Church of England, it is at least not too much to ask that they should not be pressed with a burden which is not imposed on members of the sister University of Cambridge. The subscription required is probably not construed literally by any single person who makes or receives it. A large number of those who make it look upon it as an act of humiliation, only to be justified by what they regard as sophistical casuistry. If it does not exclude more, this is because it is regarded as a mere form which ought not to exclude any one. In the case of Holy Orders, the evil is more apparent, and needs to be stated at greater length. The Charges of some of the most eminent Bishops, and the comments that they have provoked, have at last roused the country and the Church to a sense of the danger which has for some years past been perceived by attentive observers of the signs of the times — that the intelligent, thoughtful, highly educated young men who, twenty or thirty years ago, were to be found in every Ordination, are gradually withheld from the service of the Church, and from the profession to which their tastes, their characters, and their gifts best fit them. For this great calamity, the greatest that threatens the permanence and the usefulness of the Church of Eng- land, there are, no doubt, many causes at work, some tran- sitory, some beyond the power of any legislative enactment to reach. But there can be no question that one cause is the reluctance,1 the increasing reluctance of young men 1 I have been told on good autho- the acquaintance of a single individual, rity that of nineteen young men within who were within the last few years Essay IV. EVILS OF SUBSCRIPTION. 171 of the kind just described to entangle themselves in obli- gations with which they cannot heartily sympathise, and which may hereafter be brought against them to the ruin of their peace, and of their professional usefulness. They see that the liberal constructions which enabled their prede- cessors in the former generation to overstep these obsta- cles, are now far less common than heretofore. They see that recent judgments 1 in the Ecclesiastical Courts have proceeded on the principle that the contradiction to any single phrase in the Articles or Liturgy is considered in- compatible with their clerical position. They observe that these judgments, though not directly affecting the interpre- tation of the act itself of subscription, yet tend to narrow2 the larger and more liberal sense which, at the beginning of this century, and down to the decision of the Gorham Controversy in 1850, was supposed to mark the mind of the imposers. They are unwilling, accordingly, to make the same subscriptions which in the last generation were made without difficulty ; and, although other causes may have predisposed their minds in another direction, this obstacle at the first entrance on their new and increasingly difficult course is the final barrier that turns them aside ; this burden, slight though it be, is the last straw that known to have gone to Cambridge with the intention of becoming clergy- men, every one has since relinquished his intention, chiefly on the ground of the present state of subscrip- tion. Similar statistics to a larger extent, although of a less definite form, might be produced at Oxford. 1 [This referred to the Judgment of the Archbishop's Court in the case of Ditcher v. Denison in 1856, on the 29th article, the Judgment of the Privy Council in the case of Burder v. Heath in 1862, on the 2nd article, the Judg- ment of the Court of Arches in the case of Essays and "Reviews, in 1862, on the 8th, 18th, 20th, and 31st articles. All three went on the most rigid interpre- tation of the articles in question. But in the last-named Judgment a larger construction began to reappear, which was followed up in the Judgment of the Privy Council in 1864. See Essay III. 1870.] 2 This is well put in the masterly pamphlet of Professor Grote, on Dr Lushington's Judgment. 172 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. breaks the back of the camel already overladen with other scruples and anxieties. And this obstacle, this burden, unlike those other less tangible causes to which I have referred, is directly within the power of the Bishops and of the Legislature to remove. Of the Bishops, because, if they were to give their ready assent to such a change, there can be no question that it would be immediately adopted by the Legislature. Of the Legislature, because the subscriptions are either purely State enactments, or such as the State could, with general approbation, sweep away or prohibit. Not a word of the Articles need be touched. The}r would still be left as the exposition of the Faith of the Church of England in the sixteenth century, as the standard of its faith at the pre- sent day. Not a word of the Liturgy need be touched. There are, no doubt, changes which would be acceptable to many, but they must be effected by other means. The change of a single word in the Rubrics would, for example, be sufficient to relieve the recitation of the Liturgy from one of its greatest difficulties. But these are altogether beside the question of subscription. Remove subscription, and the Liturgy itself would remain the same, and would be used as it was used in fact for fifty years before any sub- scription to it was dreamed of. All that is needed is the repeal of certain clauses of the two Acts of Elizabeth and Charles II., and of the 36th Canon. The Liturgy and the XXXIX Articles would continue as much as they are now, and as they were before subscription was required to them, the law of the State and of the Church. This relief, so salutary and simple, long demanded by many conscientious members of the Church, so nearly granted in the reign of William II I. at the instance even of High Churchmen, so urgently needed by the wants of our time, would probably not be resisted, but for the appre- Essay IV EVILS OF SUBSCRIPTION. 173 hension of the clangers which would follow from it. It is Objections thought that the removal of subscription would open the door to great confusion in the doctrine and the discipline of the Church. It is thought that, in some way or other, it is bound up with the belief in Christianity, and with the constitution of the Church of England. These apprehensions are happily such as a glance at the history of our own country and of Christendom will remove. I might refer to the cases where such subscriptions have Subscrip- existed and have been swept away. There were till the less! year 1854 promissory oaths and declarations in almost all the Oxford Colleges, some of the most stringent kind, to observe the statutes imposed by the several Founders. Whilst they continued in force the statutes were broken in almost every particular. They have now been declared illegal. Has the discipline or order of a single College suffered in the slightest degree from the remission ? Till the same year subscriptions to the XXXIX Articles were required from all Undergraduates ; and the same sub- scriptions to the Articles and Liturgy as those now required from Masters of Arts, were required from all Bachelors of Arts. These were defended, so long as they lasted, as though they were necessary bulwarks of the Church and of the University; to repeal them was denounced as 'a 6 desecration of what we held to be most sacred; the 6 destruction of what we deemed most valuable in this ' life, because it was connected with the interests of the ' life to come.' They have been abolished in Oxford — they had long before been abolished, if indeed they had ever been enforced, at Cambridge. Has the faith of either University suffered from the change? Does not every Tutor of a College who had to explain and enforce these subscriptions on the young men whom he had to present 174 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. for matriculation or for their degrees feel an immense relief? But I will not confine myself to these isolated instances, but examine the history of subscription from the first. For the three early centuries the Church was entirely without it. The members of the Church made a profession of their faith at baptism. But this was in the simplest form ; it was not a precautionary assent to a variety of intellec- tual propositions, but a profession of service under a new Master, and of entrance into a new life. No Deacon, no Presbyter, no Bishop, made any subsequent profession. The distinction between the requirements of belief from clergy and from laity was as yet wholly unknown. The first subscription to a Confession of Faith,1 as such, was that enforced by Constantine at the Council of Mcaea. It was the natural but rude expedient of a half-educated soldier to enforce unanimity in the Church, as he had by the sword enforced it in the Empire. It was accompanied then by the same casuistry, by the same ambiguity, by the same inoperative results as at present.2 At each Council the same process was repeated by the Bishops who were present. But the practice, as far as appears, never ex- tended to the clergy generally or to the laity ; and, as it was then in the Ancient Church, so on the whole has it been in those portions of Christendom which have clung most tenaciously to Catholic usages, and been most stead- fast in the defence of Orthodoxy. In the niediseval, and in the Eastern Church, as a general rule, the unity of the Church was preserved, like the unity of the State, not by 1 Some kind of subscription had crees of Elvira, and the case of Antioch already been enforced to the decrees is very doubtful. See Hefele, Concilien- of the Provincial Councils of Elvira Geschichte, i. 112. and Antioch. See Dr. Ivors's Letter to 2 See Lectures on the History of the the Bishop of London,^. 19, 20. But Eastern Church, pp. 143-146, 197. there was nothing doctrinal in the de- Essay IV. HISTORY OF SUBSCRIPTION, 175 preliminary promises or oaths, but by the general laws of discipline and order, and by the general public sentiment of the whole community.1 It was one of the misfortunes incident to the Reforma- The acci- tion that every Protestant Church, by way of defending Jjjjk of itself against the enemies that hemmed it in, or that were ^he Ee; ° m formation. supposed to hem it in on every side, was induced to com- pile each for itself a new Confession of Faith. The brevity of the half-page of the Apostles' Creed, the page of the Nicene Creed, or even the three pages of the Athanasian Creed, forms a striking contrast to the two thick volumes containing the various Confessions of Protestant Christen- dom. It was not for some time, however, that to these Confessions was added the fresh evil of requiring subscrip- tion to all their contents ; and this requirement, when it was introduced, was usually in inverse proportion to the magnitude of the interests at stake. The most stringent and elaborate subscription probably ever enforced was that in the Duchy of Brunswick, when Duke Julius required On the from all clergy, from all professors, from all magistrates, Contment a subscription to all and everything contained in the Con- fession of Augsburg, in the Apology for the Confession, in the Smalcaldic Articles, in all the works of Luther, in all the works of Melanchthon, and in all the works of Chemnitz. This excess of subscription on the Continent overleaped itself, and has led to its gradual extinction or modification. 6 The Moravians have now no subscriptions at all. In ' the Calvinistic and Reformed Churches, where subscrip- 6 tion and compulsory adherence to formularies was once 1 From priests of the Greek Church their ordination any declaration of no declaration of belief is required, belief. But when they enter on any The bishops are required to declaro cure or any office of instruction they their assent to the decrees of the first recite aloud the Creed of Pope Pius seven Councils. From the clergy of IV., which is the faith equally of the Roman Catholic Church no sub- every Roman Catholic layman, scription is required at all, nor at 176 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. e the most stringently enforced, a natural and perhaps an * extreme reaction has introduced the largest liberty. In c Geneva and most of the Swiss Cantons, and in some 6 Protestant States of Germany (not to speak of the Trench ' Church also) , subscription is entirely abolished — ordained 6 ministers merely engaging to teach their flocks faithfully 6 out of the Word of God ; though the National Confes- 6 sions remain for the most part as acknowledged and 6 venerated standards of doctrine. In Holland, if matters 4 have not been carried quite so far, yet Arminians are ' once more enabled to take their place in the Church of 6 Grotius and of Barneveldt. In the Lutheran Churches, 6 as in Prussia and other German States, and among the 6 Scandinavian nations, the ancient Confessions retain a £ more formal and acknowledged authority ; yet it is not c so much by subscription, as in the solemn declarations £ and pledges advanced in the Ordination Service, that 6 ministers bind themselves to accept the doctrine, and 6 teach according to the guidance of their Church.' 1 In England, nothing more completely shows the ex- trinsic, superfluous character of our subscriptions, and therefore their needlessness, than their gradual, capricious, accidental growth. The Church of England as such recognises absolutely no subscriptions. The tests which alone are acknowledged by the ancient formularies of the Church, and on which alone it relies for protection, are incorporated in the Services, to the exclusion (as it would seem) of all besides. From every member of the Church, at his baptism, at his confirmation, on his death-bed, one profession of belief, and one alone, is required, in order to his enjoyment of the highest privileges which the Church 1 All these facts are well collected Scottish Presbyterian Churches, see in the Edinburgh Review, vol. cxv. p. Note appended to this Letter. 604. For the subscriptions of the Essay IV. HISTORY OF SUBSCRIPTION. 177 can give, namely, the Apostles' Creed.1 From the clergy of the Church certain professions are required in their Ordinations — the Oath of Supremacy from all, the seven Tests at questions put to candidates for Deacon's Orders, the eight ^o^na" questions to candidates for Priest's Orders, and the eight questions to those who are about to be consecrated Arch- bishops and Bishops. These, and these alone, are required ; and anyone who looked at those declarations standing by themselves would be surprised to find that, over and above these, other declarations had to be made, and other obligations con- tracted, of a totally different kind, and in totally different terms. These other obligations were, in fact, not con- templated at the time of the first compilation of the Prayer-book and Articles, and have grown up as a mere Gradual excrescence through the pressure of political and eccle- lublcrip-1 siastical parties. The Articles were not subscribed (by tlon- anything like general usage) 2 till the twelfth year of Eliza- beth : they were then, after much hesitation and opposi- tion, ordered to be subscribed for a special purpose,3 and with a limitation which considerably mitigated the evil which it introduced. The special purpose was the wish As imposed to have some check on the admission of Presbyterian beth. ministers of other Protestant Churches to serve in the Church of England without re-ordination. The limitation was that the clergy were to subscribe those Articles ' which only concern the confession of the true faith and 1 the doctrine of the Sacraments ; ' how many, or how few, were implied by this specification has never been deter- mined ; but the attempt at discrimination showed a dis- position very different from that which has since made 1 See the Xotes appended to this * See Edinburgh Review, vol. cxv. Letter. p. 582. 1 lb. p. 5S3. N 178 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. every allusion and every turn of a sentence as binding as the Articles on the Being of a God or the doctrine of the Trinity. By the The next step was that the Earl of Leicester, with the Leicester. v^w of annoying and excluding the Koinan Catholic or Romanising party in Oxford, introduced into the Univer- sity the subscription to the Articles which (till 1854) was required from all students at their first entrance.1 The third step was the subscription to the Liturgy 2 and to the By James I. whole of the Articles enforced by James I. through the Canons of 1603 on the clergy, and on all graduates in Oxford, with the view of excluding the rising Puritans. Down to this time the Liturgy, as before observed, had re- mained without any subscription at all. From this time, by a paradox unknown to any other Church in Christendom, the Liturgy was turned from its proper purpose, of ex- pressing the devotions of the congregation, into a store- house of theological propositions to be enforced on all those who had not the knowledge to distinguish between the nature of a Liturgy and a Creed. And finally, the subscription to the Articles was extended, and the force of the subscription to the Liturgy immensely increased, by By Charles the Act of Uniformity passed under Charles II., with the express purpose of driving from their places in the Church as many of the Puritan clergy as could be conveniently displaced. It may be said, indeed, that though these successive enactments were called forth by the evils of the times, those same evils still continue, and still require the same remedies. It would be more true to say that these remedies were the product of violent party spirit on one side and the other, which no one would now wish to imitate, and which ought to be numbered with the other 1 See Note at the end. 2 Edinburgh Review, vol. cxv. p. 594. Essay IV. ITS USELESSNESS. 179 desperate remedies, the Star Chamber and the High Com- mission Court, the Services of the 30th of January and of the 29th of May, the Conventicle Act, and the Five Mile Act, which no one would now wish to revive. As these subscriptions are mere external additions to ineffi- our system, the unfortunate growth of caprice and oppres- forunity sion, and of increasing narrowness, so also have they been °f.doc- almost entirely inefficacious for the purposes for which they were framed. They were enforced (such at least was the Declaration of King Charles L prefixed by the Queen's printers to the Articles) for the "purpose of ' main* ( taining the Church in the unity of true religion and in £ the bond of peace ; ' and (so we are told in the title of the Articles) 6 for the avoiding of diversities of opinion, and ' for the establishing of consent touching true religion.' Let the history of the contentions within the Church of England, and without it, tell whether the desired unani- mity has been secured by these means. It is far more true to say that whilst no element of discord has been excluded by these subscriptions, whilst (happily) Calvinists and Arminians, High Churchmen and Low Churchmen, Gemianisers and Eomanisers, have equally found shelter under the broad shadow of the Church itself, the chief embitterment of their sojourn in this wide tabernacle has arisen from the conflicts that beset and have arisen out of their first entrance through the narrow door of sub- scription. That unity and purity of doctrine should flourish is no doubt an object much to be desired, and it is an object which, within certain limits, has been attained in the Church of England. But to this result subscription can have contributed only in a very small degree. It must be observed that the instrument employed (if one may so say) is far too blunt for the purpose for which it is designed. M 2 180 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. Persons are tormented or excluded by it who agree in every particular with those who are included by it, except on the one point as to the degree of force which can be applied to the words in question. A scrupulous High Churchman, a scrupulous Low Churchman, a scrupulous Broad Church- man stumbles at expressions which in their literal and obvious (though perhaps only superficial) sense appear to him objectionable. But none of these obstacles avail to exclude those who by whatever means are able to per- suade themselves that the real sense of such passages is identical with the opinions which they hold in common with their more scrupulous brethren on those very points. And thus an inequality of comprehension and exclusion is produced which renders the test not only inoperative, but absolutely misleading. Or, again, go into detail on these questions. Take some of the doctrines which are (to all appearance) most ex- plicitly asserted by the Articles or Liturgy literally con- strued ; as, for example, the condemnation of the virtuous heathen, as maintained by the words of the 18th Article ; or the condemnation of all members of the Eastern Church, as maintained by the clauses of the Athanasian Creed, which appear to declare that those who refuse to acknow- ledge the Holy Spirit to proceed from the Father and the Son 6 shall without doubt perish everlastingly.5 There is probably no well-instructed Oxford graduate or minister of the Church of England who, however often he may have subscribed to the 8th or the 18th Article, has any hesitation in afiirming that it was possible for Socrates and Marcus Aurelius to be saved by diligence in framing their lives according to the religious law which they pro- fessed and the light of nature, and that the patriarchs, saints, and martyrs of the East will not perish for the lack of keeping £ whole and undenled ' the doctrines of the Essay IV. ITS USELESSNESS. 181 c Quicunque vult.' When Baxter subscribed the Articles lie felt himself constrained to subscribe these two with a special reservation in behalf of a charitable construc- tion.1 With that reservation2 they are probably sub- scribed at present by the vast majority of the clergy and graduates, and the doctrines which they condemn are thus as generally admitted within the pale of the English Church as though no subscription to that effect existed at all. Public opinion for a long time sided with the Arti- cles on those subjects. But it has at last given way to a more Christian view of the matter, and the rigid subscrip- tion has proved powerless against the increased apprecia- tion of the blessed doctrine of Christ and His Apostles. Or, again, the 6th Article c in the name of Holy Scrip- ' ture understands those Canonical Books of the Old and ' New Testament of whose authority was never any doubt ' in the Church.' Taken literally, the subscription to these words would exclude from academical degrees and from the clerical profession all those who receive as Holy Scripture the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apocalypse, the Second Epistle of St. Peter, the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, and the Second and Third Epistles of St. Johu, of whose authority it is well known that c there was con- 6 siderable doubt ' in the early Church. But this statement of the Article is not only overridden, but even forgotten. The distinction which it draws between those Books which it receives as Canonical, and those which alone it receives 1 Macaulay, Hist, of England, iii. 89. 2 1 Every sincere and conscientious 1 member of the Greek Church . . . ' must, in the estimationjof every clergy - 1 man of tho Church of England 1 who holds every point and iota in 'their literal sense "without doubt 1 " perish everlastingly." I repeat 1 solemnly that I never met with a ' single clergyman who believed this in ' the literal sense of the words, and 4 for the honour of human nature and ' of Christianity I trust that not one 1 lives in our age who would delibe- 1 rately aver that such was his belief.' Such was tho uncontradicted state- ment of an eminent Prelate in 1810, and it is probably not less true now. 182 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. as Holy Scripture, is actually set aside ; and the vast majority of the clergy of the Church of England, in defiance of the Article and of their subscription to it, receive as Holy Scripture without scruple those books c of whose authority c there was doubt in the Church ' for no less than three important centuries, and even attack as heretical those who adopt the language of the Article itself. These books, disputed and doubted as they were in the early Church, are, for the most part, so clearly marked with the essential characteristics of Holy Scripture, that the statement of the Article,1 even though fortified by the great contem- porary authority of Calvin and Luther, has broken down before the common sentiment of English Christians, both clergy and laity. Or take the whole language of the Liturgy on the great doctrines of Justification, and of Regeneration, and of Inspiration. This language, if regarded not from a con- troversial, but from a practical and devotional point of view, may be easily used by all good Christians ; but nevertheless it is such as never could have been received as the expression of the dogmatical belief of the large section of the Church commonly called ' Low Church 5 or 'Evangelical.' And yet the views confining 'Begene- ' ration ' to Conversion, f Inspiration ' to the verbal accu- racy of the sacred writers of the Bible, Justification to the single act of the renunciation of the believer's merits, are as firmly held by this section as though the Liturgy had on each of these points expressed itself for their views and not against them, and as though they had never subscribed to it at all. Or take the Articles in the aspect which presents the most formidable difficulties to many of those who subscribe 1 I give 'this, of course, as an ex- learned article on 1 Canon ' in the treme instance. The facts of the case Dictionary of the Bible, p. 268. are well stated by Mr. Westcott in his Essay IV. ITS USELBSSNESS. 183 them — their antagonism to the Roman Catholic system of doctrine. This is the most serious restraint which subscription might seem to impose, because this is (as it would seem) the purpose for which alone many of them must have been written. But this also has been success- fully overcome by those who wished to overcome it. From the time of the reaction of High Church and Arminian principles under the Stuarts, many of the Articles must, as regards their first intention, have become a dead letter, and this deviation from their original meaning was openly claimed in our own time by the celebrated Tract XC, and has been recently acknowledged as the admissible, nay, the only legitimate interpretation of subscription by the leaders of the High Church party. The 22nd Article condemns ' the ' Romish doctrine of Purgatory and Invocation of Saints,' but not (so it is contended) a purifying process after death, or an or a pro nobis. The 21st Article, which asserts that 6 General Councils may err and have erred,5 is understood as not applying to General Councils which are oecumenical. The 31st Article, which condemns ' the Sacrifices of Masses,' is understood not to condemn ' the Sacrifice of the Mass.' When in the 37th Article the Bishop of Rome is said to have ( no jurisdiction within this realm,' this is assumed to apply to temporal jurisdiction only.1 In this way, the Articles, usually supposed to be aimed against the Church of Rome, are reduced to mere truisms, which every one can subscribe ; and many of the peculiar doctrines laid down by the Council of Trent can be held, and have been held, by those who have subscribed the XXXIX Articles. It will be remembered that this mode of interpretation excited much opposition at the time, both in 1841 and in 1845. But since 1845 the question has not 1 See Tract XC. and Dr. Pusey's Letter to Dr. Jclf. [See on this point generous defence of its principles in his Essay V.J 184 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. been stirred again, and nnder cover of this construction, the so-called Romanising doctrines which generally excite most alarm, and the fear of which most effectually operates as a reason against relaxing subscription, have been received, and may hereafter be received, as fully as if sub- scription were entirely abolished. The very efforts which were made in 1841 and 1845 to restrain the latitude claimed by Tract XC, (as I ventured at the time, and still venture to think, without due regard to the general conditions of subscription in the Church of England,) have by their subsequent failure tended to render more conspi- cuous the inefficiency of these tests to oppose the main- tenance of Roman Catholic opinions within the pale of our Church. Other checks exist. But subscription has totally failed. Or, if we turn from the apprehension of the inroad of the doctrines of Rome, which causes the most general alarm for the English religious public, to the apprehension of the inroad of the doctrines of Germany, then again, for a different but equally cogent reason, subscription has proved powerless. In the case of the Catholic doctrines, the barrier of the Articles has been overborne by the Liturgy and by the strong current cf religious opinion engendered under the Stuart divines and again in modern Oxford. Against the German spirit of criticism there was hardly any barrier raised in the Articles — partly because to a cer- tain degree the English Reformers shared the continental doctrines already entertained on this subject by Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle ; chiefly from the fact that the scien- tific, historical, and critical questions, which now so much agitate the mind of Europe, had not yet come into exist- ence. There has, no doubt, been a powerful restraint upon the advance of Biblical criticism in England. But this restraint has been imposed not by subscription to Essay IV. ITS USELESSNESS. 185 the Articles, but by the determined resistance of public opinion in England to the reception or the appreciation of novelties, especially in theological matters. And it is this public opinion which on the whole is, and will always be, the chief safeguard against eccentricities and extravagances of opinion in ecclesiastical or acade- mical offices. There are many literary, some ecclesiastical institutions, where no subscription is required, and yet where the same harmony and the same general tenor of doctrine prevails as in the chairs of Oxford and in the pulpits of the English Church, simply because the audi- ences who hear, the congregations that attend, the teachers and preachers, will not endure to hear anything else taught than that which, on the whole, falls in with the religious life and sentiment of the English people. And if, in late years, the influx of German theology and the advance of criticism has made itself more felt, this is not from any relaxation of subscription, but from the fact that the public itself has become more impregnated with the doctrines which made their appearance amongst the clergy in point of fact shortly after they had taken root amongst the educated classes. That there should have been no Articles against the speculations of Niebuhr, or Grote, or Ewald ; that there should have been no precise definitions of Inspiration, of Miracles, of Prophecy ; no determination of the authorship of the several books of the Old and New Testament ; no authorised exposition of the relation in which History, Geology, and Astronomy stand to the Bible — has been an immense assistance in preparing the way for the just consideration of these great questions. But I refer to this fact now, chiefly for the proof which it affords, that the safeguard for their reverent study, as it never did depend on subscription, so it will remain though subscription were removed ; and 186 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. that, as they have not been shut out by the existence of subscription, so they will not receive any additional legal facility by its abolition. For the restraint of these speculations, if restraint be needed, there will still be the same that now exists. There will still be the natural indisposition both of the clergy and of their congregations to run into extremes.1 There will still be the Ordination Service of Priests and Deacons, and the Consecration Service of Bishops. There will still be the power of prosecuting offenders. Prosecu- tions are no doubt remedies for the most part worse than the disease. Still, as the practice of subscription has not prevented the recourse to prosecutions, so the legal grounds on which ecclesiastical litigation proceeds are wholly irrespective of subscription. Every prosecution which has been instituted might have been carried on legally, though the defendants had never subscribed at all, and may be carried on legally, though subscription is entirely abolished. But, after all, the best security for sound doctrine is in c the force of truth.' The Bible has maintained its hold 1 As an instance of what I mean, I may mention the doctrine of the final restitution of all things. How widely the opinion that there may be forgive- ness after death is spread amongst the clergy I know not. But the fact is certain, first, that such an opinion is very rarely preached, and, secondly, that this silence is not occasioned by subscription. There was an Article in the original edition of the Forty-two Articles in 1552, condemning those who teach that 'All men shall be 'saved at the length.' This article was deliberately struck out in 1562, together with another which condemn ed the doctrine of Millenarianism. There- fore, as far as subscription is con- cerned, the clergy of the Church of England are left as free to preach the general restoration of all men, as they are to preach the doctrine of the Mil- lennium. But because religious opinion in England has set its face against the former, and (in some quarters at least) in favour of the latter, the former is virtually proscribed, whilst the latter is openly avowed. [Within a few months after these words were written they received an additional exemplification from the circumstance that the liberty here indicated was distinctly recognised by the law. (See Essay III.) Yet in point of fact the causes here described have prevented any extended use of that liberty. 1870.] Essay IV. ITS USELESSNESS. 187 on the world, virtually, without subscription to its con- Beal bonds tents. No laymen, not even Oxford graduates or under- 0 unity* graduates, have ever been made to express their assent to its teaching beforehand. The Deacons of the Church have only done so in the modified form to which reference has been already made. The Articles, whilst protesting against the authority of Tradition, have still required no direct assent to the edification, the beauty, the Inspiration of the Bible. Yet the Bible has not given way. If in The Bible, some points our views respecting it have to be altered, it is more thought of, more talked of, more sought after than ever. It will retain its ground without the aid of subscription, as without such aid it has retained and does retain its ground to this present day. We have never been called to declare our belief in the grandeur of Isaiah, or the pathos of Jeremiah, or the wisdom of Paul, nor even in the Divine Pre-eminence of the Gospels. But we acknowledge this all the more readily, because we have not been entrapped into it by a legal snare in our early youth. And so of the Prayer-book also. That there are The parts here and there which by an alteration, certainly of ^lev' the Rubrics, perhaps of the prayers themselves, may be wisely amended, I do not deny. But as a whole it has commended itself to the affections of the English nation, not by reason of the ' unfeigned assent and consent ' of the clergy, or the canonical declaration that 6 it con- ' tains nothing contrary to the Word of God,' but by that surpassing wisdom and charity which breathes through almost every portion of it ; by that beauty and strength of language which soothes and cheers, even when we are unable fully to agree with all the turns of its expressions ; by that just harmony of Christian doctrine which it presents to the philosophical no less than to the simple believer. 188 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. These are the two real bonds of religious life and teach- ing in England ; these override all onr differences ; these promote that ' avoiding of diversities of opinion and that * consent in true religion 9 which neither the Articles themselves nor subscriptions (whether to Articles or Liturgy) have been able to effect. And, if to these we may add, by way of illustration, any ordinary writings, we might perhaps name two, which owe their prevailing and pervading influence, not to any subscription or assent of clergy or laity to their dogmatic truth, but to the genuine, genial, Apostolic spirit that in- spires them both — Keble's 6 Christian Year ' and Bunyan's ' Pilgrim's Progress.' These are to English Christendom, Anglican and Nonconformist, what the De Imitatione Christi is to Christendom at large. Shortcomings, defects, errors of doctrine and of taste may be detected in each, but they nevertheless serve as proofs how mighty a fellow- ship may be created even by human compositions, without the slightest external support of the State, without the slightest requirement of assent on the part of the Church. Is it not certain that an attempt to enforce ' the unfeigned ' assent and consent to all and everything ' contained in the 6 Pilgrim's Progress ' and the c Christian Year,' would, so far from increasing our appreciation and reverence of the graces of those two admirable works, incalculably pervert and lower it ? Is it not equally certain that the Prayer-book would gain in proportion as it was relieved from the forced and unnatural laudation of it, which is thus thrust, as it were, into the mouths of those who, left to themselves, would honour and praise it as it deserves ? It was observed of the oracle of Delphi, that during all the ages when the oracle commanded the real reverence of Greece, the place in which it was enshrined needed no walls for its defence. The awful grandeur of its natural Essay IV. ITS USELESSNESS. 189 situation, the majesty of its Temple, were sufficient. Its fortifications — as useless as they were unseemly — were built only in that disastrous time when the ancient feeling of faith had decayed, and the oracle was forced to rely on the arm of flesh, on its bulwarks of brick and stone, not on its own intrinsic sanctity. May God avert this omen from us ! It is only in these later ages of the Church, or chiefly in the Protestant portions of Christendom, that subscriptions have been piled up to circumscribe our oracle and our sanctuar}T. Let us show that we, in these later days, are willing to free ourselves from these un- sightly barriers which encumber, without defending, the truth which they enclose and hide. Let us show that we, in our Eeformed Church, are not afraid to dispense with those artificial restraints which the Catholic Church in ancient, and, as we think, less enlightened times, scorned to call to its aid. "What I have thus ventured to recommend is the re- moval of the existing subscriptions as mischievous and useless. Your Lordship has well observed on several occasions that the substitution of any new subscriptions instead of those which now exist would be only a revival of the old evil in new forms. Probably most of those who now complain of the system handed down to us would pre- fer it to any new test imposed by the present generation. That on which after all we must rely is the willingness to join in the Liturgy and worship, whether as expressed in the declarations now made in the Ordination Service, or in the general requirements of conformity prescribed in the Act of Uniformity, or in the tacit consent implied by becoming a clergyman at all. Those who were really averse to the profession, or out of sympathy with the system, on Puritan, or Roman Catholic, or sceptical grounds, would drop off of themselves, as they always 190 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. liave in former times, without compulsion from others. It was no enforcement of subscription or legal prosecution which drove away the Eoman Catholic seceders of 1845, or the Positivist seceders of a later time. It was simply that other systems had greater attractions, and that those attractions at last became irresistible. Those, on the other hand, who heartily and humbly wished to serve God and instruct their brethren,1 not in any narrow sect but in the unpretending and comprehensive ranks of the National Church, ought to be retained, and often would be retained, if they were freed from the present system of early pledges 1 I am aware that it is invidious to refer to single instances of sacrifice for the sake of religious scruples, yet I cannot forbear to refer to one re- markable instance which, though known to many, has come especially within my own experience. Of all the clergy whom I have known I can truly say that few have more exactly exemplified the best characteristics of an English clergyman than the iRev. Charles Wodehouse, late Canon of Norwich. He will forgive me if I go back to the days when I first knew him, now more than twenty years ago, when his kindly, Christian courtesy and good sense won from me and mine a gratitude which can never be discharged. There was nothing what- ever in his opinions or his tendencies to divide him from the mass of his countrymen or his clerical brethren. His sermons were orthodox, gentle, persuasive, manly. His parochial and cathedral ministrations were such as would have made him acceptable in any parish or in any cathedral in the land. But after a long struggle, com- menced almost from the time when he first became aware that he had sub- scribed to formularies with which, in three minute points, he could not heartily agree, he gave up, at severe cost to himself, the positions in which he had led a happy and useful life for nearly fifty years. I do not say that any exceptional cases of themselves justify an alteration of a law, but they deserve to be recorded, in order to remind those in authority what is the nature of the burden which the re- quirement of those subscriptions im- poses on those who in the points at issue exactly agree with themselves. There is probably no Bishop on the bench who would interpret the dam- natory clauses of the Athanasian Creeed in any other sense than that required by Mr. Wodehouse. There are certainly very few Bishops who, if asked, would not explain their use of the words of the Ordination Service in a sense exactly similar to that desired by him. The difference between him and his brethren was simply that he had a scruple — as many thought — an excess of scruple — in making and con- tinuing a subscription which the great bulk of the clergy accepted in the same sense as he was desirous of put- ting upon it. I trust that he may yet live to see that his blameless ministry and his conscientious, even though it may be thought unnecessary, sacrifice have not been in vain. [It may be hoped that this wish has been at least in part fulfilled. 1870.] Essay IV. REMAINING DIFFICULTIES, 191 which they either fear to undertake or at last from mere sensitiveness are led to repudiate. As it is, we keep many whom we would gladly spare, whilst we lose many whom we would most gladly keep. It may be urged, however, that, if the subscriptions are Possible useless, so also would be their removal ; that other obstacles Jau^jJJ160 maininjj;. would be left, which would still render the entrance to gra- duation in the University and to the ministry of the Church too narrow for those whom we should wish to include. It may be urged, first, that the candidates for Orders Ordination would still stumble at the questions put to them in the mce" Ordination Service. No doubt some would. But anyone who will read the seven questions addressed to Deacons, and the eight addressed to Priests and Bishops,1 will see their wide difference from the present terms of subscrip- tion. They are almost entirely practical, bearing on the moral or spiritual condition of the candidates themselves. The only questions which can be construed into a profes- sion of intellectual belief are the third to Deacons and the second to Priests and Bishops. Of these, the latter, if for a moment it might seem to press hard on anyone who attached much importance to Tradition, yet probably would not of itself even exclude a Roman Catholic or a Greek, however much they might be dissatisfied with its purely negative character. The third question, addressed to Deacons, if taken in the sense which alone the words will bear when applied to the immense variety of books and styles contained in the Bible, and viewed in the light of Dr. Lushington's recent judgment, which is now the only legal interpretation of it, is such as most reasonable Christians would at once accept.2 1 [The wide generality of these ques- stringent declaration in a late well- tions was strikingly exemplified by known Episcopal appointment. 1870.] their confessed inadequacy to satisfy the 2 See Note at the end. demands of eager agitators for a more 192 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. Con- It is urged, secondly, that conformity would become a ormi y. burden equal to that of subscription, and that there would be an inconsistency in reading or reciting that to which we have refused to express our assent. I do not deny that difficulties would arise. But they would be much less than they are at present. It is obvious that conformity must always be wider than exact belief. A single instance will suffice both as an illustration and as an argument. The whole ministry, not merely of the Church of England but of all English Churches and sects throughout the Authorised world, use the Authorised Version of the Scriptures. UMon- They use it, although they are aware that it contains innumerable errors. They use it, although they know that in many instances these errors are such as convey to their hearers a sense exactly the contrary of the original, and a belief in the genuineness of passages which they themselves know to be spurious. In the minds of the most enlightened of the clergy these variations may be of trivial importance. But to many, perhaps to a majority, they are of the very highest importance, inasmuch as they give to our congregations a totally false impression of words, and lines, and sentences of that Sacred Book, con- cerning which at least one distinguished Prelate has hazarded the remarkable statement, probably endorsed by a large section of the religious world, that ' the very ' foundation of our faith, the very basis of our hopes, £ the very nearest and dearest of our consolations, are 6 taken from us when one line in that Sacred Volume on c which we base everything is declared to be unfaithful c or untrustworthy.' This Version Ave read in spite of its imperfections, in spite of its errors, because of its general excellence, because of its antiquity, because of the difficulty of chang- ing it, because of its value as a bond of union with all Essay IV. REMAINING DIFFICULTIES. 193 English Protestants, because of the confusion which might possibly ensue if each clergyman availed himself of his liberty to alter it at his own discretion. But all this we do, without subscribing to it. King James I. might have ordered a subscription of ' unfeigned assent and 6 consent to all and every part of it,' and a declaration that we believed it to contain c nothing contrary to 6 the Word of God,' and e that all and every ' chapter and verse ' was agreeable ' to the original. No doubt this subscription, like those which now exist, would have been explained away. But how greatly would it have increased our difficulties, what insinuations of dis- honesty and bad faith would it have bred against every inquiry into the text, against everyone who endeavoured to defend (as recently) the details of the Pentateuch by arguing that every word complained of was a mistransla- tion ! What heart-burnings in students, what scruples in preachers ! From these we are happily delivered. No subscription has ever been required to the Authorised Version ; and yet it remains, as the Liturgy would remain, a lasting bond of our religious unity, and as both would remain, if they were altered in conformity with increased knowledge and increased piety. But even if conformity be of itself a burden on some consciences, this can be no reason why the burden should be increased by subscription. The difficulties of revising the Liturgy are great ; the difficulties of remov- ing subscription are small. Let us, at all events, relieve the Church where we can and as we can. It is also urged that the reluctance to enter Holy State of Orders is deeply rooted in the theological unsettlement of the age" the age, combined with the narrowness of ecclesiastical parties. I acknowledge this fully. I acknowledge that, if the present ardour for inquiry on the one hand, and o 194 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. the present disposition to narrow the boundaries of the Church on the other hand, were to continue, the ad- vantage gained by the abolition of subscription would be very slight. The willingness with which, as was noticed in your Lordship's Charge, the scruples of Arnold about the canonicity of the Epistle to the Hebrews were received by Archbishop Howley, would be now, if I mis- take not, comparatively rare. The tenderness with which, thirty or forty years ago, the consciences of young men were soothed and encouraged in their difficulties at taking Orders, has (perhaps with the best intentions on the part of our rulers) not increased in proportion to the needs of the case, or the wants of the Church. This more strin- gent view which (in consequence, it may be, of the changed circumstances of the time) so many have felt it their duty to adopt, I fully and mournfully acknowledge. Still the very gloom which this state of things casts over our pro- spects makes it the more necessary for the Legislature to do what it can to remove these (as they may be called) mechanical hindrances to the efficiency of the Church, the removal of which is within its own power. And the support given to such a relaxation, even by a single member of the Episcopal Bench, would be hailed by the rising generation at least as a sign that their case was not altogether overlooked by those whose office it is to 6 heal ' the sick, bind up the broken, bring again the outcasts, seek 6 the lost.' Conclu- May I conclude by repeating a well-known story, of which I will not vouch for the exact accuracy in detail, but which is sufficiently correct on the whole to justify the moral to be deduced from it ? There was, till within our own times, in the Turkish Empire a law — of high importance in the eyes of the eccle- siastical and civil authorities — which guarded the esta- Essay IV. CONCLUSION. 195 blislied faith by inflicting capital punishment on any convert to Islamisni who was fonnd guilty of relapse to his former religion. An instance of such a relapse was detected in the person of an Armenian Christian. The Council of State considered his case, and he was sentenced to death. The great English Ambassador, whose name is still so renowned throughout the East as a terror to evil-doers and as a refuge of the oppressed, delivered his earnest remon- strance against the execution of the sentence. The Council persisted, and the headless trunk was that same day exposed in front of the Sublime Porte. The Ambassador heard of the disregard of his warning. He instantly sent to the Minis- ters of the Sultan the announcement that part of his effects were already on board the steamer moored beneath his palace, on the Golden Horn ; and that, unless he received an assurance of the repeal of the obnoxious law, he and all his suite would instantly take their departure from. Constantinople, and that the whole diplomatic body would rapidly follow. The Council of State met. The terror of this great defection had at last awakened them to the gravity of the situation. Divided between the awe of the impending calamity, and the reluctance to part with a time-honoured bulwark of their ecclesiastical constitution, they knew not what to do. In this extremity they sent for a venerable ex-Minister, whom they were wont in severe emergencies to consult as an oracle of wisdom. He came, and they expounded to him their difficulty and entreated for a solu- tion. The aged counsellor answered, 6 You have asked me 6 a question. Allow me to reply by asking you another. £ Do you wish to lose the whole of your religion, or only a ' part ? ' They replied, c A part.' 6 Then,' he continued, ' I advise you without a moment's hesitation to repeal this * law, against which the Ambassador of England has raised o 2 196 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. 6 this formidable complaint. It is possible that our religion ' may subsist without it ; but it is certain that, unless you 6 repeal it, our whole Empire and Church will, by the 6 alienation of this great power, be brought to the ground.' They listened — they were silent. The law was repealed. No relapsed Mussulman has ever since been executed. The Turkish Empire and the Mussulman hierarchy and faith still remain, not weakened, but strengthened by the re- moval for ever of so terrible a scandal. I do not press the application of this apologue in all its parts. We have no monstrous individual grievance to provoke the anger of powerful statesmen. The Church of England is, we may confidently trust, in spite of all its dangers, far more secure than the tottering Empire and hierarchy of Turkey. But the danger which threatens us is analogous to that which threatened the Sublime Porte, the danger, namely, which the Bench of Bishops, with one accordant voice, has pointed out, in the gradual with- drawal of the highest and most cultivated minds in the country from the ministry of the Established Church. They have already begun to move ; they are but waiting the signs of the times to withdraw in yet larger and larger numbers to a further and further distance. In this crisis the advice of the aged counsellor at Con- stantinople is the best that we can follow. The question is constantly arising in ecclesiastical legislation, 6 Will you 6 lose the whole of your religious system, or a part ? ' There is always a disposition in the first instance to say that, if we lose a part, we shall lose the whole, and that the only means of saving the whole is to keep every part. Yet it may truly be said, not only that all experience proves the futility of this alarm, but that the whole is best saved by abandoning those parts which can no longer safely be re- tained. What Paley says of the advantage afforded to the Essay IV. CONCLUSION. 197 Christian Religion itself by the relief from any one Article which contradicts the experience or the reasoning of man- kind, is no less true of the relief afforded to any particular branch of the Christian Church by the removal of any unnecessary burden which has been fastened upon it. ' He ' who dismisses from the system ' any such useless append- age ( does more towards recommending the belief, and, with 6 the belief, the influence of Christianity, to the understand- ' ings and consciences of serious enquirers, and through ' them to universal reception and authority, than can be c effected by a thousand contenders for ordinances of human 6 establishment.' My Lord, I leave the matter in your hands and in the hands of the Legislature. Subscription and abolition of subscription are alike only means to ends. If the end can be accomplished in any other way, if the comprehensive- ness, the influence, the truthfulness, and the faith of the Church of England, if the interests of learning and religion at Oxford can be better maintained by retaining subscrip- tion than by removing it, then by all means retain it. But if, on the other hand, it shall seem that the time is at last come when that which the great statesmen and divines of the Ee volution so nearly carried into effect may be safely accomplished, it will be one of the best signs which could be given that the Church of England is still alive, still able to meet the requirements of our age, still vigorous enough to bear the removal of an excrescence that drains instead of nourishing its strength. One word in conclusion. It is my earnest hope that in nothing which I have said I shall appear to have been un- mindful of the extraordinary anxieties and perplexities which beset the position of those who hold the high office of Bishop in this trying time. If I have ventured to address your Lordship at all on this subject, it is because 198 LETTER ON SUBSCRIPTION. Essay IV. I know what those difficulties are, and because I feel that the clergy, of whatever degree, have at least one object and one duty in common ; that of lending any help, however humble, to guide the Church of this generation rightly through the present storms to the haven where it would be. With true respect for your manifold labours in your great work, and with sincere gratitude for your many kindnesses, I remain, Your faithful friend and servant, AETHUE P. STANLEY. April, 1862. [In 1863 a Eoyal Commission was issued to consider the question of subscription, and in the place of all the existing subscriptions as given in Note II. (p. 206, 207) was substituted, on the unanimous recommendation of the Commissioners, the form given in p. 209. For the manner of its reception see Note IV. (p. 210).] 199 NOTE L (1.) Tests of Membership with the Church of England, as recognised in the formularies of the church of eng- LAND. [April, 1865.] (a.) Tests ox Admission into the Church at Baptism. ' Question. Dost thou renounce the devil and all his works, ; the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous ' desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh, so that 1 thou wilt not follow, nor be led by them ? c Answer. I renounce them all. 1 Question. Dost thou believe in God the Father Almighty, ' Maker of heaven and earth ? ' And in Jesus Christ His only-begotten Son our Lord ? And 1 that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost ; born of the Virgin ' Mary ; that He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, ' dead, and buried ; that He went down into hell, and also did 1 rise again the third day ; that He ascended into heaven, and 1 sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty ; and ' from thence shall come again at the end of the world, to judge ' the quick and the dead ? 1 And dost thou believe in the Holy Ghost ; the holy 4 Catholic Church ; the Communion of Saints ; the Remission 1 of sins ; the Resurrection of the flesh ; and everlasting life after 1 death ? 1 Answer. All this I stedfastly believe. 1 Question. Wilt thou be baptized in this faith ? ' Answer. That is my desire. 1 Question. Wilt thou then obediently keep God's holy will 1 and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of thy ' life ? * Answer. I will endeavour so to do, God being my helper.' — {Office pf Public Baptism.) 200 NOTE J. Essay IV. (b.) Test of Continuance in the Church. (Address to a Member of the Church on his death-bed.) i The Minister shall rehearse the Articles of the Faith, saying thus, 1 Dost tliou believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of ' heaven and earth ? 1 And in Jesus Christ His only-begotten Son our Lord ? And ' that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin ' Mary ; that He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified , ' dead, and buried ; that He went down into hell, and also did ' rise again the third day ; that He ascended into heaven, 1 and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty ; and ' from thence shall come again at the end of the world, to judge 1 the quick and the dead ? 1 And dost thou believe in the Holy Ghost ; the holy ' Catholic Church ; the Communion of Saints ; the Remission of 1 sins ; the Resurrection of the flesh ; and everlasting life after ' death ? ' ^[ The sick person shall answer, 1 All this I stedfastly believe.' — (Office of the Visitation of the Sick.) (2.) Tests of Admission to Holy Orders, recognised in tee Formularies of the Church of England. For Deacons. 1562. ' ^! The Bishop, sitting in his chair, shall cause the Oath of the Queen's Supre- ' macy, and against the power and authority of all foreign Potentates, to be 1 ministered unto every one of them that are to be Ordered. ' The Oath of the Queen s Sovereignty. ' I A. B. do swear, that I do from my heart abhor, detest, and ' abjure, as impious and heretical, that damnable Doctrine and ' Position, That Princes excommunicated or deprived by the ' Pope, or any Authority of the See of Rome, may be deposed or ' murdered by their Subjects, or any other whatsoever. And I 1 do declare, that no foreign Prince, Person, Prelate, State, or ' Potentate, hath, or ought to have, any Jurisdiction, Power, ' Superiority, Pre-eminence, or Authority, Ecclesiastical or ' Spiritual, within this Realm. So help me God. ' Then shall the Bishop examine every one of them that are to be Ordered, in ' the presence of the people, after this manner following. (1.) ' Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy * Ghost to take upon you this Office and Ministration, to serve Essay IV. NOTE I. 201 1 God for the promoting of His glory and the edifying of His 1 people ? 1 Answer. I trust so. 1 The Bishop. (2.) 'Do you think that you are truly called, according to the 1 will of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the due order of this Realm, ' to the Ministry of the Church ? ' Answer. I think so. 1 TJie Bishop. (3.) ' Do you unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures 1 of the Old and New Testament ? ' Answer. I do believe them.1 ' The Bishop. (4.) ' Will you diligently read the same unto the people 1 assembled in the church where you shall be appointed to 1 serve "? ' Answer. I will. ■ The Bishop. (5.) 1 It appertaineth to the Office of a Deacon, in the church 1 where he shall be appointed to serve, to assist the Priest in 1 Judgment of the De.vx of the Arches Court, delivered June 25, 1862, on the Third Akswer of the- Deacons. ' What is the meaning of the Dea- 1 con's declaration that he unfeignedly ' believes in the Canonical Scriptures ? ' It is both difficult and dangerous to 4 attempt any definition ; but the ne- ' cessity of the case, the manner in ' which the charges have been laid and ' the defence has been conducted, com- 'pel me to put some interpretation on ' these words. I shall do so, keeping ' befure me the sole object of arriving 4 at a judicial decision in a criminal ' case. ' I think that the declaration 44 1 do 144 believe" must be considered with 4 reference to the subject matter, and 1 that is the whole Bible, the Old and Xew Testament. The great number ' of these Books ; the extreme anti- 4 quity of some ; that our Scriptures 4 must necessarily consist of copies 4 and translations ; that they embrace ' almost every possible variety of sub- ject, parts being all-important to the 4 salvation of mankind, and parts 4 being historical and of a less sacred 4 character, certainly not without some 4 element of allegory and figures, — all 4 these circumstances, I say, must be ' borne in mind when the extent of the 4 obligation imposed by the words 4* I * 44 do believe" has to be determined. 4 Influenced by these views, I, for 4 the ptirpose of this cause, must hold 4 that the generality of this expression, • 44 1 do believe," must be modified by 4 the subject matter ; that there must 4 be a bond fide belief that the Holy 4 Scriptures contain everything neces- 'sary to salvation, and that to that 4 extent they have the direct sanction 4 of the Almighty.' 202 , NOTE I. Essay IV. ' Divine Service, and specially when he ministereth the Holy ' Communion, and to help him in the distribution thereof, and to ' read Holy Scriptures and Homilies in the Church ; and to in- ' struct the youth in the Catechism ; in the absence of the Priest ' to baptize infants, and to preach, if he be admitted thereto by ' the Bishop. And furthermore, it is his Office, where provision 1 is so made, to search for the sick, poor, and impotent people of ' the Parish, to intimate their estates, names, and places where ' they dwell, unto the Curate, that by his exhortation they may ' be relieved with the alms of the Parishioners, or others. Will ' you do this gladly and willingly ? ' Answer. I will so do, by the help of God. < The Bishop. (6.) 'Will you apply all your diligence to frame and fashion ' your own lives, and the lives of your families, according to the ' Doctrine of Christ ; and to make both yourselves and them, ' as much as in you lieth, wholesome examples of the flock of ' Christ ? ' Answer. I will so do, the Lord being my helper. ' The Bishop. (7.) ' Will you reverently obey your Ordinary, and other chief ' Ministers of the Church, and them to whom the charge and ' government over you is committed, following with a glad mind ' and will their godly admonitions ? ' Answer. I will endeavour myself, the Lord being my ' helper.' — {Service for the Ordering of Beacons.) For Priests. The Oath of Supremacy, as for the Deacons. ' The Bishop* shall say, (1.) ' Do you think in your heart, that you be truly called, ' according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the order ' of this United Church of England and Ireland, to the Order ' and Ministry of Priesthood ? i Answer. I think it. ' The Bishop. (2.) 1 Are you persuaded that the Holy Scriptures contain 1 sufficiently all Doctrine required of necessity for eternal salva- ' tion through faith in Jesus Christ ? and are you determined Essay IV. NOTE I. 203 ' out of the said Scriptures to instruct the people committed to ' your charge, and to teach nothing, as required of necessity to ' eternal salvation, but that which you shall be persuaded may 1 be concluded and proved by the Scripture ? ' Answer. I am so persuaded, and have so determined by 1 God's grace. ' The Bishop. (3.) ' Will you then give your faithful diligence always so to ' minister the Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of ' Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church and ' Realm hath received the same, according to the Command- ' ments of God ; so that you may teach the people committed to 1 your Cure and Charge with all diligence to keep and observe 1 the same ? * Answer. I will so do, by the help of the Lord. 1 The Bishop. (4.) * Will you be ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish £ and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to ' God's Word ; and to use both public and private monitions and ' exhortations, as well to the sick as to the whole, within your ' Cures, as need shall require, and occasion shall be given ? c Answer. I will, the Lord being my helper. ' The Bishop. (5.) 1 Will you be diligent in prayers, and in reading of the ' Holy Scriptures, and in such studies as help to the knowledge 1 of the same, laying aside the study of the world and the 1 flesh? * Answer. I will endeavour myself so to do, the Lord being 1 my helper. • The Bishop. (6.) ' Will you be diligent to frame and fashion your own ' selves, and your families, according to the doctrine of Christ : ' and to make both yourselves and them, as much as in you ' lieth, wholesome examples and patterns to the flock of Christ ? ' Answer. I will apply myself thereto, the Lord being my ' helper. ' The Bishop. (7.) ' Will you maintain and set forwards, as much as lieth in ' you, quietness, peace, and love, among all Christian people, 204 NOTE I. Essay IV. ' and especially among them that are or shall be committed to 4 yonr charge ? ' Ansiver. I will so do, the Lord being my helper. ' The Bishop, (8.) ' Will you reverently obey your Ordinary, and other 4 chief Ministers, unto whom is committed the charge and 1 government over you ; following with a glad mind and will 1 their godly admonitions, and submitting yourselves to their ' godly judgments ? 4 Ansiver. I will so do, the Lord being my helper.' — (Service for the Ordering of Priests.) For Bishops and Archbishops. The Oath of Supremacy, as for Priests and Deacons. 1 And then shall also be ministered unto them the Oath of due Obedience to the Archbishop, as followeth. 4 In the name of God. Amen. I N.t chosen Bishop of the See ' and Church of N., do profess and promise all due reverence and 4 obedience to the Archbishop and to the Metropolitical Church of 1 N. and to their Successors : So help me God, through Jesus ' Christ. . . . 1 Then the Archbishop shall say, (1.) ' Are you persuaded that you be truly called to this ' Ministration, according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, ' and the order of this Realm ? 4 Answer. I am so persuaded. ' The Archbishop. (2.) ' Are you persuaded that the Holy Scriptures contain 1 sufficiently all doctrine required of necessity for eternal salva- ' tion through faith in Jesus Christ ? And are you determined 4 out of the same Holy Scriptures to instruct the people com- ' mitted to your charge ; and to teach or maintain nothing as 4 required of necessity to eternal salvation, but that which ' you shall be persuaded may be concluded and proved by the * same ? 4 Ansiver. I am so persuaded, and determined, by God's 4 grace. ' The Archbishop. (3.) 4 Will you then faithfully exercise yourself in the same 4 Holy Scriptures, and call upon God by prayer, for the true Essay IV NOTE I. 205 ' understanding of the same ; so as you may be able by them to 1 teach and exhort with wholesome doctrine, and to withstand 1 and convince the gainsayers ? 1 Answer. I will so do, by the h^lp of God. ' The Archbishop. (4.) ' Are you ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and 1 drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to ' God's Word ; and both privately and openly to call upon and 1 encourage others to the same ? 4 Answer. I am ready, the Lord being my helper. 1 The Archbishop. (5.) 4 Will you deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and ' live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world ; that ' you may shew yourself in all things an example of good works 1 unto others, that the adversary may be ashamed, having nothing ' to say against you ? ' Answer. I will so do, the Lord being my helper. ' The Archbishop. (6.) 1 Will you maintain and set forward, as much as shall lie ' in you, quietness, love, and peace among all men ; and such as * be unquiet, disobedient, and criminous, within your Diocese, ' correct and punish, according to such authority as you have by 1 God's Word, and as to you shall be committed by the Ordinance ' of this Realm ? ' Answer. I will so do, by the help of God. ' The Archbishop. (7.) * Will you be faithful in ordaining, sending, or laying 1 hands upon others ? 1 Answer. I will so be, by the help of God. ' The Archbishop. (8.) • Will you shew yourself gentle, and be merciful for ' Christ's sake to poor and needy people, and to all strangers ' destitute of help ? 1 Answer. I will so shew myself, by God's help.' [These remain unaltered, except that the Oath of Supremacy is now administered before ordination.] 206 NOTE II. Essay IV. NOTE n The Subscriptions required by Parliament and by the Canons from the Clergy and from Members of the University of Oxford. 1571. I. The subscription to the Articles, enjoined by the Act 13 Eliz. c. 12, sect. 5, 1571, requires that at ordination the minister shall ' declare his assent and subscribe to all the Articles of Re- ' ligion which only concern the Confession of the true Faith and ' the doctrine of the Sacraments, expressed in a book, entitled 1 " Articles whereupon it was agreed, &c." ' Two qualifications are implied in this form : 1. That the assent signified by sub- scription is made to those ' Articles only which concern the con- ' fession of the true Faith and the doctrine of the Sacraments.' Which these are has never been determined. The question was much debated at the time. See Hardwick's History of the Articles, p. 218. 2. That the book subscribed is that which contains not 39 but 38 Articles, omitting the 29th Article and the first clause of the 20th Article. The same subscription is also enjoined by the same statute, at institution to a benefice, in this form : ' No person shall hereafter £ be admitted to any benefice with cure, except he ... . shall ' first have subscribed the said Articles in presence of the ' Ordinary, and publicly read the same in the parish church ' of that benefice, with declaration of his unfeigned assent to the ' same.' 1581. II. Subscription to the Articles was enjoined by the Earl of Leicester, as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, in 1581, to be required of all Undergraduates at their matriculation, and from all Graduates in all the degrees of Bachelors of Arts, Mas- ters of Arts, and Bachelors and Doctors of the other Faculties. The subscription was expressed by signature, without any precise form of words. That for Undergraduates and Bachelors was abolished by Act of Parliament in 1854. 1603. III. Subscription was enjoined by James I., through the Canons of 1603, to the three Articles of the 36th Canon, relating (1) Essay IV. NOTE II. 207 to the Queen's Supremacy, (2) to the Book of Common Prayer, (3) to the Thirty-nine Articles. This subscription was by the Canon required from all the clergy, and by an Oxford Statute in 1616 from all graduates in the University of Oxford. It was 1610. abolished for Bachelors by Act of Parliament in 1854. The form prescribed is as follows : — * I do willingly and ex animo subscribe to the three Articles 1 above mentioned, and to all things that are contained in ' them.' The common practice, however, is to put this together with the previous subscription to the Articles, thus : — 1 I do willingly and from my heart subscribe to the Thirty - ' nine Articles of Religion of the United Church of England ' and Ireland, and to the three Articles of the Thirty-sixth ' Canon, and to all things that are contained in them.' The three Articles of the Canon are as follows : — 1 1. That the Queen's Majesty, under God, is the only supreme £ Governor of this Realm, and of all other Her Highness' s Do- ' minions and Countries, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical ' things or causes as temporal ; and that no foreign Prince, Pre- ; late, State, or Potentate, hath or ought to have any jurisdic- ' tion, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical ' or spiritual, within Her Majesty's said Realms, Dominions, and 1 Countries. ( 2. That the Book of Common Prayer, and of Ordering of i Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, containeth in it nothing con- ' trary to the Word of God, and that it may lawfully so be used, ' and that he himself will use the form in the said Book pre- ' scribed, in public Prayer and administration of the Sacraments, 1 and none other. ' 3. That he alloweth the Book of Articles of Religion, agreed ' upon by the Archbishops and Bishops of both Provinces and ' the whole Clergy, in the Convocation holden at London in the 1 Year of our Lord One Thousand Five Hundred and Sixty- two ; ' and that he acknowledged all and every the Articles therein 1 contained, being in number Nine and Thirty, besides the 1 Ratification, to be agreeable to the Word of God.' IV. The Act of Uniformity (13 Car. II. c. 4, § 9), 1662, 1662. prescribes as follows : — ' That every beneficed clergyman shall declare his unfeigned 1 assent and consent to the Use of all things in the said Book ' contained and prescribed, in these words and no other : — 208 NOTE III. Essay IV. 1 I A.B. do hereby declare my unfeigned assent and consent 1 to all and everything contained and prescribed in and by the 1 Book intituled, The Booh of Common Prayer, and Administration 1 of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, ' according to the Use of the Church 0/ England : together with the 1 Psalter or Psalms of David, pointed as they are to be sung or ' said in Churches ; and the Form or Marnier of Making, Ordain- * vug, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.'' [The form which was substituted for all these by 28 & 20 Vict, c. 122, July 5, 1865 (see p. 198), was as follows : — ' I A. B. do solemnly make the following declaration : ' I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and to the Book ' of Common Prayer, and of the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and ' Deacons ; I believe the Doctrine of the United Church of Eng- 1 land and Ireland as therein set forth to be agreeable to the ' Word of God ; and in Public Prayer and Administration of the ' Sacraments I will use the form in the said book prescribed and ' none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful autho- ' rity.'] NOTE III. (1.) Subscriptions required from Ministers of the Established Church of Scotland, and others. 1 Questions put to Presentee before his Ordination {according to Act X. of Assembly in 1711). ' 1. Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 1 ments to be the Word of God, and the only rule of faith and ' manners ? ' 2. Do you sincerely own and believe the whole doctrines 1 contained in the Confession of Faith, approven by the General ' Assemblies of this Church, and ratified by law in the year ' 1690, to be founded upon the Word of God ; and do you ac- 1 knowledge the same as the confession of ycur faith ; and will 4 you firmly and constantly adhere thereto, and to the utmost 4 of your power assert, maintain, and defend the same, and the Essay IV NOTE III. 209 1 purity of the worship as presently practised in this National 1 Church, aud asserted in Act XV., Assembly 1707, entitled, Act ' against Innovations in the Worship of God ? ' 3. Do you disown all Popish, Arian, Socinian, Arminian, ' Bourignian, and all other doctrines, tenets, and opinions what- ' soever, contrary to and inconsistent with the foresaid Confes- ' sion of Faith ? ' 4. Are you persuaded that the Presbyterian government and 1 discipline of this Church are founded upon the Word of God ' and agreeable thereto ; and do you promise to submit to the ' said government and discipline, and to concur with the same, 1 and never to endeavour, directly or indirectly, the prejudice or ' subversion thereof, but to the utmost of your power, in your ' station, to maintain, support, and defend the said discipline ' and Presbyterian government by kirk-sessions, presbyteries, 1 provincial synods, and general assemblies, during all the days ' of your life ? ' 5. Do you promise to submit yourself willingly and humbly, 1 in the spirit of meekness, unto the admonitions of the brethren 1 of this presbytery, and to be subject to them, and all other * presbyteries, and superior judicatories of this Church, where ' God in His providence shall cast your lot ; and that, according ' to your power, you shall maintain the unity and peace of this ' Church against error and schism, notwithstanding of whatso- 1 ever trouble or persecution may arise, and that you shall follow 1 no divisive courses from the present established doctrine, wor- ' ship, discipline, and government of this Church ? ' 6. Are not zeal for the honour of God, love to Jesus Christ, ' and desire of saving souls, your great motives and chief induce- 1 ments to enter into the function of the holy ministry, and not ' worldly designs and interest ? ' 7. Have you used any undue methods, either by yourself or 1 others, in procuring this call ? ' 8. Do you engage, in the strength and grace of Jesus Christ, ' our Lord and Master, to rule wrell your own family, to live a ' holy and circumspect life, and faithfully, diligently, and cheer- ' fully, to discharge all the parts of the ministerial work, to the 1 edification of the Body of Christ ? ' 9. Do you accept of and close with the call to be pastor 1 of this parish, and promise, through grace, to perform all * the duties of a faithful minister of the Gospel among this 1 people? ' P 210 NOTE III. Essay IV. ' Formula to be subscribed by the person ordained, or licensed to preach the Gospel, according to Act X., Assembly 1711. 1 I, , do hereby declare that I do sincerely own and ' believe the whole doctrine contained in the Confession of Faith, ' approven by the General Assemblies of this National Church, 1 and ratified by law in the year 1690, and frequently confirmed 1 by divers Acts of Parliament since that time, to be the truths ' of God ; and I do own the same as the confession of my faith : 1 As likewise, I do own the purity of worship presently authorised 1 and practised in this Church, and also the Presbyterian govern- ' ment and discipline, now so happily established therein ; which 1 doctrine, worship, and Church government, I am persuaded, ' are founded upon the Word of God, and agreeable thereto : ' And I promise that, through the grace of God, I shall firmly ' and constantly adhere to the same ; and, to the utmost of my ' power, shall, in my station, assert, maintain, and defend the ' said doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of this ' Church by kirk-sessions, presbyteries, provincial synods, and 1 General Assemblies ; and that I shall, in my practice, conform ' myself to the said worship, and submit to the said discipline ' and government, and never endeavour, directly or indirectly, 1 the prejudice or subversion of the same : And I promise that I 1 shall follow no divisive course from the present establishment ' in this Church ; Renouncing all doctrines, tenets, and opinions 1 whatsoever, contrary to, or inconsistent with, the said doctrine, 1 worship, discipline, or government of this Church.' 1 Formula prescribed for Ordination in 1694 and 1700 in terms of the Statute of 1693, and now required of Lay-Elders. ' I, , do sincerely own and declare the above Confes- ' sion of Faith, approven by former General Assemblies of this ' Churchy and ratified by law in the year 1690, to be the Confession 1 of my faith, and that I own the doctrine therein contained to 1 be the true doctrine which I will constantly adhere to. As ' likewise that I own and acknowledge Presbyterian Church- ' government of this Church now settled bylaw by kirk- sessions, ' presbyteries, provincial synods, and General Assemblies to be 1 the only government of this Church ; and that I will submit 1 thereto, concur therewith, and never endeavour directly or ' indirectly the prejudice or subversion thereof ; and that I shall ' observe uniformity of worship and of the administration of all Essay IV. NOTE III. 211 ' public ordinances within this Church as the same are at present ' performed and allowed.' The Formula to be Subscribed at Ordination is altered as follows for ministers of the free church of scotland. ' I, subscribing this with my own hand, do hereby declare, that 1 I do sincerely own and believe the whole doctrine contained in ' the "Westminster Confession of Faith, as approved by the ' General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in the year 1647, ' to be the truths of God ; and I do own the same as the confes- ' sion of my faith. As likewise I do own the purity of worship ' presently authorised and practised in this Church, and also the ' Presbyterian government and discipline thereof ; which doc- ' trine, worship, and Church government, I am persuaded, are 1 founded upon the Word of God, and agreeable thereto. And I ' promise that through the grace of God I shall firmly and con- ' stantly adhere to the same ; and to the utmost of my power ' shall, in my station, assert, maintain, and defend the said doc- ' trine, worship, discipline, and government of this Church by ' Kirk- Sessions, Presbyteries, and provincial or general synods ; ' and that I shall in my practice conform myself to the said ' worship, and submit to the said discipline and government, and 1 never endeavour, directly or indirectly, the prejudice or sub- 1 version of the same. And I promise that I shall follow no ' divisive course from the doctrine, worship, discipline, and 1 government of this Church : renouncing all doctrines, tenets, ' and opinions whatsoever, contrary to, or inconsistent with, ' the said doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of this < Church.' With the United Presbyterians, the candidate is required to answer in the affirmative to the following two questions, both when licensed, and also when ordained as pastor over a congre- gation : — ' 1. Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- ' ments to be the Word of God, and the only rule of faith and ' practice ? 1 2. Do you acknowledge the Westminster Confession of Faith, ' and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, as exhibiting the sense 1 in which you understand the Holy Scriptures ? and do you ' resolve through Divine grace to adhere to the doctrine con- ' tained in said Confession and Catechism, and to teach and to p 2 212 NOTE IV. Essay IV. ' defend it, it being understood that, in doing so, you express no ' approbation of anything in these documents which teaches, ' or may be supposed to teach, compulsory or persecuting and ' intolerant principles in religion ? ' [The following is an extract from an article in ' Eraser's Maga- ' zine,' December, 1865, which is inserted as giving the history of the close of this question.] Of all changes in the Church an alteration in the forms of keenly dreaded. In Oxford, the enforcement of subscription Rubscrip- to the XXXIX Articles on Undergraduates was maintained within the University itself with a tenacity which nothing could shake, till its abolition by legislative enactments in 1854. The subscription to 6 all and every the XXXIX £ Articles,' and the declaration that c the Book of Common 6 Prayer contains nothing contrary to the Word of God/ have been strenuously upheld for Oxford Degrees from the time when, in 1834, the mere apprehension of a change called forth the severest rebuke, down to the last few years, when the same language was almost word for word repeated. The exaction of the same subscription from the clergy was, by the majority of the bishops in Parliament and by the majority of the clergy in Convocation, even after long debates and minute investigation of the subject, declared absolutely necessary. The only one of the existing forms which was deemed capable of improvement — and that only with extreme reluctance and hesitation — was the form required from beneficed clergymen, of ' unfeigned assent NOTE IV. tion. Essay IV. PASSING OF THE SUBSCRIPTION ACT. 213 ' and consent to all and everything contained in the Book ' of Common Prayer.' Earnest warnings were from time to time raised against the continuance of a system which was evidently fraught with mischief to the truthfulness, the peace, and the progress of the Church. But they seemed to speak in vain ; they were indeed 6 voices crying £ in the desert ' — they were met either by a dead silence, by cruel insinuations, or by vehement invectives. At last the blow, long invited by solitary reformers, descended on these time-honoured fences of the Church. At the unani- mous advice of the Ro}ral Commission of 1864, a Bill was Subscrip- brought this year into Parliament for the abolition of tlon Aft' every one of these forms, and for the substitution of a declaration as bare and general as it was ^pssible to be, consistently with the retention of any expression of assent at all. All the accumulated phrases which human language could supply to express the most unconditional and un- reserved adhesion to documents which, however excel- lent, must have been received by every single clergyman with the inevitable reserve which truth and common sense demanded — 6 willingly,' 6 ex amnio,' 6 unfeigned consent,' — were one and all struck out, and nothing substituted in their place. And, again, all the expressions indicating particularity and detail in the writings to which assent was given were equally removed. Subscription was no longer to be made to c all and every ' the XXXIX Arti- cles. There was henceforth to be no assent to 6 all and 6 everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer,' nor any declaration that the Prayer-book in all its multi- plied usages and statements contained ' nothing contrary ' to the Word of God.' And in the place of these strin- gent and well-defined expressions is required an 6 assent,' a bare ' assent ' — to— what ? Not, as before, to every or to 214 NOTE IV. Essay IV. any particular statement in the Articles or the Prayer-book, but to the Articles generally and the Prayer-book gene- rally ; not, as before, to the Articles separately, or to the Prayer-book separately, but to the Articles and Prayer- book as a whole, conjointly — so that by the very terms of the subscription each exaggerated expression in the Articles must be considered as neutralised by the coun- tervailing expressions in the Prayer-book, and each exaggerated expression in the Prayer-book considered as neutralised by the countervailing expressions in the Articles. And yet further : in the second clause of the subscrip- tion, by which the first is explained, the assent is given not to the Articles and Prayer-book themselves, not to their outward form and letter, but to their general sub- stance— not, again, even to the c doctrines,' — the separate doctrinal statements made in each, but to c the doctrine of c the United Church of England and Ireland,1' contained in the whole substance and spirit of the two documents taken together. It is of course quite open for anyone to say that it would have been a simpler course to have abolished the form of subscription altogether, and left the clergy to the simple declarations already embodied in the Ordination Service. It is open to say that so general a form of assent as is now to be substituted is so nearly useless as to be practically superfluous. But this was not the choice submitted to the clergy or the legislature. The proposal was, as we have stated, the change of every one of the special characteristics of the existing subscriptions, and the adoption of a formula, of which the recommendation was that in every single devia- tion from the existing subscriptions it was an advance in Essay IV. PASSING OF THE SUBSCRIPTION ACT. 215 the direction of freedom, of enlargement, and of compre- hension. That such a change should have been effected at all, even if carried by the barest majority, and after the fiercest struggle, in Commission, Convocation, and Parliament, would have been a great boon ; but it would have been a boon dearly bought by the agitation and alarm that such a contest must have aroused. Tt is on the mode in which the change was carried, even more than the change itself, that we wish to fix the attention of our readers. Within the Commission itself our knowledge is of course too slight to admit of any detailed exposition of the motives by which the unanimous adhesion of such diverse elements to this common result was brought about. But we know that the Commission had placed before them in the most forcible and the most persuasive language 1 the impossibility of expecting from the younger clergy a full and intelligent assent to all the statements in the XXXIX Articles. We know, too, from what was afterwards stated in the House of Commons, that the changes above enumerated were carried with the full appreciation of their effect by those who were best qualified to judge. But it is of more importance to recall the reception of the measure in Convocation and in Parliament. It might have been feared that the Jerusalem Reception Chamber and the House of Lords would have once more change in resounded with sinister allusions to the Petition of the 9onvoca" tion. Feathers Tavern, and solemn asseverations that no change was needed, and that any change would be dangerous, such as had so often stifled every expression of discontent with the existing system. It is our happy fate to record how far otherwise this healing measure was received. In Con- vocation, after an able exposition of the changes by Dean 1 Speech of Dean Milman in the Royal Commission on Subscription, printed, in Eraser 's Magazine, March, 1864. 216 NOTE IV. Essay IV. Goodwin, and notwithstanding a full statement by another Dean of their effect in the direction of latitude, the aboli- tion of the cherished forms, to which, down to the very year before, the leaders of Convocation had so resolutely clung, was not only tolerated, but hailed with an enthu- siasm such as has never been seen in Convocation since the days of its revival. The Prolocutor announced the acceptance of the measure as a direct answer to the prayers of Convocation for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Another member of Convocation, certainly not given to change, did not hesitate to designate the act as the most blessed event that had occurred in the Church since the Reformation; and a third, one of the most venerable in years and station, rehearsed on this auspicious occasion the prayer of the aged Simeon — 6 Nunc dimittis.' 1 Reception The scene in the House of Lords was less animated change in than in the Jerusalem Chamber, but not less instructive, of LbeST" ^ ^ew coul^eous words from the President of the Council ; still fewer words of brief assent from the Archbishop of Canterbury ; a short address of the Archbishop of York, which, whilst it called attention to the extreme importance of the measure, abstained from any criticism of its details ; an ineffectual attempt of one of the Bishops to restore the vanishing formula 6 willingly 5 and 6 ex animo ; 5 — these were the only expressions that bore in the slightest degree on the merits of the Bill, which thus passed with- out opposition, and without censure, in the presence of the assembled Episcopate. There was at least one spectator 1 Chronicle of Convocation, 1865. supposed that, for the sake of the This enthusiasm was in part, no doubt, merely formal compliment , the Convo- occasioned by the satisfaction of being cation would have sacrificed any prin- allowed by the Government to bring ciple that it deemed essential ; and, in the canons of 1603 into accordance fact, there is no hint in the speeches with the Act of Parliament, and thus above cited that the joy at the measure receivinga momentary recognition from was separated from the question of its the civil power. But it is not to be intrinsic merits. Essay IV CHANGE OF SUBSCRIPTION. 217 present whose thoughts wandered back to a far different scene in the same Honse twenty-five years before — when a petition was laid on the table by Dr. Whately, then Archbishop of Dublin, signed by forty clergymen and laymen, in behalf of a modification of the existing forms of subscription. The petition included a prayer for cer- Contrasted tain changes in the formularies. But the debate turned reception almost entirely on the desired change in the form of sub- in 18W' scription. Then, as on this later occasion, the House was full. Bench after bench, the bishops rose in serried ranks. But how unlike was all besides ! The Archiepiscopal mover of the petition, stout-hearted as he was, and great in utter- ance as in thought, trembled from head to foot as he pre- sented the alarming document, and guarded himself by every precaution from the suspicion of directly advocating its suggestions. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Howley), with a vehemence of voice and manner in singu- lar contrast with the usual calmness arid gentleness of his character and address, instantly rose to denounce the slightest concession to so uncalled-for and so dangerous a demand. One Bishop alone 1 ventured to state that the existing terms of subscription were more than could reason- ably be exacted from so large a body of men as the English clergy ; and for this assertion he was immediately attacked by the Bishop of London, in a speech so full of the con- centrated fire which characterised Bishop Blomfield's elo- quence— so full of menaces against any the least whisper of hope to the complaining parties, that the debate abruptly closed, and the peers broke up as rapidly as if a burning shell had dropped into the House, which might explode if they waited another moment. Such was the difference of the House of Lords between 1840 and 1865. What in 1840 was thought so odious as 1 See Memoir of Bishop Stanley, p. 65. 218 NOTE IV. Essay IV. Reception of the change in the House of Com- mons. to be trampled down without mercy, was in 1865 thought so obvious as to be approved, not only without opposition, but almost without comment. In the House of Commons the debate, as in the Upper House, turned almost entirely on the subordinate and insignificant question of the revival of the Irish Convoca- tion ; and the only incident worth recording was that, then and there only, one of the Royal Commissioners, Mr. Buxton, made a full and forcible statement of the whole scope and intention of the changes in their bearing on the enlargement of the future forms of clerical subscription, uncontradicted either by any of the Royal Commissioners present, or by any member of the Government. It was of the greatest importance to observe that all those phrases which indicated that the subscriber declared his accept- ance of every dogma of the Church had been swept away ; and this had been done expressly and of forethought. As regarded the Thirty-nine Articles, the Commission had agreed to sweep away the words * each and every of them ; ' implying, therefore, that the subscriber was only to take them as a whole, even though he might disagree with them here and there. As re- garded the Prayer-book, the change was even still more marked ; for, instead of declaring his assent and consent to all and every- thing it contained, he only declared his assent to the Book of Prayer — that is to say, to the book as a whole ; and his belief that the doctrine of the Church therein set forth was agreeable +iO the Word of God. Observe that he would not declare that the doctrines, in the plural number, or that each and all of the doctrines, were agreeable to the Word of God, but only the doc- trine of the Church in the singular number. It was expressly and unanimously agreed by the Commission that the word ' doc- trine ' should be used in the singular number in order that it might be understood that it was the general teaching and not every part and parcel of that teaching to which assent was given. The measure thus inaugurated has now become the law of the Church, and must be left to work out its own results. But whether those results be great or small, the fact Essay IV. CONCLUSION. 219 remains — that the changes which it involves, so anxiously deprecated, so fiercely denounced, so timidly advocated for a long succession of years, have now been carried without the slightest remonstrance from those very bodies which, till within a very late period, were entirely adverse on principle to any changes whatever that would relax the iron grasp which the State and Church of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had riveted on the consciences of the clergy and Universities of England, as it seemed, for all future time. As in the case of other like triumphs of ecclesiastical Conclu- moderation over ecclesiastical violence, this marvellous S1°n* acquiescence is not merely the sign of a victory of one party over another, or of weakness and inconsistency in a hostile camp. It is a proof that when the time has come for great and beneficent changes of opinion, when the champions of truth and freedom have the will and the power to make themselves heard, when the government of the country has the force and the courage to strike the blow, then the panics of even large portions of the clergy will prove to be so utterly groundless, that they who entertained the fear, the sincere fear, lest the religious faith of the Church should be shaken, will forget the very existence of those outworks which once seemed to them absolutely essential to the maintenance of the Christian religion and of the Church of England. However loud the expressions of alarm that have been sounded on other questions that still agitate the ecclesiastical world, they cannot be louder than those which advocated the change of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or deprecated the change in the terms of subscription. The Judicial Committee — in the points on which it was attacked — re- mains and will remain unaltered. The ancient terms of subscription have ceased to be exacted. But not a single 220 NOTE IV. Essay IV. clergyman has left or intends to leave the Church of England in consequence. Not a single clergyman finds it more difficult than before to preach the Gospel to his flock. Not a single member of Parliament has been asked to rescind the decrees of the Privy Council, or the Act of clerical subscription, or the new canon of 1865. On the contrary, the prevailing sentiment with regard to the Court of Appeal is 'rest and be thankful;' the pre- vailing sentiment, as we have seen, with regard to the change of subscription, is a unanimous and almost en- thusiastic acceptance. The Polemics of the Church by this result of the agitation of so many months and years have lost two weapons of incalculable force : they have lost the chance of a clerical tribunal, which would have encouraged a series of interminable litigations ; they have lost in the old forms of subscription a magazine of taunts, insinuations, invectives, which have hitherto supplied the want of a host of arguments. The Peacemakers have gained no less incalculably. They have gained a security that the tribunal which has given shelter to all sides of religious opinion will now never again be shaken by the attacks of defeated and disappointed assailants, even although they may freely question the absolute justice of its decision or the validity of its arguments. They have gained the sanction of the legislature and the acquiescence of the Church to the public recognition of that latitude of subscription which must always have been tacitly claimed and granted by all truly honest members and ministers of the Church. The adherents of Tract XC. are, as far as their subscription is concerned, free to handle the XXXIX Articles in as 6 catholic a spirit ' as they desire, and the adherents of Mr. Gorham may question the propriety of the phrases in the Prayer-book which are repugnant to their peculiar tenets — so long as the two parties re- Essay IV CONCLUSION. 221 spectively consent to accept the general doctrine of their common Chnrch. Those who believe the Second Epistle of St. Peter, the Apocalypse, and the other books i of 6 which there was donbt in the Church ' during the first three centuries, to be part of ' Holy Scripture,' can now, so far as their subscription is concerned, boldly profess that opinion in spite of its direct denial by the sixth Article. Those who believe that human nature is not wholly evil, that all good works are pleasing to God, and that good heathens may be saved, may openly declare, as far as their subscription is concerned, these sacred truths which, in common with the whole educated world, they have long accepted as part of the Gospel teaching, in spite of their apparent denial by the sixth, the thirteenth, and the eighteenth Articles. Prosecutions, indeed, may still be carried on as they have hitherto been carried on, in courts of law, irrespectively of subscription. Controversies may still turn, as they ought always to turn, on the real merits of the doctrines in question, regardless of the consent given to them by any young clergyman or Master of Arts before he could understand what he was subscribing. But the law and rule itself of subscription is altered so effectually as to leave but a hair's -breadth of difference from its entire abolition. Still the chief gain, after all, is the warning left behind by such a bloodless victory to the spirit of hard recrimi- nation, and capricious respect of persons, which has dis- figured our modern controversies, and the encouragement held out to those who, beginning in a small minority, with no followers beyond their own immediate circle, find themselves at last at the head of a vast movement, with the whole Church treading on their heels. And not only to small minorities, but to the whole Church of England, is it a pledge that a great career may 222 NOTE IV. Essay IV. yet be before all who have the courage and patience to wait for the gradual unfolding of the drama in which we each of us have to bear our part. No doubt the estrange- ment of parties within the religious world has been wider, and the chance of obtaining a hearing more difficult, than it was twenty years ago. But the steps gained by the Church through the events of 1864 and 1865 have at least replaced it in the same relative position as that which it held in the days of Archbishop Howley ; whilst, on the other hand, the increased interest of the public at large in theo- logical questions gives a wider scope to those who have re- gained the liberty that seemed to be vanishing from them. To use this liberty as not abusing it ; to make it the common inheritance not of oi:e section of the Church, but of all ; to accept the approaches of the contending parties as real advances, and not merely as strategic movements, even if they sometimes have that appearance ; to build silver bridges for flying enemies, golden bridges for returning friends, — this is the task appointed for Freedom, as in the English State, so in the English Church : — Grave mother of majestic works, From her isle- altar gazing down .... Her open eyes discern the, truth. The wisdom of a thousand years Is in them. May perpetual youth Keep dry their light from tears, That her fair form may stand and shine, Make bright our days and light our dreams, Turning to scorn with lips divine The falsehood of extremes. 223 THE UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM AND DR. PUSEY'S 'EIRENICONS There are two subjects suggested by the discussion of the work which we have to consider. One is the general subject of the unify, union, or reunion of Christendom. Reunion of The other is the particular mode of approaching this subject ctom< in the 6 Eirenicon.' On the general question a few remarks may be needed Ambigui- to prevent ambiguity. word/ ^ Reunion itself is a misleading word. It implies that there had once been a time when Christendom was united. It is possible that this may have been the case for a few years, when the small community of Jerusalem was of one heart and one soul. But within a very short period, there were ' murmurings of the Grecians against ' the Hebrews,' 2 and the Apostle of the Gentiles soon heard that there were 6 divisions amongst his converts,' 3 and those divisions, in one form or another, have continued ever since. When we speak of union, therefore, or reunion, we have to aim not at the representation of an imaginary past, but at the attainment of an ideal future. But, further, the phrase as commonly used is open to the objection that it suggests an organic union under the same ecclesiastical laws and government. It is obvious at ' Substance of two papers read be- porary Bevicw, 1866. fore meetings of the London clergy, 2 2 Acts vi. 1. and in part printed in the Contem- 3 1 Cor. i. 11; xi. 18. 224 THE UNION OF CHRIST END 031. Essay V. the outset that such a union is too remote from any prac- tical considerations to be worth discussing at length. If, indeed, by this term were meant merely the right of individuals to partake of the Holy Communion in the respective Churches, there is, on our part, no impediment to the communion of a Roman Catholic or Greek, a Lutheran or a Nonconformist in an English church, if so he desired it, at any moment ; and even in the Eastern and Roman Churches, the difficulties in the way of receiving a Protestant to that Sacrament would arise rather from the preliminary accompaniments than from the ordinance itself. But if by the union proposed is meant an authori- tative acknowledgment, on the part of the contending Churches, of the same external laws and creed,1 it is obvious that the contracting parties are not brought on the scene, even in the most distant manner. There is not alleged the faintest probability of such proposals emanating either on the one side from the Court of Eome, the Emperor of Russia, or the four Patriarchs of the East, nor on the other side from the Crown and Parliament of England, or the Protestant sovereigns and synods of Scandinavia and Germany, or the numerous conventions and conferences of Nonconforming Churches in England and America. Again, even if such an organic union were practicable, it would not be desirable, if urged and accepted on the grounds on which it is put forward in the ' Eirenicon.' A union between two or even three powerful Churches can hardly be said to be a union or reunion of Christendom, when it deliberately leaves out of consideration the whole range of Non-Episcopal Christians, which, if less powerful, are certainly integral parts of the whole, and have ren- dered services to Christianity not inferior, in their way, to any rendered by the See of Rome or of Canterbury. 1 Froude'a History of England, ch. xxxii., xxxiii. Essay V. AMBIGUITIES OF THE WORD. 225 Still more questionable would such an exclusive union become, if it were intended as 6 a combination of forces ' against those who were excluded. Such a union would be that of the Greek, Roman, and Anglican against the Presbyterian Churches, or of the Evangelical Alliance and the Gustavadolf-Verein against the Roman Catholics. Yet more questionable again would this be for us in Eng- land, inasmuch as whilst those who are to be included are communities more or less remote, those who would be ex- cluded or attacked would be communities close at hand — the great Nonconformist bodies in England, the Presbyterian Churches in Scotland — as it has been truly said, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. More questionable still would such a scheme become, if it were not simply a union between the great Churches of Rome, and England, and Constantinople, in their entirety, but a union between kindred parties or systems of policy and belief within those Churches for the sake of repressing certain other parties or systems of policy and belief no less contained within each of them ; — if it were intended as a combination to oppose those who in the Church of Rome hold the opinions recommended by Dupin and Simon in former times, and by Dollinger and Gratry now, or who in the Eastern Churches hold the opinions of St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Chrysostom — not to speak of some of the brightest ornaments of the modern Church of Russia, — or who in the Church of England hold the opinions of Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, and other distinguished divines dead or living, whom I need not more particularly name. All these, it may be inferred from passages in the ' Eirenicon,' compared with the well-known and strongly expressed views of its author in other works, he and those who think with him would desire to exclude, as a preliminary or as a consequence of Q 226 UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. any union at all. However good, as far as it goes, may be a combination for a particular purpose, it cannot, without considerable reserve, be called a scheme for a reunion of Christendom, when it excludes elements so vast, so bene- ficent, so pregnant with immediate advantages to our own time, and with remote advantages for the whole future of Christianity. Nor if it be thus proposed with a strate- gical or polemical intention, — ' a sword,' as Dr. Newman expresses it, 6 wreathed in myrtle,' 6 an olive branch hurled 6 out of a catapult,' — can it, without considerable reserve, be called an ' Eirenicon,' or Peace-offering. Moreover, it may well be questioned, whether the or- ganic union even of the whole of Christendom, under the same external laws, would of itself produce the inward unity for the sake of which alone any external union can be desired. There was, in fact, no such spiritual unity under the joint rule of Eome and Byzantium, amidst the frightful controversies of the fifth century. Look at that most melancholy chapter in Gibbon's ' Decline and Fall,' the 47th. We should indeed despair of humanity if by the reunion of Christendom were meant the revival of such a tissue of discord and malignity as was then unfolded in the contentions between Athanasians and Arians, Nestorians and Eutychians, Monophysites and Monothelites. The unity of Europe, such as it existed in the Middle Ages, belonged to an external framework, then believed to be as essential to the union of Christendom as the Papacy or the Episcopate, but which has since entirely passed away. The Holy Eoman Empire was the united Christen- dom of the West. The Emperor, successor of Caesar, was as essential to the idea of an organic Christendom, as the Pope, successor of Peter. The Empire has vanished, and no existing external institution can now supply its place. Further, there are grounds of objection which may Essay V. AMBIGUITIES OE THE WORD. 227 be justly entertained towards a closer union with the particular Church towards which the ' Eirenicon ' draws us. We may freely acknowledge the attractions which the Church of Eome always possesses for a large section of mankind, to whom the mere assumption of authority has a charm, such as is implied in Bossuet's celebrated appeal to Leibnitz : — 6 Permettez-moi de vous prier d* examiner ' serieusement devant Dieu si vous avez quelque bon moyen ' d'empecher VEglise de devenir eternellement variable en sup- * posant qu'elle pent errer et changer ses decrets sur la foi.' There is much force in this appeal. But first it may be remarked that in order to a calm consideration of the subject, we must remember the fact brought out by the very controversy which the 6 Eirenicon ' has awakened, — that, on the questions now most discussed, the Church of Rome has either not spoken at all, or has spoken in terms which, within its own pale, are openly questioned or contradicted. On the questions of the inspiration and interpretation of Scripture — of the duration of future punishment1 — of the relation of science to the Bible — of the effects of the progress of civilisation — of the salvation of Protestants and of heathens, — the authori- tative decrees of the Roman Church are as yet silent, and the strong expressions used by the existing Pope on these subjects are either set aside or explained away by persons who are still distinguished members or ministers of the Church over which he presides. And secondly, we must bear in mind that there is a large section of Christendom which feels a positive repulsion from the claims to an infallible guidance, put forward with proofs so inadequate, and in which the answer of Leibnitz will awaken a far deeper glow of devotion and enthusiasm 1 See this well brought out in the Christian Remembrancer, December, 1861, pp. 419-4-52. Q 2 228 UNION OE CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. than the appeal of Bossuet : c 17 nous plait, Monseigneur^ e d'etre de cette Eglise toujours mouvante et eternellement 6 variable.' In this belief, that the high destinies of the Church at large depend on its constantly keeping pace with the moving order of Divine Providence and with the increasing light of ages, many sincere and enlightened members both of the Greek and Roman Churches would gladly join ; and would therefore regret any step which should fix the existing system of their own day as an eternal and unchangeable ordinance. And unquestionably this is the conviction of a powerful minority in our own Church. It is not, therefore, on the ground of the probable success or intrinsic excellence of the particular scheme proposed that the 6 Eirenicon ' deserves a favourable con- sideration. But it is the blessing of any attempt at peace that the indirect advantages are often greaterthan the direct advantages. Any friendly move carries with it a certain atmosphere of friendliness and charity. Leibnitz was raised above himself by his correspondence with Bossuet ; and when his attempts to unite the Protestants and Catho- lics failed, he entered with scarcely less ardour into the attempt to unite Protestants with Protestants. ' It is not,' as Philip Henry well said, ' the actual differences of Chris- 6 tian men that do the mischief, but the mismanagement of c those differences.' And by a better management of those differences, by a better understanding between all the different branches of Christendom, without any external amalgamation or formal reconciliation, it is to be hoped that a unity will spring up — it may be, to be realised only in some far distant age, but to be begun in our own — more like to that unity of which the Bible speaks, tha,n any which the Church has yet witnessed. Essay V. ITS INDIRECT ADVANTAGES. 229 of modera- tion in theological language. Before speaking at length of this true unity, let us notice the three important aspects in which, as indirectly contributing to this blessed end, the work before us chiefly deserves its title of an 6 Eirenicon.' I. The ' Eirenicon ' approaches the differences between Exampi two estranged bodies with the unmistakable intention of milking as much as possible of their points of agreement, as little as possible of their points of difference. And this disposition, it may be from accidental causes, so far from provoking any attack, has rather met with commendation. It is the rarity of this phenomenon in Christian controversy which renders its appearance doubly valuable, from what- ever quarter it comes. The general rule amongst theo- logical combatants has been — and our own Church and our own time form no exception — that the first duty is to resist our supposed adversary, however excellent in other respects— if he is outside our own pale, by widening the chasm between us — if he is inside our own pale, by trying to eject him from it. I have been told of the speech of a Free Church minister in Scotland, uttered with the fer- vency of a pious ejaculation — 6 Oh that we were all baptized ' into the spirit of the disruption ! ' Exaggerated as it sounds, this truly expresses the common ecclesiastical feeling. The e world,' as we call it, has for the most part risen above this curious state of mind. But there are many in what we call the 6 Church ' who still think it a sacred privilege and duty, still regard the actual expulsion and separation of men from men, churches from churches, as a thing not to be avoided, if possible, but, if possible, to be fostered on the smallest provocation. In the face of this, we have here a book which approaches a Church by most Englishmen regarded as full of error — regarded by the author himself as having sanctioned, in the most recent and emphatic manner, errors of a very 230 UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. grave kind — with no expression of bitterness or contempt or hostility. We know that copious vocabulary of abuse with which the writings of Protestant divines abound, even those belonging to the same school as that of the learned author of this book, even in formularies sanctioned more or less by the ecclesiastical authorities of our own Church — Antichrist — Babylon — the Woman on the Seven Hills — cor- rup t — idolatrous — blasphemous fables — Papist — Romanist — Popish treachery — hellish malice — detestable enormJties, &c, &c, &c. Not one of these occurs in this treatise, not even when lamenting that the Virgin Mary is described as c superior to God,' or that the Holy Ghost is described c as taken into a quasi-hypostatic union with each suc- ' cessive Pope,' though he were as wicked as Alexander VI., or as unwise as at least more than one that could be named in that high and important office. The doctrines to which objection is made are set forth in its pages clearly but calmly, in the words of their own framers, with an evident effort to appreciate their point of view, with every desire to suffer them 6 to explain to the utmost,' ' to maxi- 6 mise our points of resemblance and to minimise their c points cf difference,' c to dwell on our real agreements 6 instead of their differences of wording,' 6 to point out c how much there is in common even where there is diver- c gence.' Considering what the 6 ISTo Popery ' feeling has been in England ; considering its intensity, its bitterness, its effects in the dismemberment of households and nations, and in driving Protestants by reaction into the Church of Rome ; considering the violence in which some of the best of our divines have indulged themselves in speaking of Eoman Catholics, to a degree far below the calm and measured language employed by our men of letters and our states- men— considering all this, it seems to me a matter of Essay V. ITS INDIRECT ADVANTAGES. 231 sincere congratulation, not only that a book has been written (from whatever motive), speaking temperately of the Eoman Catholic opinions which we condemn, but that the book has not excited any strong remonstrance on this point from any but the extremest partisans of the opposite school. But this is a very small part of the benefit which may accrue. What is approved as a mode of dealing with one set of opinions from which we dissent, or with one class of our fellow-citizens or fellow- Christians from whom we are separated, must be good also for others. In one passage in the 6 Eirenicon ' we actually find this expressed towards Nonconformists in a tone of conciliation, remarkably con- trasting with the scornful language of the early 'Tracts ' for the Times.' It is obvious that, if it be right to dis- continue those offensive epithets which are common against Roman Catholics, it must be equally right to discontinue those of a like kind which are used against others, and which are not equally authorised by venerable formularies, though some of them go back to the first ages of the Church. These also we know well. Their name is Legion : — Atheist, Pantheist, Infidel, Socinian, Rationed ist, JSfeolo- gian, bleisphemer,1 dishonest, abomineible, fiend, instrument of Satan, &c, Szc, &c. They have been used against some of the holiest, purest, and most truthful of men ; and in this case, as in the case of the Roman Catholics, they can serve hardly any purpose except to engender acrimonious and exaggerated feelings whenever they are used. Once let it be understood, that they are banished from the works of theologians, as they have long 'been banished from the 1 It is hardly necessary to quote the of Natal, and the authors of Essays sources from -whence these epithets and Ttevieics, in our own day, as, in come. It is sufficient to say that they former times, against the early CI ris- have been used by those who do tians, and, in our own Church, against not condemn the ' Eirenicon ' against Tillotson, Barrow, and many others, such men as Mr. Maurice, the Bishop 232 UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. works of scholars, where they were once so rife, and the world will have less occasion than it has now to say, 6 See how these Christians hate one another ! ' and the Church will breathe more freely when the air has been purged of these sulphureous elements. And how much more if, with the change of words, came a change of spirit also ! A French Roman Catholic divine said many years ago to a friend of mine, 6 Nous avons eu assez de Polemique : ' il nous reste a avoir un peu d'lrenique.' Polemics, as Archbishop Trench would remind us, are so much more congenial, if not to human, to controversial nature, than Eirenics, that we can hardly hope that the latter will soon become a legitimate word. Still, even in this diffi- cult task it is conceivable that the soul of man may go through a new birth. The endeavour to accept opinions from which we differ as the counsels of a mistaken friend rather than as the attacks of a malicious enemy — the endeavour to view controverted questions on their own merits, and not according to the names or positions of the persons concerned — the endeavour to grasp the truths which lie beneath the words — is a severe moral and in- tellectual struggle, but it is one which must be mastered not merely in the contest with Rome, but in all contro- versies, if anything like a unity of Christendom is ever to be thought of. 6 Had the human mind the same power of ' holding fast points of agreement as of discerning differ- 6 ences, there would be an end of the controversy.' So an eminent living theologian speaks of one particular subject. But it might equally be said of most of those abstract questions which have divided Christendom. 6 If 6 our Saviour were to come again to earth ' (so the same divine continues1), 'which of all these theories would ' He sanction with His authority? Perhaps none of 1 Professor Jowett, The Epistles of St. Paul, ii. 595. Essay V. ITS INDIRECT ADVANTAGES. 233 * them : yet all may be consistent with a true service of ' Him. Who, as he draws near to Christ in the face of 1 death, will not feel himself drawn towards his theological 6 opponents ? At the end of life, when a man looks back * calmly, he is most likely to feel that he exaggerated in ( some things. . . . The truths about which we are dis- ' puting cannot themselves partake of the passing stir : ' they do not change even with the greater revolutions of 6 human things. They are in eternity, and the likeness of ' them on earth is to be found, not in the movement on ' the surface of the waters, but the depths of the silent ' sea. As a measure of the value of such disputes, we may * carry our minds onwards to the invisible world, and there * behold, as in a glass, the great theological teachers of * past ages, who have anathematised each other in their * lives, resting together in the communion of the same < Lord.' II. I pass to a second point of pacification which the Gradations 4 Eirenicon ' suggests. In the remarks just quoted, it is of truth' implied that one condition of a better unity is the acknow- ledgment of gradations of importance in religious truth and error — of an ascertainable distinction between things essential and unessential. This again is a principle against which theologians on all sides have vehemently contended. It has been constantly argued that we must believe all or nothing — ' that since the truth is one whole, it matters not ' in which part of the body the poison of error is intro- c duced ; one drop spreads through the whole, and the ' whole faith of the man is dead.' Impatience under the attack of a fly will, it is urged, lead a man to deny the goodness of God. The belief in some physiological fact about the frame of some inferior animal will, it is alleged, lead directly to atheism. It is the same argument which is used by the false 234 UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. enchantress in the ' Idylls of the King ' to undermine the wise man's better wisdom : — ' Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all. It is the little rift within the lute, That by-and-by will make the music mute. * It is not worth the keeping : let it go : And trust me not at all, or all in all.' We know the effect of this on the sage : — i He lay as dead, And lost to life and use and name and fame.' Widely extended as are the effects of this principle, it is, in fa ct, the position taken up by the extreme Ultramontane school in the severest form. It is evidently held by the present Pope, and runs through the denunciations of his Encyclical Letter, and his attacks on the Italian Govern- ment and on the Freemasons. It is the doctrine which I have heard asserted by an Italian preacher in defence of a fair held in honour of a wonder-working image, in which, after declaiming on the e rapid advances of Rationalism 6 and Infidelity,' he exhorted his audience to meet the enemy at c the outposts ' as the \ sentinels of the faith.' And the c outposts,' in his mind, were the elaborate pro- cession and fantastic statue, and 6 the sentinel of the 6 faith ' was the auctioneer who stood on a cask and sold to an eager crowd the objects of religious devotion. It is obvious that this doctrine increases the difficulty of union a hundredfold. It converts every point of religious belief, right or wrong, into a fortress which must be de- fended to the**death. It converts every difference, on matters great and small alike, into an internecine war. It would, indeed, be so destructive of human intercourse, and runs so counter to all the facts of our complex human Essay V. ITS INDIRECT ADVANTAGES. 235 nature, that, even when held, it probably is never held with absolute consistency. But the interest of the £ Eirenicon ' in this respect is that the two principles of 6 all or nothing' on one side, and of a graduation of belief on the other, are brought into direct collision, and that the author, in this important divergence, leaves the position which he has usually occupied, and takes his stand against the Pope, against the dogmatists, and is found on the side of peace, of discrimination, (will he allow me to say so ?) of liberality and of free thought. He will not consent, because he believes in the Apostles' Creed, to be dragged on to believe every decree of the Pope, or every decree of the Sacred Congregations. He accepts the position, for him so novel and so interesting, 6 that, in order to doubt of one doctrine, we need not doubt £ of all.' 1 He sees a tenable standing-place between blank atheism and an acceptance of the Immaculate Conception and the verbal inspiration of the Pope. And for this he is taunted, as such moderation ever has been taunted, with denying the Divine origin of Christianity.2 He is charged with complicity in heresy. He has exposed himself to the denunciations of the Encyclical Letter by declaring that the Papal civil power is a speculation of human wisdom and not of Divine faith. He even seems to recognise, with Schleiermacher, that opinions from which he would greatly differ may be necessary for the ultimate development of truth, as manure is to the harvest.3 How widely this liberal and pacifying principle strikes into our modern divisions, it is needless to say. Perhaps one of its earliest statements was in that remarkable chapter in Baxter's Narrative of his Own Times,4 — in 1 P. 258. 2 Dublin Bcview. * P. 282. 4 This chapter (conveniently read in Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography, toI. v. 559-597), which, many years 236 UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. itself an Eirenicon of priceless value, — where, amongst other indications of the greater calm and moderation produced by growing years, he finds that 6 of truths c certain in themselves, all were not equally certain to ' him.' Nowhere has it been more powerfully set forth than by those distinguished Roman Catholic divines who have to struggle, as we in our own Church have had to struggle also, against the tendency which exists, equally in Rome as in England, to exalt the floating opinions of popular theologians to the level of dogmatic authority. £ The great scholastic theologians maintained that it was ' not less heretical to declare that to be an article of 6 faith which was not de fide, than to deny an article of 6 faith altogether.'1 0 si sic omnes ! 0 si sic omnia! — whether on questions of Papal or Biblical inspiration ; whether on the literal flames of Purgatory or the endless duration of future punishment ; whether on the Dominican or Franciscan theory of the Immaculate Conception, or the Anselmian, or Lutheran, or Calvinistic, or Grotian theory of Justification and Atonement. III. The most striking result of the ' Eirenicon ' and its acceptance is the effect on the future position of the Thirty-nine Articles, and, with them, of ecclesiastical Confessions generally. It is not necessary to go through in detail the explanations by which at least twelve of the thirty-nine are reduced in this learned work to mere truisms, which, under such explanations, certainly no one would think it worth while to retain, as no one would Effect originally have thought it worth while to issue them. It is xxxix enough to say that Tract XC. has been reaffirmed, and the Articles. general result is that stated by a well-known quarterly ago, was recommended to me by Sir 1 Professor Dollinger's Address to James Stephen, I have often ventured, the Conference at Munich. See Essay and still continue, to recommend to all III. theological students. Essay V. ITS INDIRECT ADVANTAGES. 237 journal,1 the recognised exponent of the views expressed by the * Eirenicon,' in an article which is one sustained eulogy upon it, and which has never been disavowed by any of the school which it represents. The reviewer says : — ' One is tempted to ask with wonder, How is it that men ever ' Lave placed such implicit belief in the Articles ? . . . No ' other answer can be given than that they have been neglected c and ignored. . . It is impossible to deny that they contain ' statements or assertions that are verbally false, and others ' that are very difficult to reconcile with truth. . . . What ' service have they ever done, and of what use are they at the 4 present time ? Their condemnation has been virtually ' pronounced by the " Eirenicon." Virtually, for it is after all ' only an implicit, not an explicit condemnation of them that the ' volume contains. . . . We venture to go a step further, 1 and boldly proclaim our own opinion, that before union with 1 EjOme can be effected [that is, before that can be effected which ' the reviewer thinks most desirable], the Thirty-nine Articles 1 must be wholly withdrawn. They are virtually withdrawn at ' the present moment, for the endorsement of the view of the ' " Eirenicon " by the writer in the Times proves that, as far as ' the most important of the Articles are concerned, there are 1 persons who sign them in senses absolutely contradictory.' The peculiar position thus assigned to the Articles is rendered doubly important by the contrast between the furious outcry with which this dissolving and disparaging process was received when it was first announced, and the almost complete acquiescence with which it has been re- ceived now. There are many of us old enough to remember the agitation in 1841, and still more in 1845, when the matter was brought to its final issue in the famous Oxford Convocation of February 13. We have seen many theologi- cal disturbances in our time, but nothing equal to that. The religious and secular press were up in arms. The 1 Christian Remembrancer, January, 1866, p. 188. 2b8 UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. Bishops in their charges charged long and loud. There was not absolute unanimity ; even then there was at least one bishop who abstained, as he would have abstained now, had he still lived, from joining in any of the indiscrimina- ting Episcopal denunciations which have been so common in the last few years. But if ever there was a theological treatise under a ban it was Tract XC. And now it is re- published, virtually, in the c Eirenicon,' — actually, in the pamphlet,1 which may be called a postscript to the 6 Eireni- con.' JSot a word of remonstrance. The Heads of Houses are silent. The Bishops are silent. The leading journals ev^en approve it, and consider the former outcry c as ludi- 6 crously exaggerated and one-sided.' The learned author of the i Eirenicon ' has received no serious annoyance from this bold step. 6 The explanations ' (I quote again from the same periodical) 6 which in Tract XC. were regarded £ as pieces of the most subtle sophistry, are repeated in ' the " Eirenicon " not only without rebuke from anybody, c but with the approving sympathy of thousands.2 . . . 6 What the Bishops and others in a panic of ignorance 6 condemned in 1841 is accepted and allowed to be entirely 6 tenable in 1865.' Such a phenomenon in itself, irrespectively of the sub- ject, is of a most reassuring and pacificatory kind. It is interesting and consoling to trace such a palpable instance of the total collapse of a great theological bugbear, such a proof of the ephemeral character of protests and denun- ciations and panics, such an example of the return of public and ecclesiastical feeling to the calm consideration of a topic which once seemed so hopelessly inflammable. The Hampden controversy, the Gorham controversy, the c Essays and Eeviews ' controversy, the Colenso contro- 1 Tract XC. Republished with a 2 Christian Remembrancer, January Preface by the Rev. E. B. Pusey,D.D. 1866, pp. 163, 167, 179. 1866. Essay V. ITS INDIRECT ADVANTAGES. 239 versy — all have had their turn ; but none excited such violent passions, and of none would the ultimate extinc- tion have appeared so strange whilst the storm was raging, as the extinction of the controversy of Tract XC. But still more interesting in the cause of peace is it when we regard the subject-matter. It was the question of the binding, stringent force of our chief historical Con- fession of Faith. It had appeared in 1841, that this Con- fession had suddenly given way on the points on which it was thought the strongest ; the bonds with which the old Philistines — the Earl of Leicester and King James I. — had endeavoured to bind the Church, had burst asunder 6 as a thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the 6 fire.' On no theological question was it believed that the Articles had spoken more certainly, and with a more deliberate intention, than against the doctrines of the Church of Eome ; and Tract XC. announced tha/fc they had been so carelessly or so ambiguously framed as to admit those who held these very doctrines. This it was which produced the alarm. What has produced the calm ? Many causes have contributed ; — the recrudescence of the High Church party ; the charm thrown over the history of that time by the £ Apologia ; ' the exhaustion of the odium theologicum in another direction. But mainly, and beyond all question, and long before these events, it was the growth of the conviction, that such formularies must not be overstrained ; that their chief use is that of his- torical landmarks of the faith of the Church at a given time, but that they cannot, by the very nature of the case, bind the thoughts and consciences of future ages. This conviction had already begun to prevail even when Tract XC. appeared. By the time of the fierce and final attack in 1845, what has since been called the Liberal party in the Church was sufficiently powerful to make a 240 UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. strong rally in favour of toleration. The first force of the intended blow against Tract XC. was broken by two vigo- rous pamphlets from this quarter — one 1 by Mr. Maurice, the other by one who has since,2 in the very highest offices in the Church, been distinguished for his advocacy of a generous and liberal policy. It was resisted in the Oxford Convocation by almost all those who have since been most vehemently assailed by those whom they then defended — by four out of the five Oxford Essayists, and by others of like tendencies, but fortunately less conspicuous. The good cause has triumphed at last. It is true that the particular ground on which Tract XC. rests its pro- cess of dissolving the Articles is not historically tenable. It is true that the vehement attack upon them in the Christian Remembrancer is exaggerated in tone and sub- stance. But the general principle of the inefficacy and inadequacy of such Confessions is the same as that which has been stated in the most lucid and energetic language by the Dean of St. Paul's, in his speech on the Thirty- nine Articles in the Royal Commission, and by Principal Tulloch in his Address on the Westminster Confession to the students of Divinity in the University of St. Andrews ; and this change of feeling has coincided with, and resulted in, the fundamental change in the terms of subscription effected by the Legislature last year. The republication and general acceptance of Tract XC, brought about as it has mainly been through the growth of the principles here described, render it henceforth almost impossible that the Articles can again be used for the purposes for which they have been hitherto em- ployed. The celebrated passages from Archbishop Usher and Archbishop Bramhall, which Dr. Newman quoted in 1 The New Statute, by the Rev. F. the New Test, by A. C. Tait, D.C.L. D.Maurice. 1845. 1845. 2 Letter to the Vice-Chancellor on Essay V. ITS INDIRECT ADVANTAGES. 241 his own behalf in his defence of Tract XC, have now a chance of receiving a universal application, such as perhaps at that time he himself little contemplated. There is a hope that they may become indeed, as they are called by these two Primates, Articles of Peace, — Articles of Peace, because not Articles of Belief ; Articles of Peace, and therefore not weapons of hatred. 6 That work which 6 Tract XC. effected will never be undone, so long as the ' Articles shall last.' 1 That work, indeed, in a far deeper sense than the author of those words intended, never will be undone — the work of showing how every opinion can find its resting-place somewhere in their manifold statements ; how none can be condemned merely because of apparent inconsistency with them ; how none can be taunted with neglecting their details if he accepts their general substance ; how inadequate and powerless they are as expressions of absolute dogmatic truth. They may still be read as guides to the theology of the Reformation ; they may still be used as protections for the weaker party in the Church ; they may still be employed as indications of the form which the general doctrine of Christianity took in England in the sixteenth century. But they can no more be used, as they have hitherto been used, for the purpose of multiplying division and distrust, and of fur- nishing food for those unhappy insinuations of dishonesty and inconsistency and perfid}r, which apply either to no one or to every one, and which either invite legal pro- cesses against every one or against no one, of all those who have signed them, from the Primate down to the curate, from the extremest Liberal to the extremest Con- servative of the laymen who vote in the Oxford Convo- cation.2 1 Dr. Pusey on Tract XC, p. xxviii. were abolished for the clergy, still re- 2 [The old stringent forms, which mained in force for some years for the R 242 THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. I need hardly say that, as regards the bearing of the Thirty-nine Articles on the recent disputes in the Church of England, this heavy blow to their authority is of no direct consequence. Not only has the highest Court in the Church and realm declared that the Articles have left those questions perfectly open, but the venerable poet to whom the 6 Eirenicon ' is dedicated, has long ago ac- knowledged the same important fact. 6 If a man were 6 minded to deny the inspiration of Holy Scripture,1 and 6 the eternity of Heli torments, he would have only to point 6 out that they are not affirmed in the Articles.'2 The Liberal clergy of the Church (as they are called) have every reason to be grateful to the Articles for the protection which they have afforded to those whom the unauthorised clamour of individuals would have driven from their posi- tions. The Thirty-nine Articles, as well as the Decrees of Trent and the Westminster Confession,3 are doubtless, from the mere fact of their composite and official origin, more gently and cautiously expressed than documents on the same subjects issuing from mere popular zeal. It is not on behalf of any recent events, therefore, that I have dwelt on this phase of the 6 Eirenicon.' But not the less needful is it to observe, that on all points on which the Articles have expressed or are supposed to have ex- pressed themselves, the enormous latitude opened by Tract XC. and the 6 Eirenicon ' must extend to every opinion condemned by them. Even the adherents of Barclay's lay degrees at Oxford. These also are 3 This hns been well shown in a now removed.] lecture of Professor Mitchell, of St. 1 What was meant, probably, is the Andrews, on the Westminster Confes- peculiar theory of inspiration held by sion, in which he points out, in some the venerable author. But his state- respects, its superiority, in point of ment is equally true respecting any comprehensiveness and depth of view, theory that has ever been proposed. both to the Irish Articles and our 2 Keble's Eucharizt'cal Adoration, own. p. 162. Essay V. ITS INDIRECT ADVANTAGES. 243 'Apology,' and of the Eacovian Catechism, as far as the wording of the Articles goes, and the explanations of Tract XC. are concerned, might claim a position within the Church of England as tenable as that which is claimed by the ' Eirenicon ' and its supporters for the adherents of the Decrees of Trent. And the real cause for rejoicing is not that this or that set of opinions should be admitted which was once believed to be excluded, but that this decisive proof of the inadequacy of the theological language of a past age to bind the thoughts of succeeding ages places all such Confessions of Faith everywhere on their Effect on right footing.1 It is to be welcomed for the sake of matiecon- the Eoman Catholics, and for the sake of the Scottish fessions- Presbyterians, as much as for ourselves. If the definition of Original Sin by Dr. Newman seems to our ears almost impossible to reconcile with the Decrees of Trent ; if the noble protest which Dr. Macleod has made against the extreme Sabbatarianism of Scotland, or the equally deter- mined protest which the Free Church has made against the ecclesiastical authority of the civil magistrate, seems, in either case, difficult to reconcile with the Westminster Con- fession— these are but instances of the inevitable collision 1 It is of course not intended that dox ; and that Athanasius himself, the general acceptance of the Eirenicon after its adoption, rarely, if ever, used has equally the same effect on all Con- it again in his own polemical writings; fessions. The ancient Creeds are more (2) the distinction between person universal in character than the modern (hypostasis) and sub dance (ousia) Confessions ; and the erreat theological which is so strongly affirmed in the words which hare moulded the thoughts Athanasian Creed, whs in the original of men are more powerful and pregnant, Nicene Creed altogether denied; and in proportion to the length and depth of (3) that the Double Procession which the associations which they carry with was pointedly denied in that same them, and the precision with which they Nicene Creed, was in the Athannsinn were framed. Yet even here it is Creed made a part of the Catholic sufficient to point to the fact — (1) that Faith indispensable to salvation, with the phrase homobusion was first used the express object of condemning by heretics, and condemned by one those very Churches which the English council as heretical before it was clergy have of late years so eagerly adopted by another council as ortho- desired to attract. r 2 244 THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. which must take place between the letter and the spirit of each succeeding age ; between the form of words which was drawn up with one purpose, and the growth of sentiments and opinions which have sprung up with a totally different purpose. Such formularies cannot be the true safeguards of faith and devotion. Whatever else may be their uses, they have manifestly failed in this, whilst, on the other hand, they have been employed for those baser ends of recrimina- tion and attack for which they were never intended. But no Church will gain more by this acknowledgment of the secondary position of dogmatic Confessions than our own, because it is thereby enabled to return to its true position, which it enjoyed before the Articles were imposed on its members, as the Church of the whole nation. By such disentanglements the Church of England will become free in a far deeper, more spiritual sense, than that in which we have lately heard that c the Church of South Africa is ' free,' — free, not (as in that case, if so* be) from the restraints and protection of English law, but free from the embarrassments in which the factions of former times involved it ; free to occupy that great position which De Maistre assigned to it, touching with one hand the Churches and thoughts of the older world, touching with the other the Churches and thoughts of the newer world. These two mighty tendencies can grow up in a healthy Christian growth nowhere so securely and safely as within such a National Church as ours, which, with the author of the 6 Eirenicon,' we humbly trust 'has not without some great 6 purpose of God been so marvellously preserved until now.'1 For the three reasons, then, which I have adduced, the 'Eirenicon' seems to me to have a tendency, indirect indeed, but powerful, towards the peace of Christendom. Though we may reject, as impracticable or undesirable, the par- 1 P. 268. Essay V. THE TRUE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. 245 ticular remedy which it offers, yet, like the researches of alchemy after the philosopher's stone (to use the illustra- tion of Leibnitz), it may bring to light elements of which the Divine Chemistry will avail itself in ways that we know not of. The true spiritual unity is that described by the eminent Nonconformist whom I have already cited, in which, ' notwithstanding the sad divisions in ' the Church, all the saints, so far as they are sanctified, ' are one ; are one in their aims, one in their askings, one 6 in amity and friendship, one in interest, one in their in- * heritance. . . . The things in which they are agreed ' are many more, and more considerable, than the things * wherein they differ. They are all of a mind concerning 6 sin, that it is the worst thing in the world ; concerning 6 Christ, that He is all in all ; concerning the favour of 6 God, that it is better than life ; concerning the world, 6 that it is vanity ; concerning the word of God, that it is c very precious.' 1 For the promotion of this moral unity there are many peacemaking books, which ought to be ranked amongst the ' Eirenica ' of a higher and more persuasive order. Such is the * Imitation of Christ.' Such are the £ Christian Tear,' and the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' — each proving by its general acceptance the strength and the number of the religious ideas common to the whole of English Christendom. Such, again, are the Sermons of the lamented Robertson, also accepted as the chief of English preachers by almost every phase of English religious thought. Such are the homely practical works like that, the removal of which from its former place in the recommendation of bishops, I often hear mentioned with deep regret — Hey's ' Lectures on the 1 Philip Henry. See his Life in of the true Communion of Saints in Words-worth's Eccl. Biog. vi. 344. Wilson's Hampton Lectures on that See also the very striking description subject, pp. 278-280. 246 THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. ' Articles/ or Bishop Wilson's ' Maxims,5 which has been of late restored to its place by the earnest recommendation of one, who will not be suspected of overrating the value of mere theological treatises. Such — to take an instance from words pacific in intention, and which would, if they were known as they deserve to be, commend themselves as an Eirenicon of the highest rank, to all who read them — are those admirable pages in Professor Jowett's c Essay c on the Interpretation of Scripture,' 1 on the effects of a deeper study of the Bible. Such is the effect of that remarkable book, ©f mysterious origin, the 6 Ecce Homo,' awakening a thrill of emotion and sympathy in so many diverse minds by the force with which it presses, in all its power and simplicity, the mind and work of Him who needs only to be thus understood 6 to draw all men to < Himself.' The distinct avowal of such a unity is comparatively new. But in its novelty lies its strength. There is a well-known saying usually ascribed to S. Augustine : ' In 6 necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.' Had it really dated from his time, and come down to us with his great authority, it might have fulfilled itself more effectually than it has. In fact it is a saying of the 17th century, from a Dutch or German divine, and the acceptance which it has received in these later days is a significant indication that there is a chance of its super- seding the old theory, which may be fairly represented in the words, 6 In necessariis servitudo, in dubiis unitas, in ' omnibus odium.' The old and once universal doctrine of the damnation of heretics and heathens has almost passed away. There are very few Christians who would now refuse to recognise the goodness of M. Aurelius, or (so far as they know anything of them) of Bouddha or 1 Pp. 360-366, 410-421. Essay V. ITS HOPES. 247 Confucius. There are very few Protestants who would not acknowledge the virtues of Fenelon or Carlo Borromeo. There are very few Catholics who would not do the same for Channing, for Wesley, and for Mrs. Fry. And if there is a moral unity thus created which tra- verses the outward divisions of men, so also by the same process is created an intellectual unity which in earlier times was unknown. Many of the questions which rent asunder the Churches are dead and buried. The contro- versy of the Double Procession, the controversy of Mono- physitism and Monothelitism, the controversy of the Light of Tabor, the controversy of Traducianism — these, at least in Europe, have totally disappeared. The controversy of Baptismal Regeneration, the controversy of Predesti- nation— these, at least amongst ourselves, have almost totally disappeared. The educated world of Christendom has formed a unity for itself, above and beside and with- out the external unity or divisions of the Churches, in which those who wish can approach each other, without ever touching on the barriers which politically and eccle- siastically part them asunder. A French or German Catholic, like Tocqueville, or Eemusat, or Dollinger, has far more in common with men like Hallam or Macaulay, or Tennyson or Milman, than he has with the partisans of the Court of Rome. A Presbyterian like Chalmers, a Unitarian like James Martineau, has far more in common with Coleridge, or Arnold, or Keble, than he has with many divines nominally of his own communion. And the higher we ascend in the intellectual scale the more we find the atmosphere to be one of attraction and not of repulsion. The theology of Lord Bacon, and of Bishop Butler, and of Pascal can be used by Christians of every Church almost equally. The great work of Ewalcl, wher- ever known, commands the respect of all but the extremest 248 THE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM. Essay V. Protestants, and of all but the extremest Roman Catholics. Leibnitz, without violence to his own convictions, was able even on directly theological subjects to write a treatise which Roman Catholics could believe was written bj one of themselves. The name of Shakespeare, the greatest in human literature, does it belong to a Protestant or a Catholic ? History refuses to answer. Criticism falters. The true verdict of mankind says ' to neither.' One remark may be made in conclusion. It may possibly be said that the tendencies just noticed seem too indefinite to meet the practical wants of the world ; too meagre, so to speak, for the vast variety and richness of human thought and feeling. To this, it may be answered, that if once the predominance of those ideas be granted, if once it become the chief article of the Christian faith, as it now is not the article of any Christian confession, whether of Trent, Geneva, London, or Westminster, that the object of the Church is to make men better and wiser, and that good- ness and truth are the chief offerings in which God de- lights— then the various objects and forms of religious interest and affection will assume their right propor- tions. We shall search out the essential meaning of each, and that meaning will assign to each its due place. And this is still more true if from the objects of devotion we descend to the various modes to which men look for help, in the difficult task of that moral and intellectual improvement by which alone we can draw near to God. They are infinite. Each of them must be viewed on its own merits. It may be the Bible — it may be this or that part of the Bible — its prose or its poetry — its morality, or its philosophy, or its history — the Old Testament or the New. It may be the antiquity of ecclesiastical institu- tions— creeds — liturgies — Byzantine architecture — Gothic architecture. It may be the Confessions of the sixteenth Essay V. ITS HOPES. 249 century — or the reverence for saints — or outward ritual. It may be the lives of good men — the works of human genius — the wider view of the world and the Church which opened in science. It may be revivals — and preachings — and hymns. So long as human nature is what it is, all these things will be sought after as helps by diverse minds. The end of true ecclesiastical statesmanship will be not to suppress or destroy them, but to treat them as means to ends — as helps for something better than themselves ; and then, as years roll on, He whose fan is always in His hand, will gradually but thoroughly purge His floor, and gather the wheat into His garner and burn up the chaff with un- quenchable fire. Every one of the words which this controversy has hitherto used in a narrow, carnal, distorted sense will become transfigured entirely, as it has already been trans- figured partially. 6 Spiritual 5 will no more mean some- thing belonging to the political and external order of the world, but something belonging to the spirit within us. ' Catholic ' will no longer mean an exclusive adherence to certain venerable ancient usages, but an expansion as wide as the universal race of man. e Unity ' will no longer be another name for division, but will be that oneness of intention which overrides all outward expressions of form or utterance. ' Christendom,' which of all these words has been the least degraded, which still conveys to noble minds a noble and inspiring thought, need hardly be changed, except from the increasing fulness of the elements which it will include within it. 250 RITUALISM.1 During the last twenty years we have witnessed within the Church of England three tremendous conflicts of opinion. Within that sacred circle — ' Thrice did the indignant nations league their might — Thrice the red darkness of the battle's night Shrouded the recreant terror of their flight.' The first of these was the endeavour of the High Church party to suppress the ' Evangelical' school in the struggle between the ancient Bishop of Exeter and Mr. Gorham. The second was the combination of those two parties in the struggle to suppress the c Liberal ' theologians as represented in 6 Essays and Reviews.' The third is the war now carried on between a large section of the High Church party and their opponents on the subject of Ritualism. On the general position which the rulers of the Church of England ought to assume in struggles of this nature, we have already expressed ourselves in regard to the two former contests, in language which we cannot hope to strengthen, which, in the main drift of the argu- ment, we see no cause to modify, and which has been amply justified by the events. We declared of the Gorham controversy that it was one which could be fairly discussed within the limits of the National Church ; that it referred to doctrines on which the Universal Church in its Creeds or Councils had never expressed any opinion ; and that the interest excited 1 Edinburgh Review, April, 1866. Essav VI. COMPARED WITH PREVIOUS CONTROVERSIES. 251 by it was in its very nature illusory and transitory.1 We declared of the contest on Biblical Inspiration,2 and on the duration of Future Punishment, that this also, though touching matters of far deeper moment, belonged to the range of questions which neither Creed nor Council in ancient times, nor the Church of England in its formularies, had ever denned ; and that, although the subjects dis- cussed were of undying interest, yet the infinitely varying shades of opinion with which they are connected would render any decision upon them at once needless and futile. In both these cases our predictions were entirely verified. The Gorham controversy is now amongst the things of the past. The old lion of Exeter very soon lay down in peace with the lamb of Brampford Speke. Even the leader of the High Church party has since entered into an alliance with the most violent journal of the school which he had then considered to deny an article of the faith. The controversy on Essays and Eeviews, though still smouldering, yet ceases to enkindle the theological mind into fury. Well-known prelates have openly avowed the views of Biblical Inspiration which the 11,000 clergy denounced as subversive of the faith. The hope of a limited duration of Future Punishment3 has found an accepted place in a volume of Essays recently published as express- ing the views of the extreme High Church party. We now approach the third struggle. There are several respects in which this differs from the others. It is the revival of a contest which has been twice or thrice before raised in the Church of England. It is the revival of the contest of Laud against the Puritans ; we may perhaps say, of the Nonjurors against the Latitudinarians ; certainly, of 1 ' The Gorham Controversy,' Edin- Edinburgh R(virw, July 1863. See bu gh Kviiw, July 1850. See Essay I. Essays II. and III. 2 'Essays and Reviews,' Edinburgh 3 Church and World, p. 240. See R(vi(V\ April 1861. ' Three Pastorals,' Essay VII. 252 RITUALISM. Essay VI. the leaders of the Oxford Tracts against the mass of their fellow-churchmen in 1834-45. It differs also, down to the present moment, in this point, that the contending parties have not yet come to a pitched battle in a court of law ; 1 and that each, to a certain degree, keeps the other at bay by the threat of internecine retaliation. In this pause, we may without impropriety descend once more into the arena, and give, as far as our limits allow, a calm survey of the main controversy. We would at the outset maintain that, on the whole, the true policy of the Church and State in this contest, as in those which pre- ceded it, is to grant a complete toleration to the recalci- trant party, so far as is compatible with the practical unity of our ecclesiastical and parochial system. We shall see, as we advance, that, in advocating the toleration of the opinions and practices in question, we are putting our principle to the severest test of which it is capable. We will also point out the limits which are necessary to render that toleration safe even for those whom it is in- tended to include. But the value of the principle is so indispensable to a National Church everywhere — above all to a Church whose historical origin is so fraught with compromise and comprehension as ours — that we gladly take this opportunity of once more asserting it in the. broadest form which, perhaps, it has assumed even in these pages. The very fact, however, of advocating this legal tolera- tion makes it more incumbent on those who deprecate the progress of such views to point out by the fair argu- ments of reason and fact their nature, their tendencies, and their dangers. I. We have said that the Ritualistic development of the 1 [Since this time three judgments of of Arches, have been pronounced on the Privy Council, and two of the Court some of the questions involved. 1 870.] Essay VI. ITS ORIGIN. 253 present dajr is a revival of the movements of Laud in the seventeenth century, and of Dr. Newman thirty years ago. But it has peculiarities of its own which enable us to con- sider it apart from them. In the precise form which gives it the name of ' Ritualist,' 1 it is of sudden growth — the work almost of the last three years — a phenomenon which has taken the nation and Church by surprise. At once in a hundred or more churches (so we are told) appeared coloured vestments ; candles lighted during the Commu- nion in the morning, and during the Magnificat in the afternoon ; a new liturgy interpolated into that established by law ; prostrations, genuflexions, elevations, never be- fore seen ; the transformation of the worship of the Church of England into a likeness of that of the Church of Rome so exact as to deceive Roman Catholics themselves into the momentary belief that they were in their own places of worship. In asking the causes of this rapid efflores- cence, we must distinguish between two perfectly distinct influences. One of these is permanent, and, with certain Its rise as limitations, if not laudable, at any rate approved by many general reasonable persons of all classes of opinion. The other is artlstic movement local, temporary, and also, with certain limitations, if not of the age. absolutely mischievous, yet repugnant to the feelings and the sense of the great mass of educated men in civilised Christendom at home and abroad. The permanent influence is to be found in the vast wave of antiquarian, artistic, architectural, romantic sentiment which has passed over the whole of Europe, as a reaction partly against the French Revolution, but partly also 1 We have adopted this name, both foundly studied the origin and history because it is the one usually adopted, of ancient rites, such as Mabillon, and because it is accepted by the party Martene, Bingham, and Augusti. There to whom it is applied. But in itself are certainly many of the school now so it is as little appropriate as such desig- called to whom the term thus limited nations usually are. 'A Ritualist ' is, would te altogether inapplicable, properly speaking, one who has pro- 254 RITUALISM. Essay VI. against the false taste of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which the Revolution overthrew. It appeared in the revival, headed by the Quaker Rickman, of the feeling for Gothic architecture, which had in the previous ages entirely died out of the heart and mind of Christen- dom. It appeared in the Roman Catholic Church through the protests made by such men as Pugin and Montalem- bert in favour of the mediseval style against the Pagan classical structures of St. Peter's and St. John Lateran. It appeared in the Oriental Church through the reve- rence which, under Philaret, the venerable Metropolitan of Moscow, has everywhere drawn back the sympathy of the Russian clergy and laity from the innovations of Peter and Catherine to the older Byzantine forms of Ivan III. It appeared in Prance in the passion for Restoration which, beginning under Louis-Philippe, has, almost to excess, been rehabilitating every monument of antiquity even in that most changeful of nations — the princely Castle of Blois, the Holy Chapel of St. Louis, the Cathe- dral of Notre Dame, and the Abbey of St. Denis. It appeared in England in the growth of a hundred Archaeo- logical societies, in the rise of thousands of churches, in the reproduction, such as would have caused a shudder in our Stuart or Georgian ancestors, of the style of Henry VII. 's Chapel throughout the modern Palace of "West- minster— in the awakening of popular interest in our cathedrals, in the special services which fill their naves, in the decent celebration of parochial worship, where once all was squalor and neglect. It appears even more strik- ingly in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Glasgow Cathedral has been adorned with stained windows.1 The 1 See the vindication of this resfora- ]ate lamented Dr. John Robertson, tion on Presbyterian principles advo- minister of the Cathedral of Glasgow — cated in the Pastoral Addresses of the an excellent volume, which, if the style Essay VI. ITS ARTISTIC CHARACTER. 255 organ — once, with its 666 pipes, believed to be the Beast of the Apocalypse— has fought its way through more than one Presbytery, and is only waiting for a con- venient season to utter its prelatical blast. A liturgy has actually been introduced into the Greyfriars' Church of Edinburgh, which witnessed the original adoption of the Solemn League and Covenant. Even the Free Church — the modern exaggeration of old Presbyteriaoism — has permitted the growth of churches conspicuous by the fantasy of mediaeval architecture. The Nonconformist chapels of England have followed in the wake, and vast Independent congregations now meet within buildings which their forefathers would have regarded only as the fit shrines of apostasy and idolatry. So far as the rise of Ritualism is an eddy of this wide advancing tide of public feeling, it is not only not the triumph of any particular section of the Church, but it acquires a theological sig- nificance exactly the opposite of that which its chief advocates maintain. When the Ritualists claim all the phenomena of which we have been speaking as on their side, they merge themselves in the great secular move- ment which they seem to deprecate, they become allies of those whom in purely ecclesiastical matters they love to denounce. The true antagonist to Art and Archaeology is Puritanism, not Rationalism.1 The Iconoclast and the Fetichist are often swayed by the same superstition. The arch-ritualist of Scotland (Dr. Lee) is the bold and able leader of Free- thought in every direction.2 It is with him and the like of him, that the Ritualists, if they move from their peculiar theological basis to claim a wider sympathy, have to shake hands and move onwards. had been equal to the matter, would Milman's History of Latin Christianity, have entitled their author to a high ii. 148, 149. place amongst the theological writers 2 [See the Life of Dr. Robert Lee, of the age. published by Mr. Storey since his 1 This is admirably put in Dran lamented death in 18G7.] 256 RITUALISM. Essay VI. There is only one qualification to be made which modifies the connexion of this general historical movement with the externals of Christian worship. If, on the one hand, it be true that the love of beauty and of antiquity belongs to the more free and generous part of the development of the nineteenth century, it must also be admitted that amongst all educated men there is an increasing sense of the solemnity and grace of simplicity in all public cere- monials— an increasing impatience of anything which distracts the attention from the inward to the outward in matters of real importance. Pearls and gold, drapery and tinsel, are more and more regarded as essentially 6 bar- ' baric' The very word 6 theatrical ' as applied to anything serious is a term of disparagement. The stage effects and scenery of the drama, which were originally copied from the pageants of real life, have outrun their originals, and made it extremely difficult to carry on any gorgeous ceremonial without provoking an unseemly comparison with tragic and comic exhibitions. It is a characteristic story told of M. de Tocqueville, that, when standing on the steps of the throne on the august occasion of the opening of Parliament, he watched in silence the gathering of the Peers in their scarlet robes, the entrance of the Ministers in their official uniforms, the appearance of the Sovereign in royal magnificence, and then, when he beheld the Commons rushing to the bar in their plain, unadorned, rough, everyday dress, he exclaimed e Voila le Maitre.9 He seemed to see that the day was come, in the nation, as in a household, when it is the servants only who appear in livery, whilst the real Master stands above for- malities. The sentiment implied in this saying has doubt- less a touch of exaggeration, derived from a too austere view of human affairs. But it represents the real cause of the alienation, felt by many minds, from external show, Essay VI. ITS ARTISTIC CHARACTER. 257 even when not associated with doctrines or ideas repug- nant to them. And in this respect the general antiqua- rian taste of the time, whilst fostering an appreciation of architecture and a love of historical associations, is often found to be a positive check on ceremonialism or credulity in religion. No one is a more decided enemy to legend and superstition, because no one knows more about them, than a profound archaeologist. No one is more apt to think simplicity the beauty of holiness than a man who enters most thoroughly into the glory of art. We are led to make these preliminary remarks, not Rubric on only because of their bearing on the general question, but ments. because of their special connexion with one part of the controversy, which has assumed, in our judgment, a very disproportionate importance — that of the Vestments, One reason of this exaggerated importance, doubtless, has been the extraordinary legal entanglement in which it has been involved. The Ritualists, as is well known, defend themselves — with a characteristic defiance of one of their own cherished principles — against the united voice of almost all the bishops and of both Houses of Convocation, by appealing to an Act 1 of Parliament passed in the reign of Elizabeth, without the consent of any bishop or of either House of Convocation. We will not go at length into the mysteries of this enactment. The main features of its history are, however, curious and instructive. It represented first the suspended judgment of the Reformers of Edward VI., just on the eve of making the complete breach between the new and old ceremonial, ' the torrent's ' smoothness ere it dash below.' It was abolished by 1 The Act of Uniformity, in Charles ' Parliament,' to which the celebrated II.'s time, had no doubt the consent of rubric refers, depends virtually on the the bishops, and the Prayer-book in- Act of Elizabeth, which was passed corporated with it had the approval of only by the Temporal Peers and the Convocation ; but ' the authority of House of Commons. (Sre Essay II.) S 258 RITUALISM. Essay VI. their maturer judgment, when they published their revised Prayer-book a few years afterwards. It was revived under Elizabeth, when she, equally with the statesmen of the first years of her brother, halted be- tween two opinions — but with the express precaution that it was merely provisional, and awaiting her further royal pleasure. That pleasure was expressed in her own reign by Advertisements, and in her successor's reign by Canons, both under royal authority (at a time when royal authority reached far more nearly to the level of a law than has been the case since) — prohibiting the use of these vestments anywhere except in cathedrals and colle- giate churches. The Rubric so revived 1 was finally adopted, but without this precaution, by the statesmen and bishops of the Restoration — a proceeding which, as they never acted upon it, must be regarded as only one other ad- ditional instance of the harsh spirit with which they met the demands 2 of the Nonconformists — insulting where they could not wound, entrapping them where they dared not openly oppose them. Such is the Act — unquestionably the letter of the law — on which the use of these vestments depends ; how far capable of being sustained against the general usage of the Church for three centuries to the contrary, we gladly leave to lawyers to determine. But, apart from the legal question, the controversy has an interest of its own which deserves a few moments' attention. The use or disuse of these coloured vestments 1 In the Irish Prayer-book of 1663 knowing the object of the Declaration, it does not exist. might more easily stumble at it. When 2 Other instances of this policy are the words in the marriage service, ' I well known. When the declaration of thee worship,' had been by common the unfeigned assent and consent to the consent changed to ' I thee honour,' the use of the Prayer-book was couched words offensive to the Puritans were in the form of assent t:> all and every- retained by the mere insolence of care- thing contained, &c, it was done in lessness. the hope that the Nonconformists, not Essay VI. THE VESTMENTS. 259 is often treated by botli sides as if it were the turning qnes- The _ . , , ., . . vestments. tion between a true and a false Church ; the signs to one party of the only Catholic worship, to the other of 6 the 6 workshops of Satan.' We venture to say that, with the exception of one aspect, on which we will dwell presently, there is not in the whole course of ecclesiastical usage a ceremonial practice more absolutely void of all theological significance. Look at the origin of these vestments. Of no sig- Both their supporters and their ojDponents regard them as j^thehT sacerdotal garments, symbolical of we know not what origin- mysterious meanings. Even Milton spoke of them as borrowed from the Flamen's vestry and Aaron's wardrobe. What is the actual case ? They have not the slightest tincture of Mamen or priest in their whole descent. They are the dresses of the Syrian peasant or the Roman gentleman, retained by the clergy when they had been left off by the rest of society; just as the bishops long preserved the last relics of the flowing wigs of the time of Charles II. ; as the Blue-coat boys recall the common dress of children under Edward VI. ; as Quakers maintain the sober costume of the Commonwealth ; as a clergyman's bands, which have been regarded as symbolical of the Cloven Tongues, of the two Testaments, of the two Tables of the Law, are but the remains of the turned-down collars of the time of James I. Their very names bear witness to the fact that there was originally no outward distinction whatever between clergy and laity. They thus strike, if they have any historical significance at all, at the root of the vast hierarchical system, of which they are now made the badges and ornaments. The ' alb ' is but the white shirt or tunic, still kept up in the white dress of the Pope, which used to be worn by every peasant next his skin,1 and in southern countries was often his 1 Tertullian (Spect c. 23). Clemens Alex. (Paclag. iii. 8). 260 RITUALISM. Essay VI. only garment. A variety of it, introduced by the Em- perors Commodus and Heliogabalus, with long sleeves, was, from the country whence they brought it,1 called the Dalmatica. The c pall ' is the pallium, the woollen cloak, generally the mark of philosophers, wrapped round the shirt like a plaid or shawl. The overcoat, in the days of the Roman Empire as in ours, was constantly changing its fashion and its name ; and the slang designations by which it was known have been perpetuated in the eccle- siastical vocabulary and are now used with bated breath, as if speaking of things too sacred to be mentioned. One such overcoat was the cape or cope, also called pluviale, the ' waterproof.' Another was the chasuble, or casula, e the little house,' 2 as the Roman labourer called the smock frock in which he shut himself up when out at work in bad weather. Another was the caracalla, or caraca, or casaca, 6 the cassock,' 3 brought by the Emperor, who derived his own surname from it when he introduced it, from France. The 6 surplice ' is the barbarous garment, the 6 over- fur ' (superpellicium),* only used in the North, where it was drawn over the skins of beasts in which our German and Celtic ancestors were clothed. It was the common garb — 6 the white coat ' (cotta candens) — worn by the regular clergy not only in church, but in ordinary life. In the oldest Roman mosaic, that in the church of Sta. Pudentiana, of the fourth century, the Apostles are represented in the common classical costume of the age. No thought had entered the mind of the Church, even at that time, of investing even the most sacred personages with any other than ordinary dresses.5 1 Bingham, book vi. §§ 4, 18-20. 3 Bingham, book vi. §§ 4, 20. 2 Facciolati, in voce Cucv.llatus. 4 Ducange in voce. The same metaphor appears in our 5 So the original dress of the Benc- word ' coat,' which is the mediaeval dictine monks was merely that of • cotta] equally used for a 1 coat,' and Italian peasants, a 1 cot,' or ' cottage.' Essay VI. THE VESTMENTS. 261 Iu like manner, -when we pass from the first origin of these vestments to their retention by the Reformers of the English Church, although they had lost this primitive character, they were still merely kept up for decency or for comeliness. These reasons alone are advanced as the grounds for the use of the surplice, and the * decent cope ' in cathedrals is to be confined to the ' principal minister ' of the chapter at the Communion. If it was extended further by custom, it was merely for the sake of additional splendour. So the Dean and Prebendaries of Westminster of no sig- Abbey have at the coronations always worn copes, not to HfSST symbolise any particular office or part of the service, but reteutlon- to be in harmony with the general magnificence of the procession. So Archbishop Williams dressed up in copes, not merely the officiating ministers, but all the 6 quire- men,' lay as well as clerical, in order to increase the pomp of the reception of the French ambassadors. The bishops immediately before the Reformation wore copes not only in their episcopal ministrations, but in Parlia- ment. The episcopal e rochet ' is simply * a little coat ' (rocket) worn by the bishops at that time on all occasions, except when they went out hunting (nisi cum venantur) ; 1 and the satin s chimere ' is the loose gown or scarf, 6 the c light cymar ' worn by ladies, or by persons of quality, in riding.2 If, by some chance, the fashion of these vestments should spread, there is no obstacle, in principle, to their adoption by the most latitudinarian or the most Puritan of our divines. Kay, even in the High Church party itself, we have seen how rapidly such badges change their meaning. The surplice, for which twenty, or even ten years ago, clergymen were willing to endanger the peace of their neighbourhood and the welfare of their parishes, is now by the representatives 1 Hody*s History of Convocation. - ArchaoJ. xxx. 17. 262 RITUALISM. Essay VI. of the very same party denounced as c a white frock ' — 6 a c rag of Protestantism.' Nor is this change of feeling con- fined to the upholders of ritualism. After one of the well- known disturbances in St. George's-in-the-East, an old woman was observed straining her eyes to see what colour would be worn by the new clergyman when he emerged from the vestry. At last, on his appearance in the usual preach- ing-gown, she burst into tears, and exclaimed, 6 Thank 6 God, it is black ! ' Had the same good old creature lived to our days, she might have been disposed, even at the sight of the common surplice, to exclaim, ' Thank God, 6 it is white ! ' Therefore we repeat that any legislation on this 6 vesti- ( arian controversy,' however necessary it may at last be- come in order to clear up the ambiguity of a law left by its treacherous framers in designed obscurity, will touch but a very small part of the matter. These garments, it is true, have been made symbolical of doctrines and practices with which they have no connexion ; but the doctrines and the practices will remain even if the garments are removed, just as the doctrines and the practices might perish even if the garments were retained. II. But the real mischief of these practices lies quite in another direction; and we are anxious that the public attention should be fixed on the issues of true importance, and not on trivialities which shift with every wind of fashion or at most have only an antiquarian interest. The first of these evils arises when, whether by arraying themselves in unusual colours or by any other startling innovation, the clergy fly in the face of constituted authori- ties or of their congregations. This is an evil which in point of fact might arise equally from either of the two main sections of the ecclesiastical world. A Puritan clergy- man might create a disorder by suddenly wearing a black Essay VI. ITS MISCHIEVOUS RESULTS. 263 gown, when his congregation had been accustomed to a Evil of surplice ; or by removing the communion-table, in strict ™i'th&10J conformity with the rubric, from the chancel into the body JJ^"ega" of the fabric in accordance with the undoubted law of the Church, and with its unquestioned practice from Ridley to Laud. But it has rarely been by this school of the clergy that the episcopal authority has been set at nought. It has been reserved for those by whom the bishops are professedly regarded as the successors of the Apostles, as the one evidence of a true Church, to treat them with a contempt and a defiance altogether peculiar to themselves. No dis- senter, no presbyterian, has ever lavished on the episcopal order fouler language than that which is weekly poured forth by the organs of the Ritualist party against those whom they theoretically regard as the oracles of the Christian Church. And in like manner, though less fre- quently, the congregations, or the leading persons in the congregations, are equally ignored, when their wishes come into conflict with the desire of the clergyman, per- haps instigated by a few hotheaded youths from his own or other parishes, to introduce ceremonies which cannot by any possibility be edifying except to those who sym- pathise with them. To what results this has led, on more than one occasion, it is needless to remind our readers. The scenes at St. St. George's-in-the-East are still fresh in the recollection of ^l^East many. The vast church, crowded to the roof with a congre- iu 1860« gation, not of worshippers, but of furious zealots, trying to thunder down the chanting of the liturgy by their own dis- cordant responses ; every allusion in the prayers or lessons which could be construed into a condemnation of idolatry received with a round of coughing, as the mark of their sin- cere approbation ; the clergy and choristers vainly striving to carry on the service, under the protection of policemen, 264 RITUALISM. Essay VI within the chancel rails, £ like mice in a cage, surrounded 6 by an army of starved cats,' — to use the graphic expres- sion of an eye-witness — the very same congregation, at a simpler service afterwards, falling at once into the attitude of devotion and attention1 — furnished lessons of ecclesias- tical history, if full of scandal, yet full also of instruction. Doubtless several causes combined to produce the result in that particular case : the ruffianly neighbourhood, the presence of a polemical lecturer, the singular convenience of the church for the strategics of the escalading party, perhaps the inadequacy of the law, or the indifference of its administrators. But still the original cause was the intrusion of a novel rite in a parish unprepared to receive it. To such a state of anarchy could a congregation, in itself respectable, be reduced by the pertinacious adherence of a clergyman, in other respects amiable, sensible, and conciliatory, to the colour of a vestment, or the intonation of a voice. Whenever such a collision occurs, the authority of law, whether through the bishop or the legislature, should intervene — not on account of the ceremony itself in question, but to suppress an enormous scandal, to protect a congregation whose legal rights are outraged, to check a breach of the first maxims of Christian faith, charity and wisdom. We are not disposed to overstate the extent to which episcopal authority should be strained. In matters of opinion, a Bishop is a man and nothing more. The value of his sentiments depends on the weight of character, learn- ing, or genius which he brings to his high office, or which his high office evokes. But in matters of discipline, if in any- thing, he has a claim to be heard. In no other profession would the advice of a commanding-officer be disregarded 1 The sudden transformation of this tion of the crusading army when, fresh wild mob of fanatics into a congregation from the carnage of Jerusalem, it became of decorous worshippers, suggested to a band of devout pilgrims on its entrance more than one person Gibbon's doscrip- into the Church of the Sepulchre. Essay VI. ITS MISCHIEVOUS TENDENCY. 265 by his inferiors in matters of mere external observance ; and where, as in the cases supposed, the disobedience threatens the peace and safety of a parish, it deserves severe reprobation. III. But in fact, this insubordination against bishops — its this contempt of the rights of parish and congregation JJ^J (where it exists) — is in itself part of the still larger peril, of which Ritualism is but a very superficial development, which may exist equally without cope or chasuble, and which throws these lesser follies wholly into the shade. In entering here on the real danger of the ecclesiastical movement of our day, we would call attention once more to the fact that, whilst it might be possible to restrain the mere ceremonial extravagances by additional legal penal- ties, this vaster mischief is one which legal enactments can hardly reach, or reach only through remedies which would be worse than the evils. It is our hope that by clearly stating what those evils are we may render some service in awakening the more moderate adherents of this system to the perils of the course to which they give their sanction, and which, by the pressure of more astute politicians above them, and of more vehement partisans behind them, hurries them on, in spite of themselves, to excesses which in heart they deprecate, whilst in act they encourage. There are many who would regard the conscious imi- tation of anything that belongs to the Church of Rome one of the foremost offences of the Ritualist party. The fact is undoubted. The coloured vestments are evidently adopted, not because of their antiquity — for their first origin, as we have seen, is significant of no doctrine what- ever— but simply because they are Roman. It would appear that the XXXIX Articles are repudiated, the title of Protestant rejected, and the great name of Luther 2GG RITUALISM. Essay VI. disparaged, not so much from any fixed conviction on the subjects themselves, as because these stand as bulwarks or barriers between the mass of Englishmen and Western Catholic Christendom. But it is not on this account that the attitude of this party is open to grave objection. Approximation to Rome, or to any other Church than our own, is not of itself an evil. The doctrine that the Pope is Antichrist is indeed held by some Protestant fanatics to be the article of a falling or a standing Church, but this is not the position either of the Church of England or of any large number of educated men. The letter of the XXXIX Articles has broken down on so many other points, that no stone can be thrown on this account at those who thus cast off at least one- third of the doctrines which the Articles were supposed to enforce. They claim a latitude for them- selves which they constantly refuse to others. Let them have it. What, however, offends common sense, and must probably be trying even to themselves, is the painful striving after a system which they have not, and which they endeavour to grasp by seizing the shadow when they know that they cannot enjoy the substance. To Roman Catholics the attempt appears ludicrous. The walls of the Vatican resound with laughter at the reports which pene- trate thither of the mimicry of rites which are natural to them, but which they feel must be artificial to others. There is no doubt a strain on every reasonable mind in bearing the immense weight of the traditional hereditary system of the Roman Catholic Church ; but the strain is far greater when this weight is self-imposed — when some of the most startling forms of its worship Lre not merely accepted as parts of an ancient whole, but are dragged out into disproportionate prominence by the fancy of individual minds. It is one of the maxims of the Ritualist school that Essay VI. ITS MISCHIEVOUS TENDENCY. 267 c no public worship is really deserving of the name unless c it be histrionic.' 1 No doubt in every religious cere- its nionial there is a dramatic element, which in early 2 times character, avowedly occupied a conspicuous place. But surely the most eager Ritualists would acknowledge that in worship, as in other parts of the religious life, some deference is due to the contrary maxim, 6 Beware of hypocrisy ' (vTro/cpiaisf), that is, if we take the word in its literal sense, £ Beware ' of acting a part as on a stage.' And this ' histrionic ' element becomes doubly questionable in proportion as the part enacted is remote from ourselves. We do not deny that in every kind of ritual a divergence must often exist between the earthly feelings of the worshipper and the unearthly language in which all our devotion must be expressed. But this divergence between form and reality is increased beyond all proportion when the minister is not only assuming gestures, dresses, and words which are in themselves more or less theatrical, but when those forms and frames of thought are consciously borrowed from another society to which he does not belong. Sir Walter Scott used to tell with much zest a story of a man who tried to frighten his friend by encountering him at midnight on a lonely spot which was supposed to be the resort of a ghostly visitant. He took his seat on the haunted stone wrapped in a long white sheet. Presently, to his horror, the real ghost appeared, and sat down beside him, with the ominous ejaculation, 6 You are a ghost, and 4 I am a ghost ; let us come closer and closer together.' And closer and closer the ghost pressed, till the sham 1 Church and World, p. 37. This ' their own contributions.' is a volume composed on the principle 2 It is interesting to observe that of Essays and Reviews; that is, of a 'crerimonia' (from the city of Caere) and collection of essays on kindred sub- ' histrio ' are both Etruscan words. The jects, ' written independently of one real founders of European ritualism 1 another,' and 1 by authors responsible are the Pontiffs of Etruria. 1 only for the statements contained in 268 EITUALISM. Essay VI. ghost, overcome with, terror, fainted away. This, we fear, is the fate which awaits the Ritualist imitators of the Church of Rome. That mighty ghost — -c the ghost of the ' deceased Roman Empire ' — the ghost of the dead middle ages — will press closer and closer to our poor dressed-up ghost, till the greater absorbs the lesser or deprives it, by mere juxtaposition, of any true spiritual life. We would, in all sincerity, submit to those who adopt this histrionic worship and theology, that there is, in the very attitude which they assume, a fantastic show of religion, extremely difficult to combine with its inward reality. If one out of twenty is able to unite it with devotional fervour and practical activity, there must be nineteen out of twenty who are in danger of losing all sense of the great things of life in the punctilious and religious observance of prac- tices which, not being natural, can only be retained in the mind by an effort, to say the least, exceedingly un- wholesome. Exagger- IV. Connected with this part of the development is the of6theieVVS view of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which is made by Eucharist, faG Ritualists the centre of their new practices. It is possible that, since the lucid judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1857,1 both they and their opponents may have learned to attach less importance than they then did to the shape and materials of the Com- munion-table. Its oldest form, we now clearly know, was, as its name implies, that of a wooden table and nothing more. Such it still is in the churches of the East, and in the most venerable basilica of Rome. The stone structure which centuries afterwards took its place had even then no connexion with a Pagan or Jewish altar, but was a repro- duction of the rock-hewn grave or marble tomb, in which the relics of martyrs were supposed to be enshrined. The 1 Erode rick and Fremantle, Judgments of the Privy Council, p. 117. Essay VI. IN CONNEXION WITH THE EUCHARIST. 269 Credence-table, which used to be attacked and defended as a bulwark of high sacramental views, may now have come to be judged in its true light as an adjunct rather of a table than an altar, being in fact the sideboard from which the Credentiarius, or accredited taster, in the bar- barous times when the name and thing were invented, ascertained if the food was poisoned, whether at a common meal or in the consecrated elements. But there still remain some points which especially connect it with the present controversy. When we re- member what the original ordinance was — when we call to mind the upper chamber, with the evening feast and the recumbent guests — when wre recollect its primitive con- nexion with all the incidents of a common banquet — when we reflect on its undoubted intention, as a pledge of love between Christians and Christians, as an offering of grate- ful hearts, as a self-dedication to the Master who had de- dicated Himself for them — it is with difficulty that we can track our way through the long descent of centuries, during which it has become 6 the Dreadful Sacrifice,' the Miracle of Bolsena, the centre of strange fables and still stranger discords, the battlefield of scholastic theologians, of war- riDg nations, of conflicting sects, of the fierce struggles of Abelard and Bernard, of John Ziska and the Emperor Sigismond, of the Reformed and Lutheran Churches against each other and against Rome. Hard logic, wild rhetoric, prosaic want of imagination, and imagination run riot, bad metaphysics, and misguided politics, have done their worst on that simple and sacred rite, till the true miracle seems to be that it survived at all. We must not be surprised, therefore, if in the fluctuations of the English Reformation, in the perplexities which beset the mind first of Cranmer and then of Elizabeth on this very subject, the ambiguity and contradiction of their doctrine should have 270 KITUALISM. Essay VI. left its traces throughout the English formularies, and even in the very words of the administration of the sacred elements. The two conflicting views would thus be sure to meet in the communion of the Anglican Church even if nowhere else. We would not disturb either of them. So far as through the mist of words we can discern the meaning of the leaders of this school, they are in this respect neither more nor less than Lutherans, and it is no reproach to the English Church that Luther and Zwingle should under its auspices close their ceaseless struggle against each other. It may be true, as Mr. Hallam ob- serves, that, logically speaking, there can be nothing pre- dicated concerning a body in its relation to a given space but presence 1 and absence. But the perversity of human fancy, the ambiguity of human language, the complexity of human parties, we may add, the sincere devotion of un- reflecting minds, have hitherto rendered a simple statement of the case well-nigh impossible. Even the Canon of the Roman Mass ' can only by the most violent artifices of in- 6 terpretation be reconciled with the dogma of transubstan- 6 tiation which was defined many centuries after the Canon 2 ' was fixed.' Still, without embarking on a theological discussion which would far outrun our limits, there are two points on which we would firmly, and we would even hope with the concurrence of the better spirits of the High Church school itself, protest against the direction in which their favourite doctrine is now pushed. Material One is the disposition shown in the minute machinery the^Eu? an(^ casuistry of the f Directorium Anglicanum,' and like chanst. works of the Ritualist party, to bring out the material and local elements of the Sacrament into the most startling prominence. To this chiefly, if not alone, must be referred 1 Constitutional History of England, 2 Charge of the Bishop of St. David's, vol. i. p. 124. p. 96. Essay VI. IN CONNEXION WITH THE EUCHARIST. 271 the contorted attitudes and changes of dress and physical precautions which, though, intended to be reverent, provoke, in those who do not approve them, impressions either most painful or most profane. Now, whatever view be taken of the Eucharist,1 it is evident to a reasonable mind that the spiritual ought to preponderate over the carnal. Were our Saviour actually present, He Him self would tell us that His bodily form profited nothing, that His words and His spirit only were the source of life and strength. Even if we are to admit the unhappy posthumous correction of the vexed stanza in the ' Christian Year,' and read that He is present 6 as in the hands, so in the heart,' we must all hold that the presence in the heart is infinitely more important than the presence in the hands. This, we believe, would be the thought of the more spiritually minded even of devout Roman Catholics. The reverse of this, we regret to think, is the almost inevitable inference from such practices as those to which we refer. The other accompaniment of this doctrine runs out into Sacerdotal a larger field. It is the exaltation of the minister into a ^Eaf priest and the exaltation of a priest into an indispensable charist. channel of communication between God and man. This, again, is not, of necessity, the result of the material view, erroneous as we think it, of the Sacramental Presence. It was not held by Luther and the Churches which bear his name. And there are, we believe, high authorities even in the Church of Rome who maintain that, as in Baptism so in the Eucharist, the intervention of a priest, technically so called, is not of the essence of the Sacrament. But the peculiar sacredness of the priesthood is one of the chief ends proposed by the school whose tenets we are now dis- cussing, not only at the present time, but at their first 1 This is brought out with great by the Kev. J. Llewellyn Davies, on force in some striking sermons preached ' Morality according to the Lord's Sup- before the University of Cambridge per.' 272 RITUALISM. Essay VI. revival in the ( Tracts for the Times,' when the Apostolical Succession was the one doctrine reiterated, tract after tract, sermon after sermon, with every variety of emphasis. Here again it is doubtless extremely difficult to ascertain what is the precise effect they ascribe to Absolution, or what the precise authority to the words of a Bishop or a Priest ; nor would we press their words a hairbreadth beyond their real intention. But they unquestionably pro- fess to believe, that they are the depositaries of mystical, preternatural, almost magical influences, independent of any moral or spiritual graces, and communicated to no one else but themselves. One of their leaders has said that the opposition to their system is tantamount to a rejection of 'the belief of any medium between the soul and God.' This is probably a true expression of the state of the case. The acceptance or the rejection of this belief is the turning- point of the whole controversy. Helps, indeed, assistances innumerable, not only through the clergy, the Sacraments, and the Bible, but through example, through art, through nature, through science, through history, through poetry, through church, through home, through school, through advice, through love, through friendship, the human soul has always needed, and will always need, in her arduous, ever-retarded, upward flight towards a better world. But the belief in a fixed, external, necessary 6 medium between ' the soul and God ' on earth, is exactly that which — if we have rightly read the Psalms of David, the Epistles of Paul, and the Gospel of Christ — if we have learnt anything from the sufferings and scandals of the Church before the Reformation and since — true Religion is always striving to dispense with, and the more it can be dispensed with, the nearer and higher is the communion of the human spirit with its Maker and its Redeemer. V. Growing out of these sacerdotal pretensions, though Essay VI. ITS INTOLERANCE. 273 not, unhappily, confined to persons of this persuasion, is Intoler- the extreme intolerance of the school to which the ^gh° Ritualists belong. Indeed, one point on which these ^ool external displays deserve some indulgence, and even commendation, is that they have afforded an innocent occupation and diversion from pursuits far more repre- hensible. It is better to be busy about a vestment or a ceremony than to be always on the scent for heresy, always hounding on the religious world to some new object of suspicion and attack. The determination not merely to have their own way, but to allow no contrary practice or opinion to exist beside them, is one of the fixed character- istics of the High Church party during almost the whole of the long story of their existence in English history. Such was the extravagant design of Laud, which brought down the Church and monarchy in ruins round his head. Such was the ever- narrowing circle of the Nonjurors, each section of that small party anathematising the other, and all of them anathematising the Church and nation from which they had separated. Such were the 4 fierce thoughts,' by his own candid confession, with which the distinguished leader cf the Oxford movement of the Tracts 1 commenced his crusade against every form of liberal views. Such was the attempt of the same party, when, not content with having themselves entire freedom to preach what they believed to be the true doctrine on the mysterious subject of the effects of baptism, they sought every means to expel from the Church those who, whether on the Puritan or Liberal side, varied from their own narrow position. Such has been the career of this same party, revived within the last few years, by the energies of the champions who, whether in periodicals or in Convocation, sounded the tocsin of what was intended to be an implacable war against 1 Newman's Apologia, pp. 97, 120, 131. T 274 EITUALISM. Essay VI. the advocates of free inquiry and Biblical criticism in the Church of England — a war which ended indeed in the total rout of the assailants, but which, nevertheless, raged long enough to show what amount of fairness or consideration was to be expected from this school, if ever it gained the upper hand. Such is still the attitude of the same party and its chiefs whenever it has the opportunity of showing itself. It still exhibits, wherever there is a person of liberal opinions sufficiently unpopular to make it safe to attack him, the same polemical virulence. It still persists in insultingly ignoring the Christian graces, almost the existence, of the venerable Churches of Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland, which, in spite of their divergence from episcopacy, the Fathers of Anglicanism recognised as parts of our common Christendom, and bound to us by indis- soluble links of gratitude and affection. Doubtless there have always been brilliant exceptions. Laud was stirred to a truly generous indulgence towards the latitudinarian and 6 ever-memorable ' Hales. Ken, in the conflicts of the Non-jurors, as on many other occasions of his blameless life, proved himself a real saint by rising above the sins which his party regarded as virtues. Dr. Newman, as the earnestness of the contest waxed deeper, became more and more alive to the excellence of eminent men of opposite schools, to whom at one time he had almost de- nied the name of Christian.1 Many there are no doubt, at present, in the same circles, who discern the seriousness of the times in which we live,2 and would fain act and speak with a charity and a patience corresponding. It has 1 Newman's Apologia, p. 98. the English Church Union, which, dur- 2 We have much pleasure in men- ing the whole of the agitation against tioning, as examples of such a spirit, Dr. Temple's appointment to the see of some recent articles in a well-known Exeter, maintained the position either High Church periodical, the Christian of a laudable silence or of a yet more Remembrancer, [and, we must now add, laudable admirat:on. 1870.] the Guardian, the Church Times, and Essay VI. ITS LAWLESSNESS. 275 always seemed to us a glorious possibility for the English. High Church party to have taken np a position, which none could have occupied so well, of treating from their own point of view, kindly and reverently and impartially, the questions which the zealots, either of Calvinism or of Liberalism, are tempted to handle too harshly and too exclusively, and with too little regard to the great histo- rical exigencies of Christendom. More than once such a golden opportunity was open both to the Episcopal and the theological chiefs of this party. Most deeply do we regret for their sake and for the sake of the Church, that it was recklessly thrown away, and that the gravest and the most interesting questions of religion have been by their perverse tactics entangled with the personalities of the moment, with the triumph of eager partisans, with an almost total disregard of the truth or falsehood of the points at issue. VI. Another characteristic of the party, also springing Jealousy from its enormous ecclesiastical pretensions, is the anti- social and anti-national tendency of its proceedings. There po^er. is one shape which this tendency has taken, developed with unusual strength at the present moment, namely, its jealousy of the civil power. In Laud's time, the friendship between Charles and the Archbishop, and the peculiar views of the High Church party on the Divine right of Kings, whatever other evils were thereby entailed, had the advantage of attaching the ecclesiastical party at least to one great institution of the realm — the monarch}'. The descendants of Laud would be revolted at his exaltation of the civil power, and no Erastianism has ever gone further in ex- pression than when he restored to the Coronation Service the prayer that the King might have the ' keys of Peter * and the doctrine of Paul.' After the Eestoration, there was, perhaps in consequence of the desire to preserve as T 2 276 RITUALISM. Essay VI. many of the antique forms as was possible, a stronger effort made to give the ecclesiastcal assemblies a partici- pation in ecclesiastical legislation ; but Parliament even in the revision of the Prayer-book asserted its supreme power, and it was at this epoch that the constitutional independ- ence of Convocation was surrendered without remonstrance by Sheldon's scheme for abolishing its ancient privilege of self-taxation. It is from the time of the revival of the Laudian principles by Dr. Newman and his followers, that the hostility to the State has become a fixed idea of the school, gaining more and more ascendency over it, till in our day it has almost reached the height of a monomania. The 6 Tracts for the Times ' took their origin in the indignation expressed by the High Church party at the suppression of the Irish bishoprics by the Government.1 Dr. Newman, in his * Apologia,' has told us repeatedly that the anti-Erastian views of Church polity were one of the most prominent features of the movement ; how on this point, and on this point alone, he sympathised with Whately, whose anonymous work on that subject 6 made his blood boil with enthusiasm.' Prom that time the tradition of the school has never wavered, and has now reached the point at which almost every theological passion is tame in comparison with it. It appears in the interminable warfare waged by the High Church clergy against the 6 Conscience Clause ' — a point which brings out in the strongest relief the extravagance of their doctrine, because all, with a very few exceptions, acknowledge that they do of their own will that which, when the law enjoins, they regard as detestable. There is hardly a clergyman to be found who in his own parish school will not exempt children of Nonconformists from 1 This was the subject of Mr. Keble's since considered by Dr. Newman as the sermon on ' National Apostasy.' ever start of the Oxford movement. Essay VI. ITS LAWLESSNESS. 277 the teaching of the Church of England formularies. But when this is embodied in an Order of Council, it is denounced as a subversion of the faith.1 Hence also the pertinacious exalta tion of purely clerical authority against the State, whether as represented in the Sovereign, the Parliament, the Courts of Law, or the Privy Council. Hence, in spite of the sober warnings of Burke and the grave rebuke of Hallam, arose, first, the eager longings for the revival of Convocation, and the extravagant hopes entertained, and even now not wTholly extinguished, of the splendid results which wrould flow from it. Hence, in the general tone of that venerable body, the studied disparagement of Parlia- ment, the cheers at every allusion to the chance of escape from the ' galling fetters ' of the State, the irritation at every suspicion that measures affecting the Church, even of the most beneficial character, can be passed by the Legislature without a recognition of the power of ' the c Synod of the Province of Canterbury/ Hence the increas- ing hostility to the nomination of the higher dignitaries of the Church by the Government. The intervention of the supreme authority of the State to give the august sanction of the law and of the commonwealth to the highest officers of religion is regarded as an intrusion into the sanctuary, a degradation of the episcopal office, a neutralisation of all the once boasted glories of our cathedral establishments. When, as Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, by a stroke of his pen, erased from the Consecration service one of its most important rubrics,2 that enforcing the necessity of 1 [The Conscience Clause may now Sovereign was, in almost all is still, be reckoned amongst the dead con- required in like manner. The reason troversies. 1870.] is obvious. It was regarded as the 2 The Royal licence for the conse- necessary check on an undue multipli- cration of the Bishops represents an cation of centres of ecclesiastical power, important principle, not peculiar to the and as the necessary protection of the Church of England. In all the older State against the undue claims of cleri- churches of Europe the consent of the cal rule. Theappointment of Bishops bv 278 RITUALISM. Essay VI. the mandate of the Sovereign, which formed the last link of connexion between the Canadian clergy and the mother Church, and left the Canadian bishoprics henceforth to be the undisputed prey of fierce party conflicts carried on with all the violence and scandal of hotly contested elec- tions, municipal or parliamentary, he was hailed as a deliverer of the Canadian Church, as the inaugurator of a blessed liberty which, it was almost openly desired, might one day reach back to England. The vehement agitation carried on by this party to alter the Supreme Court of Final Appeal, though doubtless much of its acrimony arose from the bitter disappointment of a party foiled in its attempt to suppress opinions and exclude persons dis- tasteful to its chiefs, yet sprang in great measure from the repugnance to the decision of ecclesiastical matters by any but ecclesiastical tribunals. It was this which caused the exulting shout of a respected leader of the school, when, in a moment of premature triumph, he fancied that one of the late judgments had given over the clergy in the dioceses of Capetown and Natal to the irre- sponsible, uncontrolled despotism of the metropolitan of that province — e The Church of South Africa is free ! ' It is this which has inspired that metropolitan with the view that the bishops of the Church of England are no better than policemen.1 It is this which is practically followed out at home by that contemptuous defiance of the epi- scopal authority of which we have already spoken. Here, as in regard to the Conscience Clause, it would seem as the Sovereign, very early after the set- ought to be the main thing desired, tlement of Europe, took the place of the 1 ' The definition of the faith of the ancient elections by universal suffrage, Church by Civil judges , . . reduces but in either case represented the primi- each bishop to the position of a mere tive mode of appointment by the ' con- officer of the state — a policeman under ' grcgations.' It may have its evils — the Government of the day,' &c. — Letter but no other mode has yet been pointed of the Bishop of Capetown to the Dio- out which has equal chances of se- ccseof Capetown, p. 28, Jan. 19, 1867- curing the fittest men, which after all Essay VI. ITS LAWLESSNESS. 279 if the partisans of this school read the apostolic precept backwards, and made it their avowed principle to resist every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, and to disobey the powers that be because they are not ordained of God. To be just and discriminating towards Dissenters becomes wrong* if it is ordered by the Privy Council of the Queen. To disregard the authority or the injunction of a bishop acquires, in their eyes, a new merit, from the fact that, besides being their ecclesiastical superior, he is clothed with the majesty of the law of their country, appointed by the supreme authority of the realm. We have drawn out these indications, which might be Combina- multiplied indefinitely, to show the most formidable, the against the most direct, and most mischievous object at which the ^urclf party represented by the Ritualists is aiming.1 It is the and most formidable, because it falls in with two currents of feeling from very opposite quarters — the shortsighted though conscientious desire of a large body of Noncon- formists for a separation of Church and State, and the religious indifference of some of the philosophical Liberals. Signs are not wanting that these three forces may at last conspire to destroy the rare combination which, with all its shortcomings, exhibits one of the noblest works which God's Providence through a long course of ages has raised up in Europe. We do not deny that State and Church, each in its relations to the other, as well as each by itself, need immense changes in order to make them represent worthily (we are not now speaking of the political, but) the religious condition of England. The State needs to become more and more alive to what it may effect in raising the social and moral position of the mass of our people. The Church needs to be stretched to the utmost limits of which it is capable, in the hope of making it 1 See Essay VII. 280 EITUALISM. Essay VI. truly worthy of the name of National. But the framework of the system which this combination of forces is bent on destroying opens a prospect of future usefulness which, once lost, can never be recalled, and which, once fairly grasped, will secure a field for religious liberty and religious progress such as the world has never before witnessed. Of all the deviations from the grand traditions of the Reformed Church of England on which the Ritualist party has embarked, none is wider than their repudiation of that joint action of Church and State, that subordination of the clerical power to the supremacy of law which forms the crowning characteristic of the English Reformation, of sound English philosophy and theology. This was the theory stamped on all the acts of the Tudor Sovereigns in all the magnificence of diction which is peculiar to that creative age. This, as Dr. Newman observed, with the subtle keenness of hostile criticism, is brought out with every prominence that multiplicity of expression, largeness of type, reiteration of emphasis can give, throughout our Liturgy. This inspired the greatest work of English theology — the c Ecclesiastical Polity ' of Richard Hooker — from end to end, breathing into it his noble description of the dignity of law, his fine sense of the intrinsic indif- ference of ecclesiastical forms, his elaborate, perhaps too elaborate, delineation of the identity of the Christian Commonwealth with the Christian Church. This was the ruling thought of the grave good sense of Selden, of much of the high political philosophy of Burke, and of the reli- gious philosophy of Coleridge. This was the vision which to realise, both in practice and in speculation, was to Arnold 6 that great work,' to use his own words on the last evening of his life, e at which he would fain have done 6 something before the night cometh, if he might be per- t mitted to take part in it.' The Royal Supremacy was Essay VI. ITS LAWLESSNESS. 281 the outward shape in which the Fathers of the English Reformation expressed this thought. The identity of Church and State was the form which it assumed in the minds of those eminent men of whom we have just spoken. But it is not for any precise form of that doctrine, but for its practical operation, that we are now pleading, as en- dangered by the adverse influence against which we have been thus contending. The forms may vary with each succeeding century. But the principle is one which is still needed, and which is constantly attacked. That prin- ciple is (to express ourselves shortly) the control of all per- sons and causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, by the law of the land. It is the recognition of the duty of the State to guide and lead the religious teachers of the country onwards to the high end, which its rulers discover, often long before 1 it has broken in upon the narrower vision of any particular profession, even the most sacred. It is the exercise of its true power by the Church — that is, the Christian community — over the clergy in the only form in which in a great country and in our complex civilisation it can be exercised, through the voice of the whole lay mind of the nation, expressed in the government, the law, the legislature, the literature, of a free people. It is the .opening, thereby afforded, for the gradual unfolding of the new truths which science or criticism brings to light, so as to penetrate, without a violent or convulsive effort, into the circle which often most needs, and at the same time most repels, their ad- mission. It is the refuge for the vast floating mass of our large and mixed society to whom the technical or restricted expressions of particular sects are odious, but the wide and diversified forms of a comprehensive system are natural and attractive. This, and much more than ' This function of government was of A rgyllin Edinburgh before the Bible well expressed in a speech of the Duke Society in 1862. 282 HITUALLSM. Essay VI. this, is what we are called upon to sacrifice — for the sake, it may be, of the pleasure of wearing a red instead of a white dress, or for the sake of the yet more questionable pleasure of driving out of the Church, at our own will, those whose opinions or whose tempers irritate us. 6 A 6 Free Church in a Free State ! ' — 0 most ambiguous phrase ! even in the mouth of Cavour, as an eminent foreign statesman has expressed it, but a mauvais calem- bour, but in the mouth of those ecclesiastics who have now taken it under their protection, meaning only too clearly £ an enslaved Clergy amidst an indifferent Laity ' — a State where the Government shall so thoroughly despise the Church as not to think it worth controlling — a Church where the clergy are so dependent either on their con- gregations or their bishops as to lose the best chances of self-respect and of self-improvement. What such a Free Church may become we see foreshadowed in those Canadian elections of bishops, of which we have already spoken, where c a race for the mitre ' represents the candidates for the bishopric, who, as the vacancy for the see looms on the horizon, appear under the figures drawn from the vehemence of a Parliamentary canvass or the more vulgar language of the turf. We see it in a yet livelier shape on the more fiery soil of Africa, where, in the late ques- tionable judgment of the Bishop of Capetown, ' the ' unexpected release from the " galling fetters 99 and ' " ignominious bondage " of the Eoyal Supremacy was £ unhappily accompanied by a no less complete emanci- ' pation from the rules and principles of English law and ' justice. The result showed how dangerous it would be to c entrust a purely ecclesiastical tribunal with the admini- ' stration of justice in ecclesiastical causes : how surely the ' divine would get the better of the judge ; how easily the 6 most upright and conscientious men might be betrayed EflSAT VI. CONCLUSION. 283 ' by their zeal for truth into the most violent and arbitrary 1 proceedings ; exercising a usurped jurisdiction by the ••mockery of a trial.' 1 Truly may the illustrious pre- late from whom these words are quoted express the hope that 6 there are many who will learn from this ' example of the fruits of sacerdotal independence better f to appreciate the blessings we enjoy in the institutions ' under which we live, notwithstanding the opprobrious •' names cast upon them by some who rest and ruminate ' under their shade.' In that South African province, we know how, by exercising control over the incomes of the clergy opposed to his opinions, by excommunica- tions lavished on those who take a different view of ecclesiastical government, /the ministers of the so-called Free Church may be reduced to entire dependence on their metropolitan ; new bishops may be multiplied with- out check or hindrance by the casting vote of an assembly representing the minority of the religious community ; but we also know certainly how peace does not reign, nor knowledge flourish, nor charity abound. When, with these dangers before us, we see one High Church divine openly rejoicing in the fall of all Established Churches, and another eager for the arrival of Scottish and American and Colonial Bishops to override the calmer decisions of our English judges and prelates, the vision rises before us of the adverse divinities, who, under the guise of fatal gifts, betrayed the city of Priam to its ruin. 1 Hie ubi disjectas moles, avulsaque saxis Saxa vides, mixtoque undanteiu pulvere fumum, Neptunus muros, magnoque emota tridenti Fundamenta quatit, totamque a sedibus urbem Eruit. Hie Juno Scseas ssevissima portas Prima tenet, sociumque furens a navibus agmen Ferro accincta vocat.' 1 Charge of the Bishop of St. David's, 1866, p. 69. 284 RITUALISM. Essay VI. Conclu- sion. Necessity of tolerat- ing the Ritualists. Absit omen ! We will now sum up the result of this brief sketch of our recent ecclesiastical history. We have seen that the Ritualists as a body are what they have been truly called, ' Nonconformists within the i Church of England.' They introduce practices into its worship which confessedly have not been in use since the time of Elizabeth. They desire to substitute for it, as far as outward forms, gestures, dresses, teaching, suppressions, interpolations will allow, the worship of another Church. They speak with the utmost disparagement of the Articles. They explain away the meaning of many of them to such a point as to reduce them to an absolute nullity. They set aside the authority of bishops almost as entirely as if they were Presbyterians or Independents. They abhor the union of Church and State, on which the whole of the existing constitution of the Anglican Church is founded. They belong to a party which has, in late years at least, always attempted to claim the Church for itself. The}r present, therefore, the extremest case which can arise to test the comprehensiveness of the National Church. But to that comprehension we have already said that they are fully entitled, when they do not violate the wishes and rights of their congregations. As we would wish to include the Nonconforming members of the Church who are without its pale, so we would wish to retain those Nonconforming members who are within its pa^. Alien as many of their tenets are to the general spirit of their Church and nation, they have enough in common with the composite aspect of the formularies of the Church, and the double-sided character of the nation, to give them a standing-place in the eye at once of law and of charity. It must also be added that they have virtues of their own which supply a useful counterpoise to the narrowness or perverseness of other elements in the ecclesiastical world. Essay VI. CONCLUSION. 285 In the earlier days of the movement they counted amongst their ranks lofty characters, and noble deeds, and persua- sive words, which the English Church will not willingly let die. Amongst them are scill to be found some endowred with ardent, self-denying activity, some gifted with a refined or fiery eloquence, which redeem much that we condemn in their theory and their position, and which place them thus far on a level with the equally ardent and more successful leaders of the Wesleyan movement in former times, and with those numerous clergy in our own time who need no stimulant from party-spirit or from sectarian zeal to devote themselves to the unobtrusive performance of their Master's work. And we must remember that these High Church Dissenters are more amenable to the control of English law, to the softening effects of social and Christian intercourse, inside the National Church, than if they were cast out from it. By expelling them from it we should not divest ourselves of our responsibility in regard to them. We cannot burn them, as in the days of Mary ; we cannot hang them, as in the days of Elizabeth ; we cannot banish them, as in the days of Charles I. or Cromwell. By driv- ing them to extremities we might perpetuate the evil for generations. If they became a separate sect, they would remain like other Nonconformists, with the additional extra- vagance which every isolated and exasperated sect is sure to take to itself. If they became Roman Catholics, they and those who are guided by them would be parted from the national interests and national sympathies by a gulf which it might take centuries to close. On the other hand, if they are allowed to retain their position within the Church, the fashion would probably pass away with the present generation, and their children and grandchildren would be the staunch Puritans or Liberals of the coming age ; and even they themselves, judging by the changes 286 RITUALISM. Essay VL which come over individuals and parties, would imper- ceptibly melt away into the adjacent shades of opinion, by which they are still inextricably attached to the diverse but still homogenous body of the Established Clergy. It is not with the hope of expecting any return of tolerance at their hands, that we now plead for their toleration. We know well how forgetful this party has alwa}rs been in its gratitude — how implacable in its ven- geance. Not the less, however, but the more incumbent on the advocates of liberal principles is it to show that they are the first to invoke for others the liberty they claim for themselves, the last to invoke that intervention of the law which, it may be, will be rendered necessary at last by some scandalous collision with the wishes of a parish or a congregation, but which policy, charity, and the claims of mutual toleration alike lead us to deprecate. But if on behalf of the general interests of the National Church, we urge political and ecclesiastical comprehension, so on behalf of the higher interests of truth we urge the need of maintaining, alike by the force of argument and by the moral weight of authority, those great principles of the Reformation which are needed to balance the natural growth of ecclesiastical despotism, and to secure a free passage for the Church and nation through the period of transition, of which th e responsibility has fallen, for good or for evil, on our age and generation. What is needed is not the forcible suppression of the Romanising tendency, which would probably be only aggravated by the attempt, but the strengthening of the Protestant elements of the Church, and the increase of its freedom and elasticity. As regards the particular extravagances of Ritualism, the bishops have, on the whole, probably done all that they could. We do not here speak of their joint declaration against Ritualism in the Upper House of Con- Essay VI. CONCLUSION. 287 vocation. Like all such composite manifestoes, it is too vague to be of any real significance, and is open to many of the objections which, on a former occasion, we urged against such a course. Like all documents of which the origin is wrapt in mystery, we know not the motives, the arguments, the comparative adherence or aversion to it in individual minds, which alone can give any force, beyond that of official names, to such an act. The leading pre- lates, however, have spoken in the only form in which Episcopal utterances can carry any conviction, namely, in personal individual addresses to their clergy and to the public. The Primate [Archbishop Longley], in an address at once gentle and dignified, warned the party last year against the dangerous course on which they were em- barked. The Bishop of London [Bishop Tait] has appealed to them in an entreaty, the more pathetic from the affecting circumstances under which it was written, from the unmistakable genuineness of the feeling with which he addresses them, from his cordial recognition of the better side of those whom he was conjuring, we fea,r in vain, to listen to a counsel as tender in their interests as it was wise in the interests of the Church at large. The Bishop of Oxford [Bishop Wilberforce] , in spite of his reputed connexion with the party both in his own diocese and elsewhere, not only proposed the condemnatory mani- festo to which we have alluded, but has indulged in de- nunciations of their practices as fervid and as elaborate as have proceeded from any of his brethren. Above all, the Bishop of St. David's has once more spoken, with that Necessity commanding judgment, solid style, and consummate learn- bakncing1 ing which overawe even those who delight to insult the !iheir m~ ° . ° fluence. Episcopate. No one can read his Charge without feeling that there is at least one 6 master in Israel ' who surveys, if from too serene a height, yet not with an unkindly, 288 RITUALISM. Essay VI. and assuredly not with a prejudiced eye, the entanglements of his weaker brethren in the labyrinth of ecclesiastical difficulties. But it is perhaps the chief merit of Bishop Thirl w all's powerful exhortation that it recalls us from the mere superficial grievances of the moment to those far graver perils, of which we have ourselves spoken in the preceding pages, and against which no legal or episcopal interference can avail anything, but which may be restrained by free and vigorous argument, by a higher aj^preciation, in statesmen and prelates, of the principles in danger. 6 The 4 brilliant fantastic coruscation ' (so let us apply the in- genious metaphor used by one of the distinguished pre- lates 1 whom we have just quoted, in a somewhat different sense from that in which he employed it) — the 'brilliant ' coruscation ' of outward ceremonial may melt into air; but 4 the weltering mass of molten metal, from which it has 4 been cast forth, flows on with its full stream ' — the stream of sacerdotal intolerance — withering like a lava flood every green thing within its reach, undermining and eating into the foundations of the truth and freedom of the Church. Assuredly only by maintaining its love of truth and its love of freedom can the Church resist such encroachments, not the less dangerous because they are preluded by the 4 burning sparks ' and 4 exhalations ' whifjh serve to divert the vulgar eye from the real evil. It is as with 4 the false enchanter ' in 4 Comus.' The 4 glass may be wrested out of his hand and broke against 4 the ground/ the variegated robes may be torn by Act of Parliament or Canon of Convocation, but — 1 ' It seems to me like some bril- stream into its appointed mould. These liant fantastic coruscation, -which has burning sparks witness of the heat of cast itself forth from the surface of the mass from which they sprang : they the weltering masses of molten are not, in their peculiar action, of its metal, which, unaffected bj such essence or its eud.' — Bishop qf Oxford's exhalations, flows on with it* full Charge, I860, p. 30. Essay VI. CONCLUSION. 289 1 Ye should have snatcli'd his wand. . . . Without his rod reversed, And backward mutterings of dissevering power, We cannot free the lady that sits here In stony fetters fix'd, and motionless.' Only by reversing the wand of pretended hierarchical power which has exercised such a magic spell over the minds and hearts of men for so many periods of the world's history, will the Church of England be really free ' To climb High above the sphery chime.' We must not be afraid of the famous name of Protestant. We must not be ashamed of our affinities with the Ke- formed Churches which claim with us a common origin in the great deliverance from a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear. We must vindicate for the great old name of 6 Catholic ' its free, original meaning, and make it once more the watchword, not of narrow, exclusive, external observances, but of the uni- versal breadth which it bears in the ancient creeds, and which was infused into it by the teaching of Isaiah and of S. Paul. The authority of law must again be justified as in the days of Hooker, as in the days of the Apostles ; the superiority of the moral and the spiritual over the external and ceremonial parts of religion must be re-asserted, as in the days of Butler, as in the days of the Prophets. The power of the Church, that is of the laity, to control eccle- siastical matters must be maintained as alone, in our state of society, it can be wisely and fully maintained — through the free expression of public opinion, and the free legisla- ture of a free country. The clergy must maintain their right to examine for themselves the grounds of their teach- ing, to investigate, probe to the uttermost, the sacred u 290 RITUALISM. Essay VI. volume, which by restoring new life to the world in each successive age is destined to prove anew its own divine origin. Mighty works of beneficence and enlightenment must be wrought amongst our working classes — as open to a reasonable, honest exposition of religious truth, bearing on their daily life, as they are inaccessible to the mys- terious, fantastic representations of scholastic and obso- lete dogmas. The ancient institutions of England and of Christendom have resources in them still undeveloped. The Nonconformists may yet render inestimable services to the Church and country if they can rise above their long hereditary exasperation. The Church of Scotland, the 6 Samaria ' of the High Church party, may, like Samaria, give to her southern sister a school of Prophets of which England, no less than Judah, is at times sorely in need. We would not refuse to those of our own communion the pleasure of indulging in the hope of an imaginary union with the Pope, who ridicules the very notion of such a fusion. Nor do we den}' their right to fortify themselves behind the relics of older usages, which, in consideration to the infirmities of an age of transition, the Reformers left imbedded in our services, — to make the most of the fierce anathemas which condemn half Christendom,1 or of expressions which seem to savour of sacerdotal power, unknown to the ancient 2 Churches of the East, unknown to any Churches at all before the thirteenth century. But we claim for the Church of England a higher, a holier calling than anything which these passing fancies, or 1 The clauses of the Athanasian peculiar application to them, beyond creed, which condemn the w hole that which in the original text applies Eastern Church for its denial of the to all Christian believers. The use Double Procession. of both these phrases dates, in this 2 The expression in the Visitation connexion, no further back than the of the Sick, ' I absolve thee,' and the thirteenth century, and is not found in use of John xx. 22, 23, in the address to the Eastern Churches. Priests, as though there were some Essay VI. CONCLUSION. 291 isolated fragments of all but extinct beliefs, would indicate. We claim for it the honour due to a Reformed Church in a Reformed State — which, with and through the State, desires to be formed and reformed anew by the spirit of each successive age — a Church which, however much at times it has falsified its principles and retarded the course of true Christian progress, yet in those principles contains the pledge of an onward and inward movement that will, we humbly trust, continue when both the ' brilliant fan- 6 tastic coruscation ' of Ritualism, and the 6 weltering £ molten flood ' of hierarchical pretensions, have passed away from its borders. v 2 292 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. [This speech, delivered in 1865, was republished at the time of the Lambeth Conference in 1867, with only the correc- tions of verbal errors, and with such omissions of names, in the interlocutions and interpolations of debate, as were necessary to clear it, as far as possible, from personal de- tails of no interest. The notes were then added for the qualification or confirmation of such statements as seemed to need it. I subjoin such parts of the preface as were then or are still necessary to explain the purposes of its republication.] Lambeth It is well known that a meeting of bishops was sum- euce.er" moned to Lambeth in September 1867, from different parts of the British Empire, and also from the United States of America. The meeting being of a purely private character, it would have been alike impertinent and useless for an outside spectator to suggest any matter for its considera- tion. It was also uncertain whether the Conference would include the discussion of the particular controversy which occasioned the speech on the South African Controversy. But in this uncertainty it seemed desirable to place on record a statement of the case, as made independently of the prospect of any such discussion, more especially as one of the two prelates chiefly concerned in the contro- versy was not present to plead his own cause. Such a statement would, it was hoped, have had the effect of strengthening the counsels of those who, with the venerable Primate, desired to turn the deliberations of Essay VII. PREFACE. 293 their brethren to matters of practical usefulness and charity, altogether apart from intricate theological ques- tions. The Speech itself had been delivered under the follow- ing circumstances. In 1865, a Convocation of the Pro- vince of Canterbury was summoned merely for formal business. Only on the day before its meeting was there an indication of anything more serious being intended, and then without any specification of the object. In fact, there were out of the whole number (140) only seventeen present. On this occasion an Address was brought from the Upper House containing a strong expression of sympathy with one of the two contending bishops, and thus (to repeat words which were then used, and used in vain) 6 involving theological questions ' of the gravest importance, and legal questions of con- * siderable intricacy, sent down for immediate approval to * an assembly called together without any notice of such ' an Address, thinly attended beyond all example in the ' experience of those present.' In spite of this and like protests from myself and others, the Address was carried by a majority of eleven to five, having been previously carried in the Upper House (equally convened without notice of such motion) by four bishops, and was then sent out to the Cape of Good Hope, as representing the senti- ments of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury. In 1866, on the occasion of the deliver of the following speech, a similar attempt was made. On the last day but one of the sitting of the Convocation, when some of the most important members were dispersed, and equally without notice, a resolution reviving the same question (in this instance, however, not without an animated debate in the Upper House) was sent down to the Lower House. It was on this occasion that I found myself suddenly called 294 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. upon to address the House, in the speech which is here published. Again the protest from myself and others against the order of the proceedings was overruled, and the proposal, at least to delay so far as to print the Reso- lutions before they were discussed, in order to give time for their consideration, was in like manner set aside. It may be observed that on a subsequent occasion, in 1867 — a resolution of a far milder kind, touching some opinions and positions with which the majority of the Lower House of Convocation was more or less in sympathy — every pre- caution was taken, by insisting on the printing of the resolution, to secure the consideration which, in the case of which I have been speaking, was peremptorily denied. So precipitate were the proceedings, that an erroneous copy was sent down to the Lower House, and passed by it, and, I believe, sent out to Africa, containing not only a resolution which was carried, but an amendment which was rejected. It is not from any wish to revive forgotten and trivial questions of form and order, nor from any disrespect to an assembly from which, individually, I have received nothing but courtesy and kindness, and which, as a safety- valve for discussion, may occasionally serve a useful pur- pose in the complicated relations of Church and State, that I venture to call attention to their proceedings. But at the present moment, when there is a disposition to claim, in all matters of Church legislation, an implicit and exclusive deference to Convocations and Synods, it may be worth while to leave on record these instances of the irregular and partial mode in which theological and ecclesiastical questions may be handled even by a body composed of individuals in a high degree kindly, genial, and venerable. These circumstances will also serve to explain how, in an elaborate address made at a moment's Essay VII. PREFACE. 295 notice without notes, without books,1 without time to verify references or quotations, some inaccuracies of statement 2 unavoidably occurred. A like explanation must be offered for any roughnesses of expression which in a more polished composition would have been entirely out of place ; but which, as they do not affect the substance of the case, I have thought it best to leave. For these, so far as they relate personally to the two prelates in question, I must beg to ask their joint forgiveness. The issue of the theological controversy between the two Prelates in South Africa, and even the personal fate of either of them, are of little moment, compared with the importance of preserving intact the existing liberties of the English clergy throughout the British Empire, and of maintaining inviolate, for all branches of the Church of England, a right to the protection of the same laws and standards of appeal which guard the freedom and regulate the teaching of the Church at home — compared, I may add, with the danger of endeavouring to close grave ques- tions which all General Councils have hitherto avoided, and which no branch of the ancient Universal Church has ever defined. But in the obscurity and uncertainty which besets the discussion of plans proposed for the guidance of the Colonial or of other Churches, it may be advisable to recall some aspects of the case, which are perhaps best stated in a form independent of the particular occasions which may from time to time lead to their reassertion. When we are invited to take 6 a leap in the dark,' it is the duty of the humblest of the bystanders to throw what little light they can on the surrounding objects. 1 The only documents to which I ing arguments, could directly refer were those which, 2 [These I have either corrected in during a short recess, I was enabled to notes, or altogether omitted. 1870. J procure in order to fortify my conclud- 296 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVEKSY. Essay VII. THE LOWER HOUSE OF THE CONVOCATION OF THE PROVINCE OF CANTERBURY, JUNE 29, 1866. The Prolocutor. — I have been desired to request the con- currence of the House in the following resolution of the Upper House : — ' It is the opinion of this House that the Church of England holds communion * with the Bishop of Capetown and those bishops who lately with him in Synod 1 declared Dr. Colenso to be ipso facto excommunicated.' It was moved and seconded that the House agree to the reso- lution expressive of its concurrence with the Upper House. The Dean of Westminster. — I rise to express my agreement with this motion. Much as I disapprove of the proceedings of the Bishop of Capetown, they do not appear to me to be offences of so grave a character as to justify us in refusing communion to him. Carried. Oanon Seymour. — I now beg to move the following rider : — 1 And they are further of opinion that Dr. Colenso, having been not only ex- ' communicated by the aforesaid Synod, but also deposed from his office of 1 bishop, if a bishop shall be duly elected and consecrated for the see of Natal ' in the place of Bishop Colenso, the Church of England would of necessity hold 4 communion with that bishop.'1 Archdeacon Denis on. — I beg to second the motion. The Dean of Westminster. — This quite unexpectedly opens the whole question of the relations in which the Church of England stands to the Colonial Church in South Africa, and the grounds upon which the Bishop of Cape- town professes to have deposed and excommunicated the Bishop of Natal. It becomes, therefore, necessary for me, whatever the annoyance, and whatever the degree of 1 This resolution was ultimately like character brought from the Upper superseded by other resolutions of a House. Essay VII. ITS LEGAL ASPECT. 297 unpreparedness with which I approach the subject, to enter at length upon the matter. If the Prolocutor will point out to me any alternative that is open to me, I will gladly adopt it ; but otherwise I must proceed. The Prolocutor. — I have nothing to do but to receive the mo- tions that are put into my hands, and to satisfy myself that they are in order. It is not within my province to suggest any course to the very rev. gentleman. The Bean of Westminster. — Very well ; then I shall take the Judgment which the Bishop of Capetown has pro- nounced against the Bishop of Natal, and I shall go through the several parts of it one by one. It is impossible to treat the matter in any other way ; and I consider it a great disadvantage that on this, as on other occasions, we should have a matter of such importance brought before us without the smallest notice or intimation that it was In the first place, then, we have to consider the legal Legal grounds upon which the Bishop of Capetown deemed that theXposi- he had the power of deposing the Bishop of Natal. Bishop of Now, the Bishop of Capetown assumes that he had that Natal, power by virtue of the authority vested in him as Metro- politan of the Church in South Africa. If we assert that he is right, let us consider what are the consequences to which we are exposed. The office of Metropolitan in the colony is given to him by letters patent, and has been given by nothing else whatsoever. It is simply a civil Theautho- creation. He was not consecrated Metropolitan, nor did Metropoli- he become Metropolitan by any ecclesiastical act or ap- tan* pointment.1 His office of Metropolitan is simply an office 1 It must, in fairness to the Bishop not been as fully declared as it has of Capetown, be observed that, when been since, by the Judicial Committee he pronounced the Judgment, the of the Privy Council, absence of coercive jurisdiction had 298 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. created by letters patent. Into the validity of those letters patent I will not go; but both the office of the Bishop of Capetown as Metropolitan, and his jurisdiction, depend entirely upon them ; and therefore, if this House entertains the proposition that the Bishop of Natal has been deposed by the Bishop of Capetown, in virtue of his office of Metropolitan, it not only asserts the absolute validity of those letters patent in themselves (of which there is probably much to be said on both sides l), but it asserts their power to confer such coercive jurisdiction as to enable the holder of them to deprive a bishop of the Church of England of his office, his salary, and his posi- tion— a coercive jurisdiction which the law of this country expressly declares that he does not possess. That is the first proposition involved in this resolution. The ab- The second is, that, inasmuch as the Bishop of Capetown, scncc of • • appeal. pronouncing his decision, allowed the Bishop of Natal no appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal in this country, you assert that he has the power of depriving a bishop of his office without appeal to any court whatsoever. If, therefore, he had deprived the Bishop of Natal for holding political opinions contrary to his own, or for not adopting some form of ritual which he had himself adopted — if the Bishop of Capetown had deprived him on any ground whatever which he chose to say was a sufficient ground — the Bishop of Natal would have had no redress whatever. This, therefore, is the position in which, by affirming the resolution, you will choose to place the bishops and clergy of the colonies. If the Metro- politan in a colony thought fit to depose a bishop for a defect of personal appearance, and he were to protest against it (I am putting an extreme case), you would by 1 This must he qualified by the effect of Lord Romilly's Judgment delivered subsequently. Essay VII. ITS LEGAL ASPECT. 299 this resolution be affirming that he had no remedy. With regard to this question of the inherent right of Metro- politans to depose other bishops, there are, no doubt, cases in which it has been done. There is the well-known in- stance of Watson, Bishop of St, David's, who was deposed The case by Archbishop Tenison in the course of the last century. Wateon°P I do not know whether you have read the case in the £ State Trials,' but, if you have, you will be aware that it is extremely difficult to make out what the real charges against Bishop Watson were. He was a High Churchman and a Jacobite. That, we cannot doubt, was his main offence. But the charges against him vary from the allegation of being an Atheist to that of being a Papist. He is charged with having stood in peculiar postures while celebrating the Holy Communion. There are also charges of jobs and simony — of which it is very likely that he may have been guilty.1 I mention these as instances of the kind of charges that may be brought by one bishop against another when party-feeling runs high, whether in this country or in the colonies. In the case of Bishop Watson 1 The chief charges stated in the sen- 'giously, it being the Boman fast, tence were of simony. But it also 1 He stood in the posture of adoration speaks of plurima alia crimina enormia, 1 all the time of the distribution of the and in the ' sum of Bishop Watson's ' elements, with his hands elevated, his 'irregularities to be turned into articles' 'back up against the altar, to the are the following : 'He publicly justi- ' great scandal of the congregation of fied the pretended Prince of Wales's 'St. David's. He showed a libel, 1 legitimacy. . . . He said he would ' wherein were words to this purpose, 4 persuade the nurse whom he owned '" 0 misera Ecclesia Anglicana, cujus 'to be his acquaintance to teach his ' " Rex est prorepublicanus et Batavus, 1 little royal highness to say St. David's, ' " cujus Archiepiscopus est hereticus." ' the first thing he should speak upon : 1 There is scarce an action in his life ' for which he did not doubt but King ' that is not infamous, and that savours ' James would give him 5,000Z. to repair ' not of baseness, Popery, or Atheism.' 'his cathedral. As to his religious (State Trials, vol. xiv. 447-451, 466.) ' principles we have great reason to He was buried privately without so 'believe him to be either an Atheist much as the Communion Service, be- 'or a Papist. . . . He says he will die cause the Archbishop of Canterbury before he part with the tithes of Mor- had excommunicated him for not pay- vey. He fasts upon Saturdays reli- ing the fees to his officers. (Ihid. 471.) 300 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. the proceedings were protracted over a period of thirteen years, and they ended in his being deposed and excom- municated. He was excommunicated,1 however, you must understand, not on account of any of these charges, whether true or false, but in consequence of his refusing to pay the costs incurred in the ecclesiastical courts, and the result was that he was denied the rites of burial in the place to which he ultimately retired in the east of England. But however much any of us may think the charges which I have mentioned a sufficient ground for the deposition of a bishop of the Church of England (and there are many others of an equally ridiculous kind, which I cannot at this moment call to mind), the objections to it were felt to be so grave that for several years the Government refused to fill up the vacant see. It was ultimately given to Bishop Bull ; but not till after the lapse of a considerable time — a circumstance, I think, which illustrates the difficulty which would have been felt in those days if Convocation had been asked to adopt unreservedly this resolution. I stated just now that I did not think that the irregularity or the arbitrary manner, as I believe it to have been, in which the Bishop of Capetown proceeded against the. Bishop of Natal, formed a sufficient ground for withholding communion from the Bishop of Capetown. The Bishop of Capetown is a highly respectable prelate, and therefore I do not think we should be justified in rejecting him from the Holy Communion, however great his deviation from the custom or the law of the Church of England may have been. But, having said this, I have felt myself bound in justice to the Upper House, and in justice to ourselves who have lately passed this resolution on the subject, to point out 1 The Bishop of Natal's excommuni- to acquiesce in the deposition which tho cation also, I believe, rested not on any Bishop of Capetown pronounced against of his alleged errors, but on his refusal him. Essay VII. ITS LEGAL ASPECT. 301 the legal difficulties in which we may be involved if we adopt this additional matter contained in this further resolution. To sum up what I have said on this point, I presume that it is the intention of the House to affirm by it, not merely that the Bishop of Capetown is justified in depriving the Bishop of Natal for any cause whatever — ■ that is to say, for example, to take an extreme case,1 for having black hair — that the power vested in the Metro- politan is so complete and so absolutely without appeal, that if he conceived it to be his duty to depose a bishop on any ground whatever — though that ground might appear to us insufficient — yet, if it appeared sufficient to the Metropolitan, the bishop would be entirely deprived of redress. Not only do you affirm that the Bishop of Natal has been legally deposed, but you determine a point on which the Church and Government of England in the last century waited many years before they determined it, namely, that the see has become vacant. The see of Natal is supposed to have become vacant at the beginning of this year, and you are proposing that it shall be filled up, and declaring that you will of necessity hold communion with the person who is to be called the new Bishop of Natal or Maritzburg. A Member. — You are speaking as if the Bishop of Capetown had acted by himself; but in reality he was joined by the other members of the Synod. Another Member. — The Metropolitan would not act by himself ; but he would enable a Synod to be called, consisting of the neighbouring Bishops and Metropolitans. Another Member. — I shall propose to insert in the motion the 1 Although this extreme case was point deemed by grave ecclesiastical mentioned as the first that occurred to authorities in the ninth century to me, yet a very slight addition would constitute a sufficient cause for separa- have brought it within the limits of tion between the Eastern and Western probability. Had I said ' fur a beard ' Churches, or, in the seventh, between or ' a tonsure,' it would have been a those of Rome and of Britain. 302 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. words, ' and having declined to avail himself of the appeal which 4 was offered him to the Archbishop of Canterbury.' The Synod The Dean of Westminster. — Very good. I will speak of town!Pe" that presently. But first I must speak of this question of the Synod, about which there are two things to be noted. In the first place, it was a Synod composed entirely of bishops. There were in it no presbyters, no laymen. It was also a Synod called together without the assent of the civil power, either of the colony or the mother country. There were in it two bishops — -the Bishop of Grahamstown and the Bishop of Orange River, which latter was not, properly speaking, a bishop of the colony at all, but a bishop brought from over the border; so that the only bishop present who was, strictly speaking, of the colony of South Africa, was the Bishop of Grahamstown. However, I will throw the Bishop of Orange River in ; and these two prelates accordingly professed, with the Bishop of Capetown, to depose the Bishop of Natal. That is the first point in this matter of the Synod — the extreme' smallness of the numbers and its exclusive character. In fact the whole Church of South Africa consists of but three sees — Capetown, Grahamstown, and Natal. A Member. — There is a fourth, St. Helena. The The Dean of Westminster. — Yes. You will remember Bishop of at the beginning of this century there was a solitary St. Helena. o & J island selected as the place of exile of an illustrious personage by the Duke of Wellington, on the ground that it was so inaccessible — so difficult to approach, and so difficult to leave — that it was the very safest place in which to put any one that it was thought desirable to seclude from the rest of the world. That was St. Helena, and I mention this historical incident to show that it is not likely the Bishop of St. Helena would attend with any Essay VII. ITS LEGAL ASPECT. 303 great regularity1 the Synods of South Africa. There is likewise another bishop, Bishop Tozer of Central Africa, but he does not belong to the colony of South Africa, though he may be, as has been said, a ' neighbouring bishop.' There are thus three bishops of the English colony, with a legal possibility — though that is exceedingly doubtful — of the addition of the Bishop of Orange River, and the immense physical improbability of the addition of the Bishop of St. Helena. In such a case what chance is there of any person obtaining substantial justice ? Here is one bishop to be tried before three others. Can anything be more likely than that, if there was a quarrel at all, the three should take part against the one ? But if they did, the three would have the power of deposing him, and he would not possess the smallest means of redress. I must say that, if this principle is affirmed, the whole foundation of the Colonial Church will be cut away. Can we imagine that any man of high character would consent to go out and take an important post in the Colo- nial Church if he was liable, for any reason whatever, to be deprived by his Metropolitan, either in virtue of his own sole authority, or with the aid of two or three other bishops who happened to take the Metropolitan's side ? Again, a member has given notice of an amendment, Appeal to asserting that the Bishop of Natal had declined to avail bishop of himself of an appeal to the Primate of all England. But £J^er" this appeal was granted — if it was granted at all — not as a matter of right, but only as a matter of favour; and it was granted, not as an appeal to the Primate in his official character, but merely to his Grace in his private capacity. 1 1 The Bishop of St. Helena has 1 Zambezi, also 2,000 miles, and the 1 expressed his very great readiness ' difficulty of communication, have 1 and anxiety to bo present, but the ' prevented these bishops from being ' distance of his diocese, 2,000 miles, 1 present.' — Judgment of the Bishop of ' and the distance of the diocese of Cgj>etown, p. I, 304 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. The Bishop of Natal consented to appeal to the Primate in his official capacity in the Court of Arches, which would have given him a further right of appeal to the Privy Council ; but that the Bishop of Capetown would not admit. Such an appeal as the Bishop of Capetown was willing to grant no clergyman and no bishop could accept, for it was merely an appeal to one who, however mild or gentle he might be, could give him no security that he should have a fair trial. The Archbishop would have afforded him a hearing, not as a great officer of Church and State,1 but in his private room, as a private individual ; and he had, moreover, written private letters to the Bishop of Capetown and the Dean of Maritzburg, which had since come before the world, and from which it appeared that the distinguished and venerable person to whom this appeal in his private capacity would lie, had already committed himself to the opinions of the Bishop of Capetown. The Bishop of Natal knew very well that he should have been appealing to one who had committed himself so strongly to the adverse opinion that the whole matter was prejudged. The amendment of which I speak, will, therefore, have no value in this matter, unless it care- fully draws a distinction between this private appeal, granted as a matter of favour to an individual prelate who had already prejudged the case, and an appeal in the face of day to an English court of justice, and with that further right of appeal which an English court of justice allows. quences of I now wish, before I pass from the legal difficulties of principles ^G case? ^° P0^ ou^ the entire ruin in which you will in- of the de- volve our whole ecclesiastical system if you carry out this position. ' I was here speaking not of what the return of the Bishop of Natal to took place in the trial at which the Africa in 1865, when, alone, he had Bishop of Natal was condemned in his the opportunity of considering the absence, but of what took place after proposal. Essay VII. ITS LEGAL ASPECT. 305 scheme for depriving bishops and clergymen of the most common justice. You may pass this resolution, but in so doing you will say to all our Colonial Bishops who are not under Acts of Parliament, ' We consider that hencefor- 6 ward you are in the hands of the Metropolitan of your ' colony, by whatever dubious right he may hold the office, 4 however much doubt may have been thrown on his letters 6 patent, and on the jurisdiction which those letters patent ' are supposed to confer ; nevertheless you are in his hands, 4 and we confirm the sentence of deposition which he c has thought fit to pronounce.' You will say further, that this power is to be exercised on whatever ground the Metropolitan may choose to put it in force. Thus, if he entertains any private enmity, or if he has any caprice of any kind in regard to any ritualistic or theological ten- dencies, you declare that the deposition which he has pronounced is lawful, and must be maintained. If, for example, a High Church bishop or clergyman finds himself under a Puritanical Metropolitan, and that Puritanical Metropolitan feels himself justified in saying that the doctrine of such High Church bishop or clergyman is so opposed to his Puritanical doctrine that he will depose him, then that High Church bishop or clergyman will have no appeal from him to any court on earth. Or, again, if any so-called ' Evangelical' bishop or clergyman should find himself under a High Church Metropolitan, who should think it a matter of conscience to wear any of those vestments, or practise any of those ritual observances, of which you have just expressed your entire disapproval, you will say that such Metropolitan would have it abso- lutely in his power to deprive such bishop or clergyman for not using incense, for not having altar-lights, for not elevating the sacramental elements, for not using wafer- bread, or the like ; and such * Evangelical ' clergyman x 306 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. would have no appeal, except such as the Metropolitan might grant him of his free bounty and favour to a Primate in his private capacity, who might have previously com- mitted himself to the same opinion. That is the state to which you are reducing the Colonial Church, and reducing clergymen who have hitherto supposed that they enjoyed the privileges which belonged to the Church of England. I must say, if that is the course which the House should choose to adopt, woe to the Colonial Church ! Woe to its independence ! Woe to its freedom ! Woe to its chance of exercising that influence over those great branches of the Empire which we might once have hoped to see it exert ! I for one will never consent to put my hand to such an utter degradation of my fellow-countrymen and of my fellow- clergymen. Talk of ' a free Colonial Church ! ' Free Colonial Church, indeed, when it is to be deprived of every privilege that makes the freedom of the English clergyman and the English citizen dear to us ! Rules of But I foresee that some one will, perhaps, say that cecision. although it is true the Metropolitan of Capetown claimed to himself the absolute power of deposing bishops and clergy on any ground that seemed good to him, yet still he did profess to be guided by rules which might to a certain degree have shaped his course in the judgment he pro- nounced against Bishop Colenso. Even this does not do away with the fundamental injustice of his proceeding, because he chose those principles for himself. He might just as well have chosen either the principles of the Puritans or those of the Continental Reformers. These he did not take; but what were those by which he professed to be guided ? They were these ; and you will confirm them if you aflirm this resolution. In England we are in the habit of supposing that a bishop or a clergyman can only be deposed or deprived of his office if he has denied Essay VII. ITS LEGAL ASPECT. 307 or contradicted the doctrines of the Church of England as laid down in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer. The Bishop of Capetown candidly con- fesses that the Thirty-nine Articles contain nothing what- ever on some of the doctrines alleged against the Bishop of Natal. But then he says (I am not, of course, quoting his exact words — I have not had time to refer to them — but in effect he says), ' That does not concern me, in my capacity Concur- 6 as Metropolitan of the Church of South Africa. I am not rent tesi!" mony or c to be bound by the Thirty-nine Articles. ■ I take a much antiquity. 6 wider range. I go to " Catholic antiquity," to a "stream c " of divines," and to the " concurrent testimony of remote ' " ages of the Church." ' 1 These are the grounds on which 1 In the opening of his judgment the Bishop of Capetown says, ' I shall 4 be guided entirely by the language of ' the Articles and Formularies, includ- 1 ing, of course, the whole of the Book ' of Common Prayer.' But heproceeds to say, 1 1 do not mean thereby to imply ' that these are the only tests by which 4 the bishops of the Church should try ' the teaching of ministers. I am of ' opinion that the decisions of those 1 councils which the Church of England ' regards as oecumenical, are the very 1 highest authorities by which they can 4 be guided ; and the received faith of 4 the Church in all ages, even when not 1 defined by any council, if it can be 4 ascertained — as, for example, on 4 such a question as inspiration in con- 4 nection with the Holy Scriptures — 4 must .also be a guide to them which 4 cannot be disregarded.' (p. 343.) 4 In 4 denying that the five books commonly, 4 almost universally, ascribed to Moses 4 were really written by him, and in 4 attributing them to Samuel, the 4 Bishop does not contradict the express 4 language of the Church of England. 4 He does not appear to me so to have 4 offended against the plain words of 4 the Church's Articles or Formularies 1 as to be liable to condemnation. But ' is it then lawful for the Bishop to 4 teach that Samuel and not Moses was ' the author of the Pentateuch ? T 4 think not. In this case the attributing 4 of the Pentateuch to Samuel is not 4 only opposed to the stream of writers 1 in all ages of the Church, and to ex- 4 press Canons — as the 85th of the 4 Apostolical Canons —and to the inter- 4 nal evidence, and even the assertions 4 of the Pentateuch itself. It goes 4 beyond this. It involves the rejection 4 of our LorcCs authority, &c. And 4 this is one of the instances to which 4 I have just referred, in which there 4 may be an offence against the Church's 4 teaching, while there is none against 4 the express language of the Articles 4 or Formularies' (p. 386.) It is not perhaps quite clear from this whether the Bishop of Capetown means that the Bishop of Natal's offence is a con- tradiction of 4 the stream of writers,' or a contradiction of the Bishop of Capetown's interpretation of certain passages in the Gospels. If the latter, the remarks in the speech must be modified accordingly, and in place of 4 the stream of writers,' &c, must be substituted ' the interpretation which x 2 308 THE SOUTH AFKICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. he pronounced the Bishop of Ratal's deposition. Now, this opens a very serious question. I do not think the Bishop of Capetown specified exactly the period from which his precedents were taken.1 They might have been from the second, third, or fourth centuries, or the period of the first four General Councils ; or the first seven, or the first thousand or fifteen hundred years. But what will be the consequences if any one of these Metropolitans may go back to any period of the Church in which he can find a ' concurrent testimony 9 in favour of any particular doctrine on which he finds no expression of opinion in the Thirty- nine Articles, or may even find in those Articles a contrary opinion ? You may arrive at this kind of conclusion. In remote times you may find ca concurrent testimony' in favour of the Immaculate Conception, against which it may be said that no opinion has been expressed in the Thirty-nine Articles — or, if possibly an opinion has been there expressed, we need not go very far to learn how that adverse opinion may be set aside and explained. If, therefore, some bishop did not teach the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, it is quite possible that some Metropolitan who felt strongly in favour of it would be equally justified in depriving him of his bishopric. Or to 1 the Metropolitan puts on certain 1 passages.' 1 Were the Articles or ' Formularies altogether silent as to the 1 Bible being the Word of God, . . I ' should still have felt it my duty to ' declare on other grounds that the 1 Bishop was not entitled to say, &c. ' The Church of England does not ' date its existence from the Reforma- ' tion. Its history stretches back to ' Apostolic times. It holds what the • whole Church has always held. 1 Silence upon any particular point of ' faith is no reason for supposing that ' the Churcli of England is indifferent ' to that portion of tho faith. . . . The ' Articles do not embrace the whole ' of the Church's teaching. Had the ' Church of England not spolcen at all ' on the subject, I must, in the absence ' of all proof to the contrary, have ' held,' &c. {Judgment, p. 377.) It has been sometimes said that what was meant was ' the received faith in all ' ages ' on Inspiration ; but as the various ages have differed exceedingly on this subject, this is a test which either cannot be applied, or only applied illusively. 1 ' Concurrent testimony of anti- ' quity ' are the words of the Judg- ment, p. 386, as apparently one of the standards of appeal. Essay VII. ITS LEGAL ASPECT. 309 take another doctrine, respecting which you would find a still more ' concurrent testimony' in the age of the first four General Councils — namely, the celibacy of the clergy. If you take those Apostolical Canons 1 on which the Bishop of Capetown grounds part of his judgment, unless I am very much mistaken, you will find that they direct any clergyman to be deposed who has married after taking orders. What would be the position of the bishops and clergy of the Colonial Churches — I may add, what would be the position of many clergymen in this chamber — if those canons were enforced? But are these the grounds on which bishops and clergymen are to be deprived of their office, of their incomes, of their hopes of usefulness, without appeal to any court whatever except to the fore- gone conclusion of a distant primate? I will go back to a still more venerable authority, of which I wish to speak with all becoming respect — that of the Council of Nicsea. That Council declares that any bishop, presbyter, or deacon who is advanced or promoted from the ecclesiastical position which he holds to any higher position in the Church, shall be deprived of such position.' Where would be the prelates who preside over our Church, if such were now the law ? and yet, according to the Bishop of Capetown, there is nothing to prevent him from applying the canons of that Byzantine Council to the Church of South Africa. These are the legal and ecclesiastical consequences which this resolution calls upon you to affirm. It has been suggested that though you do not acquiesce in the theological opinions expressed by the Bishop of Capetown, you must vote for the motion, because you assume that the Bishop of Natal was legitimately deposed. But I have 1 The Bishop refers to the 85th regards discipline) to t he 80t.h. in his Apostolical Canon in his Judgment, p. Statement, p. 03. 380 (as regards teaching) ; and (as 310 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. shown you that it will be destructive to the Churches of the colonies, and degrading to the Church of England, to affirm that he was lawfully deposed. These conclusions are quite sufficient to call upon you to reject the resolu- tion. But I am prepared to go further into the matter, because I consider it necessary to complete my case. In so doing I may offend some that might otherwise be inclined to oppose the resolution with me ; and it might be a more politic course, if I were merely seeking to catch Necessity votes, were I now to sit down. I will not do that, how- ing the ever ; and for two reasons. In the first place, I have theological su£jcient faith in the sense of justice, le^al acumen, and question. 0 ' & ' power of discrimination in those members of this House who have agreed with me thus far, to think that they will not deem what I have said less true because our opinions may now diverge. The second reason why I feel bound to go on is because I feel that there are persons in this Chamber who may perhaps think that the theological grounds expressed by the Bishop of Capetown in his Judg- ment are such as to justify them in overriding all ordinary principles of justice and of law. Nor am I to be deterred by the reflection that on some former occasion — long before I had the honour of a seat in this House — some portion of the theological questions discussed in this Judgment were also discussed here. Under .any circumstances, this ought not to deter me. But, in fact, the only questions that this House considered were those raised by the First and Second Parts of the Bishop of Natal's work on the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua, whereas the Bishop of Capetown's Judgment is also in great measure founded on another work of Dr. Colenso, of which this House has taken no notice whatever — I mean his treatise upon the Epistle to the Eomans. Therefore, both on technical and on general grounds, I feel I am bound to consider the Essay VII. ITS THEOLOGICAL ASPECT. 311 whole question ; though., when I say the whole question, I have to remember how short a time we have to discuss a question of such importance. And first a few words on the two prelates who have caused this controversy. With regard to the Bishop of The Bishop Capetown, I may say that I have only a very slight aC- town, quaintaiice with him. I have no reason to doubt that he is a highly respectable prelate, and I see that he is gifted with considerable clearness and frankness of language. I would sum up what I have to say of him in words which I am told fell recently from a distinguished prelate con- cerning him, namely, that he was a very fitting successor of another African Metropolitan, Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, only with the misfortune 1 of having been born in the nineteenth century. With regard to the Bishop of Natal, I may st ate that with him also I have The Bishop only a slight personal acquaintance. If I remember right, I had not seen him at all before his return to England some three years ago. And, although I have a strong regard for much which I know of his character, it so happens that I have only met him on a few occasions since. His peculiar style of criticism is not such as com- mends itself to me, nor is his mode of approaching the Sacred Yolume that which is consonant to my taste and feelings. Do not let me be mistaken. Those who may have done me the honour to have cast their eyes over the few volumes I have written on these important questions will understand what is the mode that I have pursued. My endeavour has been, in the first instance, to get what- Modes of ever there is of good, whatever there is of elevation, what- 011 lclsla* ever there is of religious instruction, whatever there is of experience, whatever there is of the counsel of God, what- 1 I trust I need not add that these the respected prelate himself would not expressions are used in a sense which disclaim. 312 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. ever there is of knowledge of the heart of man, whatever there is of the grace of poetry, whatever there is of histo- rical truth, whatever there is that is true, honest, just, lovely, of good report, of virtue, and of praise in the highest degree, as they exist nowhere else in the same degree, in the Sacred Scriptures. That, I think, is the best way of approaching the Bible ; and to the utmost of my humble capacity I have employed my labours in that direction. I have always lamented whenever any one has approached these subjects from what may be called a negative point of view. But if the mode I have recom- mended is the best, it is not the only one in which such a Book may be treated — a Book so immense in its value, so vast in its authority, so multiplex in its form, so varied in its elements, requiring so much thought and acumen in dealing with its phrases, its forms of composition, and the dates of its particular books. Although Dr. Colenso's mode may not commend itself to me as the best, it may do so to other minds ; and therefore I could never bring myself to condemn any mode of dealing with the Bible, however different from mine it may be, supposing always that it is a bond fide honest attempt to ascertain what is the nature of the Sacred Books, and to draw instruction from them. There are many ways, besides that which I The alle- prefer. Let me instance two. In ancient times many method. commentators, in treating of the Old Testament, discarded almost entirely the literal sense of its historical books. They rarely troubled themselves with the historical mean- ing of these books ; they made it their chief endeavour, by the aid of allegory, to turn them into edification for the people. If any difficulty arose, they met it by saying that they did not trouble themselves with the letter of the text. 6 Jacob was the Church, and Esau the synagogue,' and so on through the whole tissue of figurative explana- Essay VII. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECTS. 313 tions. That is a kind of treatment which I myself do not approve, but which, I think, may be tolerated within the bosom of the Christian Church. It has been tolerated in former ages, and may be tolerated in the present. This is one mode of treatment, and it is certainly inferior to the best mode. Another mode is that which has been The ana- adopted by the Bishop of Natal. He has thought it his crk7caiand duty to endeavour to ascertain, as far as possible, the method- dates and authors of those different books, and that by a minute and laborious analysis which has hardly ever been surpassed by any divine of the Church of England. But he has confined himself almost entirely to this method of proceeding (not, indeed, in his work on the Epistle to the Romans, but) in his work on the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua. This method of treatment is not one which commends itself to me as most suitable to the wants of Christendom, or to this particular age ; but it is a mode which ought to be tolerated with the respect due to the great labour it involves. Whatever there is good and true in the labours of the Bishop of Natal has, I think, been sufficiently done in Germany; and therefore I cannot think that the world in general would have lost anything if his work on the Pentateuch had never been written at- all. I do not believe that conclusions as to the authors of these books can ever be reached with such certainty as to make it worth while to insist at length on these minute inquiries. Still I respect the man who has laboured so earnestly and so truthfully in his endeavour to do so. We The trans- must remember, too, the nature of the labour in which he 1:1itI0^1°,f the Bible was engaged when he first entered upon this study. He int0 the was engaged in translating the Holy Scriptures into the guage. barbarous native dialect of his diocese. There are two Bishops, and two only, among all the Bishops of the Colonial Churches, who have won for themselves the glory 314 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. of having endeavoured to translate the truths of the Scriptures into the uncouth tongues of the people whose pastors they have become. The one is Bishop Patteson of Melanesia, and the other is Bishop Colenso of Natal. If, in pursuance of this investigation, he was led to take too minute care of the words and letters of the Sacred Volume, as I fully think he was, still one would have thought that the sacredness and the value of the labour in which he was employed ought to have procured for him something different from the vast vocabulary of abuse which, as a general rule, is the only response his labours have met with in this country. A Member. — The Bishop of New Zealand has learned the native language. The Dean of Westminster. — Yes, and the Bishop of Calcutta1 is also well acquainted with the languages of India, but they have not translated the Scriptures into those languages. My position remains, that out of the vast number of Colonial Bishops two only have done this great work for the Bible, and of those two one is the Bishop of Natal. . I have thought it right to indicate the general principle on which, whilst on the one hand I differ from the method pursued by Bishop Colenso, on the other hand the method should be tolerated. There are, of course, many points of detail in which I should also differ from him. But this would lead me into too long a discussion. There is, however, one point on which I wish to take this oppor- tunity to record my protest against what I think has been a very narrow- minded attack which he has made on a hymn-book, which, whatever exceptions may be made to it, is widely circulated, and ought not to have received this 1 The late lamented Bishop Cotton. Essay VJI. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECTS. 315 treatment at liis hands — I mean 6 Hymns Ancient and £ Modern.' This is, I think, the only instance in which Bishop Colenso has transgressed that boundary of modera- tion and courteousness which he has observed towards his opponents. In this attack, and in this alone, he has, I think, almost placed himself on a level with his antago- nists, and I feel bound to record my protest against it. Now, having cleared the personal position of the two Prelates, I come to the theological grounds of the Bishop of Capetown's Judgment, and in so doing I do not mean, unless I am absolutely compelled by the House, to enter on the actual merits and truth of those grounds ; it will be sufficient for me to state clearly what are the theological grounds of this Judgment, and to what conclusions we shall be pledged if on those grounds we approve the Judgment. The grounds on which the Bishop of Capetown Charges of based his Judgment are six, if I remember right; but tiv/heresy before I proceed to show what those grounds are, and to n°t 1 & ' missible. what conclusions we shall be pushed if we accept them, I should like to make one remark, suggested by an objec- tion made by a highly respected member of this House, when this subject was last mentioned here. He said that though each of the charges by itself might be tolerated, you could not tolerate them when they were all put together. Now, if I should convince any member of Convocation that one of those six grounds, or perhaps two, or perhaps three, or four, or five and six, are tolerable, and yet if they think that the six put together are intolerable, I would beg to remind the House of a well- known passage in English history. There was once a Metropolitan of England who was on his trial for his life, with whom perhaps the Metropolitan of Capetown might have had some sympathy. There were various charges brought against him for high treason, and it was proved 316 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. The opi- nion of the Limited Duration of Future Punish- ment. that not one of those charges in itself amounted to high treason. But it was said by his enemies, that although none of them separately amounted to high treason, yet the whole of them put together did. The answer of Laud's counsel was that a 'hundred white rabbits could never £ make one black horse.' That answer, although it did not save the Primate's head from the axe, is yet generally thought to have been a very good one; and if, on this occasion, I can prove that these charges against Bishop Colenso are white rabbits, not all the logic of the Arch- deacon of Taunton will ever persuade me, or any court in England, that a hundred white rabbits, even under the burning sun of Africa, will ever make a black horse. I come, then, to the special grounds of the Bishop of Capetown's condemnation of Dr. Colenso. The first1 is that much- vexed question, on which I for one have never hitherto expressed any direct opinion, the question of the Duration of Future Punishments. Dr. Colenso expressed his opinion on this question in his work on the Epistle to the Romans ; and some consideration, perhaps, ought to be attached to the fact that this was the opinion at which the Bishop of Natal had arrived very reluctantly — after having once entirely repudiated it — as the only conclusion he could draw from the sacred text. Into a discussion of the truth or falsehood of that opinion I do not propose to conduct this House ; but what I wish to insist upon is this : that this opinion — true or false — is by the Bishop of Capetown declared to be intolerable within the Church of England, and also, going on the special ecclesiastical principle which he laid down as his guide, intolerable in those remote ages of Christendom of which I spoke before.2 As to its being intolerable in the Church of England, you 1 The charges are hero given not in the order of the Judgment, but as they occurred to me at the time. 2 Judgment, p. 369. Essay VII. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECTS. 317 well know that the Supreme Court of Appeal in this country has* determined that it is legal for every bishop and every clergyman to hold the hope that there may be found some means in the infinite mercy of God to restore His erring creatures. This is the proposition which the Tolerated Bishop of Capetown has declared to be intolerable in South church of Africa, and which the Supreme Court of Appeal in this EnSland- country has declared to be tolerable in the bishops and clergy of the Church of England. Therefore, by accepting this ground of the Bishop of Capetown's Judgment, you place yourself in direct antagonism to the law of this country. Secondly, the Bishop of Capetown has declared Tolerated by implication that this opinion is intolerable, or was fi^t^four intolerable during those remote ages of the Byzantine Councils- Church to which I referred, the period of the first four Councils. But in the first place those four Councils decided nothing whatever on the question. Although it was discussed at that time by divines as much more cele- brated than the Bishop of Natal as Cyril was more cele- brated than Dr. Gray, and Origen than Dr. Colenso, yet in the space of that long controversy none of those first four Councils thought fit to propose any opinion on the subject.1 More than that : if there is any one article of the Nicene Creed which bears at all on this subject, it is in that second part which is supposed to have been added at the Council of Constantinople, in which the words 6 everlasting 'life' occur. Who drew up that portion of the Creed? Held by Gregory It is not certain, but by the most e concurrent testimony,' of Nyssa. 1 Bishop Hefele {ConcVim-GescMch- from Petavius, De Angelis, fin.: 'Do tc, ii. 759 — 764) has shown almost hac damnatorum saltern respiratione, conclusively that those opinions were nihil adhuc cert i d cent urn est ab Ecclcsia not condemned even by any later Conn- Catholicd; at propterca nan temere cil. And Dr. Newman in his Grammar tanquam absurda sit explvdenda Sanctis- of Assent, p. 417, has quoted without simorum Patrum Juec opinio; quam- contradietion. and apparently with vis a communi sensu Catholieormn jsonie sympathy, the following passage hoc tempore sit alieua.' 318 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa; — and his opinions on this question were coincident with those of the Bishop of Natal. Therefore, in approving of this Judgment of Dr. Gray, you declare not only that the Supreme Court of law for the Church of England has allowed to its members and ministers a liberty which they ought not to be allowed, but also that Gregory of Nyssa, that great prelate, ought to have been deposed from his office, ought never to have added this passage to the Nicene Creed, ought not to be regarded as a canonised saint, but as an excommunicated heretic. There is no escape from this dilemma. The clause itself of the Nicene Creed ought to be expunged as having come out of the mouth of a blaspheming heretic.1 [Here a brief adjournment took place, followed by a debate on points of order.] 1 His opinions are contained in his Catcck. Orat., ch. xxvi., ' De iis qui 1 premature abripiuntur ; ' and eh. xv. ' De anima et resurrectione' (on Phil, ii. 10 ; 1 Cor. xv. 28). The same views were held, though less distinctly, by Gregory Nazianzen, and this in fact was recognised even in the process of ^the Capetown trial. 1 It cannot be 1 maintained that the opinions of the • Bishop are . . . without the support 1 of venerable names. I gather from ' Neander and Hagenbach that Gregory 1 of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and 1 other teachers, adopted the substance ' of the Origpnistic theory.' — Speech of the Dean of Capetown in the Trial of Bishop Colenso, p. 39. An attempt has been made by an Italian writer — (Vincenzi, ' In Sancti 1 Gregorii Nysseni et Origenis scripta ' et doctrinam nova recensio,' 4 vols., 1865) — to invalidate the generally received belief of Gregory's views. But the arguments adduced prove DO more than that there are passages in which Gregory seems to be incon- sistent with himself. I may also here subjoin a passage from a work presented by the Bishop of Oxford to the Upper House of Convocation in 1866 : 'No one inter- • ested in theology can have lived ' through the last few years without • having the awful question of future 1 punishment forced on his thoughts. 1 At one time I was inclined to consider ' it an open question, as yet undeter- « mined by the Catholic Church. But, ' as a Bom an Catholic writer has ' pointed out, the Church has never in ' any way indicated for how many or for ' how few eternal punishment may be • reserved ; and the doctrine of purga- ' tory, or rather any doctrine of purga- 4 tory, covers an indefinite portion of ' the ground on which the subject can ' be discussed. It was first brought ' before me, when I was very young, ' by the death of a school-girl, about ' twelve years old. She was not a ' particularly good child, nor a bad ' child, and she was too old to be ' classed with unconscious infants. . » Essay VTL ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECTS. 319 I now proceed to the second point on which the Bishop Opinion of Capetown condemns the Bishop of Natal, and one on justifioa- which he grounds his deposition, namely, that it is intoler- g1^0^. able for a Bishop of the Church of England to declare that thens. good heathens are justified.1 I am bound to say that the Bishop of Capetown draws a very fine distinction, which I confess I am quite unable to understand, between the posi- tion of good heathens who are c saved,' and good heathens who are 'justified.' A Member. — There is a very great difference. Dean of Westminster. — At any rate, whilst the Bishop appears to think that good heathens may be saved without being justified, what he pronounces is, that it is intoler- able for any person to maintain that good heathens are justified; and as, I think, most persons would say that justification and salvation are, if not convertible terms, at any rate terms so nearly convertible that we cannot well discover the difference, as the Thirty-nine Articles2 certainly imply this identity, we must regard this as vir- tually amounting to a declaration that it is intolerable for any Bishop to declare that any heathens are saved. Again I will not enter into the merits of the case. It is ' There was nothing about her indicat- ' gorically, and probably the legitimate* 1 ing any devotion of the soul to God ; ' development of the truths contained ' and yet the notion that she was gone ' in our Lord's descent into hell will ' to endless torment was utterly inad- 1 furnish a solution to all difficulties.' * missible. It set me thinking. I now (Church and World, First Series, p. 1 see the perfect consistency of the 246.) I am not concerned to defend ' doctrine as expressed in the Athana- this passage, but, in spite of its studied ' sian Creed with reason, where the reserve, it is clear that the opinion 1 symbolic language necessarily used to expressed is precisely that held by ' express ideas beyond us is not pressed Gregory of Nyssa, by Mr. "Wilson, and 4 into the language of actual fact, and by the Bishop of Natal. f where also the indestructibility of 1 Judgment, pp. 352 — 357. 4 man's free-will is admitted. Re- 2 Article XI. 'The Homily of * united Christendom will one day, no ' Justification,' = ' the Homily on Salva- ■ doubt, define the doctrino more cate- 4 tion.' 320 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. Opinion as to the meaning of Recon- ciliation. perfectly possible, it may be reasonable, it may be right, it maybe Christian, to say that persons like Marcus Aurelius and Socrates were not justified, and therefore could not be saved ; but I will maintain that if that is the argument to which we shall be pledged by this resolution — (cries of 6 No ') — then we have to condemn those illustrious fathers who maintained not only that good heathens were saved, but that they were ' Christians before Christ.' And if they were 'Christians' before the Advent, unquestionably they must be regarded as 'justified.' The third point is the view which the Bishop of Natal takes of the sacred doctrine of the Atonement. You will observe that all these questions are raised not by the work on the Pentateuch, but in his work on the Epistle to the Romans, and this House has never passed any judgment at all on the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. A Member. — Nor on the other. Dean of Westminster. — Perhaps not, but what I mean is, that the House has not even had a discussion on the Com- mentary on the Epistle to the Romans. The third point, then, is this. I do not profess to give the exact words : but it is well known there are two separate views which have been maintained at different times in the Christian Church on the subject of the aspect of the Atonement. One is that which prefers to dwell on the aspect of God being reconciled to man ; the other is the view which prefers to dwell on the aspect of man being reconciled to God, and redeemed not from the wrath of God but from the bondage of sin. The Bishop of Natal, in his Commentary on the Romans, although he says we may use the phrase that God is reconciled to man, yet declares that, on the whole,1 he prefers the more Scriptural expression that man is recon- 1 Judgment, pp. 3-H — 3.52. 'I am sorry the expression is used in the 2nd Article, because it is not Scrip- tural.'— Letter of the Bishop of Natal Essay VII. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECTS. 321 ciled unto God. Whether he was right or wrong I do not here pretend to say, but again I could read to you passages from the most approved divines expressing in the most pointed and emphatic manner, again and again, that the true mode of stating that doctrine is that man is reconciled to God, and that the object of the sacred interposition was to bring back man to God, and to rescue him from the bondage of sin. That is the view of the Bishop of Natal, and this is the aspect which is expressed most emphatically in a sermon preached at Oxford, and dedicated to a Pre- late of our Church, in these words : 6 To the Right Rev. c Samuel, Lord Bishop of Oxford, at whose Ordination it ' was preached, and by whose desire it is now published, 6 this Sermon is respectfully dedicated by his Lordship's ' obedient servant, the Author.' That author was my respected predecessor in the Chair of Ecclesiastical History, Robert Hussey.1 I have frequently called atten- tion publicly to this fact. I have frequently stated that this view of the sacred doctrine of the Atonement was contained in that sermon.2 That has never been denied. And this is the sermon that was published ( at the desire' of that distinguished Prelate ; it was dedicated to him ' by his permission,' and it contains this doctrine as em- phatically, perhaps not quite so clearly, but as emphati- cally and as positively, as the book of the Bishop of Ndtal ; and I therefore contend that if you affirm this resolution, you pledge yourselves to regard this lamented person, who is now long since taken from us, as a heretic. Nay, I might pursue that argument further; I fear you must also include in your condemnation the Prelate at whose quoted in the Bishop of Capetown's tory, pp. 9 — 14, 17, 19, 21, 23, 24, 29 Judgment, p. 351. — 32. 1 ' The Atonement.' a Sermon 2 Sermons on Freedom and Labour, preached by Rohert Hussey, B.D., p. 50 ; Lectures on Eastern Church, Kegius Professor of Ecclesiastical His- p. xciv. Y 322 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. desire that sermon was published, and to whom, by his express permission, it was dedicated. Opinion The fourth point on which the Bishop of Natal was Scriptures condemned and deposed by the Bishop of Capetown was th^Worcf 0n mos^ complicated and disputed question as to of God. whether the Holy Scriptures are to be regarded as 6 being,' or as ( containing,' the Word of God. I will not enter into the merits of that question, but all of you must re- member the statements which have been made on that subject during the last two years. We must bear in mind two things : first of all, that as in the case of Future Punishments, so here, the Supreme Court of Appeal has decided that it is competent for a Bishop, Presbyter, or Deacon in the Church of England to maintain that the Scriptures are not themselves the Word of God except as containing the Word of God; and therefore you would have to assert, as in the case of the Duration of Future Punishment, that a doctrine is intolerable in a Bishop of the Church of South Africa which is tolerable in the whole hierarchy of England. Both before and since that Judg- ment the doctrine condemned at Capetown has been main- tained in the Church of England. No one can read the Charges of the Bishops during the last few years without knowing that some of the most distinguished of them have held exactly the position which was held by the Supreme Court of Final Appeal ; and therefore by affirming the Judgment of the Bishop of Capetown with regard to the Bishop of Natal, you must be held to affirm it with regard to those Bishops who have held that doctrine in England.1 Opinion The fifth point was the question of the Mosaic or non- fis to the • author- Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.2 The Bishop of t8ht>Pp°onta- Capetown laid down that it was intolerable for any Bishop teuch. 0f South Africa to affirm that the Pentateuch was not 1 Judgment, pp. 374, 379. 2 Ibid., pp. 381—389. Essay VII. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECTS. 323 written by Moses. Now there again, I will not enter into the question whether the Pentateuch was or was not written as it now stands by Moses. But this I will say, that there are hundreds, I might say thousands, of clergy- men in England who do not believe that that is the case. It has over and over again been stated by many, and is believed by thousands more, that other hands than those of Moses have been engaged in the composition of the Pen- tateuch. The Bishop of Natal, with that peculiar kind of criticism on which I ventured to comment in the earlier part of my speech, and which I ventured to deprecate as being, in my judgment, a very inferior and inadequate mode of approaching Holy Scripture — the Bishop of Natal has gone a great deal more into detail as to the authorship of this sacred book, and I think that he is entirely mis- taken in attributing the authorship of the Pentateuch to the Prophet Samuel. But you will observe that that is not the question. The question is not whether it is intoler- able to attribute the authorship of the Pentateuch to the Prophet Samuel, but whether it is intolerable to attribute it to any one except Moses. If you once leave the question of its being written by Moses, the field is then open for you, as far as the law of the Church is concerned, to select any one else of the ancient prophets as the author.1 Jerome went so far as to say that it was written, I will not say entirely, but in great part, by Ezra. Now, if there was nothing wrong in taking it away from Moses, it surely is in itself indifferent whether it was written by Samuel or Ezra. Indeed, so far as the actual authorship of the two is concerned, I think that most of us would prefer to con- sider that it was written by Samuel rather than by Ezra. 1 The same applies to the hypothesis Natal) ascribes Deuteronomy to a which (with Ewald and the Bishop of Prophet contemporary with Josiah. Y 2 324 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. Opinion as to the historical statements or poetical character of the Sacred Books. There are, no doubt, persons who maintain that the whole Pentateuch, from beginning to end, including the account of Moses' own death, was written by Moses. That, no doubt, was the common belief of the Jews in the time of Josephus1 and the Christian era, and I do not doubt that it is held by some persons here. (Cries of 'No.') I should have judged from the terror with which these opinions are regarded that that was so, because the mo- ment that, on critical grounds, you upset the general belief of former ages in this matter, in any one point, you have conceded the lawfulness of going into the whole matter. I am glad, therefore, to hear that there are those who consider it an open question. The sixth question, which is partly connected with this of the authorship, is whether there occur in the Sacred Scriptures any — I do not know exactly by what name to call them — errors in matters of fact : whether there are any parts of the Scriptures that do not stand on the same ground of exact history as others. It is urged by critics, that many parts of the Old Testament which used to be thought historical are poetical. It is urged also that in those parts which are historical, errors in regard to fact have crept in. As we all know, a great deal of such con- troversy has turned on errors of arithmetic in the Penta- teuch. I am not proposing now to take one view or the other, but if you confirm the theological judgment of the Bishop of Capetown against the Bishop of Natal, you are pledged to a view of the Scriptures which says that there are no parts of them that are poetical which once were thought merely historical— that there are no parts in which there are errors on matters of fact. A great deal of what is poetical is perfectly true, as regards doctrine, feeling, and poetry, and, it may be, con- ' Joseph. Ant. iv. 8, § 48 ; Philo, V it. Moses, iii. 39. Essay VII. ITS THEOLOGICAL EFFECTS. 325 tains historical truth also. But the whole question is, whether it is allowable to admit of these distinctions in the Scriptures. The Bishop of Capetown declares that it is not.1 I could prove to you that divines of the greatest fame have admitted of these distinctions. Time alone prevents me from showing this in detail, and with the numerous illustrations of which the case admits.2 With these two points is involved the supposition that, by this statement or criticism on the authorship or his- torical character of the books of the Old Testament, there Opinion is some contravention of the universal knowledge of our JJ^q18 Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.3 Now, there again, I will knowledge ' . of tne Son not enter into the rights and wrongs of that question. It of Man. is quite true that the Bishop of Natal believes that there was in His human nature a partial knowledge, and there- fore a partial ignorance. He believes that — Taught by degrees to pray, By father dear and mother mild Instructed day by day,4 He learned His Father's will. Now, that may be wrong, or may be right, but what I maintain is, that there again, if you pronounce the Bishop of Natal to be a heretic, you have also to pronounce Jeremy Taylor 5 a heretic, who un- questionably held the same view. And though perhaps you might be willing to surrender Jeremy Taylor, you may have some scruple in giving up Athanasius,6 who also beyond question believed that there were matters of which our Lord was ignorant. We have heard a great deal 1 Judgment, pp. 380 — 385. 8 Athanasius, Second Discourse 14 See Aids to Faith ; Robertson's against the Arians, c. 28 ; with Dr. Sermons; Arnold" s Sermons, &c. Pusey's note: 'Athanasius certainly 3 Judgment, p. 390. ' seems to impute ignorance to our 1 Keble's Christian Year, on the ' Lord as man.' Nor is this questioned Catechism. by Mr, Liddon in his discussion of 5 Quoted in Bishop Thirlwall's the question in his Bampton Lectures, Charge, 1S33. GS9— 692. 326 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. about Athanasius at Capetown ; it will not be so agreeable to you to find that, after all, there is an Athanasius on the other side of the question, whom you have been trying to cast out of the Church. Those are the main grounds on which the Capetown Judgment went. I do not mean to deny that the Bishop of Natal in his criticisms has gone to great lengths. But the Bishop of Capetown, so far as he went into these criticisms at all, condemned them as flowing from certain principles which he condemned as intolerable. It is for the principles you condemn him, by adopting as your own the Judgment of the Bishop of Capetown. Expres- There is one point that remains, and that is that the paraging Bishop of Natal has used expressions disparaging to the th°ePraye?-f Prayer-book. That I do not deny. There are expres- book. sions which he has used about parts of the Prayer-book and parts of the Articles which may be, and in my judgment are, indecorous for a clergyman to use.1 But I will only say, that if they are to be condemned, that principle must be applied a great deal further ; that is to say, if you declare that the Bishop of Natal ought to be deposed from his office for speaking now and then in a somewhat disparaging manner of parts of the Prayer-book and of parts of the Articles, you must extend your principle to the excommunication and deposition of many persons, both in high station and low station, within the Church of England. We may object, and it may have been right for the Bishop of Capetown to object, to his having ex- pressed some scruples whether he could use some parts of the Baptismal Service. It was a foolish passage, and one which he subsequently so modified or retracted that I think it ought not, in all fairness or generosity, to have 1 Judgment, p. 396. Essay VII. CONCLUSION. 327 been brought up again in the Judgment.1 But even if he did make use of that expression, he did no more than another Prelate of our Church holding the very highest position, who declared in the House of Lords that in con- sequence of the charitable and universal hope of mercy which the Burial Service pronounces over the departed, there were circumstances under which nothing could in- duce him to read it.2 Now, if a prelate in such an exalted position as the personage to whom I am now referring, and of whom I wish to speak with all the respect due to his office aud his estimable character, — if that great Primate could in his place in the House of Lords declare that he would not use a valuable and to many persons in the Church of England one of the most endearing por- tions of the Burial Service of our Church, — if it was com- petent for him to do that without any remark or rebuke of any kind, I cannot think that to use the modified and almost retracted expression about the Baptismal Service is less excusable in the Bishop of Natal. And Expres- with regard to the Articles, nothing which the Bishop of pacing Natal has ever said about the Thirty-nine Articles is for ^^ts one moment to be compared to what was said of them Articles, in a celebrated Tract published some twenty years ago, and which has been republished within our own me- mory by an eminent Professor in the University of Oxford, which republication has been received without any rebuke or remonstrance from any single member of our Episcopal Bench. I say, if it is tolerable for a dis- tinguished Professor of our great English University of Oxford to speak of the Thirty-nine Articles as they are spoken of in that republished Tract without rebuke by the 1 See the -whole passage as explained 2 Speech of the Archbishop of Can- in Bishop Colenso's work on the Pen- terbury in the House of Lords, June 1, tateuch, vol. iii. pp. xxv., xxvi. 1863. 328 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. bishops, it cannot be intolerable in the Bishop of Natal to express himself in the gentle, the moderate terms which he has used towards the same venerable document. I have now gone through the legal and the theological grounds of the Capetown Judgment, and I have shown the inextricable difficulties in which you will be involved if you commit yourselves to this position. Let me now call your attention to another circumstance, which ought to have The ab- peculiar weight. The Bishop of Natal is absent. The e Bishop -BisnoP is? not indeed in his own diocese, but in this coun- try, friendless and unpopular, attacked by every epithet 1 which the English vocabulary has been able to furnish against him. Now, that circumstance ought to make this House particularly tender — I do not say in withholding what they may consider just censure, but in pronouncing sence of the Bish of Natal. 1 This vehemence is well described by an intelligent and dispassionate bystander. ' I have seen with dismay ' the reception given to the recent ' criticisms of the Bishop of Natal. I * counted, till they grew innumerable, ' the hard names launched at the Bi-- ' shop in successive pamphlets and ' letters; hard names which have been • hurled bafore now at prophets and ' reformers, by opponents of a different ' stamp from those who condescend to ' use them now ; hard names which ' should have been devoted to establish- 1 ing statements and clearing difficul- ' ties ; hard names which have enlisted ' an untold amount of quiet sympathy ' in favour of the absent who disdained ' to use them. I have regretted deeply ' to read so many hundred pages written ' to confute what he never asserted, ' and to assign inferences which were ' never admitted ; damaging by such ' public practices even the good name ' of the Bible itself.' The fact maybe illustrated, perhaps most forcibly, by ono striking excep- tion— not tho only one, but the most remarkable, from the position of the writer; the Reply to Bishop Colenso by the Rev. Edward Greswell. It contains the strongest, perhaps some who remember the arguments used may even think the most extravagant, opposition to the statements of the Bishop. But it contains not one word of insinuation, misrepresentation, or invective, of which the Bishop of Natal could personally complain. It is im- possible, on the one hand, to conceive a person more opposed to Bishop Co- lenso's mode of treating the Pentateuch ; it is impossible, on the other hand, to conceive a book more opposed to the usual manner of treating Bishop Co- lenso. It cortainly is open to conside- ration whether the mode of controversy adopted by the Bishop of Natal and Mr. Greswell on the one hand, with their almost entire absence of personal imputations, ridicule, and vituperation, or the mode of controversy adopted on the other hand by the great bulk of the assailants of the Bishop of Natal, is to be preferred. Essay VII. CONCLUSION. 329 censure, or dealing to him a hard measure which they re- fuse to deal out equally to persons holding similar or like opinions in our own Church, who are not equally friendless and equally unpopular. I have mentioned various illustrious divines of former Equality of judgment times whom you must involve in this same sweeping con- desirable, demnation if you affirm the Judgment of the Bishop of Capetown against the Bishop of Natal. But I dare say, as has often happened in these matters, a live dog seems better than a dead lion, and therefore I would call your attention to the fact that among living prelates and clergymen of this Church of England there are, on some of these points perhaps thousands, on others hundreds, who hold the same principles as those which have been condemned by the Bishop of Capetown, but against whom you have not proposed, and dare not propose, to institute proceedings. I have mentioned several prelates, I might mention many obscure clergymen. I might mention one whom you all know, who certainly on some of these matters has openly expressed the same opinions, I mean in prin- ciple, as the Bishop of Natal. I might mention one who, although on some of these awful and mysterious questions he has expressed no direct opinion, yet has ventured to say that the Pentateuch is not the work of Moses ; who has ventured to say that there are parts of the Sacred Scriptures which are poetical and not historical ; who has ventured to say that the Holy Scriptures themselves rise infinitely by our being able to acknowledge both that poetical character and also the historical incidents in their true historical reality ; who has ventured to say that the narratives of those historical incidents are coloured not unfrequently by the necessary infirmities which belong to the human instruments by which they were conveyed, — and that individual is the one who now 330 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. addresses you. If you pronounce against the Bishop of Natal on grounds such as these, you must remember that there is one close at hand whom, perhaps even with the Bishop of Oxford, certainly with Jeremy Taylor and with Athanasius in former times, you will be obliged to con- demn. I am not unwilling to take my place, if so be, beside the distinguished Prelate who presides over the great diocese in which I once resided. I am not unwilling to take my place with Gregory of Nyssa, with Jerome, and with Athanasius. But in that same goodly company I shall find the despised and rejected Bishop of Natal. At least deal out the same measure to me that you deal to him ; at least judge for all a righteous judgment. Deal out the same measure to those who are well befriended and who are present, as to those who are unbefriended and absent. That is the rule which ought to guide your judgment ; and that is the rule which I beg to submit to you in this case. There are two other topics unconnected with the argu- ment directly, to which I will briefly refer. One is a matter to which I omitted to refer when I spoke of the legal and social difficulties in which you would involve yourselves by declaring the see of Natal to be vacant. It is well known that the bishopric of Capetown owes its existence to an individual who is as illustrious for her Letter character as she is for her munificence. By the time I am Foundress now reading the letter which I hold in my hand, it will of Cape60 kave reached the Bishop of Capetown. He will have town. heard by this time from the Foundress of his see the expression of c her firm assurance that the consecration of 6 a Bishop under the title of the Bishop of Maritzburg, ' without any concert with the Crown, will be universally 6 held to be a departure from the principle upon which the * declaration of the meeting of Archbishops and Bishops, Essay VII. CONCLUSION. 331 ' held at Lambeth on the Tuesday in Whitsun week, 1841, ' was founded, and on the faith of which she was induced * to provide an endowment for the see of Capetown.' I sincerely trust that feelings of gratitude, if of no other kind, will make the Bishop of Capetown hesitate before he enters upon a course at variance not only with the legal principles of his mother country, not only with the ecclesiastical principles of his mother Church, but also with the direct understanding entered into with the illustrious Foundress of the see of Capetown. Finally, in drawing these remarks to a conclusion, I must once more express my profound regret that now, and not for the first time, questions of such immense magnitude are forced upon us from the Upper House without any notice whatever ; on a former day, in a House thin beyond all examjile, and on the present occasion in a House not so thin, but which, for all we might have known, might have consisted of half a dozen members. This, I say, is a course against which, with all due respect to that House and to the forms of this House, I do most solemnly and deliberately protest. I am persuaded that this venerable House of Convocation can never come to any good so long as we are subject to such surprises, so long as these mo- mentous issues are forced upon us, without regard either to the convenience of this House, or to the importance of those questions themselves. NOTE. Is finally dismissing the subject of the Capetown Judgment, I would wish to express in conclusion what I trust has been im- plied throughout : that I have been arguing for and against, not individuals or details, but principles. It is but due to the Bishop of Capetown to call attention to the fact that he forbore, except in one instance, directly to apply the principle which he had laid down of appealing to standards external to our Formularies ; 332 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. and, if I have dwelt upon this at greater length than it seemed to deserve, it was because even the mere assertion of such a prin- ciple is fraught with danger to the liberties of the clergy. And again, it is the condemnation not of the particular conclu- sions of the Bishop of Natal's inquiries, but of the lawfulness of those inquiries themselves, that formed the main ground of the ' Judgment ' in question, and therefore of the remarks which I have ventured to make upon it. For the same reason, I omitted to dwell on what otherwise would be a consideration of material importance : the fact that in the Capetown trial the Bishop of Natal was virtually condemned unheard. This, however, has been so fully treated by the Bishop of St. David's in his Letter to the Bishop of Capetown, that any farther notice of it would be unnecessary. POSTSCRIPT. In the foregoing remarks are expressed, however roughly, the general principles and facts which it seems to me might fairly be expected to guide English Church- men, of whatever views. I am even led to hope that I may have attributed to the author of the ' Judgment,' on which I was compelled thus freely to comment, a harsher and more destructive policy than he would be willing to carry out. If so, I trust that there is yet a chance of a pacific settlement of this tedious and unprofitable con- troversy. It may perhaps still further conduce, in some degree, to such an issue, if I take this opportunity of dwelling on some other points not directly raised on the occasion of my speech. L I have endeavoured to show that the charges brought against the Bishop of Natal, in principle, apply equally to many other divines, dead and living ; whom no one has attempted to deprive, if dead, of their authority ; if living, of their position or their salaries. What I would here venture once more to urge is this, that if our object be not Essay VII. THE LANGUAGE OF HYMNS. 333 to crush a particular person, but to vindicate the truth of certain doctrines, our course should be exactly the oppo- site. It is true that in worldly politics, a powerful advan- tage is gained if we can select for our battle-field the cause of an unpopular or extravagant partisan. But such a course is hardly compatible with the regard due to the truth itself of the doctrines in question. If the disputed doctrines, together or severally, have been set forth by persons to whom no personal prejudice attaches, then it is obviously the highest duty, difficult as it may be to attain, carefully to avoid the entanglement of such doctrines with the unpopular party, and to discuss them as far as possible on the neutral or open ground of those who have main- tained them, without attracting any general odium. This might easily be illustrated at length in the various cases already mentioned. But it may perhaps be well to take the extrernest instance which has occurred in the present controversy, and which, owing to the circumstances of the case, was not included in the discussion respecting the Judgment of the Bishop of Capetown. I allude to the The Bi- Hynm-book published by the Bishop of Natal, with the J^jSjf principles laid down in his accompanying sermon. I shall Hymn- not be supposed to defend the proceeding itself. To ac- to°k* cumulate controversy upon controversy in a community already sufficiently distracted, or to endeavour to fight out questions of abstract theology on the uncongenial field of poetical works, embodying sentiments of practical devotion, will probably appear to most persons in a high degree incongruous and inconvenient. But this ought not to affect the abstract doctrines or customs in dispute. The allegation of the Bishop of Natal was in principle this, that the rule of Scripture, and the rale of the Church of England, is to address prayers and praises directly to ' the First Person ' in the Trinity, through, and not to, ' the Second.' 334 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. That such is the general rule through the usual and the most solemn services, not only of the Church of England but of all Western Christendom, is undoubted. My attention was called many years ago, by the kindness of a well- known High Church divine, to a remark of Archdeacon Freeman,1 pointing out that this is in fact one of the main distinctions between the worship of the Eastern and the Western Churches. It is what one of the ablest of Bishop Colenso's critics on this very point justly calls 'the normal 6 state of our devotions.' It is a fact, however explained, stated openly by Eenaudot, Bishop Bull, and Waterland. It is an express decree of the third Council of Carthage, that 6 prayer at the altar shall be always directed to the 6 Father.'2 It is stated by one of the most learned of modern Eoman Catholics, that there is no direct invocation of Christ in the works of any of the Fathers of the first, second, or third century.3 These various writers have, doubtless, each their own explanation to give of the fact, which they, thus, severally admit. The question of the doctrine of the Trinity, and of the divinity of ' the Second 6 Person ' in the Trinity, does not enter into the matter at all. That is acknowledged equally by the Bishop of Natal 4 and by the Western Church on the one side, and by the Eastern Church on the other. The particular exceptions, 1 Principles of Divine Service, i. 373. 2 Sec the case fairly stated byKeble, Eaeharistical Adoration, p. 114. The decree of the Council of Carthage is also cited by Mr. Liddon in his Bamp- ton Lectures (p. 582) as expressing ' the more ancient law and instinct of ' the Church ; ' though he observes, and perhaps truly, that ' so strong was 4 the impulse to offer prayer to Christ, 1 that this Canon is strictly obsprved ' by no single liturgy,' and is especially broken in the Mozarabic rite. 8 Home and Foreign Review, nr. 659. 4 It may be observed that the Bi- shop's Hymn-book contains Heber's well-known hymn on the Trinity — ' Holy, holy, holy, Lord G od Almighty, ■ God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.' And also the Evening Hymn of Bi- shop Ken — 1 Forgive, 0 Lord, for Thy dear Son, • The ills that I this day have done ; ' with the doxology at the end. Essay VII. TIIE LANGUAGE OF HYMNS. 335 both in the Apostolic age and in the English Liturgy, are equally acknowledged by the Bishop of Natal and his opponents. Nor is it denied that these prayers form ' a feature of the devotional system of the Church of ' England, or of ancient, or of Western Christendom.' The question is simply what is the general usage — the prevailing feature — of the devotions of our own and of the Western Church, and whether that usage is founded on accident, or on some general and Scriptural principle. It may well be that the question had better not have been raised, or, if raised, ought not to have been applied to a Hymn-book. Dr. Merivale's solution of the difficulty may probably be the true one, that, whilst prayers to our Lord were discountenanced in the ancient Church, hymns were allowed; and it is well known that one of the most beautiful of modern hymns, 'Gracious Son of Mary, hear,' proceeds from the pen of one whose great name the Bishop of Natal would be the last to question. But even then the fact remains that the only hymns authoritatively annexed to the Prayer-book, and those authoritatively permitted by the Established Church of Scotland, are constructed on the same principle as those of the Bishop of Natal. On these, therefore, even if we restricted the investigation from forms of devotion generally to hymnology in particular, the question ought to be considered, rather than on the already encumbered field of the South African Church. I repeat, that I am not advocating any opinion in the matter. The Eastern Church may be more correct in its position than our own. Dean Milman's pathetic hymn may be the fittest exemplar of all our hymns. Bishop Colenso's mode of dealing with the matter may be dry, narrow, and misplaced. But neither in his case, nor in the parallel case of the English or Scottish Churches, need it infringe on the honour due to our bL ssed Lord; it may 336 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. even have been suggested by a too scrupulous endeavour to follow literally His directions as to bow we ought to pray. It may be said, however, that in this, as in all the other cases cited, there is a difference discernible which still justifies us in putting the worst construction on the state- ment of the Bishop of Natal, or, at any rate, in drawing a distinction between him and those divines with whom he seems to agree. Such differences and distinctions, no doubt, can always be found by those who look for them. Distinc- When Pascal in his c Provincial Letters ' is at a loss to doctrirfe. discover the difference between the Jansenists and the Jesuits on the doctrine on which they are both agreed, the Jesuit answers, ' The difference between us is so subtle, ' that we can hardly perceive it ourselves — you would £ find it difficult to understand. The Jansenists and the 6 Jesuits both concur in the doctrine that " Tous les justes ' " ont toujours le pouvoir d'observer les commandements." ' But this is not enough. " lis ne vous disent pas que ce ' " pouvoir est prochain, c'est la le point." ' And then after endless endeavours to ascertain what is the pouvoir prochain, the baffled inquirer finds that it has no mean- ing, and serves no purpose, except as a distinction between the Jansenists and Jesuits. 6 Heureux,' he exclaims in righteous indignation, 'les peuplesqui Pignorent, heureux 6 ceux qui ont precede sa naissance.' The pouvoir prochain, under various forms, is still the resource of those who in- sist on drawing an imaginary line of demarcation on sub- jects where no such line exists. When we find that such subtle distinctions are created in order to divert the attention from the abstract merits of these opinions to their personal adoption by a parti- cular individual, Pascal again becomes our best monitor. ' Ce ne sont pas les sentiments de M. Arnauld qui sont 6 heretiques. Ce n'est que sa personne. II n'est pas Essay VII. FALSE DISTINCTIONS. 337 c heretique pour ce qu'il a dit ou ecrit, mais surtout parce- 6 qu'il est M. Arnauld. Quoi qu'il fasse, s'il ne cesse ' d'etre, il ne sera jamais bon catholique. La grace de ' S. Augustin ne sera jamais la veritable, tant qu'il la ' defend. Elle la deviendrait s'il venait a la combattre.' It may indeed be urged tliat, after all, it is not the doc- trine but the person, the whole attitude and appearance of the man, that is disliked. And it is true that there are Distinc- characters, persons, positions, atmospheres, — far more character, dangerous, or far more sound (as the case may be), than any particular opinions. They cannot be brought before courts of law, civil or ecclesiastical. And yet we may justly entertain a dislike or suspicion, or admiration, as the case may be. But the question then ceases to relate to true or false doctrine, and becomes a question of the temper, motives, charity, pride, ambition, honesty, hypo- crisy, self-denial, love of truth, kindness, in each particular character. It is obvious that no earthly tribunal what- ever, whether Metropolitan, or Synodical, or Judicial, can take any cognisance of these matters. There is here no question of lawful or unlawful, orthodox or heretical opinions. If prelates or clergymen are to be deprived of their offices for being injudicious, or uncharitable, or pre- sumptuous, or narrow-minded, censures, such as that which we are discussing, must take a much wider sweep. In the case of the Bishop of Natal, many perhaps even of his friends will think that his style of criticism has been impetuous, his interest in it exaggerated, his mode of ap- proaching such subjects, except for its frankness and moderation, dry and repulsive. 6 It is true,' said one of the Parliamentary leaders in the trial of Strafford, 'we give * law to hares and deer because they are beasts of chase, ' but it never was accounted cruelty or foul play to knock 6 foxes or wolves on the head, as they can be found, because z 338 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. 6 they are beasts of prey.' But it nevertheless remains a grave question for us, whether, even with all the suspicion and dislike which we may entertain towards the Bishop of Natal, we yet are called by the laws of Christian charity and prudence to treat him, not even as a beast of chase, but as a beast of pre}r. When his work on the Pentateuch first appeared, it was shown to a wise man, who was by nature totally averse to rash speculation. He read it, and returned it with this remark, 'I am greatly shocked and startled. Nevertheless, 6 my one hope and prayer for the rulers of the Church is, ' that they may treat it not as the attack of a deliberate ' enemy, but as the counsel of a mistaken friend.' This doubtless is what might have been done. This is what, many will grieve to think, was hardly done at all. Almost always it was assumed, though he himself vehemently protested against the imputation, that he was assailing Christianity or assailing the Pentateuch. Often, we may grieve yet more, even by some of the most charitable and enlightened of his critics, he was charged with calling the authors of the Sacred Books 'forgers and impostors,' though he himself repudiated the expression in every possible form. At a celebrated meeting of a venerable society, there seemed to be nothing which called forth such shouts of enthusiastic delight as the defamatory epithets which fell from the lips of the speakers on their brother prelate ; as if nothing could be more welcome news than that a Bishop of the Church should be proved to be a dishonoured and dishonourable heretic. These expressions were doubtless dictated in great part by a sincere zeal for what was believed to be the cause of orthodoxy. But the question will always remain, whether we are not bound, in justice, to judge the intentions of the person attacked from his own written and published works, Essay VII. CONCLUSION. 339 rather than from the constructions which others may put upon them ; and whether the exaggerations into which the person so assailed is driven, are not in part caused by those who assail him. The proverbial result of affixing a harsh or invidious name is equally true in all conditions of life, and it requires more firmness and faith than are to be found in common mortals, to resist the effect of an attitude of constant isolation, irritation, and self-asser- tion. But there is yet more than this to be said. Let those who think the existence of the Bishop of Natal a mere scandal and offence, ask whether there is not something, even from their own point of view, which may serve as a compensation. However much any one may question the prudence or Advan- the correctness of the book on the Pentateuch or on the {Jepoid- Epistle to the Romans, no one will question the transparent ^°nh°f th* sincerity of the author. It is this which has won for him, Natal, in spite of all his own shortcomings and all the obloquy which he has met, an amount of support and sympathy from the laity such as has very rarely fallen to the lot of an English Bishop. 6 1 would go twenty miles to hear ' Bishop Colenso preach,' was the remark made by an artisan in the north to a missionary clergyman, 6 he is so * honest like.' The overflowing congregations of his own church in Natal (to which testimony is borne from the most diverse quarters), show how he is regarded by the bulk of the laity in South Africa. The fact that whilst only a small minority could be induced to assent to the election of a new bishop, an overwhelming majority en- thusiastically protested against it, is of itself a proof of the hold he has obtained over his flock. The very complaints which have reached this country against those congrega- tions, show their importance. 6 Infidels, men who never z 2 340 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. e entered a church, before, working men in their shirt ' sleeves.' That this picture is extremely overcharged is now known from the indignant denial on the part of many members of the congregation itself. But if those state- ments are well founded, it surely would be a cause for rejoicing rather than for lamenting. How gladly should we hail in London congregations of such men ! How welcome would be the sight in our cathedrals of crowds of artisans in their working dress ! Doubtless in the cathedral of Maritzburg they would hear much that we might lament, but, as we learn from the Bishop's printed sermons, they would also hear, perhaps for the first time, of the love of God to man, of the death of Christ for sinners, of the Eternal Arms beneath us, of the better life above us. And even if out of the seventeen clergy of Natal not more than two or three have adhered to him, and of these one, as has been invidiously remarked, originally a mechanic, yet if it be true that he is the only one who speaks the language of the natives, his adhesion is not altogether unimportant for a missionary bishop, nor surely for a Christian teacher can it be altogether un- worthy to have served at the trade of a carj>enter. But, even if there were no support among the clergy, and yet the Bishop were able to attract the laity of his flock, we may be pardoned for thinking, in the present crisis of Christendom, that any Church would incur a heavy responsibility that should cast off such a. teacher from its ranks. No doubt a bishoj), with a hostile clergy, is in a painful position. Yet we cannot forget that there has been in our own time and country a Prelate, one of the most learned and genial of his time, whom the great body of his clergy refused to meet at his first entrance into his diocese. He died, it is true, of a broken heart, too soon to regain the affections of those who should have Essay VII. CONCLUSION. 341 been his fellow-labourers, but not too soon to leave behind him a fragrant remembrance, which lives to this day in all who ever knew or heard of Bishop Lloyd of Oxford. The cases of more than one prelate, too, might be named, who entered on their work with an opposition from their clergy no less decisive, but who lived, happily, long enough to descend into their graves amidst a uni- versal lamentation. Such examples reveal to us that the temporary alienation of the clergy from their bishop is not of itself a convincing proof that he will never win their confidence. It is for the Bishop of [Natal himself to prove by consistent toleration and forbearance, by devotion to the pastoral work and missionary enterprise of his diocese, that he has within him the making of a Christian Bishop, as well as of a fearless and industrious scholar. And if for a moment we may take a wider view, let us look not only at our own country, but at the greatest Church of the West, the Church of Eome. There is no other single cause of its weakness, so much lamented by its own more enlightened members, as the difficulty which its clergy find in expressing their real convictions. It is in the contrast which in this respect is presented by the Church of England, that lies our peculiar strength. The Bishop of Natal gives us more than he can ever take from us, by the testimony which is thus rendered to all the world that the power of thought and speech is still left to us, even in the highest ranks of our hierarch}\ This is worth a hundred mistakes that he may have made about the author of the Pentateuch. Had Richard Simon been allowed free scope in France, who can say how many weapons would have been snatched from the hands of Vol- taire ? Were Dollinger allowed free scope in Germany, and the Benedictine communities in Italy, who can say what prospects might not yet be in store for the struggling 342 THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTROVERSY. Essay VII. Papacy ? A famous French writer, in a striking passage, contrasts the outspoken expressions of the bon eveque Colenso (as he compassionately calls him) with what he designates ' the angelic silence ' of many of the priesthood of his own country, who devour their doubts, and stifle their intellectual convictions in secret. Such silence may be necessary in the Church of France and of Italy ; it may become necessary for us, but may we long be preserved from it, for it is the silence of death. It is not, then, as partisans of any one school, liberal or otherwise, that Churchmen are invited to pause before they take any step for restricting or condemning the. opinions now in question. It is because we are in a period of transition, in which Faith as well as Charity call upon us, in the simple but emphatic language of the Psalms, 6 to 6 wait.' That the extremest lengths of opinion in the oppo- site direction, even to the very verge of Rome, shall have free play within our pale, seems now to be admitted by all who take a calm view of the best interests of the National Church. All that is asked is, that the large liberty which is thus claimed and granted on one side should be as freely granted on another. This and similar reflections may, it is hoped, compensate to many excellent persons for any disappointment which they may naturally experience in the absence of premature decisions. The doctrines, as we have seen, of the Bishop of Natal are such as the Universal Church has never condemned ; such as within the Church of England are by law allowed. It may be that in the Church of Rome, the liberty of speculation which was formerly, and is still in theory, permitted within these same limits, is now become prac- tically impossible, and that to those of its communion, who once might have freely expressed their thoughts on these subjects, silence is now the only course. But for the ~"]SSAY VII. CONCLUSION. 343 Ckurcli of England^ still so closely allied with all that is bravest and freest in the heart of the English nation, we may still surely cherish better hopes : 6 Its true voice in ' this matter,' I quote words far better than my own, * is 6 such as becomes a Church which never was infallible and c is now reformed. It is a voice humble and persuasive 6 towards its members, duly respecting their liberty of 6 judgment, not provoking them to wrath when they go ' amiss, but reaching their hearts as the voice of one * affectionately desirous of them, on whatever side they £ may contend. There is no country where the Bible may c be more safely committed to free investigation than in 6 ours, because there is none in which it rests more firmly * on the faith and affection of the people ; none where the ' clergy may more boldly probe its nature and test its * grounds, because in none will it appear more inspired as * we go deeper into its substance. Nor will the Church of 6 England be relinquishing what the Coronation Service 6 truly calls " the most valuable thing which the world ' " contains," even though its Judges should acquit the 6 Bishop of Natal, and its Bishops re-invite him to their £ conclave.' 344 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE: Objections to the con- nection of Church and State. Their ob- jections. The connection of Church and State, whatever is meant by it — and unquestionably something is meant — is at pre- sent assailed from formidable, though very different, quar- ters. There is the old Nonconformist objection, originat- ing partly in a small fraction of the Puritans, partly in the Scottish Covenanters, which, though it has died out in its extremest form of the Antiburghers, still, with more or less intensity, pervades the religious creed of the modern Independents and Baptists of England and the United Pres- byterians with a portion of the Free Church of Scotland. There is the modern philosophical objection, which received a strong additional impulse at the French Ee volution of 1789, and fortifies itself by the example of the United States. And lastly, most formidable, perhaps, because most recent, and from within the Established Church itself, the modern High Church objection, which showed itself first in the Nonjurors, and then breaking out again with more force in the early Oxford e Tracts for the Times,' has reached its highest flights in our own day. Before entering on the question itself, it may be worth while briefly to indicate one circumstance in the growth of these objections, which somewhat diminishes the pres- tige that they would otherwise possess. That circumstance lies in the fact that in the first instance they all, as I have pointed out, had their rise in a temporary and transitory sentiment. The first beginning of the Nonconformist hos- 1 Address delivered in the Hall of Sion College, Feb. 15, 1868. Bssay VIII. ITS MEANING. 345 tility to the connection of Church and State arose, not from any scruple as to its abstract lawfulness, but from the antipathy of the Scottish Covenanters to any Govern- ment which would not take the Solemn League and Co- venant, and therefore to the Government of 1688, and from the natural irritation of the Puritan .Noncon for mists against the persecuting Acts of 1662. 1 The objection of the Liberal school in great measure arose from a just dislike of the Pope's temporal sovereignt}-— an institution which, so far from being identical with what is properly called the connection of State and Church, is an example of the opposite principle, that of guarding the separate powers of the clergy by special guarantees against the ordinary course of human and national law. The origin of the High Church objection, in like manner, arose, in the first instance, not so much from the tenets of the High Church party, who in Laud's time maintained the connection with considerable energy, as from the resist- ance of the Jacobite clergy to the Dutch and Hanoverian dynasties, and afterwards, at the time of the Oxford 6 Tracts,' from the alarm awakened by the suppression of the Irish bishoprics. In each instance, the vehemence of the feeling was continued after the occasion had passed away. But it has meanwhile taken the form of an ab- stract principle, threatening to undermine institutions very different from those which first engendered the sentiment. It is this abstract principle which gives force to the com- bination of these three new allies, and which it will be my attempt to combat. \That then is meant by the Connection of Church and The es- State P Doubtless the variety of elements which it includes ffnce ol » tne con- is at once its strength and its weakness — its strength, section 1 The Five Mile Act. the Conyenticle Act, and the now rescinded clauses of the Act of Uniformity. 346 CONNECTION OF CHUECH AND STATE. Essay VIII. not En- dowments ; because, as was observed by Mr. Mill, not one Act, but a hundred Acts of Parliament will be required to break it up ; its weakness, because it thus presents a wider surface for attack. For this reason, let me briefly distinguish its accidents from its essence. It is not the existence of Endowments. Endowments materially contribute to the same purpose as an Establish- ment, and perhaps in some shape almost necessarily flow from it ; but an Establishment may exist to a great degree without them, as in the case of Russia, and Endowments, as in the case of Nonconformist colleges, can exist without an Establishment, nor se- It is not the continuance of ecclesiastics in offices of ficeTonhe secular importance, such as the Cardinals in the admi- Ciergy; nistration of the Roman States, or the German Prelates in their Principalities, or the Bishops in the House of Lords, or the country clergy in the functions of Justices of the Peace. In point of fact, the English clergy are ex- cluded from the House of Commons by virtue of belong- ing to the Established Church. Nor would the connection of itself be broken, though it might be greatly weakened, were the State to delegate a large part of its ecclesiastical functions to an exclu- sively ecclesiastical body. To a certain degree this was actually the case in the General Councils under the Em- pire, and is still in the General Assembly of the Esta- blished Church of Scotland, and in most of the rules that relate to sacramental and quasi-sacramental ordi- nances in the Church of England. These and other like matters are indeed so many various forms of the connection of Church and State. But its essential features, which are sufficient to secure the prin- ciple however inadequately or faintly it be represented, may be simply stated thus : — nor con- stant in- terference of the State. The es- sonce of the con- nection of the Church and State. Essay VIII. ITS ADVANTAGES. 347 The first is that the State should recognise and support The recog- nition and some religious expression of the community ; the second, control of that this religious expression should be controlled and ^the1^ guided by the State. These two elements are inseparable, State- and must be attacked and defended together. It will be my purpose to show that, in spite of various objections which I shall state before I conclude, this connection has been, and may still be, fruitful, especially in England, of inestimable advantages both to the Clergy and the State. I. It is hardly necessary to repeat at length the argu- I. Prac- ments of Chalmers and of Arnold as to the benefit of vantage" of securing a clergy in those parts of the country where ^^c^" it is least likely that such a provision would be made Church by by the people themselves ; something saved 6 out of the £ scramble, which no covetousness can appropriate and 6 no folly waste ; a provision made for public purposes in 6 the most unattractive districts no less than in the most 6 inviting — a man of education placed in every part of the 6 country, in the most improving of all situations, that is, a 6 life of constant intercourse with men, of which the direct 6 and acknowledged business is to do them good physically 6 and morally.' It may be that if all the established clergy were withdrawn, and all the parish churches closed, there would be a rush of enthusiasm to fill up the vacant places. Such was to some degree the effect of Wesleyanism in the last century. But it would be a hazardous experiment, and it cannot be denied meantime that an immense amount of the revival of religious life in our day has taken place within and upon the framework of the parochial system. Even in the great outburst of Wesleyan fervour, there was no spot more blessed by its apostolic piety than the parish of Fletcher of Madely ; and the Wesleyan leaders them- selves, as well as the original founders of Nonconformity, 348 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. were originally nursed in the bosom of the National Chnrch. No such remedy of voluntary enthusiasm was provided in France, when the Established Clergy were overthrown in the Eevolution of 1793. An Established Church, says an eminent Nonconformist, if properly worked out, 6 supplies an instrumentality for 6 acting uniformly and constantly on the moral and spiri- 6 tual condition of the whole country which harmonises c with all our ideas of a perfect civilisation.' 1 II. General jj_m j pass on to less obvious but not less real advantages, tages. which appeal not only to the practical interests, but to the spiritual and speculative conscience of mankind. Nearest The connection of Church and State is the nearest ap- tothe p roach which, in oar complex modern society, can be made comtitu- ^° ^ne original and essential idea of the Christian Church. tion of the This may be best shown bv stating the most common Church. J objection to the institution. The fundamental objection, whether proceeding from Scottish Free Churchmen or English High Churchmen, is, that there is in the nature of ecclesiastical affairs something which makes it unlawful for lay or secular persons to approach them. The very expression 6 Theocracy,' often applied both by friends and enemies to a purely clerical government, implies a belief that there is in it a divine character which would be de- based if it were controlled or guided by any other than clerical hands. All the complaints, now so common, of 6 the 6 galling fetters of the State,' the c heavy price paid by the ' Church for its union with the State,' 6 the less the State * interferes the better,' ' the Erastian heresy,' the 6 eman- ' cipation of the Colonial Churches,' &c, imply a belief that, by their subjection to the power of the Law, the clergy are exposed to a servitude which they may perhaps 1 Catholic and Christian Church, p. 37 ; by the late lamented John James Tayler. Essay VIII. ITS ADVANTAGES. 849 bear in consideration of other advantages, bnt which ought to be reduced within the narrowest possible limits, and which ought to be thrown off whenever and wherever opportunity can be found. If we revert to the origin of the Christian Church, we The power shall see that the fundamental idea of the Church in the nt?*- L, iirisri3.ii New Testament is the reverse of this. It is that of a body commu- in which the officers, of whatever kind they may be, } Bishops, Presbyters, or Deacons, are ministers — that is, servants — of the whole community. As, in answer to the question, ' What is the Tiers-Etat ? ' Sieyes replied, ' The 4 nation, minus the clergy and the nobles;' so in answer to the question, £ What is the Laity ? ' Arnold replied, 6 The Church, minus the clergy.' Or, to use the language of one of my own predecessors, Dean Vincent, 6 It might 6 be thought an absurdity to call the large body of the £ laity " the Church," to the exclusion of the clergy ; and £ yet it is a far greater absurdity to call the small body of ' the clergy tk the Church," to the exclusion of the laity.' In whatever way the control of ecclesiastical affairs by the laity, or rather by the whole community, is exercised, there can be no question that it is in them that by the New Testament and by the first ages of Christendom the supremacy over the Clergy was vested. They elected their chief ministers, probably their inferior ministers also.1 They moulded their own creed, they administered their own discipline, they were the Ecclesia, the Assembly, ' the < Church.' But here arises the question, how, in the present com- How to he plex state of the world, and in the social condition of a now?^ country like England, is this right to be carried on ? How can the real mind of the Church be arrived at ? Not by the Clergy alone. In the middle ages, when so 1 Bingham, Antiquities, vol. i. pp. 335-146. 350 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. 1. Not by large a mass of the intelligence of Christendom was ab- alone;r&y sorbed in the clerical ranks, when metaphysical philo- sophers like Albertus Magnus, and scientific inquirers like Pope Sylvester, could be put side by side with theo- logians like Aquinas, and priests like Hildebrand, this might have been partially true ; but even then there were elements of life in the king, the nobles, and the people, elements especially of family life, of intellectual life, which the clergy failed to represent. St. Louis was a far truer exemplar of Christian virtue, Dante of Christian intelli- gence, than any ecclesiastic, however high in rank or however devout in character. And this is much more the case now, when the lay professions have been so infinitely multiplied. 2. Not by Not by an assembly of the whole Christian community, eSra-te ^ov ^ne simple reason that, in a nation like England, such national an assembly would be impossible: still less by separate assem- blies; assemblies in particular towns or pro vi aces, which could not represent the whole community itself. The formation of Christian nations is a fact which cannot now be revoked, and to exclude the principle of national life from reli- gious affairs would be to deprive religious thought of one of the noblest and most enkindling of human motives, not by the Not by what is called the lay element in church synods, lay eie- lavmen who, as a general rule, figure in such assem- Church blies do not represent the true lay mind of the Church, still less the lay intelligence of the whole country. They are often excellent men, given to good works, but they are also usually the partisans of some special clerical school ; they are, in short, clergymen under another form rather than the real laity themselves, but by the Where and how, then, can the true voice of the laity Church. ke foun(j for Church? Surely in the same manner as it is found in other spheres. Whatever is the motive Essay VIII. ITS ADVANTAGES. 351 guiding force that rules the intelligence and the conscience of the whole country, by whatever means that force is called forth, that is the lay element which in our age corresponds to the early assembly of the Christian Church. And this, in its highest form, is what we call the Govern- ment or the State. It is no disparagement to the Clergy, because, drawing into itself the essence of the whole community, it includes the Clergy as well as the Laity. Like everything human, the State is essentially imperfect ; but it is not more imperfect than the purely clerical governments. ~No Princes of secular States have led more abandoned lives than some of the Roman PontiSs ; no Parliaments have, except in the wild times of revolu- tion, committed more unchristian acts than those perpe- trated by the Councils of Constantinople, Ephesus, and Constance. The State may be despotic, but so may be a Bishop or a body of Bishops ; it may be democratic, but so may be a Convention or a Convocation. The language of the great secular press, at least in this country, is, speak- ing generally, more just, more truthful, more moderate, and therefore more Christian, than that of the so-called religious newspapers which claim to represent the senti- ments of the clerical and religious world. Of all earthly institutions, the State is that in the improvement and perfecting of which every class in the community has the deepest interest; and, speaking for a moment on Scrip- tural grounds, there is no existing institution which can claim from the Bible so distinctly sacred a character. Even before its conversion the Roman Empire was re- garded by the Apostle as a ' minister of God,' 6 ordained ' of God, the ordinance of God.' ~No stronger expressions can be found in the New Testament for any outward office or officer inside the Christian community. After its conversion, the State by a natural instinct assumed those 352 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. functions of the old Christian democracy which were felt incompatible with the changed condition of things. By the sovereigns of the State the chief ecclesiastical officers were appointed, as formerly by the tumultuous gatherings in the market-place. By them the Christian laity were represented in the Councils, as once by the ' brethren,' even after the claims of a distinct hierarchy had sprung up. And so it must emphatically be in such a country as ours. The supremacy of the Crown, that is, of the Law, over all causes, and over all persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil, is the supremacy of the whole nation over its own concerns, spiritual as well as temporal. It is no encroachment on that which does not belong to it. It is the direct expression of the laity and the clergy, through the best organs which the experience and wisdom of a thou- sand years have been able to contrive, on matters which touch them more immediately than any other interests in the world. It is by cultivating inde23endence, repressing servility, checking centralisation, reforming the represen- tation, amending the division of labour in its different departments, elevating the press, purifying public opinion, not by creating new institutions drawn from small sections of other communities, that you will ever get a true govern- ment for the Church of this great nation. Clergy and laity alike have a duty to conscience — a duty to God, which no law of either Church or State can touch ; a submission due to the real spiritual authority of Truth, with which no ecclesiastical and no secular decrees can interfere. 6 We must obey God rather than man,' is a principle which, if at times it requires resistance to the State, may equally require resistance to Popes and Coun- cils. But, so far from considering their position as servants of the State to be a degradation, not a few of the clergy regard it as their high honour and privi- Essay VIII. ITS ADVANTAGES. 353 lege ; nay, I cannot but believe that this is so, even in spite of themselves, with the majority of English pastors, both conforming and nonconforming. ' The Church of ' Christ,' as Arnold says, £ is indeed far above all human ' ties ; but England to a true Englishman ought to be far ' dearer than the Church of England,' or than any parti- cular form of Episcopacy, Presbyterianism, Independency, Wesleyanism, or Unitarianism, with which we may sever- ally have been brought into contact. We serve God before all; but next to our service of God is the service of our country through and in that particular calling in which Providence has placed us. A Judge is not less, but more a Judge, because he sits on the Queen's Bench ; a sailor is not less, but more animated with the independence and the courage of a sailor, because he serves in the Queen's ship; and a clergyman surely ought not to set forth Divine truth less faithfully, or consider the consciences of those with whom he hns to deal less tenderly, because he does it in the name of the Law, and as a representative, in his own place and calling, of the kingly Commonwealth of England. The fact is that, throuo-h all the arguments which are Confusion f tb used to undermine this grand position, there runs a secret ■ spiritual, belief that the word ' spiritual ' can be used for some process apart from the inward operation of our souls and spirits — a tacit assumption that some particular ecclesi- astical organisation, and that alone, is identical with the kingdom of Heaven, and that all civil organisations,1 and those alone, are identical with the kingdom of this world. If this were true, then, as Pope Innocent III. remarked long ago, the civil power must not only be separate from 1 ' If any -whosoever think the in- ' different tilings, I wish my soul may ' terests of Christians and the interests ' never enter into their secret.' — Oliver, 1 of the nation inconsistent, or two Cromwell. A A 354 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. the ecclesiastical power, but altogether subordinate to it ; and the clergy ought everywhere not only to be indepen- dent of the State, but to oppose and thwart it. The only consistent maintainers of this principle that I ever heard of were the Cameronians of a Highland parish, who delated their minister for having asked to have a post- office in the village — thus recognising for the first time the Government which had not accepted the Solemn League and Covenant. But the whole assumption is based on a mere abuse of words. The kingdom of Hea- ven— that is, the triumph of good over evil — is no more identical with any earthly organisation, either ecclesiastical or secular, than it is with geographical limits or external pomps. It is something above and beyond and through them all. The kingdom of Christ is not of this world at all ; not of this world as it appears on the throne of Kings, nor on the thrones of Bishops, nor on the benches of Parliament, nor in the seats of General Councils or of General Assemblies, nor in Conferences, whether sug- gested by the Emperor of the French at Paris, or by Canadian or African Bishops at Lambeth, nor even as founded by John Wesley in the great Conference of the Methodists. Every society, by the mere fact of its being a human society, must be temporal, must be guided by mixed motives, must have a temporal human govern- ment. When our Scottish friends say that Christ is the Head of the Church, in any other sense than that in which He is the Head of all Churches and all States alike, they are clothing with a splendid name a very commonplace insti- tution. A learned Scottish Judge remarked, in language as perspicuous as it is true, and as applicable to England as it is to Scotland, 1 The position that our Saviour is the ' Head of the Church of Scotland, in any temporal, or Essay VIII. ITS ADVANTAGES. 355 6 legislative, or judicial sense, is a position which I can ' dignify by no other name than absurdity.' I have heard of a conversation between a Free Church- woman and an Established Churchwoman to this effect : Free Churchwoman : 6 D'ye ken wha's the head of your 1 Church ? — It's the Queen.' Established Churchwoman : 6 Weel, I'm glad to hear it ; I believe that she's a very ' decent body. But d'ye ken wha's the head of your ( Church? — ye think ye ken wha it is — it's no such ' thing. I'll tell you — it's Joseph Thompson, the tailor, ' that neither ye nor the minister dare peep or wag a i finger, if it does not please him. He's the head of your ' Church ; and for my part I am quite as well content ' with the head of ours.' Strip this conversation of its grotesque personalities, and it exactly represents the true and the only difference between an Established and a so- called Free Church. The Headship of Christ in its true sense belongs equally to both Churches or to neither. Their actual earthly headship and governance, in the one case, is vested in the law and the government of the whole country ; in the other case, in the irresponsible in- fluence of some particular individual or congregation that happens for the moment to have gained the popular ear. I do not denv that there are advantages in the latter kind of headship, and disadvantages in the former ; but what I have maintained is, that one of them is no more spiritual Spiritual than the other, and what I shall proceed to show is that taces." the Constitutional headship of the State is more likely to be truly wise, truly just, and thus truly Christian, than the absolute headship either of a Bishop or of a Synod, or of the preponderating influence of some local leader or congregation in the next street. From these advantages I will select the most essential. 1. There is, first, the security that it gives for the supre- A A 2 356 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. ] . Suprc- macj of equal law in the most important of human interests. macy of Law. It is in the absence of calm, judicial wisdom that small societies, especially those animated by religious zeal, most signally fail. It was by emancipating themselves from the control of the law that the clergy of Western Christen- dom, in the middle ages, created a position as dangerous to themselves as it was mischievous to the whole community. The principle of the Constitutions of Clarendon, which subjected what were called spiritual persons to lay tribu- nals, though thwarted for nearly four hundred years by the reaction which followed the murder of Becket, is now acknowledged by almost every country in Europe as indis- pensable alike to the welfare of the clergy and the laity. No step more fatal for either could be taken than the endeavour to establish a new code of laws, applicable to the one and inapplicable to the other. It is this which constitutes the true mischief of the temporal power of the Pope. That exceptional power establishes in the one country where it exists a claim for the independence of the clergy, not only from the national laws whch govern all other citizens, but from the inter- national laws which govern all other States. It is the extremest exaggeration of the pretensions of the separation of the Church from the State. The Free Churches of Scot- land and the would-be Free Churches of England desire from their respective legislatures a protection of the sup- posed inalienable privileges of the ecclesiastical jurisdic- tion, which shall guard it against the entrance of the civil power. The Free Church of the Papacy demands from the Emperor of the French the protection of Chassepot rifles to enable it to suppress the national and reforming ten- dencies of its own subjects. The one thing which these several societies in common need and dread is the just and equal administration of law to all classes. I quote Essay VIII. ITS ADVANTAGES. 357 from tlie words of a liberal and pious Roman Catholic : 4 Indifference to justice between man and man is pre- 6 eminently the fault into which a clerical body is apt to * fall, which . . . rejects everything approaching to public i responsibility as detestable and anti-Christian.' 1 I quote also from a distinguished Scottish Judge : ' I cannot for- ' get that, under the discipline of one of the best Christians 6 and greatest theologians the Church ever knew — that of c the great Calvin — 414 public trials took place before the ' Consistory in two years (1558 and 1559), ending not only c in Church censures, but many in civil punishments, for 4 matters a great number of which there is not a pious £ Christian of the present day who would not deem wholly 1 unfit to be noticed in any other way than by private re- ' buke.' 2 The chief example of a Judge on religious matters whom St. Paul and St. Luke hold up to us as a model of impartial justice, but whose name with eccle- siastical zealots has by a strange mistake of interpretation become a term of reproach, is the Proconsul Gallio. e He ' cared for none of these things,' says the author of the Acts, with a genuine burst of admiration, as he records his noble indifference to the popular clamour of the Jews at his judgment-seat. And had the course of law, as it might easily have done, led him not to dismiss the com- plaints, but to go into them at length,3 it would still have been with the same calm and dispassionate serenity which so well became the blameless brother of Seneca and the magistrate, whom St. Paul calls, ' God's minister to him ' for good,' 6 a terror not to the good ' works of faith and love, ' but to the evil spirit ' of fanaticism and oppression. 2. Secondly, there is the opportunity given in a higher 1 Letter in the Guardian, June 15, 1849, quoted in the admirable work of 1867. Mr. A. Taylor Innes on The Law of 2 Lord Justice Clerk Hope, in the Creeds in Scotland, p. 225. case of 'Sturrock v. Greig,' July 3, 3 Ibid. pp. 330, 331. 358 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. 2. Oppor- tunity for develop- ment of religious freedom. degree than has been found possible elsewhere, or by any other means that have yet been discovered, for the gradual growth of religious forms and religious opinions, and of that free expression of individual belief which is indis- pensable to any healthy development of religious action. And the changes conducted by the power of a great State are far more likely to be in conformity with the feelings of the whole community, and of the most intelligent part of it, than those which are proposed and carried by majorities in excited clerical or quasi-clerical meetings. The Reformation in every country in Europe, except Holland, was carried by the direct intervention and aid of the Government. The beneficial changes which have been made in the ecclesiastical regulations of England — those which are most precious to the Nonconformists, and which are clearly recognised to be good, even by those who at the time most resisted them — were all effected by the Legislature, that is, not by the Clergy alone, or by the Dissenters alone, sometimes against the advice of both or of each, but by the joint effort of the whole Christian community. Such were the Toleration Act, the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the Test and Corporation Act, the Roman Catholic Relief Act, the Acts for the Reform of the Church and of the Universities, and for the Relaxa- tion of Subscription. The interpretations of the English formularies by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council have not only been almost all favourable to freedom, but have almost all been acquiesced in subsequently even by those who at the time regarded them with the greatest alarm. Of the Gorham decision it has been truly said, that so far from its having been a heavy price to pay for the connection of Church and State, it was a blessing which hardly any price would have been too heavy to purchase. The Essay VIII. ITS ADVANTAGES. 359 doctrine which it was thought to disparage, if preached less constantly, is not held less strongly — the doctrine which it tolerated is held without its former bitterness, and without the sense of irritation. The Ritual judgments are the only acts of authority which have had the slightest effect in tranquillising the fierce passions engendered on either side. Of the 6 Essays and Reviews ' judgment, even High Churchmen are beginning to acknowledge that any other decision would have been in direct contravention of those General Councils which High Churchmen most de- light to honour. It may be observed, in passing, that deci- sions of this kind, though they constitute the chief point against which the missiles of Liberationists, whether inside or outside the Church, are directed, yet are the very point of contact between the State and religious convic- tions, in which almost every ecclesiastical community is equally concerned. No question of interpretation of doc- trine, in regard to property, can arise in any religious body in England which may not eventually be brought before a tribunal of this nature for its settlement. It is the only tribunal in which all the contending parties will acquiesce. The only difference in this respect between tKe Roman Catholic and Protestant Nonconformists on the one side, and the Church of England on the other, is, that the Church of England, in its Articles and constitution, openly acknowledges the principle which the others admit indirectly. When Cardinal Wiseman taunted the Church of England with having appealed from the High Priest's hall to the Hall of Caesar, he might have remembered that this was exactly the course gladly pursued by the Apostle Paul before Festus, and that the judgment-seat of Pilate, the Roman magistrate, was the one opening of escape from the dark and iniquitous judgment of the High Priest Caiaphas. He might also have remembered that it 360 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. was an appeal which he himself, willingly or unwillingly, must have made, had a question in regard to property arisen, touching that large class of doctrines which one section of the Roman Catholic world regards as lawful, the other as unlawful within their Church. The only Protestant community which seems to have succeeded in making the ecclesiastical tribunals absolutely irresponsible is that of the United States. There, by an ingenious system of distinguishing between Churches and Corporations, St. Paul's right of appeal seems to be almost entirely foreclosed — I say 6 almost,' for even there the complex definitions of the American law appear to have left a loophole,1 through which in some future time the right of individual members or ministers may be protected. It is remarkable that in the United States, whatever may be the case in regard to the expression of general opinion, the expression of opinion within the particular Churches is less free than it is in England. The Episco- palians of America have, I am told, no elements within their body corresponding to those which furnish the strongest stimulus to learning and inquiry in our Church. The Independents of America have re-enacted the strin- gent Savoy Confession which the English Independents in the neighbourhood of an Established Church have thrown aside.2 3 Elasti- 3. Thirdly, from this elasticity and capacity of growth city of the — as wei\ as from the mere fact that the religion acknow- Natioual m t ... Church. ledged by the State is the National religion — it furnishes 1 Law of Creeds in Scotland, p. 410. bolted. Publicity no doubt is a con- 2 In England and Scotland it is a dition which all bodies, aiming at ends significant token of the protection and not contemplated by the law, are control which the law insists on exer- anxious to avoid, and it is therefore cising over Non-established bodies, so much the more remarkable an in- that the doors of their churches, like stanceof the interference of the Govern- those of Established Churches, are mont^to secure it. — Law of Creeds in forbidden to be locked, barred, or Scotland, p. 246. Essay VIII. ITS ADVANTAGES. 361 a refuge for the simple and childlike, as well as for the aspiring and comprehensive, minds of every community. The State, it has been often said by way of objection, cannot enter into the detailed dogmatic belief of particular sects. It must be latitudinarian ; it must, as in Great Britain, recognise the possibility of different forms of Christian faith — as of Presbyterianism in Scotland, Angli- canism in England, Roman Catholicism in Ireland; it must, as in France and Prussia, recognise as national both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Church. This, however, is one of the best arguments in its favour. It is the ground of the comprehensiveness of the Church of England. It thus fulfils the ideal which the 6 ever-memo- 6 rable Hales ' drew of a National Church — that its shield should be as near as possible like that of Amphiaraus ; a blank shield, with no device of party or sect. It fulfils the ideal of the Early Church — an ark, a vessel contain- ing tl*e clean and unclean beasts alike. What we often mean by f profound ' is, as Talleyrand well remarked, not deep but hollow. If the theology of the State is not pro- found, at any rate it is not hollow. It is much nearer to the theology of Bacon, Shakspeare, Walter Scott, — the theology of Butler and, in great part, of Hooker, and of that long line of self-controlled theologians, which, beginning with some of the Alexandrian and Greek Fathers, reappearing more fully in Erasmus, Grotius, Hales, Chillingworth, Cudworth, Taylor, Baxter in his latest years, and in the fundamental tenets of Wesley, has formed the backbone of Christian theology, on which all who are not partisans of either ex- treme will ever fall back in their calmer and better moods. No one will accuse Burke of lukewarmness in philosophy or religion, yet he says : c Had I possessed a vote when 1 the Directory was going to be established, I would have ' divided for the Common Prayer ; or had I lived when 362 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. 6 the Common Prayer was re-established, I should have ' voted for the Directory. The reason is obvious. They ' were not essentially different. Neither contained any- * thing contrary to the Scriptures, or that could shock a c rational Christian.' 1 No doubt the judicial decisions of Privy Councils, as well as of General Councils, ' may err, and sometimes have 6 erred, even in matters pertaining to the faith.' The case of Mr. Heath is an unfortunate instance of a clergy- man having been deprived of his benefice virtually because he was deaf. But still, in point of fact, the theology of these great judicial sentences has frequently been as good as the law. There is, perhaps, no decision of any Council or Holy Office equal in moderation and insight to that of the Grorham Judgment, unless it be that which so greatly resembles it in its inclusion of two opposite principles — the decision of the First Council at Jerusalem. Many good men think that this is a dangerous latitude, and that the main use of independent ecclesiastical courts is to secure unity in doctrine. But look at the case of Scotland. No Churches have been more torn by disputes on what they believe to be essentials than the Free Churches of Scotland, and yet, outside their own communities, it is impossible for any human being to distinguish or unravel the points in dispute. What is true of the quarrels be- tween the Relief and Secession Churches in the hio«hest degree, is true more or less of many of the questions to which each theological sect attaches most importance, but which the State would probably treat as they would be treated by all except the special partisans of the opinions in question. ' There is some one,' said Talleyrand, speaking of worldly politics, ' more clever than Yoltaire, more sagacious than 1 "Burke's Works, i. 94. Essay VIII. ITS EVILS. 363 ' Napoleon, more shrewd than each minister, past, present, c and to come, and that some one is everybody.' ' There e is some one,' we may say, in ecclesiastical politics, £ more ' learned, more able, and more versatile than any indivi- 6 dnal Bishop — more likely to be right than the Pope of 4 Rome, or the Wesleyan Conference, or the General As- ' sembly — and that is the whole community.' The connection of the Church with the State is, in this respect, merely another form of that great Christian prin- ciple— that cardinal doctrine of the Reformation, which is at the same time truly Catholic and truly Apostolical — that Christian life and Christian theology thrive the most vigorously, not by separation, and isolation, and secresy, but by intercommunion with the domestic and social rela- tions of man — in the world, though not of it. What the marriage of the clergy, what the religious tone of the laity, what the free expressions of religious opinion in literature, are in^common life — may I say, what Westminster Abbey is in the ecclesiastical architecture of England ? — that the control of the State and the connection with the State is to the Christian Church. We of the Established Church have doubtless much to learn from Nonconformists ; but, if we were to become Nonconformists, even for the sake of conforming with opinions most like our own, we could only do so by surrendering — I do not say our worldly advan- tages, but what I trust most of us would value far more, as the chief privilege of our position, that which binds us to a common Christianity apart from any particular sect, that which unites us to the past history of our country, to the national life of the present, to the possible hopes of the future. III. I now proceed to state, briefly, the real objections DX Oi.jec- to the connection, which I quite acknowledge, but which tl0us' admit, I hope, partly of an answer, partly of a remedy. 364 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. l Difficulty 1. There is the impediment which the incorporation of of change. ecciosias£icai affairs with the State places in the way of an unlimited expression of sentiment, and an unlimited change of ritual or creed. There can be no doubt that nothing but the law at this moment prevents an explosion of opinions and a diversity of worship which would, for the time, be the highest gratification to many excellent persons of all kinds. But, first, the resistance to wholesome changes and re- movals of restraint exists socially, if not legally, in Non- established communities, and in Established Churches proceeds far more from the Clergy than from the State. Whatever difficulty there may be in removing the Confes- sion of Faith from the Established Church of Scotland, exists in a far deeper form in the Free Church. Whatever obstacles arose in England to the relaxation of Subscription, and to the abolition of what were erroneously called the State Services (that is, the services which had been composed by Convocation without the consent of Parlia- ment), were not from the State, but from the Clergy. Almost to the last these changes met with support only from a few individuals in the clerical body, though now that they are effected everyone acknowledges their ad- vantage. And if once the laity appreciated the true importance of their position in the Church ; if once the clergy were possessed with a desire to avail themselves of their assistance — the facility of effecting all desirable changes would be infinitely increased. And, secondly, the self-restraint rendered necessary by such a state of things is on the whole beneficial, especially when, as in England, there is perfect freedom to retire ; and the fact that, with this freedom, so few do secede, is a proof that, in spite of all declamations to the contrary, the Establishment is regarded as the Themistocles of Essay VIII. ITS EVILS. 365 the country. High Churchmen, Broad Churchmen, Low Churchmen, perhaps even Nonconformists, however much they would each desire to see their own plans carried out, yet feel a stronger spiritual attraction towards the Church of England than towards any other community that invites their allegiance. 2. Another drawback is the corrupting influence of the 2. Worldly . no i - influences. great worldly positions which are sometimes offered m Established Churches — the immense temptation to suppress conviction, to avoid or attack unpopular names, to secure the support of powerful parties or individuals. No one can question the reality of this evil who has lived in the turmoil of ecclesiastical life, or witnessed one or two of those long successions of shocks of bishoprics, deaneries, canonries, and rectories, occasioned by the fall of an archbishopric. But, first, it is an evil which depends more on the hierar- chical constitution of the Clergy than on the influences of the State. In the Established Presbyterian Church of Scotland it hardly exists at all. In the Papal Court, where the clergy reign supreme, with hardly any admixture of lay influence, the evil is greater than with us. Nothing can be more secular than the motives which regulated the election of Pius VII., as recorded, with the utmost naivete, by Consalvi, Secretary of the Conclave — the more re- markable because the Papacy was at that time separated from its temporal monarchy, and both Pius VII. and Consalvi were eminently respectable men. No characters and no stratagems can be more entirely worldly than those exhibited in the picture, of which the faithfulness is not questioned, of the schemes of Dr. Packthread, in Mrs. Stowe's novel of ' Dred,' in the Free Churches on the other side of the Atlantic. A certain exclusive ardour and purity of discipline may be kept alive by breaking up the religious community into 366 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. small fragments. But this principle, .to be consistently carried out, must divide and subdivide infinitesimally. The answer of Constantine to the first Puritan — the first Liber ationist, the Novatian Acesius — is still true : 4 Take 6 a ladder, and climb up to heaven by yourself.' I quite concede the advantages which even a solitary hermit like Acesius confers on the Christian world by his independence and austerity of life. It is one of the large debts which we owe to Nonconformists, that they have vindicated in England the sacredness of the individual conscience, the ideal of Christian purity, the noble impe- tuosity of Christian enthusiasm. All honour to them for it ! But, on the other hand, they themselves, I believe, would testify to the jealousies and narrowness engendered by the machinations of small religious circles.1 1 ' Dissenting Churches, as a whole, 1 with Dissenting religious life — the ' fail to be " in the world, yet not of it." 4 exaggeration constantly made of the 4 They are not 14 churches in the world," 4 importance of such Church member- 4 far less The Church — the Body of 4 ship — degrading as it does communion 4 Christ in the world — but 44 cliques 4 of saints into communion with a par- 4 44 apart from the world ; " very pious ' ticular party, or a clique calling itself 4 and earnest, doubtless, but of a piety 4 and 44 voting " itself a 44 Church " ? 4 that locks itself up in the chapel and 4 As to Church discipline over the 4 the Sunday, and never escapes into 4 clergy, who that knows how ministers ' the market and the weekday. ' are got for congregations, the infiu- 4 Objection is taken to Hooker's 4 ence of Heads of Colleges, the jealousy 4 position, that every member of the ' of Deacons, the suspicious inquiries 4 Commonwealth is also of the Church 4 regularly instituted, will not say that 4 of England, because, therefore, 44 no 4 (imperfect, from laxness or from mar- ' 44 discipline can be maintained over 4 tinet rigidity, as may be the examina- 4 4 4 laity and clergy." I have no space 4 tion of Bishops' Chaplains, and the 4 or time now to argue whether the 4 usual routine of Ordination, yet) the 4 whole position of Dissenting Churches 4 satisfaction of being beyond the worry 4 is not unsound ; but, taking the facts 4 of sectarian suspicion, when once the 4 as they are, what greater bondage can 4 Creeds and Articles are signed, and a 4 be imagined on ministers and people 4 recognised legal protection spread over 4 than the frequent terms of trust- 4 one, is infinitely to be preferred by 4 deeds ? — what more notorious than ' any noble independent mind ? If 4 the inconsistency between the opinions 4 any one wants to know this, let him 4 of many members, and even ministers, 4 read the pages of the 44 Christian 4 and those laid down in trust-deeds? 4 4 4 Spectator " and 44 Salem Chapel." 4 And as to Church membership, who 4 Dissenting pulpits are either occupied 4 knows not— that is at all acquainted 4 by men strong enough to kick down Essay VIII. ITS EVILS. 367 I would add also that some of the points of contact with the world in the Established Church, which cause most offence, have a side which its assailants perhaps have not sufficiently considered . The seats of Bishops in the House of Lords are important not so much as giving them addi- tional dignity, but as bringing them into free and equal intercourse with the laity, and under the direct control of public opinion and public questioning. Nor will the ecclesiastics of the State Church be found, on the whole, to have been more servile towards the State, whilst they have probably been less servile towards the people, than the unendowed and unestablished ministers. If Bishop Horsley was swept away by the anti-revolu- tionary panic of 1793, so was Eobert Hall. Bishop Ken was bolder in his rebukes to Charles II. than the Quaker Penn to his brother James ; and in that great struggle for English liberty, it was not the Nonconformists, but ' the petty narrowness that surrounds 1 them ; or are subject to the influence ' of every coterie of old women, or : young women, or " large " subscribers, '"weighty" friends, and elderly dea- ; cons in the Church or Congregational circle, without half the education or a tithe of the sense of the minister. There are plenty of Dissenting minis- : ters who have joined the Church — ask them whether the act of sub- ; scribing to the Articles has not been 1 like drawing a long breath of deliver- ance after years of worse than Lilli- ; putian bondage and arrow-pricks to Gulliver? ' Then, as to discipline over the laity, one of the chief points long in dis- cussion among Dissenters is the " de- " putation practice ; " in sending a couple or more members, deacons or others, to wait upon and examino a candidate for membership. In London, I am informed, it is much • given up ; and I know of young ' ministers who are breaking down the ' practice, from the intolerable intru- ' sion on private conscience it has 1 become. And as to the inconvenience ' lately felt in the legal limits of ' parishes, and the authority of clergy 1 within them against intruders, I can ' only say there is plenty of jealousy ' among Dissenters of one another ; 1 and at the worst it reminds me of a 1 Scotch saying in regard to abuses ' grown with years in long-established 1 institutions compared with new ones: ' " When your lum (chimney) has 1 " reeked as long as ours, we'll see 1 "whilk will be the mirkiest " — (i.e. the 'dirtiest)!' — From a Letter to the English Churchman, by 'A Dissenter against his Will.' This may contain exaggerations, but still it gives one side of the picture that ought not to be overlooked. 868 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. the Seven Bishops of the State Church, who bj their in- dependence saved both Church and State. Choice 3. Another objection is, that it is unfair of the State 3reed. to choose one creed, and set it up above the others. Doubtless this is a serious difficulty, which can only be truly met by making this creed as wide as possible, and by maintaining that which is the creed of the large majority of the nation. At the present moment, how- ever, the only test, in fact, of membership in the English Church is the Apostles' Creed. The subscription to the XXXIX Articles, imposed on the Clergy and the Univer- sity of Oxford, was a later and extrinsic addition, which the most eager advocates of the union of Church and State have severally endeavoured to mitigate or remove — an endeavour which has, in recent times, been to a great extent successful. But, in point of fact, the State has never, strictly speaking, made a choice at all. The Church of England, meaning thereby the ecclesiastical system of England, has grown up, historically, like all the other elements of the English Commonwealth. It is not a single institution, but a group of institutions — not a corporation, but a group of corporations ; and the State can be said to have chosen these only in the same way as it has chosen Monarchy, and the House of Lords, and the Universities, and the House of Commons, and the Three Denominations, each in their several ways. This is the true reason of the retention of much that might else have better not existed, and also the ground for believing in the possibility of the peaceable modifi- cation of that which needs alteration. So far as there is an exclusive creed, a narrow choice, so far the Esta- blished Church is no doubt an evil ; because, so far, it descends to the level of a sect. And, therefore, the more barriers it can wisely throw down, the more open it can render its Ministry and its Universities, so much the more Essay VIII. ITS EVILS. 369 has it fulfilled its true mission ; so much the more nearly does it rise to the true nobleness of a National Church, which is the nearest approach that, in the present condi- tion of the world, can be made to a Catholic Church. 4. Lastly, there is the objection that the State recogni- Social tion, be it great or small, involves an unfair and injurious meut.r amount of social disparagement. I am not sure how much this exists ; but, as far as it does exist, we ought all to grant that it is an unmixed evil, which ought to be recognised as such by none so keenly as the Clergy of the Established Church, or with so earnest a desire for its disappearance. It proceeds, however, not so much from the national posi- tion of the clergy, as from an ill- understood view of the claims of the Episcopal succession. Accordingly, it is a fact that the language of American and Scottish Episcopalians is often far more contemptuous towards their Presbyterian brethren than that which is heard from the majority of English Churchmen. Let us hope that this estrangement, which has doubtless of late years already diminished, may altogether cease, and that we may more and more learn to treat our Dissenting brethren as our friends, our equals, our allies — in one word, as £ Nonconforming members and ministers of the National ' Church.' And I would here venture to suggest one particular remedy which would be at once practicable and efficient. Reunion, absorption, intercommunion, or the like, may be desirable or not. These must be the end, and not the beginning, of close approximation. But larger commu- nity of preaching — the permission to our Nonconforming brethren of England, and our Presbyterian brethren of the Scottish Church, to preach in our pulpits, under whatever restrictions they or we might desire — would be an unmixed good. It would be but giving to Nonepiscopalians what B B 370 CONNECTION OF CHUECH AND STATE. Essay VIII. we have, within the last few years, granted to the Episco- palian Nonconformists of America and Scotland. It would be but restoring to Presbyterians the sympathy and the rights which they enjoyed in the Church of England during the first hundred years after the Reformation. It is all but legal, if it is not altogether legal now.1 This would indeed be an endeavour to make the Church really national ; to draw the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to the fathers ; to atone for the in- juries, to heal the bitterness, and to repair the lost op- portunities, of the past. It is, at any rate, in efforts of this nature — in bringing together our own countrymen into one communion and fellowship of good words and good works, whether of outward form or not — that our energies are far better spent, than in schemes of remote unions with distant Churches which we may never see, or systems of independent and separatist organisations amongst ourselves. Conclu- I have run rapidly through this great subject. The sion. necessary imperfections of the connection of Church and State I have freely allowed. Like every human institu- tion, it may be doomed to destruction, and to be succeeded by something better than itself. It may fall, as a relic of the past, with all the other old institutions of England — the Monarchy, the Aristocracy, the mysterious Constitution itself. It may be that we shall live to see the triumph of the triple alliance between the descendants of the Puritans, the descendants of Rousseau, and the descendants of Laud. It may be that we shall see this venerable growth of English history uprooted, the parochial system swept away, the National Church divided into fragments, the cathedral and parish churches closed, Westminster Abbey sold to the first chance purchaser for what its stones are 3 See Note appended to this Address. Essay VIII. CONCLUSION. 371 worth ; the Episcopalian clergy left to the tender mercies of irresponsible Bishops, the Presbyterian clergy to the equally irresponsible tribunals of Presbyteries and General Assemblies; the nation at large cut off from any control over the greatest and most sacred of all its interests ; the true voice of the laity and of the Church silenced in its greatest and most powerful organ ; the nation ceasing to recognise the loftiest and purest of all the missions en- trusted to it. This, and nothing less than this, will be a true and complete separation of Church and State. This may be, and out of this chaos our children may be called laboriously to construct a new order of things. But, till the fatal hour be come, I, for one, am prepared, as an American Bishop, impressed with the evils of his own system, recently urged us, ' to fight for our present con- c stitution, to the moral death.' Let us reform, enlarge, ease the system as much as we can; but let us not, without a struggle, consent to see this backbone of the English Church and Commonwealth broken to pieces. Let us not rashly part with the framework which, with all its faults, has sheltered, down to this time, what has been truly called ' the learning of the most learned, the * freedom of the freest, and the reason of the most rational ' Church in Christendom.' Let us not be ashamed of that theory of the Church of England which was proclaimed by Cranmer and Ridley, which satisfied Burke and Coleridge, which inspired Hooker and Arnold with enthusiastic love and admiration. Let us not be ashamed to be Erastian with St. Paul. Let us not, so long as Providence permits, willingly surrender the best opportunity which the world affords for an easy growth, side by side, of scientific enquiry and religious earnestness, such as will meet the natural wants of the English character, and the needs of future generations. Let us not cast away the golden B B 2 372 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. chance for this age of transition — which enables us to wait in patience the changes and the trials and the blessings which may be in store for us — the golden chance which, when it is gone, will perhaps be vainly lamented by those who, within and without the Es- tablishment, are labouring to cast it aside. Episcopa- lians, Eoman Catholics, Wesleyans, Unitarians, Indepen- dents, Quakers we may become, if the Establishment is overthrown ; but English Churchmen, with all which that name implies of glory in the past, and of hope in the future, we shall be no more. And, therefore, for all the reasons which I have urged, in spite of all obloquy from my High Church, my Liberal, and my Nonconformist friends, I still venture to trust that the Church of Eng- land may yet continue as ' a Free Church in a Free State ' — not in that degraded sense in which it means an en- slaved Clergy amidst an indifferent Laity, but in the only true and exalted sense which those words ought to bear — in the sense of a Clergy whose freedom is bounded only by Law, and a State in whose free constitution and free press and free aspirations the voice of the Church finds its best expression. NOTE. THE SOCIAL RELATION OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH TO NONCONFORMISTS. The proposal to admit Nonconformist ministers, or the Presbyterian clergy of the Established Church of Scotland, to preach, under certain conditions, in the pulpits of the Church of England, would probably conduce so greatly to a better state of religious feeling, and an enlarged Essay VIII. RELATION OF NONCONFORMISTS. 373 efficiency of the whole ecclesiastical force of the country, that it may be worth while to show how entirely it would be in conformity with principles and practices already acknowledged in the Church of England. During the hundred years from the Reformation to the Permissi Restoration, there is no doubt that it was the acknow- to Preach ledged usage. Under the 13th Eliz. c. 12, Presbyterian divines were permitted, on conforming to part of the XXXIX Articles, not only to preach, but to hold bene- fices, in the English Church.1 At the Restoration this was prohibited. But even under the Act of Uniformity (13 & 14 Car. II. c. 15-20) it was possible, though under limitations of a more stringent character, for lecturers to preach even in parish churches with the consent of the Bishop, and in cathedral and collegiate churches with the consent of the ordinary, and accordingly Howe and Calamy did so preach occasionally,2 For these stringent regula- tions have now been substituted the milder forms pre- scribed by the recent Subscription Act. In this way, even without any alteration of the law, such occasional and exceptional lecturers or preachers, if they could so far conform, might be admitted. The question remains, whe- ther the very wide latitude afforded by the recent change would fail to include any large body of Nonconformists. At any rate the permission, limited as it is, admits the principle. And even the Act of Uniformity (13 & 14 Car. II. c. 9, 11) appears to allow to Nonepiscopal fo- reigners or aliens not only the power of preaching, but of holding benefices. Further, by 32 George III. c. 63, the clergy of the Pro- testant Episcopal Church of Scotland, who are in the 1 Historical Inquiry, whether the England (London, 1859), p. 27. Ministers of Konepiscopal Churches 2 Life of John Howe, by Henry may receive Allowance to preach occa' Rogers, p. 176. — Baxter's Memoirs, p, sionally in the Pulpits of the Church of 386. 374 CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. position of Dissenters towards the Established Churches of both countries, were permitted to officiate with the consent of the Bishop, although belonging to a different communion, and in some important points, both of ritual and discipline, divergent from the forms of the Church of England. And yet more, by 3 & 4 Victoria, c. 33, any one ordained by the Bishops of the Protestant Epi- scopal Church in the United States, is allowed the same privilege ; so that it is now lawful for clergymen to preach in our pulpits, who (with the American Episcopalians) entirely reject the Athanasian Creed, omit one of the Articles of the Apostles' Creed, and have adopted modifi- cations of the Visitation and Burial Services — changes which, whether rightly or wrongly, remove what many Nonconformists regard as the chief stumblingblocks of the existing English Liturgy. ' As matters now stand,' writes an able and conscientious minister (who calls him- self 'A Dissenter against his Will'), 6 1 could cross the ' Atlantic, and come back an ordained brother of English * Churchmen, ready for any kindly recognition any Bishop ' on this side would grant me for the sake of his Ameri- ' can brother.' It is obvious that this circuitous opening through the American Church does, in fact, admit not only the whole principle here advocated, but a large part of the practice. It may be further pointed out, that there is not any- thing either in the practice or principle of allowing Nonepiscopalians to preach in our churches (under such conditions as might be agreed upon) to which the ex- tremest High Churchman need object. It is not proposed — Nonconformists themselves probably would not wish — that they should be authorised to administer the Sacra- ment of the Lord's Supper, or to ordain. But the right of persons not episcopally ordained to preach has been Essay VIII. RELATION OF NONCONFORMISTS. 375 recognised at all times, both in the ancient and in the Roman Church. The famous preachers Pantsenus, Origen, and St. Anthony, the founder of the monastic rule, were not in orders at all. St. Francis, when he first commenced his great career of preaching, was neither priest nor deacon. In the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States (lately recognised, by a large section of the Eng- lish Episcopate, as part 'of the Anglican Communion') it is, I believe, a not infrequent practice of the clergy to admit Nonepiscopal ministers to preach in their pulpits. The principle, therefore, is one which is recognised not only by English law, but by those ecclesiastical authorities which are regarded with most reverence by the only per- sons in the Church to whom such a practice could be expected to give umbrage. 1 have ventured to suggest, for the consideration of our ecclesiastical rulers, this relaxation of our system, as in- volving the maximum of increased usefulness and good feel- ing on both sides, with the minimum of organic change. There are two other measures which, whilst desirable on other grounds, would tend indefinitely to diminish the social estrangement which every true member of the National Church must deplore. One is the opportunity of including Nonconformists Revision with Churchmen whenever the time shall COme for the Authorised revision of the Authorised Version. Whenever the reve- Yerslon- rential interest of Englishmen in the Bible shall have so increased as to render it impossible for the clergy and laity of the Church to continue to read, as Scripture, texts known to be spurious, translations of passages known to be erroneous, and large portions of the Old Testament, of which the meaning is perverted, then will come the day, which it would be as wrong prematurely to anti- cipate as it would be needlessly to retard, when the 37G CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Essay VIII. question must be considered, to whose hands this most delicate yet necessary task must be confided. And inas- much as the Authorised Version has become the property of the whole Protestant Anglo-Saxon community, and forms a religious bond between its different parts, closer than any other which exists, it is manifest that any sub- stitute for it must combine as great and as extended an authority as is possible to obtain. This — besides the pro- bable need of invoking the learning of the Nonconformist as well as of the Established divines — would make it necessary that, in any Commission for the revision of the translation, both should have their place. For such a recognition of unity, for such a reunion in the grandest of all the works which belong to a National Church, we must look forward, and, looking forward, do all that in us lies to prepare for its accomplishment. Admission Another such means may be specially named — the free Univer- admission of Nonconformists to our Universities. There sities. may, especially in regard to the Colleges, be some prac- tical difficulties of detail ; but the general effects of such a measure (if past experience can enable us to forecast the future) can hardly fail to exercise the most beneficial influence both on the Church and the Dissenters. It must be remarked, that the same alarm as that now expressed has appeared at the proposal of each successive relaxation of the academical tests. It was expressed by hundreds when it was proposed to abolish the subscription to the Articles at matriculation. It was expressed again when it was proposed to abolish the subscription at the degree of B.A. It was expressed again, I believe, at every attempt to abolish the subscription at the degree of M.A., even after it had ceased, in its stringent form, to be exacted from the clergy. The ancient Universities and Colleges afford exactly that field of equal social inter- course, which would most effectually soften the exaspera- Essay VIII. RELATION OF NONCONFORMISTS. 377 tion and reduce the misunderstanding which now exist between Churchmen and Nonconformists. Whilst — speak- ing as a Churchman, and as one who desires to maintain, so far as it can be maintained, the influence of venerable and sacred associations — the genius of the place and the prevailing atmosphere of the society would have more power than any other single agency, I do not say to turn Nonconformists into Churchmen, or Eoman Catholics into Protestants, or sceptical inquirers into devout believers, but at least to remove that sense of estrangement and hostility which now makes all approaches between them so difficult and so precarious. There is not at present — there has not been for the last forty years — any lack of theological divisions within the University of Oxford. It has been the very battlefield of the contending armies, not of the Church of England only, but of the intellectual and ecclesiastical struggles of the whole nation. But the humanising, civilising, Christianising effects of the sense of a common University, of a common course of education, of a common pursuit of truth and of goodness, have ren- dered these differences compatible not only with private friendship, but with kindly sympathy — with earnest active work for the interests which the best spirits of the con- tending schools have at heart.1 1 Since these words were written, not three years ago, the two last of these proposals have been brought to the very eve of accomplishment. The union of Nonconformists with Church- men in the Revision of the Authorised Version has been proposed by the most exclusive party in the Church, and even should the Government abdicate its proper function of taking the lead in so great a national work, it is now certain that if it be done at all, it can only be by such a cooperation of the whole forces of English Religion and English Scholarship as is here con- templated. The entire opening of the Universities has also received so great an impulse both from within and with- out the Universities, that it is hardly possible to believe that so manifest a blessing will be any longer withheld by the Legislature. There remains the first of the three proposals — that of admitting Nonconformists to our pul- pits. When we think who are the preachers that we thus exclude, and what are the congregations which we thus deprive of hearing what would in most cases be especially suitable to them, it is to be hoped that this relief also will not be long delayed. 378 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES,1 [This Address was delivered to a similar audience to that before which th» preceding Address on the Connection of Church and State was delivered in the preceding year. One instance of that connexion — the Irish Established Church — at that time so little entered into general consideration, that neither by me nor any of the other speakers was the slightest allusion made to it. Within twelve months this corner of the subject, which was then too insignificant to be noticed, became the chief ground on which the larger question was discussed. It was not my intention on this occasion to re-enter that larger field. The main positions for which I before contended had not been shaken by anything that had occurred since. Nor was it my wish to discuss in detail any of the remedies which had been or which might have been proposed on the smaller question which afterwards rivetted the public attention. I have carefully avoided the use of the phrases ' disestablishment ' and ' disendowment,' from the conviction that, used as they are in different senses by the various parties who employ them, they are, until carefully defined, ' words without knowledge,' which ' darken counsel ' rather than enlighten. Whilst expressing here a sincere respect for the Nonconformists of England and Eree Churchmen of Scotland, I venture still to refer to the arguments I then used to show that liberty, progress, and order are best promoted by the connection of the State with the Church, [as represented, on the whole, in the Church of England, and that there is no reason suddenly for surrendering this opportunity of future greatness and usefulness because political opinion has for the moment coincided with a strong hierarchical movement against it. It was my endeavour to approach the subject by what, in his excellent answer to the Court of Rome, the Patriarch of Con- 1 Address delivred in Sion College, Jan. 28, 1869. E^SAY IX. PREFACE. 379 stantinople calls 'the historical method,' and, in so doing, I will venture in all humility to use the admirable words of our great Quaker statesman (William Penn ]) : 1 Before I begin, I desire ' to premise that I intend not the reproach of any party. I am * weary with seeing so much reproach in the world, for it gains 4 nothing worth keeping, but hardens to desperateness what it is * our duty to endeavour to soften. If without offence I may 1 speak the truth, I shall, by God's help, deliver myself with the 1 modesty and integrity which become a Christian and an English - 1 man.'] There are in the city of Armagh three main thorough- Thp Three fares, Irish Street, English Street, Scots Street. These Churches- three streets represent the three Nations, the three Churches of Ireland. We cannot speak of the Established Church as if it were the only Irish Church with which the English State has to deal, or of the Eoman Catholics as constituting the only nation which exists in Ireland, or of either or both without reference to the powerful body of Presby- terians and the cognate Churches which flourish beside them. To ' untwist this ' triple 1 thread of life 1 Into its first consistencies ' will be the object of this address. 1. The contrast begins from the earliest times. ' Pass- The Celtic ' ing over,' as the Irish historians say, 'the landing of churcb' ' Csesaria, Noah's niece,' we may pass over also the vexed question of the origin of Irish Christianity. Whether it came from Rome or from Asia Minor, there is no doubt that its form when first we become acquainted with it was totally different, not only from what it wears now, either in the Protestant or Roman Church, but from what it wore at that time in any other European country. 1 Penn: Address to Protectants in 1686. 380 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. Ireland not con- quered by the .Ro- mans. The Irish Mission- aries. It is the boast — it was, perhaps, the misfortune of Ireland, that alone in Western Europe it had stood apart from the great world of the Roman Empire.1 That spark of civilisation which was communicated to France and England by the invasion of Julius Csesar was withheld from Ireland. Doubtless, already in the Middle Ages, this was compensated by the introduction of Norman discipline and Latin Christianity. But even a nation has some difficulty in making up long arrears of backward- ness ; and it may be thought that, as we see individuals who have never been able to repair the loss of a classical education, so in Ireland we still perceive the effects of the five blank centuries which she lost in the race of progress, compared with her Celtic neighbours in Britain and Gaul. But historically this gives to the ancient Irish Church peculiar interest. It thus preserved or developed fea- tures quite apart from the rest of Christendom, which are, therefore, amongst the choicest treasures of ecclesiastical history, just as the Christians of S. Thomas in India, when first discovered by Roman and by Protestant missionaries, baffled and instructed them both alike. There is a certain sense in which the ancient glory of .Erin as the Isle of Saints may be borne out. Probably, from its insular situation, there was a special opportunity for leisure and study in ecclesiastical retreats such as those which sprang up on the windings of the Shannon at Clonmacnoise, on the shores of the Lough of Belfast at Bangor, or on the sacred hill of Armagh. And from these spots wanderers started forth on their travels, who carried the fame of Ireland, together with the light of the 1 This is well put in Dr. Andrews' of the Pope's donation of it to Henry interesting and learned pamphlet, The II. was that it was a still \mconquered Church in Ireland, pp. 2, 8 ; and Todd's island. St. Puirick, p. 48. In fact, the ground Essay IX. THE CELTIC CHURCH. 381 Gospel, to countries which might have been expected to have rather received religion and civilisation from Italy or Greece. St. Columba in Scotland, St. Gall in Switzer- land, St. Fridolin in Alsace, St. Cataldus in Tarentum, St. Keiran in Cornwall, supplied from the fifth to the seventh century the missions which in the thirteenth were furnished by Rome, in the sixteenth by Spain, and in the nineteenth by England. But not the less is it true, that when the English first became masters of Ireland, it was and had been for gene- rations in a state of chronic confusion and barbarism. It would seem that, as in the case of Irish soldiers, and of Irish men of letters, so also in the case of the Irish Church, the very same qualities which abroad made them conspicuous for valour, intelligence, and energy, at home ran to riot and disorder, or were lost in stagnation. The same power of achieving a great foreign career, which in war was proved by the Irish Brigade 1 and by the Duke of Wellington, and in literature by Oliver Goldsmith and by Edmund Burke, had in earlier days shown itself in these famous missionaries, whilst Ireland herself was as much behind the rest of the world as they were before it. The ecclesiastical confusion of those times was the counterpart of their civil disorders. There were bishops — but bishops as much removed from Cardinal Cullen or Archbishop Early Irish Trench, as from the Presbyterian Moderator at Belfast or EishoPs- rom the Wesleyan ministers of Enniskillen. They were to be counted, not as now by tens or twelves, but by hun- dreds. A hundred were crowded together in a single monastery. Three hundred and fifty are said to have been consecrated by Patrick alone. Hardly less than a thou- sand were scattered over the island. All the efforts of Church and State have since been spent on the reduction 1 Compare Lord Macaulay's description of the Irish Brigade. 382 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. of these innumerable bishops. Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant, is strewed with the relics of suppressed sees. But these early prelates had no dioceses, no jurisdiction, hardly any power.1 They pursued their secular employ- ments, ploughing with oxen in the fields ; or more often they were like chaplains dependent on the abbots or abbesses of the different religious communities.2 The mere ritual functions of episcopacy were discharged by them, as the sacerdotal functions of the tribe of Levi are now discharged in the Jewish Church by the obscure tradesmen or mechanics, in whose veins the blood of Aaron is supposed to flow. At Armagh, the centre of Irish Christianity, where Episcopacy might be supposed to have taken deeper root than elsewhere, there was a long suc- cession of lay hereditary chiefs, who for fifteen occupations held the primacy. At Kildare, the Abbess Bridget, guar- dian of the sacred fire of Ireland, was, according to one tradition, herself consecrated to the episcopate by St. Moel, Bishop of Ardagh; according to another, she appointed Condleaedh, 'the Wise Hugh,' to be her bishojD or arch- bishop to govern with her the whole Irish Church, in the joint chair of the Bishop and Lady of Kildare.3 The Lady did not hesitate to appropriate, without the consent of the Bishop, his much-prized vestments to the use of the poor. The Bishop, for venturing to set out for Eome without the permission of the Lady, drew from her a ter- rible curse, which was believed to have caused a pack of wolves to pursue him and devour him before he left the country. It was a less anomaly, but still one which in the eyes of strict ecclesiologists has been held to vitiate the Chris- tianity of the Swedish Church, that they were often con- 1 Todd's St. Patrick, p. 97. s Episcopalis et Puellaris Cathedra 2 Ibid. p. 30. (ibid. pp. 12-14, 22, 25, 26). Essay IX. THE CELTIC CHURCH. 383 secrated by a single bishop,1 sometimes without passing through the order of priesthood. So unlike were these roving bishops to those of the surrounding countries, that their appearance was a signal of disorder wherever they came. The Frankish prelates were amazed at their irregular proceedings. The trans- plantation of this Presbyterian system of Scotland in the case of the settlement of Iona was often a perplexity to the ecclesiastical historians of Britain, who knew not that it had long been part of the normal condition of the sister island. The Danish settlers in Ireland, who had been accustomed to more civilised and canonical practices in Germany and Scandinavia, refused to receive clergy from those wild barbaric pastors, and preferred to derive their succession direct from England or from Rome. The Council of Chelsea forbade any Irish priest to assist or take part in any functions in England.'2 The Episcopal order in Ireland has never shaken off the effects^ of this early Presbyterianism. It has been felt alike both by Protestant and Roman Catholic hierarchies, alike in their needless multiplication, and in their restricted influence.3 The peculiarities of the Irish national religion which Early Irish can most directly be traced to those early times, are "Rellsl0D- precisely the points not of agreement but of disagreement with both the Catholicism and the Protestantism of later days. The belief in charms, and 6 rhans,' and in the presence of fairies, the attachment to sacred stones and sacred wells — the Festival of the Crumduff or Black Crooked 4 Stone, before All Saints' Day ; the stone of destiny, the stones of Columba ; the sacred cow 5 of Clon- macnoise, the sacred oaks of Derry and Kildare ; 6 the 1 See Reeves' Adamnan, p. 349. * Todd's St. Patrick, p. 128. * Todd's St. Patrick, p. 46. 5 Reeves' Adamnan, p. 3o2. 8 See Essays on the Irish Church, 6 Ibid. p. 288. p. 179. 384 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. pilgrimages to Croagh Patrick, and Lough Derg, and Glen Columbkill; 1 these belong to the old Irish Church, and have descended to the Celtic population in spite of the opposition of the Roman, and the indifference of the Pro- testant, hierarchy. Clonmacnoise, and Glendalough, and Monasterboice, have long ago, except as places of pilgrim- age and burial, been deserted alike by Protestants and Roman Catholics. In their diminutive size, in their lonely situations, in their union of curiously graceful and elabo- rate sculpture with the most primitive and uncultivated forms of architecture — in them, and not in the cathedrals of Armagh, Dublin, or Kilkenny, we see the true sanctu- aries of the ancient Irish race. This is the old national religion of Ireland, no doubt, chiefly interwoven with the modern Roman Catholic worship, partly also penetrating even into the Protestant population, but in itself separate from both, and so to be considered, if any calm and just view is to be taken of the subsequent phases of the ecclesiastical condition of the island. It is this which renders all antiquarian arguments on behalf of one or other of the existing Churches in Ireland almost absolutely futile. St. Patrick may be the Apostle of Ireland, but he is not the founder 2 by lineal succession, or by succession of faith, of either the Protestant or Roman Catholic pre- lates of the present day. The sacred hill of Tara was cursed not by Cromwell, but by the monks of St. Ruadhan. Lough Derg was suppressed by Pope Innocent VIII. long 1 The sanctity of Lough Derg is at tells us that it was set up in jealousy once one of the most deeply rooted of of Croagh Patrick, that it was demo- Irish beliefs, and yet discountenanced lished in 1497 by order of the Pope, by the high authorities of the Roman and that ' this fable ' having got into a Church. Ask the peasants on the Roman breviary in 1522, orders were spot, and they tell us that 4 it is as issued that it should not appear in any 'old as Christianity, often attempted future edition. 'to be destroyed, but always in vain.' 2 Let any one who doubts read the Look at the Roman Catholic historian account of the ' coarbs' in Todd's Life Lanigan {Eccl. Hist. i. p. 376), and he of St. Patrick, pp. 156-158, 172-186. Essay IX. THE CELTIC CHURCH. 385 before it was suppressed by James I. The confusion of the Irish Church began long before William III. or Henry VIII., long even before Henry II. or Strongbow. The antipathy to the world-old custom of tithes has from the earliest times distinguished the Irish Churches from the rest of Christendom. 'They have always been at war 6 with it,' says a famous Irish Roman prelate,1 in a tone strangely in defiance of the decrees of Popes and Councils, ( and I trust in God they never will cheerfully submit to * it. It was objected to them as a crime by Giraldus 6 Cambrensis, and at the end of six hundred years they c resist with increased obstinacy.' 2 One specimen of the ancient Irish Church will suffice for a thousand. If the effect of Dr. Todd's learned labours on St. Patrick is to envelope him in a thicker mist of doubt than ever, it must be acknowledged that Dr. Reeves' investigations and Montalembert's description of St. Co- St. lumba have made us feel that in him we have before us an C°] undoubted man of flesh and blood, an unquestionable Irish- man ! indeed the very impersonation of the vindictive fierceness, the passionate curses for which Irish saints 3 have been celebrated, from the character given of them by Giraldus Cambrensis down to the curse of the Dublin Chapter on the Earls of Kildare, and yet further still of the Orange Lodges on those who refuse to drink their toast.4 His real name was fitly taken from the wild Pox (Crimthan) of the Irish hills, but, in a kind of grim irony, was ex- changed for that of the Dove (Columba). He was of gigantic stature ; he had a voice that could be heard for 1 Fitzpatrick's Doyle, ii. p. 282. down to the repeal of the tithe of agi-t- 2 The Catholic antipathy to tithes ment in 1748, the insurrection of the appeared at the time of the Norman Whiteboys, &c. (Ibid. ii. p. 38o). invasion ; the Protestant antipathy 8 Reeves' Adamnan, lxxvii. through a long series of agitations, 4 Ibid. pp. 14, 285, 286. C C 386 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. more than a mile ; his features were frightfully harsh,1 but with large soft grey eyes. He had all the passion for instruction still characteristic of his countrymen, which in that early age showed itself in the desire of copying manu- scripts. On old Langharad, the recluse of Ossory, whose bare legs were clothed with a thick covering of white hair,2 who refused to Columba his request to examine his works, he discharged the curse that his writings might become for ever illegible. From his master Finnian he contrived to steal by night a copy of his most valuable psalter. For this breach of copyright he was prosecuted by Finnian, who had detected him by looking through the keyhole.3 King Diarmid, the founder of the learned sanctuary of Clon- macnoise, was not an unsuitable judge in such a lawsuit. At Tara he pronounced the famous decree, c To every cow c its calf ; to every book its booklet.' By this judgment the copy was awarded to the owner of the original manuscript. But Columba refused to restore it. The whole tribe of the O'Donnells took part in the war. The contested copy became the 6 Fighting Psalter ' — the palladium of the O'Donnell tribe. It was borne on the breast of their priest into the thick of the battle. It still remains in Dublin, a monument of the Irish Church of that militant age. The fierce battle of Culdrevny was the result ; and in the horror excited by the torrents of blood that were shed, Columba 4 was ordered to expiate his crime by crossing the seas to Scotland.5 In all this the Apostle of Scotland was but the ancestor of the wild, faction-fighting peasant and priest of the present day.6 1 So at least he appeared in later vi- * By St. Molash, at Pevenish sions to his disciples. By the Anglo- (Reeves' Adamnan, p. 252). Saxons he was termed St. Qualm 6 Ibid. pp. 248, 249. (Reeves' Adamnan, cxxviii.). 6 The whole of the story of Co- 2 Montalembert, iii. p. 124. lumba's early life is suppressed by 3 For this his eye was pecked out Adamnan, and disbelieved by the later by a faithful crane at Columba's side. Roman Catholic historian Lanigan. Essay IX. THE CELTIC CHURCH. 387 But Columba's own career is mixed with traits as touch- Attrac- ing and as fascinating as the fierce curses with which the Celtic0 * ° hills of Donegal and the rocks of the Hebrides alike Church- resounded are repulsive. That passionate longing for his native country which finds its vent in stories as true to the Irish nature now as they are beautiful in themselves — that home-sickness for the beloved scenes of Bangor and Derry, that breaks out in the poems which, if not actually his, are at least as characteristic of him as they are of his race — that pathetic record of his death on the rocky shores of Iona, with his weeping friends, and his favourite white pony sharing in the human sorrow — belong to the same attaching influence which no race in these dominions ex- cept the Irish has been able to exercise over even its proudest conquerors and its bitterest opponents. It is thus no less true that some of the more elevating charac- teristics of Irish religion must be traced rather to the national Celtic character than to the great Church to which that race owes allegiance. And thus hardly any- where else in Europe has the Eoman hierarchy been enabled to secure, amidst the nations subject to it, such purity of domestic life as is said to be the glory of the squalid cottages of Ireland.1 Hardly anywhere else has such a moral movement pervaded a great Catholic popula- tion, and struck down, at least for the moment, its besetting sin, as the Temperance movement under Father Mathew.2 Nowhere could we find such traits of heroic fidelity and tenderness, combined with such traits of It is much to the credit of the Irish dark hints Loth of Adamnan and of annalists that they have preserved, and Bode. to the candour of Montalembert that 1 Naples alone is said in this respect he has resuscitated, a series of inci- to rival it. dents so characteristic, and with such 2 Bishop Doyle (Fitzpatrick, ii 48G) an appearance of authenticity. Their had already begun to denounce the statements, whilst intrinsically pro- Irish drunkenness, bable, are more than confirmed by the c c 2 388 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. barbaric perfidy and cruelty, as we read in Mr. Trench's ' Eealities of Irish Life.' The Celtic character, with all its winning attractiveness, no less than its apparently incorrigible pliability and ferocity, is the field in which all subsequent labourers have to toil. It furnishes that magic charm, that touch of romance, so well described by Matthew Arnold in his ' Lectures on Celtic Literature,' by the side of which all merely English culture seems stale and flat. If there is a grain of historic truth in the legend which represents the Stone of Destiny, on which the English kings are still en- throned, to have come from the Hill of Tara, there is a still deeper poetic truth in the legend which represents the most romantic sanctuary of England, Stonehenge, to have been transported from the plain of Xaas in Leinster to the plain of Salisbury to witness the coronation of the ideal, fairy, Celtic prince, the founder of chivalry, the lost, lamented Arthur.1 Hence comes that tangled, many- coloured web, by which the Irish Penelope for ever baffles her political suitors, for ever unweaving by night what she or they seem to hare woven by day ; which no outward change of church after church, or chief after chief, has ever been able to bring to completion. This is the true Church of the aboriginal people which will remain, the stuff out of which they will be formed, irrespectively of Pope or Orangeman, of Whig or Tory, of statesman or of sectary. It is something apart from Catholicism, apart froni Protestantism. Even as late as 1825, a scheme was discussed by the Irish Eoman Catholic Irish Pa- bishops for the establishment of an Irish ' Patriarch,' who trifLrchicit c should become the real head of the old national Church, fostered by the most powerful of all the Eoman Catholic prelates of that time, Bishop Doyle ; partly, it has been 1 Giraldus, Dirt, ii. 18. Essay IX. THE CELTIC CHURCH. 389 conjectured, from his having been familiarised with the idea in Portugal, where he had been educated, and where a 'Patriarchate of Lisbon ' has long existed.1 But it also fell in with the national spirit of Ireland, just as the like institution had coincided with the independent spirit of the Portuguese Church, and, before that, of the Venetian. It was a sentiment akin to that which caused the Irish Church, in defiance of the rest of Catholic Christendom, to adhere, during the last century, to the principles of Jansenism. What were the exact causes of this, it would require a deeper discussion of the controversy than can be entered upon here. But the fact — which seems un- doubted— is not the less instructive, as showing the insulated and insubordinate character of Irish ecclesias- tical life. It is a tendency which may again one day revive, and convert the most obedient sons of Rome into her most deadly enemies.2 What the Roman hierarchy itself has been and is, in Ireland, so far as it represents the Celtic race, and with the marked exceptions hereafter to be mentioned, is a story which can hardly be told by a stranger. But its main peculiarity has arisen from its identification with the people. This has been its glory and also its bane. Its The glory, because under the terrible penal laws of the last Catholic century the clergy became the natural leaders of the Hieiarcl: people, and the people the natural protectors of the clergy. Those who had gathered together for their most solemn acts of worship, under dripping rocks, and on wild morasses and in roofless ruins, were drawn together with a closeness of affection and interest, like to that which, for the same reason, drew together the ministers and the ilocks of the Scottish Covenanters. The result has been that in no Roman Catholic country in Europe have the 1 Fitzpatrick's Doyle, ii. p. 74. 2 Ibid. p. 419. 390 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. priesthood obtained such an ascendency over the people.1 Nowhere are their blessings more eagerly sought, their curses more dreaded. This situation has also been their bane, because it has brought about that dependence on their flocks, both materially and morally, to counteract the evils of which has been the object of almost every eminent statesman of whatever party ; because it has engendered in them a necessity of descending to the man- ners, almost the vices, of the lower classes — a dread of placing themselves in opposition to any popular movement, however unreasonable, that foreign or domestic agitation may set on foot. One portrait, again, for good or evil, may stand for all — the Pope of Ireland at the beginning Ei shop 0f -Q^g century — Dr. Doyle, Eoman Catholic Bishop of Kildare — the original 6 Lion of the tribe of Judah.'2 We almost seem to see his long unfleshy arms, his pointedly lean shoulders, his high broad forehead,3 his long dark eyelashes, his half-closed eye and sly Irish smile. We re- cognise his commanding character even in the smallest traits : — 6 When you act as a bishop be always in the ' right, and stand to it.' 4 c But what if I am in the 6 wrong ? ' ' No matter, be always in the right.' ' Give 6 me something to do,' he exclaims when he is ill ; 5 c I don't 6 ask for a Father of the Church ; but give me something, ' for the love of God, if it be only the Pagan Tacitus.' When asked to remain at his fireside, and spare himself by sending a letter to the synod, 6 Pshaw ! I might as 1 The sentiment towards the clergy, ' between us and harm ! great is the however, extends beyond the Roman 1 power of the clargy !' Catholic Church, and belongs in part 2 Fitzpatrick, ii. p. 338. The present to the natural instincts of the Celtic 'Lion of the tribe of Judah,' whose race. A Protestant clergyman in the abode is at Tuam, belongs to the same north, in the cottage of a poor woman, indigenous national independent type, struck a light with a lucifer match, 3 Fitzpatrick, ii. pp. 353, 383. and her first thought was that it was a 4 Ibid. ii. p. 146. priestly miracle — ' The Lord stand 5 Ibid. ii. p. 49. Essay IX. THE ENGLISH CHUECH. 391 ' well send this poker.' 1 Nothing is more triumphant than his leadership of the Eoman Catholic Belief move- ment. Nothing is more praiseworthy than his struggles in defence of national education, and against the Whitefoot and Blackfoot insurgents. Nothing is more tragical than his mixture of despondency and terror at the prospect of coming into collision with the popular agitators, which at last wore him out.2 His tomb in the Roman Catholic cathedral of Carlow3 is the lasting monument of his fame and of his sorrows. 2. From the Church of the Celts we turn to the Church The Esta- of the English settlers. The founder of that Church is not church. Henry VIII. or Elizabeth. He sleeps in Christ Church Cathedral, beside Eva, the Irish Helen — Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke. But, almost contemporaneously with the landing of Strongbow at Waterford, another new element had appeared in Ireland, which materially conduced to the first formation of an 6 Established Church.5 The first e es- 6 tablisher,' or organiser, of any regular ecclesiastical sys- tem in Ireland was Malachi, or Maal-Maadhog O'Marp-air, Malachi of 5 ° 8 ' Armagh. of Armagh, the friend of St. Bernard, of whom that saint says that < he was no more affected by the barbarism of 6 his nation than fishes by the saltness of the sea.' He first broke the succession of the lay prelates of Armagh, and grasped the episcopal insignia which were in posses- sion of one of the chiefs of the O'Neills. He first, or nearly the first, broke through the practice of his country- men, by exchanging wooden wattled buildings for stone churches, and was met with the indignant cry, since re- peated in many tones, 'We are Scots,4 and not French- ' men ; ' or, as his countrymen in later times would say, 1 Fitzpatrick, ii. p. 468. 4 'Scot,' it must be remembered, 2 Ibid. ii. pp. 175, 346, 367, 412. was then equivalent to 1 Irish.' 8 Ibid. ii. p. 67. 392 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. 6 We are Irishmen, and not Englishmen.' Through him the Cistercian monks were first brought from Clairvanx into Ireland ; and the exquisite ruin in the retired vale of Mellifont recalls, not only in its architecture, but in its situation, the like remains of the Gallican Cistercians ; the more from its contrast with the bleak, bewildered groups of diminutive chapel and tower, and rudely-carved crosses, in the adjacent sanctuary of Monasterboice ; the one as certainly native and Irish, as the other is certainly con- tinental and French. It may be that, even had no English conquest super- vened, this French influence would have either created a new Church or materially modified the old one. But, in point of fact, the arrival 1 of the Norman knights from Pembrokeshire was the signal of the decisive intrusion of an alien Church upon the Irish nation. It was not that Ireland had in any way before this made herself inde- pendent of the See of Borne, or disconnected herself from Catholic Christianity as then professed by Western Chris- tendom. But the change was hardly less marked than if a new form of religion had been introduced. Pope Adrian IY., who was the only Pope of English origin, and to whom, by a singular coincidence, it fell to make the present of Ireland to his countrymen, exhorts Henry II. (with a disregard of history not uncommon in the occu- pants of that great See) 6 to make known the true Christian ' faith to those ignorant and barbarian tribes.' 2 Giraldus, the Welshman, who accompanied the first conquerors — 1 ' Two Churches practically existed I quote from this essay, as being writ- ' before the Reformation — the one that ten in a tone more or less antagonistic ' of the Anglo-Norman pale, represent- to the general purport of this address, ' ing the ascendency of the old colo- and therefore the more unexception- ' nists; the other that of the Celtic able as an authority (compare also 4 clans, embodying the traditions of a Todd's St. Patrick, p. 231). ' half-conquered and half-savage race ' 2 See Dr. Andrews' Church in Irc- (Fraser's Magazine, Dec. 1868, p. 696). land, p. 8. Essay IX. THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 093 however much his accounts 1 may be exaggerated — speaks of the Irish as we might speak of the New Zealanders. The old Archbishop of Armagh, who appeared at Dub- lin amongst the English courtiers followed everywhere by his white cow,2 on whose milk he lived ; the lay- ecclesiastical potentates, who came out with their long yellow hair streaming over their shoulders and down their backs, were as unlike to the princely Norman pre- lates of Canterbury and Winchester as they would be to modern Cardinal or modern Primate.3 And, on the other hand, the repugnance of the aboriginal people to the new settlers was the same in kind, if not in degree, as it has been ever since. * You have had no martyrs in Ire- k land,' was the taunt of a Norman ecclesiastic to a native Irish priest. ' We have had none yet,' was the ready retort ; ' but you have brought a race 4 amongst us who ' will soon give us the opportunity.5 5 There is one spot in Ireland which, more than any other, concentrates, as in a single focus, the whole ecclesiastical history of the island. In the midst of the golden vale of Tipperary rises that singular fragment which dropped from the Devil's teeth on his flight over the plain, the Rock of Cashel, crowned The of C or surrounded with ecclesiastical reminiscences of every date. There is the old primeval, perhaps pagan stone, which won for it its earliest sanctity. There is the 1 Lingard, who, though a Roman Catholic, writes as an Englishman, is constrained to believe in the sub- stantial truth of Giraldus' complaints. Lanigan, who, though a Roman Catho- lic, writes as an Irishman, attacks the Pope and the Synod of Cashel almost with the fury of an Orangeman. 2 Giraldus, Expugn. Mil, i. 36. 3 Giraldus, Dist. iii. 36. 4 Ibid. p. 32. 4 A striking example of the likeness of the pre-Reformation to the post- Reformation Church is the establish- ment by Pope Innocent VIII., in 1484, of the Warden and Collegiate Church of Galway. This was expressly done to provide for 1 the civilised men 'living in a walled town ' the 'decency, 1 rites, and customs of the Church of • England,' apart from the wild High- landers outside (Essays on the Irish Church, p. 158). 394 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. ancient cross and round tower of the early days of Irish Christianity. There is the Norman chapel of King Cor- mac — half chief, half prelate — built in that moment of transition when, as at Armagh, under the influence of Malachi, the ancient institutions and ancient architecture were just giving way to newer influences. There is the cathedral and palace — fortress rather than cathedral — of the Norman hierarchy, which, long before the Reforma- tion, was a garrison no less than a church. There we trace the ruin and havoc wrought upon it by that famous Geraldine, Earl of Kildare — English by descent, but Irish to the backbone in manners — who burnt it because he thought the Archbishop was inside it — who, as he apolo- gised before the English Privy Council, would not have burnt it had he not thought so — whom, c as all Ireland c could not govern him, the King sent to govern all Ire- c land.' There, beneath in the town, is the modern ca- thedral, built in the last century by Archbishop Agar, who had left the old cathedral to decay, believing — as many a French and German prelate of that age would have be- lieved no less — that he was doing the church good service by substituting for it the unsightly structure which his admiring friends have had carved on his monument in Westminster Abbey.1 There, in the surrounding plain, dwell the descendants of the Cromwellian soldiers, now merged in the Irish Catholic population, but uniting with the fantastic sentiment of the Celt the fierce stubbornness of the Ironsides which has made the name of Tipperary terrible. But of all the events connected with the Rock Synod of of Cashel, none is more important than the momentous Synod held within the massive walls of that dark chapel of Cormac, in which the Irish hierarchy were convened, under the presidency of the Papal Legate, to acknowledge 1 Archbishop Agar. Essay IX. THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 395 the sovereignty of the King of England, to proclaim the identity of the Church of Ireland with the Church of Eng- land, and to restrain the barbarous practices of the Irish race. That was the foundation of the Established Church of England in Ireland. That was the first Act of Union. That was the first recognition of the Eoyal supremacy and of English ascendency. It is in no polemical or controversial spirit that these facts are stated. But they are necessary to be borne in mind in any attempt to disentangle the knot of Irish ecclesiastical confusion, and to show that it is not the Protestant Establishment, but the English race itself, which has been the badge of conquest and the standing grievance of Ireland, however much the offence of that badge and that grievance has been enhanced in later days by the difference of belief. They are necessary to show that the true position of the English Church in Ireland is as the Church of the English settlers, not as the Church of the Irish nation. ' You came in with 6 Elizabeth,' said the Duke of Gloucester to the Knight of Kerry. ' No, please your Eoyal Highness,' was the proud answer of the gallant Fitzgerald ; 6 we ended with 6 Elizabeth.' But the confusion of the Duke of Gloucester was excusable, for, in point of fact, the entrance of the Fitzgeralds under the Norman King was exactly analogous to the entrance of the Sidneys and the Essexes under the Tudor Queen. This brings us to the next phase of the story — the The Irish moment when 'the Church of the Anglo-Norman pale church?nl ' was transformed into the modern Establishment.' 1 For the reasons above given, it is needless to enter into the intricate and obscure controversy lately raised as to the mode in which the Episcopal succession was carried on in 1 Fraser, December 1868, p. 679. 3J6 THE THEEE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. Its objects. Ireland at the time of the Eeformation. It is enough to know — what no one disputes, and what is of far more importance to bear in mind — that here, as in every period of Irish history, the confusion and anomalies which arose were such as to baffle all attempts to draw up any system or theory of civil or ecclesiastical government which would be equally suitable to Ireland and to the other parts of the British islands. Roman Catholic bishops in Protestant sees — Protestant bishops in Roman Catholic sees— bishops consecrated, if at all, by a single bishop, as in the early days of Irish barbarism — property squandered — primates unable to live at their own primatial residences — bishops hardly venturing near their sees — all this must be con- ceded by both parties as the historical basis of what followed. One cheering gleam alone there is — which is startling as compared with the blood-stained history of England and Scotland during the same period — that now, as in the earlier stages of Irish ecclesiastical life, there were no martyrs — no Protestant martyrs under Mar}7,1 no Catholic martyrs under Henry VIII. or Elizabeth. What- ever the cause, the fact is one which might soothe many a bitter recollection, and which accords, not insignificantly, with the like phenomenon of the gentler and more pacific intercourse of the two Churches belonging to later times, to be noticed hereafter.2 1 The traditional version of this ex- emption, even if not historical, is emi- nently characteristic of the people. Queen Mary's commission had been given to Dr. Cole. Whilst detained at Chester, in the mayor's house, for a favourable wind, the good woman of the house, who was a Protestant, secretly took out the commission, and put into its place a pack of cards with the knave of clubs uppermost. On arriving at the Castle at Dublin, he opened the packet, and, to his con- fusion, found out the trick. The Lord Deputy immediately said, 'We must ' have another commission, and we will ' shuffle the cards meanwhile.' He re- turned, and obtained a fresh commis- sion ; but, whilst waiting at Chester a second time for the wind, the Queen died. (Mant's Church of Ireland, i. p. 251.) 2 It must be remembered, however that the victims of the massacre in Essay IX. TEE ENGLISH CHURCH. 397 Whatever may have been the intentions or the hopes of the Tudor sovereigns, the English Church of Ireland con- tinued to be, but now in a still more restricted sense, the Church of the English colonists. It is not necessary to go here through the dark history of the common mas- sacres and counter-massacres of the time of Charles I. and Cromwell, the penal laws of Anne, the corruptions and servility preceding the Union. The English clergy shared in these — it may be doubted whether they more than shared. Adam Loftus's torture of the Eoman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin ; Ussher's protest against toleration ; the eccentricities of Lord Bristol, whether present or absent from his see of Derry ; Swift's well- known jest of the Hounslow robbers seizing the letters patent of the bishops, and occupying the vacant sees 1 — are dark blots on the Protestant hierarchy of Ireland, yet perhaps not much darker than could be found at the same time in the hierarchy of Spain and France, and even of England. On the other hand, there are well-known its merits, occasions on which the prelates of the Established Church resisted the intolerance of the Irish Parliaments, and suc- ceeded in rejecting some of their harshest measures ; 2 and, without speaking of the living, no one need fear to name with respect the vast learning of Ussher, the apostolic piety of Bedell, the eloquence and freedom of Jeremy Taylor, the unrivalled genius of Swift, the philosophic 1611, on the Protestant side, and of the rebellion of 1798, on the Roman Catholic side, Bedell, as a confessor on the Protestant side, Oliver Plunket, the Irish St. Thomas, on the Roman Catholic side, mournfully counter- balance this earlier immunity from persecution. 1 See the results of the commission against the Bishop of Down and Con- nor— commonly called the Bishop of Hammersmith — in 1G93 (Reid's Pres- byteriatiism, ii. p. 438). 2 Primate Stone, and the three other archbishops of his time, in 17o7 (Stuart's Armagh, p. 439). 398 THE THEEE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. virtues of Berkeley, the Oriental learning of Pococke,1 the princely munificence of Kobinson and of Beresford, the transparent heart and lucid intellect of Yfhately. The hierarchy of England certainly cannot number amongst its ranks many names superior in their kind to these, and if it be said that these were mostly Englishmen, it is not the less true or instructive that their English origin, whilst it gave them their peculiar powers, did not prevent them from leaving a deep impression on the Irish nation. Of two of them, at least, the traces will last as long as the history of Ireland lasts. Who that has ever seen Kilmore Bedell at can forget the grave of Bedell ? Close by that great Kilmore. church (Kilmore) — great only by contrast with the small tenements which in the fourteenth century served for Irish worship — humble indeed compared with the cathe- drals of England, was the episcopal palace in which Bedell gathered, as in a little fortress, the scattered Pro- testants of the neighbourhood, during the insurrection of 1641. There, in happier days, he, and he alone, had laboured at the one weapon which might have produced some effect on the native Irish — the translation of the Bible into their own language. In a corner of the church- yard, as far as possible removed from the church, in ac- cordance with his known repugnance — curiously beyond his age — to intramural interments, his remains were brought a few months later, when, worn out by the hard- 1 Two names, less distinguished in the Irish hierarchy, should not be for- gotten in enumerating their claims on the sympathy of English Churchmen. Amidst many eccentricities, Bishop Clayton was the first Western scholar who roused an interest in the Sinaitic inscriptions — the first prelate who formally proposed in his place in Par- liament to follow the example, set by the Eastern Church, and followed by the American Church, of omitting the Athanasian Creed. Archbishop New- come, the tutor of Fox, was the first prelate who advocated the necessity of a new translation of the Scriptures, and was, probably, after Tillotson, the most tolerant primate of the English Church on either side of St. George's Channel. Essay IX. THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 399 ships in his imprisonment in the castle on the neighbour- ing lake, he died on its shores, in the honse of a friend.1 Then it was that two signal testimonies were given to the power of Christian goodness, to the universality of Chris- tian charity, but also to the force of the English, and to the gratitude of the Irish, nature. The troops of the rebel army escorted his body to the grave, and as they fired a volley over his coffin, shouted, Requiescat in pace TJltimus Anglorum. The Roman priest who stood by ex- claimed, Sit anima mea cum Bedello. The sacred grave in that thronged cemetery is now overshadowed by a branch of a vast sycamore which he himself planted in the adjacent garden, and which seems to connect his saintly end with his generous and genial life. ' Bury me * in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is buried, and 6 lay my bones beside his bones,' was the request of one of his successors in the see ; and another built in his honour the new cathedral, which, amidst whatever cha nges, will always remain a monument of the affection with which his memory was cherished as the ideal of a Christian Bishop. He was the Ken of the Irish Church — towering above the faults of his own order, endeared even to the enemies of his religion and his nation. Or look at Eobi Armagh, that ancient seat of Irish Christianity, where * St. Patrick was believed to have followed the nrystic fawn to the summit of the hill which rises like an altar in the midst of the surrounding eminences, but which had been long forsaken by the Primates who derived from it the proud title of their see. In those stormy times, when Ulster was either still shaking or only just emerging from the perpetual strifes of rival or insurgent chiefs, they 1 This friend (Sheridan^ was a Pro- perhaps justly, as a proof that the testant, but, as an Irishman, he was war was one, not of religion, but of protected. This has been adduced, races. 400 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. retired to Drogheda, and left the cathedral, the only memorial of departed greatness, brooding in deserted grandenr over the collection of wretched hovels which surrounded it. Not till the middle of the eighteenth century did any Primate reside in the sacred city. It was reserved for Archbishop Robinson to create the present Armagh.1 He expressed and he fulfilled the nobly ambi- tious wish: 'I found it of mud; I left it of stone.' Palace, park, school, library, observatory, barracks, churches, infirmary, all sprang from his munificence. It may be doubted whether anywhere else, unless at Toledo, are so many monuments of episcopal generosity ; certainly nowhere so many from a single hand.2 Its Whatever may be the anomalies and failures of the connection Irish Established Church, its vocation and its merit has with England, been that it has been one of the chief channels through which the graces of English civilisation have flowed into Ireland. If the Roman Catholic Church has fostered the Celtic virtues of purity, of devotion, and of self-denial, the Established Church has fostered the English virtues of moderation, of justice, and of loyalty. Almost the only residents out of a nation of absentees,3 almost the only pastors of independent character in the midst of a hierar- chy who depend for their maintenance on the offerings of their flocks, it is not to be wondered at that in this respect they should have won general esteem, even from their opponents. One of the most truly episcopal sayings of our time, because the most expressive of the elevation of soul and independence of mind which ought to characterise ' The munificence of the Primates 2 See Young's Travels in Ireland, i. is, however, of earlier date. Arch- p. 160. bishop Boulter left the whole of his 3 There have been, of course, many fortune to the Irish Church {Letters, i. lamentable exceptions of clerical non- p. 6), and was prodigally bountiful residents, as there have been many to the poor in Dublin, during a period brilliant exceptions of lay residents, of distress, in 1 739-40 (ibid. i. p. 279). Essay IX. THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 401 a chief pastor of the Church who is also a chief servant of the State, was uttered not by an English, but an Irish, not by a Roman but a Protestant bishop : 6 Sooner would ' I tear the lawn from my shoulders, and sink my seal ' deeper than ever plummet sounded, than I would con- 6 sent to hold rank and wealth on the disgraceful tenure 6 of always swimming with the stream and never contra- * dieting public opinion.' It is as creditable to the Irish clergy as it is to the Roman Catholic prelate who has declared respecting them, ' that in every relation of life, ' the Protestant clergy who reside amongst us are not only 6 blameless, but estimable and edifying. They are peace- c ful with all, and to their neighbours they are kind when £ they can ; and we know that on many occasions they ' would be more active in beneficence, but that they do 6 not wish to appear meddling, or incur the suspicion of < tampering with poor Catholics. In bearing, in manners, 6 and in dress, they become their state. If they are not 6 learned theologians, they are accomplished scholars and ' polished gentlemen. There is little intercourse between 6 them and us ; but they cannot escape our observation, 6 and sometimes when we noticed that quiet, and decorous, c and modest course of life, we felt ourselves giving ex- ' pression to the wish : talis cum sis, vMnam nosteresses ! ' 1 May it not be said without offence to the respected author of this generous tribute, that, in a certain sense, the clergy whom he thus eulogises are after all the instructors of his own Church — that not only do their works from time to time penetrate even into Roman Catholic libraries, but that the freedom of Irish Catholic worship from the coarse and flimsy decorations, from the disproportionate veneration of relics and saints so common in the southern 1 Letter addressed to the Clergy of David Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry, p. the Diocese of Kerry, by the Eight Rev. 1 3. D D 402 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. countries of Europe, is in part owing to the presence of a neighbour whose influence is felt even when it cannot be directly recognised ? This position the Irish Established Clergy owe to their connection with the English State and Church.1 Other changes may take place in their condition ; their bishoprics may be retrenched, their parochial ministrations may be curtailed, their revenues may be diminished ; but so long as this position is preserved, their peculiar usefulness re- mains ; if this is taken away, they may still perform func- tions common to those of other Churches, but their peculiar vocation is gone. The English Church in Ireland may become an aggressive Episcopal or Presbyterian sect ; it will cease to be what, with all its faults, it has hitherto been — the one religious institution which, with doubtless many drawbacks, has more than any other in Ireland fos- tered liberty of thought and action, and exercised a moderating and civilising influence on the country. The 3. There is yet one further element in the ecclesiasti- terian ca-l history of the Irish Churches. Besides the native Irish Church. religion, besides the religion of the English conquerors, whether Papal from the second to the eighth Henry, or Protestant from the Tudors to the Guelphs, there is the religion of the Scottish colonists, with the more or less closely kindred forms of Protestantism that have sprung out of it, or attached themselves to it. A humble church near the' coast of Antrim, between Lame and Carrick- fergus, is pointed out as the cradle of Irish Presbyterianism — where Edward Bruce first planted the better principles of the Scottish Church, 4 insisting most on the life of 1 It is a significant fact, that where- the six bishops who voted in favour of as, of the nine Irish bishops who it, five were English, and one only voted, in 1719, against the toleration Irish. (Reid's P'-eslyterianism, iii. p. of the Ulster Presbyterians, seven 107.) were Irish and two only English ; of Essav IX. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 403 6 Christ in the heart, and the light of His word and 6 Spirit on the mind.'1 It may be almost said that this was a predestined addition to the religious complications of Ireland. The basaltic causeway, by which, in the Connexion legends of Ulster, the Giant was believed to have intended Ireland "th to have stepped from Antrim to Staffa, was never com- g^and. pleted, or lay beneath the ocean. But not the less across the narrow strait which parts the northern extremity of Ireland from the Western Hebrides did the course of emigration pass and repass between the two countries which in earlier ages were united by the common name of Scotia. Thus floated in his coracle Columba and his companions to Iona. Thus came Robert Bruce for shelter to the cave in Rachlin, where he watched the famous spider. Thus came his brother Edward to Larne, and almost wrested the island from the grasp of his feeble namesake of England, whom he had already defeated ab Baniiockburn, and but for the fatal field of Athunrey2 might have annexed Ireland to the crown of Scotland, and placed on Scotland the heavy burden which, owing to that dubious success, has been since borne by England alone. Thus came, as the traditions of Donegal maintain, the unhappy Prince Charles Edward, on his flight from the field of Culloden — the last resting-place for the sole of his foot before he finally embarked from Columba's Glen for his life-long exile. Thus came, and to the very same spot where Edward Bruce had landed, the pres- byters of the Church of Scotland to minister to the Scottish emigrants whom James L planted in Ulster,3 at the close 1 Reid, i. p. 95. After 'continuing ' a national thanksgiving; the victory ' with quiet success from 1613 to 1636,' ' of Athunrey as a national humilia- hc was buried at Broadisland (ibid. i. 'tion.' p. 203). 3 For the celebration of the bicen- - Compare Arnold's well-known and tenary of the landing at Carrickfergus instructive saying: 'The defeat of in 1642, see Roid, iii. p. 484. ' Baniiockburn should be celebrated as D D 2 404 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. of the long wars which for centuries had laid waste that fairest of the Irish provinces. Everyone has felt or heard of the strange sensation as of another country, of another civilisation, of another accent, which meets the traveller as he emerges from Connaught or Leinster into Ulster. Then begins the vexed question of Orange flags on church steeples, and of the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. Then the local legends themselves put on a Protestant and Caledonian dress. The fantastic tower-like crags of the Giant's Causeway 1 are the supposed chimney-tops which lured the ships of the Spanish Armada to destruc- tion. The rock on which they foundered is the £ Protes- 6 tant Defender.' A black figure against the basaltic columns is the Priest, whom the Giant petrified when his services were no longer needed. Through the Episcopal Church Irish Protestantism had doubtless received a large measure of Puritanism ; but it was from Scotland that it became seized with the burning zeal of the Solemn League and Covenant. Following in the wake of this Presbyterian Church, all but established Cromwell, in the north of Ireland, came the storm of Cromwell's in- vasion, which threatened for a time to do for Munster and Leinster what James I. had done for Ulster. It was undertaken, like a solemn religious act, with fasting and praying, and strong crying and tears,2 and with a sense of unworthiness for so great a service. It failed, indeed, but it left its fiery marks behind. The sufferings which it inflicted on the Irish race were to be likened only to those of the Jews in their destruction by Titus.3 The name of Cromwell, c the curse of Cromwell,' still lives in 1 The very name of 'causeway' is 2 Prendergast's CromwdUan Settle- probably of Scottish origin. The ment, p. 31. Scottish street is tlio 'chauesee' or 3 Clarendon (Hallam, iii. p. 527.) ' causeway.' Essay IX. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 405 Ireland, though forgotten in England. The hatred which clings to the name of ' Tory ' dates from the time when Cromwell's troopers hunted the Irish bogtrotters, or ' Tories,' as one of ' the three burdensome beasts ' that infested Ireland.1 It broke again into flame in the wars of James and William. It was concentrated in the two strongholds of the Protestant cause — Enniskillen and yet more Lon- donderry. What a chain does that beautiful city weave between the earliest and the latest history of the Irish Church, from the days of the fi Oak Grove ' of Derry to the days when it was colonised by the £ London ' settlers ! There in that ' Oak Grove,' 2 which he loved beyond all Derry. other spots on earth, Columba left his most living recol- lections. Cathedral, chapel, sacred stone, all bear the de- signation of the fierce old Celtic saint, handed down from days when English, Scottish, Norman settlements were still in the unbroken future. 6 There, also, eleven centuries c afterwards, on the verge of the ocean, hunted to the last 4 asylum, and baited into a mood in which men may be 6 destroyed but will not easily be subjugated, the imperial £ race of Englishmen and Scotsmen turned desperately to ' bay against the aboriginal people.' 3 No spot in the British Isles is more deeply imbued with historic recol- lections. Nowhere can the Protestant Englishman feel a glow of prouder enthusiasm than as he catches from the ancient ramparts by Walker's monument the distant view of the Foyle, up which the Mount joy came on the memorable July evening, bearing succour to the heroic inhabitants of Derry. But the Churchmen must always bear in mind that this glory was shared in 1 The 'three burdensome beasts' 2 This is the meaning of the word were the wolf, the priest, and the Tory. ' Derry.' Reeves' Adanuian, p. 288. (Prendergast's Cromwcllian Settlement, 1 Maeaulay, iii. p. 163. pp. 151, 176.) 406 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX- equal proportion by the Presbyterians, who during those long months of famine and distress partook of the toils and the dangers of the Episcopalians.' The bitter con- troversy which broke out after the siege between Walker and Mackenzie is only the symptom of the like rivalry which has unfortunately on more than one occasion since divided the Protestants of Ulster. Anyone who knows the denunciations of the Orange toast, as given in their full original freshness, will see that it has its root in any- thing but an Episcopalian soil. The Regium Donum, granted by William III. to the Presbyterians,2 is but a scanty acknowledgment of the services which in that great struggle they rendered to the English Crown and the Protestant cause. Around this nucleus naturally grew up the other non- conforming sects ; and amongst the later developments of Irish Protestantism not the least curious are the traces of Wesley. Wesley's preaching on the Parade at Limerick, under the thorn-tree of Adare, in the Palace at Derry ; or of those more transitory ebullitions of fervid zeal in the successive ' revivals,' 3 that from time to time have agitated the Pro- testant population both of North and South.4 And it is one of the most striking proofs of the vigour of this branch of the Church in Ireland, that from it sprang the founders of the Presbyterians and of the Methodists of the United States.5 From the same wild county of Donegal, that gave birth to the first missionary of Scot- Reicl's Preshyicrianism in Ireland, anniversary of the 12th of July for 3 It is one of the peculiar features disturbance, of the Irish revivals that they did, at 4 For the active part taken by the least in some instances, tend to allay Society of Friends in the Irish famine, rather than increase the violence of see Dr. Andrews' Church in Ireland, party spirit. (Reid, iii. p. 512.) In p. 31. the year of their triumph, 1859, the 5 Ibid. pp. 28, 29. ii. p. 388. 2 Ibid. ii. 405. once passed in Belfast, even in Sandy Row, without drums, drunkenness, or Essay IX. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 407 land, sprang Francis Mackenie and Patrick Mackie, the two earliest Presbyterian ministers of Philadelphia. And from the Irish ' Palatines/ as they were called — the refugees from the Palatinate who settled near Limerick, and on whom Wesley 1 produced the deepest impression — issued forth Philip Embery and Barbara Heck, the founders of the first Methodist chapel in New York. The influx of this extreme Protestantism, into Ireland, though it elicited some of the most ferocious passions of the nation, yet had the same good result that it had in England, of awakening a fervour which had before been wanting in the older churches. The singular grace of the Irish nation opened a path for the refined enthusiasm of Wesley, such as he had vainly sought in Scotland.2 He found, he said, £ as much courtesy in their cabins as 6 he could have found at St. James's or in the Louvre. 1 Our people here,' he added, 6 are the most zealous, lively, 6 affectionate we have in the kingdom.' Before his time the same negligence had extended to Advan til(T6S ( both Churches. If there were English bishops of Pro- Presty testant sees in Ireland who never could face the stormy tegt^1 waves of St. George's Channel, there were also Roman Catholic bishops who usually resided on the Continent, and only visited their dioceses for the sake of recreation.3 The careless administration of their parishes by the Pro- testant clergy is too well known. Not equally well known, but equally true, is the like carelessness of the Roman clergy. Many of them made money by farming ; others attended races ; not a few hunted. Almost all wore brown coats. Confirmation, even by exemplary pre- lates, was almost entirely neglected. The good Catholic 1 Wesley's Journals, May 21, 176". History, p. 211.] 2 Southey's Life, ii. p. 294. [See 8 Brennan's History of Ireland, ii. also Urlin's JVisht/'s Place in Church p. 308. 408 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. Bishop Delany, c the only man who ever made the austere c Alban Butler laugh,1 used to publish long lists of pa- 6 rishes where he intended to hold visitations, but, when e the advertised time came, it invariably found the bishop c confined to his room by gout or on a visit with the ' patriot peer Lord Cloncurry, or Dr. Moylan of Cork.' This apathy was broken up in Ireland, as in England, at any rate simultaneously with the fervour of Wesley. His revivals and those which have followed may be mere passing phenomena, but they kept alive the flame of spiritual life, and both the Church of Rome and the Church of England have felt and profited by the warmth. With this fervour has been and is combined, whether Its disad- vantages, in the Presbyterian Church itself or in the outlying sects, the fierce and narrow intolerance,' 2 and the domination of the majority over the minority,3 which is the bane of religious parties, or so-called Free Churches. c Why do ' you prefer the voluntary system ? ' was the question of an English traveller to an intelligent Irish Methodist lay- man on the hills of Donegal. c Because it enables the ' majority at once to turn out the minorit}^,' was the decisive and instructive answer. The principle of sub- scription, to the Westminster Confession was fought out with a bitterness beyond anything that has occurred in England or Scotland; and the free element of thought has, consequently, been driven into the small sect of Unitarians. The connexion of the Presbyterian Church with the Established Church of Ireland on the one hand, and with the Established Church of Scotland on the 1 Fitzpatriclc's Doyle, i. pp. 97, 99, mental principles of toleration. Com- 117,506. pare also the extraordinary state- 2 See the condemnation (in Reid's ments in vol. iii. pp. 279, 296. Preshyterianism, iii. p. 113) of the 3 See a powerful statement of these Belfast Society, as ' undermining the evils in Mr. Ludlow's Essay in the 1 entire system ' of Christianity merely Contemporary Review of December, by the assertion of the most funda- 1868. Essay IX. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 409 other, doubtless sustained for a long time a freer spirit in the Ulster Synod ; 1 and the State has always recognised the more liberal as well as the more exclusive branch of the Presbyterians both in constitution and in salary. Bat in proportion as these influences were withdrawn, it is probable that the wilder and more imperious ecclesiastical passions of the several communities would more and more obtain the ascendenc}^. Such are the three religions — or rather let us say the Churches of the three nations of Ireland. They have each, as I have shown, a common substratum in the character of the Irish people ; they have each been coloured, to a certain degree, by the influence of each. No settlement of Ireland can be complete which over- looks any of these elements — and their almost equal coexistence is one of the peculiar features of the Irish, as distinct from the English or the Scottish, ecclesiastical arrangements. The Church of England may, in a certain sense, be called the national Church of England, and the Church of Scotland the national Church of Scotland, because in neither of these cases do the surrounding sects (except, perhaps, in the case of Wales) represent a different nationality from that of the Established Church. In Ireland, on the contrary, there is not only a difference of religious belief and of race, but the religious divisions derived most of their force from the divisions of race ; and thus, in point of fact, there are three Churches, all national, in the sense of representing a powerful nation. This coexistence, which appears in their history, is also, to a great extent, recognised by a coequality in law and in 1 Eeid, iii. pp. 302, 304. Jeremy ground through the support given to it Taylor's Original Sin was bitterly by the English bishops (ibid. iii. p. denounced by the more rigid party in 312). the Presbyterian Church, but held its 410 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. duality of ^aC^' us ^rs^ a^ ^e legal privileges and pre- 1 he two cedence of the Established Church of Ireland, and it will Churches in law. a"k once appear that, so far from its having the same ex- clusive position as the Established 1 Church in England, in almost every particular, it has varied almost as much from that of the Church of England, as the present condition of that Church varies from its own position, two centuries ago. In both cases there has been a gradual accommoda- tion of the institution to the altered state of the country ; and in both cases this change has hitherto been consistent with the existence of the English Constitution as the safe- guard of the freedom and the development of the diverse tendencies which belong to English Protestantism. In England the Roman Catholic prelates have no rank and no precedence. In Ireland, their archbishops rank before Protestant bishops ; their bishops before Protestant deans;2 till the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill of 1851 they could legally assume the titles of all sees not occupied by bishops of the Established Church. In England, every prelate but two has a permanent seat in the Legislature. In Ireland, only four prelates have seats at a time, and none have a permanent place.3 In England, the parochial and diocesan system is confined to the Established Church. In Ireland, the two Churches have their dioceses and parishes, over against or conterminous with each other, throughout the island ; every Protestant bishop is aware that he has a Roman Catholic brother or rival, as the case 1 [There was one apparent exception. 2 [Such was the state of the law in Except in the Judicial Committee of Ireland before 1869.] the Privy Council, no English prelates 3 There was a well-known answer took so high a place in the executive of Archbishop Whately to some one functions of the State as the Irish pri- who asked him why he had never mates occupy, as Lords Justices, in brought a Bill into Parliament : 'Why the absence of the Viceroy. This, 'should I lay an egg for anolher to however, was a mere excrescence, which ' addle ? ' belonged to a state of things long past.] Essay IX. THEIR FORMER EQUALITY. 411 may be ; 1 every Protestant c parson ' knows that he has a Roman Catholic 6 priest ' sharing with him the super- intendence of his flock — the very word ' parish 2 priest,' which in England signifies, of course, the minister of the Established Church, in Ireland means as distinctly the Roman Catholic pastor.3 In England, no Roman Catholic clergyman can perform the religious funeral rites of his coreligionists in the parish churchyard; in Ireland, any Roman Catholic clergyman or Nonconformist minister has, under certain nominal restrictions since 1824, and since 1868 absolutely, been empowered to perform the burial service in such churchyard according to the rites of his own Church or congregation.4 In England, the privi- lege of solemnising the act of marriage is confined to the clergy of the Established Church. In Ireland, both the Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian clergy can, in re- gard to members of their own communions, celebrate marriages equally and with as full validity as the Esta- blished clergy. In England, the Roman Catholic chaplains of gaols and poorhouses are appointed- by the Roman Catholics, and paid by them. In Ireland they are both appointed and paid by the Government or its agents. In England, no college connected either with the Established Church, or with Nonconforming churches, nor Trinity 1 The gradual rise of the Roman Catholic prelates from their depressed state, in which they refused the title of ' Lord,' to their present condition, in which they eagerly and successfully claim it, is well described in Fitz- patrick's Doyle, i. pp. 493, 494. 2 It was observed that if, at the late Congress in Dublin, an English clergy- man had announced his intention to read a paper on 1 The Duties of the ' Parish Priest,' he would have found himself pledged to deliver an address on the functions of the Roman Catholic priesthood. 3 A Catholic usage, which, without direct legal sanction, has been gene- rally recognised, is the feast of ' Lady ' Day in Harvest' (August 15). Con- trast this with the impossibility in England of public notices announcing the 1 Festival of the Assumption.' 4 5 Geo. IV. cap. 25 (1824). The preamble states that this easement of burial has been long enjoyed, but, not having been hitherto by law allowed, is by this Act authorised. The last change took place in 1868. 412 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX- College, Dublin, receives from the State any pecuniary support, beyond that of legal sanction of its property. The one great college in either island which receives a ^5[eg0eoth large direct endowment from the State is Maynooth. Everyone who has read Lord Macaulay's Speeches will call to mind his antithesis between c the commodious chambers, 6 the refectories, the combination-rooms, the bowling 6 greens, the stabling, the savoury steam of the kitchens, 4 of his own Trinity, and the miserable Dotheboys Hall 6 which is given to the future priests and bishops of the e Irish people.'1 This antithesis is one which never could have been written had the great orator seen the splendid institution which he thus disparaged. If his own Trinity at Cambridge throws all like buildings into the shade, yet assuredly S. Patrick's College at Maynooth may well con- front the rival Trinity College in Dublin. That stately pile,2 conceived in Pugin's highest mood — those wide cloisters — those spacious quadrangles — that noble hall — that ample library — that green park, and precincts centred under the venerable ruins of the old fastness of the Geraldines, is worthy of the gentle graces and learned dignity of its present enlightened head; worthy also of the historic fame which Maynooth has acquired as the touchstone, for so many years, which divided true com- prehensive statesmanship from fanaticism and sectarianism. Of all the poetic strains of the eminent historian whose words were just now cited, none is so full of pathos or of spirit as that which was inspired by the sacrifice of his political career to his support of the grant to Maynooth, 1 Macaulay's Works, viii. 305. are superior to those of his Protestant 2 This architectural equality is gene- brother at Limerick. Bishop Doyle's rally borne out by many of the palaces biographer dwells with pardonable and cathedrals of the Roman Catholic pride on ' the princely mansion of prelates. The palace and cathedral ' Braganza,' in which the bishop spent of the Bishop of Kerry, at Killarney, the latter years of his life (i. 417). Essay IX. THEIR FORMER EQUALITY. 413 Irish Catholic dignities. which carries with it the whole principle of the endow- ment and establishment 1 of the Irish Roman Catholic Church. Even in the points in which that Church has professed Nomina- r t tion by the itself more sensitive than on the question of receiving aid Crown to from the State, which in the case of Maynooth it has so freely admitted and sought — in the point of the nomi- nation by the Crown to its highest dignities, the influence of the English State has been greater than is commonly supposed. Susceptible and jealous as the Irish Roman Catholic clergy are and have been to the appointment of their bishops by any external authority, even by the Pope himself — eagerly as they have clung to what they call the system of 6 domestic nomination,' 2 yet so long as the Stuart princes3 lived, the Irish sees were regularly filled by the nominees of James II., James III., Charles III., and Henry IX. And, even afterwards, the Roman Catholic primacy was virtually bestowed on Archbishop Curtis by the influence of the Duke of Wellington, who had made his acquaintance during the Peninsular war, when Dr. Curtis4 was a professsor in the College of Salamanca, and 1 Macaulatfs Miscellaneous Worlds, 3 Ibid. i. 396. Wellington Corre- ii. 430. It should be observed that not spond.cnce, ii. 603. only was the grant to Maynooth directly 4 In 1819. The Duke also appointed given by the State, but that the nomi- Dr. Laffin to the Archbishopric of nation of the president and the laws Cashel (see Fitzpatrick, i. 164, 165, of the College must be approved by 183; Wellington Correspondence, ii. the Government; and that of the eight 308, 387, 453). Such was the ascen- visitors, five were appointed by the dency of Aivhbishop Curtis's manners Crown, and the other three approved in his office that in the synods of the by the Lord Lieutenant, and that the prelates (it was said of him) he* was Chief Secretary of Ireland is one of 'Primate of them all.' He was more them. In other words, Maynooth was Spanish than Irish. 'He had a rest- not only endowed, but, in one of the ' lessness of gesture,' wrote Sheil, in most vital points of its administration, 1828, 'and a flexibility of the physio- established by the State. (See Dr. ' gnomical muscles which surpass the Andrews' Studium Generate, p. 83.) 'vivacity of Andalusia ; and with one 2 Fitzpatrick's Doyle, i. 150, 173- * finger laid on his nose, with his eyes 177. This, however, was vehemently ' starting from his head, and with the opposed by O'Connor (ibid. ii. 505). ' other hand quiveringlike that of a Chi- 414 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. had laid the Duke under considerable obligations. How- ever irregular such interventions may have been, it may be safely said that they were yet far more direct and com- plete interferences of royal and English influence, than would ever have beeu attempted for any Roman Catholic or Nonconformist dignities either in England or Scotland. Add to this the general protection which the English law throws over all the religious communities in Ireland, as well as in England, and it will be evident that the principle of an Establishment has reached far into the vitals of other Churches in Ireland besides that commonly called the Esta- blished Church. It is a slight but instructive fact that the only application of the Act which was passed in England in consequence of the destruction of the Portland Vase in the British Museum, was for the protection of one of the sacred crucifixes in the revered sanctuary of Clonmacnoise against some lawless depredations. There is no country in Europe where the Roman Catholic hierarchy is so powerful, so much regarded by the Government, some have even said, with the command of so much wealth, as in Ireland. This it owes directly to the shelter of English law and English liberty. When an objection is sometimes urged that the State ought not to countenance the doc- trines of the Roman Catholic Church, the answer is that this countenance has been given so long and so generally, that it can only be withdrawn by the repeal of half the Constitution. The Presbyterian Church has not been equally for- tunate, only because the body which it represents is smaller. But then again its legal position is more clearly defined and established than that of any Nonconformist ' nese juggler, he presents the most sin- ' seen.' A remarkable conflict between ' gular spectacle of episcopal vivacity at him and Bishop Doyle is recorded in 1 the age of ninety-one that I have ever Fitzpatrick's Boyle, i. 392. Essay IX. THEIR FORMER EQUALITY. 415 Church in England. Not only has it received a direct maintenance from the State, since 1689,1 but before that time its ministers in several instances were ordained by the Irish Bishops, conjointly with Scottish Presbyters, through the influence of Lord Clandeboye,2 the ancestor of a not less tolerant and more distinguished namesake. In the parishes of the North, they were in many instances the established and recognised ministers.3 They eagerly adopted the only Imperial confession of faith that the "British dominions have ever received — that of West- minster.4 The General Assembly of Ulster, if not as com- pletely recognised as the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, is a more venerable synod than any other existing in Ireland. They obtained admission into the offices of State long before their Nonconformist brethren in England — before even their own worship was completely legalised.5 They have since 1844 obtained the right of celebrating marriages almost on the same footing as the clergy of the Established Church.6 It is the testimony of the austere historian of the Presbyterian Church7 of Ulster, that 'prior to 1784, when its ministers received f the smallest dividend of Regium Donum, they were at ' the lowest ebb in point of education, zeal, and doctrinal ' soundness. The increase of the grant has been con- 6 nected with their advancement in intellectual culture, 6 piet}^, and efficiency.' 1 For the Regium Donum to the (ibid. iii. 464) ; and also to the United Presbyterians, see Reid, ii. 484, 48-3, Presbyterians (ibid. iii. 356). 489 ; iii. 401-412. Its largest increase 1 Plant's Church of Ireland, pp. was probably owing to the original 454-456. Presbyterian connexion of Lord Castle- 3 Mailt, p. 455. reagh (ibid. iii. 407). A like scheme 4 Reid. ii. 252. was granted by the State, with full 5 Ibid. ii. 421 ; iii. 344. liberty of worship and appropriation of 6 Ibid. iii. 488. churches, to the French Presbyterians 7 Ibid. iii. 406. For the general who settled at Portarlington and else- effect of Presbyterianism on the social where, after the revocation of the and moral state of Ulster, see Reid, Edict of Nantes, from 16S2 to 1822 iii. 413. 416 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. Social As the legal relation, so also the social relation, has Protest °f ^een ail(^ *s essentially different from that of the Churches ants and [n England. Whatever may have been the estrangement, Roman ° ... Catholics, whatever the provocation, it is certain that their inter- course has been and is, on the whole, marked by a friend- liness and cordiality,1 strongly contrasted with our stiffness and reserve, and the more remarkable when viewed in the light of the far more extreme theological divergence of the Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic, compared with the nearer approaches of doctrine and practice in England. It would be easy to multiply stories, some serious, some comical, of this kindly intercourse. The two Bishops of Cork not long" as^o met each other in the road between Cork and Kinsale, coming to restore their letters which had gone astray respectively to each. Their carriages stopped, and their prisoners were exchanged.2 The two last Archbishops of Dublin co-operated on the most friendly terms in the Board of National Education. Within the memory of aged persons of our own time, at the centenary of the deliverance of Londonderry, the two Bishops of Derry were seen walking side by side to assist in the Pro- 1 I have spoken of the intercourse (Religion and Education in Ireland, between the clergy of the two Churches by the Rev. Edward Stanley, p. 10.) because it more especially concerns my The Roman Catholic Archbishop of argument. But it is not less true Tuam (Dr. Kelly), in 1828, gave in that an Englishman is struck by the evidence that in no instance did a more pacific relations of the people of Protestant gentleman refuse contribu- the Irish Churches. I cannot forbear tions to his numerous applications for to quote the words of one who, like the building of Roman Catholic chapels bis son, was surprised at a result so (Sir George Lewis's Irish Disturbances, contrary to what is generally believed p. 411). The first Roman Catholic I may add, so generally seen — in chapel in Derry was largely subscribed England. 'How often do we hear it for by the Protestant bishop. Com- ' asserted in England that by the entire pare Mr. Bence Jones's pamphlet on ' Catholic population Protestants are the Irish Church. « held in abhorrence [and, it may be 2 ' Pray go on opening my letters,' ' said, vice versa] ! On the contrary, if said another Roman Catholic prelate • left to their own warm feelings, they to one of the most eminent of living ' are inclined to live on the best terms Protestant bishops ; ' it is of no im- ' with their Protestant neighbours.' ' portance.' Essay IX. THEIR FRIENDLY INTERCOURSE. 417 testant cathedral at the service of joint thanksgiving. About the same period a farmer called to pay his rent to the Bishop of Limerick. He found him with another elderly gentleman seated by the fire, each with a pair of bagpipes. 6 Wait/ said the Bishop, 6 till you have heard * us play a duet ; ' and ' "Now go home and tell your friends 6 that you heard a duet played together by the Protestant 6 and Catholic Bishops of Limerick.' There is a parish church near Limerick, of which the story is told that the Bishop having heard that the clergyman was negligent and the congregation scanty, sent to say that he was coining to inspect it. The clergyman was absent, but his wife was at home. She and her husband were both on the best terms with the Roman Catholic priest. She applied to him in her distress. He lent her his congrega- tion for the Sunday. The church was overflowing. The Bishop came, and the device succeeded.1 That same re- spected prelate in the same diocese had himself, in a disturbed time, gone with the Roman Catholic priest2 of his own parish to the Roman Catholic chapel, and there from the altar steps addressed the Roman Catholic flock on their duties as citizens and Christians. A still more illustrious example, Bishop Berkeley, issued, under similar circumstances, a pastoral letter to the Roman Catholic clergy of his own diocese of Cloyne. 6 1 look,' said Bishop Law (of Elphin) in 1793, ' on my Roman Catholic brethren * as fellow- subjects and fellow-Christians ; believers in the ' same God, partners in the same redemption. Specu- ' lative differences on some points of faith are with me of 1 no account. They and I have but one religion— the 1 [This story I hare heard questioned of the general state of society.] as regards Bishop Jebb. It seems to 2 Forster' 's Life of 'Bishop Jebb>\). 59 ; be a legend common to several dioceses, conf. 174. and therefore the more characteristic £ E 418 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. ' religion of Christianity. Therefore as children of the ' same Father, as travellers on the same road, as seekers ' of the same salvation, why not love each other as 'brothers?1 Unable to make the peasants abont me 6 good Protestants, I wish to make them good Catholics,2 6 good citizens, good anything. ... I have therefore 6 circulated amongst them some of the best of their own 6 authors.' Social It would, doubtless, be easy to find parallels of kindly Epscopa-f feeling between the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, bans and Ussher assured their leader that ' it would break his heart Jrresby- terianp. 6 if their successful ministry in the North were inter- 6 rupted,' and he did in fact prove their 'very good fc friend ; '3 and with him and Bramhall originated the nearest approach ever made to a union between the two great Protestant Churches of Britain. I have already noticed the divergence of the two in the siege of Derry. It should be remembered no less that during all those memorable months the cathedral was shared between them ; each had their own service within its walls ; and on the whole harmony prevailed. The High Church party, after the Restoration and after the Revolution, in the Irish as in the English Church, unfortunately prevailed in their endeavours to keep down and irritate the Nonconformists, but there have often been signs of a better temper. Even Archbishop King generously protected Professor Hutchin- son— and of Archbishop Newcome and Bishop Clayton I have already spoken. The venerable Moderator of the General Assembly of Ulster, who died last year, openly proclaimed at a public meeting 6 the marriage between ' Episcopacy and Presbyterianism,' and ' defied any one ' to forbid the banns.' He followed to the grave the late 1 Quarterly lieview, lxxvii. 259. 3 Reid's Presbyterian Church, iii. 378. 2 Reid, i. 137. Essay IX. THEIR FRIENDLY INTERCOURSE. 419 Lord Primate of the Irish Church, and he was in turn followed to his grave by the present. John Wesley doubt- less honoured and was honoured by the higher ecclesi- astics of England, but it may be doubted whether he ever met on this side the water such a cordial reception from an antagonist as at Cork from the genial Father O'Leary, such gracious hospitality from prelates of such entirely opposite tendencies, as at Derry, from the eccentric bishop, who almost converted the great preacher to a belief in his episcopal virtues.1 Certainly, the graces and gifts of Wesley's own character have never met a more intelligent and fervent appreciation than from the most refined and least puritanical of Irish churchmen — Alexander Knox. It is true that within recent times this familiarity has been much restricted by the uncompromising spirit which has displayed itself in the Eoman Catholic Church since the Synod of Thurles has laid those severe restrictions on the Roman Catholic clergy and laity of Ireland, that would not be borne in any other European country.2 Roman Catholic servants are now no longer permitted to attend the family prayers of Protestant households. The seat which in the house of many a Protestant squire was re- served at his table for the Catholic parish priest, is now left vacant.3 It is true also that the natural asperities of religious parties have often been fostered by the vehe- 1 ' The Bishop of Derry was exem- been told, in which the squire, finding 1 plary in all points of public worship, that the old priest ceased to come to 'and plenteous in all good works' his accustomed place, and meeting him (Wesley's Journals, June 6, 1775). The in the road, entreated his forgiveness same prelate was also a great favourite if any offence had been given unwit- of the Presbyterians (Reid, iii. 351). tingly. 'No,' the old man, with tears, Compare Wesley's charitable remarks replied; 'neither by you, nor your on Bishop Chenevix (Southey's Wesley, 'wife, nor your dear children, nor ii. 517). ' grandchildren ; every night and every 2 See Decrees of the Synodof Thurles, ' morning I pray for them ; but — I am pp. 14, 35, 53. ' not allowed.' 3 An affecting instance of this has B B 2 420 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. mence on both sides in that susceptible race, to a degree beyond what is found in England. Yet still the examples above given of a better state of feeling show that the darker shadow1 through which the two Churches may be now passing is not their normal or necessary condition, and they exceed anything of the kind on this side of St. George's Channel. And the general fact remains — often noticed for other purposes — that in spite of the anomalies of the Established Church, it has never been a popular grievance. In that remarkable collection of the insurrec- tionary poetry of Ireland, called 6 The Spirit of the Nation,' where every page bristles with curses and denunciations of England, the Protestant clergy are but once mentioned. Amongst the exciting ' Realities of Irish Life,' it is always the landlord and the agent, not the clergyman, who is the hero or the victim against whom both priests and tenants are combined. And even in the midst of a proposal for considerable changes in their condition, Bishop Moriarty, the most highly educated, and one of the most highly esteemed of the Eoman prelates, bears the testimony already cited to their beneficial influence, the possible loss of which he candidly laments, at the same time that he advocates their withdrawal. (III.) What, it may be asked, are the practical results of this historical summary ? These are far too large, far too complicated, to be entered upon here. Yet three special remarks may be made, as directly flowing from what has been said, and two general reflections. (1.) Each element in the Irish ecclesiastical life ought to be developed in the natural channels indicated by its 1 It is needless to say that during the animosities of both parties must the time of elections, and elections be highly excited. But these are conducted on ecclesiastical war-cries, mere transitory phenomena. Essay IX. CONCLUSION. 421 own separate characteristics. What the law might do beneficially is indicated by what history has already done. What statesmen might hope, is indicated by what they have already attained. What statesmen might avoid, is indicated by what they have already abandoned. When experiments are said to have been tried in Ireland and failed, it has been truly and justly asked, 4 What experi- ments ? ' The wars of Elizabeth ? The curse of Cromwell ? The terrific penal laws of Anne ? Or the system of mode- ration and conciliation begun in 1828, and already pro- ducing fruits of civilisation and peace, such as almost counterbalance the whole previous disorder of Irish history. Each of the three elements must be regarded as what it is historically, and as nothing more. The Roman Catholic system has been the form adopted by the abori- ginal Celtic race, and as such it has for the last sixt}^ years received a large amount of endowment and recognition. On the expediency of this policy the opinion of eminent statesmen has attained a unanimity so rare and so striking as to compel attention even from the most reluctant.1 We have the declarations of Burke, Pitt, Peel, Lord Castle- reagh, Lord Cornwallis, Lord Grenville, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Francis Burdett, Henry Drummond, Sir George Lewis, Arnold, Whately, Senior,2 Sydney Smith — to say nothing of the two most illustrious living names of the Whig party, and of all those who have declared, within the last year, their belief that this is the course which their own unbiassed convictions would have led them to adopt. It was formally adopted in 1825 by the House of 1 See Quarter/!/ Revieit', lxxvi. argument of Mr. Ludlow in the Con- 2 See, especially, Mr. Senior's temporary Review, December, 1 S6S ; pamphlet on National Property. I and the short but decisive appeal of might add many other authorities. I Mr. Goldwin Smith (Irish Character will content myself with the elaborate atid Irisk History, p. 132). 422 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. Endow- Commons, by a majority of 43, in a resolution which has SSgnition never been cancelled. It is justified not only by the pre- ofthe cedents of Ireland, already cited, but by the still more Catholic direct examples of Malta and Canada. It is the policy mc ' adopted towards, and accepted by, the Roman Catholic Church in every other country in Europe. It is the only policy which even professes to satisfy the claims of justice. The demand for the destruction of a rival, without advan- tage to ourselves, may be vengeance, but it is not justice — ■ may be the savage war-cry of the ancient Gibeonites,1 but is not the legitimate claim of a Christian State or of a civilised Church. It is the only policy which would tend to remove one of the most dangerous temptations of the present Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland, by making them independent of the popular j^rejudices and disaffection of those to whom, by the present wretched system of fees and lotteries, they have to look for their daily maintenance and support. It is a policy which, by the nature of the case, is not less just or less wise now than it was fifty or twenty or two years ago. The only impediment which it has to overcome is the same bigotry and prejudice which resisted the Roman Catholic Relief Act, the Test and Corporation Act, the Maynooth grant, and which, in each of those cases, was, by the determination of the leaders of public opinion, steadily met and overcome. The Esta- (2.) The Church of England is the Church of the Church the English settlers. It is not the national Church of Ireland, Church of aily more than it is the national Church of India. But the J English the bishops and clergy of Ireland, as much as the bishops settlers. clergy of India, are prelates and ministers of the national Church of England, deriving from its laws, from 1 2 Sam. xxi. 4-6 : 'We will have ' be delivered unto us, and we will ' no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his 1 hang them up unto the Lord.' ' house . , . Let seven men of his sons Essay IX. CONCLUSION. 423 its government, from its authority, the same advantages that are derived by the clergy of the mother country, how- ever much the difference of circumstances may justify the loss of particular privileges which belong to the English- man at home, but not to the Englishman abroad. The vast area comprised in the ' unions ' of Irish parishes is already more like to the vast area of an English clergyman in a district of India or of the colonies, than to the com- pact structure of a rural parish in England. The accu- mulation of see upon see, and of parish upon parish, has already been an accommodation to the actual facts of the case. Any other changes in the same direction would be but carrying out a principle already admitted. The English Church in Ireland has always exercised, and will always exercise, an influence far beyond the pale ; but it has done so not so much in virtue of its Irish as of its English qualities. It can only be separated from the Church of England, of which it is an integral portion, either by a series of penal laws, or by a complete and absolute disruption from within. Such a separation, what- ever other advantages it may bring with it, will cut off from it whatever have hitherto been its redeeming1 charac- teristics. Any new Constitution must be forced upon it, either by legal enactment or by the pressure of cir- cumstances. As no Protestant could claim the separation of the Irish Catholic Church from the see of Rome, so no Catho- lic could claim the separation of the Irish Protestant Church from the Crown and laws of England. Equality in rank, in precedence, in legal rights, and, if it be possi- ble, in wealth, is a legitimate object of ambition for either community. But the destruction of the internal constitu- tion of either Church is not needed for the satisfaction of the other. Nor is it the natural policy of a Liberal 424 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. Government to promote the extinction of the more en- lightened minority of a Church which can ill afford to lose whatever elements of liberality or progress it now contains. (3.) Of the third Church it is not needed to say more than has been already implied. What has been said of the Irish Catholic Church applies to the Irish Presbyterian Church with the necessary modification of the two cases. But it is impossible not to express a hope that the aspira- tions of Ussher and Newcome for a more cordial union between the two Protestant Churches might at last be realised, and that the closer homogeneousness which in some important respects exists between the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians of Ireland, might lead to that closer intercourse and intercommunion between the Church of England and its Nonconforming and Presbyterian brethren, which on a former occasion I ventured to suggest as one of the most easy, most salutary, and most necessary reforms in the existing relations of the English State and the English Church. Finally, this leads us to the general remark that the example of Ireland, if in some respects a warning to England, is in other respects a model. Nowhere, as we have seen, has the Church of England had such opportu- e nities for conciliating its two chief rivals ; nowhere is there such a field for attempting the kind of conciliation which, in England, would be as desirable, but in some respects more difficult. In the graveyard of the Protestant cathedral of Tuam there stands the stem of the ancient sculptured cross of the original church. In the precinct of the Roman Catholic cathedral there stands its pedestal. The two fragments cannot be exclusively appropriated by either church. Neither can be expected to relinquish what Essay IX. CONCLUSION. 425 each, prizes, and what each has been the means of preserv- ing. Neither would be so ungenerous as to wish to destroy what the other possesses, merely because the one has lost it. What all good Protestant Churchmen, what all good Catholics, of Tuam naturally wish for this ancient cross, is what every wise statesman, every true Christian, would wish for the religion of which that cross is the symbol, namely, a neutral ground, a mutual truce, by which the two parts shall at last be joined, as the emblem of peace, not as the landmark of division. That neutral ground, that mutual truce, has hitherto been found in the pacify- ing influence, in the general control of the Imperial Government ; in the progress of mixed national education ; in the silent influences of resident gentry, whether Irish or English. It has been boldly but truly said hj a distinguished Churchman, who would else appear to have approached this controversy from a different side, that in these high matters the State has shown itself more Christian than the Church.1 If this be so in the questions of general policy most crying for solution, it certainly would seem not to be the moment to choose for severing any of the Irish Churches from these ' more Christian ' influences. It has been said, with all the weight belonging to the calm judgment of the eminent statesman who uttered the maxim, that in 6 Ireland, far more than in England, ' improvement and civilisation must descend from above ; ' they will not rise spontaneously from the inward work- ings of the community.' 2 If this be so in secular matters, it is surely still more true in ecclesiastical matters, where the spontaneous working even of that highly gifted com- munity too certainly needs all the stimulus wdiich a more 1 Dean Alford's Essays, p. 65. 2 Preface to Sir G. C. Lewis's Disturbances in Ireland. 426 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. vigorous race and a more impartial Government can give it, for the development of its natural resources. Inevita- 4. It is sometimes said that the day for compromise is compro- past. It may he much more truly said that nothing hut mises. compromises have heen proposed, or can, in the present state of the empire be accepted. The advance of civilisa- tion, which forbids the total destruction of institutions, such as was common two hundred years ago — the frame- work of the Constitution, which has already admitted concessions on all sides that cannot be revoked — the pledges made to each other and to the country by the two political parties — above all, the complexity of the three religious elements which have been here set forth — exclude the adoption of any measure that is not in some degree a compromise. It is a choice, not between destruction and reform, but between various kinds of reform. Amongst these the selection may be difficult, but such a discrimina- ting selection is the work to which this nation is called. It may be obstructed by the passions of contending parties, by the vehemence of popular prejudice ; but let us not say that it is beyond the reach of English statesmanship and Irish patriotism. It is hard to believe that the best remedies are in themselves too late ; or to surrender the hope that to the chiefs who guide the fortunes of the State, the very seriousness and delicacy of the enterprise will be its best recommendation. Let us conclude by an illustration from the life of the early Irish saint on whose character we dwelt at the opening of this address. There was a question in the sixth century as to the privileges and endowments of the Bards, the ancient spi- ritual hierarchy of Ireland. There were various charges brought against them. One was their disproportionate number. Every one of the first rank had thirty followers, Essay IX. CONCLUSION. 427 every one of the second rank fifteen in his train ; so that a third of the population were dependent upon them. Another complaint was that they quartered themselves on their neighbours from the 1st of November to the 1st of May. A third was that they demanded the gold brooch in the king's mantle. For these reasons Aedh or Hugh, the son of Ainmin, Conven- convoked the Convention of Drumceat,1 and proposed a Drumceat. total extirpation of the whole order. There was present at the assembly no less a person than the great Columba. He suggested a compromise. He urged that we ought to beware lest in pulling up the tares we pulled up the wheat also. He proposed that their inordinate rights and their inordinate train of dependants should be restrained, and that they should be bound to keep open schools in history, and all branches of learning then known in Ireland. He felt that their loss would be a serious blow to the civilisation of the country, and that all needful reform might be obtained by a reduction of their numbers, and a definition of their duties. This resistance to the entire suppression of the ancient Irish hierarchy excited fierce divisions in the Court of Aedh. One of the princes threw mud at the great Irish saint as he entered the assembly. Another reverently kissed him on both cheeks and gave him his seat. Columba, after the manner of those times, requited the two receptions with corresponding curses and blessings. The hostile prince was struck with idiocy, and his mother and her waiting-maid transformed into two herons, who stand for ever, watching for their prey at the ford of Drumceat. The more conciliatory chief was to have the privilege, 1 It is now called Darig Hill, or the Mullagh, near Derry. — (Reeves' Adam- nan, pp. 29, 37.) 428 THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES. Essay IX. unusual for an Irish prince, of fulfilling one out of every seven of his promises, and of dying in his own bed sur- rounded "by his family and kinsmen.1 The result was the preservation, on a more modest scale, of the Bardic order. Its harp, the symbol of ancient civilisation, is still the emblem of Ireland, and still has its place in the Imperial banner of Britain. So deeply were St. Columba's services valued by the Bardic hierarchy, that their chief priest, who himself be- came a saint, composed a paneg}rric or hymn in his praise, and which was supposed to have such a charm, as by its repetition to secure even murderers from the hands of their pursuers.2 Whether or not we reap Columba's reward, we may be content to follow in his steps. But that reward, in another and a far higher sense, is still in the power of the Irish Bardic order to bestow. I have spoken much of the civilising, controlling, and elevating influence of the State. Let it not be thought that I underrate the true power that still resides in the clergy of the three Churches — may I say especially in the clergy of the Established Church ? — if they know how to use it. They must not turn to the charms and curses of the old barbaric age ; not to the penal and exclusive laws of the last century ; not to the armed neutrality or mutual aggressions which some hold out to us as the prospect in which Ireland is hencefor- ward to delight. Not in these, nor in any dreams of unborn churches and synods, does the true mission of the Irish clergy consist. It consists in making the most of their inherited situation. It consists in turning to the best account whatever has come down to them from the Church of former ages. It consists in their conscious- ness that their present trial has been aggravated by the 1 Reeves' Adamnan, p. 33. 2 Todd's St. Patrick, pp. 133-138. Essay IX. CONCLUSION. 429 negligence and injustice of former times, for which they Duty of the Iri si are not responsible, but which excuses, if it does not justify, clergy, their opponents. It consists in the fact that they are now in the position the most interesting, the most exciting, the most stimulating, in which any Church can be placed. In that union of various elements, which in their country have been so strangely brought together, there lies a chance of coming usefulness, such as even England and Scotland have not in like degree. What I have endea- voured to do is to lay before them the treasures which have been bequeathed to them by the past, and which are to inspire them for the future. Whatever framework the State gives to the Church — whether it preserves that which is, or imposes that which is to be, the spirit must be infused into it by the Church and by the clergy. That spirit may be the spirit of a narrow, proselytising, and ex- clusive sect ; or it may be more and more, wTIia t it has been in great measure, in spite of all our joint shortcomings — taking it at its best and not at its worst — the free, magnanimous, imperial spirit of what has been for seven hundred years the United Church of England and Ireland. 430 NOTE ON THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHURCH.1 The Com- The Irish Church. Act has been, as was often predicted, promise. a COTnpromise. By the famous treaty between Lord Gran- ville and Lord Cairns, each party surrendered at last what had each party surrendered earlier, many hard words and many futile calculations would have been saved on either side. If much was lost to the pecuniary interests of the Irish Church, something also was secured. On the deeper question of principle, if the policy of a concurrent endow- ment was forced to retire for the moment, yet its retreat has been covered by a skilful manoeuvre, which will not prevent its return if ever Parliament should recover its freedom of action and speech on this and like questions. Few who heard them can forget the impressive words, im- perfectly reported at the time, with which Lord Athlumney wound up the subject on that 4 night of spurs,' when so many compliments and gratulations in the House of Lords suddenly took the place of fierce recriminations and invec- tives. ' The Government must forgive me for the one 4 occasion on which I left their ranks. That one exception 4 was the one only chance offered to me for securing what I 4 knew to be a message of peace for Ireland. I grasped at it. 4 It eluded my grasp. It was but a small thing. But you 4 gave the dog a bad name and hanged it ; and now that the 4 dog is dead and buried, I will say no more about it.' Yet, though it is dead and buried, the stern Preamble and the 1 Abridged from the Quarterly Ecv'ew, October 1869. Essay X. THE COMPROMISE 431 specific Appropriation, which forbade its resurrection, were withdrawn, and some future day may still see the triumph of a large and pacific policy over the temporary conquests of theological rancour and party spirit. But, in fact, the compromise of July 22 was rendered possible only by the still greater compromise of March 1. The Treaty of Yillafranca was justified by the campaign of Solferino. The compromise of the Lords and Commons was only following out the compromise involved in the Bill itself. Even by the Irish Church the necessity of such a compromise has been acknowledged in the most striking manner. There was indeed a moment when, contrary to the counsels of most moderate advisers, but not unnaturally, considering the circumstances and the temperament of those concerned, the cry was raised of '* No surrender ; ' 6 No compromise.' There was, there is, one course — one possible course — and one only, by which such an uncompromising policy could be carried out, namely, by refusing to create any new Church Body. Such a course would have placed the Government in the utmost difficulty ; but it has been thought by the leaders of the Irish Church too hazardous to attempt. By adopting the opposite policy — by endeavouring to form this body, the principle of compromise has been accepted by Irish Churchmen, and has thus had its complete run through the whole cycle of every party concerned — the Ministry, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the Church of Ireland itself. In some respects, no doubt, the Bill has been as sweep- ing and severe as its most enthusiastic supporters or opponents have represented. A vast revenue has been ruthlessly torn away from the Irish Protestant Church, and its legal incidents have, in many respects, been mate- rially altered. But, in principle, its position will be found 432 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHURCH. Essay X. The Church of Ireland not abolished. Nor entirely separated from the State. to have been much less affected by the Act than the extreme language of either party would seem to indicate. In the first place, the Act has not effected what, in common parlance, it was over and over again supposed to effect — the abolition of the Irish Church. Had a Bill of this nature been brought into Parliament any time before 1701 to put an end to the establishment of Presby- terianism, Episcopacy, Protestantism, or Catholicism, its meaning would have been plain enough. It would have been, as the Solemn League and Covenant expresses it, the 6 extirpation ' of such a form of belief. This, however, is not the purpose of the recent Act. It may incidentally lead — many well-informed persons think that it will ulti- mately lead — to the extirpation of Protestant Episcopacy in Ireland. But this was not its avowed object. The very name of the 6 Church of Ireland,' which was one of the main causes of offence, as implying its national position, is now secured to it for ever, not by its own voluntary assumption, but by the Act of the Imperial Legisla- ture.1 Nor, again, has the Act effected a complete separation from the State. Many of the links which knit the Irish Church to England are no doubt severed. But many still remain. In regard to its government and doctrine, there are several important respects in which the Act leaves no liberty of separation. It creates a new connection with the State, more directly emanating from the State than any which now exists. The Irish Church, by this Act, is doubtless left free to turn Anglican, Roman Catholic, Unitarian, or Lutheran. But it is not left free to turn Presbyterian, at least not till the present generation has passed away. Its first constituent assembly must embrace Episcopacy. However powerful are the arguments in 1 Irish Church Act, Clause 2 :—' The said Church of b ehind: Essay X. THE COMPROMISE. 433 favour of its adopting the Presbyterian model, no govern- ing body can be acknowledged by the Queen in Council under this Act, which does not include ' the Bishops or ' the persons who, for the time being, may succeed to the * exercise and discharge of the episcopal functions of such ' Bishops.' 1 Again, it is free to form a Synod. But it is not free to form a Synod, such as have been all the ecclesiastical Synods of Episcopal Churches in modern times. It is compelled to have a Synod so constituted as to be a novelty in the eyes of every High Church- man, of every Roman Catholic in the kingdom — a use- ful novelty, if rightly organised, but still one which, under the development of its own natural instincts, the feeling we have indicated could hardly have allowed to exist. Whether the Irish clergy desire it or not, the Legislature compels them in their new condition to admit the laity into their governing body. This is in fact an attempt, imperfect and awkward, but still quite in- telligible, to produce that very relation of the laity towards the clergy, which has hitherto been sought and supplied by an Establishment. On this vital point the supreme intelligence of the nation, as expressed in Par- liament, has intervened in as direct a manner as in the Act of Union or the Act of Uniformity. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Bright and Mr. Miall, have drawn up the first Canon of the c Free ' Irish Church. Again, with regard to the endowments of the State, Nor which form one chief characteristic of a Church Establish- 2sm? ment — much, doubtless, has been rent away, but enough dowed- remains to maintain the principle. Not only have the private benefactions left to the Irish Church, as a National Church, been retained, but also the most material, the most significant, the most symbolical of all, its sacred buildings. 1 Irish Church Act, Clause 22. F F 434 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHURCH. Essay X. In its original form the Bill went even further than this, for it provided that the State should undertake the repair of twelve of the most important of these churches. But even in its present form it provides that the State shall continue to the ' Church of Ireland,5 not only all its parish churches and chapels, but the grand old historic edifices of the Irish people — St. Patrick's, and Christ Church, at Dublin, and the primatial Church of Armagh, teeming with recollections or traditions of the Apostle of Ireland — the Cathedral of Down, which possesses his grave — the venerable sanctuaries of St. Canice at Kilkenny, of St. Flannan at Killaloe, of St. Jarlath, with its unrivalled porch, at Tuam — the Cathedral of St. Mary at Limerick, on the shores of the sacred Shannon — the Cathedral of Derry, alike famous as on the site of St. Columba's earliest ministrations and for the heroic deeds of its memorable siege. Nor Again, although the several corporations of which the dissolved. Church of Ireland has hitherto consisted are to be dis- solved, the Act creates afresh one vast new corporation in their place, which will or may absorb them all. The change from many corporations to one is doubtless con- siderable, yet it has some obvious conveniences ; and, after all, it is a merely technical process, which might, if the political world had been so minded, have been called a scheme of Church Eeform as well as a scheme of Church disestablishment. Were the Ecclesiastical Commissioners of England to be made the one corporation capable of receiving property for the Church, it would make an im- portant difference to lawyers and chapter- clerks, but to the people and to the clergy at large the change would be almost imperceptible. Again, with regard to legal privileges. There are two, indeed, which the Act destroys, of which we do not dis- Essay X. THE COMPROMISE. 435 semble the significance. One is the place of its Bishops in the House of Lords, the other is its separate ecclesiastical courts. But the Act leaves others quite as important. It leaves, so fa.r as appears, the rank and precedence of the Irish Protestant, as of the Irish Catholic, clergy un- touched. It leaves, so far as appears, the territorial Nor arrangements of the parishes and dioceses. It leaves the unrecog- Act of the Supremacy of the Crown 1 for Ireland, expressed ulsed- in more forcible and impressive terms than that for Eng- land, unrepealed. It leaves the Crown free as before to nominate the Bishops of the Irish Church.2 It leaves the 6 Church of Ireland ' free to declare itself part of the Church of England, claiming the protection of its laws, demanding the nomination of its prelates by the Crown, claiming the advice and judicial wisdom of its legal tri- bunals, having a share in its preferments, following the course of its doctrine, its discipline, and its worship. We have called attention to these aspects of the Irish Church Act for various reasons. In the first place, it is the duty of every reasonable man The effects not to exaggerate the effect of changes, which in them- Compu- serves he may see cause to lament, but which are made mise* far worse by representing them in gloomier colours than the case warrants. One of the most alarming features of the Irish Church Bill has been the impetus which it appeared to give to the enemies of endowed and established Churches everywhere. By this impetus, in great part, the Bill was carried; and, from the hopes thus excited, it still derives, in the eyes of the more fanatical and destruc- 1 2 Eliz. c. 1 (Ireland). ' Bishops of the Irish Church, if that 2 In the House of Commons Sir 1 should be the wish of the Irish Stafford Northcote put this question 1 Church ? ' The Attorney-General to the Attorney-General for Ireland : answered, with remarkable prompti- — 'Is there anything in the Bill to tude and emphasis, 'Most decidedly 'prevent the Crown nominating the 'not.' 436 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHURCH. Essay X. tive Nonconformists, its chief interest. It may be useful, therefore, thus far to have shown that the history of the Irish Church Act, so far from proving that the principle of establishments is doomed, proves how deeply rooted and almost incapable of extinction it really is. Whatever may be the meaning of the word 4 establishment ' or ' disestablishment,' the recent course of events has indi- cated that the thing denoted by it is of too stubborn a growth to be overturned by any single measure however revolutionary. Revolutionary, in one sense, the Irish Church Act may have been ; but in another sense, it is the very reverse of revolutionary. Revolutionary it was in one sense ; for it destroyed what it has destroyed, for the mere sake of destruction, and in this respect it may be said to have gone beyond the widest changes of the Reformation or of the Civil Wars, which never sub- verted without at least an attempt at construction and compensation. But in another sense it was conservative, for, unlike those changes, it has preserved, in the midst of destruction, what in a more barbarous age would have been swept away entirely. If c disestablishment ' be what this Bill has effected, then it is consolatory to remember that 6 disestablishment,' whatever that much disputed word means, does not mean total abolition of the institu- tion, nor yet the removal of all legal privileges, nor yet entire separation from the State, nor absolute freedom of clerical self-government, nor entire dissolution of eccle- siastical corporations, nor total withdrawal of their re- venues. It means, in this Bill, as regards the Irish. Church, though only in a completer form, that which every Church has undergone in every country in Europe — reduction of its endowments, reduction of its privileges, partial disendowment, and partial disestablishment ; or, as the Attorney- General described the measure before it Essay X. EFFECTS OF THE COMPROMISE. 437 actually appeared, 'disendowment and disestablishment to 6 a certain extent.' It may be remembered that the mover of the Bill, in his celebrated speech of March 1, compared the Irish Chnrch to Gloucester, in 6 King Lear.' The change to be effected, he said, was imagined to be a cleap over a precipice ' " ten masts high," but was really only the fall of a few ( feet.' There are senses, indeed, in which the leap of the Church of Ireland has been to the full as dangerous as Gloucester supposed. The loss of so large a part of its endowments, the sudden reduction of its clergy from affluent independence (if so be) to poverty or mendicancy, is doubtless a tremendous descent. The possible change in its ecclesiastical position may also be, not only a leap in the dark, but a leap into absolute chaos. But both of these results may be, or might have been to a considerable extent, arrested by Irish Churchmen themselves. And as regards the principle of the Bill — as regards the necessary operation of its clauses — the fall may be, as its mover presumed, almost imperceptible. Even as re- gards ( ascendency,' no one who heard Sir Eoundell Palmer's speech on the rejection of the Lords' amend- ments can forget the force with which he pointed out that the Irish Church Act, passed as it was, without a shred of benefit to the Irish Catholics and with important benefits still left to the Irish Protestants, was, and would continue to be, a striking monument of that very Pro- testant ascendency which it professed to destroy, being, as it was, in its most characteristic feature, the direct result of the exclusiveness of English and Scottish prejudice. The fact is that £ establishment,' like 1 endowment,' is a question of degree ; and though the amount of one or the other may be so much diminished that their benefits may be almost frustrated, yet the principle may so far remain 438 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHURCH. Essay X. as to be always capable of revival. The Knights of St. John, when they quitted Rhodes for Malta, left a powder magazine in the vaults of the citadel, which continued unperceived for three centuries. Some twelve years ago it was ignited by a flash of lightning in a thunder-storm ; an explosion took place which blew up the Turkish governor and Turkish mosque, and thus three hundred years after their suppres- sion the departing order was avenged. Such may be the results of the inflammable materials left in Ireland, in the roots of the old Establishment — the seeds of the old ascendency. Let us hope that, unlike the powder maga- zine at Rhodes, they may, by a happier Providence, be still destined to scatter, not destruction and devastation, but life and prosperity over Ireland. Re-eu- As regards the re-endowment of the Irish Church, it would be alike impertinent and useless to suggest any details by which this can be effected. We content our- selves with urging that the main object to be sought is the continuance of the present free and independent position of the Irish clergy. In proportion as they are left at the mercy of the mere voluntary and casual contributions of the individual landlords or the local peasantry, they will be degraded to the position which it is the duty and policy of every enlightened statesman to avert. The ecclesiastical history of the British Empire abounds with warnings which they have to shun. The 4 tame Levites ' of the Scottish and English Nonjurors — the dependence of Nonconformists on their congregations, so often lamented by themselves — the miserable bargaining for the performance of sacred rites, the necessity of yield- ing to the passions and superstitions of their flocks, on the part of the Irish Roman Catholic Priests — are all so many beacons to indicate the opposite path prescribed by the higher destiny of the Church of Ireland. If an adequate Essay X. EE- ENDOWMENT. 439 central endowment be secured, if the independence of the clergy be made the first object, then one of the main cha- racteristics of an Establishment — that which a well-known Nonconformist orator described as 'the unholy and ac- 1 cursed thing' — that which Dr Chalmers regarded as the most valuable part of the ancient ecclesiastical system both of England and Scotland — will still be preserved. Endowments, as the Archbishop of Canterbury pointed out in the manly and dignified speech with which he summed up the conclusion of the whole matter on the last night of the debate, are valuable not in them- selves, but for the special characteristics, moral and spiritual, of an endowed clergy, of which they are the symbols, and towards which they contribute. No doubt, there are also special virtues fostered by dependence, by poverty, by mendicancy. These ought always to be recog- nised by those who advocate the retention of an opposite system. They have been manifested in the hermits of the Thebaid, in the begging Friars of the Middle Ages, in many of the English Dissenters, and of the Scottish Free Churchmen and United Presbyterians. But there are also moral and spiritual advantages of another order, flowing from independence, from general cultivation, from national comprehensiveness. It is these which have been hitherto specially connected with the thought of ancient endow- ment ; and if the endowments of the Irish Church should, by the present effort, be raised to the same point, or any- thing like the same point, which they reached before, the whole result of the Bill, in this particular, will be the exact reverse of what was anticipated. So far from its having been a triumph, it then will have been a heavy blow and discouragement to the voluntary principle, the essence of which is the daily dependence of ministers on the casual contributions of their flocks. The only effect 440 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHURCH. Essay X. of the measure would in that case have been that in the stead of former endowments will have risen up new en- dowments, resembling those which they have replaced in their principle, in their origin, and in their conse- quences. What is true of the possibility, however remote, of a re-endowment, is still more true of the possibility — we hardly venture to say the probability — of a wise ' re- establishment ' of the Irish Church. Itsre-esta- The Act, as we have seen, so far from taking this blishment. p0wer from the members of the Church of Ireland, actu- ally places it within their reach. They have only to remain as they are — the Irish branch of the English Church — and they will retain most of the advantages which are possessed by the Church in the dependencies of the Empire, and many of those possessed by the Established Church in England itself. The second clause of the Act which dissolves the Union between the two Churches is expressly limited to ' the Union created by Act of Par- ' liament,' that is, by the Act of Union, and accordingly the Church of Ireland, as far as this is concerned, merely returns to the relations to the Church of England in which it was before the Union ; that is to say, one with it in all respects, except that whilst its supreme head was then, as it still is, the Queen, its legislative Government was then the Irish Parliament, which now having ceased to exist, can no longer regulate its proceedings. Appoint- Take, for example, what is probably the extremest form Bishops. °f ^ne connection, the appointment of Bishops by the Crown, which, as we have seen, the Act unquestionably allows. We can well understand the reluctance of Irish Pro- testants to receive their Bishops from the hands of Minis- ters who, as they think, have inflicted a deadly injury on their Church, and the temptation of Irishmen to have Essay X. EE-ESTABLISHMENT. 441 a direct share in the vivacious excitement and interest of choosing their own chief pastors. Yet they might remember that no single Ministry is eternal ; they might recall the wise old fable which warns ns against killing the golden goose to get at all her eggs imme- diately ; they might bear in mind calmly what have been the permanent advantages of Crown nominations both in England and Ireland, and what the probable disadvantages of merely popular elections. If, as everyone must admit, many mistakes have been made by the Crown and its Ministers, in ecclesiastical no less than lay patronage, yet it is indisputable that in point of fact appointments uni- versally acknowledged in the long run to have been the best are thus secured, which, as far as can be seen, could have been secured in no other way. Look at the present English Bench. It is not invidious to conjecture that by no system of merely clerical or popular election would the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of St. David's have attained their present eminence ; and yet probably there is hardly a clergyman who would not now regret if either had been excluded from the episcopate. Or look at the present Irish Bench. We do not deny that the peculiar qualifications of such men as the Primate and the Bishops of Derry and Tuam might always have attracted the suffrages of the mass of their countrymen. But it is more than probable that no form of popular election in Ireland, either clerical or lay, would have raised to the see of Dublin either the logical mind and liberal heart of a Whately, or the mani- fold accomplishments and charms of a Trench, or the varied gifts and graces which now adorn the sees of Meath, Killaloe, and Limerick. It is more than probable that at least in excited times the fiery zeal of such well- known characters as the Bishops of Cashel and Cork 442 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHURCH. Essay X. would carry the day in a heated contest over all other candidates. Nor is it to be forgotten that sore as were the evils inflicted in former times on Ireland and the Irish Church by England and the English Government, yet that to England the Church of Ireland owes four of the very brightest of its names — the genius and eloquence of Taylor, the apostolic energy of Bedell, the philosophic piety of Berkeley, the princely munificence of Robinson — names which the more purely Irish origin even of an Ussher or a Beresford can hardly counterbalance. And for the opposite system we have only to turn to the much- vaunted example of Canada. Of the half-dozen elections that have taken place since, in an ill-advised moment, the Crown gave up its right of nomination, not above two elections have occurred, we are told, without involving some scandal either in the process or the result. The individuals selected may have been blameless, but the canvassing, the agitation, the suspicions, the recrimina- tions, have rivalled those which accompany contested elections in other spheres of life. We have before us two Canadian documents. One, entitled 6 the Race for the Mitre,' refers to an election of some years past, in which the candidates are respectively designated as the White Horse, the Black Horse (Pontifex Maximus), and the Grey Horse (the Badger). The other refers to a more recent election to the Metropolitan see of Montreal, en- titled 6 the Games of the Bishops,' in which the several prelates are represented as climbing the greasy pole. Such satires and such scandals may, of course, arise under any form of nomination. But we doubt whether any event in English ecclesiastical life has so directly provoked them as the scenes in the Canadian Church described in the public journals, of which those ludicrous phases are but the shadows. The election to the see of Montreal, to Essay X. RE-ESTABLISHMENT. 443 which we have just referred, may be noticed the more freely because it finally issued in the harmonious appoint- ment of a truly estimable clergyman from England. But before it reached that consummation, it displayed in the most flagrant colours the vices of these popular modes of election. The see became vacant a short time before the vacancy of the see of Canterbury in England, and whilst the see of Canterbury was filled within the course of a few weeks, without tumult, without violence, and with general satisfaction to the whole community, candidate after candidate for the see of Montreal was proposed, rejected, and proposed again in vain, amidst long and fierce debates, excited meetings, lasting far into the night ; and the whole matter postponed, the whole Church go- vernment of Canada suspended, for six months — and peace was secured at last only by the rejection of all the Canadian candidates, and the selection of an independent clergyman from the mother country. We do not say that these scenes will always recur, or that Irish Churchmen may not avoid the faults of their Canadian brethren. We do not deny that in ecclesiastical as in civil matters there are incidental advantages flowing from universal suffrage. But scenes like those to which we have adverted remind us of the stormy conflicts which in earlier times of the Church led to the abandonment of this primitive mode of appointment, and they are exciting enough to make a reasonable man hesitate before he exchanges a system which has been moulded by the experience of all the older Churches of Christendom, for one which was deliberately given up, from a sense of its incongruity, and which in modern times has peculiar evils of its own, arising from the narrow tyranny of ecclesiastical majorities, from the violence of party feeling, and from the degrading associa- tions of political canvassing. Even if it should be found 444 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHURCH. Essay X. impracticable to continue the Crown nominations in the form in which they have hitherto contributed to uphold the dignity and efficiency of the Irish Church, there are other means by which the same end may be sought. The main object of all nominations is to obtain the best men for the post. The University of Cambridge, for example, has certain Regius Professorships. But the Crown, for some generations past, having abdicated its right, the University has wisely endeavoured to rectify the omission by a Board adapted so as best to secure the same stamp of men. At Oxford, the University Commissioners some twenty years ago, on considering the relative advantages of various modes of appointment, arrived at the conclusion that, on the whole, the nominations by the Crown were the most successful, and the popular elections by the Convocation the least. It would be a lamentable retrogression if a Church should voluntarily, and in the face of all expe- rience, reject the better, and choose the baser course ; or, if compelled to forego the best course, it should at once, without consideration of any intermediate step, descend to the worst. Union We pass to another like consideration. The Irish with x English Church will, after 1871, be doubtless free to choose for itself a new ritual and a new creed. There are, as we have seen, many reasons which might suggest this course. The preponderance of one of the three schools of the English Church to an almost overwhelming extent in Ireland, exasperated by its immediate antagonism with the Eoman priesthood, might easily induce them to take advantage of their suddenly acquired power, and to expel from their Prayer-Book and from their Communion those elements which in the English Church have furnished the sanction for the continuance within its bosom of the great High Church party, at various times, perhaps at the Essay X. EE-ESTABLISHMENT. 445 present moment, more powerful and energetic than any other. Indications of this disposition to Calvinise and Pnritanise the Irish Church have not been wanting. There may be others, also, from opposite points of view, who may consider that so choice an opportunity ought not to be lost of removing from the formularies some of those serious blemishes, both in composition and construc- tion, which, but for the cumbrous machinery of the National Church, might perhaps have been altered long ago. To arguments like these there is no answer if the Irish Church takes the position of a wholly new Church, free and separate from the Church of Eng- land. So long as an institution is part of a great whole, special defects may fairly be overlooked, in consideration of the general advantages flowing from the action and counteraction, and from the long traditional and here- ditary influences of the larger body to which it is attached. But if the Irish Church starts avowedly on an entirely fresh basis, it can hardly rest with merely continuing what it has received. It must then look in the face the questions which this new vocation raises. If it is resolved to be an Irish, altogether distinct from an English Church, it must begin by entirely reconsidering, if not rejecting, that which is the most purely English element in its composition, namely, the English Prayer-Book — not to speak of the Authorised Version of the Bible, and of the influence of English theology. These are boons which are altogether derived from England — a bond of connection, not with the Celtic chiefs or Celtic hierarchy, but with English civilisation and with English religion. We do not disparage the learning of Irish theologians or the energy of Irish laymen. But if it is to stand alone and apart, the Church of Ireland will have indeed a difficult task before it. Every Irish Churchman, and the whole 446 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHURCH. Essay X. Irish Church together, must then consider what is the definition of an Irish Churchman, and what is the defini- tion of the Irish Church ; whether Irish Churchmanship is confined to communicants, and to professors of this or that opinion, or whether it includes all who claim to be so considered, the freespoken man of science, as well as the rigid adherents of a well-defined creed. Each part of its Confession of Faith must be debated Article by Article — each part of its Ritual must be debated, Rubric by Rubric, and Collect by Collect. Each one must be taken on its own merits, each one must be sifted and searched to the bottom. We do not say that the 700,000 Irish Protestants may not arrive at the same conclusion as their English brethren, but the chances of such complete union will be, to say the least, uncertain ; and in that proportion the hope of English recognition and inter- ministration will become precarious, unless, in that case, the Church of England itself enlarges its borders so as to include, far and wide, the members and ministers of other communions than its own. This no doubt opens a formidable prospect. Even if the more homogeneous character of the Irish clergy should make the solution easier than in England, and should even succeed in what would of itself be a most desirable object, the reunion of the other Protestant communions, Presbyterian and "Wesley an, within the same body, yet the excitable temperament of the Irish people — perhaps we may add without offence the lower level of cultivation in the mass of the Irish clergy — would render such a disruption full of danger to the more refined, or compre- hensive, or catholic spirits, now exercising the most bene- ficial influence over the nation. To avert these dangers, there is one course, and that one the most simple and easy, namely, that the Irish Church, when constituted, Essay X. RE-ESTABLISHMENT. 447 should avail itself of the power left to it by the Act, of declaring itself part of the Church of England, bound by its laws, and adhering to its doctrine and worship. By this means it will be able to maintain the interministra- tions which have hitherto, and long before the Union, subsisted between the two churches ; and by this alone can it present a firm front and ready answer to the other- wise inexorable and irrepressible demands for a remodel- ling of all its formularies. And if there should be some who, whether as desiring a closer approximation to the Presbyterians, or a more elastic form, whether of creed or of ritual, would regret the loss of this opportunity for achieving such hopes, they may console themselves with the reflection that they will be more likely to attain those ends surely and in the long run by following the fortunes of the Church of England, than by crude experiments of their own. The fact that at this moment a Royal Com- mission is engaged, with the Irish Primate amongst its members, in reconsidering the whole ritual of the English Church, is a sufficient guarantee for the hope that some, at least, of the wishes for a better adaptation of the Liturgy to the wants of the age will be realised. And the consciousness that so large and important a part of its body as would be constituted by the Irish Church has those pressing needs, and may at any moment be driven to an act of entire disruption, would probably serve as a beneficial stimulus to the Church of England itself in accomplishing changes which are, in fact, not less desir- able for itself than for its Irish branch, though perhaps not so urgently and immediately demanded. The kindly feeling which now exists towards the body, which, at any rate, till recently was but a portion of the Imperial and National Church of England, could hardly be expected to continue in an equal measure if it became a narrow 448 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHURCH. Essay X. aggressive sect. There will always be, as there has always been, a sufficient force in the purely Celtic element in the Church of Ireland to give it a distinctive character, worthy of its name, however close its union, whether past or future, with the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman Church on this side of St. George's Channel. We pass over the many particulars suggested by the formation of the new governing body. It is enough to indicate the necessity (if anything of the old spirit is to *be preserved) of the largest scope for the independent action of the clergy ; of providing room for official, as well as elective representation, so as to secure the influence of the true lay intelligence of the country for the due prepon- derance of the great institution of Trinity College, which has long anticipated even the English Universities in its breadth and comprehensiveness of view, and which is the only ecclesiastical institution of Ireland that has come hitherto unscathed out of the furnace of the late revolu- tion, and commands the respect of all that is most en- lightened, both in the Catholic and Protestant communions of Ireland. It is needless to insist on the duty of securing for the Irish clergy the same privilege as is possessed by the English clergy of invoking the civil courts against the oppression of their own ecclesiastical rule. It is true that some of the Colonial Synods have attempted to de- mand as a preliminary condition of membership and mini- stration the humiliating conditions of renouncing their right of appeal to an external tribunal. But we cannot believe that English or Irish clergymen, at home, will ever be found so rash or so subservient as to surrender their liberties after this fashion, even if it were legally possible. It is to be hoped that the clergyman of the Church of Ireland may still retain the position which he now con- fessedly enjoys to the great advantage of his fellow- Essay X. CONCLUSION. 449 citizens, of standing above the factions and disputes of the other churches, and becoming their recognised leader and counsellor in all that relates to those great moral and physical wants which override the technical distinctions of sect and party. But we hardly believe that, after all which has been said in behalf of the advantages of such a position, the Irish clergy will voluntarily descend to the rank of mere polemics and proselytisers, and so, whilst they justify all that has ever been said against them, will also justify the most gloomy forebodings which friend or foe has expressed of the results of the Irish Church Act. Far better that resident laymen, if such there be, should undertake the religious ministrations in these outposts of Protestantism, than that there should be inflicted on un- happy Ireland the new curse of a pauper Protestant clergy, or a numerous ill-educated episcopate, living on the passion and prejudice of the people.1 In all these remarks it will be seen that when we speak of the benefits of retaining, as far as can be, these charac- teristics of the position of the old Established Church of Ireland, it must be borne in mind that we insist on the end and not on the particular means, on the object, and not on the machinery2 by which the object is attained. The end is that there shall be still an ecclesiastical body in Ireland, following the movement of the national mind, 1 The various suggestions into which these remarks were originally expanded have been omitted — partly for the sake of avoiding detail, partly because they have since been fore- stalled or disappointed by the course of events. In one particular, the Church of Ireland has attempted exactly that likeness of the English Constitution which is here indicated. Its proposed Court of Appeal is as near a copy of the English Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as under the circumstances was possible. 2 On this whole line of argument we strongly recommend to our readers, both for instruction and amusement, the remarks of Mr. Matthew Arnold, in the most captivating of his some- what eccentric Lectures — Culture and Anarchy. G G 450 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE IRISH CHUKCH. Essat X. representing the cause of law and order, the destined instrument of religious progress and civilisation ; not the slave of a tyrannical majority, or a despotic priesthood, or a party faction — a body capable of holding its own mode- rating, elevating course, without pandering to the passions or the prejudices of the people by whom it is maintained, or the clergy by whom it is ruled. We have always ad- vocated— the Irish clergy have advocated — the supremacy of the English Crown, and the connection with the law and civilisation of England, because these elements have hitherto contributed to produce, with whatever short- comings, these results. If other elements can produce the same or like results, in Heaven's name try them : only do not abandon the hope of securing the results them- selves, do not condemn as curses what have hitherto been valued as blessings. Its disestablishment in this sense, if it takes place at all, will be an act not of the Govern- ment or of the Bill, but of the Irish Church itself — an act not of murder, but of suicide. If, on the other hand, the Irish clergy still endeavour under their altered circumstances to keep alive the tra- ditions of the old Imperial Church from which they cannot be separated but by their own act and deed, then they will prove that the essential principle of national estab- lishment can survive the shock of a nominal disestablish- ment and of an all but entire dis endowment ; they will do more to strengthen the cause which was supposed to be overthrown than could be done by any other body of persons. For this task they have the advantage of the ' education ' (to use the words of the English Primate in what may be called his parting benediction to them) ' which they have ' received by their training under a nobler, better, and ' higher system ' than that sectarian, aggressive, mendi- Essay X. CONCLUSION. 451 cant condition, to which their mistaken friends, as "well as their avowed enemies, have sought to degrade them. The Celtic ecclesiastic has already in former ages given much to Great Britain. Scotland owes her first dawn of religion to Columba. The English Church of later days has reckoned amongst its most brilliant orators and preachers the clergy who have visited us from its sister branch. But the Church of Ireland may still confer yet one more boon, by showing that it has not enjoyed three centuries of close union with England in vain ; and that, even in this crisis of its fate, it has had the power of retaining under its new condition at any rate some of those blessings which it justly feared to lose, and which need not, except through its own act, depart with the reduction of its exclusive privileges. TThether this will be so or not, the next few years will show. r. c 2 452 THEOLOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.1 Difference between Religion ;ind Theology. Theology of the seven- teenth century. It may be advisable to consider what is the peculiar posi- tion— what the vantage ground — occupied by the theology of the nineteenth century. Let us see what this theo- logy is. It must be borne in mind that I am not speaking of the Eeligion, but of the Theology, of our time. The religious feeling itself, no doubt, varies from age to age ; but still it is much more nearly the same than is the case with the theories of thinking men, who, by their reasonings upon it, produce, what is called Theology. Sometimes the Eeligion is behind the Theology of an age — sometimes before it — always more or less independent of it. But that there is such a thing as the Theology of a, particular age is obvious. The Theology of the Fathers was different from that of the Schoolmen — that of the sixteenth century from that of the seventeenth or eighteenth. Each of these systems has had its peculiar merits and demerits — its links of connection with the systems which preceded and succeeded, as also its marked differences. That such a special Theology exists in our own time is proved, if by nothing else, by the alarms and attacks which it excites, no less than by the hopes which it inspires. No theology has raised such alarms and such hopes since the beginning of the sixteenth century. There is a wide-spread belief or opinion expressed by many, and felt by more, that there have never been since 1 Printed in Eraser's Magazine for February 186-5, from the substance of a paper read at a meeting of the London clergy. Essay XI. ITS PECULIARITIES. 453 the Reformation so many symptoms of a theological change ; more gradual, perhaps, and less defined, but hardly less universal and important than that involved in the Reformation itself. It may be necessary to repeat what I have often said on other occasions, that in citing testimonies, ancient or modern, to the truth of the principles developed by the progress of Theology, I do not in the least infer any concurrence of such writers beyond that contained in the particular passages to which reference is made. The whole of the rest of their works may be, often is, in direct con- tradiction to the valuable principles to which their assent is for the moment given. But I refer to them to show that in almost every age these principles have had some support, and that in our own this support is given even by the most reluctant witnesses and from the most opposite quarters. And I am led to do this from the natural wish to vindicate for the theology of which I am speaking its legitimate and ancient pedigree. Any additional confir- mations of it in the first, fifth, fourteenth, sixteenth, seven- teenth, or eighteenth centuries, will be doubly welcome both for their own sake, and as defences of doctrines which by many amongst us are fiercely and constantly attacked. Still 6 the theology of the nineteenth century ' is properly so called, because it is in the close of the last century, and the first sixty years of this, that it has been gaining more or less force, and spreading right and left till it has penetrated all the Churches of Europe, except perhaps, those of Spain and Sweden. It is from Germany, as is well known, that the main impulse has come. As at the time of the Reformation, so now, it is the German theologians who (to use the words of Latimer) have lighted the candle which, by God's grace, shall never be put out. 454 THEOLOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Essay XI. But the effect of this teaching would not have been what it has been had it found a less ready reception in the general literature and in the religious instincts of all Chris- tendom. The works of Goethe and Walter Scott are full of its savour. It breathes through the whole of Coleridge, prose and verse. It is still more strongly marked in the poetry of Tennyson. It has lit up all the writings of men so different from each other, and yet so important each in his place, as Arnold, Robertson, and Milman. It is that which distinguished Edward Irving from the preaching and teaching of his day in the Church of Scotland, and accounts for the increasing estimate formed of his genius and cha- racter ; and it has now incontestably influenced not only the most eminent divines of the Established Church of that country, but the writers even of the narrower com- munities of the Free Church and of the United Presby- terians. Its effects on the successors of the Puritans in England, both in the Church and amongst Nonconformists, if not equally capable of public proof, will not be denied by anyone. It has coloured very deeply Dr. Pusey's book on the Theology of Germany, and large parts of the 6 Christian ' Year ; ' and though the actual 6 Tracts for the Times ' ex- hibit its traces very slightly, yet the general movement of which they were the expression prided itself on seeking for ' something deeper and truer than satisfied the last ' century,' and on reckoning Coleridge as one of its uncon- scious founders. The 6 Home and Foreign Eeview ' amongst English Eoman Catholics, the 'Essays and Reviews' amongst English Protestants, are its direct product, together with a large part of the 'Aids to Faith,' and two at least of the 6 Seven Replies.' It has inspired all that is most alive in French theology, the whole school of Strasburg, and part of that of Lausanne, amongst Protes- tants ; and the last part of the writings of Gratry, Lacor- Essay XI. ITS KELATION TO THE BIBLE. 455 daire, Montalembert, amongst Roman Catholics. It ran through and through the letters of a learned and lamented Russian writer highly valued by some of our High Church- men.1 In Italy I may be allowed to cite — as a sample of its influence in circles the most remote from direct con- tact with it — the words of a distinguished young Roman scholar,2 of the fairest promise in the Pontifical States — a sincere and devout Roman Catholic — his charac- teristic motto, now also, unfortunately, his epitaph — * As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so longeth ' my soul after thee, 0 God.5 In a letter written in 1854 to an English friend, after recounting his elaborate study of many of the chief German divines, he says, 6 Without c the knowledge of German theological speculation and ' research — England must know it — no deep study of Chris- ' tian doctrine may be achieved.' And not then anticipating the Encyclical Letter of 1864,3 he ends by saying, 6 You ' see that the Roman Catholic Church does not oppose ' such deep studies.' I will endea.vour to arrange what I have to say under three distinct heads. The relation of the Theology of our age, first, to the Bible ; secondly, to general history and philosophy; thirdly, to Christian doctrine. I. Its relation to the Bible. As regards Religion, pro- its rela- perly so called, the Bible has done its peculiar work in all £ibie.° t] ages — even when in the hands of but a few — by keeping alive, directly or indirectly, the substantial truths of the Jewish and Christian dispensations. There have, of course, been always some who have studied it as faithfully as their knowledge permitted ; but in former times these, as far as 1 Quelques Mots par un Chretien Eome in 1859. orthodoxe, by M. Kbamiakoff. 8 [Or the Decroes of the Vatican 2 Don Giovanni Torlonia, died at Council of 1870.] 456 THEOLOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Essay XI. Theology was concerned, were the exceptions. What was done by Origen, by Theodore of Mompsuestia, by Chrysos- tom, by Jerome, by Erasmns, by Calvin, by Grotius, by Richard Simon, and by other like laborious scholars, was excellent as far as it went in this direction ; but it was again and again set aside by the main current of their times. Even at the Reformation, it was not so much the contents of the Bible as the right of reading it which gave the stimulus to human thought. It was towards the close of the last century that the Germans began to interpret the Sacred Books with the same freedom from party feel- ing, the same single-minded love of truth, the same fear- lessness of consequences — it must be unfortunately added, in some instances, with the same arbitrary and superci- lious dogmatism, as that which they employed on other books; and it was from that moment that the Bible attracted theologians towards itself, not for the sake of making systems out of it, but for the sake of discovering what it actually contained. Let me briefly go through some of the advantages thus gained. The 1. First, as to the external framework of the Bible. In text. "the early ages there had been a real desire to know what the Bible was — what books it embraced. That desire almost ceased in the cessation of mental activity, at the fall of the Roman Empire. It was revived partially at the Reformation, but it only attained its full force at the close of the last century and beginning of this. What is the ancient text of the New and Old Testament? How far does it differ from that which is put forth as the received text in our Authorised Version or in the Vulgate P What are the consequences to our theological studies from the acknowledgment of the famous variations now finally recognised in the chief manuscripts of the New Testament ? What is the view which we have to take of the formation of Essay XL ITS RELATION TO THE BIBLE. 457 the Canon of the New Testament after a study of the early variations in the canonicity of the Sacred Books as set forth in Mr. Westcott's instructive book on < the Bible in the 1 Church ' ? What is the new light thrown on the whole question of the Canon, of the original sacred text, of Biblical Inspiration, by the study, down to this time so little pursued, except by the most recondite investigators — even now but slightly approached by general students — of what may be truly called the Old Testament of the Apostolic Age and of the early Church — the Septuagint ? These are all questions which stand at the very threshold of any con- troversies about Inspiration, or about the relation of the Old Testament to the Xew, or the Bible to tradition, or respecting the merits or demerits of precise dogmatical statements. Let those who have studied these questions observe how rarely, between the time of Jerome and Eras- mus, and again between the time of Erasmus and of Gries- bach, they have met with adequate answers, and yet how deeply every recent controversy, and many ancient contro- versies, are affected by the answers which every modern scholar must give us ; how few of the passages used in the old polemics have stood the test of criticism. 2. Again, let us ascend a step higher, from the text to Sacred the external illustrations and explanations of it. We fnd8archa- must, no doubt, all express our gratitude to the gigantic ologjr* labours of the Benedictines and the ' Critici Sacri ' of the seventeenth century, which prepared such vast materials of historical, topographical, and antiquarian research. But these researches have been immensely increased of late years, and have for the first time poured their full light on the Biblical record. Palestine was seen as never before, with intelligent eyes, by the American Eobinson in 1S40. Egypt and Assyria have been brought before us, in all their intimate connection with the sacred history, as 458 THEOLOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUKY. Essay XL they had hardly ever been since they ceased to exist as kingdoms. The classical stores of Greece and Italy have been ransacked for elucidations of the journeys of St. Paul in the work of Dean Howson, which has been followed up with marvellous success by the genius and scholarship of France. The dim haze that overspread the history of the Jews, as it had before enveloped that of the Greeks and Romans, had thus been broken through. This is one great and original merit of the c Christian Year ' and of Dr. Pusey's 6 Prefaces 6 to the Minor Prophets.' In this respect they are com- pletely imbued with the genius of the nineteenth cen- tury. It is the peculiar characteristic not of one school of theologians only, but of all schools which have any wish to be heard at all beyond the limits of the nar- rowest circle, that they claim with one voice, ' freely to 4 handle in a becoming spirit subjects particularly liable to * suffer by the repetition of conventional language, and 4 from traditional methods of treatment.' No review, no essay, from any school whatever, of the present day, could venture openly to avow its intention of approaching theo- logical subjects in any other manner, or in any other spirit, than that described in these memorable words. This historical tendency may no doubt be carried to excess. In the New Testament the light to be thrown by external associations is very slight. In the Old Testament it is far more available, but there, too, it may be pushed beyond the bounds of usefulness or reverence. Still, whatever has thus been effected for other ancient histories — if Grote is better than Goldsmith — if Merivale is better than Crevier — if Rawlinson is better than Rollin — then, in everything which concerns the facts of history, Ewald and Milman must be better even than Bossuet or Prideaux, and any recent or forthcoming commentary on the Bible Essay XI. ITS RELATION TO THE BIBLE. 459 with any pretensions to scholarship must be, and will be, better than that which appeared fifty years ago under the authority of Bishop Mant and Dr. D'Oyley. It is impossible within these limits to do more than to Critical study of indicate in the briefest form the enlarged conceptions of the Bible, the Sacred Eecords which we acquire from thus allowing them to speak for themselves, (a,) The composite origin of the Books — of the Psalter — of the Pentateuch — of Zechariah — of Isaiah — of the Chronicles — and of St. Luke. Every one of these interesting results has had to fight its way against the strongest prejudice : yet the principle has now been universally acknowledged, and in proportion to its recognition has been the increase of insight into the structure and the meaning of each sacred writer whom it concerns, (b.) The nature of the Prophetical office— the distinction between Prophecy and Prediction — the moral and religious functions of the Prophets, as separate from that of mere diviners of the future, as increasing with the historical growth and spiritual development of the chosen people. Sternly, almost fiercely, as this has been con- tested, it has now been almost generally conceded. The difference between Bishop Newton's meagre Dissertations and the flood of light poured upon the whole office and history of the ancient Prophets by Ewald is a measure of our gains, (c.) The discovery of the peculiar date, ten- dency, doctrine, spirit, of each of the sacred books. Such has been the result, for example, of the chronological grouping of St. Paul's Epistles — of stating the special ob- jects of the different Gospels — of unfolding the different schemes of doctrine in the different Apostles, as set forth in Dean Alford's ' Prolegomena,' in Liicke, and in Neander. (d.) The distinction between poetry and prose in the sacred books, rarely thought of till the time when in the middle of the last century our own Lowth delivered 460 THEOLOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY. Essay XI. his famous lectures, yet a distinction so obvious when pointed out, so fruitful of immense results when fully in- vestigated. Is this passage poetical and prophetical, or is it historical ? Is this metaphorical, or is it literal ? To answer this important question in each case is one of the first objects of modern Biblical Theology.1 To strike the balance, not by our own individual fancies, but by the actual style and intention of the sacred writers themselves, between the extreme allegory of the Alexandrian school and the extreme literalism of the Syrian school in the fourth century, is the privilege of the higher criticism of the nineteenth. These are but a few instances of the nearer approach to the sacred writers which may fairly be expected, and which has to a certain degree been won, from the theology of our age. The difficulty of the task is obvious. In order to enter even into this outer court of the Kingdom of Heaven we must, indeed, become again c as little children.' We must get rid of our preconceived theories of what the Bible ought to be, in order to be able to make out what it really is. The immense layers of Puritanic, Scholastic, Papal, Patris- tic systems which intervene between us and the Apostolic or Prophetic ages — the elevation of the point of view on which those ages stand above our own — aggravate the intensity of the effort to the natural sluggishness of the human heart and intellect. Thanks to Herder and to Coleridge, thanks to the 6 Christian Year ' and to Arnold, thanks to Bishop Thirlwall and Archdeacon Hare, thanks to Archbishop Trench and Dean Mi] man, thanks to the ' Essays and Beviews' and the c Aids to Faith,' thanks to the 6 Biblical Dictionary ' and to Ewald, who have achieved, or helped to achieve, this work for us. So to discern the sacred past by the telescopic power of genius, and by the 1 See this admirably stated in Dean Milman's Annals of St. Paul's, p. 467. Essay XI. ITS RELATION TO THE BIBLE. 461 microscopic power of scholarship, is one of the chief ends for which universities and cathedrals are endowed, and for which Theology exists. The general results are as great as the particular gains. Solution This is the only solution of (what we sometimes erro- question neously call the great question of the day) the question of ££*nspira"1 Inspiration. It is, properly speaking, no real theological doctrine which is at stake in that question. What is or ought to be asked is a simple matter of fact. The conflicts respecting Inspiration are the mere scintillations or filings thrown off by the friction between fact and theory. What we have to do in this enquiry is not to frame or to attack any theory about the Bible, but to ascertain what are the actual characteristics of the Bible itself. Find out what the sacred writers really said — what they really intended — and then, whatever it be, whether it be prose or poetry, poetry or history, exact accuracy, or manifold inaccuracies, contradictions, imperfections — scientific, historical, lin- guistic,— that is what must be included within the range of Biblical Inspiration. Every fact which we thus ascer- tain from the astronomer, geologist, ethnologist, scholar, or divine, is the best approach to the true solution of the only question at issue, namely, what is the intrinsic nature of the Bible itself. Again, it cannot be gainsayed that the paramount glory Deeper and power of the Bible has become far more evident to us SSTofthe by this nearer, closer investigation. I speak not here of Bible- that Divine Faith and supernatural spiritual excellence, which is wholly independent of all such lesser details, but of the increased profit, delight, veneration, derived from a knowledge even of these. Can anyone, for example, doubt that the enjoyment which a merely ordinary student possesses of the Song of Deborah, or the Book of Job, far exceeds that of the Fathers and the Schoolmen, in whom 462 THEOLOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Essay XI. those magnificent poems inspired hardly a spark of poetic recognition, who saw in them chiefly the repetition of allegories, which might equally well have been drawn from any other book whatever ? Can anyone doubt that the characters of David and St. Paul are better appreciated, more dearly loved, by a man like Ewald, who approaches them with a profound insight into their language, their thoughts, their customs, their history, than by a Scholastic or Puritanical divine from whom the atmosphere in which the King and the Apostle moved was almost entirely shut out? Increased And, further, if the original sources of the written tion^f1 the Revelation be thus known to us in a manner in which they superiority were nof an(j COuld not be, known before, is not this of of the 9 ' ' ' theology itself almost equivalent to a new Reformation ? Does not Bible. the very magnitude of the subject thus brought home to. us throw our former systems of theology into new pro- portions? Is it possible that we can now return from this higher knowledge of the Bible to the grooves of the 6 Summa Theologise' or of the Westminster Confession? Most useful are these and like works in their place and for their own purposes. But wherever the Theology of the nineteenth century has spread, they are no longer in the first rank. The celebrated Benedictine monk, Padre Tosti, was speaking not long ago of the effects of modern criticism— partly with praise, partly with blame — 'At ' least,' he said, ' it has had this advantage, that it has 6 caused you to shut up all your Symbolical Books.' 1 I do not say that it has done this ; but it has placed them for the first time in entire subordination to the higher theology of the Scriptures, to which they never before actually paid the obedience which in words they had 1 Referring, of course, to the well-known collections of Reformed and Lutheran Confessions of Faith. Essay XI. ITS RELATION TO HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY. 463 always professed. And it is this which produces a kind of unity of religious thought unknown before since the revival of independent enquiry. When French Catholics and French Protestants, and German Catholics and Ger- man Protestants, and English Churchmen and English Nonconformists, are for the first time employed in studying the same Book on the same general principles, it is im- possible but that greater unity will emerge — greater unity of interest, if not of sentiment. Christian Theology ceases to be a collection of statements, hung on strings of texts often misapplied, and becomes a coherent attempt to ascertain the real design and scope of each book, each prophet, each apostle, in the different parts of the Bible — to form a sum total of the results of the whole ; to view its own conclusions in the lisfht of the knowledge thus acquired. Most applicable to this are the words of Lord Bacon — cNo perfect discovery can be made upon a flat or ' a level ; neither is it possible to discover the more remote * and deeper parts of any science, if you stand but upon the 1 level of the same science and ascend not to a higher 6 science.' That higher science has been given us by mount- ing into the higher region of the theologians of the Bible itself. II. This leads me to the relations of Theology to phi- Its rela- losophy and history generally. As the Theology of our age ^ ^nd*3" is distinguished by its appeal directly to the facts of the j^jo- Bible, not to theories concerning the Bible — so, also, it appeals to the facts of history, science, and philosophy outside of itself, and endeavours to include them within itself. In former times, no doubt, something of this sort was intended when mediaeval Theology claimed to be the mother and mistress of all the sciences, then in their infancy. Now that they have attained to maturity, the aim and instinct of modern Theology is no less to recognise 4G4 THEOLOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Essay XI. and attach itself to them. There are three great charac- teristics which may be selected from modern forms of thought as forcing themselves on the attention of theolo- gians, and which have, to a great extent been appreciated by them. Mutual 1. The mutual connection of the different stages of history, of different philosophy, and religion ivith each other. — This has at once systems. 0pened a wider view of the relations of Christianity to the whole universe. Mr. Maurice's book on 'The Eeligions of ' the World,' for example, is a work which could not in any case have been written before our age. And the effects of this larger appreciation of what is due to other forms of thought than our own is felt throughout our whole system. How far higher does ib raise the standard of Missionaries, how much more fruitful does it render their field. The knowledge, the counsel of such a student of Indian philo- sophy and religion as Professor Muller becomes a fresh and living guide. Amongst the many striking proofs of the connection of the most modern theology with their labours, is Dr. Eowland Williams's elaborate prize essay on 'Christianity and Hinduism' — by the testimony of most impartial witnesses, one of the best of manuals for dealing with the difficulties of heathen India. How much nearer we are than we were ever before — I will not say to an outward reunion (for that is altogether a political or temporal affair), but to a better understanding of Foreign Churches — East and West, Eoman Catholic and Protestant — than in any previous time, partly, no doubt, from that larger and truer interest in the Bible, of which I spoke ; but also from that increased mutual knowledge which books, travelling, and the intermixture of ideas have given to all of us. How completely has our relation shifted towards heathens, aliens, assailants of the established forms of reli- gion. On the one hand, what a change has come over Essay XL ITS RELATION TO HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY. 465 them ; how deeply the religious spirit of the time has pene- trated those who doubt, misbelieve, and disbelieve. Where is Yoltaire ? Where is Frederick II. ? Where (amongst the educated classes at least) is Thomas Paine? Where the blaspheming Jew ; the scurrilous infidel ? The change is so great, that, looking at realities and not at names, we might call the present posture of philosophers, of Jews, of sceptics towards Christianity, almost a conversion. And is there not, or ought there not to be, a corresponding amelioration of tone amongst Christian theologians towards them ? The scurrilous violence of the Apologists of the last century, the perverse misrepresentations by which the statements of adversaries were met, are now confined to narrower classes. The time past may suffice to have returned railing for railing. Is it not possible that a more excellent way may be open, in which the long-pending strife may be settled by arbiters, who shall show to both sides their weakness and their strength, and claim some at least of the seeming aliens to be themselves the true though unconscious servants of the same heavenly Master ? 2. The whole principle of the development of doctrine, Derelop- whether in or out of the Bible. The very word development mot, disarms the critical or the religious objector. What is not profane to them, ought not to be profaue to any one who for the moment casts his lot with them. If he has so far overcome his prejudices or his scruples as to come at all, there is nothing in the surrounding circumstances to revive or to aggravate them. He may fairly hope to receive from the spectacle before him without hindrance whatever instruc- tion it is calculated to convey beyond the circle of those for whom it is specially intended. The first impression which an educated man is likely Resem- to receive, is one which, as being most remote from the blance.to 7 ° an ancient actual scope or intention of the spectacle, shall be men- tragedy, tioned at starting, the more so as it is suggested in the most forcible manner at the very beginning of the performance. In that vast audience of peasants, seated in the open air, to witness the dramatic exhibition of a sacred story, bound up with all their religious as well as local and national associations, and represented according to the traditional types most familiar to them, is the nearest approach which can now be seen to the ancient Athenian tragedy. Precisely such a union of rustic simplicity and high-wrought feeling — of the religious 512 THE AMMERGAU MYSTERY. Essay XIII. with the dramatic element — of natural scenery with simple art — was exhibited in the Dionysian theatre, and, as far as we know, has been exhibited nowhere since, through all the numerous offspring of dramatic literature which have risen from that great original source. The very appearance of the proscenium is analogous. Instead of the palace of Mycense, or the city of Thebes, before which the whole action of a Greek tragedy was evolved, is the palace of Pilate and of Annas, and the streets of Jerusalem, remaining unchanged through the successive scenes. And the spectacle is opened by a sight, which, if not directly copied from the one institution peculiar to the Greek drama, is so nearly parallel as to convey an exact image of what the ancient Chorus must have been. From the opposite sides of the stage advance two lines of solemn figures, ascending from childhood up to full grown age ; who range themselves, eight on each hand, at the sides of a Coryphaeus, who in a loud chant announces to the audience the plan of the scene which is to follow, and then, in con- junction with his companions, sings an ode, precisely similar to those of the Athenian chorus, evoking the religious feeling of the spectators, recalling to their minds any corresponding events in the ancient Jewish history, and then moralising on the joint effect of the whole. It would be interesting to know how far this element of the sacred drama is a conscious imitation of the Grecian chorus, or how far it is the spontaneous result of parallel circumstances. That it is, in essential points, of indigenous growth, may be inferred from the fact that its part was in earlier times performed by a personage called 'the Genius ' of the Passion.' And such a personage appears in other religious solemnities of Southern Germany. In a quaint picture preserved at Landek (in the Tyrol) of the jubilee of the consecration of the village church, the ' Genius,' Essay XIII. THE CHORUS. 513 draped in a gay court costume, marches at the head of the procession of sacred banners and images which passes through the town and neighbourhood. In one respect, this chorus of guardian spirits is The Alle- less directly connected with the religious element of the Tableaux drama, than was the case with their Pagan prototypes, who actually performed their evolutions round the altar erected in front of the stage. But this difference is compensated by the uniformly sustained elevation of their choral odes, and the stately stillness with which they stand during their recital, and yet more by the curious device which the framers of the Ammergau drama have adopted to throw life into these moralising allusions to the ancient preludes of the Christian history. As they touch on the events of the Old Testament, which appear to bear more or less nearly on the evangelical incident about to be represented, they open their ranks ; the curtain of the theatre draws up, and discloses at the back of the stage the event to which the recitation refers, exhibited in a tableau vivant, composed of the peasants, who, down to the smallest children, remain fixed in their attitudes till the curtain falls over them, again to rise and disclose another of like kind, arranged with incredible rapidity, again expounded, and again withdrawn from view, whilst the chorus proceeds with its task of didactic exposition. These tableaux y which thus form an integral part of the choral representation, are repeated at the beginning of each scene, and though often so remotely or fancifully connected with the main action of the drama as rather to clog its progress, yet powerfully contribute towards the variety and the continuous flow of the performance. They are of the most unequal interest. Some — such as the rejection of Yashti, corresponding to the rejection of Jerusalem ; the insult of Hanun to David's ambassadors, L L 514 THE AMMERGAU MYSTERY. Essay XIII. corresponding to the mockery of Christ ; and the elevation of Joseph in Egypt, contrasted with the mock elevation of Christ in the hall of Pilate — are tame both in conception and execution. But others — snch as the appearance of Joseph to his envious brethren, Adam labouring in the sweat of his brow, the gathering of the manna in the wilderness, and the carrying of the grapes, corresponding respectively to the councils of the Sanhedrim, the Agony, the Last Supper — are at once touching and graceful, even when most childlike in ideas. In all, the immobility of the figures, sometimes consisting of hundreds, is most remarkable. In all, the choral odes derive from them a combination of pictorial and poetical representation as singular as it is effective. The fine passage in which, after the false kiss of Joab by the rock of Gibeon, the rocks of Gibeon, and through them the surrounding rocks of the Ammergau valley, are invoked to avenge the treachery of Judas, is a stroke of natural pathos, which whilst it exactly recalls the analogous allusions in the choral odes of Sophocles, could be reproduced nowhere but on a scene such as that which is here described. The After the first prologue, and the first tableau (which represents the expulsion from Paradise), begins the regular action of the drama, which, alternating with the choral odes and tableaux, proceeds with unflagging continuity (only broken by one hour's rest in the middle of the day) from eight in the morning till four in the afternoon. This untiring energy of action is, no doubt, a powerful element in sustaining the interest, and reproducing the animation of the actual story. The first part begins with the Triumphal entry, and closes with the capture in the garden of Gethsemane. (1) The first scene introduces us at once to the Chief Figure in the sacred story* The wide stage, with the Essat XIII. THE FIEST PART OF THE DRAMA. 515 passages approaching it, is suddenly filled with the streaming multitude of the Triumphal Entry, of all ages, The chiefly masses of children, mingled together in gay costume, £ntry throwing down their garments in the way, and answering, with jubilant shouts, to a spirited ode, which, in this instance rising above the ordinary music of the rest of the lyrical pieces, is sung by the exultant chorus.1 Hail to Thee ! hail ! 0 David's Son ! Hail to Thee ! hail ! Thy Father's throne Is thine award. In God's great name Thou comest nigh, All Israel streams with welcome cry To hail its Lord. Hosanna ! He who dwells in heaven Send from above all help to Thee ! Hosanna ! He who sits on high Preserve Thee everlastingly ! Blessed be the life that springs anew In David's house, in David's race ; To glorious David's glorious Heir, All nations, bring your songs of praise ! Hosanna ! to our King's own Son, Sound through the heavens far and wide ! Hosanna ! on his Father's throne May He in majesty abide ! Hail to Thee ! hail ! It is amidst this crowded overflow of human faces, that there appears seated on the ass, the majestic Figure, known at once by the traditional costume of purple robe and crimson mantle, but still more by the resemblance to the traditional countenance of the Redeemer. Of this appearance a gifted eye-witness in 1850 wrote that, from 1 This and the following literal translations are given as specimens of the lyrical parts of this rustic drama. 516 THE AMMERGAU MYSTERY. Essay XIII. The Chief that moment, in her imagination, ' This living represen- 6 tation would take the place of all the pictures and statues c she had ever seen, and would remain indelibly impressed 6 on her mind for ever.' In every such representation, of whatever kind, the Ideal Person will still, to every religious and every cultivated mind, remain unapproached, and therefore unprofaned. But each will, in proportion to its excellence, exhibit some aspect of the Divine Original, in a form more impressive and more intelligible than has been obtained by any previous study or reading. That which, in the character now brought forward, most strikes the spectator as with a new sense of the truth of. the Gospel narrative, is the dignity and grace with which the Christ moves, as it were, above the multitude and above the action of the drama, although bearing the chief part in it. It is felt that from this one character is derived the true tragical interest attaching to every other person and incident in all the subsequent scenes. On the common mass of the audience the same impression appears in a less conscious, but a still more certain, form, through the increased stillness which pervades the theatre whenever this Figure appears. But this pre-eminence is maintained, not by any acting, rather by the absence of acting. The clear distinctness of the words which are uttered makes them heard and felt, without the slightest approach to de- clamation. Every gesture implies a purpose, and yet there is not a shade of affectation. The disciples, the priests, the money-changers, the children, press around, and yet the figure of the Christ remains distinct from them all. Few have ever read the sacred narrative without a sense of the difficulty of conceiving how He, who is there described, could have passed through the world, as in it, and yet not of it. It is one advantage of the Ammergau representation Essay XIII. THE FIRST PART OF THE DRAMA. 517 that it gives us, at least, a glimpse of the possibility of such a passage through, yet above, the world. To dwell on all the details in which this idea is carried out would be superfluous to those who have seen the spec- tacle, and unintelligible to those who have not. It is enough here to say, that amidst all the changing scenes which follow, and of which some notice will be taken as we proceed, the identity of character in the first appear- ance is never lost. (2) As the Christ is the character in the drama, where Judas IsCcirK the effect is sustained by the absence of all art and the independence of all the agitations of human passion, so the next most important character is that on which most effort has been bestowed, and in which the play of imagi- nation and dramatic invention has been allowed the freest scope. It would be a curious enquiry to ascertain how far the conception of Judas Iscariot is traditional, or how far derived from the fancy of the last revisers of the drama. It is a certain and an instructive fact, that in the modern- ization of the spectacle this internal development of motives has taken the place of the demons which the earlier machinery reproduced in outward shape as Judas's companions. This accommodation to what may have been thought modern prejudice is in every sense as it should be : it is not only a more refined, but a more scriptural representation of the history of the Traitor ; and the coin- cidence of the two, as thus brought out in the drama, is well worthy of the attention of the theological student. But the particular mode in which the motives of Judas are conceived is peculiar, and must be stated at length. He is conspicuous amongst the Apostles, not only from the well known red beard and yellow robe (as of envy), with which he always appears, but from his prominent position always pressing forward, even beyond Peter him- 518 THE AMMERGAU MYSTERY. Essay XIII. self, the restless, moving, active, busy personage of the whole group. The scene of the breaking of the box of precious ointment is worked to the utmost. The silent profusion of the Magdalene and the eager economy of Judas are contrasted from the two sides of the stage in startling opposition. From this moment a monomania, a fixed idea of replacing the 300 pence, takes possession of his mind. He shakes his empty money-bag. He recurs to the subject with a pertinacity bordering, and apparently meant to border, on the ludicrous. The thirty pieces of silver are represented as an equivalent for the loss. He is filled with nervous apprehensions as to the destitution of himself and his companions, if their Master should imperil Himself at Jerusalem. In this state he is left alone to his own thoughts, and, in a scene perhaps too elaborately drawn out, he rushes to and fro between the distractions of his worse and better nature ; until the balance is turned by the deputation from the chief priests suddenly entering, playing on his delusion, getting round him, and entrapping him into the fatal compact. The absorbing passion is brought out forcibly once more, when, with a greediness of the actual coin, truly Oriental, and (if not suggested by some travelled or learned prompter) wonderfully resem- bling the Oriental reality, he counts over the silver pieces in the presence of the high priests. But the compunctions of conscience are never wholly repressed. The deadness of the grasp with which he takes the hands of his accom- plices in the compact is very expressive. The shuffling agitation during the last supper ; the outbreak of remorse before the Sanhedrim ; the frenzy into which he is goaded by their calm indifference ; the fury with which he offers back the money to each, and with which he finally flings the bag behind him and rushes out, all have the effect of exhibiting in strong relief the return of a better mind Essay XIII. THE FIRST PART OF THE DRAMA. 519 recovering from a dreadful illusion. With this is mingled something: of the ludicrousness as well as of the horror of insanity ; and when, at the last, he clambers up the fatal tree, tearing off the branches as he reaches the top, and the curtain falls1 to veil his end, it is probably as much from this admixture of the grotesque, as from a sense that the villain has got his due, that the commoner part of the audience is roused for once to an incongruous expression of derision. In one instance, at least, of a more thought- ful German Catholic of the middle classes, the representa- tion of the strength of Judas's repentance left the impres- sion that c we have no right to say that Judas was lost.' No other personage is so lifted above the incidents of the drama as to claim a separate notice. But if none of them rise above the general action, none of them fall below it, with the exception of the female characters. In former times, as in the ancient classical drama, these- characters were all sustained by men ; and the failure of the present practice well illustrates the reasonableness, almost the necessity, of the ancient usage. Not to speak of the inferiority of the conception of their parts — perhaps in themselves more difficult — the inadequacy of any ordi- nary female voice to fill the immense theatre in the open air is painfully felt ; and the fulness and distinctness of the speeches of the men brings out forcibly the contrast of the thin, shrill voices of the women who have to act the parts, happily less prominent in the drama than might have been expected, of the Virgin Mary, the Magdalene, and Martha. Possibly, the peculiar accent of German 1 It is a curious fact, and confirms dropped ; then the swine devouring the remarks made above, that the his entrails ; next, in 1850, his death circumstances of Judas's death have was indicated only by a piercing shriek been, and are gradually, being softened as the curtain fell; now, in I860, the down in the representation. First, the curtain falls, and the shriek is not devils who carried him off were heard. 520 THE A3DIERGAU MYSTERY. Essay XIII. women, especially in the lower classes, may conduce to this result on English ears, beyond what would be the case with their own countrymen. Themoney- (3) In accordance with this prominence of the character changer.. ^ jU(jag the one event round which the whole of this portion of the drama revolves, perhaps out of proportion to its place in the sacred narrative, is the Betrayal. The first preparation for it occurs in the first scene of the entry into the Temple, through the intervention of an element, the importance of which must be ascribed to the fancy of the framers of the drama. It would almost seem, as if with a view of bringing home the moral of the sacred history to the minds of the humbler classes, for whom the representation is chiefly designed, an intentional emphasis had been given to the incident of turning the buyers and sellers out of the Temple. The incident itself is brought out with much force in the loud and solemn utterance of the words, ' My house is called a house of prayer ' — the sudden overturning of the table of the money-changers — the live pigeons flying off into the open air above the heads of the spectators — the wild confusion and dispersion of the traffickers themselves. Immediately afterwards are heard their cries of 'Revenge, revenge!' and throughout the subsequent scenes they are made the malignant and ingenious agents between the Sanhedrim and Judas. The San- (4) A large proportion of this part of the drama is hednm. 0CCupied by the debates in the Sanhedrim. In these debates, a larger scope for the dialogue is given than in any other part; and from this circumstance, as well as from the difficulty of following in a foreign tongue arguments not founded on familiar facts, or couched in familiar language, the length to which these debates are carried is perhaps the only part of the spectacle which produces an impression of wearisomeness. But for the Essay XIII. THE FIRST PAET OE THE DRAMA. 521 common spectators this interlude, as it may be called, of ordinary life and speech may be a seasonable relief ; and to the stray visitor there are two or three points exhibited in these scenes too remarkable to escape notice. He cannot fail to be struck by the prominence (not indeed beyond the strict warrant of Scripture) given to the fact that the catastrophe of the Passion was brought about by the machinations of the priesthood ; that Christ was the victim of the passions, not of the people, or of the rulers, but of the hierarchy. The strange costume, as well as the vehement and senseless reiterations of the arguments and watchwords of the leaders, present (uninteiitionally, it may be, but if so, the more impressively), the appearance of a hideous caricature of a great ecclesiastical assembly. The huge mitres growing out into horns on the heads of the high priests present a grotesque compound of devils and bishops. The incessant writing and bustling agitation of the scribes are like satires on high dignitaries immersed in official business and intrigue. What may be the parts assigned to the lesser personages in the Sanhedrim it would be impossible to describe without the opportunity of more closely following the thread of the dialogue. But Annas and Caiaphas stand out distinct. Caiaphas is the younger, more impetuous, more active conspirator. Annas clothed in white, and with a long white beard, represents the ancient, venerable depository of the Jewish traditions. He ' rejoices that he has lived to see this day, when the ' enemy of the customs of his fathers will be cut off. He ' feels himself new-born.' He gives to the traitor the assurance 'that the name of Judas shall be famous for c ever in the annals of his country.' The whole scene suggests, in its own strange fashion, that of the Council in Milton's Pandemonium. But, as by the great poet in the fallen archangels, so in the apostate priests, there is kept 522 THE A MM ERG AU MYSTERY. Essay XIII. up by the simple dramatist and performers of Ammergau, something of the dignity and grandeur of a former and higher state. (5) The scenes which represent the Feast in the house of Simon, and the Journey from Bethany to Jerusalem, require few remarks. The solemn, and, in a manner, regal appearance of the Christ, surrounded and fenced off by the constant circle of the Twelve, each with his staff in his hand, recalls what doubtless was one main peculiarity of the journeys recorded in the Gospel narrative. The The part- parting from the Virgin mother and the friends of Bethany the r°m on the way to Jerusalem, is touching and simple. It Mother. forms one of the few exceptions to the failure of the female parts before noticed, and it is accompanied by one of the most affecting of the choral odes, on the search of the beloved one in the Canticles. Where is my love departed, The fairest of the fair ? Mine eyes gush out with burning tears Of love, and grief, and care. Ah ! come again ! ah ! come again ! To this deserted breast. Beloved one ! oh ! why tarriest thou Upon my heart to rest ? By every path, on every way, Mine eyes are strained to great thee ; And with the earliest break of day My heart leaps forth to meet thee ! 1 Beloved one ! ah ! what woe is me ! My heart how rent with pain ! ' — ' 0 friend beloved — oh, comfort thee, Thy friend will come again. ' Soon to thy side he comes once more For whom thy soul awhile must yearn ; No cloud shall ever shadow more The joy of that return.' Essay XIII. THE FIRST PART OP THE DRAMA. 523 (6) The scene of the Last Supper is the one of which the The Last v Supper. effect on the audience is the most perceptible, and of which every detail most firmly rivets itself in the memory. From the first appearance of the band of sacred guests at the table in the upper chamber, till its dispersion after the joint recitation of a prayer or hymn, the whole multitude of spectators is hushed into breathless silence, deepening into a still profounder stillness, at the moment when the sacred words, so solemn in the ears of any Christian audience, introduce the institution of the sacrament. There is probably no point in the spectacle where a religious mind would naturally be more shocked than by this imitation of the holiest of Christian ordinances. There is none, however, where this feeling is more im- mediately relieved, both by the manner of the imitation, and by the demeanour of the spectators. To a critical eye, two or three points of special instruction emerge from this strange mixture of dramatic and devotional interest. Although the aspect of the actual historical event is in this, as in all pictorial representations, marred by the substitution of the modern attitude of sitting for the ancient one of reclining, yet the scene reproduces, with a force beyond many doctrinal expositions, the social cha- racter of the occasion out of which the Christian sacrament arose. Nor is there anything (or hardly anything) in the form in which that first origin of the sacrament is repre- sented, which attaches itself peculiarly to the special tenets of the particular Church, under whose auspices this drama has been preserved. The attitude of the Apostles in receiving, and of their Master in giving, the bread and wine of the supper, far more nearly resembles that of a Presbyterian than of a Roman Catholic ritual. The cup is studiously given, as well as the bread, to all who are present. The dignity and simplicity of the Chief Figure 524 THE AMMERGAU MYSTERY, Essay XIII. suffices to raise the whole scene to its proper pitch of solemnity. One only slight interruption to the complete gravity of the transaction, is the sudden flight of Judas from the supper, which, like most of the details of his character, blends, as has been already observed, something of the grotesque even with the most sublime and tragical parts of the story. The (7) The wild and touching prelude of the chorus to the §ethse-°f scene of the Capture in the garden of Gethsemane has been mane. already noticed, and is, with its living accompaniments, amongst the most expressive parts of that class of repre- sentation in the spectacle. The scene itself is, and, perhaps, must of necessity be, unequal to that which it endeavours to reproduce. The slow and painful ascent of the rocky side of the garden, the threefold departure, and the threefold return, is a faithful attempt to recall the heaviness and the sorrow of that hour. But of the re- mainder of the scene it is difficult not to feel that it would have been better if all had been left, as some parts are left, merely to the imagination of the spectators, however welcome to a rude taste may be the literal exhibition of what is in fact incapable of being exhibited. Not so, however, the sudden change of the stillness of the scene by the entrance of the armed troop. This, with the gradual closing in of the soldiers on their Victim, and the melting away of the disciples on the right hand and on the left, leaving their Master alone (for the first time from the beginning of the action) in the centre of armed strangers, makes the fitting, as it is the truly historical, climax to this first act of the drama. As the first part of the spectacle converges to the Betrayal, so the second part, with more unquestionable propriety, converges to the Crucifixion. The whole action of the representation changes with the change of the Essay XIII. THE SECOND PART OF THE DRAMA. 525 position of the Chief Character ; and, in this respect, it may be said that its dramatic interest is lessened. That Character, although still the centre of the movement, is now entirely passive. The majesty is sustained, even more remarkably than in the first part, but it is almost exclusively the majesty of endurance, and probably the fact of the Gospel narrative which the representation here most deeply impresses on the spectator, is that of the long, immovable, almost unbroken silence, which, with very few exceptions, is the only expression, if one may use the word, of the Sufferer, in all the various scenes through which He is hurried, driven, insulted, tortured. This immobi- lity of the Central Figure, added to the circumstance that the groups which follow are often directly copies either of well known pictures, or of the sculptured representa- tions on Calvaries, gives to this second part much more the appearance of a succession of scenes in painting or sculpture than of actual life. For this reason, there are fewer points than in the former part requiring remark. Such as there are shall be briefly noticed. (8) The long and constant bandy ings of the trial to The trial, and fro from court to court are powerfully delineated. How much the brief narrative of the Gospel gains by some such development of its meaning may be best understood by reading the admirable attempt at such a literal deve- lopment in Dean Milman's e History of Christianity.' What that distinguished poet and scholar has achieved by the art of his pen, the drama of Ammergau has, in its rude way, attempted in its living actions and figures. (9) A new class of actors is here introduced, in whose The execu part it is more difficult than elsewhere to imagine the tluners- feasibility of maintaining a proper reverence of sentiment, namely, the soldiers and executioners. Nothing can be more natural than their roughness and insensibility ; but 526 THE AMMERGrAU MYSTERY. Essay XIII. of all the scenes of the transaction, these are the most painful to witness. The chief possibility of reconciling them to the devotional feelings of the audience and the actors must be found in the pictorial character of these latter scenes, which has just been noticed. To the critical observer they have the merit of exhibiting in the most graphic forms the way in which the hard realities and brutalities of life must on this occasion, as always, have come into the most abrupt and direct contact with the holiest and tenderest of objects, which, by a stretch of imagination, we usually contrive to keep apart from them. Peter's (1 0) Of these scenes one of the most effective, and (from the absence of the Christ during the chief part) the least offensive, is that in the hall of Caiaphas, where the soldiers and the maids of the palace light the fire and interchange rude jests with each other about the recent events ; whilst Peter and John are seen stealing in and mixing themselves with the crowd. Then comes the gradual absorption of Peter into the conversation round the fire ; the manner in which he is entangled by his own forward obtrusiveness ; the quick succession of questions, rejoinders, retorts, and denials ; the sudden pang as his Master enters, and turns directly upon him a fixed silent look before passing on with the armed band, leaving Peter alone on the stage. The rapid passage across the stage of the two successive solitary penitents — Peter and Judas — is full of instruction even to those who have heard the contrast drawn out in hundreds of sermons. Pilate. (11) A character now appears, which, as it is conceived by the Ammergau dramatists, is, in dignity and gravity, though in no other particular, second only to that of the Christ. This is Pilate. There are many of the more subtle traits of the Governor's character, as they appear in the Gospel narrative, — his perplexity, his anxiety, his Essay XIII. THE SECOND PART OF THE DRAMA. 527 scepticism, his superstition, — which the spectacle has failed to reproduce. The dialogue is less impressive than it should be ; the question 6 What is truth '? ' is cut short by the entrance of a messenger who calls him out, as if by an external cause to account for his discontinuance of the conversation. But it is remarkable to observe the true historical tact of nature with which these half-edu- cated peasants have caught the grandeur of the Roman magistrate. Every movement of himself, and even of his attendants, is intended to produce the impression of the superiority of the Roman justice and the Roman manners, to the savage, quibbling, vulgar clamours of the Jewish priests and people. His noble figure, as he appears on the balcony of his house, above the mob — his gentle ad- dress— the standard of the Roman empire behind him — the formal reading of the sentence — the solemn breaking: asunder of the staff to show that the sentence has been delivered — are bold, though not too bold, delineations of the better side of the judge and of the law, under which the catastrophe of the sacred history was accomplished. Herod, on the other hand, is depicted as a mere Orien- Herod, tal king, furious at the silence of his prisoner, and at his own inability to make anything out of the case. The chief priests still continue to take the leading part The chief in the transaction, which they have sustained through Priests- its earlier stages. One element in their conduct is brought out with considerable truth of nature as well as of history; namely, the spirit and zeal with which, as fanatical ring- leaders, they conspire, and then disperse in various direc- tions, to rouse the Jewish populace, which is represented as then, and by these means, turned for the first time into the course of fierce hostility which demanded the Crucifixion. In this part of the story immense stress is laid on the 528 THE A3DIERGAU MYSTERY. Essay XIII. Barabbas. preference of Barabbas. In the ode which precedes the scene of the choice between the two prisoners, there is a striking combination of the choral and dramatic elements of the representation. The cries of the populace for Barabbas are heard behind the scenes, to which the Chorus replies with a mixture of irony and remonstrance. People. Let Barabbas be From his bonds set free. Chorus. Nay, let Jesus be From his bonds set free. Wildly sounds the murderers' cry ! People. Crucify Him ! crucify ! Chorus. Behold the man ! behold the man ! Oh ! say what evil hath He done ! People. If thou settest this man free Caesar's friend thou canst not be. Chorus. Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! woe, woe to thee ! This blood, 0 Israel, God shall claim from you ! People. His blood on us and on our children be ! Chorus. Yea ! upon you and on your children too. In the actual release of Barabbas, the contrast is heightened by the assignment of the part of Barabbas to a person who is, or is made to look, the image of a low vulgar ruffian ; and as the two stand side by side, the majesty and patience of the one is set forth by the un- dignified, eager impatience of the other, shuffling to be released at the earliest moment. The Cruci- (12) As the plot advances, the reproduction of the well- known paintings on the subject becomes more apparent. The ' Ecce Homo ' is an evident imitation of the picture of Correggio. The Crucifixion, without perhaps specially resembling any one representation, is so much more like a picture than a reality that its painful effect is thereby much diminished. The Descent from the Cross is an Essay XIII. SECOND PART OE THE DBAHA. 520 exact copy of Rubens' famous painting.1 Whatever living action is carried on through these last scenes lies almost entirely in the rough by-play, already described, of the soldiers and executioners. Only when the motionless silence of the Central Figure is broken by the few words from the Cross, is the illusion dispelled which might make us think that we were looking on a sculptured ivory image. The actual appearance of the Crucifixion is produced by mechanical contrivances, through which the person is sustained on the Cross with no further effort than that (which is no doubt considerable) of the extension of the arms. The apprehension or the knowledge of this effort gives a sense of real anxiety to the scene, which lasts for upwards of twenty minutes — and also of real care, to the mode in which the arms are gradually released from their outstretched position, and the body is slowly let down from the Cross by the long drapery with which, as in Rubens's picture, it is swathed and suspended as it descends, A breathless silence, succeeded by a visible relief, pervades the vast audieuce through the whole of this protracted representation. (13) With the entombment, the dramatic portion of the The Re- spectacle properly ends. The scene which follows, and surrectI° which is intended to represent the Resurrection from the tomb, in the presence of the watching soldiers, is, as might be expected from the nature of the subject, wholly incon- gruous. And the brief scenes of the disappointment of the Chief Priests, of the arrival of Peter and John at the tomb, and of the appearance to the Magdalene, are unequal to the magnitude of the interest with which they are charged, and are evidently felt to be so by the audience, who, 1 The engravings of thes9 pictures these pictures less remarkable than it in the inns, even of remote parts of "would otherwise be. the Tyrol, render the knowledge of M if 530 THE AMMERGAU MYSTERY. Essay XIII. though still retaining their respectful demeanour, now begin very gradually to disperse. The veil of mystery which the Gospel narrative draws around the Rising and Risen Christ, ought not to have been removed. There is still, however, the impressive conclusion. The chorus, lay- ing aside the black robes, assumed during the scene of the Crucifixion, come forth ; a final tableau, embracing a vast mass of figures, represents the heroes and saints of both Old and New Testament united in one, and the spectacle is closed with a hymn of Triumph. Conquering and to conquer all Forth He comes in all His might ; Slumbering but a few short hours In the grave's funereal night. Sing to Him in holy psalms ! Strew for Him victorious palms ! Christ, the Lord of life, is risen ! Sound, O heavens, with anthems meet ! Earth, with songs the conqueror greet ! Hallelujah ! Christ is risen ! Praise Him who now on high doth reign ! Praise to the Lamb that once was slain ; Hallelujah ! Praise Him who, glorious from the grave, Comes forth triumphantly to save ! Hallelujah ! Praise be to Him who conquers death, Who once was judged on Gabbatha ! Praise be to Him who heals our sins, Who died for us on Golgotha ! Let Israel's harp with gladdening sound Joy through every spirit pour ; He with the conqueror's crown is crown' d, Who died and lives for evermore. O praise Him, all ye hosts of heaven ! To Him all praise and glory be ! Praise, glory, honour, power, and might, Through ages of eternity ! Essay XIII. CONCLUSION. 531 III. So ends the Ammergau spectacle. Its fourteenth Conclu- and last representation was on the 16th of September, and slon* it recurs only in 1870. What may be the religious or devotional feelings awakened by this spectacle, in the various classes who are present, it would be impossible to determine. What they were intended to be is well expressed in the close of the short preface to the choral songs, which almost every spectator held in his hand : — ' May all who come to see how 6 the Divine man trod this path of sorrows, to suffer as a ' sacrifice for sinful humanity, well consider that it is not ' sufficient to contemplate and admire the Divine original ; ' that we ought much rather to make this Divine spectacle ' an occasion for converting ourselves into His likenesses, 6 as once the saints of the Old Testament were His fitting e foreshadowers. May the outward representation of His 6 sublime virtues rouse us to the holy resolution to follow c Him in humility, patience, gentleness, and love. If that 6 which we have seen in a figure, becomes to us life and ' reality, then the vow of our pious ancestors will have re- 6 ceived its best fulfilment; and then will that blessing not ' fail to us, with which God once rewarded the faith and ' the trust of our fathers.' But it may be worth while to sum up the reflections of a more general and intellectual character, which arise in the mind of an educated stranger who may have been present. (1.) He can hardly fail to have an increased idea of the dramatic nature of the sacred story, which amidst all the Dramatic imperfections of this rustic spectacle, is brought out in so ^ A^teT unmistakable a form. It is a saying, quoted from Lavater, Gospel story. that as there is no more dramatic work than the Bible, so the history of the Passion is the Drama of dramas. That this characteristic peculiarity of the sacred narrative should thus stand the test, when actually placed on the M II 2 532 THE AMMERGrAU MYSTERY. Essay XIII- Biblical and Pro- testant character of the Drama. Catholic and philo- sophic character of the Drama. stage, is a striking proof of the all-embracing power and excellence of the Bible itself. (2.) Again, if he be a sonnd Protestant, it cannot but be a matter of theological instruction and gratification, to have observed how entirely Scriptural, and even in a certain sense unconsciously Protestant, is this representa- tion of the greatest of all events. The Biblical account controls the whole spectacle. The words of the Bible are studiously used. Only one of the numerous tableaux — (that of Tobias and his parents) — is drawn from the Apocrypha. Only one slight incident (that of the woman offering the handkerchief on the way to Golgotha), is taken from ecclesiastical tradition. Even in cases where the popular sentiment of the Roman Catholic Church would naturally come into play, it has not penetrated here. The Virgin appears not more prominently or more frequently than the most rigid Protestant would allow. In the scenes after the Resurrection, the Biblical narrative of the appearance to the Magdalene, not the traditional one of the appearance to the Virgin, is carefully preserved. The forcible representation of the predominant guilt of the Jewish hierarchy, and of the simplicity of the Last Supper (as already noticed), are directly suggestive of the purest Protestant sentiments. (3.) Nor are there wanting further indications how a natural representation of the sacred history rises into a higher and wider sphere than is contained within the limits of any particular sect or opinion. The exhibition of the sacrifice on Calvary, whether in the actual repre- sentation, or in the didactic expositions of the chorus, is (with the possible exception of a very few expressions) the ancient ScrijDtural view, not deformed by any of the more modern theories of substitution, imputation, satisfaction, or expiation. Essay XIII. CONCLUSION. 533 The philosophical as opposed to the mediaeval conception of human character in the case of Judas has been already noticed. Of the two great virtues which find so little favour with sectarian polemics, the praise of truth is the special subject of one of the choral odes ; and the need of justice, especially justice in high places, forms the special theme of another. There are those, it may be hoped, to whom it is a pleasure and not a pain to reflect that a representation of such a subject should not contain what is distinctive of any peculiar sect of Christendom; but, as if by a kind of necessity, should embrace and put forward what is common to all alike. (4.) Again, any person interested in national religious Effect on education must perceive the effect of such a lifelike repre- ofl^,lon sentation of the words and facts of the Bible in brino-mo- people, them home to the minds, if not the hearts, of the people. To those who believe that the Bible, and especially the Gospel history, has a peculiarly elevating and purifying effect, beyond any other religious or secular books, it will be a satisfaction to know that thousands of German peasants have carried away, graven on their memories, not a collection of mediaeval or mythological legends, but the chief facts and doctrines both of the Old and New Testament, with an exactness such as would be vainly sought in the masses of our poorer population, or even, it may be said, with some of our clergy. We may fairly object to the mode of instruction, but as to its results we must rejoice that what is given is not chaff but wheat. Nor need the most fastidious taste reject the additional light thrown by this representation on the most sacred page of the book which all Christians are bound to study, and which every clergyman is bound to expound to his 534 THE AMMERGAU MYSTERY. Essay XIII. flock, though by totally different means from those em- ployed at Ammergau. Difference (5.) For, finally, any intelligent spectator, at this scene will feel it to be a signal example of the infinite differences which, even with regard to subjects of the most universal interest, divide the feelings and thoughts of nations and Churches from each other, and of the total absurdity and endless mischief of transposing to one phase of mind what belongs exclusively to another. We Englishmen are not more reverential than an audience of Bavarian or Tyrolese rustics. Probably we are much less so. But, from long engrained habit, from the natural reserve and delicacy of a more northern and a more civilised people, from the association of those outward exhibitions of sacred subjects with a Church disfigured by superstition and intolerance, we naturally regard as impious what these simple peasants regard as devout and edifying. The more striking is the representation, the more salutary its effect on those for whom it is intended, the more forcibly we may be ourselves impressed in witnessing it ; so much the more pointedly instructive does the lesson become, of the utter inapplicability of such a performance to other times and places than its own. Sacred pictures, sacred sculpture, sacred poetry, sacred music, sacred ritual, must all be judged by the same varying standard. The presence or the absence of any one of these is reverent or irreverent, according to the intention of those who use it, and the disposition of those for whom it is intended. An organ would be as shocking a profanation of worship in Scotland or in Russia as a crucifix in England, or as the absence of a crucifix in the Tyrol or in Sweden. Every one knows what disastrous consequences have flowed from the attempt of certain High Church clergy to force upon the population of Wapping a ritual which, to those who introduced it, Essay XIII. CONCLUSION. 535 was, doubtless, symbolical of reverence and devotion, but in those who were to receive it, awakened only a frenzy of ribaldry, fanaticism, and profaneness. The case of the Ammergau mystery decisively proves the futility of all such forced and incongruous adaptations. This, beyond all dispute, is an institution which cannot be transplanted without provoking sentiments the exact opposite of those which it excites in its own locality. Even an extension or imitation of it in the country of its birth would go far to ruin its peculiar character. The Archbishop of Salzburg was probably as right in his general prohibition of such spectacles in Southern Germany, as the King Max-Joseph in his permission of this particular one. Its secluded situation, its rude accompaniments, its rare decennial re- currence, are its best safeguards. It may be hoped that the curiosity which each decennial representation rouses will have been laid to rest long before its next return ; and the best wish that can be offered for its continuance is, that it may remain alone of its kind, and that it may never attract any large additional influx of spectators from distant regions or uncongenial circles. 5-3G ARCHDEACON HARE.1 How difficult it is for foreigners to understand the institu- tions of England ! What a mass of contradictions is involved in our constitution, in our Church, in our univer- sities ! But it is, in fact, a part not only of c the system,' as it is called, but of our character, of our situation. It is at once our curse and our blessing. Its dangers can be guarded against, its advantages may be made the most of ; but its root is deep in our very inmost being — we can- not lose it or change it without ceasing to be what we are or have been. To no point does this apply more truly than to our literature and theology. Go to France or Germany, and no man will be at a loss to tell you where the most learned, the most enlightened men of the country are to be found. They are members of the Institute ; they are lecturers in the College of Henri IY. ; they are Professors in the Universities. Here and there they may have risen to be Ministers of State. But such a rise has been through their literary eminence ; and that eminence is illustrated, not superseded, by their new position. Every one knows where is the oracle at whose mouth he is to enquire. In England it is far otherwise. Now and then it may be that a great light in theology or history will burst forth at Oxford or Cambridge, and draw all eyes to itself. But these are exceptions. Look over the roll of 1 Quarterly Review, July 1855. For by Professor Plumptre, prefixed to the further details of Archdeacon Hare's last edition of the Guesses at Truth. life, see the excellent memoir of him ESSAY 3QV. PECULIARITY OP HIS LIFE. 537 our literary heroes in ancient times or in present. En- o-aGrecl in the distracting labours of the school-room, serving the tables of a bank, in the back room of a public office, in the seclusion of a rustic parish, are too often planted the men who in France or Germany would have been enthroned on professorial chairs addressing them- selves to the rising historians, philologers, or theologians of the age. The evil has been pointed out in the Eeport of the Oxford Commission, and may, we hope, be remedied to some extent by the Legislature ; for an evil undoubtedlv it is, that Archimedes should be without the standing- place from whence he might move the world. But there is a brighter side to this state of thing's which is not to be overlooked. It is a good that light should be diffused as well as concentrated ; that speculation and practice should be combined and not always isolated; that genius should be at times forced into uncongenial channels and compelled to animate forms of life which else would be condemned to hopeless mediocrity. TYe have made these remarks because we are about to Position of enter on a remarkable instance of their applicability. If Hare, any foreigner landing in England in 1853 had asked where he should find the man best acquainted with all modern forms of thought here or on the Continent — where he should find the most complete collection of the philosophical, theological, or historical literature of Ger- many— where he should find profound and exact scholarship combined with the most varied and extensive learning — what would have been the answer ? Not in Oxford — not in Cambridge — not in London. He must have turned far away from academic towns or public libraries to a secluded parish in Sussex, and in the minister of that parish, in an archdeacon of one of the least important of English dioceses, he would have found what he sought. He would 538 ARCHDEACON HARE. Essay XIV. have found such an one there : he would now find such an one no more. For such was Julius Hare, late Eector of Herstmonceux and Archdeacon of Lewes. His Julius Charles Hare was born on September 13, 1795. He was the third of four brothers, all more or less re- markable, and all united together by an unusually strong bond of fraternal affection — Francis, Augustas, Julius, and Marcus. Of these the eldest and the youngest have left no memorial behind ; but the two nearest in years and nearest in character cannot be mentioned together Augustus without noticing the one as well as the other. Augustus Hare. Hare will long be remembered by all who can recall the lofty and chivalrous soul, the firm yet gentle heart, which was so well represented in his bearing and countenance. He will be long remembered by those who never knew him through the two volumes of £ Sermons to a Country 1 Congregation,' which will probably be handed down to future generations as the first example of the great im- provement of rural preaching in the nineteenth century — as a striking proof of the effect which a refined and cultivated mind may have in directing the devotions and lives of the most simple and ignorant populations. But he will be remembered also by the undying affection of his younger and more celebrated brother, expressed many a time and oft with a fervour and simplicity unusual in our countrymen — nowhere more strikingly than in the revised edition of the 6 Guesses at Truth by Two * Brothers,' in which they first appeared before the world. ' In truth, through the whole of this work I have been holding 1 converse with him who was once the partner in it, as he was in 1 all my thoughts and feelings, from the earliest dawn of both. ' He too is gone. But is he lost to me ? Oh no ! He whose ' heart was ever pouring forth a stream of love, the purity and ' inexhaustibleness of which betokened its heavenly origin, as he ' was ever striving to lift me above myself, is still at my side, Essay XIV. HIS EDUCATION. 539 * pointing my gaze upward. Only the love which was then 1 hidden within him has now overflowed and transfigured his 1 whole being, and his earthly form is turned into that of an 1 angel of light.' In his early training lie owed much to his mother, a Julius woman of great strength and beauty of character, daughter 5jJ|j of Dr. Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, and his aunt, Lady Jones, widow of the famous Orientalist. A large portion of his boyhood and youth was spent abroad ; and to this must be in some measure ascribed the foreign tinge which appeared, as well in the simplicity and impulsiveness of his character, as in his literary predilections. ' In 1811,' he playfully said, e I »aw the mark of Luther's ink on the 4 walls of the castle of Wartburg ; and there I first learned c to throw inkstands at the Devil.' This, as we shall afterwards see, expressed, in a fuller sense than that in which he had intended it, the origin of much of his future labours — the influence exercised over his mind by Germany and its great Reformer. His regular education was begun at the Charterhouse, and he there fell in with one of those golden times which at successive intervals crown the harvests of schools and colleges as well as of the natural world. The same generation of schoolboys numbered on its roll, besides his own, the names of the two Wadding- tons, and of Grote and Thirlwall, the future historians of Greece, not to mention others less known to fame, but whose strong practical abilities, or whose fresh and genial natures, long retained a hold on the respect or the affection of their fellow Carthusians. From the Charterhouse he went to Cambridge in 1812. His academical career was terminated by his election as Fellow of Trinity College in October, 1818; whither, after a short study of the legal profession, he returned in 1822, and entered on the office of Assistant Tutor of the College. 540 ARCHDEACON HARE. Essay XIV. In the honoured succession of those who have occupied the princely chambers which open on the long green avenue of limes — the glory of the Trinity Gardens — Julius Hare will always fill a distinguished place. To the twenty years which he passed at Trinity College he owed, as he says himself, 6 the building up of his mind.' 1 Not only as a teacher, but as a student, he entered with all the ardour of his mind into the philological learning in which the University of Cambridge has always been pre- eminent. There, too, he laid the foundation of that German library which has now returned once more to the walls within which it was first begun. With his friend and colleague, now Bishop of St. David's, he there made accessible in an English garb the great and truly inspiring work of Niebuhr. With the same eminent man he set on foot the £ Philological Museum,' which shared the usual transitory fate of such learned periodicals, but which during the period of its existence furnished more solid additions to English literature and scholarship than any other of the kind that has appeared. His But it was not from the intellectual atmosphere of Cambridge that his mind received its most lasting in- fluences. There was the circle of his numerous and most distinguished friends. It has sometimes struck us that there was a strength and permanence in the youthful friendships of that generation which we hardly find in our own. How far more strikingly does Arnold stand out from the background of his generation by reason of the group of faithful and loving equals — equals not in character or genius, but in age and sympathy — with whom he is surrounded from first to last !• So too it was with Julius Hare. Removed by distance, by occupation, 1 Dedication of Sermons on the Victory of Faith. Essay XIV. HIS PUPILS, 541 perhaps by opinions, from almost all of thein, lie never forgot or was forgotten by them. Of Thirlwall we have already spoken, in his exquisitely polished Essays on philology and history giving the promise of that calm, comprehensive, imperturbable judgment which has made his Episcopal Charges the chief oracles of the English Church for the last twenty years. Sedgwick was there, awakening, as his friend well expresses it, 6 an almost ' affectionate thankfulness ' 1 for the delight which his genial wit and eloquent conversation afforded; yet more for the free and generous sympathy which, unchilled by time, he is still as ready as ever to pour forth. Less known, but not to be forgotton, was the author of the ' Broad Stone of Honour/ and of 6 The Ages of Faith,' to that generation the chief representative of the admiration for mediieval times which has since spread so wide, and so far overshot the legitimate reaction which was then unquestionably needed in their behalf. Perhaps the one to whom he looked back with the chiefest portion of gratitude was his powerful and vigorous colleague, Dr. Whewell — afterwards the head of that illustrious College — through whose urgency he was mainly induced to ex- change a legal for an academical course, a lay for a clerical profession. There was yet another and a more intimate circle which His pupils, grew up round the Tutor of Trinity — the exceeding great reward of every one sincerely engaged in the work of education, and, in the sense in which we here speak of it, the peculiar blessing of a college tutor — the circle of his pupils. Many there must be who look back with interest to the stores of knowledge which streamed forth in only too abundant profusion in that well-known lecture-room ; 1 (r Houses at Trath, 1st series, 4th ed., p. 353. 542 ARCHDEACON HARE. Essay XIV. many who cherish a grateful and affectionate reverence for the memory of him who delighted to be not only the instructor, but the friend, of those young and aspiring minds with whom he was thus brought into contact ; — in whose very aspect they read a rebuke to all suggestions of evil, an enkindlement to purity and goodness. Three, however, require especial notice — three who to their con- nection with him would probably have gladly confessed that they owed a great portion of that cultivation which has given them a place in the literature of their country, and on whom he in return looked with a love, and in one instance at least with a reverence, which almost made one forget that the superiority of years and station, to speak of nothing more, was on his side, and not on theirs. There was the bold and generous, it may perhaps be added, the rash and eccentric, spirit of one whose story, with hardly any incidents worth recording, has had the singular fate of being told by two of the most gifted men 1 of his time, and who certainly left an impression on all who ever heard his converse, such as can hardly be con- ceived by those who only know him through the far inferior medium of his written words. There was the accomplished author of the ( Notes on the Parables,' who 1 The allusion is to the two biogra- Mr. Carlyle believes to have been a phies of John Sterling, by Archdeacon mere pretext. It so happens that I Hare and Mr. Carlyle. Each is to be had unusual opportunities of observ- reckoned amongst the most interesting ing the working of Sterling's mind of its author's writings. It would be at the time in question, and I am presumptuous to adjudicate between persuaded that, as his interest in his two such men. But it may perhaps parochial work was intense, so his be pertinent to observe, that whilst the reluctance to abandon it was deep and Archdeacon has probably understated unfeigned. The description of his the amount of Sterling's doubts in his conversation is equally powerful and later years, on the other hand, he was exact in both the biographies. My right in ascribing Sterling's original recollection of his sermons is hardly abandonment of the clerical profession less vivid, to the simple cause of ill health, which Essay XIV. HIS LIFE. 543 has the merit of having first recalled the course of English theology from patristic to exegetical studies, after the decline and fall of the Oxford school, and who, more than any other of Hare's pupils, imbibed from him the accurate discrimination which has produced the series of delightful little volumes on 6 Words,' ' Proverbs,' and the 6 English 6 Language.' There was finally the noble-hearted man, who, whatever may be thought of the obscurity of his style, the insufficiency of his arguments, or the erroneous- ness of some of his conclusions, is perhaps the best example that this age can show of that deep prophetic fervour, of that power of apostolic sympathy which awakens not the less because it often fails to satisfy — which edifies not the less because it often fails to convince. We may not be able to go along with the vehement expressions of admi- ration for Mr. Maurice's works which fill the Archdeacon's pages, but we can well understand and honour the genuine enthusiasm with which he laboured to bring all the world to agree with him in his estimate of his friend and pupil, and, as was afterwards the case, his near and dear kins- man. In 1832 the family living of Herstmonceux in Sussex became vacant by the death of his uncle, and his elder brother Augustus declining to leave the scene of his happy labours at Alton, the Rectory of Herstmonceux was offered to Julius. He at once accepted the charge, though we can easily imagine the pain with which the Fellow of Trinity exchanged the studies and society of Cambridge for the active ministration and the retired life of a country parish. It was in the interval between the acceptance of the living and his entrance on its duties that he enjoyed a year's absence on the Continent, mostly with his friend and ardent admirer, Walter Savage Landor, whose 544 ARCHDEACON HARE. Essay XIV ' Imaginary Conversations ' he had himself been mainly instrumental in introducing to the English public. In His visit the course of this journey he first visited Rome, always an to Rome, q^qq^ jn the life of any man who can think and feel, more especially to one whose Cambridge studies had neces- sarily drawn him into the careful study of the beginnings of Roman history, and whose love foi art amounted almost to a passion. One there was, too then living in the Capitol, whose presence stirred the thoughts and warmed the hearts of many an English traveller, and lent an additional charm even to the glory of the Seven Hills and the treasures of the Vatican. It was the begin- ning of his life-long intimacy with Bunsen ; an intimacy confirmed and cemented when in after years the Prussian Minister took up his residence in the parish of the friend, whose name stands prominent on the roll of those with which the elaborate work on Hippolytus and his Age is connected by its illustrious author. One curious incident is worth recording, which marked his stay at Rome. Whilst there he preached a sermon in the English chapel — treating of some of the feelings with which travellers ought to be animated — on the charac- teristic text, ' What went ye out into the wilderness for to 4 see P A prophet ? yea, I say unto you, and more than a 6 prophet.' We will give the anecdote in his own words : 1 — ' From the subject it came home to the heart of a part of the con- 4 gregation, and in compliance with their wishes I endeavoured to ' obtain the consent of the Papal censor to its publication at Rome, * having received a hint that that consent would not be withheld. ' For I had been misunderstood — as was natural enough — in the ' passage where I termed Rome this fateful city, and had been ' supposed to have called it this faithful city ; whereupon, while 1 some of my Protestant hearers were offended by the expression, ' rumour was busy in reporting that a sermon had been preacht 1 Preface to Victory of Faith, p. xii. Essay XIV. HIS LIFE. 545 1 at the English chapel speaking very favourably of Roman- 1 ism The imprimatur which I applied for was not 1 refused ; but proceedings at Rome are so dilatory, that months ' passed by, and I came away before it was obtained. Perhaps ' the delay was a civil substitute for a refusal.' He returned from Rome in the spring of 1834, bringing with him many costly works of art to adorn his new home. One of these, a Madonna of Raphael, which he bought at Florence, in a characteristic access of enthusiastic tender- ness he insisted on carrying in his own hands over the long ascent of S. Gothard. And now he settled in the sphere of duty from which he never afterwards moved, and in which wTas afterwards associated with him the beloved and honoured partner of his later years, sister of his friend and pupil Frederick Maurice. Let us pause for a moment on a scene which became so much a part of himself and of his writings, that for all who knew him during the last twenty years of his life the recollections of Herstmonceux and of Julius Hare were almost inseparable. On the edge of the long sweep of high land which Herstmon- encloses the marsh of Pevensey Level stretches the parish ceux< of Herstmonceux,1 so called from the ' weald,' 'forest,' or ' hurst ' of Anderida, which once covered the hills of Kent and Sussex, and from the Norman family of Monceaux, who first appear as the owners of the property. The church stands at the extremity of the parish, on an eminence immediately overlooking the flat plain on whose shore the Conqueror landed, with the bright line of sea and the bluff promontory of Beachy Head in the distance. 1 Every particular respecting the for several years curate of Archdeacon history of Herstmonceux has been Hare, now Canon of Lincoln. It em- carefully collected in a valuable paper bodies many interesting and minute in the Sussex Archaeological Collection, remarks of the Archdeacon himself, vol. iv. pp. 125-208, by Mr. Venables, N N 546 ARCHDEACON HAEE. Essay XIV. Immediately beneath the church are the ruins of Herst- monceux Castle, commonly said to be the oldest brick building: in England since the time of the Eomans ; the ancient seat of the Fienneses, Dacres, and Naylors, from whom, in the reign of Anne, it passed by marriage into the hands of Francis Hare, Bishop of Chichester, well known as chaplain of the great Duke of Marlborough, and ranked by his contemporaries on a level with Bentley for his critical sagacity and learning. The Castle was dis- mantled by the Bishop's descendants ; in the last genera- tion the property was sold ; and the only connection which the Hare family retained with the place was the benefice, which still remained in their gift. The Eectory stood far removed from church, and castle, and village ; and in its tranquil retreat Hare's remaining years were spent. Of all peculiarities of English life, none perhaps is so unique as an English parsonage. But how peculiar even amongst English parsonages was the Eectory of Herstmonceux ! The very first glance at the entrance-hall revealed the character of its master. It was not merely a house with a good library — the whole house was a library. The vast' nucleus which he brought with him from Cambridge grew year by year, till not only study, and drawing-room, and dining-room, but passage, and antechamber, and bed- rooms were overrun with the ever-advancing and crowded bookshelves. At the time of his death it had reached the number of more than 12,000 volumes; and it must be further remembered that these volumes were of no ordi- nary kind. Of all libraries which it has been our lot to traverse, we never saw any equal to this in the combined excellence of quantity and quality ; none in which there were so few worthless, so many valuable works. Its original basis was classical and philological ; but of later years the historical, philosophical, and theological elements Essay XIV. HIS LIFE AT HERSTMONCEUX. 547 outgrew all the rest. The peculiarity which distinguished the collection probably from any other, private or public, in the kingdom, was the preponderance of German litera- ture. No work, no pamphlet of any note, in the teeming catalogues of German booksellers escaped his notice ; and with his knowledge of the subjects and of the probable elucidation which they would receive from this or that quarter, they formed themselves in natural and harmonious groups round what already existed, so as to give to the library both the appearance and reality, not of a mere accumulation of parts, but of an organic and self-multi- plying whole. And what perhaps was yet more remark- able was the manner in which the centre of this whole was himself. Without a catalogue, without assistance, he knew where every book was to be found, for what it was valuable, what relation it bore to the rest. The library was like a magnificent tree which he had himself planted, of which he had nurtured the growth, which spread its branches far and wide over his dwelling, and in the shade of which he delighted, even if he was pre- vented for the moment from gathering its fruits or pruning its luxuriant foliage. In the few spaces which this tapestry of literature left unoccupied were hung the noble pictures which he had brought with him from Italy. To him they were more than mere works of art; they were companions and guests ; and they were the more remarkable from their contrast with the general plainness and simplicity of the house and household, so unlike to the usual accompani- ments of luxury and grandeur, in which we should usually seek and find works of such costly beauty. In this home, — now hard at work with his myriad volumes around him at his student's desk, — now wander- ing to and fro, book in hand, between the various rooms, N N 2 543 ARCHDEACON HARE. Essa* XIV. or up and down the long garden walk overlooking the distant Level with its shifting lights and shades, — he went on year by year extending the range and superstructure of that vast knowledge of which the solid basis had been laid in the classical studies of his beloved university, or correcting, with an elaborate minuteness which to the bystanders was at times almost wearisome to behold, the long succession of proofs which, during the later years of his life, were hardly ever out of his hands. Many, too, were the friends of his boyhood, and youth, and manhood, who wTere gathered under that hospitable roof ; many the scholars, old and young, who knew that they should find in that copious storehouse knowledge which they would vainly seek elsewhere on British ground ; many and long were the evening hours in which he would read aloud, after his wont, the choicest treasures of prose or poetry, truth or fiction, from the most ancient or the most modern sources of English literature. We have dwelt on this aspect of his life, because we believe it to have been the most unlike to any other which could be named amongst his contemporaries. But it would be to overlook a very curious as well as important part of his career, if we were to forget to ask how this shrine of learning rose and flourished on what might have seemed the uncongenial soil of the Weald of Sussex — how the Cambridge scholar was united with the country pastor — what benefit the white-frocked peasants or the neigh- bouring clergy reaped from the appearance of a character or a home amongst them which could hardly have been more unlike all around it had it been transplanted from another hemisphere. Those of our readers who have turned over the pages of the very interesting volume lately published on the reorganisation of the Civil Service, will remember the clever, though not altogether conclusive, Essay XIV. HIS LIFE AT HEESTMONCEUX. 549 objections urged against the proposed reforms by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department: 1 — 1 It may be instructive as well as amusing to enquire what ' would be the effect were my two immortal friends [Grote and 1 Macaulay] to descend from the clouds, and assume for a few days ' the humble disguise of Home Office clerks. I very much fear ' the public would not discover the change. The more exact ' knowledge of the composition of the Spartan "Mora," or the ' Macedonian phalanx, would not peep out in a letter fixing the ' permanent staff of a regiment of militia ; the eloquence of the ' great historian of our constitutional liberties would not be 1 recognised in a letter pointing out to a county magistrate that ' he had strained the provisions of the Vagrant Act. The gods ' would return to Olympus undetected, leaving no Otoaavrog dcp) 1 behind.' May we venture to ask the same question as to another of Mr. Waddington's former schoolfellows ? would he, too, have returned undetected to his Cambridge Olympus, had the University thought fit to recall the most learned of her sons to occupy his fitting place amongst her professors ? or was there, even in these distant wilds, a sense of worth and power which they would else have never known ? An active parish priest, in the proper sense of the word, he never was ; not so much, perhaps, by reason of his literary pursuits as of his desultory habits. Constant, regular, vigilant ministrations to the poor, were not his wont, perhaps they were not his call. Kbr can he be said as a general rule to have accommodated his preaching to his parishioners. Compared with the short and homely addresses of his brother Augustus to the poor of Alton, his long and elaborate discourses will hardly hold their place as models of parochial exhortation, even to more enlightened congregations than those of Herstmonceux. But it would be a great mistake to measure his influence 1 Papers relating to the Beorga?iisation of the Civil Service, p. 391. 550 ARCHDEACON HARE. Essay XIV. on his parish, or his interest in it, by these indications. Coming to Herstmonceux as he did — -to the scene of his own early years — remembered as a child by the old in- habitants— honoured as the representative of a family long known amongst them — he was from the first bound to them, and they to him, by a link which years always rivet with a strength of which both parties are often unconscious till it is rent asunder. His own knowledge of their history, of their abodes, of their characters, per- haps in great measure from the same cause, was very remarkable; and although his visits to them might be comparatively few, yet theirs to the rectory were constant, the more so because they were always sure to receive a ready welcome. Whatever might be the work in which he was employed, he at once laid it aside at the call of the humblest parishioner, to advise, console, listen, assist. There was that, too, in his manner, in his words, in his voice and countenance, which could not fail to impress even the dullest with a sense of truth, of determination, of uprightness — yet more, with a sense of deep religious feeling, of abhorrence of sin, of love of goodness, of humble dependence on God. Such a feeling transpired in his ordinary conversation with them ; it transpired still more in the deep devotion with which he went through the various services of the church. ' If you have never heard 4 Julius Hare read the Communion service/ was the ex- pression of one who had been much struck, as indeed all were, by his mode of reading this especial portion of the Liturgy, e you do not know what the words of that service £ contain.' And in his sermons, needlessly long, and provokingly inappropriate as they sometimes were, there were from time to time passages so beautiful in them- selves, so congenial to the time and place, that Herst- monceux may well be proud, as it may well be thankful, Essax XIV. HIS LIFE AT HEKSTMONCEUX. 551 to have its name, its scenery, its people associated with thoughts and with language so just and so noble. Who is there that ever has seen the old church of Herstinonceux, with its yew-tree, and churchyard, and view over sea and land, and will not feel that it has received a memorial for ever in the touching allusions to the death of Phillis Hoad,1 to the grave of Lhia Deimling,2 to the ancient church on the hill-top? Who that ever heard or read the striking introduction of the stories of Hooker's death, and of the warning of St. Philip Neri, in the sermons on the ' Chariots of God,' 3 and on the ' Close of the Year,' will not feel the power and life given to the pastor of the humblest flock by his command of the varied treasures of things new and old, instead of the commonplaces which fill up so many vacant pages of the sermons of an ordinary preacher. Not seldom, thus, a passage of Scripture or an event of sacred history was explained and brought home to the apprehensions of his most unlettered hearers, when it seemed to those who listened as if the windows of heaven were opened for a flood of light to come down ; and when the purest and most practical lessons of morality were educed with surprising force and attractiveness. It was impossible but that Herstinonceux Rectory His Archi- should have become the centre of the surrounding clergy. Charges. The influence which was gradually fostered by the mere fact of his presence amongst them received its legitimate sphere when, in 1840, he was appointed by Bishop Otter to the Archdeaconry of Lewes. This office he discharged with remarkable zeal and success. It is not too much to say that his Archidiaconal Charges occupied, with the single exception of those of his distinguished friend the Bishop of St. David's, the first place in this field of 1 Parish Scrmo7is, vol. i. p. 459. • Ibid. vol. i. p. 433 ; vol. ii. p. 497. 2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 460. 552 ARCHDEACON HARE. Essay XIV. ecclesiastical literature. They laboured indeed under the defects inseparable partly from his own style, partly from the circumstance that, including under their undefined range, all subjects, from the pewing of a church up to the war with Russia, they were marked by a certain incon- gruity of composition amounting almost to grotesqueness. And for his audience, we can quite imagine that their inordinate length may at times have been calculated to produce the effect which we once heard ascribed to them by the good-humoured wit of Bishop Blomlield, — 6 If I had been one of his clergy, and been " charged " 6 in that way, I should have been like a gun — I should c have gone off,' But with all these drawbacks there was in his delivery and his style a kindling fire, a trumpet-call, which few could hear or read without emo- tion : there was in his arguments an accuracy of research, a calmness of judgment, a clearness of statement, which made them the best resource for anyone who wished to know the rights and wrongs, the lights and shades, of the leading practical questions of the day. Take any of the topics which have been the nucleus of the most embittered and entangled controversies, — the marriage of a deceased wife's sister — Maynooth — the management clauses of the Privy Council — and the best answer to any questions you may have to ask concerning them will be found in the Charges of the late Archdeacon of Lewes. They for the most part turn on merely temporary questions, but the principles and the spirit in which he discusses them are eternal. They relate chiefly, as addresses of this nature must relate, to the externals rather than the essentials of religion ; but no one was more aware of this than himself, or more carefully guarded against any misconception that might arise from it. It may have been inferred from what we have said that Essay XIV. HIS CAMBRIDGE SERMONS. 553 we should regard, and that he himself regarded, his proper His Cam- sphere to have been neither in the labours of a parish, nor mr