PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
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 BX 5132 .E44 1878 
 Ellicott, C. J. 1819-1905. 
 Some present dangers of the 
 Church of England 
 
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SOME PRESENT DANGERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 C. J. ELLICOTT, D.D., 
 
 Bisliop of Gloucester and Bristol. 
 
 Cassell Petter & Galpin: 
 
 LUDGATE HILL, LONDON, B.C. 
 [all rights reserved.] 
 
Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 in 2015 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/somepresentdangeOOelli 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PRESENT DANGERS OF THE CHURCH . 
 
 CONFESSION 
 
 THE ROYAL SUPREMACY 
 THE FINAL COURT OF APPEAL . 
 THE LIVING VOICE OF THE CHURCH. . . .101 
 
 REMEDIAL COUNSELS 121 
 
 UNCORRUPT DOCTRINE 139 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The first six of the following Addresses are pub- 
 lished in accordance w^th the wish kindly expressed 
 by many of those who heard them. They form the 
 second portion of Addresses delivered in a recent 
 triennial Visitation of one of the two Archdeaconries 
 of the Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol. They are 
 printed nearly in the exact words in which they 
 were delivered, those parts only being omitted or 
 modified that had merely a local reference. 
 
 The last of the Addresses is a sermon preached, 
 very recently, at the opening, after restoration, of 
 Chippenham Parish Church; and is added in com- 
 pliance with a strongly expressed wish that it 
 should be published. As the sermon is similar, in 
 its general reference to the Present Dangers of the 
 Church of England — to the Addresses which precede 
 it — it has been included in the present volume. 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 The object of the first six Addresses is to set 
 forth as clearly as possible, and in as logical a 
 form as the nature of the subject will permit, the 
 three dangers that at the present time are seriously 
 threatening the constitutional relations between the 
 Church and the State in this country. 
 
 What it has been desired especially to make 
 plain is this : — first, that those who are resolved 
 upon securing perfect independence in matters 
 ecclesiastical, must purchase that independence at 
 the cost of disestablishment; and, secondly, that 
 those who desire to maintain the existing relations 
 of Church and State must adhere to the old lines 
 of our Constitution, and not commit themselves to 
 any of those experiments which are from time to 
 time suggested to us by well-intentioned but not 
 very far-seeing advisers. 
 
 The views generally maintained in these Ad- 
 dresses, so far as they represent the views of any 
 party in the Church, are those of what may perhaps 
 be conveniently termed the Constitutional Party- 
 men deeply attached to the Reformation, and firmly 
 loyal to all its principles and settlements, but no 
 less revering the primitive and apostolical aspects 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 of the great liistorical Church to which it is our 
 blessing to belong-. Till recently this honourable 
 and influential body was commonly known by the 
 name of the "Old High Church Party;" but as 
 the High Church Party has now unhapi)ily been 
 stretched to include men whom the loyal High 
 Churchmen of former days would have promptly dis- 
 owned and repudiated, some fresh name has become 
 necessary to designate that large " Party of the 
 Centre," as it has also been called, with which the 
 best spirits both of the Old High Church and of 
 the great Evangelical Party can honourably unite 
 and co-operate. 
 
 May the blessing of God be permitted to rest 
 upon the grave thoughts which are treated of m 
 these pages, and which are now submitted to the 
 Christian reader. 
 
 C. J. GLOUCESTER & BRISTOL. 
 
 aioucester, Jan. 14, 1878. 
 
PEESENT DANGEES OF THE CHUECH. 
 
PEESENT DANGERS OF THE CHUECH. 
 
 [Delivered at Bristol Cathedral, October 25th, 1877.] 
 
 My Dear Brethren and Friends, 
 
 I canuot, perhaps, better introduce the subject of 
 the present Address than by briefly reminding' you of 
 the circumstances under which we are now gathered 
 together. 
 
 We have met together, in the first place, to con- 
 sider the details of the Christian work that has been 
 done in a large city and in one half of a Diocese of 
 average character and extent during the three years 
 that have now passed away — three years, three 
 eventful years, which the future Church historian 
 will frequently refer to in days to come as the three 
 years which most potently influenced what is now to 
 us the unknown future of the National Church.* 
 
 * It may be here noticed th.at the first part of the present 
 and each of the succeediug Addresses was devoted to a 
 specification of the local work of the Archdeaconry or 
 Deanery, and to a comparison of the work of the last three 
 years with that done in former periods. This first part, 
 under the present circumstances of the publication of these 
 Addresses, is necessarily omitted. 
 
12 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 This has now been completed^ and may rightly 
 give us all great cause for Christian hopefulness. 
 We have seen that, by God^s blessings much good 
 work has been done among us during the past three 
 years. The fallow ground has in most cases been 
 broken up, a truer love for souls has seemed to 
 stimulate our Christian work, a more present sense 
 of responsibility has left its traces — thank God that 
 I can say it — in many and many a parish. Much, it 
 is true, yet remains to be done ; there are still several 
 places in which, so far as one can judge from the 
 outward, the standard is low, and in which the 
 progress has been slight and inadequate ; still, when 
 we pause to form a broad and general estimate of the 
 Church work in which we have been engaged, we 
 cannot but £e '1 that we have real cause for hope and 
 for encouragement. 
 
 Our survey of what is past, and what is merely 
 local and particular, is, however, only one of the 
 objects of our present meeting. The consideration of 
 the Diocese naturally leads us onward to a considera- 
 tion of the Church at large. The recapitulation of 
 the details of the more immediate past seem to invite 
 us to look forward, and to take into our thoughts 
 some at least of the hopes and the feai-s of the more 
 immediate future. 
 
 Let us, then, now raise our eyes and look beyond 
 the horizon of our local sphere of Christian labour, 
 and endeavour to form some sort of estimate of the 
 
TJie Church of England. 
 
 13 
 
 present characteristics and, more especially, of the 
 present dangers of the Church of England. 
 
 When thus we turn from the Diocese to the 
 Church at large, we cannot but at once he conscious 
 that the estimate which any fair and inteUigent 
 person would form of the state of the Church 
 generally is far less encouraging than that of this 
 portion of a Diocese which has been the subject of 
 our present consideration. And what may be thus 
 said in reference to our own Diocese may be said 
 equally in reference to the Dioceses that lie around 
 us. There is nothing exceptional in our own case, 
 nothing that could give us reasonable ground for 
 believing that we are differently circumstanced to 
 the other Dioceses that with us help to make up the 
 Province and Church to which we all belong. Good 
 work, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, has been 
 done in this Diocese, increasingly good work, but yet 
 work not probably, either in quality or amount, 
 beyond that which has been done elsewhere. 
 
 How, then, are we to account for this seeming 
 discrepancy ? If we regard the Church of England 
 as composed of separate Dioceses, of which our own 
 may be taken as a fair avernge sample, we can hardly 
 feel any just cause of anxiety. A large amount of 
 Church work done; abundant instances everywhere 
 of earnestness and loyalty ; scarcely in any Diocese 
 more examples of direct disobedience than could be 
 numbered on the fingers of one hand; considerable 
 
14 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 unanimity in the E-uri-decanal Chapters ; and in the 
 larger and more mixed Diocesan Conferences or 
 Synods a complete freedom from angry or heated 
 discussions. In reference to this last point I am 
 rather speaking from impression than from any very 
 exact investigation of the reports of these now widely 
 prevalent Conferences^ but still I think the general 
 remark is correct — that the angry controversies 
 that are now disquieting the Church at large find but 
 limited and partial counterparts in the actual work- 
 ing and home life of our different Dioceses. 
 
 If we regard, then, the Church of England thus 
 distributively, we seem to feel the very reverse of 
 disquietude ; and yet it is absolutely impossible to 
 deny that the moment we take into consideration 
 the Church as a whole, we are conscious of an 
 anxiety rapidly increasing each year that is added 
 to our annals, and are even beginning to lose hope 
 in the maintenance of the existing relations between 
 the Church and the country. 
 
 The discrepancy in the estimate is indisputable. 
 How is it to be accounted for ? Are we to say 
 that the Diocesan estimate is the true one, and 
 that the anxiety and disquietude about the Church 
 of England as a whole are causelessly exaggerated, 
 and are the result of mere vague impressions, which 
 are dissipated the moment they are analysed? Or 
 are we to take quite the other view, and to say 
 that the general estimate is the correct one, that 
 
The Church of England. 15 
 
 there ?'? real reason for anxiety, and that the Dio- 
 cesan mode of regarding the present state of the 
 Church is innocently illusory — illusory, because 
 (thanks be to God that we can say so) the 
 relations of each Bishop and his Clergy are such 
 that the real amount of existing antagonisms is 
 by common consent veiled over and minimised. 
 It has been often said, perhaps with some degree 
 of truth, that if all the Dioceses in England 
 were to be set free to-morrow to choose their 
 Bishops, they would probably in the great majority 
 of cases choose those who now preside over them. 
 This kindly and loyal feeling, it is said, leads 
 each Bishop unconsciously to give a rose tint to 
 Church aspects of his own Diocese, and interferes 
 with the correctness of the general estimate. 
 
 Which of these two views is the correct one? 
 The discrepancy is patent. On which side does the 
 error lie? Or is it really to be attributed to both 
 estimates ; the Diocesan view being in excess owing 
 to its local hopefulness, the general view being equally 
 in excess in its vague and unverified apprehensions ? 
 
 The true answer probably is this — That the 
 Diocesan view of the present state of the Church 
 does not, by the very nature of the ease, take into 
 cognizance those elements of difficulty and mischief 
 which can only be properly realised when we re- 
 gard the Church of England as a whole ; and that it 
 is the collective force of these evil elements which 
 
16 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 constitutes our present danger. For example^ the 
 three great evils in the Church at the present time 
 are lawlessness, caballing, and sacerdotalism — all, it 
 is true, emerging from the vanity and self-assertion 
 of the individual, but not actually dangerous to an 
 institution and a community until organised and 
 aggregated. In the Diocesan view these evils are 
 very imperfectly recognised. The few individuals in 
 a Diocese that may be pledged to extreme views or 
 practices are too small to form any party; they are 
 often on personally friendly relations with their 
 Diocesan; they become mixed up in general move- 
 ments with their clerical neighbours, and for the 
 most part are only regarded as the local represen- 
 tatives and exponents of views, more or less extreme, 
 which must be expected to be found in every free 
 community. In most of our Dioceses we may 
 perhaps have, on an average, in each some four or 
 five churches in which practices not consonant with 
 the law are unhappily maintained ; but they remain, 
 and are likely to remain, isolated and inoperative, and 
 almost vanish from consideration when we think, in 
 each case, of the hundredfold number of churches, in 
 very many of which quite as good work is done, and 
 quite as much Christian earnestness is shown both by 
 pastors and people. 
 
 The Diocesan view is thus sure to be partial and 
 limited. The real dangers that may exist in the 
 Church generally are but imperfectly reflected by it. 
 
The Church of England, 
 
 17 
 
 and a sort of optimistic apathy is the result, of which 
 the opponents of the principles of the Reformation are 
 never slow to avail themselves, and of which they 
 have largely availed themselves during the past ten 
 years of our ecclesiastical life. 
 
 It may be well, then, for us at the very outset to 
 bear these differences of estimate clearly in mind, 
 and so to avoid the prevalent danger at the present 
 time, either, on the one hand, of judging too ex- 
 clusively of matters ecclesiastical from what we may 
 know of the diocesan life of the Church, or, on the 
 other, of foi'ming unduly desponding estimates from 
 what we may hear or know of the general difficulties 
 of the Church collectively, just at a time of tension, 
 transition, and trial. There is an unmeaning 
 optimism that will persist in believing that all will 
 come right at the last, and that the general Church 
 life of the country really is what any Diocese would 
 seem to show it to be ; whereas, there may be in the 
 Church as a whole dangerously confederated action, 
 and sinister combinations seriously imperilling the 
 very existence of the present relations of the Church 
 and the State, of which there may be no very 
 perceptible trace in the ordinary home life of the 
 Archdeaconry or the Diocese. There is, however, 
 an equally unwise pessimism that draws its inferences 
 only from general aspects and current apprehensions ; 
 that ignores the real progress in local Church life 
 in almost every parish in the kingdom, and steadily 
 
 B 
 
18 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 closes its eyes to such specification of the various 
 forms of Church work as that which was set before 
 you in the introductory portion of the present 
 Address. 
 
 Our wisdom will be to avoid both these errors^ 
 and to form our estimate as far as we are able from 
 a due consideration of what would seem to be the 
 true state of the Church of England^ not merely 
 under its Diocesan^ but under its general aspects and 
 characteristics. There is, indeed, much that renders 
 this no easy task at the present time; much that 
 tends to disturb our judgments ; much that makes 
 it difficult to form a cool and clear estimate of 
 existing difficulties ; much that helps to exaggerate ; 
 — still, if we endeavour to combine the two aspects 
 of Church life, the general and the diocesan, to 
 which allusion has been made, we shall probably, in 
 the sequel, not only come to a sound opinion on oui- 
 present causes of disquietude, but even gradually 
 see our way to mitigate or remove them. 
 
 The reasons, however, for disquietude are cer- 
 tainly very serious. The dangers that now menace 
 the Established National Church are especially grave. 
 They may be all summed up in those three forms of 
 evil which I have already specified, and with which 
 we have unhappily now become all too familiar — 
 lawlessness, caballing and the spirit of party, and 
 that undue exaltation of an office and its privileges 
 which is commonl}' known by the name of sacerdo- 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 19 
 
 talism. With each one of these forms of danger 
 we have been broiight frequently in contact during 
 the last ten years. Much has been said on these 
 subjects ; many a warning has been given ; many 
 an indication of the train of evils that always 
 accompany these three dangerous principles has often 
 been specified. Still, they are prevailing with us, 
 and — what is of especial moment — under present 
 forms and developments that seem to give us ad- 
 ditional causes for anxiety. These forms and 
 developments, these new aspects of old dangers, 
 it may be useful for us to subject to a very careful 
 consideration, as there would really seem to be some 
 good cause for thinking that they are now assuming 
 very dangerous aspects, and that verily the last state 
 may be now becoming even worse than the first. 
 
 I. With lawlessness we have long been familiar. 
 For fully half a generation almost every essay on the 
 state of the Church, every Address like the present, 
 every graver document that has in any degree repre- 
 sented the general voice of the clergy and laity of 
 this Church and nation has called attention to the 
 increasing tendency of individuals, in the matter 
 of rites and ceremonies, to become a law to them- 
 selves, and to adopt, on their own responsibility, 
 whatever they might themselves judge to be primitive 
 and catholic. With all this we have become painfully 
 familiar ; but it is only of late that this lawlessness 
 has raised itself into a sort of principle, and claimed 
 B 2 
 
20 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 for itself a legitimacy of development. Of all the 
 unhappy novelties of our own strange days this is 
 the last and most startling. Up to the present 
 time the charge of lawlessness has always been 
 met, either by the declaration, on the part of the 
 individual, that his own was the true interpretation 
 of the disputed rubric, and that he was so persuaded 
 of it that he needed no Bishop to guide him ; or else 
 by the maintenance of the principle that innocent 
 additions for the purpose of manifesting greater 
 reverence or of deepening devotion, are certainly 
 no worse than the neglect and omissions which are 
 still to be found in many of the churches of the 
 opposed school of thought. This has been the 
 usual defence. It cannot be said that it is very 
 valid or convincing — but we have become used to 
 it, and it has been accepted for what it is worth. 
 
 Now, however, a very different position is 
 assumed. Lawlessness, if we might so speak, has 
 almost acquired the dignity of a science. It now 
 claims to be one or other of two things — either the 
 legitimate setting forth of the traditional observances 
 of the Church of England which have never been 
 expressly forbidden, and some of which — such, for 
 example, as turning to the East at the Creed — are 
 maintained to this hour ; or, on the other hand, 
 still more boldly, it claims to be a manifestation 
 of rightful protest against the decisions of an un- 
 lawful court and judge-made law. These are the 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 21 
 
 latest grounds taken by the leading exponents o£ 
 the regressive and reactionary party in the Church, 
 and are among the saddest indications of the strange 
 and sinister reasoning to which men of clear and 
 honourable minds will allow themselves to have 
 recourse when under the influence of party feelings 
 and led away by party prejudice. 
 
 Let us briefly examine each of these startling 
 positions. 
 
 Both, it will be seen, are modes of dealing with 
 the now clearly-recognised fact — that the law has 
 been again appealed to, and again considered by 
 probably the most competent Court that has been 
 called together in our own times, and again declared 
 to be against those usages which have been the causes 
 of the greatest offence. This is the fact that has 
 to be dealt with, and the manner in which it has been 
 most recently dealt with is as follows. 
 
 The decision at which the Court has arrived need 
 not now be discussed. It has been vitiated by an 
 assumption which has been made every time the 
 Court has alluded to the subject — viz., that the 
 omission from a rubric of any practice or ceremony 
 is equivalent to the prohibition of it.* This 
 
 * A temperate statement of tlie objections to tlie assump- 
 tion here alluded to will be found in Canon Carter's 
 pamphlet entitled, Constitutional Order, p. 7 et seq. (Lond. 
 1877), and in a second and supplementary pamphlet by the 
 same author, entitled, A Further Plea for Constitutional 
 Liberty, p. 4 et seq. (Lond. 1877). 
 
22 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 assumption, it is urged, is entirely inconsistent with 
 any common-sense view of the subject, and still more 
 so when it is remembered that the directory rubrics of 
 the Prayer Book are so few and so utterly insufBcient 
 for the carrying out of a careful and reverential 
 ritual. Further ceremonies are thus needed, and for 
 these we are to go either to the rubrics of the First 
 Book of Edward VI., or, failing them, even to the 
 Roman or ancient Sarum use, it being contended 
 that, independently of rubrics, there have been, ever 
 since the Reformation, traditionary usages, partly 
 primitive, partly specified in these early Reformation 
 documents, which are perfectly permissible to those 
 who may find them spiritually helpful. The example 
 is cited of Bishop Juxon, who, in his Msitation 
 articles of 1610, inquires whether the manual acts 
 during the prayer of consecration were duly 
 performed, although the marginal rubrics in reference 
 to them found no place in the Prayer Book which 
 was then in use. He, it is contended, was really 
 falling back on the First Book of Edward VI. ; and 
 if so, why may not the Catholic priest of the 
 present day use the mixed chalice, and reserve 
 the sacrament on exactly the same authority and 
 principle? The Act of 1552, which gives authority 
 to the Second Prayer Book, speaks of the First Book 
 as being agreeable to the Word of God and the 
 primitive Church.* How can it be equitably held to 
 * It has been very justly observed by Mr. Milton in a 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 23 
 
 be wrong- and censurable in supplementing' existing' 
 usag-e bj ceremonies borrowed from such a bigh 
 authority ? 
 
 The argument is ingenious, but the answer is 
 simple. 
 
 It may be true that in every document the 
 principle of omission being tantamount to prohibition 
 cannot be equitably insisted upon ; but in such 
 subject-matter as rubrics, and especially rubrics 
 which very often involve doctrinal considerations, 
 omission, which is also sometimes dejinitely erasure, 
 must, by every rule of common sense, be regarded as 
 designed, and so, distinctly prohibitory. If the 
 legislator has before him an enactment, through some 
 portion of which he runs his pen, and which he after- 
 wards re-enacts in the amended form, he must be 
 understood to be repealing, and so practically pro- 
 hibiting, what he has thus erased and modified. If 
 
 recent tr.act, entitled Church Perplexities, part ii., p. 79 
 (Shaw, Lond. 1877), that the words of the Act hero referred 
 to ought to be read in connection with the wliole sentence of 
 which they form a part. The Act speaks of the First Book 
 as " a very godly order, set forth by authority of Parliament, 
 to be used in the mother tongue in this Church of England, 
 agreeable to the Wurd of Gud and the Primitive Church." 
 The words in italics, as Mr. Milton rightly obsen-es, cannot 
 fairly bo understood as referring to the doctrine of the Book, 
 but to the words which immediately precede, i.e., to the use 
 of " the mother tongue," in reference to which the same 
 appeal to the Word of God and the custom of the primitive 
 Church is found in the twenty-fourth Article. 
 
24 
 
 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 some such principle as this were not accepted, we 
 might just as well say plainly that the First Book of 
 Edward VI. is still rubrically available at the present 
 time, and that the historic fact that our present 
 Prayer Book is founded on the Second Prayer Book 
 of Edward VI. is an error and mispersuasion. The 
 example of Bishop Juxon, even if it were not capable 
 of being accounted for and explained, is not enough 
 to give us aU free range among the rubrics of the 
 First Book, or to justify our going on our own 
 authority to ti'aditional forms and ceremonies, of 
 which we find no trace, either in the continued and 
 generally accepted usage, or in the written documents 
 and formularies of our Reformed Church. 
 
 The second form which lawlessness has now 
 assumed is less ingenious, but is equally effective in 
 practice. It consists in maintaining that the Court 
 which deals with these questions is so distinctly 
 unconstitutional, whether in its earlier or its appellate 
 form, that its own legal existence may be considered 
 to be as under protest and moral appeal, and that 
 until the Church has decided this question — how it is 
 not said — obedience to its decision may rightly be 
 suspended by the loyal Churchman. Thus, it is said, 
 what is called lawlessness is obedience to a higher law, 
 or, at any rate, an equitable waiting till it is settled 
 whether the Court is or is not one of the constitutional 
 tribunals of the realm. In other words, before 
 obedience can be rendered, it is to be settled whether 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 25 
 
 — to use the language of some of the reckless decla- 
 rations of the present time — the Church of England 
 has not a right " to govern herself in spiritual 
 matters without interference from secular authority 
 and whether that right has not now been infringed. 
 
 It really, my dear friends and brethren, takes 
 some patience and toleration to give any answer 
 whatever to such amazing defences of what all fair 
 and reasonable Englishmen must feel to be and know 
 to be an utterly indefensible attitude. Yet if answer 
 must be given it is this — that if cheerful obedience 
 cannot be rendered to existing laws and to the Courts 
 by which they are administered, two courses, and only 
 two courses, are open — either to obey under protest, 
 and while so obeying to use all constitutional means 
 to bring about alterations, or frankly to retire from 
 the office or position which is held on the condition 
 of obedience. No honourable Englishman can adopt 
 any other course. It is simply immoral to say, that 
 as every effort to effect by constitutional means 
 changes in the laws and in the constitution of the 
 Courts has failed, there is nothing left but dis- 
 obedience ; and still more immoral to cling to an office 
 and position, with the deliberate intention of using 
 that office and position against the very laws, con- 
 ditions, and principles under which it is well known 
 that the office or position is held. 
 
 But on this subject and the duty of obedience to 
 our Courts as at present constituted I shall hope to 
 
26 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 speak more fully at another centre. The only fact I 
 wish now to impress upon my hearers is this — that 
 lawlessness and disobedience have at length assumed 
 the worst possible form, and are justifying their o^vTi 
 existence by arguments which are simply incompatible 
 with the first principles of good faith and integrity. 
 
 II. But if this be the first of the three dangers, 
 no one can say that the second of those I enumerated 
 is less serious and menacing. Caballing and party 
 spirit are now threatening the very existence of the 
 Church of England, and must ere long call down upon 
 us some heavy and chastening judgments. It is quite 
 idle and superficial to attempt to get rid of this subject 
 by laying the blame equally on two party societies, 
 and by prescribing that these two societies should do 
 what they certainly will not do — break up and disband 
 themselves. In the first place, the circumstances of 
 the two societies are very different. The Church 
 Association, it must in simple fairness be said, was 
 called into existence by the excesses and extravagances 
 of ritual which had been encouraged by an earlier 
 society, not, I believe, originally constituted for such 
 an object, but unhappily soon committed to it. If we 
 would be equitable in our judgments, the blame must be 
 laid on the highly provocative and antagonist action on 
 the part of the older society which led to the formation 
 of the powerful organisation with which it is now 
 held in check and confronted. It may be doubted 
 whether the term "persecution," which is unsparingly 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 27 
 
 applied to all proceedings against extreme ritual, is 
 fairly applicable. A witty speaker, as we may 
 remember, labelled one of the societies alluded to as 
 the "Persecution Society (limited)." The joke raised 
 the laugh it was intended to raise, but remains a joke 
 and nothing more. The persecution is really often 
 quite on the other side. The sober and religious 
 persons of a congregation are frequently harassed and 
 really persecuted by the changes and innovations in 
 ritual which are often persistently introduced in spite 
 of all remonstrances. To fall back upon the law in 
 such cases, or to appeal to the aid of a society that is 
 interested in maintaining the law, is simply self- 
 defence, and is very far removed from persecution. 
 The true persecutors, as was wisely said by one of our 
 prelates in a letter published early in the present year, 
 are those who resist spiritual and temporal authority, 
 and by their innovations spread confusion and anarchy. 
 I have no interest in either of these societies, and I 
 wish from the very bottom of my soul that neither 
 of them had ever come into existence ; but I must 
 pause for a moment to protest against that undiscerning 
 censure that represents both of these societies as 
 equally culpable; and I must also equally protest 
 against that still more undiscerning estimate of the 
 real circumstances of the case which could suppose that 
 if the two societies were disbanded to-morrow our 
 prospects would, to any material extent, be more 
 encouraging. 
 
28 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 No, my dear friends, it is not these two societies 
 that make up our present danger, but the appalling 
 party spirit which has called them into existence, and 
 is now making men doubt whether they can possibly 
 have a common Saviour. No wonder that infidelity 
 exists amongst us, and that disbelief in everything is 
 becoming day by day more common, when the Holy 
 Ghost is sinned against, as He now is sinned against, 
 by the utterances on either side, sometimes even from 
 the very pulpit, during the unholy antagonisms of 
 the present time. My very blood runs cold some- 
 times as I read the denunciations that are forced on 
 one's notice by each hapless creature who thinks it 
 his duty to dip his pen in bitterness, and send its 
 hateful tracings in some leaflet, or pamphlet, or 
 newspaper-letter, which never ought to have seen the 
 light. It was ljut the other day that a clergyman 
 sent me a tract in which the frightful term " hellish " 
 was applied to a system which, however much we 
 may rightly censure, repudiate, and disavow it, has 
 found defenders among men of pure and holy lives, 
 and has even been adopted by members of our own 
 Church — alas, in their ignorance and blindness — oi 
 whose devotion to Christ crucified no man living can 
 equitably doubt. 
 
 If I ever tremble for the future of the Church of 
 England, it is when these hateful instances of party 
 spirit come before my thoughts, and when I re- 
 member that, week after week, party newspapers — 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 29 
 
 religious newspapers as they are called — open their 
 columns to this demoralising' invective, and give 
 publicity to that which is not only seriously en- 
 dangering the peace o£ the whole Church, but is 
 shaking all faith in rehgion itself. Well might a 
 venerated writer, whose opinions ought to have some 
 weight with the party to whom he was addressing 
 himself, say but recently — that, however much might 
 be laid to the charge of editors and editorial com- 
 ments, ''it had fallen far short of the evil arising 
 from clerical correspondents." * 
 
 And this, alas ! is not the only form in which 
 party spirit is now showing itself. 
 
 The worst manifestation that party spirit can 
 assume, whether in a nation or a community, is 
 certainly now beginning to be recognised among us — 
 that manifestation which, if repulsive and dangerous 
 in a body irolitic, as all experience has bitterly proved 
 it to be, in a Church is abhorrent to the very idea of 
 a Church, and is of the most sinister and menacing 
 augury. I allude to secret or partially secret 
 societies — societies formed for a definite purpose 
 which cannot be safely avowed, and organised with 
 the view of more energetically, because more unitedly, 
 propagating their principles and practice. One of 
 these societies has, fortunately for the Church of 
 England, been brought distinctly into the light of 
 
 * Dr. Pusey, in a letter to the Daily Express, reprinted 
 iu the Guardian of August 1, 1877. 
 
30 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 common day. It has been said^ I know — and I grieve 
 to think that such words could have been uttered 
 by one so respected as the honoured presbyter from 
 whom they came — that the recent exposures which 
 have tended to bring one of these societies into notice 
 are due to the instigations of the powers of evil.* I 
 know it, and I see in such words only another ex- 
 emplification of the spirit of party and its power 
 even over noble and holy minds — but I cannot 
 thus estimate the mercy of God that has enabled 
 us, ere it be too late, to realise the fact that societies, 
 definitely organised and with carefully graduated 
 rules of life, are now existing in the Church of 
 England, and are silently aggregating the young 
 and the enthusiastic, the hopeful and the aspiring, 
 into their attractive but really morally dangerous 
 confraternities. I had occasion, some little time 
 since, in my Pastoral Letter for the year 1875, to 
 call attention to the teaching which there seemed 
 good reason for fearing was given to many who were 
 about to join the more strict of the religious houses, 
 or so-called convents, in connection with the Church 
 of England. The teaching, as it was specified to me, 
 was this — that the XXXIX. Articles are to be in- 
 terpreted by the Articles of 1536 ; that the teaching 
 and formularies of the Prayer Book are to be read 
 and understood by the light afforded by " The 
 
 * Dr. Pusey, in his preface to Gaume's Manual of Con- 
 fessors, reprinted in the Guardian for August 1, 1877. 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 31 
 
 Institution of a Christian Man " of 1537 ; that the 
 Reformation was accomplished and completed in the 
 reign of Henry VIII., and not later ; and that the 
 First Prayer Book is to he accepted as the exponent 
 of the Reformation and of the true teaching of the 
 Anglican Church. This I specified nearly two years 
 since ; but though I feared much evil was at work, 
 I hardly could have expected that such an organi- 
 sation as that of the Holy Cross would so soon after- 
 wards have come before the general judgment of the 
 Church, and that principles in strict harmony with 
 what I have mentioned would be found in their 
 practical development in the society to which I have 
 referred. I do not wish to press ungenerously on 
 a society that has now very few defenders, and 
 certainly very few adherents among the incumbents 
 or licensed curates of this Diocese (three or four at 
 the outside), but I do wish solemnly to call attention 
 to this sad and unhappy illustration of the develop- 
 ment of party spirit and caballing in the forms of 
 these secret or semi-secret societies. 
 
 And this, remember, is very far from being a 
 solitary instance. If this society was especially 
 designed to propagate, sustain, and encourage the 
 practice of Auricular Confession, the doctrine of a 
 real presence not substantially different from that 
 set forth by the Church of Rome is also not without 
 the support of a society which is now widely 
 extending itself among our younger and more 
 
32 
 
 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 energetic clergy. I will say no more. I wish to 
 use no unkind or hard expressions which could wound 
 the feelings of any one who may hear or hereafter 
 read these words ; the fruit of the Spirit is love^ joy, 
 and peace, and I desire not to say anything that 
 could hurt that love or mar that peace ; but it is 
 still my duty to point out this really grievous and 
 menacing danger arising from party spirit at last 
 becoming crystallised in party societies and organi- 
 sations. The evil is increasing, sensibly increasing; 
 and it is an evil which, if left unchecked, will di-ive 
 peace from our borders, and terminate the existence 
 of the Established Church. 
 
 III. A few closing words may be said on the 
 third and allied danger of sacerdotalism. Sacerdo- 
 talism is but party spirit in another and more strictly 
 professional form. And just as party spirit is in- 
 creasing, so is sacerdotalism. It has recently dis- 
 played itself in its most repulsive form in the effort 
 to promote and encoui-age confession. Now here 
 again I will not permit myself to use any of the 
 harsh and cruel expressions which have been used 
 against earnest and religious, but most utterly 
 mistaken, men. I will not needlessly swell the 
 strong cry of indignant reprobation that has arisen 
 from every part of this Protestant kingdom; but 
 it is my duty to say it — aye here in this venerable 
 House of God — First, that the evil of man, practically 
 assuming the prerogative which belongs only to God, 
 
The Church of Einjland. 
 
 33 
 
 and o£ claiming to have strictly supernatural powers 
 denied even in kind or deg-ree to his fellow-men, is 
 widely spreading;* and, secondly, that the system 
 which has ever been found to be in closest union with 
 
 * It may be remembered tliat three years ago Lord 
 Coleridge, in a speech at Exeter which created some little 
 sensation at the time, said that the princijjle underlying most 
 of the ritualism of the time was the sacerdotal principle. It 
 may also be remembered that he added, amid the cheers of 
 his audience, that this principle would not now— whatever 
 might have been the case in the past — be submitted to for a 
 moment, and that those read history very strangely who 
 coidd ever bring themselves to think so. The claim now 
 made is that priests have strictly supernatural powers, which 
 ■widely differentiate them from the laity, and that the power 
 of remitting sins is one of them. The plain answer is that 
 both layman and priest have received the Holy Ghost in 
 baptism, and that what has been additionally conferred on the 
 latter are gifts from the same Spirit to enable the work of a 
 priest to be executed, that work being strictly ministerial and 
 by commission. It is from God alone that the power emanates. 
 The sacvaments arc the effectual media, and remain so, even 
 if ministered hy unworthy ministers. It woidd be well if our 
 younger men would consider what such writers as Barrow 
 (De Potestate Clavium, vol. viii., p. 110 etseq., Oxford, 1830) or 
 Bingham (On Absolution, vol. viii., p 360 et seq., London, 1844) 
 set forth as the real meaning of the remitting or retaining of 
 sins. The truth is that what is declarative is claimed to bo 
 directly operative. The " absolve te " is what is consciously 
 or unconsciously, insisted upon ; the concluding words which 
 are the real words of power are forgotten. There is a note in 
 the Salisbury Manual not wholly uninsti'uctive : " Post abso- 
 lutionem convenieuter apponitur. In nomine Patris, ct Fill, 
 Spii'itus sancti. Amen. Ad signandum, quod sacerdos non 
 propria auetoritate absolvet, sed quasi, minister : tamen hoc 
 relinquitur sacerdotis arbitrio." 
 c 
 
34 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 these claims and assumptions is consequently spread- 
 ing, and becoming propagated. The evil, and the 
 only too well-known historical manifestation of it, 
 are now present and operative in the Church of 
 England. Nay, more, there are conditions favourable 
 for its development. There is a silent and most un- 
 welcome decline of learning, and especially of general 
 culture, in the rank and file of the younger clergy. 
 There is also, as many of us must have noticed with 
 some anxiety, a tendency to decline in the social 
 standard. For some reasons, divers perhaps, and not 
 very easy satisfactorily to explain, the class of young 
 men, mostly from our Universities, that a few years 
 ago entered Holy Orders now go into other pro- 
 fessions. Both these circumstances combine in 
 augmenting the tendency to clique and to caste 
 which is now only too plainly disclosing itself. 
 Personal vanity, too, is a factor which is now playing 
 a far more important part in the present dangers of 
 the Church than has been at all sufficiently estimated. 
 It is often, especially when combined vdth. obstinacy, 
 the chief moving force in the lawlessness around us. 
 It is the principal constituent in party spirit; and 
 the share it has in fostering and fomenting sacer- 
 dotalism, as all experience reminds us, is simply 
 incalculable. And this personal vanity, let it be 
 remembered, is intimately connected with lowered 
 social and intellectual standards, and, to speak 
 generally and from merely human estimates, always 
 
The Chwch of England. 
 
 35 
 
 increases in intensity as courtesy and culture 
 decline. 
 
 But now I must bring- these words to a close. I 
 must hope at other centres to develop the subjects 
 which have only been touched upon in this Address, 
 and especially under those practical aspects which the 
 present time brings most seriously home to us. The 
 sacerdotalism of which I have been speaking will 
 certainly suggest some consideration of that great 
 and perilous agency, Sacramental Confession, by 
 which it is so largely sustained. Our comments on 
 the modern aspects of lawlessness seem to suggest 
 some discussion of the subject of our Courts, and 
 especially of the highest Court of Appeal, closely 
 home as that subject has been brought to us by the 
 weighty and epoch-marking judgment which was 
 delivered in the earlier part of the present year. Nor 
 can we here leave unnoticed the appeal that has been 
 made to what has been called ''the living voice of 
 the Church," and the arguments, such as they are, 
 for a re-adjustment of the relations of the Church 
 and the State. Lastly, the review of all these 
 dangers will certainly suggest and require in a 
 closing Address some remarks upon what would 
 seem to be, under God, our best and most hopeful 
 remedies. 
 
 I now close, as I began, with heartfelt expressions 
 of thankfulness to Almighty God for his many and 
 abounding mercies to this Diocese, at a time of great 
 c2 
 
36 
 
 Some Present Dangers. 
 
 tension and trial. May we all strive to live more 
 worthy of these mercies, and endeavour to show forth 
 in our words and works that blessed, blessed fruit of 
 the Spirit, that love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentle- 
 ness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against 
 which, as an Apostle has told us, there are no courts 
 and no law. 
 
CONFESSION. 
 
I 
 
CONFESSION. 
 
 [Delivered at Cirencester, Oct. 26th, 1877.] 
 
 In my last Address I specified the three dangers 
 which, now especially, are threatening and even 
 imperilling the existence of the National Church. 
 One of these I stated to be sacerdotalism; or, to 
 use a simpler, and what may seem to some a less 
 repulsive definition — the growing tendency on the 
 part of some of the ministers of our Church to assert 
 their priestly powers and prerogatives beyond that 
 general line and standard which seem to be prescribed 
 by our formularies, recognised by all our greatest 
 Divines, and alone consonant with the declarations 
 of Holy Scripture, or with those principles and in- 
 ferences which can clearly be deduced from it. 
 
 This tendency has of late shown itself in the 
 attemjit to re-introduce what is by some boldly 
 spoken of as that which our 25th Article repudiates 
 — the Sacrament of Penance, and by others, more am- 
 biguously and evasively, as Saci-amental Confession. 
 This alien practice, it is now perfectly plain, is being 
 
40 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 steadily and I fear I must add stealthily re- 
 introduced, or as some would prefer to say, revived, 
 in the Church of England. Farther, it is now also 
 clear that this re-introduction or revival has the 
 support of at least one distinctive organisation, and 
 that those who advocate it are not in the least 
 prepared to submit to the judgment of those set 
 over them in the Lord, or to what one of the 
 supporters of the system arrogantly and unbe- 
 comingly speaks of as " the voice of uninstructed 
 authority/^ 
 
 We therefore find ourselves confronted with a 
 system which we are plainly told shall be, if possible, 
 re-introduced into our Church — a system which, 
 independent of all other considerations, is calculated 
 to enhance and consolidate the power of the priest- 
 hood, and by consequence, dangerously to alienate 
 the whole body of the laity of the Chui-ch, and, in the 
 sequel, to precipitate that separation of the Church 
 and the State, which will inevitably and inexorably 
 follow any general development of priestly assump- 
 tions on the part of the clergy of the Reformed 
 Church of England. On this subject no reader of 
 history, no quiet observer of the deeper feelings and 
 almost instincts of the people of this country can feel 
 any doubt whatever. Friends are looking forward 
 with anxiety; foes with increasing satisfaction; as 
 both well know that when confession becomes 
 generally advocated and pressed forward, and with 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 41 
 
 it the sacerdotalism of which it is the outward 
 manifestation, then the last sands of the Established 
 Church will be running, and the end very near at 
 hand. 
 
 Every reason, then — self-preservation as well as 
 higher reasons — seem certainly to suggest to us that 
 it is our duty calmly and temperately to face this 
 question, and to settle, on broad and sober principles, 
 on the general tenor of our formularies, the light 
 aiforded to us by Holy Scripture, and a calm con- 
 sideration of the characteristics of our composite 
 nature, whether Sacramental confession either is or 
 ought to be regarded as a part of the doctrinal 
 heritage of the Church of England. 
 
 First, however, as far as it is possible to do so, let 
 us settle what we mean by the expression I have just 
 used. What is Sacramental Confession ? It is a 
 term* as our own Houses of Convocation remind us 
 unknown to the Church, and from that very reason 
 more difficult fairly to define. I suppose, however, 
 that we shall not be wrong in deeming it to moan the 
 habitual and detailed confession of sins to a priest 
 with a view of receiving priestly absolution, and of so 
 becoming better fitted for a faithful and true par- 
 taking of the Holy Communion, and of attaining 
 to a higher standard of spiritual life. This perhaps 
 falls short of the meaning that very many of its sup- 
 
 * See Report of the Committee of the Upper House of 
 Convoeatlon, presented July 23, 1873. 
 
42 
 
 8ome Present Bangers of 
 
 porters assign to it. Very probably that which a 
 calm and wise writer on this subject has declared to 
 be the grammatical meaning of the term, viz., 
 "confession as one part of a sacrament/''* is really 
 the meaning that many would readily accept, though 
 such an acceptance really involves a denial, or at 
 any rate an explaining away, of the 25th Article. 
 Very likely our gloss is not co-extensive vdih the full 
 meaning of the expression ; it is, however, quite 
 enough for our present purpose; it is fair to our 
 opponents ; it avoids side-arguments as to the number 
 of the Sacraments, or the definition of the word 
 Sacrament, and it can be dealt with in plain and 
 intelligible argument. 
 
 Let us, then, consider this to be the question 
 before us which we will now endeavour to answer. 
 " If this be Sacramental Confession, is it the doctrine 
 of the Church of England ? and if it is not, ought it 
 to become so, and can its re-introduction be morally 
 or psychologically defended 
 
 I. In arriving at our answer let us clear the 
 
 * Vogan, Bemarhs on Catholic Practice, Confession, and 
 the Beat Presence, p. 32 (Lond., 1873). The ambiguous 
 nature of the expression, and therefore its uusuitableness 
 for use in controversy, may be ilhistrated by the faet that 
 Bingham, in his sermon on " Absolution " [Worhs, vol. viii., 
 p. 360, Lond., 18-14), uses the term " sacramental absolution" 
 as meaning the power of administering the two sacraments 
 to such as are qualified to receive them — a meaning far indeed 
 from what now appears to be associated with the term. 
 
The Church of England, 
 
 43 
 
 ground by observing', first o£ all, that if Sacramental 
 Confession be what we have defined it, — if it is 
 necessary for a worthy receiving of the Holy 
 Comnmnion, and does certainly open the way to a 
 higher life, it does become morally compulsory. It is 
 something that really ought to be required. Ought 
 not life to be a progress onward in holiness ? Is 
 not our sanctification the very will of God Himself? 
 Is it not then an unworthy evasion to speak of 
 Sacramental Confession as not compulsory? Com- 
 pulsory it is not in this sense, — that any Priest of our 
 Church could be legally justified in refusing the 
 Holy Communion to any one who had not confessed, 
 or could even publicly preach and teach that it was 
 necessary and indispensable to salvation. Thank 
 God, we have not yet come to this ; and in such a 
 sense as this it may still be spoken of as not 
 compulsory. But if the strongest encouragement be 
 given to it, — if societies are formed to support and 
 further it, — if in our missions, when the soul is 
 agitated and anxious, it is presented as the only safe 
 remedy, — if it is privately pressed upon the young 
 and the sensitive during their preparation for 
 Confirmation, — if our very children are instructed in 
 some of the disloyal and unscriptural books for the 
 young now freely circulated in many a parish (I have 
 one such now before me as I am writing these words) 
 that, however painful. Confession must be made to 
 Christ's Priest " because God desires it/' and because 
 
44 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 concealment of sins from the Priest involves the 
 certainty of being consigned to " the everlasting 
 fires of hell," if death overtakes the concealer^ — if 
 all this is taught, as it is taught, earnestly and per- 
 sistently, then I solemnly declare it to be a plain 
 and even wicked evasion to say that Confession is 
 not required and is not to be understood to be as 
 morally compulsory. 
 
 It is so j and here exactly it is that we find this 
 novel teaching in conflict with our Prayer Book and 
 formularies, and, what is far more serious, with the 
 very mind of Holy Scripture, so far as that mind can 
 be collected from its complete and most significant 
 silence. " I do not find, " says the sober and thought- 
 ful writer to whom I have already referred, " anything, 
 from beginning to end of the New Testament, which 
 can prove or intimate that this is the mind of Christ, 
 or was understood by the Apostles to be His intention. 
 Very clear places there are which enjoin confession 
 of sins to God, but not one place to prove or intimate 
 that Confession in any case must be made to the 
 Priest, in his sacerdotal capacity, in order to obtain 
 forgiveness of sins." * 
 
 This, then, is the plain and most serious aspect of 
 this matter. While it has been admitted (for it could 
 not be denied) that Confession is not compulsory in 
 the system of the Church, in the sense in which it is 
 
 • Vogan, Bemarlcs on Confession, &c., p. 40 (London, 1873). 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 45 
 
 compulsory in the Church of Rome, Confession has 
 nevertheless been pressed both in public and private 
 exhortations constantly and cogently. And not 
 Confession merely, in the general sense in which it 
 seems mainly alluded to in the exhortation in the 
 Communion Service, but Sacramental Confession, — 
 Confession to be followed by and designed to procure 
 absolution. Without this absolution it has been 
 implied, aye and I fear far more than implied, that 
 there is no security for the forgiveness of post- 
 baptismal sin. " If you desire earnestly, " says one of 
 the current manuals " some assurance of God's pardon, 
 you 7niisf-, as the Church directs you, make use of the 
 ministry of reconciliation. You tnusi, as the Church 
 directs you, go to some Priest in whom you feel con- 
 fidence, and open your grief, that is, tell him all your 
 sins." 'You must.' If language means anything this 
 certainly is compulsion in a very undisguised form. 
 This is the unscriptural teaching which is swelling 
 the numbers of the poor anxious creatures who are 
 now resorting to the Confessional. Ever in their ears 
 the stern voice that tells them that no confession, — 
 whether by the bedside or in the House of God, 
 whether in the comprehensive words of the daily 
 service, or in the earnest and even passionate words 
 in the Holy Communion, — will be of any real avail 
 unless it be whispered in the ear of the listening 
 priest ; ever the dreadful teaching that post-baptismal 
 sin must remain, always remain, red as scarlet^ 
 
46 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 until it be made white by sacramental absolution, 
 and by the judicial utterance of^ however highly 
 claiming to be accredited, poor, mortal, and fallible 
 man. 
 
 This, then, is the true aspect of the sad and 
 dangerous influence that is now seriously augmenting 
 the numbers o£ those who resort to habitual Confession, 
 and is bringing us all, whatever our views may be on 
 the question generally, to realise this certain fact and 
 truth — that if the system is to be continued there 
 must be a complete disciplinary change in the peni- 
 tential provisions of the Reformed Church of England. 
 In plain words, I mean that there must be some pro- 
 vision made, similar to that made in the Church of 
 Rome, by which the scandals that might arise from 
 every young Priest setting himself up as a confessor 
 might in some degree be avoided. It was from a dim 
 feeling of this kind that, four years ago, the notorious 
 petition on this subject was presented to the Upper 
 House of the Convocation of this Province, and that 
 the advisability was pressed upon our Bishops, — these 
 I believe were the terms of the petition — " of providing 
 for the education, selection, and licensing of duly 
 qualified confessors, in accordance with the provisions 
 of — Canon Law." 
 
 The answer to this petition was as instructive as 
 it was conclusive. It did not enter for one moment 
 into the desirableness or undesirableness of entertain- 
 ing such a request. It simply said in effect that 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 47 
 
 we have no such custom/" and that if any doubt 
 could be entertained on the subject it would be 
 dissipated by a calm consideration o£ the formularies 
 of our Church, and of not only the language but the 
 changes of language, distinctly and deliberately intro- 
 duced, in the second and subsequent editions of our 
 Book of Common Pi-ayer. And this answer we know 
 has been very recently re-afRrmed by the Upper 
 House of Convocation, and generally assented to by 
 the Lower House, and now constitutes the declara- 
 tion of the living voice of this Province of the 
 English Church, so far as that Province can be con- 
 sidered to speak through its ancient and constitutional 
 Synod. And what the Synod has thus spoken has 
 been, to some extent, formally accepted by the Laity; 
 for it may be added that not long since an Address 
 to the Bishops was sent round, if I remember right, 
 by the Chairman of Committees of the House of 
 Commons, bearing the signatures of forty or fifty 
 of the most representative Churchmen in the House, 
 and expressing general agreement with the Declara- 
 tion of Convocation. This document has not become 
 generally known owing to its having appeared some 
 time after the Session had concluded, but is 
 nevertheless of the utmost significance. When lead- 
 ing members of the House of Commons put their 
 hands to such a declaration it may be certainly con- 
 sidered that the lay mind of the country is thoroughly 
 aroused. 
 
48 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 When we revert then to the question with which 
 we commenced as the substratum of the present 
 Address, Is the teaching of Sacramental Confession 
 compatible with the doctrine and discipline of the 
 English Church ? we see that we have, indirectly and 
 inferentially, yet no less completely, answered it in 
 the remarks that have been already made — and the 
 answer amounts to this : That our Church knows no 
 such term as Sacramental Confession,'that she does 
 not enjoin, directly or indirectly, any practice of 
 habitual confession, and that so far as her mind can 
 be collected from the textual changes that have taken 
 place in the exhortation that relates to this subject, 
 and the rubric that relates to absolution, it may 
 further, safely and truly, be said that our Church 
 does not encourage Confession to a Priest, nay even 
 appears to discourage it, if we may rightly appeal to 
 the Homily on Repentance as in any general way 
 expressing the principles and teaching of the 
 Church of England on this vital and distinctive 
 question. Let any one fairly and dispassionately 
 consider the second Exhortation in the First Book of 
 Edward VI., and compare it with the second Exhor- 
 tation in the Second Book, and the slightly changed 
 form of words in which the resorting to the minister 
 is referred to in our present Exhortation — let him 
 consider duly all that is meant by the specification of 
 " the ministry of God's Holy Word " as the means 
 or medium whereby the penitent is to receive " the 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 49 
 
 benefit of absolution " — let him also weigh well, on 
 the one hand, the addition of the general Confession 
 and Absolution iu the Second and all succeeding 
 Prayer Books, and, on the other hand, the omission 
 of the words in the rubric in the First Book which 
 authorised the uses of the judicial form of Absolution 
 in the Visitation of the Sick in all private confessions, 
 and yet further the new limitation by the words " if 
 he humbly and heartily desire it" to the direction to 
 absolve the sick, found as we find it in our last re- 
 vision — let him dispassionately consider all these 
 truly significant changes, and then finally endeavour 
 to formulate the teaching of the Church of his 
 Baptism on this subject. Can that formulation be 
 other than this— that our Church, while distinctly 
 including in her commission to her ministers the 
 right to hear Confession, and the power to declare 
 Absolution to the truly repentant believer, does 
 plainly use such language and adopt sucli limita- 
 tions as imply that, as regards the private relations 
 of the Priest and those that resort to him, her rule 
 is pastoral counsel and consolation; and that it is 
 only when this is found to be utterly unavailing, or 
 when sickness is casting on the penitent its shadows, 
 that she sanctions Confession and the extreme exercise 
 of her committed powers. 
 
 We know well that it is urged that all this may 
 be generally true, but that when once a Church has 
 committed such a power to a Priest to be used in the 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 case of the sick, it must mean that the powci* should 
 be used equally in the case of the whole, whenever 
 there should seem an emergency; and that emergency 
 is something which may he very differently estimated. 
 With this argument, often used not only by those 
 who support Confession, but, conversely, by those 
 who have in the background a desire to revise away 
 the whole system as either superstitious or as resting 
 on claims to supernatural powers which cannot 
 possibly be substantiated,* we need not particularly 
 trouble ourselves. If on the face of our formularies 
 there are clear indications that the committed power 
 was intended to be used subject to restraints and 
 limitations, then really all reasoning and arguments 
 that do not take these apparent restraints into con- 
 sideration may be set aside as irrelevant and in- 
 admissible. Whether there are these limitations, 
 and if there are, whether they have or were intended 
 to have the power ascribed to them is a fair subject 
 for argument, but to argue simply from the fact that 
 the Church of England admits the principle of Con- 
 fession, and to maintain that the admission of the 
 principle is quite enough to justify the Sacramental 
 Confession that is now contended for, is simply to 
 ignore the facts of the case, and to decline to attend 
 to very reasonable evidence. 
 
 * An article of eonsiderahle ability, but to a groat degi-ee 
 illustrating these commeuts, will be found in the Spectator for 
 July 7tli, 1877. 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 51 
 
 We seem, then, fairly entitled to claim that the 
 first part o£ the proposed question has been sufficiently 
 answered. Sacramental Confession cannot claim the 
 sanction of the formularies of the Church of England; 
 nay, it is even discourag-ed and inferentially disallowed 
 by them. 
 
 II. But we must not wholly pass over the second 
 part of the question. This, it will be remembered, is 
 based on the assumed evidence of the good that has 
 been effected by the revival of Confession, and in fact 
 amounts to this — whether Confession may not become 
 the rule instead of the exception, and whether we 
 may not at least revert to the practice that seems 
 to have prevailed under the First Prayer Book. It 
 is admitted, for it cannot be denied, that the principle 
 of Confession to a Priest is recognised by our Church, 
 why should it not, in these days of spiritual revivals 
 and of more deep earnestness, be more universall}' 
 acted on ? 
 
 The broad and general answer seems conclusive — 
 that if this extension of a system be permitted in 
 consideration of the good that, it is asserted, dis- 
 tinctly flows from it, such changes must be intro- 
 duced as will give us security against the abuses, the 
 frightful abuses, which centuries of experience have 
 shown us are inextricably involved in any general 
 system of habitual confession. The present theory 
 of the Chui'ch of England is on the one hand to 
 concede to every Priest the right of hearing eon- 
 D 2 
 
52 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 fessions, and the power^ when all conditions are 
 satisfied^ of pronouncing absolution — but on the 
 other practically to restrain this right and power by- 
 implying, very unmistakably^ that it is only to be 
 used exceptionally and in cases of distinct emergency. 
 This is consistent with that attitude of moderation 
 M'hieh every calm and unbiassed observer must 
 recognise as the unchanging attitude of the Church 
 of our baptism. If this theory is to be modified in 
 reference to the present subject, then regulations by 
 authority must be introduced, safeguards }>iust be 
 devised, competent and duly-instructed confessors 
 ij/ust be accredited, and the liberty now conceded to 
 each ministering priest viusi thus practically be 
 limited and regulated. This is, in fact, conceded. The 
 startling revelations of the last few months, the very 
 petition of the 480 priests, based as that petition 
 was on their own anxious experiences, alike prove the 
 utter and absolute necessity of these restrictions. 
 In each system, in that which exists, and in that 
 v.'hich is being introduced, one aspect of the object 
 aimed at is really the same — avoidance of abuses, 
 and of the dreadful shadows that ever are flung by 
 the glare of this trying light. But how radically 
 different are the methods of attaining the object ! — 
 the one the implied restraint of wise and charitable 
 formularies; the other, the sort of practical limi- 
 tation that results from the authoi'isation of ac- 
 credited confessors. The one the loyal maintenance 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 53 
 
 of the principle of the Reformatiou ; the other not 
 only a reactionary modification of it, but, I iiesitate 
 not to say so, a clear and prelusory preparation 
 for a return to the system of the Church of 
 Rome.* 
 
 I am using- here no party expressions. I am not 
 catching at the mere popular approval that still, in 
 every meeting- of clergy and laity like the present, 
 follows the expression of these opinions ; but, as I 
 shall answer to God for these words, I do solemnly 
 declare my conviction, that there neither is nor can 
 be, consistently with the known laws of poor fallen 
 human nature, any ultimate line of demarcation 
 between the system of Confession that is now being 
 adopted in the Church of England, and that care- 
 fully-adjusted and shrewdly-regulated system which 
 is maintained by the Church of Rome. To make the 
 
 * It is ever jjaiuful to express tlio suspicions that are 
 forced upou us iu the progress of serious movemeuts ; but I 
 am at last obliged to say that of late many things, and among 
 them same of which T have had personal knowledge, have led 
 me to fear that a sort of understanding has, in some cases, 
 actually takou place between members of the two Churches 
 with the view of ultimate adjustment. Could there bo any 
 more potent ally to tlie Church of Rome at the present time 
 than a member of our own Church, perhaps a married man, and 
 so unable to take Orders in the Church of Rome, staying in 
 our communion, and using all his influence to widen that com- 
 munion into uuion or a uuiate connection with Rome ? Such 
 a one might consider ho was thus doing a duty to the whole 
 Catholic Church, and if so, his action would only be the more 
 determined and dangerous. 
 
54. 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 differentia between the two systems the priueiple of 
 aion-compulsion is worse than illusory. It is really 
 — I trust in God it is not consciously — mislead- 
 ing-. To use the moral pressure that now is used, 
 to hold up the nature of the blessings that come 
 Jrom it, to point to the holy ideal life to which it 
 leads, is to use really a far strong-er compulsion than 
 simply to set forth the rule of a Churclj, which knows 
 well, and is known to know well, the long-transmitted 
 art of tempering the severity of rules by prudently- 
 adjusted dispensations. 
 
 Let us, in God's name, bear to see things as they 
 are. I know, nay I can even hear, with at least 
 toleration, all that has of late been passionately urged 
 by those who have had considerable home-missionary 
 experience, in favour of an extension of the system 
 of habitual and so-called Sacramental Confession. I 
 know that it is urged that there are sins of youth, 
 sins that cast their baleful shadows all along the 
 course of a life, that can only be dealt with by the 
 habit of early confession. I do not forget that it is 
 said that there is nothing like the shame and sorrow 
 of Confession to bring about a real conviction of sin, 
 and to diminish the likelihood of its recurrence. I 
 am aware that it is asserted to give that reality to 
 the spiritual intercourse between the modern pastor 
 and its people which we all feel to be so blessed and 
 yet so rarely experienced. Nay, I will not refuse to 
 believe that the practice of encouraging and hearing 
 
The Church of England. 55 
 
 confession may exercise a sobering' influence on the 
 life of the individual clergyman, and may give a 
 knowledge— often, however, a very corrosive know- 
 ledge — that cannot otherwise be always certainly 
 obtained. All this I know ; but I also know, inde- 
 pendently of all that I have already urged, that on 
 the bare merits of the question, and apart from all 
 ecclesiastical considerations, the arguments on the 
 other side are utterly overwhelming. Let all be 
 said that cau be said, and this terrible spiritual fact 
 remains — that the danger of the confessor taking the 
 place of Christ is found to be in practice irremovable. 
 The evidence that can be collected on this subject is 
 simply irresistible. Poor human love of power and 
 poor human trusting in something other than Christ, 
 both terribly co-operating, boar their daily witness to 
 this appalling form of spiritual peril. There are a 
 hundred other dangers — but all, really great as they 
 are, sink into utter nothingness compared witii this. 
 Who would dare to incur such a danger when the 
 practice of his own Church, and the counsels of the 
 purest spirits that have lived and died in its com- 
 munion have earnestly pressed home their ever- 
 repeated warnings? Are we to build up again the 
 things we destroyed ? Are we to return to bondage 
 from which the Holy Ghost has set us free ? Are we 
 to run the dreadful risk of making Christ of none 
 effect by a worse than Galatian error? 
 
 No, it cannot be; it will not be. Sacramental 
 
56 Some Present Bangers. 
 
 Confession neither is nor ever will be the doctrine of 
 our AjDostolic and Reformed Church.* 
 
 * Among the many recent pamphlets on this subject in 
 which the true teaching of the Church of England is set 
 forth clearly and persuasively, I may mention a learned and 
 interesting Address by the Bishop of Llandaff, delivered to 
 the Archdeacons and Rural Deans of the Diocese (Riving- 
 tons Lend., 1873), and the following more recent sermons, 
 all fully deserving to be referred to : — Perowne (Canon), 
 Confession in the Church of England (Macmillan, Lond., 
 1877) ; Couybeare, Forgiveness Tmnicdiate (Parker, Oxford, 
 1877) ; and the useful tract of Mr. Lumby, St. Ambrose and 
 St. Chrysostom on Penitence (Deightou, Carabr., 1877). 
 
THE ROYAL SUPEEIACY. 
 
TEE EOYAL SUPEEMACY. 
 
 [Delivered at Malmeshiir//, Oct. mii, 1877.] 
 
 Among the clangers of the present time that are 
 now menacing the very existence of the National 
 Church, there are three to which it has been, and 
 it will be, my care to direct the thoughts of my 
 hearers at the present time. These I have defined to 
 be party spirit, sacerdotalism, and lawlessness. 
 
 On two of these dangers I have already spoken. 
 I have spoken generally in my tirst Address on the 
 frightful party spirit that is now everywhere showing 
 itself, and is of the worst augury for the future. In 
 my second Address it has been my care to notice 
 the second danger, and more particularly that 
 manifestation of it which is now calling for our 
 most anxious consideration — the principle of sacer- 
 dotalism as exemplified and manifested in Sacra- 
 mental Confession. It remains for me now to spenk 
 of some of the more recent forms in which the third 
 danger, lawlessness, has of late been showing itself, 
 and of offering to you some considerations which. 
 
no 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 with the blessing of God^ may be helpful in our 
 present necessity. 
 
 It is, however, of the utmost moment exactly to 
 understand the aspects which the danger of which I 
 am now speaking is distinctly and even avowedly 
 assuming. It is unfair, we are told, to speak of the 
 action of the innovating party in the Church as 
 lawless. It is ceaselessly affirmed that it is not so. 
 It is action in obedience to a pre-existing law, which 
 law, it is contended, is still in force. Modern 
 legislation, it is asserted, has simply ignored and 
 superseded powerful guarantees given by the State 
 to the Church, has disregarded the liberties of the 
 Church, and annulled her rights. And all this is 
 expressed, and even attempted to be substantiated, by 
 English Churchmen in the most unqiialified, exciting, 
 and, I regret also to add, utterly unjustifiable, lan- 
 guage. We have pictures drawn of the humiliated 
 Church, either as lying " bound hand and foot and 
 only just awakening from its lethargic sleep," or if 
 awakened, still only to find itself " sitting by with 
 manacled hands and dumb lips, powerless to explain 
 its own meaning," mutely accepting its humiliation. 
 Churchmen occupying positions of trust and respon- 
 sibility, describe the whole legislative action of the 
 Church as " paralysed by apprehension." Commu- 
 nicants tell their Bishop that the highest Courts of 
 the Sovereign, under pretence of interpreting the 
 law, are wittingly engaged in altering it. Eccle- 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 61 
 
 siastical essayists, whose language and learning on 
 other points deserve our respect and consideration, 
 on this subject lose all control, and point to a hapless 
 Church, " trammelled Ly the brute force of the 
 secular arm,^' and partly by this violence and brute 
 force, and partly by fraud and cunning, elbowed out — 
 I am using the very language and metaphor of one 
 of these writers — elbowed " out of the exercise of 
 her unalterable and constitutional rights/''* Even 
 Churchmen from our own diocese, from whom I 
 might have hoped for a little cooler language and a 
 little clearer recognition of the true facts of the case 
 — even they have allowed themselves to be carried 
 away by the same excitement, and, in a recent 
 pamphlet, tell us of "injustice dressed up in the garb 
 of religion and law," of the " disregarded liberties of 
 the Church, and her annulled rights,"'' of " clever 
 schemes to give quasi-religious aspects to essentially 
 secular courts," and of the belief of those who ought 
 to know better in "'the gospel of parliamentary 
 opinion." Nay, even among those who occupy 
 positions of high authority there are some who have 
 not wholly escaped this ecclesiastical epidemic. In a 
 recent official letter I was sorry to notice allusions to 
 
 * I was sorry to meet with this language (pp. 11, 27) in a 
 pamphlet wLieh for its learning and research certainly takes a 
 place far above the party pamx>hlets that are now disturbing 
 the peace of the Church, and exposing the ignorance of those 
 who write them. This pamphlet is entitled This Church and 
 Realm, by E. S. Grindle (London, 1871). 
 
62 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 the hushed living voice of the Churchy and to " judge- 
 made law" — forms of expression which very far 
 from correctly represent the true state and present 
 circumstances of the Church of England. 
 
 Now had these things appeared in the columns of 
 so-called religious newspapers, or emanated from those 
 who call Reformers " a set of miscreants/' and who, 
 in their powei-lessness to influence or affect the living, 
 denounce and vilify the honoured dead — had these 
 expressions come from such a source, I should never 
 have thought it necessary even to allude to them. 
 When, however, we find them on the pages of, for 
 the most part, sober and responsible writers, and 
 hear them reproduced in every varying form of ex- 
 aggeration, then it does seem desirable to subject 
 them to a little sober examination, and sei-iously to 
 inquire whether there are really any just grounds for 
 such mischievous and unprecedented language. 
 
 What, when stripped of this reckless rhetoric, are 
 the real grounds on which the disobedience to existing 
 law is now seeking to justify itself ? As far as we 
 can ascertain, the three positions now taken up by 
 the extreme party in the Church are substantially as 
 follow : — 
 
 (1.) The contract between the Church and the 
 State has been so distinctly broken, and the 
 supremacy of the Crown converted into such an 
 encroaching principle of secular usurpation, that 
 resistance is not only a necessity but a duty. 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 G3 
 
 (2.) The present Court of Fina^ Appeal is so 
 unconstitutional in its nature, and so biassed in its 
 decisions, that, on Catholic principles, it may be 
 rightly disregarded and disobeyed. 
 
 (3.) The living voice of the Church, now 
 silenced, is that alone to which, in matters eccle- 
 siastical, obedience can be properly and cheerfully 
 rendered. 
 
 On the present occasion let us confine our thoughts 
 to the first of these positions, and endeavour to make 
 plain to oiirselves what really is meant and included 
 under the somewhat ambiguous expression, the Royal 
 Supremacy ; and to what extent any contract it may 
 imply between the Church and the State can be 
 correctly said to have been either infringed or 
 violated. 
 
 I. And first let us clear the ground by saying 
 that the popular view of a compact between the 
 Church and the State, as between two independent 
 bodies competent to make terms with each other, 
 is, as has been well pointed out by the Bishop of a 
 neighbouring diocese, utterly mistaken and illusory.* 
 There may have emerged in the sixteenth century, as 
 we shall see more clearly afterwards, such an adjust- 
 ment of the relations between the Church and the 
 State as may imply or involve something of the 
 nature of a tacit agreement, and of obligations on 
 
 * See the " Charge " of the Bishop of Worcester for tlio 
 present year, p. 32 — 59, (Rinugtons, Loudon). 
 
64 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 each side ; but for the idea of a compact in the sense 
 in which it is now used by popular and party writers, 
 there are no grounds whatever, either in the facts of 
 history, or in the constitutional reasoning which may 
 be founded on them. 
 
 The facts of history, very briefly stated, would 
 seem to be as follow : — 
 
 The first relation of Church and State in this 
 country commenced 1,280 years ago, when Augustine 
 was received by the King of Kent, and Christianity 
 was again planted in this island. In less than a 
 century it was so far organised that, at a Synod of 
 Bishops, under the presidency of the then Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, the code of the rapidly- 
 spreading Church was agreed upon, and the whole 
 body of the canon law, including the first four 
 General Councils, was accepted as the law of the 
 Anglican Church. On this canon law were founded 
 the laws of the Anglo-Saxon period, and of the 
 Anglo-Norman period, which dealt with the Church 
 and matters ecclesiastical. " The law," to use the 
 words of a deeply-read canon lawyer of our own days, 
 to whom I am indebted for much that I am now 
 placing before you, " the law became part of the 
 common law of England. The whole organisation 
 of the Church, the diocesan and parochial system, 
 the ordination office and functions of the ministers, 
 and discipline of the clergy, grew out of that common 
 ecclesiastical law, and was identical in England and 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 65 
 
 Ireland." * It was this continuous acceptance by the 
 State of the law of the Church as the law of the land 
 that really constitutes the historical establishment of 
 the Church of England. The local development of 
 the Church, the creation of dioceses and parishes, 
 the rights of patronage, the donations of land by 
 the sovereigns and great nobles, the adoption of 
 that law by which, in accordance with the usage 
 of Christendom, the tenth of the produce of the land 
 was set apart for the maintenance of the Church and 
 its ministers — these and many other of the outward 
 adjustments of the accepted Christianity, all tended 
 to make the relations of Church and State still more 
 close and intimate. Christianity became inwrought 
 in the political life of the nation, the laws which it 
 carried with it became, so far as affected it, the com- 
 mon law cf the realm ; and so, to use the language 
 of a famous Act of later times,t "a body politick, 
 compact of all sorts and degrees of people, divided in 
 terms and by names Spiritualty and Temporalty," 
 the Church and Realm of England, united and co- 
 extensive, at length distinctly emerges to our view. 
 
 * The tract from wliicli this extract (p. 16) is taken bears 
 the not very suggestive title of Thoughts on Mr. Gladstone's 
 Autobiography (Hatchard, London, 1869), but contains some 
 singularly trustworthy and instructive comments on the re- 
 lation of Church and State. The author was my respected 
 friend the late Mi-. Ralph Barnes. 
 
 t 24 Henry VIII. , cap. 12, commonly known as the 
 " Statute for the Restraint of Appeals ." 
 
66 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 We are now fairly contemplating what, in times 
 nearer our own, has been termed, and rightly termed, 
 the Established Church of this favoured and Christian 
 land. 
 
 Thus far we have seen no trace whatever of 
 compact or of mutual engagements. During the 
 period we have been contemplating, a period of nine 
 long centuries and more, numerous laws were passed 
 closely affecting the interests of the Church, and all 
 tending to bind Church and State into closer union 
 aiad interdependence, but none that could in any sense 
 be regarded as implying or involving any contract. 
 The Church was free, and had the full exercise of its 
 own laws ; but, as the Constitutions of Clarendon 
 remind us, it was, as a part of the great body politic, 
 subject to the King as supreme, and as the last and 
 ultimate authority to whom appeal could be made or 
 ought to be made by any loyal member of the 
 Church of this land. Though usurpations were 
 incessant, and corruptions numberless, the great 
 principle of the Constitutions of 1164 remained the 
 true law of the Church of our forefathers — " ad 
 doiiihinm reijem perveniendum est postremo." 
 
 But we have now come in our brief retrospect to 
 a time when the great principle which I have just 
 enunciated had to be more sharply formulated and 
 defined. The shameless usurpations of Rome, the 
 flagrant extortions, and the un-English appeals to a 
 foreign potentate had now made it necessary for the 
 
Tlie Church of England. 
 
 67 
 
 Church, no less than for the nation, that the appeals 
 to Rome should cease, that the suoremacy of the 
 Sovereign of this land should be vindicated and 
 should be confirmed by the strong will of the nation 
 and by the distinct enactments of authoritative laws. 
 And the Church probably no less felt it than the 
 State. For though it is certainly quite true that we 
 must primarily attribute the great change which we 
 are now considering to the autocratic action of a 
 Tudor King, and though men like the learned non- 
 juror, George Hiclces,* may with some truth speak 
 of " the astonishment of Christendom " when Henry 
 VIII. took upon him the title of " the only supreme 
 head upon earth of the Church of England," still we 
 can hardly doubt that many of those clergy who 
 agreed to give the title felt in their inmost hearts 
 that, of two forms of tyranny, papal or regal, they 
 were certainly choosing the least and most endurable. 
 However this may be, we know the actual facts. 
 This title was conceded by the synodical representa- 
 tives of the National Church, and incorporated in the 
 documents that announced their enforced subsidy. 
 And this, as we know, was some three or four years 
 before it found a place in the statutes of the realm. 
 They spoke of themselves as the " ecclesia et Clems 
 Anglicanus cujus protector et supremuiii caput Rex 
 solus est." Calvin may speak of these men as 
 
 * ScG his Dlgnifij of Episcopal Order, cap 1, § 6 
 {Works, Tol. ii., p. 353. A.-C. Libr.). 
 
 E 2 
 
68 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 " inconsiderati homines,"* and writers like Hickes 
 may speak of a blot resting upon their memories 
 which no apology can wipe ofE, but every true-hearted 
 Englishman must to a great degree sympathise with 
 them, and even charitably recognise in their con- 
 cession something moi-e than a mere weak compliance 
 with imperious demands. They did yield, but they 
 added qualifying words — "quantum per legem Christi 
 licet" — words which must never be forgotten by 
 any one who would desire equitably to estimate the 
 extent of the memorable concession. They did accept 
 for themselves and the Church of England the 
 specified title, but while they did so it is not 
 unreasonable to believe that many a heart-protest 
 against Papal exaction and usurpation at last found 
 its vent in the novel and historic words. 
 
 Three or four years later came the famous Act 
 that exemplified the force of the words, and clothed 
 them with the first realities of legislative enactment. 
 Into the many details connected with the Act we are 
 now considering, the Act called the Submission of 
 the Clergy, it is not necessary for us ' to enter. The 
 unfair pressure and determination on one side and the 
 reluctant concessions and compromise on the other 
 
 * Prcelect. in Amos, vii. 13 (cited by Hickes, loc. cif.). 
 Ai-clibisliop Bramliall uot unsuitably reminds us that the men 
 who gave this title were not Protestants but Roman Catholics. 
 See his Protestants' Ordination Defended, § 6 (TFo?'is, toL 
 T., p. 232. A.-O. Libr.). 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 69 
 
 are traced sadly and legibly enong-h on tlie page of 
 history^* but with these we need not delay the course 
 of our brief narrative. The propositions were made 
 to the Clergy in Convocation to the effect that no 
 Constitution should be made by them without the 
 King's assent ; and further, that the ecclesiastical 
 laws as were then existing in the Provincial Con- 
 stitutions, should be subjected to revision, and to the 
 King's corroborative approval. These were assented 
 to by Convocation in what was equivalent to an oath, 
 " rcrdo sncerdotii ; " they were afterwards recited and 
 embodied in an Act of Parliament, and they remain 
 binding on us and upon the Church of England, in 
 their full force, to this very hour. Convocation 
 cannot meet without the King's writ ; cannot confer 
 with reference to framing any canon or constitution 
 without the licence of the King ; cannot execute any 
 canon without the assent of the King. This was the 
 first practical manifestation of the accepted title ; and 
 was associated with the transfer of all appeals from 
 the Archbishop's Court to the King in Chancery — a 
 provision which a sober and learned writer on this 
 subject rightly says, far from destroying, really 
 placed on a statutable footing the English Ecclesias- 
 tical Law.f Nothing can be more clear than this. 
 
 * The reader who may wish to refer to a succinct but 
 very exact aud trustworthy account of this strug-gle will fiud 
 it in the preface to Cardwell, Synodalia, vol. i., p. iii., § 9. 
 
 t Archdeacon Hale, in his brief but clear Essay on the 
 
70 
 
 8ome Present Dangers of 
 
 The clause which binds also defines and strengthens ; 
 for it distinctly specifies that "such canons, con- 
 stitutions; ordinances, and synodals provincial, being 
 already made, which be not contrariant or repug- 
 nant to the laws, statutes, and customs of this 
 realm, nor to the damage of the King's prerogative, 
 should still be used and executed." 
 
 The next year saw the next practical manifesta- 
 tion of the Royal Supremacy in the settlement of the 
 choice and election of Bishops — a settlement which 
 remains in its full vigour to this very day. 
 
 The most important manifestation of the Supremacy 
 was, however, yet to come — a manifestation that, it 
 seems to me, is much overlooked by ordinary writers 
 on this subject, but which, from a Church point of 
 view, and especially a High Church point of view, is 
 of the most vital and serious importance. I allude to 
 the Act which was passed four years after the conces- 
 sion of the title,* and which most emphatically 
 invests the king, his heirs and successors, with the 
 fullest power of visitatioti — to redress, reform, and 
 otherwise amend all errors, heresies, and abuses, 
 which, by any manner of special authority or juris- 
 diction, may lawfully be reformed and amended. 
 The Crown, in fact, was hereby constituted Supreme 
 Ordinary. And this visitatorial power remains. It 
 
 Union between the Church and the State, p. 20 (Butterwortlis, 
 Lond., 1868). 
 
 * 26 Henry VIII., cap. 1. 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 71 
 
 was restrained by the Act of the IGth year of 
 Charles I. in reference to its exercise by com- 
 missioners under the Great Seal, but it is the 
 deliberate judgment of one deeply read in these 
 subjects, the late Archdeacon Hale, that the 
 authority to visit, and the duty of visitation, are 
 fully preserved. "Our Church," the Archdeacon 
 says, "is thus united by statute with the State 
 in this most important point of government. If 
 Churchmen are disloyal to the Church, and depart 
 from that faith which the law has recognised as 
 the faith of the Church, the correction of such 
 misconduct belongs to the Crown.'' * 
 
 These words are of great moment, and seem to 
 suggest to those who of late have been using very 
 unrestrained language as to the independence of 
 the Church, some reconsideration of their position. 
 
 * Union between the Church and the State, p. 17. Tlio 
 words quoted, anil tlie remarks associated witli them, have 
 beeu referred to by a competent critic as showing that the 
 writer of this Address is an " Erastian of Erastians." They 
 show nothing of the kind. The o^jinious liere advanced are in 
 strict consonance witli the expressions of some of our 
 soundest divines. To cite one out of numhorloss expres- 
 sions of a similar kind that could be adduced as to the right 
 and power of the Crown to exercise visitatorial power, it may 
 1)8 enough to cite a few words of Archbishop BramhaU. " It 
 [the jurisdiction ecclesiastical] is the regiment and the govern- 
 ment of that power which is vindicated to tlie Crown to see 
 that clergymen do their duties in their places, as well as all 
 other of the king's subjects." — Pi-otestants' Ordination 
 Defended, § 6 {Works, vol. v., p. 231. A.-C. Libr.). 
 
72 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 As long as this visitatorial power remains^ it is 
 simply impossible to maintain the high pretensions 
 that are now put forward by current writers on the 
 liberty of the Church. If the Crown is really thus 
 the Supreme Ordinary, and if that power remains, 
 as it is contended it does remain to this very hour, 
 then, in the great difficulties of our times, when 
 erroneous teaching and practices make their appeal 
 to pre-existing law, it may be quite within the 
 possibilities of things that a counter-appeal may 
 be made to existing law, and that we may find 
 ourselves realising, in a manner unlooked for, the 
 due order of this Church and realm, and the true 
 historic aspects of our ancient Constitution. 
 
 We have now considered the Royal Supremacy 
 in matters ecclesiastical, in its broad and general 
 outlines, and as we find it defined in statutes which 
 remain on the Statute-book in their full legal force 
 to this very day. "VVe see that, to speak very 
 generally, it consists of three powers, two in use, 
 the other practically in disuse ; first, its negative 
 power in reference to the Synods of the Church; 
 secondly, its positive power in deciding appeals in 
 ecclesiastical causes ; and thirdly, the power of 
 Visitation, and of the correction of all errors, 
 heresies, and abuses. In a word, to use the careful 
 language of Archdeacon Hale, the true principle of 
 the Supremacy is this: "That the Church, having 
 in her Councils and Convocations, defined the faith. 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 73 
 
 and the Legislature having accepted it, the Crown 
 is invested by law with a supl<5me authority to 
 require the Clergy to adhere to thdt faith, so that 
 the people may be instructed in it." * The Royal 
 Supremacy is a purely legal power, and, in the 
 words of the late Lord Westbury, neither has nor 
 claims any authority to assert anything with respect 
 to doctrine except the meaning of the written law. 
 All jurisdiction proceeds from the Crown, and so 
 the final jurisdiction in all matters ecclesiastical and 
 spiritual is centered in the Crown. 
 
 II. If such, then, be the Royal Supremacy, only 
 two questions remain to be asked with reference 
 to the first of the three positions which we have 
 
 * Doctrine and Government of the Anglican Church 
 under the Supremacy of Henry VIII., p. 24 (Rivingtons, 
 London, 1869). Perliaps, for a brief and summary definition 
 of the Royal Supremacy, we could hardly find words more 
 comprehensive than those of the sound and learned prelate 
 who has before been referred to in these notes. The definition 
 is as follows : — "That power which this and other statutes 
 do vindicate to the Crown is a supremacy or sovereignty of 
 regal power in the King of England, according to the example 
 of his predecessors, by his custom immemorial, to dispense 
 with the transgression of the laws of the land, to dispose of 
 the greater dignities of the Church, to prohibit the proceed- 
 ings of ecclesiastical courts in case of encroachment, to receive 
 appeals, and to sentence them by fit delegates, to make laws 
 ecclesiastical with the advice of his clergy and Great Council, 
 and to do all things necessary for that great and architee- 
 tonical end, the safety of the commonwealth." — Archbishop 
 Bramhall, Protestants' Ordination Defended, § 6 {Worhs, vol. 
 v., p. 234. A.-C. Libr.). 
 
74. 
 
 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 been considering- in this address, viz., that in the 
 exercise of the Royal Supremacy the compact 
 between the Church and Slate has been broken, 
 and that resistance is justifiable. And the two 
 questions are these : Did the legal enactment of 
 the Royal Supremacy involve any compact? and, 
 if so, has it been broken ? 
 
 1. Now, in reference to the first question, we 
 liave seen that up to the times we have been now 
 considering — which, roughly speaking, may be 
 regarded as the times of the legislative, as con- 
 trasted with the historical, establishment of the 
 union of Church and State — it could not be correctly 
 said that there was any compact between the Church 
 and the State. Both had grown up together and 
 develoj^ed in union and co-extension. After this 
 time, and at the epoch we are now discussing, it may 
 be fairly admitted that a kind of tacit compact did 
 emerge from the very enactments that defined and 
 exemplified the Supremacy. And the compact would 
 seem to be of this nature — that so long as the 
 Spirituality, as rej^rcsentod by Convocation, does not 
 either resist or evade the restrictions to which it 
 submitted itself, so long shall it be regularly sum- 
 moned to meet and discuss, unless there be some clear 
 and evident reason to the contrary. There does also 
 seem to be a sort of further compact, if not implied, 
 yet equitably involved, in the legislative recognition 
 of Convocation as the Church of England by repre- 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 75 
 
 sentaliou, \iz., that, in all matters relating to the 
 doctrine, discipline, and internal administration of 
 the Church, Convocation shall be duly consulted, and 
 be free to express its formulated opinions on the 
 subjects submitted to it. That there is any fur- 
 ther compact, viz., that spiritual and ecclesiastical 
 cpiestions shall, in the last resort, be restrained to 
 spiritual or ecclesiastical arbitrament, cannot, in m}^ 
 judgment, possibly be substantiated. The appeals 
 are transferred to the King in Chancery ; the nature 
 of the Court by which the King shall decide them 
 cannot be regarded as even inferentially involved in 
 the transference. The only tacit and implied com- 
 pact is that the King should do justice to the 
 appellants. 
 
 2. "With regard to the second cpiestion — -Whether 
 the compacts, thus admitted to exist, have been 
 broken on the side of the State — the following seems 
 to be the equitable answer, viz., that whatever ma}' 
 be said of the non -summoning of Convocation for 
 the century and more that elapsed after the year 
 1717, it may correctly be said that in our own times, 
 and for more than the last generation, the first 
 compact I have mentioned as to the summoning of 
 Convocation, certainly has not been broken, nor is 
 there the slightest probability that it will be broken in 
 the futm-e. Convocation has many enemies ; but its 
 worst enemies cannot deny that it has maintained 
 a very difficult and even ambiguous position with 
 
76 
 
 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 wisdom, dignity, and moderation. The first-men- 
 tioned compact has been kept in our own times, 
 and, so long as Church and State remain in union, 
 will, we may feel persuaded, be kept faithfully in the 
 future. 
 
 Whether the second-mentioned compact has been 
 equally well kept, and whether it can be said with 
 truth that, in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical, 
 Convocation has been duly consulted, is much more 
 open to argument. It is a question, however, which 
 more properly belongs to the last of the three 
 positions which I specified in the earlier part of this 
 address, and will be best discussed when we con- 
 sider how far the general allegation is true, that the 
 living voice of the Church has not been allowed its 
 free expression, or received the recognition that may 
 seem rightly to be due to it. For the present, I will 
 content myself with saying, on the one hand, that 
 the contract is in its very nature loose and inferential, 
 and so a contract very liable to be infringed upon ; 
 and, on the other hand, that it cannot be truthfully 
 said that Convocation has been consulted to that full 
 extent which it has a moral right to claim and to 
 expect. 
 
 And now T close a difficult and debatable 
 subject. Earnestly do I pray to God that I may 
 have been enabled to set it forth with truth and 
 moderation. The one and only object I have in 
 view is to enable you, my dear friends and brethren, 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 77 
 
 calmly to form an opinion upon a very practical 
 question, which is now, I regret to say, discussed with 
 unbecoming party spirit and prejudice. How far 1 
 may have succeeded I know not. Yet in this, at 
 least, I humbly pray that I may have been permitted 
 to succeed : I trust I may have helped each earnest 
 thinker here present more fully to realise, not only 
 the duty, but the blessedness, of rightly co-ordinating 
 the two great and inseparably united principles of 
 a loyal Christian life — the rendering unto Ca;sar of 
 the things that are CiBsar's, and unto God of the 
 things that are God's. 
 
THE FINAL COURT OF APPEAL. 
 
TEE FINAL COURT OF APPEAL. 
 
 [Delivered at Chippenham, Oct. 30th, 1877.] 
 
 In my last Address I endeavoured to illustrate 
 in detail one form of the systematised lawlessness 
 which I have already specified as one of the three 
 great dangers to the Church of England at the 
 present time. 
 
 I called attention yesterday to the first of three 
 positions which is now taken up by an extreme 
 party in the Church, who not only manifest dis- 
 obedience to the plain law of the land, but endeavour 
 to explain away or justify it. I endeavoured to 
 show the grounds on which distinct opposition to 
 the Royal Supremacy (for it really amounts to no 
 less) is maintained as rightful and necessary; and, 
 in doing this, I did my best to make plain what 
 contract, if any, there is between the Church and 
 the State, and what grounds, if any, there are for 
 asserting that the contract has been broken by the 
 encroachments and usurpation of the State. 
 
 To-day I pass to a second but no less important 
 position, which is taken not only by extreme thinkers 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 and writers, but, I regret to say, by men of greater 
 moderation and sobriety of thought — a position 
 which, as I noticed yesterday, may be expressed in 
 the following sentence : " The present Court of Final 
 Appeal is so unconstitutional in its nature, and so 
 biassed in its decisions, that, on Catholic principles, 
 it may be rightly disregarded and disobeyed." This 
 very serious statement, which is now made freel}^ and 
 openly, it may be well for us to consider fully and 
 carefully in the present Address. 
 
 Let me begin, however, by calling your attention 
 to the extreme gravity of the simple fact — not only 
 that the Court is declared to be unconstitutional, but 
 that its decisions are alleged to be biassed, and, in a 
 recent case, to use the language of a resolution which I 
 regret to say professes to be the expression of a society 
 of working men — that the decision deliberately arrived 
 at by the Court " is clearly intended as a compromise 
 to satisfy public opinion, and not in accordance 
 with the plain letter of the law." * Such an 
 imputation on the character and justice of the dis- 
 tinguished and honourable men who composed the 
 Court in the case that has recently been decided, is in 
 itself one of the worst, as it is also one of the most 
 significant signs of our own unhappy times. Hitherto 
 the honour of our judges has never been assailed. 
 Party spirit, bad and malevolent as it ever is, has 
 
 ' Passed " by acclamation " August 4, 187", and directed 
 to be sent round to the Bisliops. 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 83 
 
 never before so flagrantly imputed motives, or im- 
 plied injustice, in the highest Court of the Sovereign, 
 or practically so vilified names that are amongst the 
 highest both in the Church and the State. If this 
 were an isolated manifestation we could easily pass it 
 over as the expression of persons who were probably 
 stimulated by others, and who, by their very position, 
 had probably a very imperfect acquaintance with the 
 difficult and complicated questions on which the}^ 
 had the foi-titude, not to use a harder word, to express 
 an opinion. Such a declaration as that to which I 
 have alluded might at once be dismissed without 
 comment. But, as we well know, it is the expression 
 of others than working men. It is felt by many 
 who perhaps would hardly like to embody it in such 
 unjust and culjmble words as those which I have 
 specified, but who nevertheless latently sympathise — 
 nay, I am afraid, more than latently sympathise ; for, 
 if I remember right, it is not more than three months 
 since a petition was forwarded to the Queen, signed 
 by many whose names deserve our respect, which, 
 while avoiding the indecency of impugning the 
 honesty of the Judges who formed the Court, never- 
 theless did not scruple to speak of the grievous wrong 
 that has been inflicted on the Church by the recent 
 decisions, and to speak of the interpretation as an 
 alteration, and even arbitrary reversal, of the written 
 law of the Church, by the sole authority of the 
 Sovereign's councillors. A more utterly disrespectful 
 F 2 
 
84 
 
 Some. Present Dangers of 
 
 document was probably never transmitted by respon- 
 sible men to a constitutional Sovereign. 
 
 There seems, then, every reason for considering 
 briefly the constitutional history of our present Court 
 of Appeal, and its claims on the obedience of all loyal 
 and reasonable Churchmen. 
 
 In the first place, this seems certainly clear — that 
 a Court of Appeal is a part of our ancient Con- 
 stitution. In the Saxon times the Court appears to 
 have been the King in his Court of Lords — a Court 
 .vhich, tinder various modifications, has always main- 
 tained its position during the whole course of our 
 long and eventful history. And this Court dealt 
 with nlatters ecclesiastical as well as temporal, it 
 being the very principle of our law that — as an 
 early Act of Edward VI. expressly declares — " All 
 authority of jurisdiction, spiritual and temporal, is 
 derived and deducted from the King's Majesty.'^* 
 It is therefore rightly said that "the Sovereign in 
 Council" — or, in other and more technical words, "the 
 Sovereign acting ' commnni concilio, et concilio Archi- 
 ejjiscoporniii et Fpiscoporum et Ahhatum et omniuin 
 principuin rcgni ' — is the oldest tribunal known to the 
 English laws for the final decision of causes and 
 matters ecclesiastical.'" This tribunal has naturally 
 undergone various changes, which we may now 
 shortly consider. These, however, we shall more 
 
 * 1 Ea«-. VI., cap. 2. 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 85 
 
 fully appreciate if we carry in our minds this general 
 statement — that five forms, in reference to matters 
 ecclesiastical, obviously suggest themselves as possible 
 for the composition of such a Court ; and these five 
 forms actually have been assumed by the Court in 
 the course and development of our national history. 
 We may conceive the Court as composed wholly of 
 spiritual persons, or wholly of lay persons, or of both 
 mixed ; or, as uiider these further and more modern 
 aspects, viz., as either a Court of spiriti]al persons, 
 acting as judges, with laymen as assessors ; or lastly, 
 as composed of laymen as judges, but with spiritual 
 persons as assessors. 
 
 When we turn to actual histoiy, we find th^i all 
 our complications and troubles arose from the appeals 
 to the Pope. These began in the reign of Stephen, 
 and were introduced, I am afraid, by one who 
 occupied an ancient English bishopric, Henry de 
 Blois, Bishop of Winchester. Almost from the very 
 first they were strongly resisted, ijot only by the 
 Sovereign, but by the whole spirit and feeling of the 
 nation. Of this we find distinct indications in the 
 Constitutions of Clarendon, and in many of our 
 earlier laws. The provision of the Constitutions of 
 Clarendon directs that the appeal was to lie from the 
 Archbishop's Court to the King ; and from the King 
 it would seem that it was to be remitted to the Arch- 
 bishop's Court with the King's pi-ecept that justice 
 be done, and that the matter be duly concluded. Here 
 
8G Some Present Bangers of 
 
 we appear to have an indication that ecclesiastical 
 causes were ultimately to be settled by an eccle- 
 siastical Court ; butj even thus^ and in these early 
 days, the King is distinctly regarded as the last 
 and ultimate authority. If the Archbishop's Court 
 is to settle the matter, it is only as acting for and 
 at the command of the King. 
 
 Notwithstanding this and other provisions, we 
 know well that, unhappily for us and our Church, 
 appeals to Rome were not only frequent, but connived 
 at, and even permitted. At last, however, the gi-eat 
 change came. In the iWh. j ear of Henry VIII. the 
 first step was taken, and preparation obviously made 
 for what was to follow. Appeals were again dis- 
 tinctly prohibited, save within this realm ; and, as 
 before, in all ecclesiastical cases, the Archbishop's 
 Court was to be the Court in which the cause was to 
 be finally decided, except only that in matters which 
 concerned the King the appeal was to be to th.e 
 Upper House of Convocation. All this, however, 
 was only prelusive and transitional. In the follovs-ing 
 year, in that most memorable Act which is the real 
 basis of the present constitutional relations of Church 
 and State, the Act entitled the Submission of the 
 Clergy, it was specially provided that the Ai-ch- 
 bishop's Court was not to be final, but that the 
 appeal was to be made to the King in Chancery.* 
 
 * 25 Henry VIII., cap. 19 (1533—31). 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 87 
 
 The Church of England had by the voice of its 
 synods acknowledged the King as Supreme Head 
 of the Church : this transference was one of the 
 inevitable consequences. It was naturally to this 
 Supreme Head that appeals were to be made; and 
 such appeals, as every constitutional lawyer will 
 admit, were regarded then, and must be regai-ded 
 now, as appeals to an ecclesiastical and not to a 
 civil Court. 
 
 It is quite idle to attempt to escape the con- 
 sequences of the formal Acts of the representatives 
 of the Church of England at that time ; and to use 
 high language about the privileges of the Church and 
 her rightful independence when such an Act remains 
 on the Statute-book, and such a recognition of the 
 Royal Supremacy as stands in the annals of Con- 
 vocation, is nugatory and mischievous. All really 
 clear-headed and resolute Churchmen have seen and 
 acknowledged that two courses only lie open to us — 
 either on the one hand to accept the laws of our 
 country, and, let me add, the acts of our Church, and, 
 as well as we may, to arrange a modus viveudi under 
 principles that are very far from unreasonable or 
 intractable ; or, on the other hand, boldly and honestly 
 to break with the State, to repudiate the title accepted 
 by the Church, to withdraw from obedience to the 
 Act of the Submission of the Clergy, and to accept 
 frankly all the consequences. This is clear and in- 
 telligible; but to use the language that is now, I 
 
88 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 regret to say, freely used by the leaders of the 
 extreme party, and to suppose it possible that 
 we caa flout courts, and evade plain Acts of the 
 Church and Realna, and yet hold the prerogative 
 position which the union of the Chm*ch and Realm 
 secures to us, is not only foolish and hopeless, 
 but is also, in a very high degree, mischievous and 
 censurable. 
 
 But let us go onward in our considerations of the 
 changes through which the Final Court of Appeal has 
 successively passed in the 340 years that have elapsed 
 since the memorable statute that first called it into 
 existence. 
 
 For three hundred of these years the spiritual 
 jurisdiction of the Crown in causes of appeal from 
 the Provincial Courts was exercised through what 
 was called the Court of Delegates, or, in other words, 
 of persons to whom, on each separate case, the Crown 
 delegated its authority to investigate the cause sub- 
 mitted to it. But who were these persons? It is 
 obviously of the greatest interest and importance to 
 ascertain whether they were commonly lay or spiritual ; 
 or whether it was usual for both elements to be united. 
 The correct answer would seem to be as follows. For 
 the first seventy years, that is to the year 1604, we 
 are told, on the authority of Bishop Gibson,* that no 
 
 * Codex Juris EccJesiastici Anglicani (Introdxiot. Dis- 
 course, vol. i., p. xxi, Lond., 1713). 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 89 
 
 traces are to be found of any of the Lords temporal or 
 of the Common Law Judges being summoned to form 
 part of the Court ; that for thirty-five years afterwards 
 only a very few cases of a mixed Court are to be met 
 with ; but that after that time, till the powers of the 
 Court were transferred to the Judicial Committee of 
 the Privy Council, or, in other words, for about 200 
 years, the Court was nearly always a mixed Court, 
 and, in ordinary cases, composed of Common Law 
 Judges and civilians. The tendency, then, was dis- 
 tinctly to pass from a Court composed wholly of 
 spiritual or ecclesiastical persons to the more natural 
 form of a mixed Court, it being obvious that each of 
 the two elements would greatly aid and assist the 
 other, the lay portion by its better knowledge of the 
 law and of the customary rules of evidence, the 
 spiritual and ecclesiastical portion by its more exact 
 knowledge of the special details that might commonly 
 require to be fully taken into cognisance and con- 
 sideration. 
 
 In the year 1832 the old Court ceased to exist. 
 It was then transferred with all its powers, both in 
 ecclesiastical and maritime causes, to the Sovereign 
 in Council; the power of appointing delegates was 
 repealed, and the Court returned to its original form. 
 In the following year a selection was made by Act of 
 Parliament out of the general body of the Privy 
 Council, and a permanent Committee was appointed, 
 who were to report to the Sovereign their decision on 
 
90 
 
 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 the appeals made to the Crown. This Courts it is 
 proper to observe, consisted at first wholly of laymen; 
 but, in a supplementary clause in an Act passed seven 
 years later, it was enacted that every Archbishop and 
 Bishop who was a member of the Privy Council was 
 also to be a member of the Judicial Committee of this 
 body in all cases of appeal under the Clergy Discipline 
 Act ; and further, that no ecclesiastical appeal was to 
 be heard by the Committee unless one of such Arch- 
 bishops or Bishops were present at the hearing of it. 
 Three or four years later it was provided that all 
 appeals from ecclesiastical courts were to be referred 
 directly to this Judicial Committee; and the Court 
 was empowered to hear them without any special 
 reference of such appeal by the Crown. The dis- 
 cretion formerly exercised by the King in Council, of 
 granting or not granting an appellant a hearing, was 
 thus done away with, and, for the better securing of 
 the ends of justice, a Court of Final Appeal was com- 
 pletely constituted, to which all ecclesiastical causes 
 were, in their last resort, ultimately and formally to 
 be referred. 
 
 Let us now pause for a moment, and consider 
 whether there was really much to complain of in 
 the composition of the Court. It was plainly altered 
 in several important details as a Court of Appeal, 
 when compared with the old Court of Delegates. 
 But all the changes were for the better, and clearly 
 indicated one common purpose — to secure justice to 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 91 
 
 all appellants, and to ensure uniformity in decisions. 
 It is impossible to say that the list of those out 
 of whom the Court was to be composed was other 
 than high and honourable, and in every way likely 
 to command public respect and confidence.* It is 
 also equally impossible for any one, not led away by 
 party spirit, to say that the presence of the two 
 Archbishops and of the senior Bishop was otherwise 
 than calculated to secure to the Court that full 
 knowledge of theological details as well as that 
 wide ecclesiastical knowledge which the holders of 
 those positions would be certain to have acquired, 
 and all which it was obviously essential to justice 
 should be accessible to every member of the Coui-t. 
 Much unreasonable and unbecoming language, we 
 well know, has been used on this subject even by 
 those who have some claim on our attention. One 
 writer, for instance, who probably represents the 
 opinions of many of the upper stratum of the party 
 to which he is reputed to belong, has not hesitated 
 
 * The names, as specified in tlie Act (3 and 4 William IV., 
 cap. 41), are, the President of the Council, tlio Lord Chan- 
 cellor, such members of the Council as should from time to 
 time hokl the offices of Lord Keeper, Chief Justice of the 
 King's Bench, Master of tho Rolls, Vice - Chancellor of 
 England, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Chief Baron 
 of tlie Exchequer, Judge of tho Prerogative Court of Canter- 
 bury, Judge of the Court of Admiralty, Chief Judge of tho 
 Court of Bankruptcy, and all members of tho Privy Council 
 who sliould liave held any of the offices above specified. 
 
92 
 
 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 to call this addition of the three episcopal members 
 a " useless ecclesiastical fringe^" * and has told us, 
 in the language that has unhappily always dis- 
 figured the attacks made upon this Court, that if 
 this fringe were stripped away, the Court would 
 no longer be able to " give itself the airs of the 
 Vatican," though when it did give itself those airs 
 no sober observer could be found to specify. This 
 has been the current language of the extreme party, 
 but it has never, so far as I know, convinced one 
 unprejudiced Churchman that the presence of spiritual 
 persons in the Court was otherwise than reasonable, 
 constitutional, and just. In the third place, it is 
 clearly desirable that the necessarily uncertain and 
 precarious element, the will of the Sovereign, should 
 give way to a uniformity of procedure, whereby 
 all appeals to English justice should be duly and 
 formally entertained by a properly constituted and 
 ultimate Court. 
 
 These considerations, however, as we well remem- 
 ber, did not preclude the further changes which have 
 recently been introduced in the Court. And it is, 
 perhaps, well that it has been so. At any rate, every 
 possible theory as to the formation of a final Court 
 in matters ecclesiastical has had the opportunity of 
 having been freely ventilated. Every imaginable 
 
 • Liddon, Letter to Sir J. T. Coleridge, p. 38 (London, 
 1871), cited by Stephens, Letter to Archhishop of Yorlc, 
 pp. 8, 9. 
 
The Church of Emjland. 
 
 93 
 
 form that it might ultimately assume has been 
 suggested, discussed, and re-discussed, until the 
 very subject has been a tedium and a weariness. 
 On one point only all the disputants seemed agreed, 
 and that was that the Court should not be composed 
 wholly of spiritual persons. And yet, so utterly un- 
 reasonable is party spirit, that now, now that every- 
 thing is settled, this is just what is pressed for and 
 demanded as the only true and legitimate form of 
 a Final Court. Nothing, we are now told, can ever 
 o-o right, no obedience can properly be given by good 
 Churchmen,until "'spiritual and ecclesiastical questions 
 shall be restrained to spiritual or ecclesiastical arbitra- 
 ment.^^ And yet all this was argued out fully a few 
 years ago, and the opinion of men like the late Sir 
 John Coleridge, who said openly that the most learned 
 divines could never be safely left to act as judges 
 without judicial training and experience, was rightly 
 allowed to prevail. A few years ago, not only in 
 certain quarters in the Church, but everywhere, there 
 was one prevailing cry — get rid of your ecclesiastical 
 fringe, and let your Court be a civil Court, and then 
 we shall escape from iiuicA sjiiritiial distress (I am 
 using the very expression of a writer above referred 
 to), and consciences will no longer be wounded and 
 harassed. 
 
 Opinion only seemed to fluctuate between two 
 forms— the last two of the five forms which I 
 specified in the earlier part of this Address — either a 
 
94 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 Court of ecclesiastical persons with lay assessors^ or 
 a Court o£ lay persons with ecclesiastical assessors. 
 The first form was advocated by Convocation some 
 twenty years ago, but never very strongly pressed or 
 insisted upon.* The want of sufficient legal training 
 and experience in the members of such a Court was 
 always felt to be an almost unanswerable argument 
 against it. So the second form was ultimately adopted, 
 and in that form the Final Court of Appeal has been 
 very recently constituted by a fully considered Act of 
 the Legislature. 
 
 This, then, is our present Court of Appeal in 
 matters ecclesiastical at the present time ; and such 
 the brief history of the changes and transitions 
 through which it has passed during the 310 years of 
 its existence. To say that this last form is the best 
 that could be conceived under the circumstances, is 
 what no one would assert ; but that it is probably the 
 best of all those that have as yet been proposed is 
 an assertion that may very soberly be maintained. 
 Those who are professionally experienced are the 
 judges in the questions submitted to them ; but as 
 those questions involve details of a special and 
 
 • The resolution (passed in February. 1857) 'vas to the 
 following eifect : '' That this House felt it rijrlit to declare 
 that no arrangement would appear satisfactory wliieh did not 
 give full security that all questions involving points of 
 doctrine should be dealt with under the authority of the 
 Crown, by the spiritualty assisted by such legal persons as 
 might be deemed necessary for the ends of justice." 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 95 
 
 technical nature, the judges are assisted by assessors 
 who havre a full knowledge of such details, and whose 
 position would ensure to their opinions and advice 
 the weight that those opinions would deserve. As 
 yet we have had only one specimen o£ the working 
 of the Court, but if the recent judgment may be 
 accepted as a sample of those which may follow it — 
 lucidity, force, and transparent impartiality, will be 
 the characteristics of the judgments of that Final 
 Court of Appeal, which party spirit and disloyalty is 
 now doing its best to denounce and to vilify. 
 
 Our subject has now come to its close. It 
 remains only for me to add a few parting sentences 
 of counsel and of solemn entreaty, which such times 
 as the present seem to render more than usually 
 necessary and appropriate. 
 
 If, my dear friends, the general account of the 
 origin and. changes of the highest Court of Appeal 
 in matters ecclesiastical has been truly stated in the 
 brief narrative which has been submitted to you — if 
 the principles out of which the Court has emerged 
 are a very part and portion of our long-continued 
 union of Chui'ch and State — if the existence of such 
 a Court is a legitimate consequence of that supremacy 
 of the Crown which is the foundation of our national 
 independence and of our true Christian liberty — if 
 this be so, let us beware that we are not led away by 
 the dangerous and really unreasoning clamour of 
 those who, however sincere may be their intentions. 
 
96 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 are fast passing over to the worst and most determined 
 opponents of the National Church. To refuse 
 obedience to the laws of this Church and realm, to 
 set aside rightful authority except where it may be 
 accordant with our own predilections, to deny that the 
 Churchman is morally or spiritually bound by the 
 decisions of equitable and lawfully constituted Courts, 
 and to yield allegiance only to that which (to use the 
 words of some of these writers) we ourselves hold to 
 be sacred — this verily is to join the cause of Dis- 
 establishment, and to aid, powerfully and effectually, 
 the designs of those to whom the very name of a 
 Church is an offence and a stumbling-block. If 
 obedience be not rendered to our Courts, but only to 
 that which we ourselves or the clique to which we 
 may belong may assert to be binding and obligatory 
 — then verily the end will have come. The holy 
 bonds which unite the Church and the State, now 
 sorely strained, will at length be broken, and ecclesi- 
 astical lawlessness will have wrought out that which 
 sectarian opposition and political dissent never could 
 have effected if left unaided, and for which the open 
 foe would have laboured hopelessly aud in vain. 
 
 But this will not be. No, my dear friends, when 
 I look round at a meeting such as the present, and 
 see, as I now see, faithful and lo^al and earnest men 
 gathered round their Bishop, and know, as I do 
 know, that this is a sample of what may be seen in 
 every diocese in the kingdom, all anxiety and fore- 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 97 
 
 boding seem at once to pass away. Troubles may be 
 before us ; trials may await us. There may be deep 
 shadows through which the Church of our fathers 
 may have to pass, but with faithful and devoted 
 presbyters and — may I not say so? — an Episcopate 
 trying to emulate them in earnestness and in labours 
 for a dear and coming Lord — with all these things 
 for us, it would be faithless indeed to doubt the 
 issue. 
 
 Trials and shadows there may be and will be, but 
 beyond them is hope and light, and the brightness of 
 the long looked for day. 
 
 a 
 
THE LIVING VOICE OF THE CHUECH. 
 
 G 2 
 
THE LIVING VOICE OE THE CHUECH. 
 
 [Belivered at Swindon, October 31st, 1877.] 
 
 The subject which the general course of the 
 argument in the present Charge now brings before 
 us is one of great importance, and of great present 
 interest. In the preceding Addresses I have spoken 
 of the Church in her relation to the Royal Supremacy, 
 and in her relations to the Courts; I have now, in the 
 third place, to speak of the Church as having a living 
 voice, and yet, as it is alleged, not free, fully and 
 effectually to utter that voice in reference to the 
 settlement of existing controversies. 
 
 We have, in fact, to consider the Church in her 
 relation to those means and institutions by which her 
 voice is commonly and constitutionally expressed — 
 the Convocations of our two Provinces. This will be 
 the general subject of the present Address. 
 
 We have already seen how existing lawlessness has 
 attempted to justify itself in reference to the Royal 
 Supremacy and the Courts of this land, especially the 
 
102 
 
 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 highest Court of Appeal. This we have seen and 
 considered ; we have now to consider the terms under 
 which this same spirit of lawlessness justifies its 
 so-called " meritorious resistance " to existing law ; 
 from the present circumstances and position of the 
 Synods of the Church of England. The general plea, 
 as we have stated elsewhere, may be expressed in the 
 following terms — 
 
 " The living voice of the Church, now silenced, is 
 that alone to which, in matters ecclesiastical, obe- 
 dience can be properly and cheerfully rendered." 
 
 This position it may now be well for us to subject 
 to a full and careful consideration, with the view of 
 realising what we really understand to be the living 
 voice of the Church, — to what extent it can bj 
 considered as silenced, — and what changes can be 
 constitutional!}' introduced by which the voice may be 
 more clearly and authoritatively proclaimed. These 
 seem to be the three broad questions which connect 
 themselves with the general subject of this present 
 Address. 
 
 I. — In regard of the first question, what we are to 
 understand by the living voice of the Church — the 
 answer is not by any means easy to formulate. The 
 living voice of the Church may be regarded by some 
 as that sort of generally concordant utterance which 
 occasionally makes itself heard through local con- 
 ferences, sjTiods, and collective meetings of clergy 
 and laity, and sometimes also widely signed decla- 
 
The Church, of Emjland. lO-'i 
 
 rations and memorials. It might, for instance, be 
 said, and not wholly without truth, that to a very 
 considerable extent the voice of the Church, or, at the 
 very least, of a large portion o£ the Church, was 
 heard three or four years ago in reference to the 
 Athanasian Creed. It could also be said that only a 
 few months ago the voice of probably by far the 
 greater portion of the clergy was heard in reference 
 to the Burial Question, and that this, so far as it 
 went, was the living voice of the greater portion of 
 one of the two constituent parts of the Church. It 
 is obvious, however, that all such utterances of 
 the living voice are but partial, informal, and in no 
 sense whatever having anything of a representative 
 character. They are expressions of the general public 
 feeling and opinion of large portions of the Church, 
 often profitably made public, often suggestive, occa- 
 sionally even monitory, but still nothing like what we 
 can in any way truly speak of as ''the voice of the 
 Church." Others might feel disposed to apply the term 
 to formal expressions of sentiment on the part of the 
 imited Episcopate, as for instance, the Pastoral Letter 
 of two or three years ago, or expressions of collective 
 opinion and judgment which have similarly, from 
 time to time, been made public in the Church. These, 
 liowever, though carrying with them a certain amount 
 of moral weight, cannot be spoken of as the voice of 
 the Church. The episcopate in the Church of 
 England does not occupy the position of the epis- 
 
104 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 copate of the Church of Rome, as the exponent and 
 representative of the Church.* Its voice is but 
 that of the rulers of the Church, a voice grave, 
 and morally authoritative, but still by no means 
 to be considered the living voice of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 We are only left, then, with Convocation ; and 
 though it may be said, and truly said, that Convoca- 
 tion cannot be considered adequately to represent the 
 Church of England in its present complex condition, 
 yet Convocation is an ancient and constitutional body 
 canonically defined to be the Church of England by 
 representation, and so far really representing the 
 general sentiments of the majority as to deserve to 
 be considered the organ by which 'the living voice is 
 heard and promulgated. When we speak, then, of the 
 living voice of the Church, we must be understood 
 for the most part to have Convocation in our 
 thoughts ; and we must be supposed to imply that 
 really, though Convocation is only a clerical body, and 
 elected by members of that body, still its voice is the 
 only voice which can be constitutionally regarded as 
 that living utterance, to which it is now said — if 
 
 • See Moliler, Symbolism, § 43, p. 299 et seq. (Transl.) 
 Tlie words of this able writer as to tlie spiritual weight that 
 is to be assigned to the linng voice of the episcopate wheu 
 united with their head are very distinct. " The dogmatic decrees 
 of the episcopate (united with the general head and centre) 
 are infaUible." P. 302 (Transl.). 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 105 
 
 properly uttered and promulgated — obedience would 
 be at once readily given. 
 
 How far tbis last avowal would be verified in the 
 sequel, may, we fear, very reasonably be doubted. 
 When, very recently, what really would seem to be 
 the mind and utterance of the Convocations of both 
 provinces were brought to bear upon an individual 
 case, obedience, as we may remember, was declined, 
 because the living voice had not received that 
 external authorisation on the side of the State which 
 was necessary to give it technical and legal validity.* 
 In other words, disobedience was so utterly wilful 
 and hyper-Erastian, that it declined to yield to the 
 moral force of the living voice of the Church, unless 
 that living voice could be proved to have been 
 ratified by the State. So utterly do extremes meet. 
 
 Be this, however, as it may, we may, for our 
 present purpose, consider our first question as an- 
 swered, and agree to understand by the term " the 
 living voice of the Church," the formal and 
 authoritative utterances of our Church as formulated 
 and expressed by Convocation. 
 
 In coming, however, to this agreement, it seems 
 right to guard ourselves by saying that we do not 
 commit ourselves to the assertion that this is 
 
 * A correspondence between the Archbishop of Canter- 
 hm-y and a clergyman of the Diocese of Kochester 
 ilhistrating these statements will be found in the Guardian 
 for July 18, 1877. 
 
106 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 necessarily to be considered an adequate expression 
 of the living voice of the Church (for the Church 
 consists of the laity as well as the clergy), but 
 simply that, as we are now circumstanced, it is the 
 only definite meaning that we are able to assign to 
 the words. 
 
 II. — We now pass to the more difficult question, 
 how far the current allegation is true — that this living 
 voice of the Church is in any sense silenced, or to 
 take an expression used by one in high position in 
 the Church, that Convocation is "half- muzzled," as 
 well as uu-reformed and antiquated.* Is it so ? 
 The answer of course must be, that if we are to 
 regard the living voice of the Church as in other 
 words the voice of Convocation we cannot possibly 
 deny these two positions — First, that the voice 
 cannot be uttered at all unless Convocation be 
 summoned ; and. Secondly, that the power of 
 summoning Convocation can now no longer be 
 exercised by the Archbishop without the consent of 
 the Crown. This power, though actually stated by 
 the clergy, at tlie critical period in the reign of 
 Henry YIII., to have alwa)-s depended upon the 
 Crown f does really appear to have been possessed by 
 
 * The expression referred to will be found in a letter of the 
 Bishop of Salisbury to tlie Archdeacons of Sarum and Wells 
 that appeared iti some of the Church newspapers. The letter 
 is dated April 21, 1877. 
 
 t The form in which this statement is made was presented 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 107 
 
 the ArcliLishop prior to the Act of Suhmission. Tlie 
 King's writ originally had reference to the taxation of 
 the clergy, and to the supplies that were demanded ; 
 but it would o£ course often happen that the body 
 when assembled would use the opportunity for the 
 transaction of other business than that merely relating 
 to the share of the clergy in the taxation of the 
 country. Hence some confusion appears to have 
 arisen as to the summoning authority — but that it 
 was 2>ossessed in regard of matters ecclesiastical by 
 the Archbishop of the province, and was not un- 
 frequently exei'cised by him, seems beyond reasonable 
 doubt. This power at any rate has now been taken 
 away. Convocation cannot now assemble, for the 
 general purposes of conference and deliberation, 
 without the consent of the Crown. If that con- 
 ference or deliberation has the further purpose of 
 formulating any new rules or canons, then the general 
 consent is not sufficient. There must then further be 
 obtained the assent or license of the Crown for such 
 special form of conference, and when the conference 
 is concluded, and the rule or canon agreed upon, it 
 still cannot be executed except the royal assent has 
 been first obtained ; and even then, the act of Con- 
 vocation cannot be carried into effect unless it be also 
 made clear that it is not against the prerogative of 
 
 to the king May 16, 1532. The exact ivords will be found in 
 Wilkius, Concilia, Vol. iii., p. 754, and in Cardwell, Synodalia, 
 Vol. i., pp. V. and vi. Introd. 
 
108 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 the Sovereign, nor against the common law, statute 
 law, nor any custom of the realm. 
 
 Much of this any one who will simply take 
 into his hand the Book of Common Prayer, 
 and carefully read the Declaration prefixed to the 
 Articles of Religion, may readily substantiate and 
 verify. 
 
 Such, in general terms, is the position and 
 authority of Convocation ; such the limitations to the 
 living voice of the Church. Silenced it is not ; but 
 silenced it may be. For one hundred and twenty 
 years or more Convocation, as we well know, was 
 never summoned ; and though we may perhaps feel 
 and even admit that, under the circumstances, it 
 really was in the interests of religion that Convo- 
 cation was not then permitted to meet, yet the fact 
 remains that during all that time the Church of 
 England had no living voice except so far as it might 
 be uttered by the individual or collective members of 
 the Episcopate. The living voice was silenced ; and 
 what has taken place once may of course happen 
 again; though it may be fairly added that, in the 
 temper of the present times, no responsible minister 
 of the Crown would ever be likely to advise so pre- 
 carious a step as that of refusing the consent of the 
 Sovereign to the assembling of Convocation. Still, it 
 cannot possibly be denied that the power of refusal 
 exists, and that in forming any true estimate of the 
 real position of the Church in regard of the utterance 
 
The ChurcJi of England. ] 09 
 
 o£ its living voice, this certainly cannot be dismissed 
 from consideration. 
 
 We seem^ then, forced to admit that thoug-h the 
 term is not very happily chosen, or very compli- 
 mentary to the venerable body to which it is applied. 
 Convocation certainly is ''half-muzzled/' and that 
 if there is to be that resort to the legislative power of 
 the Church which some have deemed to be the only 
 true remedy for existing ditRculties, license must be 
 obtained from the Crown to enter into the questions 
 proposed to be dealt with, authority from the Crown 
 to promulgate them, and especially care taken that 
 none be made contrary to the laws and customs of the 
 land. If recommendations be made that involve 
 alteration in existing law or in the final and autho- 
 ritative interpretations of it, then it is obvious that 
 recourse must be had to that body by which the law 
 was enacted, and that without the legislative sanction 
 of that body no possible alteration can be made. 
 
 This is and must be the plain admission of good 
 sense and of any fairly made legal and historical 
 retrospect; and this, if we would loyally and honestly 
 deal with our existing difficulties, must be borne dis- 
 tinctly in mind, recognised, accepted, and acted upon. 
 Plalf to veil over our real position, or, what is equiva- 
 lent to the same thing, to encourage by vague or 
 reckless proposals adjustments which ignore the con- 
 stitutional conditions of the present union of Church 
 and State, cannot be too strongly or emphatically 
 
110 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 condemned. Our wisdom now is to realise the true 
 circumstances under which the Church of England 
 has passed into its existing relations with the realm 
 and nation^ and not to commit ourselves to vague 
 plans or proposals of change until these circumstances 
 have been fully and wisely considered. There are, 
 indeed, only two possible courses that appear to be 
 open to us — ^either to accept, as heretofore, vdth all 
 its consequences, the Act of Submission, and to con- 
 tent ourselves with those changes and developments 
 which are legally compatible with the principles on 
 which the Act was based, or frankly to break with 
 it, and to purchase freedom at the cost of disestablish- 
 ment, and of such an amount of disendowment as 
 disestablishment may be found to bring with it. 
 These really are the two alternatives — a modus vicetuU 
 under existing relations, or a movement like that 
 which founded the Free Church of Scotland. If the 
 bondage of the State is intolerable, break with it; if, 
 whatever it may be in theory, it is not found to be so 
 in practice, and, in the present state of public opinion 
 never likely to become so, then accept the present 
 state of things as historical, and even as providential, 
 and use the great influence which the Church of 
 England enjoys from its union with the State in the 
 diffusion of true religion in this realm and in the 
 furtherance of the kingdom of Christ. This is 
 Christian common-sense ; but to attempt to carry out 
 that third course which so many, under the most in- 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 Ill 
 
 appropriate names, such as " constitutional liberty/' 
 and so forth, are now advocating — to suppose for one 
 moment that any parliament of this countiy would 
 agree to or connive at any real or tacit abrogation of 
 the principles of the Act of Submission, or would 
 give to Convocation any greater freedom than it now 
 possesses — is simply to indulge in dreams that can 
 never be realised, and to sacrifice the present great 
 powers of Christian usefulness which, thank God, our 
 Church now possesses and puts in action, for priestly 
 theories which the Church and Nation have always 
 protested against or repudiated. Eut, alas ! party 
 spirit seems now to be impervious to sober historical 
 reasoning, and to be fast becomiHg more and moie 
 blind to the signs of the times, and to the inevitable 
 issues to which what is now called "meritorious 
 resistance" is rapidly and even precipitately leading 
 all who are committed to it. 
 
 III. — But to return to that which more ^particularly 
 forms the subject-matter of this Address — the living 
 voice of the Church, and the power which the Church 
 possesses of making that voice heard — we may now, 
 apparently with correctness, say that the living voice 
 must be understood to be the voice of Convocation, 
 and that this living voice can only bo authoritatively 
 uttered under certain conditions. Two reasonable 
 questions, however, obviously emerge — First, can we 
 alter the conditions ? Secondly, if we have no hope 
 of doing this, can we make Convocation more 
 
112 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 thoroughly representative, so that whenever Con- 
 vocation does utter its voice, it will be with more 
 force and effect, and with a much better chance of 
 being loyally attended to ? The answer to the first 
 question has in effect been given already — that there 
 is no likelihood whatever that these conditions will be 
 altered, or that the Act of Parliament on which they 
 depend will be amended or modified. If alteration 
 does take place, it will be that necessary and practical 
 alteration which follows when existing relations 
 between the Church and the State are rescinded, and 
 the present union dissolved — an alteration total and 
 fundamental. There will be no other alteration. It is 
 just possible that a power might be conceded by which 
 the living voice might enunciate its bj-e-laws, subject 
 only to the veto of Parliament,* — but the assumptive 
 tone that has of late been adopted by writers who 
 may be considered to represent the higher stratum 
 of Church opinion seems to have rendered any such 
 concession on the part of the State considerably less 
 likely than it was two or three. years ago. INIoderate 
 men, who might then have felt favourably disposed to 
 
 * It will be rememl)ered that a Bill to tliis effect was laid 
 on the table of the House of Lords by the Bishop of London 
 three years ago. The Archbishop of Canterbury [Letter to 
 Canon Carter, p. 26, London, 1S77) says that nothing but good 
 could result from a full and fair consideration of the advan- 
 tages or disadvantages of such a reform. It may be shrewdly 
 doubted, however, whether the matter would ever proceed 
 further than consideration. 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 113 
 
 sufli au enlargement of our present adjustments, 
 would probably now feel that any snch solution of the 
 problem would only lead to further assumptions, 
 further complications, and that final separation of 
 the union of Church and State which is always 
 looming in the distance. 
 
 But if we must answer the first question in the 
 negative, it by no means follows that we must do the 
 same in regard of the second. There is really no 
 reason why Convocation should not be made more 
 thoroughly representative; there are no just grounds 
 for refusing, at any rate, to consider some of the 
 proposals — not for the reform of Convocation, for 
 reform is perhaps not a word very happily chosen, but 
 for such an expansion and enlargement as would make 
 it more completely represent all parties and all rea- 
 sonable shades of opinions within the now inclusive 
 area of the National Church. But here we must have 
 no chimerical theories, no mere ventilation of schemes 
 for the sake of discussion, but sober, well-considered, 
 and — so far as we can judge — workable proposals 
 and suggestions. Now really I only know one such, 
 and that is a moderate enlargement of the number of 
 proctors for each Diocese, and, with it, the extension of 
 the suffrage to all licensed curates who are practically 
 in the position of incumbents, that is, who are 
 holding sole-charge curacies. If we add to this a 
 provision in all cases for a minority vote, so that the 
 two parties in a Diocese should each obtain representa- 
 
114 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 tion in the central body, we have before us all the 
 change that seems needed or desirable. Preparations 
 have been made for this ; the opinion of Convocation 
 has been taken on the subject; schemes for the 
 enlargement of the number of proctors in the 
 different dioceses have been drawn up, discussed, and 
 agreed upon. Everything is ready; and nothing 
 that I know of remains, except to give it effect. 
 This, after careful consideration, I now feel must be 
 done by the Archbishop, and by virtue of that 
 inherent power of summoning, when duly authorised 
 by the Crown, the clergy of his province, or a due 
 representation of them, which is a part of, and one of 
 the pierogatives of his office. If, upon the subdivision 
 of a Diocese, the Archbishop is within his rights in 
 directing two new proctors to be elected for the new 
 Diocese, he must certainly be deemed also within his 
 rights when, for any given ecclesiastical area, he 
 summons, in accordance with the will and desire of 
 both Houses of Convocation, such an additional num- 
 ber of proctors as will ensure to the clergy of the 
 given area a more adequate representation. To refer 
 such a question as this to the law officers of the Crown 
 is to invite complications. In a body so ancient as 
 Convocation, and under such subordination as it is 
 and ever has been to its president, even the best con- 
 stitutional lawyer in the kingdom might find the 
 greatest difficulty in defining the extent of the 
 Archbishop's prerogative as regards his right of 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 115 
 
 summoning' to the Synod, or of prescribing the mode 
 of election — and in all such cases we know well what 
 the answer of the legal adviser will be, and have 
 learnt that the responsibility of action must be taken 
 by the person presumed to have the power of taking 
 it, and the real need boldly dealt with and adjusted. 
 I sincerely trust that when a new parliament as- 
 sembles, an enlarged and more adequate representation 
 of the clergy will he summoned by the Archbishop 
 of the province.* 
 
 There are, as we know, two other schemes for 
 providing for a fuller utterance of the living voice 
 of the Church — the one to admit laymen into Con- 
 vocation, the other to secure the services of a consul- 
 tative body of laymen outside of Convocation, with 
 whom, in some way, not very clearly defined, Con- 
 vocation is to take counsel and to co-operate. Both 
 
 * Tlie greater part of the proposals liere specified receive, 
 I am glad to say, tlie support of the Prolocutor of the Lower 
 House of Couvocation, as expressed in a clear aud sensible 
 jjamphlet recently published, entitled, The Reform of 
 Convocation (Riviugtons, Loudon, 1877). The pamphlet 
 was published subsequently to the delivery of this Address, 
 but the substance of it was spoken prior to it. The two ex- 
 pressions of opinion are thus perfectly independent of eaeli 
 other. The diiferences between us seem to be very .slight. 
 The Prolocutor is not favourable to the admission of any 
 stipendiary curates, aud the subject of a minority vote (a very 
 important matter) he leaves, I think, unnoticed. In all 
 respects I am rejoiced to find myself at one with so important 
 au authority. 
 H 2 
 
116 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 these schemes have been proposed by persons high 
 in autliority in the Church, and, being so proposed, 
 may claim two or three closing sentences. But two 
 or three sentences seem enough. Tn the first place, 
 such a constitutional change as the first or even the 
 second — if the consultative body was to enjoy any 
 constitutional form of existence — would necessitate 
 an appeal to Parliament, than which nothing could 
 be more unwise or undesirable. In the second place, 
 if the consent of Parliament was obtained, and either 
 of such schemes were formally carried out, some other 
 name would have to be invented for the hybrid body 
 thus called into existence, or for the clerical body 
 thus associated with another body beyond its walls; 
 the ancient and constitutional body now known by 
 the name of Convocation would have really ceased to 
 exist. In the third place, collision with Parliament 
 would be inevitable, and the final issue would be 
 certain. All such schemes could have only one issue, 
 and that issue would be disestablishment. 
 
 Finally, then, if such be a fair statement of our 
 difficulties in reference to this living voice of the 
 Church, in regard of which we now hear so many 
 unprofitable and revolutionary comments, is it not 
 plainly our wisdom to bear with the ills, if ills they 
 be, which we know, than to plunge restlessly into 
 new adjustments which, so far as we can judge, 
 would make our present ills inconceivably worse? 
 It may be quite true that in the matters we have 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 J17 
 
 been discussing the Church of England is not fully 
 free, perhaps not as free as she was designed to be 
 when the memorable clause in IVIagna Charta was 
 written ; it may be that her living voice cannot 
 always be as authoritatively heard as many of her 
 loyal children might desire, still our present position 
 is neither hopeless nor discouraging. A little wisdom 
 and forbearance, a few possible and obvious adjust- 
 ments, a calm and unassumptive maintenance of 
 ancient and statutable rights, and, above all things, 
 a true and luj al obedience to the laws of this Church 
 and llealni, and all will yet be well. Even within this 
 last year I see slight changes for the better, some- 
 what more reasonableness, and a growing persuasion 
 that we have had a great deal too much of indivi- 
 dual self-assertion, anarchy, and disloyalty. This 
 persuasion will increase. The utterly unreasonable 
 will part from us. Those whose heart is elsewhere 
 will go elsewhere. The Church of England, purified 
 and strengthened, will carry out with greater earnest- 
 ness her mighty mission, and will more faithfully 
 and devotedly prepare her children for the coming 
 of her Lord. 
 
EEMEDIAL COUNSELS. 
 
EEMEDIAL COUNSELS. 
 
 [Delivered at Chipping Soclbury, November 2nd, 1877.] 
 
 T HAVE now come to the last of a present series of 
 addresses on the existing relations of Church and 
 State. In those which have preceded I have 
 endeavoured to set plainly forward the special dangers 
 which, at the present time, appear to threaten the 
 well-being and even permanence o£ the National 
 Church. I have spoken generally, and I have also 
 spoken more particularly, with reference to Confession, 
 the Relations of the Church to the Crown and the 
 State, the authority of the Courts, the utterance of 
 the living voice of the Church, and now, lastly, I come 
 to that which seems to form the natural epilogue — a 
 brief consideration of such counsels and remedial 
 proposals as the tenor of the foregoing Addresses 
 may seem more particularly to suggest. And these 
 it shall be my care to set before you on the present 
 occasion. 
 
 Such considerations are useful at all times, but 
 never more so than when, as at the present time, there 
 seems a sort of pause and breathing-space, a brief 
 
122 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 period during- which both of the great parties in the 
 Church seem disposed to reconsider their antagonisms, 
 and to endeavour to find out whether a modus vivendi 
 is possible for us all in the Church of England, or 
 whether our lot is always to be friction, disquietude, 
 and conflict. Such a time it is always wise to make 
 as far as we can our own : such an ojiportunity, to 
 use the words of an apostle, it is well indeed for us 
 " to buy up." The days are evil, the present is 
 marked by anxiety, the future is clouded ; now, if 
 ever, a few thoughts on our future course, whether as 
 individuals or as members of the National Church, 
 seem especially seasonable. 
 
 One principle, however, let us agree to prescribe 
 to ourselves at the very outset, and that is to use, as 
 far as (jod may help us, our Christian common-sense 
 in estimating and providing against the difficulties 
 and dangers of our present times. One of our most 
 fruitful sources of trouble is the unreasoning and 
 unreasonable spirit in which present controversies are 
 estimated or discussed. The position on either side 
 is utterly exaggerated ; and difficulties, often of a 
 very serious and menacing character, are created by 
 the disputants, which a little good-humour and com- 
 mon-sense would have very easily left in a state of 
 abeyance. The plain truth is on the surface, and has 
 been many times illustrated in the foregoing Ad- 
 dresses — viz., that the Church of England, owing to 
 its antiquity, and its varied and eventful history, is 
 
The Church of England. 12.'5 
 
 in very complex relations with the State, some of 
 which, if regarded in the abstract, and considered 
 apart from their practical workings, may be deemed 
 to be inconsistent with that theoretical freedom which 
 many may not hesitate to claim for a local branch of 
 the universal Church of Christ. If it had that 
 freedom, however, it would certainly cease to continue 
 the National Church; and that, not because these 
 days of ours are more particularly revolutionary than 
 others that have gone by, or because the rulers of the 
 Church are more Erastian than has been the case in 
 former periods of our history, but because the adjust- 
 ments made at the time of the Reformation have 
 involved a subordination to the Crown which, from 
 various reasons, has ever been jealously maintainetl 
 by the kingdom and nation. The memories of old 
 usurpations and galling rapacities, of humiliations 
 and confusions, of arrogant claims and irritating- 
 corruptions, are all mixed up with the general main- 
 tenance of the principle of the Royal Supremacy, and 
 there is no period in our history since that Supremacy 
 became legally defined, when it could have been 
 tampered with or practically disregarded without 
 imminent danger to the union of the Church and the 
 State. The feeling in the country and in the nation 
 is just as strong as it ever was, not more strong or 
 less strong, because this is one of those hereditary 
 feelings and instincts which remain unchangeable and 
 unchanged, and will remain so to the very end. The 
 
121 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 astounding' delusion of those who can bring them- 
 selves to suppose that this nation will bend itself 
 again to any priestly domination, or, like the Galatian 
 Church, will show an inclination to return to a former 
 yoke of bondage, is one of the many instances sup- 
 plied by our own times that men, really otherwise 
 reasonable and intelligent, can be brought by party 
 spirit or sacerdotal appetences to believe that which 
 every page of the history of their country protests 
 against and denies. Whatever may be our private 
 longings or our ecclesiastical idealisms, this much is 
 certain — that the existence of the Church of England 
 as a National Church is involved in the maintenance 
 of the Royal Supremacy. To many this may be far 
 from a palatable statement ; some ears when they 
 hear it may tingle ; but this is historically true, and 
 as politically certain as any one of those broad 
 principles of our constitution which we may most 
 properly characterise as primary, fundamental, and 
 unchangeable. It was with perfect truth that one of 
 our greatest living historians said publicly, three or 
 four weeks ago, that the real question was, " Is the 
 Queen the supreme governor of the Church of Eng- 
 land or not?"* Those, he added, who wished it to 
 be otherwise, and to get rid of the Queen's supremacy, 
 had only one way open to them by which they could 
 
 * Tlie words are taken from a newspaper report of the 
 speech of Mr. E. A. Freeman at a Diocesan Conference in 
 Bath in the early part of October. 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 effect their purposes, and that was by disestablishment. 
 And what the historian thvis says on the one side, 
 every really consistent and logical writer of the 
 extreme Hig-h Church party urges on the other. One 
 of these writers, and not the least distinguished 
 among his party for candour and historical perspicuity, 
 has frankly called upon every English Churchman 
 who would desire to be faithful to the Lord Jesus 
 Christ to re-assert the Churches essential freedom. 
 And this the writer most truly says " can only be 
 done by repudiating the Royal Supremacy, at what- 
 ever cost of temporal loss and suffering."* 
 
 This is plain and intelligible language ; and how- 
 ever much we may dissent from it, to be honoured for 
 its straightforwardness. Our shame and misfortune is 
 that we have so little of it, and that men who 
 entertain the strongest and most Ultramontane 
 views as to the freedom of the Church of England 
 — views every whit as strong as those of the writer 
 to whom I have just referred — have not either 
 the courage or the honesty to indicate the con- 
 
 * Mossman, Freedom for the Church of God, p. 21, 22 
 (Hayes, Lond., 1876). The great merit of this writer is that 
 he sees clearly and states candidly what his advice involves. 
 "If," he says, "High Churchmen are persuaded tliat tlie 
 Royal Supremacy is not conducive to the glory of God and 
 the good of souls, then in God's name, and for Christ's sake, 
 let us sweep it away for ever from that Church of England, 
 our spiritual mother, which it has degraded and enslaved, 
 gladly paying the price which must be paid for its accomplish- 
 ment — the price of Disestablishment." (P. 30.) 
 
VZ6 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 sequences to which those views naturally lead, and 
 the issues which they will certainly be found to 
 involve. Our bane is the persistent inculcation 
 of extreme opinions in regard of the relation of the 
 Church to the State by men of high character, and 
 the complete suppression of any hint of what must in- 
 evitably follow if those opinions obtain any prevalence 
 in the Church. The greater part of the disquietude, 
 assumption, and self-will that are now disclosing 
 themselves on every side may fairly be referred to 
 writers of this school. Young men utterly ignorant 
 of history are stimulated into the belief that we are 
 languishing in a state of cruel bondage to the State; 
 that the iron of tyranny, on the part of the 
 Parliament or the Government of the coimtry, is 
 entering into our soul; and that all who doubt or 
 deny the truth of such a state of things are either 
 unconscious or wilful Erastians. 
 
 This foolish and dangerous mode of writing 
 cannot be too strongly denounced. These unhistorical 
 dreams of what some of these writers designate as 
 " constitutional liberty," but which really means and 
 implies disestablishment, cannot be too promptly 
 dissipated. The language, too, that they frequently 
 allow themselves to use cannot be too severely 
 censured. And this language, be it observed, is not 
 merely found in the castaway letters that figure in 
 the columns of party newspapers, or in the childishly 
 passionate language that is heard on ritualistic 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 platforms, but is unfortunately often found on pag-es 
 that have otherwise much to commend them, and are 
 often marked by vigour and ability. For example, 
 in a carefully-written pamphlet that was sent me a 
 mouth ago upon the rights of such as those to whom 
 I am now addressing myself, I found, amid much 
 that was interesting and instructive, much that was 
 learned and elaborate, the following statement of our 
 present position and our duty : " AVe owe it," this 
 writer said, " to the State no longer to connive at its 
 sacrilegious and unconstitutional intermeddling in 
 spiritual affairs."* " Sacrilegious ? " Now really, if 
 words are to be considered to have any meaning at 
 all, it would be scarcely possible to use any one word 
 that could be less fairly applied to the State of which 
 we are all citizens, or which, at the same time, was 
 unhappily better calculated to stimulate the prejudices 
 and passions of the younger members of the extreme 
 party. And this is but one of countless passages 
 that could be cited from the pages of respectable 
 
 * Pullor, Tlie Duties and BigJds of Parish Priests, p. 
 37 (Riviugtons, Lond., 1877). The geucral spirit of this 
 writer may be inferred from the following sentence : " It is to 
 be hoped that the firmness of Convocation will make the day 
 far distant when our Primitive and Catholic x^^rty shall be 
 marred and thrown into confusion by the setting up within 
 our borders of an arbitrary Episcopal tyranny, feebly copied 
 from the revolutionary proceedings of Ultramontanism" 
 (p. 51). As we read such a sentence as this at the present time 
 we smile at its unconscious humour. 
 
128 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 writers, men to whom we might rightly look in our 
 present difficulties and emergencies for wise and 
 sedative counsels, but who unhappily seem all carried 
 away in one common tide of reckless rhetoric and 
 exaggeration. 
 
 It is perfectly true, as we have already said, 
 that there arc many anomalies in the present re- 
 lations of the Church and the State, many things 
 that may involve theoretical difficulties, some things 
 even — such, for example, as the power of refusing to 
 allow the Convocations to meet — which, if put in force, 
 might gravely interfere with the well-being of the 
 Church of this land ; but if so, what is the course of 
 loyalty, prudence, and charity? To exaggerate and 
 to intensify, or to adjust and to minimise? The 
 real and practical truth is, that, in the working of 
 the complex machine, these difficulties widely dis- 
 appear ; some friction may exist, but it is capable of 
 being reduced nearly to a minimum. The observance 
 of a very few conciliatory principles, — the equitable 
 recognition, on the part of the State, of those rights 
 which essentially belong to a Christian Church, and, 
 conversely, the recognition on the part of the Church 
 of that prerogative which, as our Article truly and 
 wisely says, has " always been given to all godly 
 princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself," — this, 
 together with a little charity and a little Christian 
 common-sense, may yet save us from those disastrous 
 issues to which self-will and priestly assumption are 
 
The CJiurch of Enrjlnnd. 
 
 129 
 
 now rapidl}' hunying' us. There is yet time; there 
 is just at present a transitory hill in the pitiful strife 
 in which for years we have heen involved ; there is 
 just an opportunity left for a calm consideration of a 
 few broad principles of inter-action between the Church 
 and the State^ and a few adjustments of our present 
 complicated relations. This time and opportunity 
 there is ; but it is a time and opportunity which may 
 very soon pass away, and if it does pass away — this 
 may be pronounced as inexorably certain — it will 
 nevermore return. The machinery is very complex. 
 A little oil now, and the working may continue for a 
 time, extending far, far into the future; a little more 
 friction and the already impeded action will stop, and 
 then the only course" that will be adopted will be not 
 readjustment but reconstruction, and all things that 
 reconsti-uction may involve. 
 
 If this be so, can we do better than employ the 
 remaining time in conferring together on those prin- 
 ciples, whether of modified action or of agreement 
 and mutual understanding, which must now be 
 faithfully and consistently observed if our Church is 
 really to remain the Church of this kingdom and 
 nation ? In doing this, however, let us be careful only 
 to discuss such principles or adjustments as are clearly 
 compatible with the existing laws of the Church and 
 the realm. Of all the many evils of our own times, 
 none really is greater than the constant circulation of 
 proposals all more or less inconsistent with the present 
 I 
 
130 
 
 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 relations of Church and State by persons who are not 
 qualified, either by experience or practical knowledge, 
 to give us available counsel at the present critical 
 time. Proposals that may be very suitable for parishes 
 are confidently set forth as the bases for amateur pro- 
 ceedings in reference to Parliament and Convocation, 
 that bear on their very face their own inappropriate- 
 ness. The Church is kept in disquietude and suspense, 
 and the action of those who are really responsible 
 for the government of the Church is unprofitably 
 hindered. Church difficulties, as they are called, will 
 never be removed by the self-confident plans that 
 unhappily are now perpetually ventilated by well- 
 meaning but utterly inexperienced advisers. 
 
 Discarding, then, all chimerical schemes and pro- 
 posals, let us come to what is possible, practical, and 
 consistent with our own present complex relations of 
 Church and State. 
 
 Our first and immediate care should be such a 
 constitutional enlargement of Convocation as would 
 make it more fully represent the mind and feelings of 
 the Church of England of our own times. This I 
 feel persuaded may be safely and constitutionally 
 effected by the simple action of the Presidents of our 
 two Convocations. As I have already dwelt upon 
 this subject in the preceding Address, I will here 
 content myself simjjly with specifj'ing it as the first 
 and foremost step that must be taken in our progress 
 to a better state of things. 
 
The Church of England, 
 
 151 
 
 Having thus secured for the Church an adequately 
 expressive living voice, our next care must be that in 
 this free land it finds fair and free utterance. This 
 broad and certainly most reasonable principle can only 
 be secured — First, by giving all possible facility to the 
 regular summoning and meeting of Convocation, or, 
 in other words, by regarding on the one hand the 
 power of non-summoning as a power lying utterly in 
 abeyance, and, on the other hand, by treating Con- 
 vocation as the practically representative body of the 
 Church of England, which we do not doubt it will, 
 ere long, really and truly become. The action of 
 the Crown towards Convocation in past times, and 
 especially in imposing on it a silence of more than a 
 hundred years, may be far from what may commend 
 itself to our present judgments; the sort of mixed 
 feeling of suspicion and contempt with which it has 
 been regarded by many since its revival may be so 
 utterly undeserved as to provoke many a feeling and 
 expression of bitterness and hostility. These things, 
 however, must be forgotten if there is now to be any 
 real progress. B^-gones must be bygones. We must 
 look forward with good temper, as well as with hope- 
 fulness and confidence. Convocation, even in its 
 present state, has done much to secure the respect 
 of all sober and reasonable persons, and if it only 
 continues to act as it has hitherto acted it will have 
 no cause to fear that its voice will be treated other- 
 wise than with respectful attention. 
 
 I 2 
 
132 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 Eut to secure the full effects of this free utterance, 
 not only must Convocation be regularly and duly 
 summoned, but license must be given to it, freely and 
 unsuspectedly to deliberate with a view to framing 
 rulfcs, or introducing changes, afterwards to be em- 
 bodied in legislation. Of late letters patent have 
 been given and are now still in force in reference to 
 the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer ; several 
 proposals have taken their final shape, and em- 
 bodiment in an Act of the Legislature is probably not 
 far distant. This license to deliberate, with a view to 
 future legislation, must never be withheld when both 
 Houses of our Convocations, with a tolerable unan- 
 imity, formally apply for it. In plain words, the Act 
 of the Submission of the clergy must not be con- 
 verted into what it was never historically intended to 
 be, and tacitly used as an implement of unfair 
 suppression, and a yoke of unnecessary and un- 
 reasonable bondage. If we are to get on at all, there 
 must be, in this critical matter, bearing and forbearing 
 on both sides. 
 
 A third principle which may be enunciated in 
 reference to the future is this — that all proposals 
 affecting or relating to doctrine should be initiated by 
 Convocation. It would be monstrous, and contrary 
 to the spirit of some of our most authoritative docu- 
 ments, that it should be otherwise ; but as there have 
 been, even in recent times, some indications that this 
 obvious principle might be tampered with, it is quite 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 133 
 
 desirable that it should be hei-e specified as one of the 
 most necessary stipulations in any practical concordat 
 of the future. Convocation must be the initiatory 
 body. It will be for the Legislature ultimately to give 
 the authority of Law to that which Convocation has 
 initiated and formulated^ or, on the other hand, to 
 withhold it; but the first step must be taken by the 
 spiritualty, and any change in their proposals in 
 matters relating to doctrine, must never ultimately 
 become law without the approval of those from whom 
 the original proposals emanated. It would here be the 
 duty of the Crown, as Defender of the Faith, and 
 Supreme Governor of the Church, to interfere, and 
 withhold assent to any act of the Legislature which 
 sought to ignore these very rudimentary principles. 
 The language of the well-known statute for the 
 Restraint of Appeals may here certainly be appealed to 
 as vindicating to the full the position which we are here 
 specifying; nay, the very principle of common-sense — 
 H)iicuique in sua arte credcmlum — makes all further 
 argument unnecessary. 
 
 Thus far it has been easy to mark out our leading 
 principles. It becomes more difficult when we have 
 to settle on what principles legislation on the dis- 
 cipline of the Church should ultimately be adjusted. 
 Some, as we know, have proposed that some competent 
 body should have the power given to them of making 
 bye-laws for the ordinary regulation of the affairs of 
 the Church, on which Parliament should simply have 
 
1?54< Some Present Bangers of 
 
 a veto ; and we may remember that the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, in a recent letter, has said that nothing 
 but good could result from a full and fair consideration 
 of such a reform. This has been proposed ; but I am 
 persuaded, especially in the present temper of the 
 times, that Parliament would never pass the statute 
 by which such a procedure could be legalised. I can 
 therefore myself only see my way to a tacit recog- 
 nition of this reasonable principle — that nothing, in 
 reference to the discipline of the Church, should 
 receive the Royal assent which should be found to bo 
 in opposition to the formally expressed opinion of 
 both Houses of both Convocations. Where such a 
 very distinct dissent on the part of the whole Church 
 of England as represented by Convocation could be 
 shown to exist, there it would be something like 
 tyranny on the part of a lay parliament to clothe with 
 the force of law its own counter resolutions. Of 
 course we are here touching upon the most difficult 
 of all the questions we have been hitherto discussing ; 
 and it may be perhaps practically impossible to 
 formulate any very definite principles as to the 
 interaction of Parliament and Convocation in matters 
 affecting the ritual or discipline of the National 
 Church. Each body has its rights — the Clergy as 
 represented in Convocation, the laity as represented 
 by Parliament — and the technical adjustment of 
 these rights is no doubt, in the present composition 
 of Parliament, supremely difllcult. Still, even here, 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 135 
 
 we need not utterly despair. Some such principle as 
 that indicated must be practically recognised if 
 Church and State are to remain in union ; and some 
 such principle, I firmly believe, will be recognised, 
 and our insoluble problems will be solved, as they 
 often are solved in this country — amhulando, by 
 moving onward on a give-and-take system, and not 
 by pushing everything to its logical or theological 
 extremities. In a word, wo must learn to bear and 
 forbear ; and if it be true, as I believe it is true, that 
 our Church of England has a deep hold on the loyal 
 affections of the people, then we must put our trust 
 in those affections, and find in tl.em our ultimate 
 safeguards and the protective influence in regard 
 of our just rights and liberties. The Church of 
 England was never held in higher esteem than now, 
 and never more fully deserved it. To doubt, then, that 
 the same merciful God and Father who has vouchsafed 
 tons these blessings will also, in His boundless mercy, 
 vouchsafe to us that spirit of moderation and sobriety, 
 of obedience and charity, would be to doubt that He 
 who has begun a good work in this His Church 
 would also accomplish it for His dear Son's sake. 
 
 The future is certainly clouded, and the present 
 disquieting, still we may now see how comparatively 
 simple are the principles which, if generally followed, 
 will not only enable us to escape present dangers, but 
 will ensure a long future of peace, 'usefulness, and 
 Christian co-operation between clergy and laity. This, 
 
136 Some Present Dangers. 
 
 howevefj cannot and will not be^ unless a changed 
 spirit is shown by that party in the Church which 
 has been the cause of our troubles and anxieties. 
 Without obedience to the law^ and a readiness to 
 submit private predilections to the principles and 
 practice of our Reformed Church, and, where these 
 may not be clearly defined, to that living voice of our 
 spiritual rulers to which our Prayer Book bids us to 
 resort — without this there can be neither peace nor 
 progress, nor that growth in unity and love which is 
 the unfailing and unerring characteristic of a true and 
 a living Church, 
 
 Let us then, my dear friends, pray more and more 
 earnestly for peace and unity — and that "we may 
 henceforth be all of one heart, and of one soul, 
 united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith 
 and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth 
 glorify God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
UNCOEEUPT DOCTRINE. 
 
UNCOEKUET DOCTEINE. 
 
 \_Preached at Chippenham, Januarij Voth, 1878.] 
 
 " In doctriue, uncorruptnoss." — TlTUS ii. 7. 
 
 These few^ but most vitally important words, 
 may not unsuitably form the text of a sermon 
 delivered under the happy, yet responsible circum- 
 stances of our present meeting. Happy, indeed, 
 the circumstances are; for I come now among you, 
 dear brethren and friends, to celebrate the opening of 
 this fine and spacious parish church; to commemo- 
 rate the liberality, energy, and love for the reverent 
 worship of Almighty God which has animated all 
 those who have taken part in this great and good 
 workj and to pray, as I do with all my soul, that 
 this noble restoration may minister to the honour 
 and glory of God, and to the edification and devotion 
 of all who come to worship within these hallowed 
 walls. These great works for God's honour, these 
 united efforts to prepare for the coming of our King, 
 do verily gladden the heart, and make days such as 
 these days of true Christian rejoicing. 
 
 Most happy, tlien, are the present circumstances. 
 
140 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 and yet not free from some amount of associated 
 resjJonsibility. There are occasions in which the 
 Christian preacher addresses large and mixed con- 
 gregations, and on which words spoken find a wider 
 circle of hearers, and perhaps even of readers, than 
 is usual in ordinary ministrations. I need not, then, 
 excuse myself for placing before you some medita- 
 tions on the general tenor of our own times, and 
 especially on those aspects of Church teaching and 
 Church doctrine which are now engaging the anxious 
 attention of all religious thinkers in this Christian 
 country, and are daily suggesting to us all the solemn 
 question. Is there now, in the general teaching of 
 the Church of England, that uncorruptness, purity, 
 and sincerity which the Apostle tells his true son 
 Titus that he is to set forth in his doctrine and 
 practice ? " In doctrine, uncorruptness " — uncor- 
 ruptness, or as the old Syriac version freely, but 
 not incorrectly, paraphrases this and the associated 
 clause, " Let there be with thee in doctrine sound 
 speech, which is sincere and uncorrupt." This un- 
 corruptness, this purity and sincerity, is that which 
 is to mark the teaching of the Apostle's true son 
 in the faith. He is not to explain away, he is not 
 dangerously to stretch, he is not unfaithfully to 
 compromise ; his doctrine is to be pure and healthy, 
 his teaching, whether in public or private, is to be 
 free from every corrupt form and element — it is to 
 be faithful, lucidj and true. 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 141 
 
 This exhortation suggests, as I have just said, 
 the serious and seasonable inquiry whether such, at 
 the present time, is the prevalent teaching of the 
 Church of England; whether this purity in the 
 principles set forth is the general characteristic of 
 the doctrine which is publicly declared to be the 
 doctrine of our mother Church of England. 
 
 The doctrine of the Church of England? Ere 
 we attempt to give that answer to our question 
 which will form the leading thread of this sermon, 
 let us be sure that we arc agreed as to what we 
 mean by the doctrine of the Church of England. 
 What is it? Where is it to be found? How is 
 it formulated ? What does it rest upon ? To what 
 does it make its ultimate appeal ? The answer to 
 these questions, or, at any rate, to their general 
 tenor, is obviously necessary before we can proceed 
 to the further question which the text and the whole 
 circumstances of our own times very profitably bring 
 to our thoughts. 
 
 The general answer as to the doctrine of the 
 Church of England is, perhaps, nowhere better given 
 than in one of those great and careful statutes of 
 the realm that marked the early days of the Reforma- 
 tion. In one of these great historic documents the 
 doctrine of the Church of England is declared to 
 rest on the Canonical Scriptures, on the first four 
 general councils, and further, the decrees of any 
 other general council of the yet undivided Church 
 
14.2 Some Present Bangers of 
 
 so far as tlie same can expressly be proved by 
 the Scripture. This is the indirect definition of 
 the Statute Book ; this is, and ever has been, the 
 standard of the Reformed Church of England ; this 
 is recognised in our Book of Homilies ; this every 
 great teacher and divine of our communion has 
 acknowledged to be the fountain whence the pure 
 waters of the doctrine of our Reformed Church have 
 always been derived — in other words, the blessed 
 Scriptures, the three creeds, the undisputed general 
 councils, and that book which for purity of teaching 
 and chaste warmth of devotion stands first of all 
 the service-books of the Christian world — our own 
 Book of Common Prayer, with its succinct and yet 
 comprehensive catechism, and its wise and tolerant 
 articles of Christian belief. 
 
 These are the sources to which the English 
 Churchman ever goes for the doctrine of his Church — 
 one golden and guiding thread ever in his hand — the 
 supremacy of the blessed Word of God, and the 
 utter irrelevancy of all teaching as bearing upon 
 eternal salvation, except that which ms.j be con- 
 cluded and proved by the Scripture. Such is the 
 doctrine of the Church of our baptism. In the 
 delivery of that doctrine at the present time, can 
 we honestly and truthfully say there is that uncor- 
 ruptness of which the Apostle speaks in the text ? 
 Is there no such thing now as a dealing deceitfully 
 even with the Word of God itself? Are not some 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 113 
 
 doctrines now pressed as even vitally necessary^ for 
 which there is no authority in the Holy Scriptures, 
 and of which there is absolutely no trace in the 
 teaching and pi'actice of the primitive Church ? Can 
 we hesitate ? Take up, on the one hand, oue of the 
 manuals for the young that are now circulated by 
 thousands, in which our very children are told that 
 " God absolutely requires " (I am quoting the exact 
 words) " that they should tell the priest all the sins 
 that they remember to have committed." Take up, 
 on the other hand, any one of the current numbers 
 of the best-conducted of our religious journals, 
 and read therein the letters — letters often ably and 
 thoughtfully written— in which, perhaps, on one 
 column an invocation of the saints that can scarcely 
 be separated, at any rate by the ordinary thinker, 
 from that which our tolerant Articles expressly con- 
 demn, is persuasively advocated ; while, on another 
 column, the final doom of the impenitent is exijlained 
 away as, perhaps, after all, not what it might appear 
 to be, and hopes ministered for which the words of 
 our future Judge have given absolutely no warranty. 
 
 Can this be carrying out the precepts of the 
 text? Can this be showing forth — in doctrine, 
 uncorruptness ? My brethren, I fear the sad truth 
 is, in many ways, thus brought home to us that 
 definite and dogmatic truth — truth based upon the 
 Holy Scriptures, and set forth in all our formularies, 
 is not now as jealously guarded as it may have been 
 
144 
 
 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 in days gone by — days to which we may think our 
 own stand in several respects in very favourable 
 contrast. Our own days are no doubt marked by 
 more real earnestness, deeper devotion, and far more 
 abounding fruitfulness in great and good works, 
 such as that which we ai"e now assembled to recognise 
 and commemorate. But no calm observer could 
 honestly say that they are also marked by a deeper 
 loyalty to the ground-principles of the faith once 
 delivered to the saints, that truth of which the 
 Church is the upbearing pillar and basis — the founda- 
 tion and corner-stone being Christ. No, my dear 
 friends, no one could say candidly, that "in doctrine, 
 uncorruptness " is the motto of our own times. 
 
 Two dangerously corruptive influences there are 
 at the present time, both of which, in different ways, 
 in opposite directions, are tending to mar the purity 
 and truth of the doctrine of our mother Church. 
 On the one hand there is the distinct tendency to 
 minimise and attenuate the heritage of dogmatic 
 truth which the Church of England has received 
 and maintained through all changes down to this 
 day. On the other hand, there is the equally patent 
 tendency to stretch our distinctive Church principles 
 until they may be made to include all that was 
 expressly disavowed or tacitly set aside by the fathers 
 of the English Reformation. 
 
 These are the two influences that are now intro- 
 ducing corruptness into doctrine, and are causing 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 145 
 
 that deep anxiety as to the future which is felt 
 more and more by every earnest and far-seeing 
 Churchman. Both these influences have their origin 
 in feelings and principles which we cannot unre- 
 servedly condemn — nay, which to some extent we 
 may sympathise with and approve; but both are 
 still just those plausible depravations of what is 
 good and true which constitute to many minds the 
 worst and most seductive temptations. 
 
 The influence that tends to minimise and attenuate 
 doctrine is often allied with much that is attractive 
 and philanthropic. It is essentially humanitarian. 
 It breathes human sympathy ; it believes in human 
 progress ; it stimulates human effort. It cannot 
 understand how man can fail to work out for him- 
 self — if refreshed by noble encouragements and 
 stimulated by chivalrous examples — those measures 
 of commencing perfectness which time and progress 
 will bring to full growth and maturation. It dis- 
 courages, nay it often disavows, as immoral, that 
 trust in the atoning blood of Christ which is the 
 key-stone of all Christian doctrine. It acknowledges 
 Christ as the great Exemplar — but only thus far, 
 that in Him the flower of humanity was unfolded 
 in its most blessed hues and proportions. Its hopes 
 really are in man, and those hopes consistently 
 enough stretch beyond the gulf of death, and see 
 evolution and progress under conditions on which, 
 to say the very least. Scripture is profoundly silent ; 
 J 
 
146 Some Preaent Bangers of 
 
 nay, cheer us with the thought that the door will 
 at last be opened which a safer and truer teaching 
 tells us must remain closed for those aeons of aeons 
 beyond which neither thought nor imagination can 
 extend, and which, so far as human language can 
 do so, make up to us the idea of eternity. 
 
 But this corrupting influence, as I have already 
 said, is not the only one that is now at work in 
 the Church of England. Another, and to some 
 extent opposed, influence there is, which is now 
 seeking to persuade us to build again that which 
 we have destroyed, and to go backward into the 
 twilight of those dim days when the blessed radiance 
 of early and apostolic truth could no longer struggle 
 through the thickly-gathered clouds of accumulated 
 error and corruption. Yet this influence has also 
 an origin better than its present development. As 
 the love of man and the idea of humanity formed 
 the nobler germinal principle, the semuncia recti, 
 of the first influence to which I have just alluded, 
 so in this other influence which would lead us all 
 back again to days for ever gone by, and would 
 undo the mighty and providential work of the earlier 
 years of the sixteenth century, is there a silent 
 moving principle which, in its truest aspects, must 
 command the love of every truly Christian heart. 
 That principle undoubtedly is that all may be one in 
 Christ — one in common worship and adoration as 
 well as in soul and in spirit — that there may be one 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 147 
 
 flock aud one Shepherd^ even here and even now — 
 now, before the Church militant has become almost 
 the Church triumphant, and the blessed nearer 
 presence of Christ in His millennial reign has drawn 
 all that love Him unto Himself. This desire for 
 an earthly unity among Christians is undoubtedly 
 the nobler side of that innovating movement in the 
 Church of England of which now we are seeing so 
 many and calamitous manifestations. There is this 
 better side ; but the equitable recognition of it must 
 not lead us the less to mark its steadily corruptive 
 tendencies, or to hesitate to take our stand against 
 that wilful and reckless effort to undo all the work 
 of the Reformation, and to bring into our doctrine 
 a corruptness which, under the light that God has 
 vouchsafed to give us, we may now clearly see to 
 be alienative from Christ to an extent that was never 
 realised in the times when Roman Catholicism was 
 the religion of the Christian world. 
 
 Oh, my dear friends, union, union in faith, union 
 in worship, union in creed, is very blessed ; to strive 
 for this union, is noble, to hope and to pray for it is 
 the duty of every one of us who loves Christ 
 crucified ; but this blessed union can never and will 
 never be secured by treading those backward paths 
 along which many are striving to lead us. Every- 
 where the poor human being is consciously or uncon- 
 sciously tending to take a mediatorial place between 
 man and his God, such as the purest ages of the 
 
148 iS'ome Present Dangers of 
 
 Church never knew, and, if they had known, would 
 have recoiled from with horror. 
 
 We are told that we may rightly ask of God that 
 He would move His saints to pray for us ; we are 
 told that we do well and that it ministers to a 
 higher life to spcify all our sins regularly to some 
 poor erring fellow-man, and we are told that we 
 may do so without fear, because in all confessions 
 avowal of sin is made to God as well as to the 
 Priest. In a word, this blessed principle, the prin- 
 ciple on which forgiveness, acceptance, salvation, 
 everything, eternally depend, is just enough conserved 
 to warrant what all experience has shown to be of 
 the utmost peril if brought into the regular usage 
 of the English Church. 
 
 When we hear such things, when we realise how 
 far from the uncorruptness in doctrine of which the 
 text speaks all such teaching and reasoning must 
 be pronounced to be by every candid mind; when 
 we ■ see the old lines of demarcation which our fore- 
 fathers traced with their blood attempted to be 
 effaced by usages and practices which, however 
 ancient, are now really distinctive of another and 
 an alien Chm-ch ; when we are conscious that the 
 words of our formularies are twisted into a toleration 
 of that which they were framed to repudiate ; when 
 we feel everything that is really characteristic of 
 the simple, elevated, and reverential worship of the 
 Church of England is transmuted into a sensuous 
 
The Church of England. 
 
 149 
 
 ritualism — old landmarks all lost, old and real dis- 
 tinctions all obliterated — how we seem to crave for 
 some clear and loyal voice that would again remind 
 us what our doctrines really are, what the sharp, 
 bold lines of doctrinal antithesis which separate 
 the pm-e and Apostolic Church of England from the 
 daring innovations of the Church of Rome, or the 
 real, though as yet hardly realised, corruptions of 
 the once noble Churches of the still changeless East ! 
 Oh, for a voice like that of Jewell, that would tell 
 us, even if it were again in the words of challenge, 
 what the faith of an English Churchman really is, 
 what those great doctrinal principles, which, resting 
 on the Holy Scriptures, any and every fair reasoner 
 that will agree to appeal to the same Scriptures may 
 be fearlessly challenged to controvert or equitably 
 to deny ! 
 
 "If any learned men of our adversaries," said 
 the brave preacher — for these words were spoken at 
 St. PauFs Cross — " or all the learned men that be 
 alive, be able to bring any one sufficient sentence 
 out of any old Catholic doctor or father, or general 
 council, or holy scripture, or any one example in the 
 primitive Church, whereby it may clearly and plainly 
 be proved, dm-ing the first 600 years, that there 
 was then commimion ministered to the people in one 
 kind " (is such a practice now never adopted in 
 any one of our religious houses ?), " or that the 
 people were then taught to believe that Christ's 
 
150 Some Present Dangers of 
 
 body is really, substantially, corporally, carnally, or 
 naturally in the sacrament" (is such teaching wholly 
 new to us now?), "or that the priest did then hold 
 the sacrament over his head " (has such a usage 
 never formed a charge in our Courts?), "or that 
 the people did then fall down and worship it with 
 godly honour" (are very similar sights never seen 
 in any of the churches of this land?), "or that it 
 was then lawful for the priest to pronounce the 
 words of consecration closely, or in private to him- 
 self" (is such a usage utterly and absolutely un- 
 known?), " or that the sacrament is a sign or token 
 of the body of Christ that lieth hidden imderneath 
 it" (have we never heard of the elements being 
 spoken of as "the veils of bread and wine?") — "the 
 conclusion," said Jewell, "is, that I shall then be 
 content to yield and to subscribe." 
 
 My dear brethren, how such brave and loyal 
 words seem to come home to us ! How they illustrate 
 the text ! How sadly and how sharply they contrast 
 with much of the faltering and sinuous teaching of 
 our own times ! That was indeed " showing in 
 doctrine uncorruptness/' This was the voice of one 
 of those true and fearless sons of the Reformation, 
 who were not ashamed of the doctrines of their 
 mother Church. "Would to God that there was a 
 little more of this faithful speaking in our own days. 
 Whether it be, on the one hand, against a teaching 
 that seeks to remove from the Gospel all that is 
 
The Church of Encjlmid. 
 
 151 
 
 really definite and distinctive^ or against attempts, 
 on the other hand, to lead us back to the twilight 
 of old and cast-away corruptions ; whether against 
 compromise or reaction, half-belief or superstition, 
 may God vouchsafe to us all a little more of that 
 spirit that ever seeks to speak the truth in love, 
 and is never, never ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ. Our own days minister to us many blessings, 
 but beyond all doubt they also bear with them, 
 especially in matters of faith, many and anxious 
 trials. The world is ever striving to draw us away 
 from Christ and from a loyal belief in His own pure 
 and living Word. The world is ever whispering 
 liberalism and compromise. But, brethren, there is 
 a victory that overcometh the world, and God vouch- 
 safe to us all that victory — for that victory is faith, 
 
 God grant to us, then, in these anxious days, 
 abiding love for the truth of God's Holy Word, and 
 for that sound and truthful teaching which has ever 
 been the unchanging characteristic of our Reformed 
 and Apostolic Church. So long as we cleave to 
 that truth, so long will it be well with us; but 
 if ever the temptations of these strange times lead 
 away our recognised teachers, either into Rational- 
 ism on this side, or pseudo-Catholicism on the 
 other, then verily the end will have come to the 
 National Church. Remember therefore how thou 
 hast received and heard, and keep it, and repent." 
 (Rev. iii. 3.) 
 
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 The Gospel according to St. JOHN, by the Rev. W. H. WATKINS, 
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 Keble's Christian Year. 
 
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 EgApt as It Is. 
 
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 Don Qui.vote . . . . 1100 
 
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 r, ', .( /..■>,' r' :j .i>!,f Kelii:io}ts ll'orij, Fint 
 
 Art l\'li('>tf%. Lhsl.ir.:: . , /',,, 7 , ■ . : . r/cs , liattii-Iioots and Outdfs, 
 
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BW5023.1 .E46 
 
 Some present dangers of the Church of 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00035 5208