THE 
 
 U^ITV OF THE CHORCH 
 
tihrary of t:he Cheolocjical ^tmimry 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 BX 8 .»L32x 
 
 Lacey, T. A. 1853-1931. 
 The unity of the church as 
 treated by English 
 
^be Cburcb Ibistorical Societ\>. 
 
 President: — The Right Reverend M. Creighton, U.D., 
 Lord Bishop of London. 
 
 Chairman: — The Reverend W. E. Collins, Prof, of Eccl. Hist. 
 AT King's College, London. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 THE 
 
 UNITY OF THE CHURCH 
 
 AS TREATED BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 REV. T. A. LACEY, M.A. 
 
 vicar of madinglev. 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. ; 4^, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, B.C. 
 
 BRIGHTON: 129, North Street. 
 New York : E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 
 .1898. 
 
Digitized by 
 
 the Internet i 
 
 Archive 
 
 
 
 in 2015 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/unityofchurchastOOIace 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 The first part of this brief dissertation 
 appeared in the Revue a nglo-romaine of June 
 20, 1896. Written at Rome under great pres- 
 sure of time to meet an instant emergency, 
 it might easily have been improved and 
 brought into a form more suitable for English 
 readers. It has, however, been thought wiser 
 to republish it in English exactly as it 
 originally appeared in French, omitting only 
 an allusion to a personal incident which is 
 already forgotten. The second part was 
 to have followed immediately, but in the 
 interval the Encyclical, Satis cognitum, on 
 the Unity of the Church, wag issued, and it 
 was thought unseemly to continue the treat- 
 ment of the subject in a sense necessarily 
 opposed to that of the papal document. The 
 scope of the dissertation was shown to be 
 
 • A 2 
 
4 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 purely historical, the statement only of what 
 had actually been taught in the Church of 
 England ; but in spite of this it was held in 
 very high quarters that the second part ought 
 not to appear in the Review. It was accord- 
 ingly withdrawn. 
 
 In greater leisure it has been carefully 
 revised and considerably enlarged. To those 
 who lack opportunity for study, this little 
 book may perhaps be useful as summarizing 
 the teaching of the Church upon a subject 
 which is continually in debate; with others, 
 it will entirely fail of its object if it does not 
 lead them to study at first hand the great 
 masters of theology whose conclusions are 
 here recorded. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 VAGK 
 
 § I. Introductory ....... 7 
 
 j 2. The Particularity of the English Ctiurch . . 8 
 I 3. T}i() Principle of Dissidence . . .10 
 
 54. The Theory of Sacramental Unity . . • '7 
 
 § 5. The Branch Theory 20 
 
 PART II. 
 
 § 1. Tlie Church and the Churches .... 27 
 
 is. Tlie earlier definitions pf tlie Churcli . . 30 
 
 The Controversy of the Great Schism . 32 
 
 § 3. The question raised by the Reformation . . 34 
 
 § 4. Tlie public teaching of the English Church . 37 
 
 The Necessary Doctrine, &c. • • • 37 
 
 The Thirty-nine Artichs . . . .41 
 § 5. Contemporary definitions by Curialist theo- 
 logians 43 
 
 § 6. The Reconciliation with Rome ... 47 
 
 § 7. The public teaching of the English Church 50 
 
 The Canons of 1604 ..... 50 
 
 Orrrall's I (iiiroralion Book .... 52 
 
 § 8. Th(' problem for theologians • • ■ • 55 
 
 § 9. Pole and Tunstull on the JItad of the Church . 56 
 
 Jewell's Ajxitoyia .... .60 
 § icx The teaching of Hooker ..... 61 
 §11. The teaching of the Laudinn School: Ham- 
 mond, &('. ...... 68 
 
 Its j)ractic!il failure • • • • 73 
 
6 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 12. Tlie English Divines iinder the Calvinist 
 
 oppression ...... 75 
 
 Branihall, liis Just Vindication ... 76 
 ,, on internal and external com- 
 munion .... 77 
 
 ,, on essential unity ... 83 
 Thorndike 85 
 
 § 13. The teaching of Pearson ..... 87 
 The six modes of unity .... 94 
 
 § 14. Pearson on the essential unity and holiness 
 
 of the Church . ' . . . -91 
 
 § 15. The practical teaching of the Restoration 
 
 period ....... 99 
 
 The union of National Churches . . 104 
 
 § 16. The teaching of Barrow ..... 105 
 
 § 17. The internal unity of particular Churches . 113 
 Say^vell . . . . . . .114 
 
 Barrow . . . . . . .116 
 
 Beveridge . . . . . .118 
 
 § 18. Weak points in the foregoing teaching . . 122 
 Compulsory Uniformity .... 122 
 
 Toleration ...... 123 
 
 Occasional Conformity .... 123 
 
 The Else of Dissent .... 124 
 
 Exaggerated Nationalism . . . 126 
 Latitudinarianism ..... 128 
 
 § 19. Palmer's Treatise on the Church of Christ . . 130 
 
 § 20. Modifications of the geographical system . 142 
 
 § 21. Later developments ...... 146 
 
 Manning 146 
 
 Forbes 146 
 
 Pusey 148 
 
 § 22. Summaiy and conclusion . . . .151 
 
THE 
 
 UNITY or THE CHUECH 
 
 AS TREATED BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 PART I. 
 §1- 
 
 As we say our Creed we profess our belief 
 in one only Church. What do we mean by 
 this unity 1 What is this one Church ? Clearl}^ 
 we suppose ourselves to be members of it ; 
 unless, indeed, we are using words without 
 any present meaning, a relic of a former state 
 of tilings, or a pious aspiration after a future 
 development. 13ut what is this one Church of 
 which we claim to be members ? We of the 
 English Church are regarded by the greater 
 part of Christendom as a separate body, com- 
 pletely isolated. How do we regard ourselves ? 
 (i) Do we shut ourselves up in our own com- 
 munion, declaring that this alone is the true 
 
8 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 Church of Christ ? (2) Do we console our- 
 selves with the fiction of an invisible Church 
 which is one thi-oughout the world, of which 
 the true members are known only to God ? 
 
 (3) Do we picture to ourselves a number of 
 separate societies, united only by the fact 
 that all receive the same grace and share in 
 the same spiritual life of the sacraments ? 
 
 (4) Do we think of the one Church as com- 
 posed of several societies or communions, 
 loosely associated in a sort of federal union ? 
 
 Here are four questions which habitually 
 occur to those who study the Church of Eng- 
 land from without. They may perhaps have 
 seen or heard remarks of individuals among 
 us which appear to suggest an affirmative 
 answer to one or the other of these questions. 
 I shall endeavour in the first place to show 
 that such an affirmative answer would en- 
 tirely misrepresent the conception of unity 
 which prevails among Englisli theologians, 
 and I will then try to set out this con- 
 ception in a more positive fashion. 
 
 §2. 
 
 It should hardly be necessary to answer 
 the first question. But if it be needful to 
 show that the Church of England is regarded 
 
BY ENGLI^<H THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 9 
 
 as a part only, and a purely local part, of one 
 whole Church, I can do this best by quoting 
 her own most official lanjjuawe. The Preface 
 of the Prayer Book, written at the time of 
 the last revision in 1662, speaks of certain 
 alterations then proposed, but i-ejected, as 
 " secretly striking at some established doc- 
 trine or laudable practice of the Church of 
 England, or indeed of the ivhole Catholick 
 Church of Christ."' And further, this particu- 
 larity of the English Church is to be regarded 
 as purely local or geographical. The short 
 treatise Of ceremonies, prefixed to the Prayer 
 Book, says expressly, '• In these our doings 
 we condemn no other nations, nor prescribe 
 anything but to our own people only : for 
 we think it convenient that every country 
 should use such Ceremonies as they shall 
 think best to the setting forth of God's honour 
 and glor}-, and to the reducing of the people 
 to a most perfect and godly living, with- 
 out error or superstition." 
 
 You may, if you will, call this an expres- 
 sion of an exaggerated particularity, or of 
 a dangerous nationalism ; but you will find 
 no room left for the idea that the Encrlish 
 Church claims to bo herself alone the true 
 Church of Christ. 
 
lO THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 The second question brings us face to 
 face with the fundamental principle of the 
 Dissidence of Dissent. According to this 
 principle, the one true Church of Christ is 
 not visible here on earth. It is a mystic 
 invisible body, the members of which are 
 known to God alone. Believers are free to 
 band themselves together in different con- 
 gregations ; and every such congregation forms 
 a Visible Cliurch, which may, or may not, in- 
 clude some members of that one Church which 
 is the mystical Body of Christ. The external 
 organization is purely local, accidental and 
 temporary ; membership in it is voluntary 
 and has no necessary relation to the spiritual 
 life. A Christian may join himself to any 
 such organization or may leave it as he wills. 
 Any number of these societies may exist side 
 by side, in friendly or hostile rivalry. It is 
 well that they should live at peace among 
 themselves, with mutual offices of good-will 
 and charity, for that is a Christian duty ; but 
 the invisible unity of the one true Church is 
 neither injured by their quarrels nor promoted 
 by their alliance. There is no need for them 
 to have any formal relations with each other ; 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 II 
 
 still less is it necessary or even desirable 
 that they should submit to any common rule, 
 adopt even approximately any common form 
 of worship, or make any common profession 
 of faith Some great and fundamental truths 
 indeed they must hold in common, but even 
 these need not be defined by all in the same 
 terms, or should be expressed only in the 
 terms of Scripture. 
 
 I have sketched a theory of the Church 
 which is widely held in England, still more 
 widely in America and the English colonies, 
 and which is not unknown among the Pro- 
 testants of Europe. I might trace its genesis 
 to the confusion of the Reformation, its 
 gradual development among the English 
 separatists, its enormous growth during the 
 present century. It is more to the point to 
 observe it as now in full vigour. It is the 
 theory of the Eixingelical Alliance. 
 
 It is clear that one who holds to this theory 
 may profess his belief in One Church. He 
 will mean the Invisible Church of which he 
 dreams. Does the English Church leave her 
 members free to make their profession of faith 
 in this sense ? 
 
 The Thirty-nine Articles do not directly 
 condemn this theory. At the time of their 
 
12 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 composition it was not yet sufficiently 
 developed ; nor do I find that our rulers have 
 ever taken the trouble to pronounce an ex- 
 press judgement upon it. But at the same 
 time the definition of the Church which is 
 found in the Thirty-nine Articles will exclude 
 any such idea. 
 
 "Ecclesia Christi visibilis "The visible Chiircli of 
 est coetus fidelium, in quo Christ is a congregation of 
 verbum Dei purum praedi- faitliful men, in the which the 
 catur, et sacramenta, quoad pure word of God is preached, 
 ea quae necessario exiguiitur, and the sacraments be duly 
 inxta Christi institutuin recte ministered according to 
 a(hninistrantur.'' Christ's ordinance, in all 
 
 those things that of necessity 
 are requisite to the same'." 
 
 This definition as read in the Latin might 
 indeed stand for the particular and local 
 visible Church of the theory which we are 
 considering. But the English version, which 
 has equal authority with the Latin, uses the 
 
 ' Article xix. Compare the definition of Bellarmine, 
 Controvers. 1. iii. de Eccltsia, c. 2 : "Nostra .sententia est 
 ecclesiam iinam tantum esse, non duas, et illani unam et 
 veram esse coetum hominiim eiusdem Christianae fidei profes- 
 sione et eorundem .sacramentorura communione colligatuui 
 sub regiiiiine legiuiitoriim pastorum ac praecipue unius Chri<ti 
 in terris Vicarii lio iiani pontifiois." With this again compare 
 that of Lyiidwood, the English canonist of tlie fifteenth cen- 
 tury : " Ecclesia Christiana cum suis sacranientis et legibu-i, 
 <liiae aliter ap[)ellatur Catholica seu Universalis, dicitur 
 Fidelium niukitudi) fide ut caritate unita." Prov. lib. i. tit. i. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 13 
 
 definite article in a way to exclude any such 
 interpretation. Any doubt which may remain 
 will be set at rest by a citation from one of 
 the authorized homilies: "The true Church is 
 an universal congregation or fellowship of 
 God's faithful and elect people, built upon the 
 foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, 
 Jesus Christ Himself being the head corner- 
 stone. And it hath always these notes or 
 marks whereby it is known : pure and sound 
 doctrine, the sacraments ministered according 
 to Christ's holy institution, and the right 
 use of ecclesiastical discipline ^" 
 
 The Church is here defined as universal and 
 also as visible, having marks by which it may 
 be recognized. Moreover, the Church of 
 England has forbidden her own faithful, under 
 pain of excommunication, to maintain the 
 legitimacy of such freely formed congregations 
 as are contemplated by the theory in question. 
 The eleventh of the canons promulgated in the 
 Synod of London in the year 1604 runs as 
 follows : — 
 
 "QuicuiKiuo ill posterum " Whoever shall hereafter 
 affirniabit aut tuebitur ullos affinn or maintain, that tliere 
 oonventus, <oetii8, aut con- aro within thlH rejilin other 
 {{regationes 8iil)'litoriiui indi- meetings, assemblies, or con- 
 genarum infra hoe rcgnum gregations of the King's born 
 
 ' Homily for Whitsunilay, part ii. 
 
14 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 existere (jiraeter eos qui ex 
 huius regni legibus tenentur 
 et api)robantur) qui veraruin 
 et legitimariim ecclesiarum 
 nomen possint sibi iure ven- 
 dicare : excommunicetur, non 
 nisi per Ai-chiepiscopum re- 
 stituendus, idque postquam 
 resipuerit, et iinpium hunc 
 errorem puLlice revocarit." 
 
 subjects, than such as by the 
 laws of this land are held 
 and allowed, which may 
 rightly challenge to them- 
 selves the name of true and 
 lawful Churches ; let him be 
 excommunicated, and not 
 restored, but by the Arch- 
 bishop, after his repentance, 
 and public revocation of such 
 his wicked errors." 
 
 In the face of this declaration it is im- 
 possible for any one seriously to maintain that 
 the opinion of dissidence is free to the mem- 
 bers of the English Church. In professing 
 their belief in One Church they cannot fall 
 back upon the theory of an Invisible Church, 
 consisting of members hidden in divers visible 
 organizations. 
 
 But does the teaching which is actually in 
 force follow these lines ? We hear from time to 
 time of priests of the Church taking part with 
 ministers of the Protestant sects in proceed- 
 ings of a compromising character ; we hear of 
 them in conferences at Grindelwald and else- 
 where, which appear to be conducted on the 
 principle of dissidence. We find some of them 
 engaged with the Evangelical Alliance itself. 
 What shall we say to this ? 
 
 We may admit in the first place that there 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 15 
 
 is in certain quarters a dangerous tendency 
 to abandon the ground of principle in this 
 respect. We may allow also that there is 
 very widely diffused a sort of timidity, which 
 hinders alike the plain declaration of the 
 teaching of the Church, and the reprobation 
 of those who offend against it. But it would 
 be a great mistake to suppose that this 
 timidity is due to an imperfect grasp of the 
 truth. It is due to entirely different causes. 
 In England we are face to face with an 
 organized sectarianism, always aggressive, and 
 not so very long since powerful both socially 
 and politically. To denounce this, or even to 
 teach definitely the truth which it opposes, is 
 to invite virulent attacks, and a ridicule 
 which it needs no little courage to face. 
 
 But I will point out in the next place that 
 much of our fraternization with the ministers 
 of Protestant sects docs not in the least imply 
 an acceptance of the principle of dissidence. 
 It is on the contrary adopted as a means of 
 spreading the truth. The Archbishop of York, 
 whom no one will suspect of any unfaithful- 
 ness to the principle of unity, invites the 
 Protestant ministers of his diocese to his 
 palace. It is precisely what the great Bossuet 
 loved to do. Even those who assist at tlie 
 
l6 THE L-MTi OP THE CmTBCH AS TEKATED 
 
 conferences at Grindelwald and elsewhere, find 
 there an opportunity for driving home some 
 truths to the a^embled sectaries. Indeed, it 
 was at Lucerne that Mr. Hammond, Canon of 
 TrurO; read h'ls paper on what he calk, by 
 a painfully barbarous term, "Polychurchism." 
 the most vigorous attack on the principle of 
 dissidence which recent times have seen. At 
 the Norwich Church Congress there was a long 
 discussion on the hindrances to the reconcilia^ 
 tion of Dissenters, when Mr. Hammond was 
 again the protagonist, and I do not remember 
 that a single word was said which suggested 
 any paltering with the truth. 
 
 The best witness however to the actual 
 teaching of the Church is afforded by the 
 Dissenters themselves. They denounce the 
 exclusiveness of the Chtirch, the arrogance 
 of the priesthood- They band themselves 
 together, in spite of their mutual antagonisms, 
 in a tinion of hatred against this one body 
 which refuses to consort with them, and 
 which will not so much as allow them the 
 name of Churches. They have been working 
 for years to drive the clergy from the schools 
 on the express ground that they teach the 
 children the iniquity of dissidence. If in spite 
 of all our carefulness, our moderation our 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 17 
 
 timidity indeed, we bring these attacks upon 
 ourselves, it is clear that "we cannot be 
 altogether neglecting the duty of insisting on 
 the visible unity of the Church. 
 
 §4. 
 
 The conception of unity implied in the 
 third question is one, we must admit, which 
 has great attractions for many amongst us. 
 For them the Church throughout the world 
 is actually and visibly one, by virtue of the 
 one spiritual life which all its members share 
 in common by the visible means of the sacra- 
 ments. They may be entirely without inter- 
 course, they may be separated from one 
 another in sympathy, they may disagree even 
 in matters of faith ; but being baptized into 
 one Body, and partaking of the one Bread of 
 Life, they are inseparably one. This unity 
 of the Church is a natural fact, comparable 
 to that of a family where the brothers, being 
 born of one father, remain necessarily and 
 indestructibly united by origin and kinship, 
 however widely they may bo sundered by 
 accidents of travel, by diti'erence of tastes and 
 pursuits, or even by bitter enmities. 
 
 It is unnecessary to point out the incon- 
 veniences and inconsistences which flow from 
 B 
 
1 8 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 this theory if it be taken for a complete 
 statement of the unity of the Church. My 
 object is rather to show that, whatever partial 
 truth it enshrines, it cannot lawfully be taken 
 as expressing the whole meaning of our belief 
 in One Church. My citation from the Homilies 
 may be sufficient for this, where the right use 
 of ecclesiastical discipline is set down as one 
 of the notes or marks of the true Church. A 
 community of Christians, then, who lack this, 
 even if they enjoy the fullest possession of 
 the sacraments, cannot be regarded as forming 
 a part of the one Church in which we profess 
 our belief. We shall not of course interpret 
 the phrase rigorously, so as to conclude that 
 a weak or faulty administration of discipline 
 would involve a defection fi'ora the Church, 
 but we shall be compelled to allow that the 
 general maintenance of the constitution of the 
 Catholic Church on its broad hnes must be 
 required of any local organization which shall 
 claim to be a part of the whole. The precise 
 nature indeed of the discipline here proposed 
 as necessary is matter for further question. 
 The demand is mentioned here only as evi- 
 dence that we do not make the unity of 
 the Church rest merely on participation in the 
 sacraments. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 19 
 
 But again, in the Visible Church, as defined 
 in the Thirty-nine Articles, the imre word of 
 God must be preached. As the late Bishop 
 of Winchester pointed out in his Commentary 
 on the Articles, the expression is not "the 
 •word of God is purely preached," but •' the 
 pure word of God is preached." In other 
 words, the definition does not point to a sub- 
 jective purity of teaching, but to the possession 
 of an objective body of doctrine, the main 
 truths of the Gospel, the fundamentals of 
 Christianity, the Faith of the Church. As 
 there is one sacramental life, so also there 
 must be one faith, and those who do not hold 
 this faith cannot be reckoned as within the 
 unity of the Visible Church. The practice of 
 the English Church in this respect can be 
 precisely determined. At the request of the 
 Nestorians of Persia and Kurdistan the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury maintains a mission 
 amonof them. The missionaries are forbidden 
 to proselytize from the Nestorians, or in any 
 way to break up or disturb their ecclesiastical 
 order; but, on the other hand, they are not 
 allowed to communicate with them until such 
 time as they shall renounce their heresy and 
 acknowledge the faith of the Church as de- 
 fined at Ephesus. 
 
 B 2 
 
20 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 It is clear that neither the authoritative 
 teaching nor the practice of the Church of 
 England -will tolerate the theory which makes 
 the essential unity of the Church consist solely 
 in the unity of the sacramental life. 
 
 §5- 
 
 There is a fourth theory which is often 
 attributed to us — an imputation founded, per- 
 haps, on a rigorous interpretation of certain 
 careless statements of individuals. It is com- 
 monly known as the Branch Theory, and as 
 such it is made the object of attack by many 
 disputants, who expend considerable ingenuity 
 in assailing a position which no one defends. 
 The term Branch is indeed used in connexion 
 with the Church by many of our best writers. 
 They will speak of the English Branch of the 
 Chuix-h, of the Roman or the Greek Branch. 
 They will speak also of the French or 
 Spanish, or of the American Branch. The 
 distinguished Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Words- 
 worth, was a well-known exponent of the 
 idea set forth by this expression. But he 
 made it perfectly plain in what sense he used 
 it. In his Theophilus Anglicainis, discoursing 
 On the A rt(jlican Branch of the Catholic Church, 
 he quotes from Hooker: — "As the main 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 21 
 
 body of the sea being one, yet within divers 
 precincts hath divei"S names, so the Catholic 
 Church is in like sort divided into a number 
 of distinct societies, every one of which is 
 termed a Church within itself ^" Thus when 
 our writers speak of the Branches of the 
 Church, they have in view the local divisions 
 or branches of a homogeneous body such as 
 the sea. 
 
 The term, however, is ambiguous, and very 
 naturally suggests the branches of a tree — 
 a suggestion which is perhaps aided by an 
 inaccurate association with the words of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, comparing individual 
 (Christians to the branches of the vine, or with 
 those of St. Paul describing them as engrafted 
 into the olive tree. Hence there results a not 
 unfrequent extension of the figure, which 
 represents far less accurately the constitution 
 of the Church. For the branches of a tree, 
 though they spring from a common stem, and 
 derive sap from the same root, have no sort 
 of actual communication or intercourse with 
 each other, none of that free circulation which 
 estabUshes a real unity between the various 
 divisions of the sea. 
 
 It is this comparison with the branches of 
 
 ' Eccl. I'ol. bk. iii. uh. i. § 14. 
 
22 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 a^tiee, and all the consequences which may 
 be rigorously deduced from it, which some of 
 our critics are eager to fasten upon us. We 
 are supposed to hold that the various parts of 
 the Church, like the branches of a tree, do 
 indeed spring from a common stem, but are 
 separate from each other, enjoying an entirely 
 individual existence. We are asked ironically, 
 if all the parts of the Church are branches, 
 where is the stem ? We are invited to show 
 how an individual passes from one branch to 
 another when he changes his domicile. We 
 reply that these questions demand of us the 
 explication and defence of an hypothesis 
 which we do not in the least accept. This 
 Branch Theory is not our invention ; it is 
 the invention of our adversaries who gra- 
 tuitously attribute it to us. It is not for us 
 to develop its absurdities. 
 
 They are not perhaps very open-minded 
 critics who treat us in this fashion, but, partly 
 as a consequence of persistent misrepresenta- 
 tion, we are in some quarters seriously sup- 
 posed to regard the Catholic Church as con- 
 sisting essentially of a number of separate and 
 independent communions — the Roman, the 
 Russo-Greek, and the Anglican, at least, even 
 if we exclude, as heretical, the Copts and the 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 23 
 
 Armenians, and other separated Churches of 
 the East. Our theory of the Church, on this 
 supposition, regards each of these various 
 communions or Churches as enjoying a cor- 
 porate existence, as possessing a body of 
 doctrine peculiar to itself, as endowed with 
 a separate life and capacity of development. 
 From this it would follow that, so far as the 
 whole Church is one, its unity is found only 
 in the agglomeration of these parts, essentially 
 independent, but bound together by a loose 
 federal tie. So loose indeed is the tie, that it 
 does not as a matter of fact involve so much 
 as diplomatic intercourse between the members 
 of the union. Indeed they might rather be re- 
 garded as so many separate kingdoms reigned 
 over by one Divine and invisible Monarch. 
 
 Now it is quite true that we do sometimes 
 speak of the various Communions into which 
 Christians are divided. In doing so we are 
 merely noting an obvious fact. We in no 
 way imply that they ought to be so divided, 
 still less that such divisions are a necessary 
 or essential feature of the Church's consti- 
 tution. On the contrary we regard the fact 
 as a deplorable one. I do not believe that 
 a passage could be adduced from any of our 
 writers treating this kind of division as a thing 
 
24 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 good or even tolerable in itself. We recognize 
 it only as a matter of fact. It is a state 
 of things which has to be reckoned ynth for 
 the present, and as soon as possible amended. 
 Christians have not that perfect intercourse of 
 charity and that perfect community of worship 
 which they ought to have. Moreover, by 
 reason of these differences they do actually 
 fall into certain well-defined groups, and 
 these groups are commonly called different 
 Communions. The term may not be well 
 chosen ; it might be wiser to adopt one, if 
 possible, which should lend itself less readily 
 to misunderstanding ; but we are not singular 
 in the use of such inaccurate terms, nor are 
 we conscious of giving any direct cause for 
 misunderstanding. 
 
 We use the term, then, to express a certain 
 unhappy fact ; and we are careful not to 
 extend its meaning beyond the precise limits 
 of the fact. It is not these divers Com- 
 munions that we regard as members or 
 branches of the Catholic Church, but the local, 
 provincial, or national Churches which are 
 attached to one or other of them. The 
 Church of France, the Church of Spain, are 
 branches of the Universal Church. In one 
 of the constitutions promulged in 1604, the 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 25 
 
 Church of England, speaking of our unhappy 
 divisions, uses language of the most careful 
 precision. 
 
 " Tantuiii aberat ut Eccle- 
 uia Anglicana ab Italiae, 
 Galliae, Hispaniae, Germa- 
 iiiae, aliisve siiiiilibus Eccle- 
 siis voluerit per oinnia re- 
 cedere, qiiicquid eas sciret 
 tenere aut observare, ut 
 . . . ceremonias illas cum 
 reverentia susciperet, quas 
 citra Ecclesiae incommodum 
 ac hominum sobriorum 
 ofifensioiiem retineri posse 
 senserat." 
 
 " So far was it from the 
 purpose of the Church of 
 England to forsake and re- 
 ject the Churches of Italy, 
 France, Spain, Germany, 
 or any such like Churches, 
 in all things which they 
 held and practised, that . . . 
 it doth with reverence retain 
 those ceremonies, which doth 
 neither endamage the Church 
 of God, nor offend the minds 
 of sober men '." 
 
 It will be seen that we do not here read of 
 the " Roman Communion " as an entity apart, 
 but of the local Churches, within certain geo- 
 graphical limits, which in fact hold to the 
 communion of the Roman See. We and 
 they are unhappily separated from each 
 otlier in a certain manner, but when wo 
 confess the one Church we Ijelieve that these 
 Churches and the English Church arc equally 
 integrating parts of the one Catholic Church. 
 The Branch Theory, in short, does not regard 
 tlie Catholic Church as consisting of a con- 
 federation of several Counnunious ; it merely 
 
 ' Canuu XXX. 
 
26 THE UNITT OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 recognizes the fact that the Church is organized 
 in provinces and groups of provinces geo- 
 graphically circumscribed. 
 
 Again, when we work or pray for the 
 reunion of Christendom, we do not regard our 
 object as the development of a somewhat 
 closer federal bond between three or more 
 independent Churches ; we desire the realiza- 
 tion in practice of a true unity which already 
 exists. We do not think of unity as pro- 
 ceeding from multiplicity; we recognize the 
 profound truth that the Church is funda- 
 mentally and essentially one, and that from 
 this unity proceeds the multiplicity of the 
 local divisions. To return to the figure of 
 speech which gives rise to this discussion, the 
 branches of the Church are not like the 
 branches of a tree, which have no real inter- 
 course with each other, but like branches of 
 the sea through which the same waters 
 freely circulate. The divisions of Christendom 
 we may compare to the floating boom with 
 which the entrance to a harbour or bay is 
 defended. It prevents the passage of ships, 
 it hinders free communication upon the 
 surface, but the waters flow freely beneath, 
 and the continuity of the sea is unbi-oken. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 27 
 
 PABT II. 
 § I- 
 
 I HAVE examined and set aside four in- 
 adequate theories of unity. I am not here 
 concerned with their proper falsity, but only 
 with their inadequacy as representing the 
 sense in which we actually profess our belief 
 in the one Church. They spring from a 
 simple misundeistanding of terms, or they 
 are inconsistent with certain principles of 
 belief and practice to which the English 
 Church firmly adheres. 
 
 It remains to show in what sense we really 
 are bound to use the words of the Creed. We 
 believe in one Church. That is to say, there 
 is, in the region of fact, but one Church, 
 (,'atholic and Apostolic, to which we our- 
 selves belong as members. We do not ex- 
 press an opinion that something ought to be 
 which is not ; nor yet a hope or aspiration 
 for the future. We speak of that wliich 
 exists, a part of the divine order. But oui- 
 belief is in apparent contradiction to facts ; 
 the language of the Creed conflicts with the 
 
28 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 language of ordinary life. We habitually 
 speak of several Churches, some of them 
 sharply antagonistic. How, then, do we 
 believe in one Church ? 
 
 It may be as well to remove out of the way 
 at once a mere verbal quibble. No one Hnds 
 any difficulty in reconciling the Scriptural 
 language about the Churches of Asia or of 
 Judaea with the truth of the unity of the 
 Church. They are clearly but parts of a whole, 
 each one sharing the common name, or else 
 contributing to the whole in a collective sense 
 the title which is proper to each. Neither 
 is any doubt raised when we speak at the 
 present day of the (churches of France or 
 Spain. The}' are known to be held straitly 
 together in a highly centralized system. In 
 popular but very inaccurate language they 
 would be called parts of the Roman Church. 
 The difficulty begins when we find several 
 Churches holding no intercourse with each 
 other, or exchanging only frigid salutations, 
 more or less completely denying one another 
 communion. I do not speak of quarrels and 
 controversies. When Rome and Carthage, 
 Constantinople and Alexandria, were ex- 
 changing fierce denunciations over diver- 
 gences of belief or practice, we may see in 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 29 
 
 the very vehemence of the dispute, in the 
 ardour of mutual interference, a proof of un- 
 derlying unity. But when, as now, great 
 Churches treat each other with cool and even 
 polite indifference, the note of unity is less 
 easily found. Separation seems to be accepted 
 as normal. And if there would be a difficulty 
 even in the case of Churches geographically 
 separated, a still greater confusion arises 
 where the professed adherents of several 
 Churches are locally intermingled. 
 
 The difficulty is simplified for those who 
 persuade themselves that one only of these 
 severed parts of Christendom is the true 
 Church, and that all the rest are fallen away 
 from unity. It is simplified, but not solved, 
 for there remain questions about the nature 
 of member.ship in the Church and the con- 
 dition of the separated, which varieties of 
 practice have rendered singularly embarrass- 
 ing. With these, however, I have little or 
 nothing to do. We have not attempted such 
 a simplification of the problem. Neither the 
 public teaching of the English Church nor 
 the individual teaching of English theolo- 
 gians looks that way. We recognize the 
 severed parts of Christendom as being truly 
 parts of the one Church. Where, then, is the 
 
30 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 unity ? What is the one Church in which 
 we believe ? 
 
 I have distinguished the public teaching 
 of the Church and the individual teaching 
 of theologians, and to this distinction it will 
 be convenient to adhere. The theologians 
 speak with authority only as interpreting the 
 teaching of the Church, and, conversely, if 
 the public teaching of the Church be obscure, 
 it is to the common interpretation of recog- 
 nized theologians that we must turn. 
 
 §2. 
 
 Controversy regarding the unity of the 
 Church can hardly be said to have existed 
 before the fourteenth century. There were 
 disputes whether certain persons or certain 
 dioceses were or were not severed from the 
 unity of the Church, but the dispute turned 
 upon the validity of some excommunication, 
 or upon details which could not be regarded 
 as belonging to the essential constitution of 
 the Church. Of the latter kind was the con- 
 troversy that raged in the early years of the 
 English Church about the Celtic usages. Men 
 fought for uniformity in details.not for essential 
 unity. But this trivial dispute was animated 
 by a growing idea that Rome was in some sense 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 31 
 
 the centre of unity, and that unity was to be 
 secured only by conformity to the practice of 
 the Roman Church. St. Wilfrid Avas indeed 
 a precursor of St. Boniface, that English 
 missionary who was the true leader of the 
 centralizing movement which laid the founda- 
 tions of the later Papacy. The idea can 
 hardly be said to have prevailed in the time 
 of Wilfrid, but it grew in strength from his 
 time onward. It was not however formulated : 
 it did not appear in the recognized definitions 
 of the Church. The definitions of earlier times, 
 of St. Cyprian, of Theodoret, of St. Gregory 
 the Great, were still considered adequate. 
 The Church was merely the AHsenihly of the 
 faithful. So it was defined by the Pope 
 Nicholas I ; so St. Thomas Aquinas defined 
 it ^ On the eve of the great schism, the 
 
 ' St. Cypri.an, Ep. Ixvi. 8 : " lUi sunt ecclesia plebs sacer- 
 doti adunata et pastori suo grex adhaerens." Ixix. 5 ; 
 " Gregem nostrum significat conimixtione adim<atae multitu- 
 dinia copulatum." 
 
 Theodoret in Ep. ad Eplies. i. 23; fKKXrjaiav icaKii rov 
 avWoyov TUIV maruiv. 
 
 St. Greg. Mag. E.rp. mor. in Job, lib. xix. cap. 22: " Sancta 
 ipiippe Ecclesia sic consistit u&itate Fidcliuin sicut corpus 
 nostrum nnitutn est couipage meuibrorum." 
 
 Nic. I. in Deer, de L'oiisecratiune, dist. i. cap. \'iii : 
 " Kcclt'sia, id est, catliolicorum cougregatio." 
 
 The only place in the genuine writings of St. Thomas 
 
32 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 Franciscan Nicholas de Lyra loosely described 
 the Church as consisting of those in whom is 
 the knowledge and genuine confession of the 
 faith and the truth, without regard to eccle- 
 siastical power and dignity K 
 
 It was coming to be thought, however, that 
 communion with the Roman See was the test 
 of unity. The bull Unam Sanctam gave 
 coherence to the idea. When therefore the 
 Great Schism broke out on the election of 
 Urban VI in 1378, when for forty years there 
 were two men, and at times three, each 
 claiming to be the true occupant of the Holy 
 See, the nature of the unity of the Church 
 necessarily became matter of controversy. But 
 
 where I can find anything answering to a formal definition 
 of the Church is S- T. iii. qu. 8. art. 4, where he seems to 
 treat the phrase Congregatiojidelium as a sufficient definition. 
 The following, however, from his Commentary on the Epistle 
 to the Ephesians, has considerable interest : " Cum Ecclesia 
 Dei sit sicut civitas, est aliquod unum et distinctum. ... In 
 qualibet autem civitate ad hoc ut sit unum quattuor debent 
 esse comniunia ; scilicet uiius giibernator, una lex, eadem 
 insignia, et idem finis." On this he builds the unity of the 
 Church, "quae est una; primo, quia liabet diicem unum, 
 scilicet, Christum," &c. Comment, in EpJus. c. iv. lect. ii. 
 
 ' De Lyra, in Matt. xvi. i8: "Ecclesia non consistit in 
 hominibus ratione potestatis vel dignitatis ecclesiasticae vel 
 saeculari.s, quia multi Principes et Summi Pontifices et alii 
 inferiores invent! sunt apogtatasse .a fide, propter quod 
 eccU'sia consistit in illis persouis in quibus est notitia vera 
 et confessio fidei et veritatis." 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 33 
 
 the controversy was smothered. The fiercer 
 partisans of each Pope might claim that 
 with them alone was the one true Church. 
 Moderate men sought a practical solution. The 
 Western Church was reunited in the Council 
 of Constance by a practical expedient. Under 
 the direction of the Council, the cardinals nomi- 
 nated by three rival popes combined to elect 
 Martin V; visible unity was for a time restored, 
 but the question remained undetermined, 
 wherein the true unity of the Church consisted. 
 
 During all this period the English Church 
 was disturbed by the same difficulties, and 
 calmed by the same practical solution as the 
 rest of Western Christendom. It may be as 
 well, however, to note what was done in 
 England at the time when the difficulties 
 of the Schism reached their height. In 1416 
 there were three claimants to the Papacy. 
 The English Church recognized none of them. 
 Three sees were vacant, which in the ordinary 
 practice of the age could not be filled without 
 Bulls from Rome ; in this emergency the 
 Archbishop of C/anterbury, fortified by royal 
 support, filled the sees by his metropolitic 
 authority It is plain that Chichele recog- 
 nized the lawfulness, under proper circum- 
 
 ' See the king's wriU in Kymer, ix. 337, 338. 
 0 
 
34 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 stances, of independent provincial action, 
 without the authority of the Roman See. On 
 the election of Martin V, the English Church 
 returned without question to its former rela- 
 tions with the Papacy. 
 
 Thus the controversy of the Great Schism 
 was without result. The definitions of the 
 Church put forward even by Curialist theo- 
 logians were as wide and indeterminate as 
 before. The Cardinals de Cusa and de Turre- 
 cremata, the English Lyndwood, and others, 
 were content to define it as the Congregation 
 of the Faithfid, sometimes with a vague 
 attempt to identify the members, sometimes 
 with the significant addition that Christ is 
 the Head ^ 
 
 §3- 
 
 Such was the state of theological opinion 
 when the storm of the Reformation broke 
 
 ' Jo. de Turreciemata, Summa de Ecclesia, lib. i. cap. i, 
 thus defines the Church fecniidum rem: "Est enim catho- 
 liconim sive fidelium coUeclio." Just below, however, he 
 adds : " Sive Ecclesia est universitas fidelium qui uniug 
 veri Dei cultu, unius fidei professione oonveniunt." 
 
 Nic. Cusanus, de Concordantia Calholica, lib. i. cap. I : 
 " Ut per harinoniam quandaiu virtutura ac ministeriorum 
 corpus unum, ex omnibus rationatilis naturae spiritibus, 
 adhaereat capiti siio Christo." 
 
 For Ljndwood, see p. 12, note ; and compare the defini- 
 tions given below, pp. 43-46. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 35 
 
 upon the Western Church. Within a very 
 few years the partisans of Luther were called 
 upon to formulate a theory of the constitution 
 of the Church and its essential unity. They 
 took a new departure, and they had to justify 
 it. A little later the Swiss and the Genevese 
 were subject to the same necessity'. I have 
 no immediate concern with their theories ; 
 they affected the opinions of certain English- 
 men, but only as any treatment of an eagerly 
 debated subject was bound to do so. The 
 question which the English Church had to 
 face was different from that which pressed 
 upon the Protestants and the Swiss Reformers. 
 The English Church as a body put aside the 
 jurisdiction of the Roman See, as then usually 
 exercised. Here the question was not whether 
 individual Christians were cuttinij themselves 
 off from the unity of the Church, but whether 
 unity was destroyedby a rupture of the existing 
 relations between certain parts of the Church. 
 The question was not to be evaded. When 
 the English Church, at the instance of Henry 
 VI n, began to act independently of the 
 Papacy, the cry of broken unity was at once 
 raised. Reginald Pole wrote his Defence of the 
 Unify of the Church, an epistle to Henry, 
 which he soon afterwards published. Roundly 
 
36 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 accusing the king of schism, he made his 
 meaning the clearer by founding his accu- 
 sation mainly on the title of Supreme Head. 
 The one head of the Church on earth, he said, 
 was the Roman Pontiff, and the unity of the 
 Church consisted in subordination to him ; to 
 set up another head was to make another 
 Church. Pole's language was rhetorical and 
 exaggerated as usual ; his later action at the 
 time of the reconciliation shows that it must 
 be read with some qualification ; he did not 
 clearly distinguish, as indeed theologians 
 had not yet learnt to distinguish between 
 the external oneness of the Church and its 
 internal unity ; but he raised a question, the 
 practical meaning of which was clear. He 
 was answered as clearly. Starkey and Tun- 
 stall replied that England was in no sense 
 departing from the unity of the Church. The 
 issue was definitely joined. From this time 
 forward the position of the English Church 
 was formally taken up, to be abandoned only 
 for a few years under pressure of circumstances. 
 But so far the position is only a negative one. 
 To remain in the unity of the Church it is 
 not necessary to submit to the jurisdiction 
 of the Roman Pontift'. What of the positive 
 teaching ? 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 37 
 
 §4. 
 
 I shall consider first the public teachiag of 
 the English Church. The pressure of con- 
 troversy and the turmoil of the reformation 
 movement made it necessary, in England as 
 elsewhere, to put out some definitions of the 
 truths that were most called in question. 
 The English Church did this, rather hurriedly 
 perhaps, in 1537, by publishing the book 
 entitled The Inditution of a Chridian Man. 
 Carefully revised, it was put forth again in 
 J 543 under the title of A Necessary Doctrine 
 and Erudition for any Christian Man, and, 
 though popularly known as The Kings Book, 
 it was issued with the full synodical authority 
 of the Church. In the exposition of the ninth 
 article of the Creed, the Church is defined as — 
 " An assembly of people called out from other, 
 as from infidels and heathens, to one faith 
 and confession of the name of Christ." 
 
 Of this Church Christ is the only Head, and 
 therefore it is Holy, by reason of His holiness. 
 It is also Catholic, " that is to say, not limited 
 to any one place or region of the world." 
 There are therefore several Churches in divers 
 parts of the world having distinct ministers, 
 and divers heads in earth." The unity of the 
 
38 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 Churcli is nevertheless intact. " Yet be all 
 these holy Churches but one holy Church 
 Catholic, invited and called by one God 
 the Father to enjoy the benefit of redemp- 
 tion wrought by one only Lord and Saviour 
 Jesu Christ, and governed by one Holy Spirit, 
 whicli teacheth to this foresaid holy Church 
 one truth of God's holy word in one faith and 
 baptism." It is then argued that the recog- 
 nition of one supreme governor in earth is 
 not necessary for preserving unity, and there 
 follows a passage on the true nature of unity, 
 which I must transcribe at length : — 
 
 " The unity therefore of the Church is not 
 conserved by the Bishop of Rome's authority 
 or doctrine : but the unity of the Catholic 
 Church which all Christian men in this article 
 do profess, is conserved and kept by the help 
 and assistance of the Holy Spirit of God, in 
 ]-etaining and maintaining of such doctrine 
 and profession of Christian faith, and true 
 observance of the same, as is taught by the 
 Scripture and the doctrine apostolic. And 
 particular Churches ought not in the said 
 doctrine so accepted and allowed, to vary one 
 from another for any lucre, arrogance, or any 
 other worldly affection, but inviolably to 
 observe the same, so that by reason of that 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 39 
 
 doctrine each Church that teacheth the same 
 may be worthily called (as it is indeed) an 
 apostolic Church, that is to say, following such 
 teaching as the Apostles preached, with minis- 
 tration of such sacraments as be approved b}' 
 the same. 
 
 " And this unity of the holy Church of 
 Christ is not divided by distance of place nor 
 by diversity of traditions and ceremonies, 
 diversely observed in divers Churches, for 
 good order of the same. For the Churches of 
 Corinth and of Ephese were one Church in God, 
 though the one were far distant in place from 
 the other : and though also in traditions, 
 opinions, and policies there was some diversity 
 among them, likewise as the Church of England, 
 Spain, Italy, and Poole ^ be not separate from 
 the unity, but be one Church in God, notwith- 
 standing that among them there is great dis- 
 tance of place, divei'sity of traditions, not in all 
 things unity of opinions, alteration in rites, 
 ceremonies, and ordinances, or estimation of 
 the same, as one Church peradventure doth 
 esteem their rites, traditions, laws, ordinances, 
 and ceremonies to be of more vix'tue and efficacy 
 than another Church doth esteem the same. 
 As the Church of Rome doth affirm certain 
 
 ' i.e. Polaud. 
 
40 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 of their laws and ordinances to be of such 
 estimation that they be of equal force with the 
 word of God, and that whosoever disobeyeth 
 or transgresseth the same committeth de<adly 
 sin ; yet we, perceiving the same to be dis- 
 crepant from the truth of Scripture, must 
 needs therein dissent from them. But such 
 diversity in opinions, and other outward 
 manners and customs of policy, doth not dis- 
 solve and break the unity which is in one 
 God. one faith, one doctrine of Christ and 
 His sacraments, preserved and kept in these 
 several Churches without any superiority or 
 pre-eminence, that one Church by God s law 
 may or ought to challenge over another 
 
 This teaching on the Unity of the Church 
 became ingrained in English theology ; the 
 very words of the passage here cited find 
 a continual echo in later utterances. The 
 formal definition of the Church, however, 
 given above, was clearly inadequate, and was 
 soon improved. In 1552, at the time when 
 the influence of the Swiss Reformers was 
 working most disastrously in England, a new 
 definition was adopted, which, so far from 
 bearing the marks of that influence, difters 
 
 ' The King^s Book. Reprint by Rrowniiig, 1S95. pp. 
 24-27. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 41 
 
 from the older one only in being more precise. 
 Forty-two Articles of Religion were then put 
 forth, under the pretended authority of Con- 
 vocation. The twentieth of these was iden- 
 tical with the nineteenth of the Thirtj'-nine 
 Articles finally adopted by the Synods of 
 1562. I have already quoted this, but I repeat 
 the text here for the sake of convenience : — 
 
 " Ecclesia Chiisti visibilis 
 est coetus fidelium, in quo 
 verbum Dei puruui praefli- 
 catur, et sacranienta, quoad 
 ea quae necessario exiguntur, 
 iuxta Christi institutum recte 
 adniinistrantur." 
 
 "The visible Church of 
 Christ is a congregation of 
 faithful men, in the which 
 tlie pure word of God is 
 preached, and the sacraments 
 be duly fliinistered according 
 to Christ's ordinance, in all 
 those things that of necessity 
 are requisite to the same." 
 
 In this definition there are seven points to 
 be noticed, (i) The Church here spoken of, 
 as I have shown above, is that one universal 
 Church which is rightly called Catholic. 
 (2) This universal Church, spread throughout 
 the world, is visible, and therefore, since it is 
 exhibited to sense or to the understanding as 
 one, it follows that the unity itself also miist 
 be visible. (3) It is a congregation, that is 
 to say, it consists of a number of individuals, 
 who are bound together in some special way. 
 (4) It is a congregation of faitliful men, that 
 
42 THE UNITY OF THE CHUBCH AS TREATED 
 
 is of men who profess a cei-tain faith, and are 
 known thereby. (5) In this Church the pure 
 xvord of God is preached, or the sum of 
 revealed truth. (6) The sacraments also are 
 ministered in this Church ; and the sacra- 
 ments — to quote another of the Thirty-nine 
 Articles — are " not only badges or tokens of 
 Christian men's profession, but rather they be 
 certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of 
 grace ^" ; and among them Baptism is " a sign 
 of regeneration or new birth, whereby, as by 
 an instrument, they that receive Baptism 
 rightly are grafted into the Church ^ " ; whence 
 it follows that the Church consists only of the 
 baptized. (7) Lastly, the sacraments must be 
 duly ministered, with all that is necessary for 
 carrying out the ordinance of Christ ; and 
 therefore any professing themselves Christians 
 who fall short of this requirement are so far 
 alien from the one Church. But, further, the 
 notion of ministering includes the idea of a 
 certain control, and therefore the ministers of 
 the sacraments must exercise some discipline ; 
 
 ^ Art. XXV : " Sacramenta a Christo instituta non tantuni 
 sunt notae professionis Christianoruin, sed cei'ta quaedaiu 
 potius testimonia et efficacia sigua gratiae." 
 
 * Al t. xxvii : " Baptismua . . . est signuni regenerationis, 
 per quod, tanquam per instrumentum, recte Baptieiuum sua- 
 cipientes Ecclesiae iuseruntur." 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 43 
 
 and since, according to these same Articles, it 
 is not lawful for any man to take upon him 
 the office of ministering the sacraments, before 
 he be lawfully called and sent to execute the 
 same ^, it follows that the true Church must 
 be established under the rule of lawful pastors. 
 
 §5- 
 
 I have thought it well to analyze the whole 
 of this definition, though it contains no actual 
 reference to the note of unity, because upon the 
 essential constitution of the Church depends 
 the nature of its unity. But in the definition 
 itself there is nothing peculiar, nothing to 
 mark the standpoint of English theology. It 
 corresponds closely to those that Avere current 
 in the fifteenth century and earlier ; con- 
 temporary theologians, even among those who 
 strenuously supported the claims of the Roman 
 Pontiff, were content with a similar form. 
 Fisher, indeed, in controversy with Oecolam- 
 padius, fell back upon the simplest definition^. 
 
 ' Art. xxiii : " Non licet cuiquam sumere eibi muinis 
 publice praedicandi, aut iidiniiiistraiuli Bacrameuta in Eccle- 
 eia, nisi prius fiierit ad haec ubeunda legitime vountus et 
 misBua." 
 
 ^ Fisher, Contra Oecolampadiuin, Praef. ad lib. iv. ail 
 Jiiiem : '• Quid est Ecclesia Catliolica, niai corpus unum ex 
 plebe patribusque coUectutn, ubicumque fuerint per orbeiii 
 aparsi ? " 
 
44 THE UNITY OF THE C'HURCH AS TREATED 
 
 Albertus Pighius, face to face with the divisions 
 that were racking the Church, distinguished 
 the true part from the false merely as that 
 which kept the true faith and worshipped 
 the true God with true religion^. Michael 
 Bucchinger proposed three alternative defini- 
 tions of the Church, the longest and fullest 
 being as follows : "A congregation of faithful 
 men agreeing in one and the same doctrine of 
 the Gospel according to the consent of the 
 holy fathers, and in the same catholic and 
 lawful administration of the sacraments 
 Stapleton was among the most vigorous con- 
 
 ' nierarchiae Eccledasticae Assertio, lib. i. cap. I : " Ut 
 evidens faciamus quaenam sit Christi Ecclesia, ab ipsa 
 nominis notione exordiendum est. Ecclesia itaque Latine 
 multitudinem, coetuni, aut conventuin significat. . . . Seil 
 quoniam et vera est et falsa de Deo fides, vera falsaque 
 religio, veri Dei falsornmque deorum cultus, hie statim in 
 duo e dianietro se secat Ecclesia, videlicet in Ecclesiani 
 sanctam, quae rectam de Deo fidem servat, vera religione 
 verum Deum colit et adorat, et ab eo salutem suam ex- 
 spectat; et in earn quae dicta omnia non habet sincera ac 
 recta, sed vel in omtiibiis vel in aliquo eorum aberrat." 
 
 ^ Bucchinger, Hist. Eccl., Moguntiae, 1560, p. i. His 
 definitions are as follows : — 
 
 1. " Ecclesia Catholica niilitans est sanctorum communio, 
 sen congregatio, couiplectens tam bonos quam males. 
 
 2. Ecclesia est multitude vel coll«ctio fidelium fide et 
 caritate unita. 
 
 3. Ecclesia est congregatio fidelium consentientium in 
 unam ac eandem evangelii doctrinam, secundum conso- 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 45 
 
 troversialists on the papal side, yet his defini- 
 tion goes no further. "The word Ecdesia," 
 he saj s, " means nothing else but the whole 
 multitude of the faithful scattered throughout 
 the world." Coming to close quarters with 
 the Calvinist opinion that the elect belong to 
 the Church even before Baptism, he requires 
 something more precise, and produces the fol- 
 lowing definition: "The Church is a society 
 of those that profess the name of Christ, 
 gathered and lawfully ordered in the unity 
 of the faith and sacraments." Elsewhere he 
 makes one of several modes of unity consist in 
 submission to the Roman see ^. Estius, when 
 
 nantiam sanctorum patruin et in eundein Catholicum ac 
 legitiinum sacrainentorum ritura." 
 
 It is noteworthy that Bncchinger, while qualifying the 
 universal Church as Jtomanu, formally treats the source of 
 its unity {Ecclesiae Vnitaa mule, p. 4) without any mention 
 of the Pope. He attributes it exclusively to the immediate 
 action of the Holy Ghost. " Sed unde Ecclesiae ea unitas, et 
 sibi per omnia secula consentiens ? Ex Spiritu unicae veri- 
 tatis uiiico. Spirituiii ilium Christus (imago Dei inconspicui) 
 suae Ecclesiae, non solum consolatorem, sed et rectorem, et 
 omnigenae veritatis doctorem promigit." Compare above, 
 p. 38. 
 
 * Stapleton, 7?e?ec<io t>cholastica,kc. Controv. I. <le Eec-le- 
 sia in xe. Qu. i, " Vox Ecclesiae nihil aliud quam universam 
 fidelium multitudinem toto orbe di.sper.sam significat." Qu. ii. 
 art. 3, " Ecclesia est iirmissime una per connexionein oumium 
 membrorum tam superiorum et pastorum ipsorum immediate, 
 
46 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 expressly distinguishing between Calvinist and 
 Catholic definitions of the Church, states the 
 latter as follows : " The society of those who 
 are held together by a right faith and the 
 sacraments 
 
 At length the mention of the Roman 
 Pontiff began to creep into the definitions 
 of the Church. The Dominican Banes 
 propounded two definitions — one by which 
 all the baptized, orthodox and heretical alike, 
 were included in the Church ; another by 
 which it was "A visible congregation of faithful 
 men baptized under one head Christ in heaven, 
 and His Vicar on earth From the time of 
 Bellarmine the definition has always taken 
 this form in Curialist writers. It was however 
 a novelty, and was strongly opposed by many 
 
 quam alioruni onmiuin mediate, sub uno primario capite 
 Petri succe?sore et Cbristi Vicario." Qu. v. art. i, "Ecclesia 
 est societas Christi nomen profitentium in unitate fidei et 
 sacramentorum collecta atque legitime ordinata." 
 
 ' Estius in Matt, xviii : " Controversia est inter Catholicos 
 et haereticos, quid nomine Ecclesiae intelligcndum sit. 
 .Joannes Hiis et eum secuti haeretici nostri teni ports de- 
 finiunt Eccles\Rm,Praedestin(iiorutn universitatem. Catholici 
 definiunt Societatem eorum qui per rectam Jidem et sacra- 
 menla sibi midtto cohaereiit." 
 
 Banes, Comment, in Sec. Sec. qu. i.art. 10: "Congregatio 
 honiinum fidelium baptizatorum visibilis sub uno capite 
 Christo in caelis, et Vicario eius 'tn terris." Ed. 1615, toni. 
 iii. p. 45. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 47 
 
 of the Gallican school. It is a very significant 
 fact that the definition adopted by the English 
 Church is practically identical with those put 
 forward by many supporters of the Papacy, 
 and employed by them for the express purpose 
 of combating Calvinism. 
 
 §6. 
 
 After some nineteen years of independence, 
 the Church of England submitted once more 
 to the Roman see. The reconciliation was 
 certainly carried out under pressure from the 
 Crown, but none the less it seems to have 
 been the genuine act of the Church. The very 
 men, such as Tunstall, Gardiner, and Bonner, 
 who had been foremost in advocating the 
 rupture of relations, were foremost also in 
 restoring them. They had seen the Church, 
 during the later years of Edward VI, rushing 
 headlong, as it seemed, into Zwinglianism 
 and other heresies. In a sort of despair they 
 turned to the Roman obedience as the only 
 sure defence of unity and orthodoxy. They 
 did not shrink from saying precisely what 
 they had formerly denied, that the English 
 Church had fallen from unity. In 1554 the 
 clergy of the Province of Canterbury in Con- 
 vocation addressed a petition to the bishops, 
 
48 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 referring to their " godly forwardness ... in 
 the restitution of this noble Church of England 
 to her pristine state and unity of Christ's 
 Church, which now of late years hath been 
 grievously infected with heresies, perverse and 
 schismatical doctrine sown abroad in this 
 realm by evil preachers ^" The language is 
 guarded, and very different from that of Pole 
 in his Defence of Unity. While acknowledging 
 a certain lapse from unity, the clergy claimed 
 to be still members of the nohle Church of 
 England. It was not the essential unity 
 of the Church that was broken, otherwise they 
 could make no such claim ; it was some ex- 
 ternal, accidental unity. We can trace what 
 was in their mind. In the course of their 
 petition they call the English Prayer Book 
 a schisviatical book ^. In this they anticipate 
 the language used by Cole in the discussion 
 of 1 559, when he declared that the substitution 
 of an English for the Latin service »would 
 involve a breach of unity, a horrible schism 
 and division. His argument shows that he 
 meant nothing more than a serious divergence 
 in practice fi-om the rest of the Church ^ ; his 
 
 ' Canlwell, Synodalia, p. 433. 
 - Ibid. p. 434. 
 
 ' Cardwell, Cciiferences, p. 66. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 49 
 
 opponents answered him by asserting the right 
 of every particular Church to vary ceremonies, 
 arguing, with quotations from Irenaeus and 
 Augustine, that such variation does not involve 
 any breach of peace and unity ^ The schism 
 complained of in 1554 was of this nature. It 
 meant a needless and therefore a mischievous 
 variation from the general practice of Christen- 
 dom. In 1555, when the reconciliation with 
 Rome was effected, and the English Church 
 was fairly in the grip of the Legate, we find 
 a closer approximation to Curialist language. 
 Bonner, in his declaration to the people of 
 London concerning the reconciliation, spoke of 
 " this noble realm of England dividinsr itself 
 from the unity of the Catholic Church, and 
 from the agreement in religion with all other 
 Christian realms 2." Pole, in the first decree 
 of his Legatine Council, used similar but 
 even more emphatic words''. The English 
 Church, during the Marian j-eaction, un- 
 doubtedly looked to the Roman see as the 
 centre of unity; but this was probably in 
 regard not so much to the essential unity of 
 
 ' Cardwell, Conferences', pp. 79-82. 
 
 ' Cardwell, 'Documentary Annals, vol. i. p. 170. 
 
 ' Ibid. p. 176: " Hoc regnum, quod a corpore catholicae 
 Ecclesiae Beparatum erat, iam Dei misericordia ad eins uni- 
 tateiu rediit." 
 
 •D 
 
50 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 the Cliurcb as to the practical maintenance 
 of unity and concord in Christendom. 
 
 §7- 
 
 I have already shown, when speaking of 
 the Branch Theory, that in the thirtieth 
 canon of the Code of 1604 the English Church 
 definitely repudiated the idea of having 
 separated essentially from the other local 
 Churches of the West^ There were great 
 and serious differences, but these were not 
 to be taken as involving a breach of unit}'. 
 
 In the same Code there is included a con- 
 stitution which is often put forward as indi- 
 cating that in this unity were to be included, 
 on equal terms, the organizations created in 
 various countries by the Protestant or Cal- 
 vinist reformers. The fifty-fifth Canon requires 
 all preachers to bid prayer in a form beginning 
 as follows : Ye shall pray for Christ's holy 
 Catholick Church, that is, for the whole 
 congregation of Christian people dispersed 
 throughout the whole world, and especially 
 for the Churches of England, Scotland, and 
 Ireland." But, we are told, the Church of 
 Scotland at this period was a Calvinist bod}', 
 organized on a Presbyterian basis. Therefore, 
 
 * Above, p. 25. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 according to this Canon, such bodies were to 
 be regarded as forming regular parts of the 
 Catholic Church. The argument is a striking 
 instance of the transfer to other times of ideas 
 proper to our own time. We are familiar with 
 the long-established, permanent settlement of 
 Presbyterianism. We readily forget that in 
 the early seventeenth century there was no 
 such thing. In Scotland the Church had been 
 harried by Calvinism, precisely as the Puritans 
 had endeavoured to harry the Church of 
 England under Elizabeth. The whole eccle- 
 siastical order had been thrown into confusion ; 
 the bishops were all departed, and their places 
 were filled, if at all, by mere titular holders of 
 the temporalities. But the Church of Scotland 
 had not, therefore, ceased to exist. However 
 disorganized, it was none the less rightly to be 
 aided, alike by prayer and by more active 
 benevolence. The same Fathers of the English 
 Church who bade prayer for the Church of 
 Scotland took order also, at the earliest oppor- 
 tunity, for supplying the Church of Scotland 
 with what she lacked. In 16 lo the titular 
 Scottish bishops received consecration in 
 England, and were charged with the restora- 
 tion of the ruined discipline of their Church. 
 Nor is it only by this subsequent action that 
 
52 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 we may determine the regard in which the 
 Church of Scotland was held when robbed of 
 her hierarchy. A later session of the same Con- 
 vocation supplies a further doctrinal witness. 
 
 In 1606 the Provincial Synods of Canter- 
 bury and York adopted a most elaborate 
 declaration concerning the government of the 
 Church. It was divided into three books 
 and sixty chapters, the doctrine of each 
 chapter being for the most part digested into 
 a eanon. Owing to the opposition of the 
 king these canons were not promulged, but 
 many years afterwards they were published, 
 with their chapters, under the misleading 
 title of OveralVs Convocation Book. The fifth 
 canon of the second book contains the fol- 
 lowing condemnation : — 
 
 If any man shall affirm, under colour of 
 anything that is in the Scriptures, either that 
 our Saviour Christ tvas not the head of tJie 
 Church from the beginning of it ; or, that all 
 the particular churches in the world are 
 otherwise to he termed one Church, than as He 
 Himself is the head of it^, and as all the 
 
 ' It would be stretching the sense of the canon too far 
 to make it mean that this is the only mode or ground of unity. 
 It is treating e.r professo of tlie f/overnmeid of the Church, 
 and deals with only that one element of unity. Compare the 
 quotation from St. Thomas Aquinas given above, p. 32. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 53 
 
 particular kingdoms in the world are called 
 but one kingdom, as He is the only king and 
 monarch of if; or, that our Saviour Christ hcdh 
 not appointed under Him several ecclesiastical 
 governors to rule and direct the said particu- 
 lar churches, as He hath appointed several kings 
 and sovereign princes to ride and govern their 
 i^everal kingdoms ;' . . . he doth greatly err. 
 
 The unity of the Church is here made 
 precisely parallel to the unity of human 
 society. It depends upon the One Head, from 
 whom inferior rulers immediately derive their 
 authority. Unity is at once organic and 
 hierarchical. Human society is an organic 
 unity, of which Chri.st is the Head, and all 
 princes and magistrates are His vicegerents, 
 ruling by His authority. The Church is also 
 organic unity, gathered out of all mankind, 
 of which Christ is again the one Head, and the 
 bishops throughout the world are His vicars. 
 In the chapter prefixed to this canon it is ex- 
 pressly taught that Christ Himself immediately 
 upon the Fall of Man, " not only began the 
 erection of that one Church, selected people, 
 and society of believers, which ever since hath 
 been, and so shall continue His blessed Spouse 
 for ever ; but also took upon Him thenceforth 
 and for ever to be the sole' monarch and hca<l 
 
54 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 of it, ruling and governing the same visibly 
 by such priests and ministers under Him, 
 as in His heavenly wisdom He thought fit 
 to appoint " ; and that, when the fullness of 
 time was come, He also " did, by the direc- 
 tion of the Holy Ghost and ministry of His 
 Apostles, ordain in the New Testament that 
 there should be in every national Church 
 some ministers of an inferior degree to instruct 
 His people in every particular parochial 
 church or congregation ; and over them 
 bishops of a superior degree, to have a care 
 and inspection over many such parochial 
 churches or congregations, for the better 
 ordering as well of the ministei's as of the 
 people within the limits of their jurisdiction; 
 and lastly, above them all, archbishops, and 
 in some especial places patriarchs, who were 
 first themselves, with the advice of some 
 other bishops, and when kings and sovereign 
 princes became Christians, then with their 
 especial aid and assistance, to oversee and 
 direct, for the better peace and government 
 of every such national Churches, all the bishops 
 and the rest of the particular Churches therein 
 established ^" 
 
 ' Overall's CoHVOcadon Book, pp. 124, 128, edit. Oxford, 
 1844. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 55 
 
 We may see here some crude and doubtful 
 history. Wfe may be amazed at the confidence 
 with which Divine authority is claimed for 
 the formal organization of National Churches. 
 But the very exaggeration of the language 
 serves to emphasize the doctrine thus publicly 
 taught, that one only Church was established 
 by Christ Himself, an organic whole and unity, 
 of which the several National or Provincial 
 Churches are only administrative divisions. 
 
 With this I conclude my survey of the 
 public teaching of the English Church. 
 
 §8. 
 
 How does the existing state of Christendom 
 answer to this teaching ? What sort of unity 
 can we recognize in the Church, so divided as 
 we see it ? Where is the one Church in Avhich 
 we believe? The synodical teaching which 
 we have reviewed takes little count of exist- 
 ing divisions. Indeed, in the sixteenth century 
 those divisions had not the appearance of 
 permanence which they now have. Men 
 were confronted, as they thought, with a pass- 
 ing difficulty ; patience would find a solution. 
 The continuance of division has compelled 
 theologians to face, and gradually to answer, 
 questions which the public teaching of the 
 
56 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 Church passes by. It is useless to define the 
 one Church in terms which point to nothing 
 now visible on earth, which may correspond 
 to the experience of some golden age in the 
 past, or to something which the providence 
 of God has in store for the future, but which 
 has no relation to existing facts. What is 
 the unity of the Church now, and how is it 
 to be recognized ? Does it exist ? Is it per- 
 fect or impaired? What is needed for its 
 perfection ? 
 
 W^e must turn to the writings of theolo- 
 gians. What have we learnt during the last 
 three centuries? We ma}'^ expect to find 
 a growincr consciousness of difficulties, and if 
 the matter is not inscrutable, then also 
 a growing clearness of definition. I shall 
 refer to some few writers only, choosing those 
 who enjoy the highest reputation, and who 
 are most characteristic of their several periods. 
 
 § 9- 
 
 Cardinal Pole, as we have seen above, at- 
 tacked Henry VIII for breaking the unity of 
 the Church. He made it perfectly clear what 
 he meant. In the Apologia ad Angliae Par- 
 liamentum, prefixed to his work on Unity, 
 he insists that for the presei-vation of unity 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 57 
 
 there must be one Chief Pastor of the Church 
 Militant, even as there is one only Head of 
 the Church Triumphant, and this Chief Pastor 
 is the Roman Pontiff ^ His whole argument 
 turns on the assumption by the king of the 
 title of Supreme Head on earth of the Church 
 of England, the attainment of which title he 
 recklessly takes to be the chief object of 
 Henry's breach with the papacy^. An attack 
 delivered in this vein was not a difficult one 
 to answer. It was easy to show that the 
 title adopted by the king made no inroad 
 upon the unity of the Church, but merely 
 indicated a certain legal relation between the 
 prince and that part of the one Church which 
 was locally established in his dominions. 
 Such, in fact, was the tenor of the replies 
 actually made. Before publishing his book 
 
 ' " Quoil ;ul unitatuin Ecclesiae attiiiet, ut sit umis Faster 
 in Ecclesia inilitaiiti nd exemplar triuiiiphantis, quain per- 
 sonam J'uiUifex Romanus gtrit." I'uli Epist. Pars. i. 
 p. 187. 
 
 ' " Ut cniin te Hupremiim caput Ecclesiae in regno tiio 
 conHtitueres, negasti unum in univerta Ecclesia caput esse," 
 I'ro Uiiilale, fol. 3 a. edit. Argentorati, 1555. A little 
 above he speiika of the overthrow of the papal jurisdiction 
 as the greatest injury that could he done to the Church : 
 " Dico igitur, dico hanc ahs te iniuriam Kccleniac inferri, 
 ijua haud Bcio an major potuerit, (|uod suuui illi caput in 
 terris aufers, cum I'oiilificem Uonuiii'im unicuni iu terris 
 Ecclesiae caput et Christi Yicarium no^as." 
 
58 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 Pole sent a copy of it to the king, who placed 
 it in the hands of Tunstali for examination. 
 Tunstall replied in a long letter to Pole, 
 answering his chief objections, and earnestly 
 dissuading him from publication. I am con- 
 cerned here, not so much with the intrinsic 
 value of the bishop's argument, as with his 
 presentment of the English case. He em- 
 phatically denies the breach of unity, and 
 shrewdly points out that Pole himself makes 
 no attempt to prove it, but assumes it 
 throughout. 
 
 " Your purpose," writes Tunstall, "is to bring 
 the king's grace, by penance, home unto the 
 Church again, as a man clearly separate from 
 the same already. And his recess from the 
 (yhurch ye prove not otherwise than by the fame 
 and common opinion of those parts ; who be 
 far from the knowledge of the truth of our 
 affairs here, and do conjecture every man as 
 they list (blindly) of things unknown to 
 them. 
 
 " Ye presuppose, for a ground, the king's 
 grace to be swerved from the unity of 
 Christ's Church ; and that in taking upon 
 him the title of Supreme Head of the Church of 
 England, he intendeth to separate his Church 
 of England from the unity of the whole body of 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 59 
 
 Christendom. . . . His full pui-pose and intent 
 is, to see the laws of Almighty God purely and 
 sincerely practised and taught, and Christ's 
 faith without blot kept and observed in his 
 realm ; and not to separate himself or his 
 realm anywise from the unity of Christ's 
 Catholic Church, but inviolably, at all times, 
 to keep and observe the same, and to reduce 
 his Church of England out of all captivity of 
 foreign powers heretofore usurped therein, into 
 the pristine state that all Churches of all realms 
 were in at the beginning \" 
 
 Tunstall states the English position clearly 
 enough. " We believe,'' he says in effect, "in 
 the one Church, and in the unity of that 
 Church we abide." But he does not, any more 
 than Pole, prove his case by argument. It 
 was the same with Henry's other apologists. 
 Sampson accumulated precedents for the 
 king's action from Scripture, from the acts 
 of the councils, from ecclesiastical history. 
 The inference was that if such action in the 
 past had not broken the unity of the Church, 
 neither did the king's action now. But with 
 the fundamental (juestion as to the true nature 
 of ecclesiastical unity every one fenced. The 
 
 ' TunBtall to Pole; Burnet, Becurds, Piirt III. book iii. 
 no. 52 (^Pocock's edition, vol. vi. p. 177 seqci.). 
 
6o THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS ^TREATED 
 
 controvei'sies of the Great Schism were not 
 yet forgotten, and he was a bold man who 
 would venture on a definition. Pole indeed 
 had the advantage here. He did not venture 
 on defining the unity of the Church as con- 
 sisting essentially in subordination to the 
 Roman Pontiff, but he was certainl}'' feeling 
 his way to this, and, as we have seen, within 
 a few years this definition began to appear in 
 books, and was finally adopted by all the 
 theologians of the Roman schools. This idea 
 •was behind Pole's argument and gave it a 
 certain coherence. His adversaries apparently 
 had no clear idea with which to encounter it. 
 
 The same weakness appears in the defenders 
 of the English Church for some time after- 
 wards. They stoutly repel the charge of 
 schism ; but they do not explain the nature 
 of the unity which they defend. Jewel, in 
 his famous Apologia, has a noble passage on 
 the one Church in which we believe, not 
 confined like that of the Old Testament to the 
 circumscription of a single nation, but spread 
 throughout the world, in the sense that no 
 part of the human race is excluded ; but when 
 he has to speak of the actual state of things 
 he becomes at once hazy and irrelevant. 
 He distinguishes vaguely between separating 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 6l 
 
 from a part of the Church and separating 
 from its en-ors and faults, without an}^ at- 
 tempt to determine the nature of the union 
 which remains ; he builds upon our unity 
 with the whole of the Church in its best age ; 
 he has nothing to say about the corporate or 
 organic unity of the Church that now is. 
 
 § lo. 
 
 These were arguments of hard-pressed con- 
 troversialists. Controversy was not .to be 
 silent for many years to come, but our next 
 author is one who had the extraordinary merit 
 of placing even trivial disputes upon a broad 
 and philosophic foundation. Hooker, brought 
 up under Calvinistic influences, freed himself 
 gradually from them as he became the cham- 
 pion of the Church against the Puritans. In 
 earlier days he could still speak of the invisible 
 Church in the sense of Calvin, "that body 
 mystical whereof Christ is the only head, that 
 building undiscernible by mortal eyes, wherein 
 Chi'ist is the chief corner-stone," and contrast 
 with it "the visible Church, the foundation 
 whereof is the doctrine of the prophets and 
 Apostles profest'." In his mature work he 
 
 ' Sermon II. § 23. This sermon was preached in tlie firBt 
 year of Hooker's MaBtership of tlie Temple, 1585 6. See 
 the note ta Kebleu edition- of the Workg, vol. iii. p. 483. 
 
62 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 maintains with a wealth of argument the 
 essential unity of the visible Church, no less 
 than of the invisible. I will quote him at 
 some length : — 
 
 " When we read of any duty which the 
 Church of God is bound unto, the Church 
 whom this doth concern is a sensibly known 
 company. And this visible Chuich in like sort 
 is but one, continued from the first beginning 
 of the world to the last end. Which company 
 being' divided into two moieties, the one 
 before, the other since the coming of Christ ; 
 that part, which since the coming of Christ 
 partly hath embraced and partly shall here- 
 after embrace the Christian religion, we term 
 as by a more proper name the Church of 
 Christ. And therefore the Apostle affirmeth 
 plainly of all men Christian, that be they 
 Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, they are all 
 incorporated into one company, they all make 
 but one body. The unity of which visible 
 body and Church of Christ consisteth in that 
 uniformity which all several persons thereunto 
 belonging have, by reason of that one Lord 
 whose servants they all profess themselves, 
 that one Faith which they all acknowledge, 
 that one Baptism wherewith they arc all 
 initiated. The visible Church of Jesus Christ 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 63 
 
 is therefore one, in outward profession of 
 those things, which supernaturally appertain 
 to the very essence of Christianity, and are 
 necessarily required in every particular Chris- 
 tian man/' 
 
 A little below he adds : " Although we know 
 the Christian faith and allow of it, yet in this 
 respect we are but entering ; entered we are 
 not into the visible Church before our admit- 
 tance by the door of Baptism." He seems 
 to allow no mark of membership in the one 
 Church but that of one Lord, one Faith, one 
 Baptism. " For apparent it is, that all men 
 are of necessity either Christians or not 
 Christians. If by external profession they be 
 Christians, then are they of the visible Church 
 of Christ ; and Christians by external pro- 
 fession they are all, whose mark of recog- 
 nizance hath in it those things which we have 
 mentioned." He argues that even heretics 
 are in some sort, though a maimed part, yet 
 a part of the visible Church." Their baptism 
 is allowed, and the honour of martyrdom is 
 not denied them. They are .separated " not 
 altogether from the company of believers, but 
 from the fellowship of sound believers. For 
 where professed unbelief is, there can be no 
 visible Church of Christ; there may be, where 
 
64 THE UNITY OP THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 sound belief wanteth." Even the act of ex- 
 communication, he says, " neither shutteth out 
 from tlie mystical, nor clean from the visible, 
 but only from fellowship with the visible in 
 holy duties 
 
 It is clear that he here recognizes in the 
 Church a soi't of organic unity which is of 
 God, and is altogether independent of the wills 
 and the human actions of the individual 
 members of the Church. He then passes on 
 to a different aspect of unity. " For preserva- 
 tion of Christianity there is not anything 
 more needful, than that such as are of the 
 visible Church have mutual fellowship and 
 society one with another." Here follows that 
 passage, already quoted, in which particular 
 Churches are compared to branches of the sea ; 
 and the visible unity of all these is further 
 founded on the common possession of certain 
 marks or properties. " As therefore they that 
 are of the mystical body of Christ have those 
 inward graces and virtues, whereby they differ 
 from all others, which are not of the same 
 body ; again, whosoever appertain to the 
 visible body of the Church, they have also 
 the notes of eternal profession, whereby the 
 world knoweth what they are : after the same 
 
 ' Eccl. Pol. bk. iii. ch. i. §§ 3, 6, 7, 11, 13. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 65 
 
 manner even the several societies of Christian 
 men, unto every of which the name of a Churc h 
 is given with addition betokening severalty, 
 as the Church of Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, 
 England, and so the rest, must be endued with 
 correspondent general properties belonging 
 unto them as they are public Christian societies. 
 And of such properties common unto all 
 societies Christian, it may not be denied that 
 one of the very chiefest is Ecclesiastical 
 PoUty \" 
 
 By this expression he means the general 
 order and government of the Church as ap- 
 pointed by God -. Thus he makes the visible 
 unity of the Church depend of necessity on 
 the maintenance of lawful authority. On the 
 constitution of this lawful authority he is not 
 very explicit. The scope of his work did not 
 demand this. Great as are its positive merits, 
 Hooker's work on the Lcnvs of Ecdemistiml 
 Polity is primarily a defence of the Church 
 of England against the Puritans. These main- 
 tained that no form of Church government is 
 lawful or tolerable save what is explicitly set 
 forth in Holy Scripture, and further, that all 
 the teaching of Scripture on this point had 
 
 ' Keel. Vol. bk. iii. ch. i. § 14. 
 ' Il.id. ch. ii. §• I. 
 
 E 
 
66 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 been precisely ascertained and put in practice 
 by the Calvinists of Geneva. The Genevan 
 settlement was therefore the only tolerable 
 form of Church order, and those bodies only 
 which conformed to it were any part of the 
 true visible Church of Christ. Against this 
 contention Hooker had not to prove that any 
 other form of government was essential ; in 
 doing so he would have fallen into the argu- 
 mentative blunder of attempting to prove too 
 much. It was sufficient for his purpose to 
 show that all the particulars of ecclesiastical 
 polity are not explicitly contained in Holy 
 Scripture ; many features, which are no less 
 truly of God. may be derived from other 
 sources. He had to defend the Catholic 
 discipline received and established in the 
 Church of England. It was not necessary, 
 even if he had thought it right, to attack the 
 Genevan discipline as actually unlawful. 
 
 It must not however be supposed that 
 Hooker allowed unlimited freedom in this 
 matter to particular Churches. In that case 
 the unity of discipline would disappear. 
 " Dissimilitude in great things," he says, " is 
 such a thing which draweth great inconveni- 
 ence after it, a thing which Christian religion 
 must always carefully prevent. And the way 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 67 
 
 to prevent it is, not as some do imagine, 
 the yielding up of supreme power over all 
 Churches into one only pastor's hands ; but 
 the framing of their government, especially for 
 matter of substance, everywhere according to 
 the rule of one only Law, to stand in no less 
 force than the law of nations doth, to be 
 received in all kingdoms, all sovereign rulers 
 to be sworn no otherwise unto it than some 
 are to maintain the liberties, laws, and re- 
 ceived customs of the country where they 
 reign. This shall cause uniformity even 
 under several dominions, without those woe- 
 ful inconveniences whereunto the state of 
 Christendom was subject heretofore, through 
 the tyranny and oppression of that one uni- 
 versal Nimrod who alone did all. And, till 
 the Christian world be driven to enter into the 
 peaceable and true consultation about some 
 such kind of general law concerning those 
 things of weight and moment wherein now 
 we differ, if one Church hath not the same 
 order whicli another hath ; let every Churcli 
 keep as near as may be the order it should 
 have, and commend the just defence thereof 
 unto God'." 
 
 In Hooker, then, we find the elements of 
 
 ' Eccl. Pol. bk. viii. ch. iii. § 5. 
 E 2 
 
68 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 the Church's unity broadly sketched, but not 
 worked out in detail. Beginning with unity 
 in the worship of one Lord, the unity of one 
 Faith professed by all in common, and the 
 sacramental unity of one Baptism, he pro- 
 ceeds to the unity of government by which 
 the Christian society is held together. He 
 may seem, however, to have recognized in 
 the one Faith only those ti'uths, the denial 
 of which would fasten upon a man the name, 
 not so much of heretic, but rather of apostate 
 or infidel. So too, while asserting a necessary 
 unity of government, he does not treat the 
 form of such government as specifically deter- 
 mined by the divine law ; he rather suggests 
 that particular Churches, if they adhere to 
 certain general principles, may vary it in 
 details even of some importance. 
 
 § II. 
 
 Hooker holds an unique position in modern 
 English theology, a position due partly to his 
 philosophic breadth of mind, partly to those 
 very circumstances which induced a certain 
 incompleteness in his work. His special task 
 was to turn the tide of Calvinism which 
 threatened to overwhelm the Church. He did 
 not, however, stand alone ; there were others 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 69 
 
 about him to fill up the gaps of his teaching. 
 Already, four years before his great work 
 appeared, Bancroft had preached the famous 
 sermon on the Trying of Spirits, in which he 
 asserted the episcopal government of the 
 Church to be of divine right. Almost simul- 
 taneously with the Laivs of Ecdesiadiccd 
 Polity appeared the kindred work of Bilson 
 on The Perpetual Government of Christ's 
 Church, in which the same principle was 
 strenuously maintained. But beyond all ^is 
 contemporaries Hooker made an impress on 
 English wa3'S of thinking which has never 
 been effaced. His temper in controversy, no 
 doubt, had much to do with this. He was 
 recognized from the first as the "Judicious." 
 He sot the form of thinking, even where he 
 failed to supply the matter ; the forces of the 
 Church were marshalled against Calvinism, 
 and the issues were clearly joined. 
 
 Hooker died with the sixteenth century. 
 During the forty years that followed, the 
 fruits of his work were ripened. I shall 
 make only one brief citation from a writer 
 who sums up, more perfectly perhaps than 
 any other, the teaching of the time. Ham- 
 mond, the chaplain of Charles I, was amoug 
 the most faithful and devoted disciples of 
 
70 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 the Laudian school. At the great crisis of 
 the Church of England, in the year 1644, he 
 published his Practical Catechism, in which 
 we read as follows : — 
 
 " The word ' catholic ' signifies ' universal,' 
 dispersed or extended all the world over ; in 
 opposition to the former state of the Jewish 
 (.'hurch, which was an inclosure divided from 
 all the world beside, in time of the law ; 
 whereas now the gospel is preached to all the 
 world, and, by those powers of the Holy 
 Ghost forementioned, a Church with all those 
 ministrations in it is constituted over all the 
 world. This Church is a society of believers, 
 ruled and continued according to those ordi- 
 nances, with the use of the Sacraments, preach- 
 ing of the word, censures, &c., under bishops or 
 pastors, succeeding those on whom the Holy 
 Ghost came down, and (by receiving ordi- 
 nation of those that had that power befox-e 
 them, i. e. of the bishops of the (Jhurch, the 
 continued successors of the Apostles) lawfully 
 called to those offices." So far in theoiy. 
 Then he asks, " What is the practical part 
 of this belief?" To this he answers: "The 
 living peaceably, cliaritably, faithfully, and 
 obediently within the fold of the universal 
 Church, yielding all reverence to the decrees 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 71 
 
 and doctrines of it ; and in every particular 
 or national Church, ' obeying them that have 
 the rule over us,' labouring to preserve both 
 unity of faith and charity with all our fellovp- 
 brethren, both in that and all other particular 
 Churches ; and not breaking into factions, 
 parties, divisions, subdivisions ; but labouring 
 our utmost to approve ourselves holy mem- 
 bers of that holy Catholic Church, by unity, 
 charity, brotheily love, ensuing and contending 
 for peace, and all other branches of Christian 
 purity ^" 
 
 It is clear that Hammond regarded the 
 essential unity of the Church as founded 
 mainly in uniformity of government and the 
 common use of the sacraments. Unity of 
 faith, as of mutual charity, he seems to place 
 rather among the objects of the Christian life, 
 to be earnestly desued and carefully sought, 
 than among those properties by which the 
 one Church may be discerned. This way of 
 thinking was common to most Eno-lish theo- 
 logians of the time. They insisted much upon 
 the corporate organization of the (Jhurch i 
 careful attention to the form of public worship, 
 strict observance of canonical order, would 
 
 ' Hammond,' Pm(7. Cut. lib. v. sect. iv. pp. 329, 330, 
 ad. 1847. 
 
;2 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 have the effect of bringing men to a right 
 
 DO D 
 
 faith as well ; they hardly regarded the possi- 
 bility of any Church retaining the apostolic 
 discipline and yet losing the faith. Recog- 
 nizing no rule in the Church but that of the 
 bishops, the successors of the Apostles, they 
 judged all men who were duly subject to 
 their own bishop in their own particular 
 Church to be fully established in the uni- 
 versal Church as well ; the bishops of the 
 several Churches throughout the world were, 
 potentially at least, united in one supreme 
 senate ruhng the whole Church of Christ. 
 
 The perfect realization of tliis idea], at least 
 in England and the associated kingdoms, was 
 the aim of Laud and his followers. The 
 religious unity of the nation, based on strict 
 ecclesiastical uniformity, was first to be 
 secured. The aid of the secular arm was 
 freely invoked ; it was the duty of the 
 Christian prince to secure this unity within 
 his dominions. When this was done, the 
 three national Churches of England, Scot- 
 land, and Ireland, bound together with inti- 
 mate communion, were to exhibit to the 
 world a pattern of wider unity, and the 
 divisions of Christendom were to be healed 
 by the universal apphcation of the same 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 73 
 
 principle. In the meanwhile, if practice was 
 to be uniform, opinion was to be free. The 
 great verities of the Christian faith must 
 not be impugned ; iierce and heated contro- 
 vers}' ought, perhaps, to be stifled ; but there 
 must be no undue forcing of thought — above 
 all, no proscription of opinion ; men must 
 agree to differ, and, differing, to live together 
 in unity. The ecclesiastical rigour of Laud 
 was crossed by a remarkable breadth in the 
 matter of doctrine. 
 
 This was the weakness of his school. Too 
 little account was taken of the passion with 
 which men, orthodox or heretical, will press 
 their beliefs. Too little importance was 
 attributed to the right faith which alone can 
 bind men together in the supernatural society 
 of the Church. The uprising of Calvinism, 
 no less against the Laudian toleration than 
 against the Laudian strictness, proved this in 
 part. The lamentable state into which the 
 English Church was at once reduced proved 
 it for the rest. The objective notion of the 
 (Jhurch which had seemed adequate in pros- 
 perity was found wanting in the day of ruin. 
 Theologians could not abide by it. They no 
 longer had before their eyes a great and 
 splendid house in which there was visibly 
 
74 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 room for vessels not only of gold and silver 
 but also of wood and earth, some to honour, 
 some to dishonour. They could no longer 
 dream of a vphole nation bound in one sacred 
 society under the rulers of the Church. The 
 house was fallen ; they saw the nation 
 miserably deceived and divided, the bishops 
 murdered, imprisoned, hiding, or driven to 
 exile. Triumphant sectaries were trampling 
 all ecclesiastical order under foot ; the 
 Calvinist discipline was in part established, 
 in part made way for mere anarchy ; no 
 vestige of orthodox rule or worship was even 
 tolerated. Where was now that National 
 Church which proclaimed itself an integral 
 part of the Universal Church, and as such 
 demanded the allegiance of all Christian men 
 within the nation 1 In what fashion did the 
 Church of England still exist? Was it in 
 exile, with the scattered bishops here and 
 there exercising their pastoral function with 
 doubtful right beyond their own borders ? 
 Was it in hiding at home, where some few 
 priests, amid the general defection, ministered 
 as they could in timorous and scanty gather- 
 ings of the faithful ? How did the actual 
 state of the Church stand with the theory 'i 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 75 
 
 § 12- 
 
 The pressure of this question had a remark- 
 able effect on English theologians. They 
 were not cowed by their misfortunes ; on the 
 contrary, in the time of worst oppression, 
 they were roused to extraordinary efforts. 
 Some of the greatest works of English 
 theology belong to this period ; and in these 
 writings there is a tone, not of bitterness, 
 such as persecution often engenders, but of 
 breadth and sympathy beyond what is found 
 in the previous age. There is a firm con- 
 viction that the Church of England will be 
 raised up again from her misery, and at the 
 same, time, a wider outlook over the whole 
 Catholic Church, their membership in which 
 men prized the more in proportion as their 
 own particular Church was forlorn. Bramhall, 
 pursued by the dominant faction with a hatred 
 second only to that which fell upon Laud, was 
 derided as " the advocate of a dead Church." 
 It was dead, he replied, " even as the trees 
 are dead in winter, when they want their 
 leaves ; or as the sun is set, when it is behind 
 a cloud ; or as the gold is destroyed, when it 
 is melting in the furnace. When I see a seed 
 cast into the ground, I do not ask where is 
 
70 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 the greenness of the leaves 1 where- is the 
 beauty of the flowers ? where is the sweetness 
 of the fruit ? but I expect all these in their 
 due season. Stay awhile, and behold the 
 catastrophe. The rain is fallen, the wind 
 hath blown, and the floods have beaten upon 
 their Church ; but it is not fallen, for it is 
 founded upon a rock. The light is under 
 a bushel, but it is not extinguished. And 
 if God in justice should think fit to remove 
 our candlestick, yet the Church of England 
 is not dead, whilst the Catholic Church 
 survives 
 
 It was in 1654, when the fortunes of the 
 Church of England were at their lowest ebb, 
 that Bramhall published his Jud Vindica- 
 tion'^. An opponent might well sneer at him 
 as the champion of a dead Church. It seemed 
 superfluous to defend the Church of England 
 against the charge of schism, when the Church 
 of England no longer existed ; when, as her 
 enemies might say, she had received her 
 deserts, when sentence and execution had gone 
 forth against her. But for Bramhall she lived 
 
 ' Ueplicadon to the Bishop of Ckalcedon. M'orks, vol. ii. 
 p. 95. Oxford, 1842. 
 
 ' A Just Vin licafion of the Church of England from the 
 unjml aspersion of Criminal Schism. Works, vol. i. p. 84. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 77 
 
 and claimed his allegiance. In rebutting the 
 charge of schism he had occasion to define 
 the unity which to rend were criminal ; and 
 therefore we shall find in this treatise some- 
 thing to our purpose. 
 
 He goes far beyond the conception of the 
 numerical unity of the Church, or of the local 
 unity by which the Christians of any place 
 are gathered into one society. The Church 
 is to be united as well as one. " Schism is an 
 exterior breach, or a solution of continuity, 
 in the body ecclesiastic." According to the 
 several modes of union there are sevei'al forms 
 of schism. " Consider," he says, " by what 
 nerves and ligaments the body of the Church 
 is united and knit together, and by so many 
 manner of ruptures it may be schismatically 
 rent or divided asunder." He then passes 
 without comment from the term unity to 
 the term communion, which he uses in the 
 same sense ; and he distinguishes the commu- 
 nion of the Catholic Church as partly internal, 
 partly external. 
 
 " The internal communion consists prin- 
 cipally in these things : to believe the same 
 entire substance of saving necessary truth 
 revealed by the Apostles, and to be ready im- 
 plicitly in the preparation of the mind to 
 
78 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 embrace all other supernatural verities when 
 they shall be sufficiently proposed to them ; 
 to judge charitably one of another ; to ex- 
 clude none from the Catholic communion 
 and hope of salvation, either eastern, or 
 western, or southern, or northern Christians, 
 which profess the ancient faith of the Apostles 
 and primitive Fathers, established in the first 
 general Councils, and comprehended in the 
 Apostolic, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds ; to 
 rejoice at their well-doing ; to sorrow for their 
 sins ; to condole with them in their sufferings ; 
 to pray for their constant perseverance in the 
 true Christian Faith, for their reduction from 
 all their respective errors, and their re-union 
 to the Church in case they be divided from 
 it, that we may be all one sheepfold under 
 that One Great ' Shepherd and Bishop of our 
 Souls' ; and lastly, to hold an actual external 
 communion with them 'in votis' — in our 
 desires, and to endeavour it by all those 
 means which are in our power. This internal 
 comnmnion is of absolute necessity among all 
 Catholics. 
 
 " External communion consists, first, in the 
 same Creeds or Symbols or Confessions of Faith, 
 which are the ancient badges or cognizances 
 of Christianity ; secondly, in the participation 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 79 
 
 of the same sacraments ; thirdly, in the same 
 external worship, and frequent use of the 
 same Divine Offices or Liturgies or forms of 
 serving God ; fourthly, in the use of the same 
 public rites and ceremonies ; fifthly, in giving 
 communicatory letters from one Church or 
 one person to another ; and, lastly, in ad- 
 mission of the same discipline, and subjection 
 to the same supreme ecclesiastical authority, 
 that is, Episcopacy, or a general Council : for 
 as single Bishops are the Heads of particular 
 Churches, so Episcopacy, that is, a general 
 Council, or Oecumenical assembly of Bishops, 
 is the Head of the universal Church'." 
 
 This external communion is not, says Bram- 
 hall, of the like necessity with the internal. 
 It may obviously be suspended by the just 
 censures of the Church. "And as external 
 communion may be suspended, so likewise it 
 may sometimes be waived or withdrawn by 
 particular Churches or persons from their 
 neighbour Churches or Christians in their 
 innovations and errors." And further the 
 most complete external communion does not 
 imply uniformity in all opinions, even upon 
 matters of the gravest moment. " The Roman 
 and African Churches held good communion 
 
 ■ Works, vol. i. pp. 103, 104. 
 
8o THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 one with another, whilst they diffei-ed both in 
 judgement and practice about rebaptization 
 
 We must follow him as he comes to the 
 pith of his special controversy. " If any par- 
 ticular Patriarch, Prelate, Church, or Churches, 
 how eminent soever, shall endeavour to ob- 
 trude their own singularities upon others for 
 Catholic verities, or shall enjoin sinful duties 
 to their subjects, or shall violate the un- 
 doubted privileges of their inferiors contrary 
 to the canons of the Fathers ; it is very lawful 
 for their own subjects to disobey them, and 
 for strangers to separate from them. And if 
 either the one or the other have been drawn 
 to partake of their errors upon pretence of 
 obedience or of Catholic communion, they 
 may without the guilt of schism, nay they 
 ought, to reform themselves, so as it be done 
 by lawful authority, upon good grounds, with 
 due moderation, without excess, or the viola- 
 tion of charity ; and so as the separation from 
 them be not total, but only in their errors 
 and innovations ; nor perpetual, but only 
 during their distempers : — as a man might 
 leave his father's or his brother's house, beinor 
 infected with the plague, with a purpose to 
 return thither again so soon as it was cleansed. 
 
 ' Works, vol. i. pp. 104, 106. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 8t 
 
 This is no more than what Gerson hath taught 
 us in sundry places : ' It is lawful by the law 
 of nature to resist the injury and violence of 
 a Pope ^ ; ' and, ' if any one should convert 
 his Papal dignity to be an instrument of 
 wickedness to the destruction of any part of 
 the Church in temporalities or spiritualities, 
 and if there appears no other remedy but 
 by withdi'awing oneself from the obedience of 
 such a raging power, . . . until the Church 
 or a Council shall provide otherwise ; it is 
 lawful 2.' He adds further, that ' it is lawful 
 to slight his sentences,' yea, ' to tear them in 
 pieces, and thi'ow them at his head 
 
 " Bellarmine in effect saith as much : — ' As 
 it is lawful to resist the Pope, if he should 
 invade our bodies ; so it is lawful to resist 
 him invading of souls, or troubling the com- 
 monwealth ; and much more if he should 
 endeavour to destroy the Church ; I say it is 
 lawful to resist him by not doing that which 
 he commands and bv hindering him from 
 
 ' Rerjulae Morales, tit. De rraecept. Decalog. [BramhaU'H 
 reference : the Oxford Ed. addn ; Op. 1*. ii. fol. 131. Paris, 
 1521.] 
 
 ' Lib. (h Auferibilitate Pupae, Consider. 14 [Op. P. i. 
 fol- 35-1 
 
 ' De Unit. Ecclm., Consider. 10. [Op. P. i. fol. 38. 
 " PoHsuiit occurrere cebuh, ip quibus . . . liceret, &c."] 
 F 
 
82 THE UNITY OF THE CHUECH AS TREATED 
 
 putting his will in execution ^' We ask no 
 more. The Pope invaded our souls by enact- 
 ing new oaths and obtruding new articles 
 of Faith ; he troubled the commonwealth with 
 his extortions and usurpations ; he destroyed 
 the Church by his provisions, reservations, 
 exemptions, &c. We did not judge him, or 
 punish him, or depose him, or exercise any 
 jurisdiction over him ; but only defended our- 
 selves by guarding his blows and repelling 
 his injuries^." 
 
 A careful reader will note a certain omission 
 in Bramhall's argument. Both the internal 
 and the external communion of which he 
 speaks are alike elements of a moral, not of 
 a natural unity. They are alike to be upheld 
 as a matter of duty, the former in all cases, 
 the latter where possible. We do not here 
 touch the essential unity of the Church — its 
 unity as an organism. Bi-amhall transcends, 
 as I have said, the idea of numerical unity ; 
 does he ignore if? Numerical oneness is 
 a necessary element in the full present- 
 ment of the Chui'ch's Unity. We believe in 
 Oiie Church. The unity of which we have 
 heard Bramhall speaking might be the unity 
 
 ' De llomun. Poniif. lib. ii. c. 29. [Op. torn. i. p. 820, A..] 
 " Brauihall, Woilg, vol. i. pp. 106, 107. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 ^3 
 
 of essentially separate bodies, united in some 
 sort by a complicated system of communi- 
 cation. 
 
 It is impossible to suppose that such was 
 Bramhall's idea. There is abundant evidence 
 to the contrary both elsewhere and close at 
 hand. The Catholic Church, he says, is fo- 
 tuvi homogeneum, and for this reason only 
 " every particular Church and every particular 
 person of this Catholic communion doth 
 participate of the same name inclusively, so 
 as to be justly called Catholic Churches and 
 Catholic Christians He had occasion after- 
 wards to justify what seemed to be the 
 particularism of his Vindication. " No man 
 can justly blame me," he says, " for honouring 
 my spiritual mother the Church of England ; 
 in whose womb I was conceived, at whose 
 breasts I was nourished, and in whose bosom 
 I hope to die. ... If I have had any bias, it 
 hath been desire of peace, which our common 
 Saviour left as a legacy to His Church ; that 
 I might live to see the re-union of Cbristen- 
 dom, for which I shall always bow the ' knees 
 of my heart ' to the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. . . . Howsoever it be, I submit myself 
 and my poor endeavours, first, to the judge- 
 
 ' Bramlittll, Wwkn, vol. i. ji. 109. 
 K 2 
 
84 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 ment of the Catholic Oecumenical essential 
 Church ; which if some of late days have 
 endeavoured to hiss out of the schools as 
 a fancy, I cannot help it. From the beginning- 
 it was not so. And if I should mistake the 
 right Catholic Church out of human frailty 
 or ignorance ... I do implicitly and in the 
 preparation of my mind submit myself to the 
 true Catholic Church, the spouse of Christ, 
 the mother of the Saints, the pillar of truth. 
 And seeing my adherence is firmer to the 
 infallible rule of Faith, that is, the Holy 
 Scriptures interpreted by the Catholic Church, 
 than to mine own private judgement or 
 opinions ; although I should unwittingly fall 
 into an error, yet this cordial submission is an 
 implicit retractation thereof, and I am confident 
 will be so accepted by the Father of Mercies, 
 both from me and all others who seriously and 
 sincerely do seek after peace and truth. Like- 
 wise I submit myself to the representative 
 Church, that is, a free general Council, or so 
 general as can be procured ; and until then, 
 to the Church of England, wherein I was 
 baptized, or to a national English Synod : to 
 the determination of all which, and each of 
 them respectively, according to the distinct 
 degrees of their authority, I yield a conformity 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 85 
 
 and compliance, or at the least, and to the 
 lowest of them, an acquiescence ^" 
 
 Bramhall then by no means lost sight of 
 the essential unity of the Church, but the 
 conduct of his argument put that thought 
 in the background. The stress of the times, 
 the miserable overthrow into which her pre- 
 carious, if splendid, isolation seemed to have 
 brought the Church of England, the obvious 
 difficulty of resisting heresy with the forces 
 of a divided Church, led him to insist on the 
 paramount need of a moral unity. His argu- 
 ment might have been sounder had he based 
 the need more clearly upon the essential unity, 
 of which moral unity is the right manifestation. 
 Hooker, going always to the root of the matter, 
 in like circumstanceswould probably have done 
 so ; but Bramhall, if a better theologian, was 
 a worse philosopher^ and therefore his con- 
 clusions have not that air of absolute finality 
 which, in spite of all omissions, characterizes 
 the work of Hooker. 
 
 He was not alone in this limitation. The 
 circumstances of the time pressed moral con- 
 siderations to the front. Thorndike also stood 
 on this ground. " I maintain," he said, '• that 
 the Church, by divine institution, is in point 
 
 ' Wwkti, vol. ii. pp. 21-2. 
 
86 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 of right one visible body, consisting in the 
 communion of all Christians, in the offices of 
 God's service ; and ought, by human adminis- 
 tration, in point of fact to be the same." 
 Unity is here regarded purely as a matter 
 of right. Yet the One Church has a voice, 
 a judgement, in fact as well as in right. 
 " Owning, therefore," he adds, " my obligation 
 to the whole Church — notwithstanding my 
 obligation to the Church of England — I have 
 prescribed the consent thereof, for a boundary 
 to all interpretation of Scripture, all reforma- 
 tion in the Chui'ch ^" 
 
 It is the almost inevitable fault of con- 
 troversial treatment to be thus incomplete. 
 Attention is concentrated on the actually 
 disputed point. The numerical unity of the 
 Church was not at this time challenged, unless 
 by the more extreme Independents. All were 
 agreed as to the oneness of the true Church ; 
 its boundaries and marks were in dispute. 
 In controversial writings this numerical unity 
 is taken for granted. It is only in the positive 
 teaching of a trained theologian, covering the 
 whole field, that we should expect to see it 
 formally treated, and laid square and firm as 
 the foundation of moral unity. We have this 
 
 ' Thorndike, Works, vol. ii. pj'. 6 and 7. O.xford, 1845. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 87 
 
 positive teaching in the work of Pearson on 
 the Creed. 
 
 § 13- 
 
 Through the worst years of the Calvinist 
 oppression Pearson continued to lecture at 
 St. Clement's, Eastcheap, where he delivered 
 those discourses which he afterwards published 
 as An Exposition of the Creed. The very 
 conditions of the time, and the caution which 
 they imposed, were favourable to the positive 
 treatment of the subject. Pearson dealt with 
 the broad, solid foundations of Christian faith 
 and practice ; so far as he treated the contro- 
 versies of the time at all^ it was by establishing 
 the underlying principles on which they 
 turned. For this reason his work never 
 grows old ; it remains, like that of Hooker, 
 an imperishable possession of the English 
 Church. It is even more solid and homo- 
 geneous, for the greater and more luminous 
 passages of Hooker are imbedded in a mass 
 of forgotten controversy, trivial and tiresome, 
 while Pearson's arijumcnt deals throughout 
 with fundamental verities. 
 
 Expounding the ninth article of the Apostles' 
 Creed, The holy Calholick Church; the Com- 
 raunion of Saints; although there is here no 
 
88 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TKEATED 
 
 express mention of the note of unity, he 
 nevertheless treats it with great fullness ^. The 
 Chui'ch is One ; and the existence of this 
 Church is a fact. " For when I say, I believe 
 in the Holy Cathollclc Church,! mean that there 
 is a Church which is Holy, and which is 
 Catholick." He beo-ins with the origin of the 
 Christian Church, when the Apostles gathered 
 into their fellowship " the multitude of them 
 that believed, who trere of one heart and one 
 souiy Thus he establishes the definition of 
 the Church from the beginning. But he 
 then observes that the oneness of the Apostolic 
 Church at Jerusalem differs in a way from 
 the oneness of the Church in which we believe ; 
 for " that Church, which was one by way of 
 origination, was afterwards divided into many, 
 the actual members of that one becoming the 
 members of several Churches," whereas the 
 Church in which we believe is " one by way 
 of complexion, receiving the members of all 
 Churches into it." So in the language of the 
 
 ^ He note^ in the margin that it was expressed in Bonie 
 of the most ancient forms of the Creed. Cyril of Jerusalem 
 has it, ets" n'tav aylav Ka9o\iic^v (KKKrjcrlav. Alexander of 
 Alexandria gives an emphatic form in his Confession ; /jtiav 
 Hal ixuvTjv KaOoKtKfjv t^v anoOToXiK^v (KKKijaiav. Theoiloret. 
 Hint. 1. 2. c. 4. It is of course contained in our Niceut 
 Creed. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 89 
 
 New Testamefit the word Church has a double 
 use. " Sometimes it admitteth of distinction 
 and plurality; sometimes it reduceth all 
 into conjunction and unity. Sometimes the 
 Churches of God are diversified as many ; 
 sometimes, as many as they are, they are all 
 comprehended in one." 
 
 It will be observed that Pearson treats the 
 many Churches of the New Testament as 
 divisions of the One Church founded in 
 Jerusalem. He goes on to show that these 
 divisions are pure!}- local, and establishes 
 the unity of each local Church within itself. 
 " When the Scripture speaketh of any country 
 where the Gospel had been preached, it 
 nameth always by way of plurality the Churches 
 of that country as the Churches of Judaea, 
 of Samaria, and Galilee, the Churches of 
 Syria and of Cilicia, the Churches of Galatia, 
 the Churches of Asia, the Churches of Mace- 
 donia^. But notwithstanding there were 
 
 ' Gal. i. 22 ; Acts ix. 31 ; 1 Cor. xvi. i, 19 ; Rev. i. 1 1 : 
 I Thess. ii. 14 ; 2 Cor. viii. i. 
 
 ' It is obvious that on tliiii principle it wouKl be iiiore 
 accurate to .S|)eak of the Churches of Eiifjlund tlian of tin- 
 Church of Ktiglanil. I'earson would probably Iiave replieii 
 that by ancient custom and by le;,'al conhtiliition the vai ious 
 CluircheH of Englaiul are bound toj,'ether in a special unity of 
 tlieir own. 
 
90 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 several such Churches or Conffreorations of 
 believers in great and populous cities, yet 
 the Scriptures always speak of such Con- 
 gregations in the notion of one Church. As 
 when St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, Let 
 your women keep silence in the Churches; 
 yet the dedication of his Epistle is, Urdo the 
 Chvrch of God ichich is at Corinth. So we 
 read not of the Churches, but the Church at 
 Jerusalem, the Church at Antioch,the Church 
 at Caesarea, the Church at Ephesus, the Church 
 of the Thessalonians, the Church of Laodicea, 
 the Church of Smyrna, the Church of Per- 
 gamus, the Church of Thyatira, the Church of 
 Sardis, the Church of Philadelphia^. From 
 whence it appeareth that a collection of 
 several Congregations, every one of which is 
 in some sense a Church, and may be called so, 
 is properly one Church by virtue of the sub- 
 ordination of them all in one government 
 under one ruler. For thus in those great and 
 populous cities where Christians were very 
 numerous, not only all the several Churches 
 within the cities, but those also in the adjacent 
 parts, were united under the care and in- 
 spection of one Bishop, and therefore was 
 
 ' Acts viii. I ; xiii. i ; xviii. 22 ; xx. 17 ; i Thess. i. I ; 
 Col. iv. 16 ; Rev. ii. and iii. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 91 
 
 accounted one Church ; the number of the 
 Churches following the number ot" the Angels, 
 that is, the rulers of them, as is evident in 
 the Revelation." 
 
 This was. of course, urged against the English 
 Presbyterians and Independents ; but with 
 Pearson it was much more than a controver- 
 sial point. He was going to the foundation 
 of the idea of unity. He has proceeded from 
 the unity of the original Church at Jerusalem 
 to the multiplicity of Churches throughout 
 the world ; he has ascertained the principle 
 of internal unity in each of these ; he now 
 returns to establish by this same principle 
 the essential unity of the whole Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 " Now as several Churches are reduced to 
 the denomination of one Church, in relation 
 to the single governor of those many Churches, 
 80 all the Churches of all cities and all 
 nations in the world may be reduced to the 
 same single denomination in relation to one 
 supreme governor of them all, and tliat one 
 governor is Chrid the Bishop of our souls 
 Wherefore the Apostle, speaking of that in 
 which all Churches do agree, comprehendeth 
 them all under the same appellation of oik! 
 
 ' Compare the Canon of 1606, above, p. 5J, and note. 
 
92 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 Church ; and therefore often by the name of 
 Church are understood all Christians what- 
 soever belonging to any of the Churches 
 dispersed through the distant and divided 
 parts of the world. For the single persons 
 possessing faith in Christ are members of 
 the particular Churches in which they live, 
 and all those particular Churches are members 
 of the general and universal Church which 
 is one hy unity of aggregation ; and this is 
 the Church in the Creed which we believe, 
 and which is in other Creeds expressly termed 
 One — / believe in one Holy Gatholick C/iurch." 
 
 Aggregation, in itself, might be the gather- 
 ing of essentially separate bodies, but Pearson 
 has guarded against this misunderstanding 
 by showing that the various Churches, which 
 are thus aggregated, are themselves but local 
 divisions of the Church originally founded 
 in unity. And further they are aggregated, 
 not by any action of their own, but by virtue 
 of their proper relation to the one Head, 
 which is Christ. This at once shows that 
 something more than numerical unity is in- 
 tended ; but so far nothing more is expressed, 
 and thus Pearson grounds all which follows 
 upon that numerical unity. The unity of 
 the Church of which he now proceeds to speak 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 93 
 
 is the expression of the natural and essential 
 oneness of the Church. He does not ex- 
 pressly note this distinction, but it is inherent 
 in his argument. " It will be further neces- 
 sary," he says, " for the understanding of the 
 nature of the Church which is thus one, to 
 consider in what that unity doth consist." 
 It is not then a mere aggi-egation. He turns 
 back to the one Church as constituted in the 
 beginning, and asks in what respect it was 
 one. "We may collect," he says, "from their 
 union and agreement how all other Churches 
 are united and agree." And what do we find 
 there. " They were described to be believing 
 and baptized persons, converted to the faith 
 by St. Peter, continuing steadfastly in the 
 Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in 
 breaking of bread, and prayers. These then 
 were all built upon the same Rock, all pro- 
 fessed the same faith, all received the same 
 sacraments, all performed the same devotions, 
 and thereby were all reputed members of the 
 same Church." 
 
 Starting from this he proceeds to enumerate 
 six modes of the unity of the Church con- 
 sidered in itself. This limitation is important, 
 and rather obscure. He means a unity " be- 
 side that of the Head, v/hich is one Christ, 
 
94 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 and the life communicated from that Head, 
 which is one Spirit." This latter we may 
 perhaps distinguish, with other authors, as 
 the invisible unity of the Church. By the 
 unity of the Church, considered in itself, 
 Pearson means a kind of social unity, which 
 is, at least in some measure, visible. The 
 sis modes of this unity are as follows : — 
 
 I. In the first place the Church is one in 
 respect of Origin. There is but one Founda- 
 tion, which is Christ, and in so far* as the 
 Apostles are called the foundation, yet they 
 are united by the one Corner-stone. Upon 
 this foundation " was the fii-st Church built, 
 and whosoever have been, or ever shall be 
 convei^ted to the true Christian faith, are 
 and shall be added to that Church, and laid 
 upon the same foundation, which is the 
 unity of origination. Our Saviour gave the 
 same power to all the Apostles, which was 
 to found the Church ; but He gave that 
 power to Peter, to show the unity of the same 
 Church 1." 
 
 ' He quotes in the margin the well-known passage of 
 St. Cj-prian, de Vniiate, c. 4 : "Et quamvis Apostolis omnibus 
 post resurreclionein suain parem potestateni tribuat, et dicat, 
 iSicut mitii me Pater, et ego mitto vo", &c., tamen ut unitateui 
 iiianifestarct, unit;itis eiusdem originem ab uno incipienteiii 
 Kua auctoritalc dispusuic. Hoc crant utique et ceteri Apostoli, 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 95 
 
 2. In the second place he puts the Unity of 
 Faith. " The Church is therefore one, though 
 the members be many, because they all agree 
 in one faith. . . . They which believe the same 
 doctrine delivered by Christ to all the 
 Apostles, delivered by all the Apostles to 
 believers, being all professors of the same 
 faith must be members of the same Church." 
 
 3. Next he advances the Unity of the 
 Sacraments. " Many persons and Churches, 
 howsoever distinguished by time or place, 
 are considered as one Church, because they 
 acknowledge and receive the same sacraments, 
 the signs and badges of the people of God. . . . 
 All believing persons, and all Churches con- 
 gregated in the Name of Christ, washed in 
 the same Laver of Regeneration, eating of the 
 same Bread, and drinking of the same Cup, 
 are united in the same cognizance, and so 
 known to be the same Church." 
 
 4. Thence he passes to the Unity of Hope. 
 " Whosoever belongcth to any Church is some 
 
 quod fuit Petrug, pari consortio praediti et honoris et potest- 
 tatis, sed exordium ab uiiitato proficiscitur, ut Ecclesia una 
 uionstrctur." TIiIh he interprets: "For whereas all the rest 
 of the ApoHtles hud tcnial power anil honour with St. Peter, 
 yet CliriMt did pa? ticularly give that power to St. Peter, to 
 bhow the unity of the Clitirch which he intended to build 
 upon the foundation of the ApontleB " 
 
96 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 way called ; and all which are so, are called 
 i II one hope of their calling^' 
 
 5. Then follows naturally the Unity of 
 Charity, which Pearson finds not so much in 
 outward acts of mutual kindness, as in a 
 certain inward and spiritual bond of common 
 life. " They which are all of one mind, what- 
 soever the number of their persons be, are 
 in reference to that mind but one ; as all 
 the members, howsoever different, yet being 
 animated by one soul, become one body." 
 
 6. Lastly, the Church is one in the Unity 
 of Discipline and Government, " by virtue 
 whereof the same Christ ruleth in them all. 
 For they have all the same pastoral guides 
 appointed, authorized, sanctified, and set 
 apart by the appointment of God, by the 
 direction of the Spirit, to direct and lead 
 the people of God in the same way of eternal 
 salvation : as therefore there is no Church 
 where there is no order, no ministry ; so 
 where the same order and ministry is, there 
 is the same Church.'" Here he inevitably 
 quotes in the margin the two well-known 
 passages from St. Cyprian, Episcopatus uvua 
 est, cuius a singulis in solidum pars tenetur ; 
 and Cum sit a Christo una Ecclesiaper totum 
 riiundum in multa membra divisa, item 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 97 
 
 Episcopatus unus Episcoporum multomm 
 concordi numerositate diffusus ^. These quo- 
 tations fill up what would otherwise be a gap in 
 the text, and identify the order and ministry 
 which are essential to the unity of the Church. 
 
 Such is the unity which Pearson finds in 
 the Catholic Church. Nor is it only in 
 theory that he regards the Church as thus 
 one ; as an object of faith it is really existent. 
 " For when I profess and say, / believe a 
 Church, it is not only an acknowledgment 
 of a Church which hath been, or of a Church 
 which shall be, but also of that which is." 
 This Church is indefectible, not so much by 
 virtue of its own nature, as by reason of the 
 promise of God ; and this promise relates not 
 to each several part of the Church, but to the 
 whole. A particular Church may fail and its 
 candlestick be removed. " But though the 
 providence of God doth suffer many particular 
 Churches to cease, yet the promise of the same 
 God will never permit that all of them at once 
 shall perish." 
 
 § 14- 
 
 If we critically examine this teaching of 
 Pearson, we shall see that he is speaking 
 throughout of the essential unity of the 
 
 ' Cyprian, de Uuitiile, c. 5 ; Kyist. Iv. 24. 
 Q 
 
98 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 Church. He is dealing with it, to use his 
 own language, as an Object of Faith. It has 
 therefore an objective reality. But neither 
 is this a purely invisible reality ; for it is not 
 so much the actual existence of the one 
 Church which is propounded as the object 
 of faith, but rather its perpetual existence to 
 the end of time, according to the promise 
 of God. The unity of the Church is a visible 
 reahty, an object of human knowledge, which 
 is seen by faith to be indefectible. Pearson, 
 expounding the objective realities of the Creed, 
 is not concerned with the moral unity of the 
 Church — the unity which depends on human 
 agency conforming to the purpose of God. 
 We shall understand this the better if we 
 bring into comparison what he says about 
 the Holiness of the Church. This is not a 
 holiness which ought to be, and may be, which 
 is to be striven for and attained ; nor yet are 
 there two Churches, " one, in which good and 
 bad are mingled together, another in which 
 there are good alone " ; but " the Church of God 
 is universally holy in respect of all, by institu- 
 tions and administrations of sanctity." In like 
 manner the unity of which he speaks is not a 
 unity that we are to strive after and to pray for. 
 It is the essential unity in which the Churcli is 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 99 
 
 constituted by the Word of God. And this 
 is not a mere abstract numerical unity. The 
 Church is not only one ; she is also united. She 
 is held together hy bonds, partly visible, as 
 her origin, the sacraments, and the Episcopate ; 
 partly invisible — the bonds of faith, and 
 hope, and charity. It will follow, though the 
 inference was beside the scope of Pearson's 
 work, that just as the practical holiness of 
 the Church, however imperfect, is the ex- 
 pression of her essential and inherent holiness, 
 so also the moral unity of the Church is the 
 expression more or less perfect, more or less 
 visible, of her indefectible essential unity. 
 
 § 15- 
 
 So Pearson taught in the days of oppression. 
 He may be said to have definitely fixed the 
 colour of English theology on this subject. 
 There are questions which he did not touch, 
 practical ditticulties with which he did not 
 concern himself, but for the solution of all 
 these it has been found necessary only to 
 apply the principles laid down by Pearson. 
 
 At the time when he wrote, the actual 
 circumstances of England were in flagrant con- 
 flict with his theory. But the anarchy was 
 nearly at an end. Within a few months, 
 a 2 
 
lOO THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 with dramatic suddenness, the restoration of 
 order in Church and State was complete. 
 Rarely has there been such a simple renewal 
 of broken institutions. The surviving bishops 
 resumed the administration of their dioceses ; 
 the vacancies were filled at once ; the disorder 
 of twenty j-ears was treated as a mere episode. 
 What rendered this possible was the fact that 
 a clear and definite foundation of theory had 
 been laid. The confusion of thought con- 
 sequent upon the breaking up of mediaeval 
 ideas in the crisis of the Reformation had 
 now passed away. The conception of the 
 Church as an organic body realizing its life 
 in local, provincial, or national organizations, 
 which in the minds of the Laudian school had 
 been too closely identified with the mere 
 accidents of the English political system, was 
 now purified by the failure of those accidents. 
 It was not indeed shaken altogether free from 
 them on their revival, but it was at least 
 separable from them. Indeed the ecclesi- 
 astical system was revived more whole and 
 entire than the civil ; and its independence 
 was thus more clearly discerned. During 
 the latter part of the seventeenth century the 
 English Church enjoyed a freedom of activity 
 such as had never, perhaps, been known before. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 lOI 
 
 The bishops then set to work vigorously to 
 realize the ideal of the Church as now con- 
 ceived, and statesmen, from whatever motive, 
 were ranged at their side. The local unity 
 of the Church within the borders of the 
 nation was to be firmly established. Uni- 
 formity of practice was not only enforced, as 
 never before, on the actual ministers of the 
 Church, but any separate activity was rigidly 
 suppressed. The new dissent, which sprang 
 from the repression of the older nonconformity, 
 was prosecuted with inquisitoi'ial zeal. Nor 
 was this care for orthodoxy narrowly confined 
 to a mere nationalism. A new episcopate 
 was forced on the reluctant Calvinism of 
 Scotland, to bring that nation also into the 
 unity of the Church. Towards the Calvinists 
 of France and the Netherlands the attitude 
 of many English divines was perplexing and 
 inconsequent. Political ties and the danger 
 of a common enemy had formerly associated 
 them closely with England ; they had been 
 commonly acknowledged as forming sub- 
 stantially a part of the Catholic Church, 
 though denuded of much that was essential 
 to the true order of the Church. The stress 
 of the conflict with Calvinism at home, and 
 the more definite insi.steuce on the notes of 
 
102 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 the true Church which followed, made this 
 attitude all but impossible. Political sym- 
 pathy also was broken by the rivaby and 
 the growing strength of Holland. Rome 
 and Geneva were now alike enemies ^, and 
 foreign Calvinism became as distasteful as the 
 home-bred dissent. There was, however, this 
 difference. The Calvinists of France were 
 regarded as having some good grounds for 
 withdrawing from the communion of bishops 
 who allowed most of the errors of the Roman % 
 See ; the English Calvinists were supposed 
 to have no defence at all for rebellion against 
 their bishops. We have to read with this 
 caution the emphatic assertion of the rights 
 of the Episcopate by English theologians of 
 the period. 
 
 Their attitude towards the Roman Church, 
 on the other hand, was perfectly simple and 
 consistent, though their language varied con- 
 siderably in intensity. The Roman Church 
 and all the Churches subject to the Papacy 
 were regarded as indisputably parts of the 
 
 ' See Beveridge's Oratio Cuiioiiica in his Tlie.Kiunis 
 Theologicm, vol. ii. p. 340, ed. Oxford, 1816 : " Faxit ut 
 Ecclesiiv nostra, vel potius sua, niagis magisque indies stabi- 
 liatur, floreatque. Faxit, ut nec Koniae, nec Genevae, neo 
 ipsae inferorum purtae adversus earn unquam praevaleant." 
 This sermon was preached in one of the years 1679-80-81. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 Catholic Church ^. Yet there was little desire 
 for closer union, or even for any intimate 
 relations with them. They seemed to be full 
 of corruption, doctrinal and practical. Above 
 all, the claims of the Roman See barred 
 the way, and the profound conviction that the 
 Roman Court was bent on making good 
 those claims by force awakened a frenzy 
 of antagonism. Popery became the night- 
 mare of the English people, and the gravest 
 divines were not free from a certain obsession 
 with regard to it. The period of the Popish 
 Plot, of the Exclusion Bill, and of the in- 
 trigues which gathered about the person of 
 James IT, was not one for a fair and profitable 
 
 ' We must except tliose who use the word Catholic as 
 implying perfect orthodoxy. Beveridge, in the sermon just 
 quoted, delivered amid the excitement of the Popish Plot, to 
 which he makes an acrid allusion, fiercely denies the C'at/io- 
 licily of the Roman Cliurch {Thesaurus Thcologicus, vol. ii. 
 P- 335)' "At vero Romana ista Ecclesia, in cuius fidem 
 raoresque Pontificii omnes iurati sunt, tot nova dogmata 
 adinvenit, totque novos ritua Ecclesiae universali vel reiectos 
 vel incognitos nuperinstituit,hodiequeimperat,utvixEccl'giae 
 Christianae, nisi forsitan corruptissimae, neduiii Catholicae 
 nonien mereatur. Nihil enim cumC'atliolica, nihil cum omnibus 
 aliis Ecclesiis commune haliet, scd omnia potius di versa et con- 
 traria, praeter ea in <iuibiis cum Anglicana conaentit." Yet 
 even liere, with his vlx Eccle.iiae ('hrutimiae he grudgingly 
 allows the »Hl)stanti.T.l itichnion of the Roman Church in tlie 
 universal Church of Christ; 
 
I04 THE rXITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 discussion of the Roman controversy. Yet 
 Barrow was able to treat it with candour 
 and with some approach to courtesy. The 
 interest taken by English divines in the 
 conflict about the Galilean liberties led to a 
 clearer distinction between the Papacy and the 
 Churches subject to it. This cuhninated in 
 the well-known attempt of Wake to detach the 
 French Church bodily from the Papacy and to 
 brincy it into line with the Church of England. 
 The attempt failed through causes operating 
 on both sides, but it is of lasting interest as 
 the only step seriously undertaken, befoi'e the 
 apathy of the eighteenth century was com- 
 plete, towards the realization of that concep- 
 tion of a united Church which occupied the 
 minds of English theologians. Accepting the 
 national organization of Christendom as an 
 accomplished fact, standing to the order of 
 the Church much as the provincial organiza- 
 tion of the Roman Empii-e stood in the fourth 
 century, they would draw the national 
 Churches together, not as separate bodies 
 politic joined in a federal union, but as already 
 parts of an existing but disorganized unity. 
 The Papacy they regarded asachief cause of the 
 prevailing confusion. The Churches of Chris- 
 tendom must break with the Papacy before 
 
BY EKGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 they could become effectively united. United 
 in reality they were, though not in effect. 
 The note originally struck by Tunstall was 
 maintained. The English Church was not 
 sepai'ated from Catholic unity, nor was any 
 Church that might follow her example. On 
 the contrary, this was the only way to perfect 
 unity. Every national Church must be 
 reduced "out of all captivity of foreign powers 
 heretofore usurped therein, into the pristine 
 state that all Churches of all realms were in at 
 the beginning Then only could the original 
 unity of the Church be completely restored. 
 
 § 16. 
 
 To those who regard the Papacy as the 
 divinely appointed instrument of unity, or 
 even to those who think of it as the best 
 practical guardian of unity, this will seem the 
 wildest paradox. I am not here concerned to 
 criticize or to defend it ; 1 merely propound it 
 as the characteristic opinion of English theo- 
 logians from the seventeenth century onward. 
 
 The half-century following the Restoration 
 was for the English Church a period of extra- 
 ordinary learning and literary activity. Out 
 of the mass of material available I shall make 
 
 ' Above, J). 59. 
 
I06 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 a small number of typical citations. We 
 naturally turn first to Barrow, as the author 
 of a formal treatise on the Unity of the 
 Church. He shows his sense of the im- 
 portance of his theme by prefixing to it as 
 a motto the saying of St. Augustine : Non 
 habet caritatem Dei, qui ecclesiae non d 'digit 
 unitatem^. He allows, in almost the same 
 terms as Hooker the distinction between 
 " the true universal Church, called the Church 
 mystical and invisible," and "the visible 
 Church Catholic here on earth." The former is 
 " the catholic society of true believers and faith- 
 ful servants of Christ, diffused through all ages, 
 dispersed through all countries, whereof part 
 doth sojourn on earth, part doth reside in 
 heaven, part is not yet extant ; but all 
 whereof is described in the register of divine 
 preordination, and shall be re-collected at 
 the resurrection of the just." This is abso- 
 lutely and indefectibly united. The latter is 
 " the society of those who at present or in 
 course of time profess the faith end gospel 
 of Christ, and undertake the evangelical 
 covenant." This latter "doth enfold the 
 other, as one mass doth contain the good 
 ore and base alloy ; as one floor the corn 
 
 ' Aug. (le llapt. 3. ' See above, p. 61. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 and the chaff; as one field the wheat and 
 the tares ; as one net the choice fish and 
 the refuse ; as one fold the sheep and the 
 goats ; as one tree the living and the dry 
 branches." The visible Church must there- 
 fore correspond to the " true universal,"' and 
 the same attributes are " by analogy and 
 participation" assigned to it. This, there- 
 fore, is also united, and " the question is. 
 Wherein the unity of it doth consist, or 
 upon what grounds it is called one ; being 
 that it compriseth in itself so many persons, 
 societies, and nations^ ?" 
 
 The question thus put he answers by dis- 
 tinguishing eight grounds of unity. 
 
 1. The Church is one by consent in faith 
 and opinion concerning all principal matters 
 of doctrine. All who desert this one faith 
 are to be esteemed ipbo facto cut off and 
 separated. But, on the other hand, there 
 are points of less moment, more obscurely 
 delivered, in which Christians may dissent, 
 about which they may dispute, in which 
 they may err, without breach of unity ^. 
 
 2. All Christians are united by the bands 
 
 ' Barrow, Works, vol. iii. pp. 204, 205, edit. Nelson, 1846. 
 
 ' Ibid. pp. 206, 207. I quote for the most part verbally, 
 but, for convenience of compreiuion, without marks of quo- 
 tation. 
 
Io8 THE UNITY OF THE CHUECH AS TREATED 
 
 of mutual charity and good-will. Any one, 
 therefore, who highly offends against charity, 
 separates himself from the body of Christ ; 
 and since the causing of dissensions and 
 factions in the Church is the most notorious 
 violation of charity, the authors of causeless 
 separations or of unjust condemnations of 
 any Church are to be rejected as schismatic. 
 
 3. All Christians are united by spiritual 
 cognation and alliance ; as being all regene- 
 rated by the same incorruptible seed, being 
 alike born, not of blood, nor of the will of 
 the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God ; 
 whence as the sons of God, and brethren of 
 Christ, they become brethren one to another. 
 
 4. The whole Christian Church is one by 
 its incorporation into the mystical body of 
 Christ, making up one spiritual corporation 
 or republic, whereof Christ is the sovereign 
 Lord. A habit of disobedience, therefore, 
 severs a man from this body. 
 
 5. All Christians are linked together in 
 peaceable concord and confederacy. In par- 
 ticular they are bound to assist one another 
 in the common defence of truth, piety, and 
 peace, in the propagation of the faith, and 
 enlargement of the Church 
 
 ' Barrow, Works, vol. iii. pp. 208, 209. 
 
EY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 109 
 
 6. The Church is held together by a common 
 discipline exercised by lawful pastors, who 
 ought therefore to maintain intercourse and 
 concurrence to preserve truth and charity. 
 No Church should admit to communion those 
 who are excommunicated by another, or who 
 are schismatically divided from it. 
 
 7. All Christian Churches are also one by 
 a specifical unity of discipline, resembling 
 one another in ecclesiastical administrations, 
 which are regulated by the indispensable 
 sanctions and institutions of their Sovereign. 
 They are all bound to use the same sacraments 
 according to our Lord's appointment, with- 
 out any substantial alteration, and to uphold 
 the order and ministry which God appointed. 
 In lesser matters of ceremony or discipline, 
 instituted by human prudence, Churches may 
 differ ; but no power can abrogate the main 
 form of discipline constituted by divine ap- 
 pointment. It is a fundamental rule that 
 but one bishop should be in one Church ; 
 and no new priesthood can be ordained. 
 
 8. Lastly, it is expedient that all Churches 
 should conform to each other in great matters 
 of prudential discipline, although not insti- 
 tuted or prescri])ed by God ' . 
 
 ' B.'in-ow, Works, vol. iii. pp. 211, 212. 
 
no THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 It is clear that Barrow has in view that 
 moral unity which is to be attained by sub- 
 mission to the will of God. The essential 
 unity or numerical oneness of the Church is 
 postulated — the unity of the field, the floor, 
 or the draw-net. What is to be sought is the 
 effective unity of those who are contained as 
 members in the one Church ; and these are 
 the grounds to go upon. Having set them 
 out he approaches the further question : 
 " Whether the Church is also necessarily, by 
 the design and appointment of God, to be in 
 way of external policy under one singular 
 government or jurisdiction of any kind ; so 
 as a kingdom or commonwealth are united 
 under the command of one monarch or one 
 senate ? " He draws a negative answer from 
 the silence of Scripture, from the practice of 
 the Apostles, from the teaching of the Fathers, 
 and from the fact that Churches not thus 
 united have yet been recognized as Christian 
 and Catholic. He argues it more particularly 
 in a stern arraignment of the Papacy, which in 
 claiming such singular jurisdiction has done 
 not good but injury to the Church ^. 
 
 It is to be noted that, according to Barrow, 
 the Church is no more to be ruled by a senate 
 
 ' Barrow, Works, vol. iii. pp. 212-319. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 than by a monarch. The conciliar theory of 
 the fifteenth century was no less foreign than 
 the Papal theory to the essential constitution 
 of the Church. Indeed he makes short work 
 with it. General councils, he says, " are ex- 
 traordinary, arbitrary, prudential means of 
 restoring truth, peace, order, disciphue ; but 
 from them nothing can be gathered concerning 
 the continual ordinary state of the Church. 
 For during a long time the Church wanted 
 them ; and afterwards had them but rarely ; 
 'for the first three hundred years,' saith 
 Bellarmine, ' there was no general assembly ; 
 afterwards scarce one in a hundred years " 
 The unity of the Church, therefore, is not 
 effected by general councils, and cannot be 
 dependent thereon. 
 
 In pressing this argument, however, he 
 uses an illustration which has to be read with 
 caution: "General councils are wholesome 
 expedients to clear truth and heal breaches ; 
 but the holding of them is no more an argu- 
 ment of political unity in the Church, than 
 the Treaty of Munster was a sign of all 
 Europe being under one civil government." 
 But the Treaty of Munster was an agreement 
 
 ' " Primis trecentis annis nulla fiiit coiiffre^^atio gcneralis ; 
 postea vero vix ceiite»iuio anno." De Hum. Pont. i. 8. 
 
112 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 between independent sovereign states ; and 
 if Barrow's illustration is pressed too far it 
 will commit him to the opinion that the 
 several Churches of Christendom are in like 
 manner separate and sovereign — an opinion 
 clean contrary to the whole body of his 
 treatise. We must, therefore, either pass 
 this as an imperfect illustration, or we may 
 suppose that Barrow was deeply impressed 
 with the fundamental unity of the European 
 system, which in the seventeenth century took 
 the place of the older ideal of Christendom 
 and the Empire. In that case he might see in 
 a treaty agreed to by all the European Powers 
 a close analogy to the decrees of an oecume- 
 nical council. But the main point is that 
 general councils are not for the ordinary 
 government of the Church ; they are for 
 exceptional emergencies. " In the opinion 
 of St. Athanasius," he says, "there was no 
 reasonable cause for synods, except in case of 
 new heresies springing up, which may be con- 
 futed b}' the joint consent of bishops 
 
 For healing the disorders of the Church, 
 therefore, Barrow did not look to the 
 gathering of an oecumenical council. He 
 even doubted whether, if possible, it would 
 
 ' A than, de Syn. § 6. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 be expedient. In this respect be certainly 
 moved somewhat from the usual ground of 
 English divines, who from their first quarrel 
 with the Papacy appealed to a general 
 council, when one could be held. Barrow 
 did not look to the methods of the fifteenth 
 century, nor did he seek to revive even those 
 ot the fourth or fifth. He found a closer 
 correspondence with the needs of modern 
 times in the century of St. Cyprian \ 
 
 § 17- 
 
 Such is the position maintained by Barrow, 
 with a prodigious array of leai'ning, alike in 
 his Discourne concerning the Uir'dy of the 
 Church, and in his Treatii<e of the Pope's 
 Siq^reniaey. We are here on the high ground 
 of theory. ^Yhat was put forward as of 
 practical moment? Every Christian man 
 was bound to do what lay in his power to 
 promote the unity of the (,'hurch. And how 
 should he do this ? By living in dutiful 
 subjection to those set over him in the Lord. 
 Tlie practical enforcement of unity was to be 
 sought in each several Cliurch; for English- 
 men in the Church of England. This was 
 that part of the Church Catholic in which 
 
 ' Barrow, Works, vol. iii. (ip. 122, 22^. 
 H 
 
114 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 God's providence had placed them. Living 
 in communion with this, they were in com- 
 munion with the whole. 
 
 This consequence was pressed at every turn. 
 Dr. William Saywell, Archdeacon of Ely, 
 published at Cambridge in 1689 an edition of 
 the works of Launoi. The fact of itself is 
 interesting, as an evidence of sympathy with 
 the Gallican controversialists. The Preface, 
 in which Saywell spoke not to English readers 
 only but to the learned of Europe, admirably 
 states the position of the English Church. 
 " We have not," he says, " separated from the 
 Catholic Faith, from the unity of the Church, 
 or from any particular Church whatever^." 
 Nor does he mean by this merely that we are 
 not the authors of the schism or responsible 
 for the separation ; the division, he would say, 
 is only in certain relations, not absolute or 
 essential. He sliows what is the nature of 
 the really existing unity. The whole power — 
 potestas et auctoritas — of teaching and ruling 
 resides in the bishops and pastors of the 
 Church ; the prime duty of Christian men is 
 to submit to their ruling. If all the bishops 
 of the world could be gathered together, they 
 
 ' " Non enim a fide Catholica, ah unitate Ecclesiae, aut 
 ab uUa Ecclesia particulaii separavimus." 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 might determine all matters by their common 
 suffrages, after the fashion of an aristocratic 
 commonwealth. Saywell clearly did not share 
 BaiTow's objection to an ecclesiastical senate. 
 But since this can rarely be done, we must 
 ordinarily depend upon the authority of the 
 Church as diffused throughout the Episcopate, 
 and exercised by the bishops in their respec- 
 tive dioceses, or even as deputed by them to 
 parish priests. He who submits to their rule 
 is maintaining the unity of the Church; he 
 who rebels is rightly excommunicate ^ 
 
 ' I transcribe the whole of a long passage, as the book is 
 uot reailily acces-ible to all, and the argiiirient is of first-rate 
 importance : " Tola vero potestas et auctoritas docendi 
 regendi corrigendi Ecclesiam Episcopis et Pastoribus com- 
 missa est ; et nihil niagis Christianis iniungitur quani pacem 
 colere, schismata vitare, Pastores audire, eis obedire et 
 86 subicere, eontm fidem seqiii ; et ne sub aliquo praetextu 
 in doctrina et moribna ab ecclesiae imitate recedant, semper 
 ad episcopos in dubiis et arduis reciirvendiim est. Qui vos 
 a ml it' me audit, qui von reicit me etium reicit ; it ccce 
 vrihixrum sum, iix'iiie ad coiiKumniatioiiein saeculi. Deinde 
 ])oniiniis ipse modinn definiens qtioiiiodo lites et dissidia in 
 Ecclesia tenninaniia sunt, ait: Si peccaverit in tc fratir, 
 (He Ecclesiap, et si Kcclesiain non audierit, nit tibi lanquam 
 Kthiiicus el I'lihlirriiius. Et per Ecclesiam hie Episcopi et 
 Presbyteri sunt intelligendi ; quia stafim subiungitur, Quod- 
 cttmque liijHveritis in lerris liijatum crit et in cacUn. Per 
 Ecclesiam igitur Servator denotat cos quil)U8 incuuibit sen- 
 tontiani ferre, et non obeditntes cxcouimunicationis vinculo 
 ligare. Et si possent omnes Episcopi in unuui convenire, 
 
 n 2 
 
Il6 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 Barrow, once more, enforces the same prin- 
 ciple in his Latin tract De regimine Episcopali. 
 In form this is merely an academic exercise, 
 but it is full of the learning and the vigorous 
 thought of the man. He has to maintain the 
 thesis that "The rejection of episcopal rule, 
 where orthodox and lawful bishops are estab- 
 lished, makes in the proper sense of the 
 word a deadly schism Episcopal rule, 
 he says, is that ancient and universal order 
 of the Church, by which one supreme pastor 
 
 procul dubio omnibus aeqiiale esset ius et auctoritas de rebus 
 ecclesiasticis communi sufFragio diiudicandi, ut est in 
 regimine aristocratico : sed cum lioc saepe fieri non possit, 
 unanimi Episcoporum consensu Ecclesia ita in Provincias, 
 Dioeceses, et Parochias distributa est, ut quamvis diversis 
 locis, eandem tamen fidem et caritatem onines vere Catholici 
 summa cum benevolentia amplectantur ; et ad osttndendam 
 strictam unionem et connexionem omnium membrorum inter 
 se, et cum Christo capita, saepe Ecclesia coniparatur corpori, 
 viti, domui, &c. Quorum partes vitam et perfectioneui 
 amittunt quuni primum a toto vel sua propria sede et loco 
 separantur. Atque ita hac ratione Laieus qui non atidit 
 Parochuni, et Paroclius qui non audit Kpiscupum, et Kpi- 
 scopus qui non audit Synoduiii Provincialeni, et Synod us Pro- 
 vincialis quae non audit Collegium Pastorum sive Concilium 
 vere generale, in rebus ad pacem et unitatem Ecclesiae 
 spectantibus, non audit Ecclesiam, ao proiiide non Dominum 
 ipsum qui dixit : Si Ecclesiam non audierit, ait tihi /anqiutiti 
 Ethnicus et Puhlicanus." 
 
 ' Worlis, vol. ill. p. 240 : " Eeiectio regiminis episcopa- 
 lis, ubi habentur orthodozi et legitimi episcopi, facit proprie 
 Bchisma mortale." 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 117 
 
 and overseer was appointed to rule the whole 
 congregation of clergy and laity in a certain 
 defined region, with certain offices reserved to 
 himself, as ordainingr and confirming and the 
 exercise of jurisdiction^ Schism he accurately 
 defines as a division within the Church, mar- 
 ring the unity, charity, and peace in which it 
 is the will of God that all Christians should 
 abide. Schism is due either to faction within 
 a particular Church, to an unjust refusal of 
 one Church to communicate with another, or 
 to the violation by any particular Church of 
 the common rules and usages determined by 
 the whole body ^. The guilt of schism is in- 
 curred by those who reject episcopal rule, 
 because, as he shows at large, it is either 
 an act of rebellion against their immediate 
 
 ' Works, vol. iii. p. 240 : " lUuil neinpe regimen, j)enes 
 quod, in (listrictu quopiam ecclef ia<tico, singularis unus (ad id 
 rite vocatuf, delectus, approbatus et consecratus) toti coetui, 
 totique clero praeficitur, ceu p:istor et inspector supremus, 
 in sacris quibuscuiique rebus di.tjjensandis et ordiuandis, 
 vpfafitia quaedain obtinens et peculiaria munia sibi reser- 
 vata, sacroe ordines couferendi, baptizatos confiruiandi, iuris- 
 dictionem exercendi." 
 
 ^ Ibid. p. 241 : "Cum una qiiae|iian) ecclesiasticae dis- 
 pensalionitt inoduii\ qiieincuiique generali conucnnu a con- 
 foederatis pa.storibus, fvra^iat aut eoncordiae gratia, lege 
 i>ancitum, vel u.su firmatum (nulla cogente necessitate, vel 
 gravi ratiuue suadente) viobif." 
 
Il8 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 superiors, or else it is a corporate departure 
 from the fixed order of the Church and the 
 institution of Christ. This proposition, how- 
 evei", is to be read with two limitations : the 
 bishop must be orthodox, for it is not merely 
 the right of the faithful but their duty to 
 withdraw their allegiance from a heterodox 
 bishop ; and he must be kavful, that is to say, 
 duly consecrated, and rightly promoted to his 
 charge^. Subject to these two limitations, 
 Barrow maintains the duty of submission, 
 with no little insistence on St. Cyprian's 
 judgement that the episcopate was expressly 
 constituted for the defence of unity. The 
 unity, as distinct from the mere numerical 
 singleness of the Church, is to be upheld by 
 ever}^ Christian remaining in the communion 
 of his own proper bishop, and by all the bishops 
 of the world remaining in communion with 
 each other. 
 
 I will quote one more author, Beveridgo, 
 Bishop of St. Asaph, for piety and learning 
 perhaps the greatest ornament of the English 
 Church at the opening of the eighteenth 
 
 ' Works, vol. iii. p. 241 : " Nam episcoporum lietero- 
 tloxoruin uedum regimen, at comimniioncm ipsam leicere fas 
 est, hno officii est." P. 242: ^' Lnjitiini ; hoc est, (jui cum 
 rite conneirantur, turn iure populo suo praoficiuntur." 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 119 
 
 century. Beveridge has left us several ordi- 
 nation sermons, which form indeed a theo- 
 logical tieatise on the sacred Ministry. The 
 fourth of these treats of Salvation in the 
 Church only, under such a Ministry. Start- 
 ing from the text, And the Lord added to the 
 Church daily such as should he saved (Acts 
 ii. 47), he shows that by the Church is here 
 meant the society which the Lord founded by 
 choosing the twelve and the seventy, and 
 afterwards " took cax'e to settle the perpetual 
 government of it by granting to His Apostles 
 the like power and commission which He had 
 received from His Father for that purpose." 
 Those converted by the preaching of the 
 Apostles " are said to be added to the Church, 
 that is, to the society or congregation of the 
 faithful people before described ; consisting 
 of the Apostles, as the governors of it, and of 
 such as were joined to them, and held com- 
 munion with them in the Word and Sacra- 
 ments, which our Lord had instituted. And 
 when the said society was dispersed, as it soon 
 was, over the whole world, it was still the 
 same, and retained the same name, being still 
 called the Church. And not only the whole, 
 but wheresoever any part of it was settled in 
 any city, and the iterritories belonging to it, 
 
I20 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 that also was called the Church of that city; 
 as the Church of Jerusalem, the Church of 
 Corinth, &c. And wheresoever there were 
 several such cities and Churches in them be- 
 longing to any province or country, they are 
 called the Churches of that country ; as the 
 Churches of Asia, Macedonia, &c. But as 
 every private Christian is a member of some 
 particular Church, so is every particular 
 Church a member of the catholic or universal, 
 which is always meant when we I'ead in 
 Scripture of the Church in general, without 
 the addition of place or country ^" 
 
 Of the necessity of being thus added to the 
 Church, he says : " Forasmuch as this being 
 the way and method that He hath settled 
 in the world for the saving of souls, or for the 
 applying that salvation to them which He 
 hath purchased for them ; we have no ground 
 to expect that He should ever recede from it." 
 This iiosition he supports by recalling the 
 conversion of Cornelius, of the Aethiopian 
 eunuch, and of St. Paul, concluding that God 
 would rather work miracles to bring men 
 into the Church, than save any without it. 
 " Seeing therefore," he continues, " that the 
 Holy Ghost hath so positively affirmed that 
 
 '■ Beveridge, Works, vol. i. pp. 72-4, edit. Oxford, 1817. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIAXS. 
 
 121 
 
 the Lord added to the Church such as should 
 be saved, and likewise hath given us such 
 extraordinary instances of it ; it is no wonder 
 that the Fathers so frequently assert, that 
 there is no salvation to be had out of Christ's 
 holy catholic Church ; but that whosoever 
 would be a member of the Church triumphant 
 in heaven, must first be a member of the 
 Church here militant on earth '." 
 
 Here is the same teaching. The Church is 
 one and universal, but it is geographically 
 distributed into several particular Churches. 
 The plain duty of every individual Christian 
 is to adhere to the particular Church in which 
 God's providence has placed him, and so he is 
 retained in the unity of the whole Church. 
 Pai'ticular Churches also have their duty. 
 Beveridge sets this out in a sermon preached 
 before the Convocation of Canterbury. Every 
 provincial Church is bound to adhere to all 
 that is detennined by the universal Church, 
 even in matters of rite and discipline. This 
 obligation Hows from the very nature of an 
 ordered society, and the Church is bound to 
 be the most orderly of all societies 
 
 ' Beveridge, Wori-s, vol. i. pp. 75-77. 
 '■' Beveridge, Themiurus 'Duoloyicus, vol. ii. p. 331, edit. 
 0.\f"ord, i8i6: "Ad nctaiii Proviiicialiij cuiuslibet Ecclesiae 
 
122 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 §i8. 
 
 The teaching, theoretical and practical, which 
 I have here set out is not that only of certain 
 individual theologians. It is the expression 
 of a belief solidly held by the whole Church of 
 England, and of a practice which for a time 
 was strenuously enforced. It was enforced, 
 not only by spiritual censures, but also by 
 civil penalties. In the heat of reaction from 
 the anarchy tempered by tyranny into which 
 Calvinism had plunged England, the State 
 accepted the theory of the Church. All Chris- 
 tians living within the realm were to be forced 
 
 constitutiouem necessarium esse, ut Ecclesiae universae 
 disciplina ac ritus ab eadem obsei ventur, constat ex ipsa 
 Ecclesiae natura ac notione. Ecclesia enim, geiieratim sic 
 dicta, una est permagna hominum ubicunque terraruni 
 Christi fideni protitentium Societas aut Congregatio, cuius 
 singulae Provinciales Ecclesiae totiJem sunt partes sive 
 membra. In omnibus autein huiusniodi societatibus, qualis 
 est Ecclesia, pars omnis toti suo coiigrua, et pars minor 
 maiori consentanea esse debet. Hoc ratio suadet. Ho<^ 
 ius naturale edicit. Hoc communis hominum consensus 
 necessarium esse statuit. Adeo ut si quid a maiori, multo 
 niagis quod a n)axima cuiiisvis societatis parte constituitur, 
 eodem pars relicjua constringatur, ilhulque observare necesse 
 habeat, si membrum manere et jirivilegiis istius societatis 
 gaudere velit. Quod cum in onmibua cuiuscunque generis 
 societatibus valeat, niulto magis in Ecclesia valere debet, 
 quam omnium ordiuatissimam esse decet." 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 123 
 
 into unity. The procedure adopted, as we now 
 see, was terribly unwise, even if we say no 
 worse. Civil rights were made dependent on 
 conformity, and the sacraments w^ere profaned 
 as a title to public office. Nor was this the 
 whole of the harm done. The intimate con- 
 nexion of Church and State bred an almost 
 inevitable confusion in ordinary minds. The 
 result was not patent while the repressive 
 policy was maintained. But with the first 
 Act of Toleration the result began to appear. 
 Spiritual censures carried with them temporal 
 disabilities ; therefore, if Dissenters were to 
 be tolerated, they must be released from the 
 jurisdiction of the spiritual courts. This was 
 done, and the bishops and their officials were 
 restrained from proceeding against a man who 
 formally claimed his rights as a Dissenter. 
 But the same man was driven by the Test 
 Act to communicate in his parish church, in 
 order to quality for office, lie was allowed, 
 nay compelled, to claim the rights of a member 
 of the Church, and, at the same tiine, he might 
 not be subjected to the discipline of the Church. 
 Occasional conformity, as it was called, was 
 the inevitable result, and only a feeble attempt 
 was made to restrain it. The authorities of 
 the Church Avero thcmsolves in practice made 
 
124 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 parties to the toleration of that dissent which 
 in theory they denounced. 
 
 With the popular delusions that ensued 
 I am not directly concerned. I am dealing 
 only with the teaching of theologians. But 
 the existence of such delusions may lead us 
 to ask whether an^-thing in the matter or 
 manner of contemporary theology afforded 
 them occasion. 
 
 During the latter part of the seventeenth 
 century English theologians were in face of 
 a certain definite controversy. The country 
 was affected by a twofold schism. On the 
 one hand were the Recusants, or Papists, as 
 they were invariably and accurately called, 
 who refused the communion of the English 
 bishops on the ground of heresy ; on the other 
 hand there were organized bodies of Cal- 
 vinist or Protestant Dissenters, who rejected 
 the authority of the bishops as unscriptural. 
 Each of these schisms was further connected 
 with a ceitain theory of the Church, and 
 theological writing, even when not directly 
 polemical, was coloured by the consciousness 
 of the dispute. This might have induced a 
 preciseness of definition corresponding to what 
 was found in Curialist and Calvinist authors. 
 Tlie former, as we have seen, were diivon by 
 
BY EXGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 the stress of controversy to import into the 
 formal definition of the Church the note of 
 subjection to the Roman Pontiff ; the latter 
 were compelled to justify their separation by 
 a theory which reduced the visible Church to 
 a particular congregation of men associated by 
 their own choice of companionship. Kut the 
 theologians of the Eno-lish Church were not 
 driven to any such straits. They took their 
 stand on the historical position of their Church. 
 They challenged opponents to dislodge them 
 from this gi-ound. Tiiey examined and refuted 
 all definitions framed for the purpose of ex- 
 cluding them fiom the pale of the Church ; 
 but they had no need to aim at an equal 
 nicety in their turn. Their object was to 
 show that neither Recusants nor Dissenters 
 were justified in their separation. "I do not 
 .scruple," says Barrow. " to affirm the Recu- 
 sants in England to be no less schismatics 
 tha^n any other separatists ^" To this end 
 they laboured to show, on the one band, that 
 in faith and polity the English Church con- 
 fonned to the standard universally recognized 
 until the rise of the papal monarchy; on the 
 other hand, that she required of her children 
 nothing but what was founde<l on warranty 
 
 ' Barrow, M'or/cs, vol. iii. p. 225. 
 
126 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 of Holy Scripture. Their practical teaching 
 was : Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna. 
 
 The inevitable result was an exagoreratecl 
 nationalism, and a certain looseness of doc- 
 trine. Disputants who were always telling 
 Papists and Calvinists alike that they had no 
 cause for separation from the national Church, 
 could not be very precise on ditterences of 
 opinion, and might easily seem indifferent to 
 the truth. It is true they were not always 
 consistent. According to their theory, strictly 
 interpreted, they had no direct concern with 
 the corruptions, practical or doctrinal, of other 
 Churches, and notably of the Church of Rome. 
 Their ground of quarrel with the Pope was, 
 first, that he claimed a jurisdiction over them 
 which they rejected, and, secondly, that he 
 countenanced and admitted to his communion 
 the English Recusants. Doctrinal disputes, 
 however, with the Recusants, who took their 
 doctrine from Rome, complicated the disci- 
 plinary controversy with the Papacy ; and this 
 was one of the causes which wrecked the 
 attempt of Wake at a practical union between 
 the Anglican and the Galilean Churches. On 
 the other hand, the passionate, unreasoning 
 abhorrence of papal rule, felt by nearly all 
 Englishmen, embittered the doctrinal dispute, 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 127 
 
 until differences were rather exaggerated than 
 minimized. The fading memory of the Puritan 
 tyranny left nothing of the kind to sharpen 
 the controversy with Dissenters, and they 
 were too often treated as merely unreasonable 
 schismatics. It was recognized, indeed, as we 
 have seen, that there were grounds on which 
 Chi-istian men might lawfully withdraw their 
 obedience from the bishops set over them, but 
 the nature of these grounds was seldom de- 
 fined with precision ; it was enough to show 
 that the grounds alleged by the Dissenters 
 were insufficient. They were insufficient, 
 partly because they were false, partly because 
 they were trivial. The Dissenters were urged 
 to lay aside their objections, renouncing those 
 and waiving these. But for them, both alike 
 were founded in conscience. The Church 
 was exhibited in controversy as regardless of 
 conscience, intolerant where she was strong, 
 indifferent where she was weak. 
 
 I speak of an impression produced by a cer- 
 tain controversial method, not of the express 
 teaching of any authors. It is an impression 
 of the Church as a great national institution, 
 embracing in a sense the whole population, 
 without much regard to the belief or practice 
 of individuals. Over against this idea stood 
 
128 THE UXITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 the fact of the existence of several organized 
 bodies, holding aloof from the national Church 
 on the ground of certain beliefs or practices 
 regarded by their members as vital. Combine 
 the idea and the fact, which are inconsistent 
 but not mutually exclusive, and there issues 
 the confusion which seems to dominate English 
 thought in the eighteenth century. Public 
 opinion was able to accept in varying propor- 
 tions the theory of the Established Church, 
 and the theory of the denominational system. 
 The Church of England appeared at one time 
 the national organization of religion ; at 
 another she was one denomination among 
 many. Butler, with characteristic fidelity 
 to fact, accepted the denominational system 
 as existing. In his sermon on the Propaga- 
 tion of the Gospel he claims the control of the 
 work for the Church, but he thinks it " much 
 to be wished that serious men of all denomina- 
 tions would join in it." In the true spirit of 
 latitudinarianism he bids them ''remember, 
 that if Christianity is to be propagated at all. 
 which they acknowledge it should, it must be 
 in some particular form of profession. And 
 though they think ours liable to objections, 
 yet it is possible they themselves may be 
 mistaken ; and whether they are or no, the 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 129 
 
 very nature of society requires some com- 
 pliance with others \" But latitudinarianism 
 was not always so logical as in Butler. Without 
 having any clear conception of the unity of 
 the Church, men were nevertheless fretted 
 by the existence of Dissent. The effect of 
 the prevailing confusion is noticeable in the 
 attitude of Wesley. He could exhort his 
 followers to remain united to the Church, 
 while ignoring his whole life long the hier- 
 archical basis of unity. 
 
 Another effect is seen in the schemes for 
 comprehension, as it was called, which the 
 eighteenth century produced in abundance. 
 Easier terms, not indeed of communion, for 
 such could hardly be invented, but of admis- 
 sion to the ministry of the Church, were 
 sought in a relaxation of subscription ; Dis- 
 senters were to be cajoled into a purely 
 external union. Such schemes, renewed in 
 the present century by Arnold and his 
 followers, even if the Church could have 
 agreed to them, would liave been wrecked 
 upon the rugged conscience of the Dissenters. 
 With them we have no immediate concern ; 
 we are considering the teaching of theolo- 
 gians. 
 
 ' Butler, Sermoim, p. 174, edit. 1838. 
 I 
 
130 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 So far as this confusion of thought was due 
 to the neglect of instant facts by the divines 
 of the seventeenth century, an obvious remedy 
 was to return to their principles and apply 
 them rigorously to the facts as developed. 
 This course was taken b}' those who saw the 
 need. The Oxford movement, if it was an 
 appeal to the Fathers, was no less a revival 
 of the true English theology. In the face of 
 a militant, an almost triumphant sectarianism, 
 it was necessary to state afresh the theory of 
 the Church. New principles were not wanted, 
 but an application of old principles to existing 
 circumstances. The need was supplied. I .shall 
 not quote from any of the Tractarian leaders ; 
 I shall quote from one who enjoyed far more 
 fully than they the confidence of the whole 
 English Church. 
 
 Palmer's Treatise on the Church of Chrit^t 
 appeared in the year 1H38. Its authority was 
 at once recognized ; it remained for many 
 years the standard work on the subject. I shall 
 attempt to extract the author's leaching on the 
 particular point of the unity of the Church. 
 
 He treats this under the two general heads 
 of unity in Communion and unit}'' in Faith. 
 He subjects the idea alike of unity and of 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 13I 
 
 schism to a searching analysis. "Particular 
 Churches," he says, '■ were instituted by the 
 apostles in obedience to the divine will, not 
 to divide, but to organize the Church uni- 
 versal." Their relation to the whole is thus 
 clearly determined. They are rather ad- 
 ministrative than component parts. They exist 
 for the sake of the whole ; and the relations 
 of an individual to them are determined by 
 his relations to the whole. Palmer thus 
 avoids the mistake of proceeding from the 
 particular to the universal ; he recognizes 
 from the first the universal in the particular. 
 This leaves no room for the fault, common 
 to so many English writers, of strenuously 
 defending the unity of the particular Church, 
 to the comparative or entire neglect of the 
 unity of the universal. He looks both ways 
 at once. " Hence the communion of the 
 Church," he says, '• is twofold, and there 
 may be offences against it in two ways : either 
 in dividing the communion of a particular 
 Church, or in dividing that of the universal 
 Church. The one arises, when professing 
 Christians divide or refuse to communicate 
 with the particular Church of which they are 
 members: the other, where particular Churches 
 refuse to communicate with the universal 
 I 2 
 
132 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 Church ; that is, with the great body of 
 Christians." On tlie effect of such schism he 
 passes the severest judgement. " When one 
 or more professing Christians separate them- 
 selves from the communion of a particular 
 Church, and from that of the great body of 
 Christians, or are cut off from it by a regular 
 and legitimate judgement, they are totally 
 separated from the Church of God ^" 
 
 After an examination of authorities he 
 naturally concludes that "separation from the 
 Church is incapable of justification. No excuse 
 can be admitted in the case of positive and 
 deadly sin, except the plea of ignorance ; and 
 this does not render the act less heinous, 
 though he who commits it may be ' beaten 
 with few stripes.' To separate openl}' from 
 the universal Church, or, which is the same 
 thing, to separate from a particular Church, 
 on grounds and principles which equally 
 involve sepai-ation from the universal Church, 
 is, as I have said, inexcusable Are 
 there then no grounds which can justify 
 separation ? He allows their existence, but 
 defines them much more narrowly than 
 his predecessors. " The mere existence of 
 doctrinal errors, or the corruption of rites 
 
 ' Palmer, vol. i. pp. 51, 52. ^ Ibid. p. 61. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 and sacraments in any Church, afford no 
 excuse whatever for separating from its com- 
 munion. The abuses of the Corinthians, the 
 errors of the Galatians, did not justify any 
 separation from those Churches ; on the con- 
 trary, the duty of union was strongly incul- 
 cated on them by the Apostle. ... I speak 
 here only of faults and defects which do not 
 amount to a rejection of what God has plainly 
 revealed, or to a manifest contradiction and 
 disobedience to His commandment ; because if 
 any Church of Christ should be guilty of such 
 a rejection and contradiction, and obstinately 
 persist in them, it would be ajwdate, and 
 cease ipso facto to be a Church of Christ ; 
 and therefore he wlio should forsake its com- 
 munion, would not forsake the communion of 
 the Church, but of a .synagogue of Satan 
 Nothing short of apostasy, then, can justify 
 separation from any particular Church. 
 
 Unity in comrtmnion is thus intimately con- 
 nected with unity in fai/h. Palmer regards 
 this in two lights— as an obligation, and as 
 an actual fact. "THE TRUTH revealed by 
 Chiist must be believed by all Christians in 
 order to salvation^." Put not every error 
 amounts to heresy. "Heresy is the perti- 
 
 ' Palmer, vol. i. pp. 64. " Ibid. p. 88. 
 
134 "^HE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 naeious denial of some truth certainly re- 
 vealed And this alone imperils salvation ; 
 this alone excludes from the Church. Errors^ 
 in matters of opinion are tolerable. But 
 even in matters of faith, "if a doctrine has 
 been declared de fide by the legitimate 
 judgement of the universal Church, still if 
 through an error of fact it is supposed by 
 some Churches not to have been so declared, 
 they do not incur heresy in retaining a dif- 
 ferent doctrine." And conversely, " Churches 
 which through an er?w of fact, but on strong 
 reasons, believe a doctrine to have been de- 
 fined by the universal Church as a matter of 
 faith, which was in reality not so defined, 
 and which is erroneous even in faith, are not 
 guilty of heresy in holding that doctrine^." 
 It follows that while the obligation of 
 unity in faith lies upon all Christian people, 
 it is not necessarily realized in actual fact. 
 Apparent imity in faith cannot therefore be 
 taken as a mark or sign of the Church, noi- 
 can apparent disunion l»c taken as a proof 
 of defection from the Church. But on the 
 
 ' Palmer, vol. i. p. 91. 
 
 ' Tbiil. pji. 106-108. He supports tlie.se propositions by 
 many liistorieal iii.stances, but he does not allwle to a point 
 of nuiuh interest at the present clay — their application to the 
 so-called Nestoriaus and Monophysites of the East. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 other hand, " Christ having enjoined unity in 
 the belief of the truth on all Christians, there 
 must necessarily be in His Church some 
 means for preserving or restoring this unity, 
 as well in particular Churches as in the 
 Church universal ; and, therefore, all those 
 societies which are prevented by their funda- 
 mental principles fiom sustaining unity in 
 the truth, cannot be Churches of Christ \" 
 
 Proceeding as he does from the universal 
 to the particular. Palmer has no need to insist 
 on the numerical unity or singleness of the 
 Church. His object also led him to neglect 
 this point. He had to set out the four notes 
 of the Church — One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic. 
 Face to face with a multitude of discordant 
 sects and communities, all clairainw for them- 
 selves membership in the Church of Christ, 
 he saw the necessity of determining which of 
 them were entitled to the claim. Assumina: 
 then the oneness of the Church, these, if their 
 claim be true, must be parts of the one. But 
 if so they must partake of its character. The 
 notes of the true Church must in some way 
 be found in them. The first of these notes 
 is Unity. Palmer, as we have seen, reduced 
 this to unity in communion and unit} in 
 
 ' raliiiur, vol. i. p. 1 1 5. 
 
136 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 faith. UBity, in the sense of singleness, is 
 of no avail as a test ; it is not an attribute 
 of which the parts can partake. Of the moral 
 unity of the whole Church, of its corporate 
 and sacramental unity, they can partake, and 
 by this they can be tested. Palmer applies 
 the test, along with those supplied by the 
 other notes of the Church, to the vai-ious 
 claimant bodies. He finds no difficulty in 
 allowing the claims of the British and of the 
 orthodox Eastern Churches. Of the Churches 
 of the Roman communion, he distinguishes 
 carefully between those founded anterior to 
 any schism, those founded more recently in 
 heathen lands, and those founded by an inva- 
 sion of other Churches. The last only he 
 pronounces schismatical, on the ground of 
 broken unity in communion. He then turns 
 to consider the case of the Protestant and 
 Calvinist communities. Of the English Dis- 
 senters he makes short work. He shows 
 that the principle of separation is a " maxim 
 of dissent \" and those who maintain it can 
 have no claim to be regarded as integral 
 parts of the Church whose note is unity. 
 The Lutherans and Reformed of continental 
 Europe he holds to have l)een unjustly and 
 
 ' Faluier, vol. i. p. 406. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 against their will driven from the communion 
 of the Church. He will not therefore lay to 
 their charge the sin of schism. " Under such 
 circumstances they had no remedy, and were 
 obliged to remain as a distinct community 
 until God should see fit to restore them to 
 union with the rest of the Church." As 
 individuals, therefore, they may be considered 
 as not cut off totally from the unity of the 
 Church ; but as organized bodies they lack 
 the other notes of the true Church, and cannot 
 be accounted integi-al parts of it. Their 
 organization was purely provisional. The 
 favour at one time shown them by English 
 divines he attributes to a charitable inter- 
 pretation of their acts and principles. " There 
 was a great probability that they were not 
 schismatics nor heretics ; and as they did not 
 exhibit an unfriendly feeling to our Churches, 
 there were good and sufficient reasons to view 
 them with kindness and charity. The suffer- 
 ings which we experienced, in common with 
 them, from the persecution and ambition of 
 the Roman pontiff, added sympathy to this 
 general good-will ; and tho agreement on 
 certain points of doctrine and discipline 
 against Rome may have, perhaps, induced us 
 to give a better construction to some things 
 
138 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 than they deserved, and to overlook some 
 faults which an unfriendly, or even a strict 
 criticism vs^ould have condemned." Their 
 after history, however, made this impossible. 
 They '■ deemed it necessary to assume the 
 office and character of Churches of Christ 
 in the ordinary sense '" ; and this " led them 
 to reject that Catholic tradition which did 
 not suppoit their novel system, and thus to 
 open the door for the intrusion of heresy and 
 infidelity ^" Thus Palmer, whose opinion 
 I quote as interesting in itself, without passing 
 judgement on its historical accuracy. 
 
 It will be seen that Palmer treats his 
 subject in that practical, not to say polemical, 
 tone, which characterizes most of the authors 
 that I have quoted. Of the unity of the 
 Church in the abstract he has not much to 
 say ; and therefore he does not touch, unless 
 incidental]}', on the distinction between the 
 essential, indestructible unity of the (Jliurch, 
 and that practical unity which dopeuds on 
 human agency. The distinction is, however, 
 implied in a question which he treats at 
 great length. He glances at essential unity 
 when he speaks of an impossibility. " Unity 
 of communion," he says, "being the law of 
 
 ' Palmer, vol. i. pp. 382-392. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 God, both in the universal Church, and in 
 all the particular Churches in which it is 
 arranged, it is impossible that in the same- 
 place there can he several dlljerent Churches, 
 authorized by God and united to Christ^." 
 But given the necessary existence of one 
 Church only in each particular place, as a 
 member of the Church universal, he goes 
 on to ask the important question, " Whether 
 the external communion of the universal 
 Church can ever he interrupted'-." We have 
 here a question which our older writers had 
 strangely neglected. An affirmative answer 
 is necessary to the defence of their position. 
 It is an obvious fact that all the particular 
 Churches which they recog-nized as parts of 
 the universal are not actually knit in the 
 bonds of perfect unity and communion. On 
 the contrary they hold aloof, sullenly or 
 fiercely ; they denounce, they even anathe- 
 matize each other. If, then, the external 
 communion of the Church cannot be inter- 
 rupted, if the fullness of external communion 
 be a part of the essential unity of the Church, 
 it will follow that only one of these discor- 
 dant parts can belong to the true Church. 
 Controversialists had urged this against the 
 
 ' Palmer, vol. i. j). 68. ^ ibid. pp. 71 seqtj. 
 
140 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 English position ; English divines had been 
 slow to answer. Palmer undertook the task. 
 
 He shows that what is said in Holy Scrip- 
 tui'e about the unity of the Church is either 
 to be understood of a spiritual unity of rela- 
 tions to Christ, or of spiritual privileges, which 
 might exist even if external unity were inter- 
 rupted ; or else must be taken as showing 
 by way of moral precept rather what ought 
 to be than what must be. From the very 
 earnestness of our Saviour's repeated prayer 
 for the unity of His disciples he infers " that 
 the Church was in imminent danger of dis- 
 union, and that so great an evil would most 
 probably at some time arrive." He then 
 shows that neither the Fathers nor the Coun- 
 cils of the Church ever affirm the impossibility 
 of such divisions among the members of the 
 one Church as should amount to a breach of 
 communion. The well-known passage in 
 which St. Cyprian sa,ys that " unity cannot 
 be severed, nor the one bod}^ by laceration 
 be divided refers to the Novatian schism 
 at Rome, and asserts only the impossibility 
 of the coexistence of two Churches in one 
 
 ' Cypr. De Unitnte, c. 23, p. 2.^1, edit. H artel : " Scindi 
 unitas non potest nec corpus iinum discidio conpaginis 
 eeparari, divulsis laceratioiie visceribus in frusta discerpi." 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS, 
 
 141 
 
 place. It says nothing of the estrangement of 
 different parts of the Church from each other. 
 In the thu'd place he brings into evidence 
 the many recorded interruptions of communion 
 between bishops alike of the East and of 
 the West, in which it is agreed that both parties 
 remained in the unity of the whole Church : 
 he insists especially on the Great Schism 
 of the fourteenth century, when for nearly 
 forty years the Latin Church was divided 
 into two or even three obediences. Lastly he 
 quotes various theologians, and in particular 
 Tourncly, as distinguishing three kinds of ex- 
 communication ; the fii'st, " by which bishops 
 are deprived of the charity and ecclesiastical 
 communion of other bishops " ; a second, " by 
 which a person was totally cut off from the 
 body of the Church " ; and a third, " most 
 customary among the ancients ... by which 
 bishops or Churches separated themselves from 
 mutual communion, and thus one, as it ivere, 
 excommunicated the other, though not subject 
 to it ^" This last kind, according to Tourncly, 
 is not excommunication properly so called. 
 "Therefore," he concludes, "if the Church 
 universal should be divided into two portions 
 hy audi an excommunication, neither party 
 
 ' Tournely, Praelect. Theol. de Ecclesia, qu. iv. art. iv. 
 
142 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 would be truly cut off from the Church, and 
 therefore the Church would exist in different 
 communions ^" There maybe divisions, in- 
 ducing a breach of external communion, by 
 which the unity of the Church, though im- 
 paired, would not be destroyed. 
 
 § 20. 
 
 The elaborate but condensed argument in 
 which Palmer deals with this question, fills 
 up a serious gap in the English presentment 
 of the doctrine of unity. His treatment of 
 the doctrine as a whole is not exhaustive ; 
 as I have noted, he passes by the points of 
 essential and of numerical unity ; but he sup- 
 plies what was lacking in earlier theologians. 
 The defects and the merits of his work are 
 closely connected. There is in his method a 
 sort of hard and hammerins; logic which was 
 needed for the rescue of English thought from 
 the confusion that had mastered it. There is in 
 his argument a tone of bitter polemic, and a 
 certain narrowness of view, which occasionally 
 betrays him into inconsistency. An instance 
 may be found in his treatment of a question 
 which was then beginning to press for solution. 
 
 ' This passage is interesting ;is fixing the sense in which 
 we speak of the Church as divided into various Cotnmutiion.'. 
 See above, p. 23. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 The geographical arrangement of the Church 
 was from the beginning the basis of practical 
 unity. To St. Cyprian it was the pledge of 
 unity : there was to be one bishop in a city, 
 and a united episcopate. On this ground the 
 English bishops took their stand in rejecting 
 the Papal jurisdiction. All English theo- 
 logians since have stood by the same principle, 
 and Palmer with them. But he was familiar 
 with a certain modification of it, established 
 by centuries of usage in the East. The violent 
 controversies which broke up the unity of 
 the Eastern Church in the fifth and sixth 
 centuries have left a legacy of confusion to 
 our day. Inveterate schisms, following as a 
 rule the lines of national divisions, are not 
 easily healed, even when their original cause 
 is removed. There are now several com- 
 munities, Nestorian, Monophysite, or Mono- 
 thelite in their origin, which have been led, 
 chiefly by Roman influence, to abandon their 
 heresy, and ai'e admitted to the communion 
 of the Roman Church. But they retain their 
 independent organization, and their jurisdic- 
 tions are interlaced over the whole field of 
 Oriental Christendom. The position is further 
 complicated by a Latin Christianity, intro- 
 duced in the timje of the Crusades. There 
 
144 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 are thus, besides the Orthodox Eastern Church, 
 various independent hierarchies, with their 
 several patriarchs, all in communion with the 
 Roman See. Palmer allows this to be effected 
 without any formal breach of unity. As a 
 provisional arrangement, at least, it may be 
 tolerated ^ But when he has to face a not 
 dissimilar state of things in the West, his 
 judgement is much more rigid. Setting aside 
 England, where it is clear that the adherents 
 of the Roman communion separated them- 
 selves in formal schism from the local Church, 
 there have been established, in several new 
 countries, rival hierarchies of the Anglican 
 and the Roman communions. These are the 
 fruit of a division which may well be re- 
 garded as inveterate, and which follows in 
 the main the lines of national cleavage — 
 notably between England and Ireland. We 
 might expect to find the same charitable 
 judgement passed on these rival hierarchies 
 as on those of the East. Palmer indeed de- 
 fends in this way the establishment of an 
 Anglican hierarchy in one region. After 
 allowing the regularity of the Church founded 
 by the French settlers in North America, he 
 proceeds: "If, in Canada, the English com- 
 
 ' Palmer, vol. i. pp. 302-304. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 munity united to our Catholic Churches have 
 bishops and priests, it is only as a matter 
 of necessity, because the Church there refuses 
 them communion, and they are properly for 
 the English only. The arrangement must be 
 considered only provisional in a certain 
 measure, and not designed to interfere with 
 the prior claims of the Roman Churches there, 
 within their proper didricts." But a similar 
 establishment of bishops of the Roman com- 
 munion in the United States he condemns 
 without reserve : " When America received 
 bishops from our Churches, the schismatics 
 constituted a rival episcopacy, and so remain 
 to this day separated from the true Church '." 
 It might be more fairly argued that in the 
 West, or in new countries associated with the 
 West, as in the ancient field of Eastern 
 Christendom, the effects of a long-standing 
 quarrel may require, provisionally at least, 
 some modification of the geographical arrange- 
 ment of the Church. In the United States, with 
 their extraordinary gathering of people from 
 all parts of the old world, bred in every form 
 of Christian profession, the question is most 
 pi'essing and will perhaps find its solution. 
 
 ' Palmer, vol. i. pp. 304, 305. 
 Iv 
 
146 THE UNITY OP THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 § 21- 
 
 If it was the merit of Palmer's work to 
 clear away confusion, his defects were hardly 
 less serviceable in calling for the completion 
 of his system. His neglect of the natural or 
 essential unity of the Church compelled atten- 
 tion to it, as the necessary foundation of all 
 manifest unity. Manning followed him with a 
 treatise on the unity of the Church, in which 
 natural and moral unity are carefully distin- 
 guished ; the natural unity which is the imme- 
 diate work of God and is therefore indestruc- 
 tible, and the moral unity which, depending on 
 human agency, is variable and may fail entirely. 
 This distinction became the keynote of the 
 aspirations after the reunion of Christendom 
 which have lately been so marked a feature 
 of English religion. I have traced it in many 
 of our older writers ; it has found clear and 
 familiar expression duringthe last half-century. 
 
 Dr. Alexander Forbes, the late Bishop of 
 Brechin, proposed another distinction. He 
 divided unity into objective and subjective. 
 " Objective unity is that inwrought by our 
 Head, Jesus Himself, through union with Him- 
 self. It is wrought on His side, by the com- 
 munication of the ' one Spirit,' and by the 
 Sacraments, making us all one body in Him. It 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS, 
 
 requires, on our part, continuity of the com- 
 mission which He gave to His Apostles, and 
 perseverance in the faith which He committed 
 to the Church. Subjective unity is unity of 
 will, and intercommunion with one another. 
 Subjective unity may be suspended, while 
 objective unity is maintained. Subjective 
 unity was suspended during the schism at 
 Antioch, yet objective unity is maintained, 
 for the blessed Meletius is a saint. Subjective 
 unity was suspended in the quarrels between 
 the British and Western Churches in the Saxon 
 times, yet nobody doubts of the salvation or 
 sanctity of St. Aidan or St. Cuthbert. Sub- 
 jective unity was suspended during the 
 struggles of the antipopes, yet no one con- 
 siders the followers of Peter de Luna as 
 either heretics or schismatics. And thi.s must 
 also apply to the mighty disunion between the 
 East and the West, and between ourselves and 
 the rest of Christendom. It is deeply to be 
 deplored that the state of the Church is as it 
 is ; but let us hope, that the evil is not so 
 great as it seems, and that there is a fund of 
 unity, if men only understood each other ; 
 that the fissures are only surface ones ; that 
 the disorder is functional, not organic ^" 
 
 ' Forbes, Exphinalion of the Sicene Creed, jj. 276. Second 
 edition, 1866. 
 
 K 2 
 
148 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 This is clearly a cross-division. The objec- 
 tive unity of Forbes is partly natural and the 
 immediate work of God, partly moral, depend- 
 ing on our continuance and perseverance. 
 Forbes would probably say that a purely 
 natural unity is a mere abstraction. The 
 Church, a society of moral beings, cannot have 
 an}^ real unity which is independent of their 
 moral co-operation. A simple static unity — 
 the unity for example of the baptized as such 
 — is nothing more than a classification ; nor 
 does it become a living unity, through the 
 relation of the members to the Head, without 
 the express or implicit perseverance of the 
 members in adhesion. 
 
 Pusey, than whom no one of our day has 
 pondered more deeply the question of unitj^ 
 adopted these terms, but used them in the 
 older sense. " Unity," he wrote, " in part, is 
 the direct gift of God ; in part, it is the fruit 
 of that ffift in the mutual love of the members 
 of the Church. In part, it is a spiritual 
 oneness wrought by God the Holy Ghost ; 
 in part, it is a grace, to be exercised hy man, 
 a consequence and fruit of that gift. In 
 one way, it is organic unity derived from 
 Christ, and binding all to Christ, descending 
 from the Head to the Body, and uniting the 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 149 
 
 Body to the Head ; in another, it consists in 
 acts of love from the members one to 
 another^." Quoting from St. Athanasius, 
 he shows that the primal unity of the Church 
 is " an actual mystical oneness, inwrought by 
 Christ our Head, uniting the whole Church 
 together in one with Himself in His Body; 
 an actual oneness produced by grace, corre- 
 sponding to tlie Oneness of the Father and the 
 Son by nature-." He shows how St. Hilary 
 urges against the Arians that the unity of 
 the Church is an unity not of will but of 
 nature ^. This unity is imparted primarily 
 through the sacraments, and so far depends 
 on the continuance of the powers given to 
 the Apostles ; but the work done by the 
 sacraments is essentially the work of God. 
 Those who wilfully reject the organization 
 by which sacramental grace is given, reject 
 Christ. Those who retain it are like the 
 river of Eden, which is one though it parted 
 and became into four heads. " Unknown in 
 face, in place separate, different in language, 
 opposed, alas! in some things to one another, 
 still before the Throne of (Jod they are One 
 Holy (,'atliolic Apostolic Church ; each several 
 portion praying for itself and for the rest, 
 
 ' /j7re»/Vo)i, part i. p. 45. " Iliid. p. 47. ' Iliid.p. 51. 
 
150 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 united in the prayers and oblation which it 
 offers for all, by the One Bread and the One 
 Spirit which dwelleth in alP." 
 
 He then passes to the subjective, which is 
 for him the whole moral unity of the Church. 
 " The Divine gift of Unity requires, as a corre- 
 sponding duty, mutual love as the exercise of 
 that ' love of God which is shed abroad in our 
 hearts through the Holy Ghost which is given 
 to us.' This has been called ' subjective ' 
 unity, or ' unison of wills,' and of this, 
 intercommunion is the natural expression." 
 He shows, with his usual wealth of erudition, 
 that in the history of the Church there have 
 been numerous interruptions of communion 
 without breach of the organic unity of 
 the Church. He shows the true nature of 
 Donatism, involving a different kind of schism 
 from these, and one which is often misunder- 
 stood. " The Donatists were not merely 
 separated from the Catholic Church through- 
 out the world, but denied its existence, and 
 claimed to be the whole Church. The body 
 was formed on a heresy, rejected by the Eng- 
 lish Church 2." He points to the evidence of 
 the life of grace, of the working of the Holy 
 Ghost, in " the several Churches, owning the 
 
 ' Eirenicon, part i. p. 57, et ante. ' Article XXVI. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 same Lord, united to Him by the same 
 Sacraments, confessing the same Faith 
 
 Objective unity is therefore the work of 
 God. It is a gift of grace ; but since the 
 Church is the creation of grace this gift is 
 the natural law of the Church's life, organic, 
 essential, indestructible as the Church herself. 
 Subjective unity on the other hand is the 
 result of human effort, corresponding to the 
 Divine grace given ; like all the fruits of 
 grace it varies with the varying efforts of the 
 individual man. It can never disappear en- 
 tirely, as holiness can never be banished 
 entirely from the visible Church, but its 
 natural expression by intercommunion may 
 for a time be lost. 
 
 § 22. 
 
 It remains for me to summarize all this 
 teaching — the public doctrine of the Church 
 and the teaching of theologians. 
 
 The Church is, in the first place, numerically 
 one. There is but one Lord, one Faith, one 
 Baptism. There is, moreover, but one human 
 race, one naturally indivisible human society, 
 and the Church is designed to embrace the 
 whole of it. There is but one foundation and 
 
 ' Eirenicon, part i. pp. 58-66. 
 
152 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 one superstructure. The Church is essentially 
 singular, and is divided into a plurality of 
 parts only for reasons of administration. It 
 was founded in a single community, and re- 
 mains as truly one, though widely expanded, 
 as when gathered wholly at Jerusalem. 
 
 The Church is eskentialiy one, not a mere 
 aggregate of parts. This truth, propounded 
 by Nicholson and others in the seventeenth 
 century ^, but obscured or neglected by many 
 writers, has more recently obtained the fullest 
 recognition. This oneness, being essential, is 
 not a mere matter of classification. It belongs 
 to the nature of the Church. There is there- 
 fore a natural unity ; and since the Church 
 consists of persons united by the grace of God 
 to Christ, in a manner comparable to the 
 union of the members of a living body with 
 
 ' Nicholson, Uxposilion of the Catechism, p. 58, edit. 
 Oxford, 1 842 : " This Church is but one, as it is in the Nicene 
 Creed ; one body knit together by one Spirit, under one 
 Head. ' Tliere is but one Lord, one Spirit, one Faith, one 
 Baptism.' Inwardly, then, and essentially it is but one, 
 but outwardly and externally you may say the'-e be many 
 Churches cither national or congregational ; who are bound 
 to retain one faith, but may differ in rites and ceremonies."' 
 It is not easy to see what he means by conijretjational. Of 
 course he does n.it use the word in its modern sense. 
 I think he must have had in view any gnmping of dioceses 
 on otlier than national lines. 
 
BY ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 their head, this unity is rightly called organic. 
 From another point of view it is a social 
 unity, since the Church visible is a form of 
 human society, ordained by God as a means 
 to the salvation of men. 
 
 This unity of the Church, essential, natural, 
 organic, social, is the work of God alone, fixed 
 and immovable as the laws of nature. The 
 Church is not only unalterably one, it is also 
 unalterably united. The individual man is 
 gathered into this unity not by any act or 
 volition of his own. but by his baptism, which 
 the Church as the Body of Christ administers, 
 but in which the Holy Ghost Himself operates. 
 In this unity the man remains until he is 
 either cast from it by effective excommunica- 
 tion, or falls from it by apostasy from the 
 conditions of membership. In neither case is 
 he removed by any act of human will, but by 
 the working of a divine law — the natural law 
 of the Cliurch's being. No man can divide 
 the Church essentially. The member cut ott 
 ceases to be a membei-. 
 
 This unity, being organic, depends upon a 
 certain principle of life, which is the possession 
 of the true faith and sacramental grace. This 
 is diffused through all tlie parts of the one 
 Church, though it may not be found every- 
 
154 THK UNITY OF THE CHURCH AS TREATED 
 
 where in the same vigour ; and therefore if 
 it fail entirely in any part, that part is cut 
 off as a branch and withered. It ceases to be 
 a part of the Church at all, remotely through 
 its own will and action, but immediately 
 through the cessation of the flow of life. 
 
 This unity, being social, depends upon the 
 continuance of a certain order. The Church 
 was founded in the fellowship of the Apostles, 
 and this fellowship developed, under the guid- 
 ance of the Holy Spirit, into a hierarchy, which 
 extends into every part of the Christian society. 
 This hierarchy alone, by the gi-ace of God, binds 
 the scattered parts together. The episcopate, 
 in particular, is one solid indivisible order, and 
 the individual Christian is held immovably in 
 union with this whole order by communion 
 with his own bishop. 
 
 In addition to this natural, essential unity, 
 there is another kind of unity proposed to the 
 Church as an end of moral action. In contrast 
 with the other it is called subjective, because 
 it is immediately dependent upon human 
 volition ; but as realized and expressed in 
 action it is in truth equally objective. It is 
 a moral as distinct from a natural, afunctional 
 as distinct from an organic unity. It is the 
 result of an effort, on the part either of the 
 
BY EXGLISH THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 individual or of the community, to live in 
 coiTespondence with the divine grace of unity. 
 Its principle is charity. Its outward expres- 
 sion is found, on the part of the individual, in 
 loyal submission to authority, in mutual for- 
 bearance, in prayer and almsgiving and other 
 acts of charity ; on the part of the community, 
 in the same acts corporately performed ^, and 
 especially in free and pei'fect intercommunion. 
 
 This moral unity corresponds to the natural 
 unity of the Church, and therefore to its various 
 phases. Corresponding with the organic unity 
 of the Church is free and brotherly partici- 
 pation in the sacraments, free and brotherly 
 communication for the defence and propaga- 
 tion of the faith. Corresponding with the 
 social unity of the Church is the common 
 action of each several diocese or province ; 
 in a wider field, the brotherly intercourse of 
 Church with Church, bishop with bishop, 
 tlio mutual recognition of each other's acts, 
 
 ' Moral union between England and the rest of Christen- 
 dom might Metin to be ended after tlie accession of Elizabeth : 
 yet in 1 565 public prayers were ordered for the rescue of 
 the Knights of Malta from the Turks ; and in the following 
 year for " the Emperor's excellent Majesty, as God's prin- 
 cipal minister," and " all the Christian army now assembled 
 with him," to resist the Turks in Hungary. See Liturgical 
 Services of the lieiyn of Queen Elizuheth, Parker Society, 
 VV- 5 '9-5 35' 
 
156 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 mutual support against heresy or schism ; in 
 the last resort, the assembly of a General 
 Council and the universal acceptance of its 
 decrees. 
 
 This moral unity is an end : it is set before 
 us accordincr to the will of God as a thing 
 to be attained. It is also a means : it is neces- 
 sary to the perfect well-being of the Church, 
 to the final conversion of the world, to the 
 accomplishment of the woi'k of salvation. It 
 must therefore be realized ; but the necessity 
 does not stand in any special time or manner. 
 The moral unity of the Church may be 
 realized in varying degrees. In different parts 
 of the Church it may be realized in varying 
 intensity ; between some parts there may be 
 the closest union ; between others at the same 
 time there may be grave dissension. No part, 
 perhaps, can ever be entirely without moral 
 union with the rest, but the outward expression 
 of it may be all but wliolly lost. 
 
 The moral unity is therefore variable, but 
 the natural unity is indefectible. In this sense 
 we declare our belief in the Church, past, 
 present, and to come, OXE and united. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aggregation, vinity of, 92. 
 Aiclan, Saint, 147. 
 Antioch, Schism of, 147. 
 Apologia, Jewel's, 60. 
 Apostasy, 6H, 13,^, 153. 
 Arnold, 129. 
 
 Articles, the Thirty-nine, 12, 19, 41, 42, 43. 
 Athanasius, Saint, quoted, 112. 
 Bancroft, his sermon on the Trying of Spirits, 69. 
 Banes, his definition of the Church, 46. 
 Barrow, 106-113, 116-118. 
 
 — on General Councils, iii. 
 
 Bellarmine, his definition of the Church, 12, 46. 
 
 — on General Councils, 1 1 1. 
 
 — on resistance to the Pope, 81. 
 Beveridge, 1 18-121. 
 
 — denies the catholicity of the Roman Church, 103. 
 
 — on salvation only in the Church, 120. 
 
 — on the enmity of Rome and Geneva to the English Church, 
 
 102. 
 
 — on the powers of provincial Churches, 121. 
 Bilson, 69. 
 
 Boniface, Saint, 31. 
 Bonner, 47, 49. 
 Bramhall, 75-85. 
 
 — on separation from Rome, 80. 
 
 — on the reunion of Cliristendon, 83. 
 
 — on submission to the rule of Faith, 84. 
 Branch Tlieory, the, 20, 50. 
 
 Bucchingcr, his definitions of the Church, 44. 
 Butler, on the denominational system, 128. 
 Canada, hierarchies in, 144. 
 
 Canon ot 1604, English, on sectarian congregations, 13. 
 
 on separation from other Churches, 25. 
 
 on tlio Church of Scotland, 50. 
 
 — of 1606, English, on the unity of the Church, 5^. 
 Canterbury, Archbisliop of, and the Nestorians, 19. 
 Centre of unity, Rome as the, 3t, 32, 49. 
 Chichelo, his confirmation of Bishops, 33. 
 
 Cole, his argument against the Book of Conimoii Prayer, 48. 
 Communions, division of the (,'hurch into, 23, 142. 
 Compri'liension, schemes of, 129. 
 Conciliar Theory, the, iii. 
 
158 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Constance, Council of, 33. 
 
 Convocation of Canterbury, on reconciliation with Rome, 47. 
 Cusa, Cardinal de, on the constitution of the Church, 34. 
 Cuthbert, Saint, 147. 
 
 Cyprian, Saint, quoted, 31, 96, :i3, 118, 140, 143. 
 
 Cyril of Jerusalem, Saint, quoted, 88. 
 
 Definitions of the Church, 12, 13, 31, 34, 37, 41, 43-47, 125. 
 
 Denominational system, the, 128. 
 
 Discipline, necessity of, 18, 65. 
 
 — unity of, 96, 109. 
 Dissent, principle of, 10, 136. 
 Dissenters, their origin, 123-124. 
 
 — their testimony to the principles of the Church, 16. 
 
 — refuse comprehension, 127, 129. 
 Donatism, its true nature, 150-151. 
 Episcopate, necessity of the, 70, 116, 119, 154. 
 
 — the united, 72, 79, 143. 
 
 Essential unity, 71, 82,91, 97-99, 138-139, 152. 
 Established Church, the, 128. 
 Estius, his definition of the Church, 45. 
 Evangelical Alliance, the, 11, 14. 
 Excommunication, effect of, 64. 
 
 — nature of, 141. 
 
 External communion, interruption of, 79, 139. 
 
 Faith, vinity of, 19, 62, 73, 95, 107, 131, 133. 
 
 Fisher, his definition of the Church, 43. 
 
 Forbes, Bishop of Brechin, 146. 
 
 Fraternization with Dissenters, 15. 
 
 Galilean Church, attempted union with the, 104, 126. 
 
 — controversialists, English sympathy with, 114. 
 
 their definition of the Church, 47. 
 
 Gardiner, 47. 
 
 Genevese Calvinists, the, 35, 66, 102. 
 
 Geographical organization of the Church, the, 25, 39, 121. 
 
 modified, 143. 
 
 Gerson, on resistance to the Pope, 81. 
 
 Gregory the Great, Saint, his definition of the Church, 31. 
 
 Grindelwald Conferences, the, 14, 16. 
 
 Hammond, teaching of his Practical Catechism, 69-71. 
 
 — Canon of Truro, 16. 
 
 Head of the Church, Christ Himself, 34, 37, 52, 9., 108, 149. 
 
 — the Roman Pontiff, 36, 46, 57. 
 
 — royal title, 36, 57-58. 
 Henry VIII, 35, 56. 
 Heresy, definition of, 134. 
 
 Heretics, not wholly excluded from the Church, 44, 63. 
 Hierarchy, institution of the, 54, 119. 
 
 — necessity of the, 43, 70, 116, 154. 
 
 Homilies, the authorized, definition of the Church, 13, 18. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Hooker, 20, 61-69, 85, 87, 106. 
 Itistitution of a Christian Man, the, 37. 
 Intercommunion, 79, 150. 
 
 Invisible Church, Calvinist theory of the, 11, 14, 61, 106. 
 Jewel, 60. 
 
 King's Book, the, 37. 
 Land, 72. 
 Lannoi, 116. 
 Lutherans, the, 35, 136. 
 
 Lyndwood, Ids definition of the Church, 12, 34. 
 
 Lyra, Nicholas de, on the constitution of the Church, 32. 
 
 Manning, 146. 
 
 Martin V, 33, 34. 
 
 Meletius of Antioch, Saint, 147. 
 
 Monophysites, 134, 143. 
 
 Moral unity, 82, 110, 146, 150, 155-157. 
 
 National Churches, 24, 54, 71, 74, 104, 128. 
 
 — unity of, 72, loi. 
 Natural unity, 146, 152. 
 
 Necessary Doctrine, etc., definition of the Church in the, 37. 
 
 — on the nature of unity, 38-40. 
 Nestorians, 19, 134, 143. 
 
 Nicholas I, his definition of the Church, 31. 
 
 Nicholson, on essential unity, 152. 
 
 Novatian schism, the, 140. 
 
 Numerical unity, 77, 82, 86, 99, 135, 142, 152. 
 
 Objective unity, 147, 155. 
 
 Organic unity, 53, 64, 153-154. 
 
 Overall's C'ontt/cation Book, 52-54. 
 
 Oxford movement a revival of English theology, the, 130. 
 Palmer, Treatise on the Church of Christ, 130-146. 
 
 — on heresy, 134-135. 
 
 — on interruptions of external communion, 139-142. 
 
 — on relations with the Lutherans and Reformed, 137-138. 
 
 — on separation, 132-133. 
 
 — on the geographical organization of the Church, 141. 
 — *• on the nature of excommunication, 141. 
 
 Papists, 124, 126. 
 
 Particular Churches, not indefectible, 97. 
 
 — the unity of, 90, 131. 
 
 Pearson. Kxpusition of the Creed, 87-99. 
 
 — on Christ as the Head of the Church, 91. 
 
 — on tlio episcopate, </>. 
 
 — on the holiness of tlie Church, 98. 
 
 — on the indolectibilitj' of the Church, 97. 
 
 — on the modes of unity, 94-97. 
 
 Pigliius, Alhortus, on the constitution of the Church, 44. 
 Pole, ('iiKliiial, liis Defence of Unity, 35, 48, 56. 
 
 — his Legatine Council, 49. 
 
i6o 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Prayer-book, the Preface to, 9. 
 
 — called schismatical, 4.8. 
 Presbyterianism, 51. 
 Protestants, the, 35. 
 
 Pusey, on the nature of vmity, 148-151. 
 Recusants, 124, 126. 
 
 R«formers, relations with foreign, loi, 136. 
 Restoration, the, loo, 105. 
 
 Roman Communion, Churches of the, 25, 28, 136, 144. 
 Roman See, its jurisdiction put aside in England, 35, 82. 
 
 — regarded as the centre of unity, 31-32, 49. 
 Sacraments, necessity of the, 42. 
 
 — unity of the, 17, 95, 149. 
 Salvation only in the Chiirch, 120. 
 Saywell, Dr. William, 114. 
 Schism, definition of, 77, 117. 
 
 — effect of, 132. 
 
 — • in England, 124. 
 
 — the Antiochene, 147. 
 
 — the Great, 32, 60, 141. 
 Scotland, the Church of, 50, 72, loi. 
 Separation, when justifiable, 118, 133. 
 Social unity, 94, 153-154. 
 
 Stapleton, his definition of the Church, 45. 
 
 Subjective unity, 146, 150, 154. 
 
 Swiss Reformers, the, 35, 40. 
 
 Test Act, the, 123. 
 
 Theodoret, 31. 
 
 Thomdike, 85. 
 
 Toleration, Act of, 123. 
 
 Tournely, on excommunication, 141. 
 
 Tunstall, 36, 47, 105. 
 
 — his reply to Pole, 58-59. 
 
 Turrecremata, Card, de, his definition of the Church, 34. 
 h'nam Sanctam, the Bull, 32. 
 Uniformity, compulsory, 123. 
 
 United States of America, hierarchies in the, 145. 
 Visible Church, the, 10, 41, 61, 106. 
 
 — unity, 17, 41, 64, 65, 98. 
 
 can be impaired, 79, 140, 147. 
 
 Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, 104, ia6. 
 
 Weslej', 129. 
 
 Wilfrid, Saint, 31. 
 
 Winchester, the late Bishop of, 19. 
 
 Wordsworth, Dr., Bishop of Lincoln, 20. 
 
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