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 LI E> RA RY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VLR5 ITY 
 
 or ILLI NOIS
 
 HOME REUNION SOCIETY. 
 
 TWO PAPERS UPON THE 
 
 RELATIONS OF THE 
 
 ENGLISH CHURCH TO NONCONFORMITY. 
 
 (From the Reports of the Society, for 1876— 1877. J 
 
 W. WELLS GARDNER, 
 2, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON, E.G.; 
 AND AT THE OFFICE OF THE SOCIETY: 
 
 7, Whitehall, London, S.W. 
 
 /3.
 
 I. 
 
 ON THE RELATIONS OF 
 
 THE ENGLISH CHURCH TO NONCONFORMITY. 
 
 (Selected from the Report of the Society, June 29, 1876.) 
 
 The prayer of our Blessed Lord (St. John xvii. 20-23) must 
 have its fulfilment in a visible unity ; and to such an unity 
 we have the promise of a greater glory, a greater and more 
 perfect love, a greater and more perfect witness to the world of 
 the truth of Christ's religion ; and, therefore, a promise by these 
 means of a more certain, effectual, and speedy accomplishment 
 of His Will. 
 
 It is this belief that must ever unite all true members of 
 Christ's Body, wherever their lot on earth may be cast, in a longing 
 desire that such perfect visible unity be attained. 
 
 But we may go a step further, and, without saying who is 
 specially to blame for the present state of things, may boldly 
 appeal to Holy Scripture to show that a state of schism and division 
 among Christians is alien to the true principles of the religion of 
 Christ. 
 
 We would quote here and elsewhere, by permission, from an 
 
 able pamphlet : — * 
 
 " St. Paul's warnings on account of scliism (I Cor. i, 10-12, and I Cor. 
 xii, xiii, and elsewhere) are unmistakeable ; and yet of what did these schisms 
 consist ? Of little more than party cliques within the Church — one Christian 
 saying that he was of Paul, another that he was of Apollos, another com- 
 placently saying that he was of Christ. But surely, if even these compara- 
 tively small matters were wrong, it cannot be less improper when men go far 
 
 * " The Relation of the English Church to Nonconformity," By George 
 Venables, Vicar of Great Yai'mouth. London : W. Wells Gardner. 1876.
 
 greater lengths iu rending the Seamless Robe, and quit the Communion of the 
 Church altogether. If Dissenters came to Church for Baptism and Holy- 
 Communion, there would be some approach to the unity taught by St. Paul, 
 but not even this is done, except in a few instances." 
 
 In our search for a return to that outward unity which we have 
 lost, it will be well to look back to Apostolic times, to the times 
 of the undivided Church, and also in our country to the reign of 
 King Edward the Sixth, before divisions had made an inroad upon 
 the unity of our National Church. 
 
 To quote again from the pamphlet above referred to : — 
 
 "After Pentecost the Christians were distinguished by four remarkable 
 characteristics : — 
 
 **(1.) Steadfastness in the doctrines taught by the Apostles, who were 
 told by Christ to make discij)les of all nations, by baptizing them and teaching 
 them to observe all things that Christ had taught to them. 
 
 "(2.) Steadfastness in the fellowship and Communion of the Apostles. 
 They were not split into sects and parties, but all spake the same thing, and 
 were perfectly joined in the same mind and judgment, 
 
 " (3.) Steadfastness in the Bread-breaking or Lord's Supper. Every (adult) 
 Christian wns a Communicant, and few, if any, would omit Communion on 
 every Lord's Day. 
 
 "(4.) Steadfastness in the Prayers. There was pretty surely some known 
 form of words from the bet-inning. The Jews were so accustomed to forms of 
 prayer (in which Jesus Himself must often have joined) that it is in the 
 highest degree probable that certain forms of words in prayer were used." 
 
 We then come to the times of the undivided Church after the 
 Apostolic age, and find a common Bible, a common Creed, a 
 common witness to the faith even unto death ; the same sacra- 
 ments, the same priesthood, the same Church government, under 
 Bishops after the Apostolic model. And lastly in our own coun- 
 try we find ourselves one in the desire for a literal translation of 
 the Bible and for a Service book in our own tongue, one as to 
 Church government, one in a continued protest against the en-ors 
 and corruptions with which the Church of England has wrestled 
 so long. 
 
 uiuct
 
 If a secession from this outward unity had resulted in a large 
 and united body of separatists it might have been fairly argued 
 that such secession might tend towards a still greater unity, but 
 history shows us that the essence of Nonconformity is to repro- 
 duce itself again and again even among those who apparently 
 have the nearest symjiathies. 
 
 ' ' Men find it easier to withdraw from a corporate body and set up a party 
 and community of their own than to submit their own will, or to sacrifice a 
 little selfishness, " 
 
 On the other hand, a fair consideration of Church history would 
 show that no small share of the blame attaching to subsequent 
 divisions must be laid at the Church's door. 
 
 In the revulsion of feeling after the Marian persecutions, the 
 Church was governed rather by political than by purely religious 
 considerations, so that^ 
 
 ** Many phases of Dissent (became) little else than an eager pursuit after 
 some truth which the Church had ceased to recognize in her practice, and 
 which cannot be lost without injury. " 
 
 And yet the Church really possessed all that was needed to 
 supply the necessities and shortcomings, if she had only been 
 ready to avail herself of her many facilities for usefulness. 
 
 From this spirit of Erastianism arose a bitterness, unknown 
 before Queen Mary's reign, against those of the " old learning," 
 and a jealousy of the foreign Protestantism which deluged our 
 shores in the reign of Elizabeth, and the consequent enactment of 
 strict laws cruelly enforced against the Roman Catholic and 
 Puritan Nonconformists. 
 
 Hence, as a rebound against such persecutions came the repudia- 
 tioa of Episcopacy by the Puritans, and the complete estrange- 
 ment of the Roman Catholics.
 
 Again in the last century, when this country was blessed with 
 a great siDiritual revival, the Church missed the opportunity of 
 throwing herself thoroughly into the movement, being at that 
 time too cold, too worldly, too indifferent to spiritual things to 
 sympathise fully with so godly a manifestation. 
 
 While however acknowledging with deep sorrow the different 
 causes of our past divisions, we must not omit thankfully to 
 recognize the wonderful movements towards a more visible unity 
 which God has, from various sources, vouchsafed to us in later 
 years. 
 
 The removal of civil disabilities and the repeal of penal laws, 
 though carried out mainly on political considerations, have directly 
 undone much of the evil of former legislation ; w^hile the subse- 
 quent increase of scepticism (or at all events the greater promi- 
 nence it has lately assumed) has directly tended (as did the 
 persecutions of old time) to unite all Christians more truly in a 
 common defence of the Christian faith. The fears raised by a 
 more systematic effort, both at Eome and in the country, to exalt 
 Rome's more distinctive doctrines and modes of Church govern- 
 ment have tended to open the eyes of many Protestant Noncon- 
 formists to the importance of the Established Church as a sure 
 bulwark against the attacks of the Roman Curia. 
 
 The greater spiritual life which, under distinct and apparently 
 opposing schools of religious thought, has been gradually but 
 surely growing up within the Church since the begimiing of this 
 century, as evidenced by the rapid growth of the Colonial 
 Churches, by the increasing desire for preaching the Gospel to 
 the heathen, and by her efforts to meet spiritual destitution at 
 home, has gone far to remove cause for the sloth and suj^ineness 
 with which a too entire dependence on her endowments and on 
 her worldly position had well nigh overwhelmed her in a previous 
 age.
 
 This increasing zeal with which the Church has been blessed 
 has tended directly, in many ways, to the cause of reunion. Not 
 only have the large contributions from her members, for the 
 building and restoration of churches, and for the increase of home 
 and foreign missions, given to her all the vitality of a voluntary 
 association, but the practical work for the increase of Christ's 
 Kingdom at home and abroad has directly tended to create fresh 
 sympathies towards her from all the true members of Christ's 
 Body. 
 
 Many have found, in carrying out a common work for the 
 extension of Christ's Kingdom, that the same old and clearly 
 marked lines are essential to success though they may have 
 called the means employed by different names. 
 
 Growing out of this greater zeal to spread the knowledge of the 
 Gospel of Christ comes the desire to open our churches for tlie 
 use of all, at all times, and for various Services, and a concurrent 
 desire for a relaxation of our uniformity laws to enable us to meet 
 in different ways the var3''ing needs of all classes of our people. 
 
 This increasing zeal has exposed a deficiency in the supply of 
 agents to carry on Christ's work among us, and has created a 
 demand for a distinct order of Evangelists ; for a permanent 
 Diaconato ; and for a recognised Lay Agency, male and female, 
 all which will tend to draw us somewhat nearer to Nonconformist 
 organizations, and will pave the way for a complete supply of 
 those deficiencies and neglects which, as we have before shown 
 had so much to do with the first formation of divisions amongst 
 us. 
 
 On the other hand, in the midst of many apparent estrange- 
 ments, the Nonconformists, in many and unexpected ways, are 
 drawing nearer to us. There is a growing sympathy on their part 
 in all real spiritual work undertaken by the Church witnessed to
 
 by the interchange of all hymns of a truly spiritual character, 
 
 and to quote once more from the pamphlet : — 
 
 "The three Creeds are believed in by a large proportion of Dissenters. 
 Episcopacy is certainly not the hateful thing in their estimation that once it 
 was, forms and ceremonies once so much disliked are now used by not a few 
 of their leaders. " 
 
 And we may add, more ornate Services and more beautiful 
 edifices have been accepted by them as good accessories to public 
 worship. 
 
 There is a direct sympathy among the more religious of the 
 Nonconformists with the Church's earnest endeavour to secure a 
 religious education in our elementary schools, while there is an 
 increasing desire among the ministers of the different sects to 
 place themselves under regular training, and to seek Episcopal 
 ordination. 
 
 The earnest question we would place before our members is — 
 How can we best cherish, increase, strengthen these various 
 proofs of a desire for a more visible unity which are spreading on 
 crery side 1 
 
 Certain methods are embodied in No. 3 of our Society's 
 rules, but at such a critical period it becomes a prominent 
 duty to circulate occasional papers and to recommend the best 
 treatises drawn up in a Christian spirit which fairly and carefully 
 discuss the existing points of difference between us ; and having 
 thus prepared the way, to inaugurate conferences with Noncon- 
 formists, at first tentative and confidential, seeking points of 
 agreement rather than points of difference ; on all occasions to be 
 carefully undertaken, prepared for, and preceded by a course of 
 fervent prayer for God's blessing upon the conference by members 
 of all denominations who propose to take part in the same. 
 
 It may be after all that the perfect unity for which we long
 
 9 
 in accordance with our Blessed Lord's prayer, may not be fully 
 attained till the times of the Gentiles have been fulfilled — 
 " When Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex 
 Ephraim. " But surely, as the time of the end draws nigh, it 
 must be well fitting for all of us, whether Churchman or Noncon- 
 formist, to labour in earnest prayer, with watchfulness against 
 our own individual shortcoming, and in patient hope for the 
 blessed consummation.
 
 II. 
 
 A SHOET EEVIEW OF 
 CANON CUETEIS' BAMPTON LECTUEES.* 
 (From the Eeport of the Society, June, 1877.) 
 
 The leading points of these lectures will be brought in a 
 condensed form under the reader's notice, in the hope that 
 many may be induced to study the lectures for themselves. 
 
 Lect. I. The first j^oint Mr. Curteis makes is that " dissensions 
 are allowable and a sign of life in a Church until they culminate 
 into the chronic disease of Dissent, which is not allowable." 
 
 He puts this proposition under three headings — 
 
 "(1.) That in all ages and countries where the Christian 
 Church has found a footing there have always (from the very 
 construction of the human mind) arisen parties in opposition to 
 the prevailing and authorised methods, both of doctrine and of 
 discipline. 
 
 "(2.) That this opposition and its resulting conflict is, in the 
 ecclesiastical as well as every other kind of polity, the essential 
 condition of vitality and movement. 
 
 "(3.) That while 'dissension' is both healthy and inevitable, 
 yet, when it runs out into extreme forms, becomes exasperated 
 by mismanagement or poisoned by the admixture of hatred, 
 jealousy, and self-will, it then becomes a dangerous and chronic 
 disease. It has grown into something which cannot easily be 
 
 * The Rev. G. H. Curteis' " Bampton Lectures for 1871, upon Dissent in 
 its relation to the Church of England." (Macmillan and Co.)
 
 11 
 
 cured. A chasm has been opened which renders reabsorption 
 very difficult ; and dissension (in one word) has ripened into 
 Dissent." 
 
 His second point — the definition or description of the 
 Catholic Church, in which these dissensions originate and from 
 which this Dissent cuts itself off — is also most worthy of con- 
 sideration. 
 
 A consideration of the parables of the kingdom (St. Matthew 
 xiii, 31-50, xxii, 2) shows what the Church w^as intended 
 to be. There we see "its tolerance of sinners, its breadth, 
 its noble fearlessness of infection in carrying out Christ's work of 
 redeeming mercy." St. Matthew xvi, 19, and xviii, 17, shews its 
 authority; and St. John xvii, 21, shews its unity, and completes 
 what may be called our Blessed Lord's own description of His 
 Church. From this it is impossible to come to any other conclusion 
 than the following : — 
 
 " (1.) That what our Lord intended to leave in the world was 
 a society, beginning from a small germ and developing itself far 
 and wide; commissioned expressly to take the largest possible 
 sweep for embracing multitudes of every kind, whoever could be 
 persuaded to come; and with the distinct function assigned to 
 it of gathering in the weak, the young, and the ignorant, rather 
 than of forming any sort of privileged club from which all such 
 imperfect persons were to be excluded. 
 
 "(2.) That it was to be no chaos, but an organized society. 
 The Incarnate Order and Keason of the universe was not likely 
 to bequeath to us an anarchy : and we have seen how He Him- 
 self carefully selected and personally commissioned the first 
 office-bearers in His new kingdom for the special purpose He had 
 in view. 
 
 "(3.) That this purpose was simply and purely an ^c?wc«^wwaZ 
 one. The society was, above all other things, not to be exclusive 
 and selfish, as if for enjoyment. It was to be the self -forgetting.
 
 12 
 
 self-hazarding agent of His own vast and expansive charity. And 
 tlierefore, like Himself, it was not to stop and ask if tliis man was 
 a publican or that man a Samaritan ; but to gather up its armfals 
 of the strayed, the lost, the weak, the young, the victims of nature, 
 of man, of their own passions or folly ; and to ' set them once 
 more among princes by giving them a home, with love and 
 training in it, and all that makes men human, cheerful, healthful 
 and (in the best sense of the word) natural.' 
 
 "(4.) That the ultimate object of all this machinery v/as not to 
 create (in any sense whatever) a privileged class — not to main- 
 tain a hierarchy or an endowed establishment, for their own sakes 
 (God forbid !) — but simply the pure and Christian purpose of 
 saving souls ; of sealing down upon them, when the wax is hot, 
 the impression of Christianity ; stamping it down in sacraments, 
 and rituals, and sermons; and setting before them a visi])le 
 example of the peace, and joy, and health that dwell in His 
 household, and are the natural inheritance of His children." 
 
 If, as we believe, this is a true definition of what Christ's 
 Church was intended to be, what a lesson have we, both Church- 
 men and Dissenters, to learn from our hindrance of His work, 
 and from the defamation of this more perfect reflection of Him- 
 self, in His purity, and truth, and love, which our respective 
 shortcomings have occasioned. 
 
 Too soon was the unhappy lesson accepted that it was a 
 righteous act to put down heresies by the temporal sword ; hence 
 arose the auto da fes of the Inquisition ; hence " the fires of Smith- 
 field for the Lollards, and of Oxford for Eef ormers. And when their 
 accursed work was done, and the last flame died down in England 
 upon the blackened corpse of a Socinian, in the market-place of 
 Lichfield, A.D. 1612, then, within less than forty years, a ruined 
 Chiu"ch, an overthrown State, and the frantic triumph of 
 sectarianism and anarchy proclaimed to all the world the utter
 
 13 
 
 failure of compulsion in religion. Men have thus been brought, 
 by slow degrees, to see at last that force and persecution were the 
 weapons of Antichrist, and not of Christ; and that charity, 
 courtesy, and honest explanation were the only fitting weapons 
 of a warfare which is ' not carnal but spiritual,' and whose only 
 lasting victories, are gain by ' in meekness instructing those that 
 oppose themselves' (II. Tim. ii, 25)." 
 
 It was thus that much of the old breadth and charity of the 
 Ciiurch of Christ was clouded. And though it is popularly sup- 
 posed, especially among the Independents, that they were preserved 
 in full measure by the persecuted ones when lost by the persecut- 
 ing Church, history gives an unequivocal denial to such a view. 
 " Not only the founders but the earliest champions and martyrs 
 of Independency as earnestly repudiated 'toleration' as the 
 Cliurchmen and Presbyterians, and perhaps every human being 
 at that time, repudiated it." 
 
 " Luther invoked the civil sword against the Anabaptists ; 
 Calvin burnt Servetus ; Cranmer burnt Jane Boucher ; and of 
 Cartwright a Dissenting writer says : — ' Parker and Whitgift per- 
 secuted the Puritans ; but if Cartwright had been in Whitgift's 
 place he would have dealt equal persecution to Baptists and 
 Independents.' Independents, when they had the power, as in 
 America, persecuted their opponents as fiercely and unrighteously 
 as they had themselves been persecuted, verifying Cromwell's 
 saying, ' That hath been one of the vanities of our contest. Every 
 sect says, ' give me liberty ! ' But give it to him, and to his 
 power and he will not yield it to anybody else.' " 
 
 And this brings us to consider the real origin of this persecuting 
 spirit, a spirit which we find permeating all bodies of Christians 
 — Churchman and Dissenter alike — leading us away by impercep- 
 tible degrees from our Blessed Lord's idea, as shown us plainly in 
 the Gospels, " of what His Kingdom of Heaven should be. "
 
 14 
 
 The Apostles themselves showed at first a leavening of this 
 spirit of Intolerance, when they asked for fire from Heaven on the 
 city that had rejected their Master, and they were rebuked — "Ye 
 know not what manner of spirit ye are of. " When they forbad 
 one casting out devils because he followed not with them, they 
 were rebuked — " Forbid him not, for no one that can do miracles 
 in My Name can lightly speak evil of Me." Exclusiveness, again, 
 is the spirit of the self-righteous Pharisee, who was offended 
 because our Lord ministered to the publicans and sinners, and was 
 rebuked by the words: "They that be whole need not a physician, 
 
 •T 
 
 but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous but 
 sinners to repentance ; " and by the language of St. Paul, II Cor. 
 X. 12, against those who measure. " It is, in a word, the (false) 
 conception that the Church was intended by its Author to be a 
 social and not an educational brotherhood ; a club for enjoying 
 happy Christian fellowship, and not a school for bringing men 
 gradually to Christ ; to be, in short, a select and exclusive circle 
 of Heaven's favourites, instead of a broad and inclusive net for 
 sweeping in all of every kind. " 
 
 Surely this is very little other than the Pharisaism so openly 
 and continuously rebuked by our Lord. Surely those who are 
 leavened with such a spirit are drifting far from the example of 
 Christ, and from being fellow-workers with Him ; and yet the 
 leaven of this spirit, though intensified by Calvinism, was in the 
 Church long before Calvin, and is in it now — yea, in each man's 
 inmost heart ; for we are ever inclined to judge others by our 
 own standard of goodness. All stricter than ourselves are 
 scoffed at — all who have not attained to the same outward 
 appearance of perfection and respectability are condemned. 
 
 If the Church's connection with the State were of use in no 
 other way, it at least keeps down this spirit of exclusiveness ; for 
 Hume goes very near the truth in crediting no denomination with
 
 15 
 
 the virtues of toleration, saying, " If among Christians the English 
 and Dutch have embraced the principles of toleration, this singu- 
 larity has proceeded from the steady resolution of the civil 
 magistrate." And yet the Church of England is modelled on the 
 original or Gospel conception of what the Church should be ; and 
 while she insists on safeguards at the admission of her teachers, 
 she leaves her ordinary members the greatest freedom. " Our 
 own Church requires from its lay members no confession of faith 
 except that contained in the Apostles' Creed." (Bishop Harold 
 Browne on the Articles, p. 11). 
 
 " And as for the Thirty-nine Articles, they are a sketch of 
 framework of sound doctrine, by which the Church takes engage- 
 ments from her clergy and other teaching officers. But even if 
 these contravene them, she does not necessarily excommunicate 
 such men, but leaves them to retire into lay communion. " 
 
 It is true that within the Church there are numbers known to 
 God, and in some cases, by the answering of heart to heart, to 
 each other also, as among His holy ones ; but these dare not arro- 
 gate to themselves an exclusive claim. Our Lord taught that 
 " there are first that shall be last, and last that shall be first ; and 
 there may be many a penitent to be called, for their humble wit- 
 ness and amazing love to Christ, who, perchance, will enter before 
 these into the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. 
 
 Let us proceed with Mr. Curteis to the consideration of how 
 these two evils, so nearly allied to each other, of intolerance and 
 exdusiveness, have made rents in the Seamless Robe, under the 
 various forms of Dissent amongst us, and learn from the lessons 
 of this past experience some way back into the old paths from 
 which Church and Dissent have fallen — by amending those 
 original evils which in each case caused fresh rents as the ready 
 remedy.
 
 16 
 
 Lect. 11. The Independents, though, as history reveals to us, 
 persecutors in their turn, left the Church for the rights of freedom 
 of conscience. " And if the Independent refuses to conform, 
 secedes from the Church, and then fights a long and vigorous 
 battle for complete political and social toleration — barring the 
 first false step — he is a man worthy o£ all respect and honour. 
 The complete toleration he valiantly demands he has a perfect 
 political right to attain. Nor will he fail in the course of its 
 attainment to teach his country, and even the Church which he 
 has left, some valuable lessons of liberty, until time shall come 
 that he will learn from her in his turn the inestimable value of 
 Christian obedience, and the invincible strength gained by eccle- 
 siastical cohesion, and shall see how far grander and Christ-like a 
 thing it is to bend one's will to duty than to stand stiffly and 
 jealously upon one's private right" (see St. Paul; Phil. ii. 1-14). 
 
 Indeed, the most important truths which the Independents 
 have emblazoned on their banner are simply an essential part of the 
 acknowledged teaching of the Church of England, viz., the ecclesias- 
 tical rights of the laity, and the urgent need of guarding Christen- 
 dom against secular corruptions from without. But, on the other 
 hand, it must not bo forgotten that SHE can teach these things 
 without danger of extremes, for she balances them carefully by 
 many other compensating truths, and so keeps them in due sub- 
 ordination to the analogy of the faith. 
 
 Lect. III. The Romanists were the next to break away from the 
 Church of these realms, on the ground that a despotism was the 
 only divinely ordered Christian polity. And is not this despotism, 
 as at present exercised, nothing else than the realisation of that 
 spirit of intolerance so alien to the Gospel view of the kingdom? 
 Yet there is a caution to us in this secession against too lax a 
 discipline and too common a disobedience to all constituted 
 authority ; although it has resulted in a complete abandonment
 
 17 
 
 of everything that is national, and a breaking with the past. 
 " And while at this hour, in every cathedral and parish church 
 throughout the land, the old EngHsh Service-books are (in a 
 revised and condensed form) daily and weekly to be heard, in the 
 Romanist chapels, on the contrary, scarcely anything English is 
 to be heard or seen. The modern Roman Rituals have supplanted 
 everywhere those of the ancient English Church ; and, while to 
 this hour on the Episcopal thrones, and on the benches of Parlia- 
 ment, are to be seen the direct successors of Chichele, Langton, 
 Anslem, Dunstan, Augustin, the Roman succession, being a foreign 
 importation of Roman not of Anglican orders, appears as an Episco- 
 pate with no roots in the country, governing apart from the old 
 Canon law, which was the guard of the priesthood and Episcopate 
 alike against despotic power. 
 
 It is true that by our past neglects and our habits of self- 
 depreciation we have encouraged Romanists in their schism. But 
 after all the work of the Church of England has not*been a mean 
 one in the cause of Christ. " We have attempted and by His 
 blessing gone far to succeed in planting Christ's banner upon the 
 citadel of a free and modern State, to infuse Christianity into the 
 very nerves and veins of an adult and fully organised nation, 
 and to consecrate — not curse or secularize — science, family life, 
 political life !" 
 
 Surely in doing this we have more fully performed the duty 
 of the old Catholic Church of this nation than has been done by 
 those who have gone out of her, in allegiance to a foreign despot, 
 and in so doing have denationalized themselves altogether. 
 
 Lect. IV. The Baptist, on the other hand, from another point of 
 view, opposes the Gospel ideal by adopting as its own the exclu- 
 siveness of Calvin. There were three grand principles, for the sake 
 of which they held themselves justified in making a secession — 
 " (I.) The maintenance of more strictly Calvinistic doctrine. 
 (II.) For the exercise of a more rigorous and exclusive discipline.
 
 18 
 
 (III.) For the practice of a more literally Scripture ritual, espe- 
 cially in the matter of Baptism." 
 
 (1.) This was a protest against the worldliness which has far 
 too much crept into the Church. This worldliness is innate in 
 human nature, began with Judas, and has been more or less in 
 the Church ever since, and does not date from Constantino, as 
 those disposed to treat it as of the essence of Establishment would 
 maintain. 
 
 (2.) Another lesson to be learnt from the history of this 
 secession is the mischievous folly of persecution in order to insure 
 the uniform profession of the national religion. For history 
 reveals the fact that at certain periods " the rulers of the Church 
 lent themselves far too readily to the merely political purposes 
 of the State. 
 
 (3.) And there is yet a third and by no means unimportant 
 lesson to be learnt by the Church from the Baptists, on the 
 subject of Baptism itself, and of Church discipline with which that 
 rite is closely connected. We must admit her carelessness in 
 looking after the baptized who have but entered as scholars into 
 the fold to be instructed carefully in all godliness ; nay, more, 
 we must admit her insufficient teaching, which has caused her 
 real doctrine on this subject to be woefully misunderstood ; her 
 want of zeal in winning adult converts to the faith, and her 
 neglect of immersion, which is the rule, for affusion, which is the 
 exception (" It shall suffice to pour water upon it "). 
 
 Lect V. The Quakers Mr. Curteis describes as follows : — 
 
 " The majestic truth which George Fox travailed with was, 
 in a few words, that department of the Church's Creed which 
 was not then — nay, I am bold to say is not now — brought out 
 into its full significance : ' I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord 
 and Giver of life.'
 
 19 
 
 *' Behold, accordingly, this child-like soul, this man of one 
 Book — but that Book the Bible — steps forth amid the confused 
 Babel that called itself the English Christianity in the seventeenth 
 century to bear testimony in the Name of God to all these 
 things that the sects were battling over." 
 
 "It is not in the affirmations of George Fox, but in his denials, 
 that the Church of Christ meets him and repudiates his teaching. 
 And yet Quakerism has been enabled to infuse the spirit and 
 essence of George Fox's teaching into the very veins of the 
 modern world ; it has all but put down slavery ; it is on its way, 
 I hope, to put down war." 
 
 " (1.) His first great doctrine is this (and it is also the doctrine 
 of the Catholic Church), that the visible and outwardly organised 
 Church, with all her hierarchy and canons, her ritual, her creeds, 
 her sacraments, is nothing more than the shell (as it were) of the 
 living creature, the scaffolding of the real building, the means and 
 not the end, the casket and not the jewel." And in so far as the 
 members of the Church are prone at times to forget such a truth, 
 it was a thing to be thankful for that such a witness should be 
 given." 
 
 (2.) The second great doctrine was that of "the universal inward 
 light,'' "by which he (in common with the Catholic Church) protested 
 against the errors of Calvin." We needed this witness : for the 
 bigotry of Bible worship, and of schemes worked out by individual 
 readings of particular texts, had subdued. and constrained the free 
 worship of the Spirit in the hearts of men. But the Church 
 Catholic has never forbidden " her sons to recognise in the gentle 
 whispers of their Christian conscience — in the strong wrestlings 
 of some inward conflict, in the sweet and full conviction of some 
 glorious truth, in the passages of a friendly filial walking with 
 God — the adorable and neither mute nor insensible Presence of 
 the Holy Spirit."
 
 20 
 
 (3.) A third great doctrine to which the early Quakers wit- 
 nessed was the Church's "doctrine of sanctity," as a protest 
 against the strong conviction which had grown up amongst some 
 that the elect of Heaven remain such, be they of what moral 
 character they may — which is nothing else than a divorce of 
 morality from religion. But all these things, good as they are 
 and of use in counterbalancing other truths in the Church itself, 
 when divorced from the Church run into error. It was thus that 
 a tendency to ultra-spiritualism was engendered, which rejected 
 the sacraments and denied to them and to the beautiful symbolism 
 of the Church that interpretation by the Holy Spirit which they 
 allowed would give life to the types and symbolism of the Old 
 Testament. 
 
 Lect. VI. The two last sects which Mr. Curteis describes are 
 the Unitarians and ?FesleyansJ' 
 
 Of Unitarianism he prefaces that the name is entirely mislead- 
 ing, and that the great majority of them do believe in the Divinity 
 of our Lord and of the Holy Ghost, but object to these things 
 being set forth in what they call the terminology of metaphysics 
 as they are at present set forth in the Church. God grant that it 
 may be so, as there might be thus some hope of union with them 
 also. And it must never be forgotten that the Church, in her 
 Athanasian Creed, never undertook to define how these things 
 can be, but that the whole Creed, where it at all goes beyond the 
 Apostles' Creed, is, like the Nicene Creed, defensive, and denies 
 metaphysical heresies which attacked the true faith, and one by 
 one, when worked out into their consequences, resulted in a direct 
 denial of some great Bible truth. For after all it is an absolutely 
 certain fact " that it was purely and entirely in defence of the 
 unlyroken and inviolable ' Unity ' of God that the whole doctrine ' of the 
 Trinity was evolved by the Church"
 
 21 
 
 Their original protest was made "in defence of intellectual 
 freedom within Christ's Church, " and at the time it was made the 
 Puritans had built up " a chaotic body of self- constituted and 
 half-instrilcted interpreters of Holy Scripture, from whom no 
 mercy or freedom was to be expected, " and which, where it had 
 free play, was binding men's minds with a more cruel bondage 
 than Eome had ever attempted to impose. 
 
 And have not we soinething to learn from the secession ; Have 
 we not, from the leaven Puritanism within the Church, neglected 
 too much to minister to the higher intellectual spirits among us, 
 looking upon them with too complete an antagonism, forgetful 
 how the Church Catholic from the earliest age ^' had from every 
 philosophy, as it successively sprang up, employed its utmost 
 energies to draw and fix for the Church's use whatever was most 
 pure and sound and available " 1 
 
 Lect. YII. We turn now to the latest of our divisions, which 
 teaches us a lesson of past neglect in the contrary direction ; for if 
 Unitarianism reminds us of our neglected duty towards the more 
 intellectual few, Wesleyanism reminds us of our past neglect of the 
 uneducated many. Wesleyanism began in a distinctly friendly 
 spirit, and with an earnest desire to supply the Church's then 
 glaring deficiencies by forming within her an energetic body 
 of men who would work for her where her regular officers had 
 neglected their duty, and work for her on the old lines of that 
 primitive Christianity to which she had ever appealed, but in an 
 Erastian age had well nigh forgotten. Wesley's own words are — 
 ** I declare that I live and die a member of the Church of England 
 and none who regard my opinion or advice will ever separate 
 from it." 
 
 Nevertheless the separation has widened, and the small begin- 
 nings of the difference, notwithstanding the comparatively slight
 
 22 
 
 amount of opposition by the Church, teach us the ever-impor- 
 tant lesson, ** to guard against the danger of drifting into dis- 
 union, and of pushing our ecclesiastical dissensions to the sad 
 extremity of mutual alienation and of actual dissent." Want of 
 sympathy was the main cause here ; for, as in the other cases, the 
 Catholic Church of England could have fully worked with these 
 men, and in working with them guarded against the extremes into 
 which they subsequently ran by the compensating truths which 
 she also holds. But when the Wesleys arose the Church had 
 drifted far from her first love, and had lost the lesson that stands 
 in the forefront of the Gospel, " to condescend to men of low 
 estate." 
 
 She had not indeed the exclusiveness of a higher spiritual life 
 which the Calvinist held to be the Church's ideal, but the exclu- 
 siveness of worldly caste, an indifi'erence to anything that was not 
 strictly orthodox and respectable, and so the energies of the Wes- 
 leyans were allowed to drift away. 
 
 Lect. VIII. The Church of England is now by God's mercy 
 waking up fully to her spiritual responsibility. As the Church of 
 this whole nation she has learnt that she is not a class Church, 
 but for all ; and for the lowest in the world's estimation more 
 essentially than for any others. To the politician, whether 
 Churchman or Dissenter, there can be no end to strife. The 
 warfare of the past has stirred up animosities which nothing 
 but a full practical acceptance of the great truths of the Gospel 
 can ever sweep away. Mr. Curteis' book will reveal to us faults 
 enough in the Church among the Dissenters, which a political and 
 worldly spirit may work up from time to time to feed the flame, 
 while the old watchwords of prelacy and priestcraft, disendow- 
 ment and disestablishment, are cries under which the conflict can 
 be maintained to the bitter end. 
 
 But Math the politician we have nothing to do. It is to the
 
 23 
 
 Nonconformist who holds the essential truths of Christianity, 
 who is very zealous for the honour of his Lord and Master — his 
 and ours — that we would appeal. We do not deny that there are 
 many evils to be removed before the Church of England can 
 fully and efficiently discharge her duty as the one true branch of 
 the Catholic Church to this great people ; but now that it has 
 pleased God to re-endow her with great spiritual life, we would 
 ask the religious Nonconformists, who must prayerfully sym- 
 pathise with all the Church's works against sin and error, 
 whether adherence to the Church of their fathers would not be 
 more likely to complete the work of God amongst us than a con- 
 tinued opposition. 
 
 If our review of Mr. Curteis' book has done anything, it must 
 have taught us this : That if the Church had not gone from its 
 old love into a persecuting spirit, if Nonconformity had not com- 
 mitted itself to the equally false chimera of Calvinistic exclusive- 
 ness, the distinctive truths and sides of truths to which Noncon- 
 formists have from time to time borne witness would have much 
 more quickly leavened the Church of their fathers ; while the 
 extremes into which they have run, because separated from the 
 Church, would have been kept in their proper place in the 
 analogy of faith by the counterbalancing truths of Catholic 
 teaching. It is a sign of weakness that the sects have forgotten 
 their old distinctive protests against one another, often enforced 
 by the direst persecutions, and have united together in a joint 
 and determined attack against the Church of their fathers. But 
 Mr. Curteis* advice to the Church is important : 
 
 " It is true that many of these separated bodies appear now to 
 be weakening, to be diminishing in numbers, and falling apart 
 into innumerable fragments. But this fact does not in any way 
 affect the question. We are all bound, by our duty to our
 
 24 
 
 brethren and to God, to ' follow peace with all men.' We are 
 bound to study every method of conciliation and of mutual good 
 will. We are under the strictest obligation to explain, as clearly 
 as we can, both to the Dissenters and to our less instructed 
 people, the true position and standing purpose of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 " And as to the present embittered assaults — which probably 
 indicate a consciousness that the power of making them is rapidly 
 passing away — every Churchman should remember that the only 
 revenge which Christ has taught us that of returning good for evil. 
 The only retaliation possible to the follower of the meek and lowly 
 Jesus is to ask clearly and simply, * Why smitest thou me V The 
 only offensive warfare allowable to a Christian is ' to instruct in 
 meekness them that oppose themselves."
 
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