THE FORM AND MANNER OF MAKING, ORDAINING, AND CONSECRATING OF BISHOPS,
PRIESTS, AND DEACONS, ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF THE UNITED CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND.
If the Church of England confined herself in her ministrations to offices which had some demonstrable effect, her occupation would be gone. These Ordination offices stand on a par with that of Confirmation. In both, the Holy Ghost is given by imposition of episcopal hands; in both, no appreciable results follow the gift. The preface to these offices says: "It is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ's Church: Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." The "evidence" of this appears doubtful, seeing that all Presbyterians acknowledge no such triple order, and regard bishops as an invention of the devil, and "the pride of prelacy" as "a rag of the scarlet" lady. The three offices before us may, to all intents and purposes, be treated as one, for they are the progressive steps of the ladder which reaches-from earth to heaven, from the poor deacon-curate on 70l. a year at the bottom, to the archbishop luxuriating on 15,000l. a year at the top. There is much of solemn farce in the opening: the archdeacon presents the candidates for ordination to the bishop, and the reverend father in God, who has had them examined, who knows all about them, and has-probably dined with them the night before, gravely responds, "Take heed that the persons whom ye present unto us be-apt and meet, for their learning and godly conversation, to exercise their ministry duly, to the honour of God and the edifying of his Church." For the learning of some young clergymen, the less said about it the better, but those presented have at least scraped through the bishop's examination, and will not now be turned back. The question is simply a sham, and both candidates and bishop would be thoroughly astonished if the archdeacon replied that any one of them was deficient.
The Litany follows after this, and then the Communion Office, with special Collect, Epistle, and Gospel. After the Oath of Supremacy, the bishop examines the candidates for the diaconate: "Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon you this office?" is asked of each, and each answers: "I trust so." This ought to be a solemn question: to be inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost is surely an important thing; and when one remembers how very little many of these young men, fresh from college, seem to think of the matter, and how one chooses the Church because it is "gentlemanly," and another because there is a fat living in the family, and another because he is too stupid for any other profession, we can scarcely help wondering at the workings of the Holy Spirit in the heart of man. They are also asked if they "unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures." If they really do believe them at their ordination much change must take place in after life, judging by the amount of scepticism among the clergy. Much of the fault lies in pledging young men of three-and-twenty to absolute belief in what they have probably studied but little; at college all their instruction is in Christian Evidences, not in attacks on Christianity; they really know but little of the anti-Christian arguments, and therefore are naturally shaken when they learn them further on. Then the deacon is to read Homilies in Church, and promises to do so, although he never fulfils the promise, and he vows to obey his "Ordinary and other chief ministers of the Church... following with a glad mind and will their godly admonitions." How well the deacons and priests keep this pledge may be seen in the daily struggles between them and their bishops, and in the necessity of passing a Public Worship Regulation Act for the easier suppression of rebellious priests. A year must intervene between the diaconate and the priesthood, and when this year has run, the youthful aspirant to the power of the keys presents himself once more before the Father in God, and the same farce of question and answer is repeated. The service runs as in that for deacons, save the special Epistle and Gospel, until after the Oath of Supremacy; and then comes a long exhortation, wherein what strikes us most is the complete contrast between the priest in theory and the priest in practice: "If it shall happen the same Church, or any member thereof, to take any hurt or hindrance by reason of your negligence, ye know the greatness of the fault, and also the horrible punishment that will ensue see that you never cease your labour, your care and diligence, until you have done all that lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are or shall be committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there be no place left among you, either for error in religion, or for viciousness in life." Now change the scene to six weeks later, and our young priest is playing croquet and flirting meekly with his rector's daughters, oblivious of the "horrible punishment" he is incurring from Hodge at the public-house getting drunk unrebuked. "Consider how studious ye ought to be in reading and learning the Scriptures... and for this self-same cause how ye ought to forsake and set aside (as much as you may) all worldly cares and studies." Alas for the special vanities of country clergymen; this one botanizes, and that one zoologizes, and another one geologizes, and a fourth is devoted to his garden, and a fifth to his poultry, and a sixth to his farming, not to speak of those who adorn the bench of magistrates and sternly sentence wicked poachers, and sinful old women who pick up sticks, and children who steal flowers. It may be urged that no set of men could possibly live the life sketched in this exhortation: granted; but, then, why pretend that they are bound to live it, and threaten horrible punishments if they do not perform the impossible? Besides, the bishop expresses his hope that they have well considered the whole matter, and have "clearly determined, by God's grace... you will apply yourself wholly to this one thing, and draw all your cares and studies this way." When the time comes to put the questions to the candidates, this very point forms one of them: "Will you be diligent in prayers, and in reading of the Holy Scriptures, and in such studies as help to the knowledge of the same, laying aside the study of the world and the flesh?" And the candidates solemnly promise to do that which they must know they have no intention of doing. One might further urge, that the perpetual meddlesomeness enjoined in this Office on the priest would make that individual a perfect nuisance to his parishioners if he tried to carry it into practice, and that he would probably very often find his ministrations cut short with unpleasant emphasis. The consecration follows in due course: "Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and work of a priest in the Church of God... Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained." And yet some people pretend that the Church of England does not sanction an absolving priesthood! If these words have any meaning, they mean that the young men now ordained have the most awful power given into their hands, that they can, in very truth, lock and unlock heaven, for by their absolution the forgiven sinner may enter, while through their retainment of his sins he may be shut out. How tremendous then is the authority thus given into hands so young and so untried! And surely such power is not to be wasted? Surely it is the duty of these priests to be continually urging people to seek, and continually to be giving, absolution. Why should one sinner die unshriven, when such death may be prevented by the diligence of the priest? Life would be impossible were all this really believed; what priest could live in reasonable comfort if this were true and were realised? All earthly things would sink into insignificance, and life would become a desperate struggle to save and absolve the perishing; real belief would end its days in a lunatic asylum.
The Consecration of Archbishop or Bishop is somewhat more ceremonious, but is one in character with the preceding offices. The promise to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God's word is one the fulfilment of which brings unfortunate bishops nowadays into much trouble in the flesh. For when a Colenso "comes down like a wolf on the fold," and a faithful Bishop of Oxford forbids him to tear the lambs of his flock, immediately people mutter "bigoted," "narrow-minded," "tyranny," with sundry other unpleasant adjectives and nouns. Yet can there be no doubt that he of Oxon was only obeying his ordination vow. In truth the present spirit of liberty is thoroughly at issue with the spirit of these offices, and the only effect of maintaining them is to create hypocrites and vow breakers. Nor is it fair to-judge too harshly those who break these foolish vows, for a man may honestly think that he can best serve his generation as clergyman, and may have a general belief in Christianity, and he may then argue that he cannot permit himself to be kept out of a wide sphere of usefulness by a few obsolete vows. The pity is that men, whose common sense is too strong to be bound by foolish promises taken in ignorance in their youth, do not join earnestly together to remove this stumbling-block from before the feet of the next generation, so that, if they deem their church valuable, they may preserve her by adapting her to the realities of the nineteenth instead of the sixteenth century, and may make her services something more than a farce, her ceremonies something better than a show.
THE ARTICLES.
It is a little difficult to make out how far the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England—"the forty stripes save one"—are binding or non-binding on her members. There is, of course, no question that they accurately sketch her doctrines, and that all her faithful children should accept and believe them with devout piety, but scarcely any dogma can be enforced by law against the laity, the whole spirit of the time being directly antagonistic to such enforcement. But there is no doubt that these Articles are both legally and morally binding on the clergy, as they voluntarily submit themselves to them, and declare their full and free belief in them when entering upon the enjoyment of any benefice of the Establishment. The Royal Declaration, prefixed to the Articles, is sweeping and decisive enough. "The Articles of the Church of England do contain the true doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God's word; which we do therefore ratify and confirm, requiring all our loving subjects to continue in the uniform profession thereof, and prohibiting the least difference from the said Articles." After this distinct declaration we are commanded "That no man hereafter shall either print, or preach, to draw the Article aside either way, but shall submit to it in the plain and full meaning thereof; and shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense." When any outsider has read this declaration it becomes to him one of the mysteries of the faith how it is that English gentlemen, honest, honourable men in everything else, manage to accept livings on condition of declaring their full concord with these Articles, and then deliberately twist them into non-natural meanings, in order that they may be Roman Catholic or Latitudinarian, according to the opinions of the readers. It may, certainly, be conceded that the "literal and grammatical sense" is very often nonsense, and therefore cannot be believed; perfectly true: but these honest men have no right to give the weight of their culture and their goodness to bolster up this falling Church, whose dogmas they can never accept, except by transfiguring their unreason into reason, and their folly into wisdom. Many who are ignorant, and careless, and uncultured are kept as nominal members of the Anglican Church because a glamour is thrown over it by the Broad Church clergy; but their position cannot be too strongly reprobated, so long as they make no effort to alter that in which they do not believe, so long as they silently support superstitions which without their aid would, long ago, have crumbled into ruin.
Article I. deals with "Faith in the Holy Trinity." Most creeds, certainly all Oriental creeds, cluster around a Trinity; the root of the worship of the Trinity is struck deep into the nature of man, for it is the worship of the life universal, localised in the giver of the life individual, under the symbol of the phallic emblem, the creator of each new existence. The Christian Trinity has, naturally, outgrown the primal barbarism of Nature-worship, although preserving the Trinity in unity: "There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions... and in unity of this Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost" So far have we travelled under the guidance of the Church, and we have before our mind's eye, one God, uncorporeate, passionless, indivisible, and yet divided into three "persons," thus implying three individualities, separate the one from the other. Let us remember that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, but that since there is but one God, the Father is the Son, and the Son is the Holy Ghost, and since the Father is the same as the Son, and the Son is the same as the Holy Ghost, the Father and the Holy Ghost must necessarily be identical. Article II. teaches us that "the Son, which is the word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance;" the Son: that is, the Second Person in the undivided and indivisible Trinity: "begotten from everlasting of the Father;" but the Father is one with the Son, for both are God, and yet there is but one God, and therefore Son and Father are interchangeable terms; the Son then is begotten from everlasting of himself, for in the one true God no division is possible, and "such as the Father is such is the Son;" and further, the Son, being the Son, and at the same time identical with his own Father, takes man's nature: then the Father and the Holy Ghost must also take man's nature, for "such as the Son such is the Father, and such is the Holy Ghost:" and God, "without body," takes man's body, and "without parts" is crucified, and "without passions" suffers. But the Son dies "to reconcile his Father to us;" but he is his Father, and his Father is himself. Can the one living and true God die to reconcile himself to himself, and to offer himself up a sacrifice to himself to appease his own wrath? The bodiless is nailed on the cross: the impassible suffers: the undying dies: the one God on earth is offered to appease the one God in heaven, and there is but one living and true God. If this be so, either the God in heaven or the God on earth must have been a false God, for there is but one true God: and the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who must be kept indivisible in thought, hang upon the cross, as a sacrifice to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and cry, being the one true God, to "my God, my God" who has forsaken himself. And all this "to reconcile the Father to us:" the Father who is "without passions," and who therefore cannot be angry or need reconcilement. "As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also it is to be believed that he went down into hell." Down into hell; which way is down from a round globe? In the ancient conception of the universe the earth was flat, with heaven above and hell underneath, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, when the earth opened her mouth, "went down quick (alive) into hell:" did Jesus do the same? But, hanging on the cross, he said to the penitent thief: "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise:" is Paradise the same hell? and is heaven identical with both? Jesus ascended, went up, not down, to heaven: if this be so, might not some confusion arise on the way, for a soul starting downwards from Australia on its way to hell, might be found soaring upwards from England after a few hours' journey. Are heaven and hell both all round the world, and if so, why is one "up" and the other "down"? Rome was right and wise when she set her face sternly against the heliocentric theory; a revolving globe destroys all the old notions of the "heaven above," and of "the water under the earth," and of hell below; and it was a strong argument against the sphericity of the earth that "in the day of judgment, men on the other side of the globe could not see the Lord descending through the air." The Fourth Article teaches us that Christ "took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature; wherewith he ascended into heaven, and there sitteth." Body, flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to man's nature; wishes, and appetites, and needs, heart and lungs, for instance; and he took these beyond the atmosphere? lungs to breathe where no air is? heart to pulse where no oxygen can purify the blood? flesh and bones among pure spirits? the form of man sitting on the throne of God? and this flesh, bones, &c, all one with the indivisible, from the God without body and parts, and Jesus the Son of Mary, the crucified man, sitting in his flesh and bones in heaven, not to be separated in thought from the one living and true God, without body, parts, or passions.* Such is the "literal and grammatical sense" of the first four Articles, and to analyse the Fifth, "of the Holy Ghost," would be simply to repeat all that has been said above, since "such is the Son, such is the Holy Ghost." May it not justly be said that belief in the Trinity in Unity is the negation of thought, and that faith is only possible where reason ends?
* 1 Cor. xv. 50.