A Second Letter to the Rev. William Maskell, M.A. / Some thoughts on the position of the Church of England, as to her dogmatic teaching

by Mayow Wynell Mayow

* * * * *

“Few persons will deny that the existence of a doctrine known, acknowledged, and taught in the Church of England at the beginning of the sixteenth century, coupled with the fact that no reformation or alteration of that doctrine has at any time since been made—and therefore that it was intended to be still known, acknowledged and taught, is strong evidence by itself that such a doctrine must be true. The obligation to enquire accurately into it, and if possible overthrow it, is in the first place, upon the shoulders of those who are inclined to doubt or to dispute. It will then be for us to see if it can be defended. One thing only I am bound to say before I pass on. And it is this: that, equally on this matter of absolution, as upon all other essential portions of the One Faith once delivered to the saints, I believe that the Church of England holds the true and complete doctrine of the holy gospel, and follows in her practice of it, the example of the primitive age. Our Church now claims, in right of her succession, all the ordinary powers and privileges which the Apostles received from their and her Almighty Lord; now offers to her children all the means whether in aid of, or as being necessary to, the salvation of each one which were offered from the beginning; and now, as of old and ever, either insists upon the reception, or entreatingly urges the acceptance, according to their various nature, of all and every of those means of grace.” [52]

I think I am justified in saying that you admit yourself, by inference, in your second letter, that if the principle of these passages can still be sustained, the case and position of the Church of England will be tenable against the charge of being without necessary dogmatic teaching. But you explain in your recent letter that you feel you must give up the soundness of these views; that you cannot now believe the same things concerning our Church’s rule of faith. Let me give this comment in your own words:—

“Here, very probably, some one may object against me my own language, published rather more than a year ago. I allude to my book on the doctrine of absolution. Let me quote it.” Then follows the quotation I have already made as to our Church retaining the teaching she held previous to 1540, except where expressly repealed; upon which you add: “When that passage was written, it was written in entire assurance that every word might be established. I do not think so now. And with whatever pain I say this, it is not because my belief has altered from accepting the fixed principle that all essential Christian truth is one and eternal; and that every part of the Church-Catholic is bound of necessity to hold it whole and undefiled. Believing, as at that time I did, with the strongest confidence and trust that the Church of England was a living and a sound portion of the one holy Catholic Church, I could not but assert, as being capable of undeniable proof, her claims to teach authoritatively and undeniably every single doctrine of the Catholic faith. If I searched into her foundations it was with no shadow of fear lest they should be seen not to be resting on the rock, but much rather in the undoubting hope that the more she was tested and examined the more triumphantly she would declare herself to be divine.

“If the end of long enquiry and consideration has resulted in disappointed hope, and what seems to be evidence of the fallacy of former expectations; if I am compelled to own that the utmost we are justified in declaring seems to be—not that the Church of England now ‘holds and teaches’ &c., but—that the Church of England how suffers and permits to be held and taught; and again, as to the right interpretation of the prayer book, not ‘must be understood,’ but ‘may be understood:’ let none suppose that I have lightly yielded up that ground upon which alone a minister of the Church of England, as a minister of the Church Catholic, can stand securely.” [54]

Now, the first observation which hereupon occurs is this:—you state you can no longer think that ground tenable; but you do not sufficiently give a reason why you thus change your mind. I do not say you give no reason, because I suppose we are to take the whole of your second letter, as in fact the reason; but I mean, you do not go into the particulars of the matter, nor in detail state the grounds why you should think the Church of England does not still appeal to her doctrine before the year 1540, wherever unrepealed, to supply the defect or short comings (if any) of her later teaching. You seem to have condemned her on her practical or external deficiencies, not as going into and proving her to have changed her internal rule. Indeed, it seems to me you have hardly weighed at all, either in asserting or denying the principle you formerly maintained and now yield up, the external evidence for its truth. This, perhaps, was originally not an unnatural omission, since you held the view co-ordinately with, and as an essential part of, your belief in the Catholicity of the English Church, not as a proof of it, nor as an answer to objections. You then so unhesitatingly believed the Church of England to be “a living and sound portion of the one holy Catholic Church,” (and were not engaged in proving any thing about this at that time, your argument quite allowing you to assume it;) that, as you say, “you could not but assert her claims to teach authoritatively and undeniably every single doctrine of the Catholic faith.” It followed directly as a natural and necessary consequence from the position you assigned her, that she must be able so to teach; and, I repeat, you had no need to do more than assume it, because none of those with whom you were arguing, denied it; and your point was to show what followed from this unquestioned statement as to the particular doctrine you were then treating of, not to give the proofs of it in detail, if at all. That the Church of England was a true and living branch of the Church Catholic was therefore your premiss: that she taught necessarily the one essential Christian truth, all necessary dogmatic teaching, was your natural and just inference. And to show what this Christian truth was on absolution, you referred to the prior teaching of the Church of England, and of the Church Catholic as received by her before the reformation. But no wonder, when upon other grounds your premiss was shaken, the truth (as I still believe it) of the inference was shaken also in your mind. It could not be its own proof. If you are no longer certain the Church of England is a true and living branch, you lose your evidence, I mean the evidence adduced by you in that treatise, and on which you were then resting, that she embraces all necessary dogmatic teaching. But if I can shew by plain reasoning in the nature of things, or by external proof, without first assuming her Catholicity, that she has this rule of faith; that she is linked up to, and holds on by, the whole of her teaching previous to the reformation, except where she has “plainly, openly, and dogmatically asserted the contrary,” I shall have just so much proof to give that she does not fail in point of dogmatic teaching, and therefore so far an answer to your difficulty and your enquiry, “What am I to teach as the faith and doctrines of the English Church?” If by this process I can make it reasonably clear that, “by the great grace of God,” the Church of England has had preserved to her a strict rule by which she does teach the whole Catholic faith, then shall I meet all the objection of your recent letter, so far as principle is concerned, and sustain, as my conclusion, what was your premiss, that (in so far, at any rate, as her dogmatic teaching is concerned,) we have no right to doubt her claims; but that she is still what you so unhesitatingly believed her to be in 1848, a living portion (though it may be now a wounded one) of the one holy Catholic Church.

You have touched upon, though without entering into proofs to sustain it, (which as I have said before, your argument did not there require,) the principle by which the said dogmatic rule is to be established; viz. “the Church of England now holds and insists upon all things, whether of belief or practice, which she held, taught, and insisted upon before the year 1540, unless she has since that time plainly, openly, and dogmatically asserted the contrary.” . . . Again:—“Whatsoever we find handed down from the earlier rituals of the Church of England, and neither limited nor extended in its meaning by any subsequent canon or article, must be understood to signify (on the one hand) fully and entirely all, and (on the other hand) no more than it signified before the revision of the ritual.”

You do not say precisely why it must be so received, unless we are to understand (a position with which I make no quarrel) that common sense and the nature of things declare it to be a self-evident truth, immediately the proposition is announced. But I venture to think, beyond this strong support it has other and more particular evidence, and so rests altogether upon a much wider basis than is overthrown by the general and sweeping rejection of it in your assertion, that you do not now think it tenable. It appears to me in the first place, as I have said, to rest on principles of reason and common sense, and next to admit of particular proof, that the Church of England does retain such teaching.

Let me ask you to examine with attention the evidence I am about to adduce. I would arrange it under the following heads:—

I. Common sense, and the nature of things.