British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII / January and April, 1871

by Various

Art. III.—Parties in the Episcopal Church.

(1.)Judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. By the Hon. G. C. Brodrick and Rev. W. H. Freemantle. London: John Murray.

(2.) The Church Times.

(3.) Church Association Reports.

The glory of the Episcopal Church, according to many of her loudest eulogists, is her comprehensiveness. She is not, they say, like the sects, bound within the narrow lines of a rigid orthodoxy. She does not expect that from all her pulpits the same doctrines should be preached in stereotyped phraseology, not even that her ritual shall always conform to the same pattern. She recognises diversities of tastes, and adapts herself to them. Instead of checking, she encourages the widest freedom of inquiry, and secures for her clergy a liberty which the members of voluntary communities will not tolerate in their ministers. Hence she includes in her ranks men of innumerable varieties of opinion, from believers in the extreme theory of verbal inspiration on the one hand to Doctor Colenso and his sympathizers on the other; from upholders of sacramentarian and sacerdotal systems, which run to the very verge of Romanism, to men whose Church principles are hardly to be distinguished from those of the Plymouth Brethren. Whether such diversity is consistent with the fundamental principles of the constitution of the National Church; whether it was ever contemplated by the men who, at the time of the Restoration, gave her her present character; whether the advocates of this comprehensiveness support it by arguments drawn from their own ideal of what a National Church should be, rather than from the documents which determine what the Anglican Church really is; whether the principle they lay down is worked out to the extent which, if admitted at all, justice would demand; whether, on the whole, it works for evil or for good, are questions which we do not propose to discuss at length here. The fact at all events is patent, and was never more so than at present, that the Church of England includes not only individuals of different views, but great antagonistic parties having their separate organizations, pursuing their own ends, and two of them at least, so far from admitting that the Church should be of this comprehensive character, asserting that they themselves are the only loyal Churchmen, and that all others have more or less of the taint of heresy upon them. The lines of demarcation have become even wider, and the feelings cherished by the more eager partizans on either side more intense than when, eighteen years ago, one of the distinguished divines of the day gave to the world his celebrated sketch of the rival hosts. During the interval there have been many fierce struggles, in the settlement of which the courts of law have been called to intervene. Decisions of great importance in their bearing upon the liberty enjoyed by the clergy have been given. Toleration has been secured for doctrines and practices which it was generally thought were inadmissible, and the legislature has gone so far in its desire to relieve scrupulous consciences as to modify the terms of clerical subscription. The result of the liberty thus given, has been, as perhaps might have been expected, a wider divergence of opinion than has existed at any previous period; but this, unfortunately, has not been accompanied by a growth of that mutual tolerance which even the result of the various suits, instituted for the suppression of what was regarded on one side or the other as heresy, ought to have produced. The parties who have failed in their attempts to purge the Church of error have sat down under their defeat, angry and discontented, the loud talk of a determination to secede rather than be parties to the toleration of false doctrines has died away, but the lesson as to the limitation of their power has done nothing towards producing a spirit of greater charity.

The Broad Church party—if indeed it is right to speak of a number of men who have no party organization and no party aims, among whom are to be found all shades of opinion, and whose one bond of connection is their common love of freedom—have consistently maintained that the Church of England belongs neither to one section nor the other, but is intended to comprehend all. The aim of the courts has been as far as possible to maintain this view, on behalf of which they have often strained the language of the law to a dangerous extent, and in fact have allowed mere custom to set aside the authority of law in a way which certainly would not have been tolerated in any proceedings relative to property or civil right. The expositions of ecclesiastical law, as given even by the highest court, have often been remarkable as illustrations of the dexterity with which the judges have rescued the Church from positions of great difficulty, rather than as examples of sound interpretation of the statutes. Considerations of public policy have affected the decisions, and the strict letter of the law has been disregarded in a fashion which would find little favour in Westminster Hall. The question has been, not as to the positive requirements of the statute if construed on the ordinary principles of language, but as to the amount of latitude to be permitted; and so far has this been carried, that the defendant in a recent suit was bold enough to quote a passage from a letter of Dr. Arnold, which was not published till after his death, as illustrative of the liberty which had been granted to him, and which, therefore, though to a much greater extent, he demanded for himself. Statesmen and lawyers in truth, understanding that the absolute victory of either of the contending parties meant the downfall of the National Church, have anxiously sought to protect all in the enjoyment of their position, and to make them understand that the continuance of the great institution, to which in common they profess so hearty an attachment, depends upon their mutual recognition of each other's rights. But the lesson has been given to reluctant pupils, of whom it would not be too much to say that they cling to that which they ought to forget, and turn a deaf ear to all they need to learn. If among the best men on all sides there has been the steady growth of a better feeling, and if there is an increasing body of the ablest and most thoughtful of the clergy who refuse to identify themselves with any party, the majority of the strong adherents both of the High Church and the Evangelicals display all the old spirit, and if they had the power certainly do not lack the will to make the Church the exclusive preserve of their own section.

A better illustration of this could not well be found than that which is given in the introductory Essay on 'Anglican Principles' in the recent volume of 'Essays on the Church and the Age,' the manifesto of moderate High Churchmen. In this party the Dean of Chichester deservedly holds a very high place. His great abilities, his large and varied experience, his distinguished services in various departments of labour, his high character, rightly give him position and influence. He is not a man of illiberal temper, and if he ever had the heat of the partizan, the mellowing influence of time has toned down its ardour. He is so far from being a man of extreme views or from cherishing any sympathy with the Ritualist party, that he says, 'They assert dogmas which are scarcely to be distinguished from some of the errors of the Church of Rome.' 'To this party,' he adds, 'those who adhere to the principles of the English Reformers, and who were, till of late years, known on that account as High Churchmen, are as much opposed as they have ever been to the Puritans, and on the same grounds.' His opposition to these Romanizing tendencies, however, does not lead him to regard more favourably those who are at the other pole of the theological compass. On the contrary, if he condemns Ritualists, he lays much of the blame for their position, as well as for that of the Rationalizers, on the Evangelicals, whom he charges with infidelity to their ecclesiastical obligations, and with all the consequences which have resulted from those lax notions of subscription of which they gave the first example. 'The only difference,' he says, 'between the Tractarian and the Puritan, in regard to the formularies of our Church, is this, that the former honestly, if not discreetly, has avowed the principle upon which the other party has, from the time of the Reformation, never ceased to act. The Puritans did not use the term non-natural; but what else is meant when they clothe in the garment of Calvinism what the Church has laid before them as plain and simple Catholic truth?' Having himself no sympathy with those who do not care to inquire what the Church really means in the dogmas which she has laid down, and who are satisfied if they can so torture her formularies as to make them lend an apparent sanction to preconceived opinions, he contends that 'if the thumb-screw be allowable to one party, it cannot be withheld from the other;' ... that if liberty be granted to one, it must be extended quite as freely to the other; and that if this be conceded, the only conclusion is that 'we possess no authoritative statement of doctrine whatever.'... 'The question is—we repeat it—the principle having been conceded to the Puritans, where is it to stop!' This is certainly turning the tables to some purpose. The Evangelicals have been in the habit of denouncing, with a good deal of righteous indignation, the Popish traitors who eat the bread of a Protestant Church, while all the time they are labouring only to betray her into the hands of her enemy; or the still greater offenders who continue to occupy Christian pulpits, while their writings show that they have accepted even the fundamental doctrines of Christianity in a non-natural sense. It is somewhat startling for them to be told, not only that they are equally guilty, but that their own laxity has been the fruitful parent of the excesses of which they complain so bitterly in others; that as the definite meaning of formularies must be maintained or universal liberty be conceded, and every man left to believe as seemeth right in his own eyes, the toleration to a Gorham necessitated toleration to a Bennett and a Mackonochie and a Colenso; and that on them, therefore, rests the responsibility for the disorder, the anarchy, and the heresy by which the Church is afflicted. The argument is not new, for it is substantially that which was employed by the Rev. W. G. Ward in his defence before the Oxford Convocation, and the Evangelicals would doubtless have a good deal to say in opposition to its conclusions. We quote it here only as indicative of the strong feelings that prevail between different parties. Mr. Ward used it in self-defence, and in an extremity when the tu quoque plea was about the only one which was available. From Dr. Hook it comes as a judicial utterance; and when such a man adopts this style of criticism, we can easily understand with what bitterness the struggle will be carried on by those who have neither his ability nor his self-restraint.

While High Churchmen are thus determined on their side, and while the more advanced section of the party never attempt to conceal the contempt they entertain for Evangelicals, we have only to turn to the utterances on the opposite side to see how fully the sentiment is reciprocated. It would be hard to conceive of a sadder caricature of Christianity than would be presented by a series of extracts from the Church Times and Church Review on the one side, and the Record and the Rock on the other. That there are members of both parties who are shocked by the violence, the narrow-mindedness, the unreasoning partizanship of their organs, we do not doubt; but it is impossible to deny that these journals do represent large classes, whose antagonism to each other they at once stimulate and express. The scenes which two or three years ago disgraced the meeting of the Christian Knowledge Society, and the prosecutions which occupy so much of the time, and must sometimes try the temper and patience of the judges, are other indications of the same virulence of spirit. We hear about the comprehensiveness of the Church, but while this internal strife continues, that comprehensiveness is its scandal, not its glory. It is the legal association in a Christian Church of men who have no faith in each other, whose principles are mutually subversive, who lose no opportunity of expressing their disgust with their companions and their belief that they are where they are, only by unfaithfulness to conscience and disobedience to law. It is the maintenance of an outward and visible form of union where there is not the inward and spiritual grace; not the fellowship of those who have subordinated minor differences that they may cultivate a true spiritual unity, but of those whose antagonism is deep-rooted and intense, and who remain in the same Church from mutual jealousy and distrust rather than from any better feeling. It is a comprehensiveness which is the child of legal moderation, not of Christian charity, which, so far from being the legitimate development of noble and generous sentiment, is the result only of external constraint, whose hollowness is evident in the railing accusations to which both parties condescend, and which survives only because neither is willing to withdraw from an enforced and hateful union, and so leave all the prestige and emoluments of the National Church in the hands of its opponents for the promotion of what it regards as deadly error.

The ideal of a church which allows the greatest latitude of opinion consistent with an adherence to the primary truths of the Gospel, which trusts for the maintenance of Christian truth to its own living force rather than to any artificial defences, which aims to cultivate unity of spirit rather than agreement in creed, which, proceeding on the belief that where there is the same spirit there will yet be diversities of gifts, and under the same law differences of administration, does not attempt to curb the free development of individual belief or allow the divergence to which it may lead to interfere with the enjoyment of true spiritual fellowship, is a very exalted one. If the Church of England were really striving to attain that, or if it exhibited any signs of an approach to it, we should be prepared to condone many faults, and, even though it failed to realize its own conception, to honour it for aiming at such an ideal. But this is just the view which High Church and Low Church would alike repudiate. Little love as they bear to each other, they have still less for the only section which is honestly seeking to give the Church this character. Whether or not the members of the Broad Church party are right in their interpretation of the facts of history or the principles of ecclesiastical law, it is due to them, at least, to say that they are consistent in their maintenance of clerical liberty. Others demand freedom for themselves, and are very loud in their protests against ecclesiastical despotism if there is any danger that they may themselves become its victims. Broad Churchmen vindicate the liberties of all, and have more than once, in times of fierce excitement, exposed themselves to a storm of unpopularity by their gallant defence of men who had made themselves obnoxious by their avowal of what was branded as heresy. All others have in their turn been assailants; they, never. From all the crusades against heresy they have stood aloof, and have been content to bear the reproach of heterodoxy themselves rather than do anything which might narrow the boundaries of the Church, or curtail the freedom of the clergy. We could not find a better illustration of this than in Dean Stanley's recent volume of Essays. We find him in the Gorham controversy breaking a lance in defence of the Evangelicals when an attempt was made to deprive them of their status in the Church; and when they, forgetful of their own difficulties, turned round, and in their turn became assailants of the authors of 'Essays and Reviews,' we find him equally resolute in courageously withstanding them. His own views in opposition to Ritualism are expressed with sufficient distinctness, and, when dealing with its favourite South African prelate and his attack on Dr. Colenso, he is bold and unsparing; but if any wish him to unite in an effort to expel Ritualists from the Church, his answer is, 'As we would wish to include the Nonconforming members of the Church who are without its pale, so we would wish to retain those Nonconforming members who are within its pale.' The very thoroughness with which the Dean carries out his principle itself irritates many. They cannot understand how a man should be so zealous a champion of the rights of those whose theological and ecclesiastical opinions he has not a spark of sympathy. But nothing tempts him to swerve from his position. The Church is nothing to him if she be not comprehensive, and he will resist to the death anything which threatens to deprive him of this boasting on her behalf.

All that Broad Churchmen can thus do, however, is to justify themselves. They cannot alter the fact that there is an Act of Uniformity defining exactly what the character and constitution of the Church shall be; and when we come to examine the history and requirements of that Act, it is difficult to see how it can be maintained that the Church was intended to be comprehensive. It is so in fact; but it is so certainly in opposition to the designs of the ecclesiastics of the Restoration who gave it its present constitution, and in opposition to the letter of the law.