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

by Various

'It would be' (says Mr. Orby Shipley, one of the ablest and most fearless exponents of Ritualistic views) 'the crowning labour; it would be the culminating honour, it would be the blessed consummation of the Catholic reformation to be the means in the Divine economy of terminating that wicked, immoral, and godless alliance which, under present circumstances, exists under the title of the Union of Church and State.'

How far it is consistent for any man to lend his personal support to an alliance which he pronounces 'wicked, immoral, and godless,' by continuing to accept the advantages which it secures to him, is a question which his own conscience must be left to determine; but it is at least satisfactory to find that Mr. Orby Shipley and his friends have begun to feel the inconsistency of their present position. Whether in the event of the Judicial Committee condemning their distinctive principles, as it has already condemned their symbolic practices, and deciding against Mr. Bennett as it has done against Mr. Purchas, they would secede from the Establishment, is not very clear. What is clear is, that they regard the present relation of the State to the Church as hindering the work of the 'Catholic' restoration, and therefore seek disestablishment as the first essential to the realization of their ideal. But this cannot be brought about at once, and in the meantime circumstances may force on a separation. Perhaps, however, it is more as a menace to the bishops than as an indication of any serious purpose that Mr. Shipley tells their lordships that the 'conspicuous want of success which has attended Episcopal hindrance to the Catholic revival has certainly postponed, but has not at all removed the prospect of impending schism.' We are left to infer, therefore, that if the attempts to repress Ritualism should be crowned with more success than has hitherto attended them, we must be prepared for schism, which, Mr. Shipley says, would be an untold evil to the Church; adding, and in this we agree with him, 'that the present state of abnormal antagonism, in any Christian sense, is less harmful, it is hard to believe.' If, however, this calamity should come, he gives the Episcopal Bench to understand that on them the responsibility will rest.

'If they precipitate a schism, either by actively hostile legislation, or by unconstitutional illegality, or by the continuance of vexatious antagonism, the sin of schism will rest upon their individual consciences. Neither those who see below the surface from without, nor those within, who can feel the pulse of the Catholic Party,[210] and know its deepest sentiments, need to be told that the scandal of Episcopal sanction and apology for the desecration of the Blessed Sacrament in Westminster Abbey, and the dishonour done to God's Holy Word, by entrusting the revision of the Authorized Version to heretics and schismatics, out of which this scandal arose, has done more to render such a schism possible than any other act of the English bishops during the last half century.'

These thunders will not disturb the serene complacency of the Episcopal Bench, nor are such petulant utterances to be regarded as indicating any serious idea of separation, but their insolent and lawness tone is eminently characteristic of the party. They have formed their ideal of the Church, and in defiance of all authority, whether civil or spiritual, they are determined to work it out. They know and confess that they are at variance with the bishops, whom they have promised 'reverently to obey,' 'following with a glad mind and will their godly admonitions, and submitting themselves to their godly judgments;' but they have a convenient theory as to the necessary limitations of the obedience they are bound to render, by which they satisfy themselves that they are right in their resistance to the authority which they have in the most solemn manner bound themselves to accept. The bishops 'are, it may be, good results, but still they are results of a bad, vicious, immoral system; of a system which is utterly un-Catholic;' they have pronounced against the Catholic revival from beginning to end, and having thus set themselves against all that 'priests of the Catholic school' are doing, they have condemned themselves, and forfeited all title to unlimited obedience, by condemning these developments. In other words, the want of harmony which they confess exists between the mind of the Episcopate and the mind of the Presbyterate is a sufficient reason why priests should refuse their allegiance. The conclusion is not that which suggests itself to ordinary minds, but these men are so thoroughly convinced that they have Catholic truth, and are doing a great Catholic work, that they seem to suppose themselves superior to the laws by which ordinary mortals are governed. They may seem to be arrogant and overbearing, they may indulge in railing and vituperation, they may condescend to a style of controversy, happily altogether cast aside by Christian gentlemen, but everything is done in the interests of the Catholic revival, and these are to be advanced at all costs. Mr. Shipley candidly avows that their aim is to 're-Catholicize the Church of England,' and he appears to think that because that object cannot be secured without disobeying the bishops, there is sufficient reason why they should be disobeyed. After enumerating the changes that require to be made in the election of bishops and the remodelling of Convocation, he says:—

'We have again to make confession the ordinary custom of the masses, and to teach them to use Eucharistic worship. We have to establish our claims to Catholic Ritual in its highest form. We have to restore the Religious Life, to say Mass daily, and to practise Reservation for the sick. Looking at these and other more or less pressing needs of our communion, I confidently ask, "Can these and suchlike wants, in the providence of God, be restored to His afflicted, and to this extent indigent, Church, if we admit the theory of limitless obedience, not, observe, to the Episcopate combined in a Sacred College, but to any or to all the individual members of the Bench of Bishops?"'

The simplicity of this is no doubt beautiful, but its weakness is manifest. 'Limitless obedience' no one expects them to render; but the justification of their refusal to obey at all, on the ground that disobedience is necessary to their design of revolutionizing the character of their Church, has certainly the merit of novelty. They seem to imagine that the first essential to success is audacity, and expect that they will prevail, in virtue of their blustering self-confidence and contemptuous treatment of all opponents. But the ultimate result of such a policy cannot be doubtful. A party which sets up a plea of liberty to excuse the violation of distinct obligations, whose Catholicity has in it not a single element of true charity, which seeks to subject others to authority while it disclaims all authority that comes into collision with its own ideas and designs, which brands every man, however eminent and good, who will not bow down to its idols as a heretic or an infidel, is not a party that is likely to exert any permanent influence. The age is tolerant, disposed to permit great latitude of opinion, perhaps too ready to sympathise with those who are resisting constituted authority, but it is not to be cajoled by the specious sophistries of men who, professedly contending for liberty, are seeking only to establish a new priestly despotism.

But if we have no fears of Anglican Catholics being able to shape the future of the Church of England according to their wishes, neither can we look hopefully on the condition and prospects of the Evangelical party. Thirty years ago it was the most popular and influential, if not the most numerous section of the Church. Its most sanguine friend would hardly pretend that it holds the same position to-day. We have already marked incidentally the disadvantage under which it lay in contending against a party full of the passionate zeal and energy of youth, and with ability equal to its earnestness, its members claiming to be par excellence, the assertors of Church principles and the champions of Church interests, skilful in adapting themselves to the wants of different classes of minds, fertile in expedients, and indefatigable in labours. Under any circumstances, it would have been no easy task to have maintained an equal struggle against such adversaries, hampered as the Evangelicals necessarily are by their position in the Church. Still they had many compensating advantages, and had they known how to avail themselves of the forces at their command, they might not only have held their ground, but have been to-day masters of the situation. In the great conflict which has been going on between authority and freedom, the reactionary forces are not the strongest, and had the Evangelicals been prepared fully to identify themselves with the cause of liberty, they need not have feared the result of the struggle. They had on their side the prestige of the noble work which they had done in rousing the Church from torpor and idleness, and in regaining for her much ground that she had lost, in quickening the spiritual life of the nation, in promoting social and philanthropic movements at a time when they were not viewed with so much favour as at present. As the representatives of Protestantism in the National Church, they were able to rally to their support a strong national sentiment, not always very intelligent or reasonable, but deep and passionate in its hatred of everything that has on it the taint of Romanism, and only too easily roused in opposition to any party which could fairly be suspected of Popish sympathies. Their position, too, seemed to mark them out as the connecting link between the Established Church and the Nonconformists. Their theological views, if not identical, were in close sympathy with those of Evangelical Dissenters: they were frequently brought into association in Christian work, and had often to fight side by side against the common foe; and though there never was a chance that the Nonconformists could be won back to the Church, kindly and intimate relations might have been established with them, which would have told greatly to the credit of the party by whom they had been promoted. Yet with all these circumstances in its favour, the Evangelical party has been declining. Its enemies point to it with triumph, and exaggerate the weakness over which they rejoice. Its friends reluctantly confess it, and find the explanation in the wickedness and degeneracy of the age.

The tone of a recent gathering of the leaders of the party at Islington shows that they are conscious of the fact, and alive to the necessity of making some strenuous effort, perhaps of effecting a considerable change in their policy, in order to recover the ground that has been lost. To outsiders, however, the real causes of their weakness may be more apparent than to themselves, and we shall therefore attempt to explain a state of things which we unfeignedly regret. The Episcopal Church, whether Established or not, must be one of the most powerful religious forces in the country, and we must desire to see its influence wielded by men whose theology is that of the Reformers, who recognise the rights of the individual conscience, whose creed is derived from the Bible and not from Church tradition, who preach salvation by faith in the living Christ, and have no confidence in priests and sacraments. It would therefore be cause of sorrow to us, as it will assuredly in the issue prove disastrous to the Church and injurious to the nation, if the Evangelical party should be overborne in the present struggle, its power crippled, or its character so modified as to impair its usefulness. We are fully alive to its defects. As Nonconformists, we have little for which to be thankful to it; but not the less should we deplore the loss of what has been the most spiritual element in the Church, and therefore we can only regard with sorrow the state of things of which we have to speak.

The decline of the Evangelical party is attributed by many, both friends and foes, to a growing distaste for evangelical doctrine. The age, we are often confidently told by those in whom the wish is father to the thought, has outgrown the old theology; it is too intelligent to rest in the dogmas which were once received without question; the leading spirits of the time are known to be unbelievers, and that fact itself is sufficient to make unbelief a fashion among a class who desire to be esteemed intellectual. Very sorrowfully we admit there is some ground for these statements, but they are only half-truths. The philosophic and scientific movements of the day, have undoubtedly affected theological opinion; the spirit of inquiry has become more searching in its investigation; the rebellion against the bondage of creed has, in some instances, led to an indifference to all forms of belief; and in general, doctrines that were thought to be established, are discussed with freedom, and rejected when they do not stand the more severe tests by which they are proved. Orthodoxy counts for less in the estimate of Christian character, and there is less disposition to condemn any man because of his inability to accept all its shibboleths. But all this does not indicate that the power of the Gospel is diminishing; and, indeed, there are many things that point in the opposite direction. Preaching quâ preaching may be less influential; but the preaching which is a power at all, never was a greater power than it is at present. Men chafe against the notion that it is their duty to hear a certain number of sermons, even though they be made up of platitudes rendered additionally wearisome by the style in which they are delivered; but where a preacher has a message from God, and knows how to deliver it he is quite sure of having a large audience. Nor is it at all likely to be diminished by the fact that his sermon is decidedly evangelical and even strongly dogmatic. We have popular Ritualist as well as popular Evangelical preachers; but the discourses of the former are in their leading features as decidedly evangelical as those of the latter. Indeed, at the conference at Islington, it was frankly admitted that whatever might be the actual condition of the party, the doctrines for which it contends were never so widely preached by the clergy as at present. Certainly, the Nonconformist Churches know no decline, nor is their prosperity to be traced to any abandonment or concealment of evangelical doctrines. Congregationalists, accustomed as they are to breathe the atmosphere of freedom, and unfettered by the restraints of any formal creed, have, perhaps, felt more of the influences of the age than any other body of Christians; but no one who is acquainted with them would assert that they have at all faltered in their loyalty to the Gospel. Perhaps one of the best proofs of this is to be found in the essays in 'Ecclesia.' Their writers speak with great frankness; they admit many defects in their system, and suggest various changes; they are anxious, as far as possible, to adapt themselves to the wants of the age; but withal, there is a consistent adherence to the essential principles of the old theology. Changes in the forms in which doctrines are expressed, differences in the modes of expounding and defending them there are, but change as to the root-ideas there is none. And Congregationalism upholding the great truths of the Trinity, the Godhead of our Lord, and the Atonement, and basing all on the authority of Scripture, not only maintains its ground despite the opposition it has to meet from the renewed activity of the Established Church, but is on the increase.

If, then, the Evangelicals are decreasing in numbers and influence, the cause must be sought in some errors in their policy, and not in the increased unpopularity of the principles they profess. We are confirmed in this view by the refusal of some of the best men of the day to identify themselves with the party, even though they hold the principles. It would be invidious to name living men; but there is one recently passed from among us, to the great loss not of his own particular Church only, but of all Christian Churches, who affords, perhaps, the most striking illustration of the remark. Others there are, of whom the late Canon Melville may be taken as a type, whose High-Church ideas are sufficient to prevent them from uniting with a party with whom in doctrinal sentiment they have much in common. But the Dean of Canterbury, we need not say, had no such hindrance. Mr. Ryle himself is not more free from any tinge of ecclesiasticism, as he certainly is not more heartily and thoroughly Evangelical, than was Dean Alford. Yet the latter stood aloof from the Evangelical party; and they, we fear, did not desire his union with them. His case was a typical one, and enables us to understand the enfeebled state in which the Evangelicals find themselves. They did not like the Dean's breadth of view; they regarded the opinions on the subject of inspiration, to which his Biblical studies had led him, as unsound and dangerous; they did not understand, what was one of his marked characteristics, a large-hearted sympathy with goodness even in the professors of a false creed. So, though he was educated in the school, and (as the Rev. E. T. Vaughan truly says) though he 'preached the Gospel which they preached with a force and simplicity which they might well have wished to emulate,' they looked coldly on him, and he could find no home in their midst.