Dr. Ewer is a Protestant Episcopal minister of Christ Church in this city, and is, we are assured, no ordinary man. Afflicted in early life with doubts of the truth of revealed religion, but subsequently getting the better of them, he joined the Protestant Episcopal Church, became an Episcopalian minister in California, whence he was called to the pastorate of Christ Church in this city. He is, we are told, a man of great ability, of genuine eloquence, and a true pulpit orator. He appears to be an honest and earnest-minded man, who took seriously the church pretensions of Episcopalians, treated the Episcopal Church as a real Christian church, in which he might hold, develop, and defend what he regarded as real church principles.
But he found that he had counted without his host, that is, without his vestry, with whom the principal power in Episcopalian churches is lodged. His vestry or wardens complained of his preaching, and censured his doctrine as tending Romeward, or as not sufficiently Protestant. Like a brave man, he answered their complainings by these four discourses, in which he distinctly asserts the failure of Protestantism as a religious system, and "Catholicism" as the remedy. Nothing could be more startling to a Protestant congregation, and it seems to have startled to a considerable extent the whole American Protestant public. But we are bound to say, if any one imagines that in these discourses Dr. Ewer rejects Protestantism for the church in communion with the Roman Apostolic See, he is very much in error. Dr. Ewer, in the train of the Oxford Tracts, the Puseyites, and the Ritualists, disclaims Protestantism, proves unanswerably that it was a blunder, and is as a religion a disastrous failure; but the Catholicity he looks to for a remedy is of a very different stamp from ours, and whether it be a genuine Catholicity or not, he claims to be as far from being a Romanist as he thinks he is from being a Protestant. Rome, he says, failed in the fifteenth century, as Protestantism has failed in the nineteenth.
That Protestantism was a sad blunder, and has proved a disastrous failure, Catholics have proved over and over again; and on this point Dr. Ewer has said no more nor better than they had said before him. He has said no more than was said by the Oxford men, or than is said every day by the Ritualists, who are so strong in the English Church that its authorities do not dare condemn, and are obliged to tolerate them. The Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, lately in session in this city, could not by any means be induced to take any action against them, or to do anything to favor the party in the church opposed to them. The Anglican Church, or a considerable portion of it, would, if it could, like to get rid of the name of Protestant, and assume that of Catholic. It is growing ashamed of its origin and principles, and it has many noble members who are doing their best to bring its doctrine and form of worship up to the level of Catholicity. Dr. Ewer indeed says nothing of Protestantism that all thinking men do not see and know as well as he. Protestantism was always more political and national than religious. It originated chiefly with the princes of the sixteenth century, who were opposed, for secular reasons, to the pope, or wished to frighten him in order to bring him to their terms; and it relied wholly on the civil power to diffuse, protect, and defend it. Now, when the civil powers are abandoning it as no longer necessary to their purposes, and giving partial or complete liberty to Catholics, it is able to make a show of sustaining itself only by forming an intimate alliance with the unbelief and naturalism of the age. It is not an insignificant circumstance that, when recently the attempt, for political purposes, was made in England to revive the "No Popery" cry, once so effective, it wholly failed. The Protestant mind in the Protestant world is evidently drifting away from the Reformation, even if not drifting toward the church.
But though the part of Dr. Ewer's discourses which so effectually prove the failure of Protestantism as a religious system is the part most satisfactory to us, we must for various reasons confine the remarks we design to make chiefly to the remedy proposed. The error, nay, the blunder, the author assures us, was in breaking away from the One Holy Catholic Church of the Bible and the Creed, and setting up in its place the Bible interpreted, by the private spirit or private judgment, almost inevitably tending to discredit the Bible, and to develop in pure rationalism or naturalism; the remedy, of course, must be in the return to this One Catholic Apostolic Church with its divinely instituted priesthood, its august sacrifice, its sacraments, sacred rites, and plenary authority in matters of faith and discipline. This, if asserted by us, would be very intelligible to all the world, and would mean a return to the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, or church in communion with the Apostolic See of Rome, the See or the Chair of Peter. But Dr. Ewer takes great pains to have us understand that this is not his meaning, and that in rejecting Protestantism he is far from accepting Romanism, or Roman Catholicity. The puzzle, then, is to determine what, which, or where is the One Catholic Apostolic Church which he proposes as the remedy of the widespread evils of Protestantism.
Is it the Roman Church? No. That is a Catholic Church, but not the Catholic Church. Is it the Greek or Oriental Church? No. That is a catholic church, but not the Catholic Church. Is it the Anglican? No. That, again, is a catholic church, but not the Catholic Church. These, the doctor says, near the conclusion of his second sermon, are particular and local churches, not the one universal church itself, but holding from it and subordinate to it. Where, then, is this universal church? He answers, in the same sermon, a little further on, "We must go deeper and broader" than these particular and local churches "to find the Catholic Church, down to the great foundation on which the three stand; down out of the differences of the brothers to the unity of the family, to find the ground upon which we stand as Catholics, not as Romanists, not s Greeks, not as Anglicans, far less as Episcopalians." But is this catholic church which underlies alike the three particular churches an organ or organism distinct from them, with a centre of unity, life, and authority, independent of them, but on which they themselves depend for their church unity, authority, and life? Not at all. If we understand the author, the Catholic Church is in what these three particular or local churches have in common, in what they agree in holding, or what remains after eliminating their differences. In order not to do the author any injustice, we quote nearly at length, in his own words, the answer he gives in his fourth discourse to the question, "What is the Catholic Church?"
"Now, a church is an organism. The Catholic Church must be an organism universal over space and universal back through time to Christ. Suppose, now, I go to the Methodists again. I find there an organism; but in looking back I find it was arranged about the time of John Wesley, one hundred years ago. Before his day there was no such church organism. I pass then to the Presbyterians. There I find a different organism. But in looking back I find it dates its origin only about three hundred years ago. That will not answer, then. Very well, I try the Congregationalists, and, in fact, each and all of the modern Protestant organizations. Avowedly they do not, any of them, run back into the dreadful mediaeval times—those dark ages. Whatever these Protestant organisms may be, then, they must each and all be set aside, as, at any rate, not Catholic organisms either in space or in time, and therefore not Catholic at all. Well, suppose I come to our church. I find it, as an organism, with its bishops, priests, and deacons, its ritual form of worship, its altars and sacraments, its conventions and synods, its dioceses and parishes, running back in the history of England into mediaeval times; yea, still further back through the early days of old Britain and up even to the apostles. I seem to strike something Catholic here. But be not in haste. Suppose I go to the Roman Church. I find that I can trace its life back also interruptedly to the apostles. Suppose I go to the Greek Church. I find the same peculiarity of continued existence back to the apostles there. Here, then, in the Roman, Greek, and Anglican churches, we have reached something which it will do at least to pause upon for further investigation.
"But have a care. When we look a little more closely into the Anglican organization as a whole and consider it part by part, and when we examine the Roman organization in like manner, and the Greek, we find that each of the three differs from the other two in certain respects. Rome has a pope and a cultus of St. Mary the ever-Virgin; these are not parts of the Greek (?) or of the Anglican organisms. Though we have paused here, then, though the Catholic Church must be hereabouts somewhere, nevertheless, when we have reached our church, we have not yet reached the Catholic Church we are in search of; when we go to Rome, we have not yet reached that Catholic Church; and equally, when we go to the Greeks, we have not reached the object of our search. For we find that neither of these three organisms, when taken as a whole, and in all its minutiae, is accepted by the other two. Shall we go elsewhere, then? There is nowhere else to go.
"Let us look, then, more closely still here. As we examine, we find that, although the three—Anglican, Greek, and Roman— thus differ in some respects, they are marvellously alike in all others. All three have a hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. All have the holy altar of the tremendous sacrifice as the central object in their churches. All have robed clergy. All have saints' days and identical ecclesiastical seasons. All have a ritual form of worship. All have parishes, dioceses, and provinces, All (?) date their life back into the first century. All have stately ceremonials and processions; the Greeks the most glorious, the Romans less, and the Anglicans the least.
"All acknowledge the authority of general councils. All have the same apostolic succession and the same sacraments. Here, then, I begin to find the Catholic Church. Those few peculiarities in which the Greek, the Anglican, and the Roman differ from each other are merely local; all those many peculiarities in which the three are at one shape out for me visibly, solidly, and sharply the great Catholic Church; one in space as in organism, and one in time; to be found equally in Russia, and Italy, and England, and America, and Mexico, and Germany, and Brazil—everywhere; to be found, too, in the nineteenth century, and equally in mediaeval time, and also in the earliest days, unchanged and unchangeable. And everything in the Anglican, Greek, and Roman bodies which the three hold in common, and which has been held in them, everywhere, always, and by all, is Catholic. Anything else, any peculiarity which we have that Rome and the Easterns have not, or which Rome has, but the Greeks and we have not, or which the Greeks have, but Rome and we have not, is merely local, partial, and not Catholic."
This is explicit enough. Take all that any one of the three holds in which the other two agree, and you have the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. Eliminate from all three the points in which they differ, which are assumed to be trifling, and take their points of agreement, and you will have what the preacher calls "Catholicism," and which he proposes as the remedy for the evils of Protestantism. Extend the rule so as to include all professedly Christian churches, denominations, or sects which professedly recognize a Christian church and a Christian ministry, and it will be the view of the Catholic Church generally taken by Protestants. No Protestant sect has ever had the audacity to claim to be itself alone the visible Catholic Church of the Creed; and none of the older Protestant sects deny that there is, in some sense, a visible Catholic Church. In the early Protestant teaching, if not in the later, there is recognized one visible Catholic Church, which is what all professedly Christian communions agree in holding, or which alike underlies them all. In this sense, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, Methodists and Baptists, Lutherans and Calvinists, have always been as strenuous asserters of the Catholic Church and of Catholicity as is Dr. Ewer himself. We see, then, in Dr. Ewer's "Catholicism," nothing that need startle a Protestant or especially gratify a Catholic. In principle, at least, he asserts a very common Protestant doctrine, and in no sense necessarily breaks, except in words, with the Protestant Reformation.