NEW PUBLICATIONS.
[My Clerical Friends], and Their Relation to Modern Thought. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.
We are glad to announce the publication of the American edition of this work, our previous notice having been based upon the advance sheets of the English edition.
The Catholic Publication Society has done good service to religion by its handsome edition of this most important book. It is divided into four chapters, which treat of “The Vocation of the Clergy,” “The Clergy at Home,” “The Clergy Abroad,” and “The Clergy and Modern Thought.” Under these divisions, the distinguished author has grouped together a most interesting series of facts and arguments which cannot fail to carry conviction to any honest mind. He deals principally with what may be called the advanced clergy of the Anglican Church, shows their real position in the present state of controversy, and the utter absurdity of their claims. If there is anything properly called ridiculous, it is the aspect of a small portion of a sect pretending to be that which every one else in the world denies them to be, and flaunting their professions to the entire denial of history, tradition, and even common sense. Our Ritualistic friends have no regard for anything in the past, present, or future but themselves, and, therefore, they cannot be reasoned with. Their half-way house may be a stopping-place for a time for honest hearts, but no sincere mind can rest there, for Almighty God never leaves the true in mind without the assistance of his grace or the use of their natural faculties. We commend this book to all in the Anglican communion who desire to look facts in the face or to save their souls. And we beg in all charity to tell them that they cannot save their souls without sacrifice. If they prefer to keep this world, they will lose the next. There may be in our author’s clear and bright presentation of truth something that may seem to them harsh or severe. We can assure them that there is no kinder heart than that of our distinguished friend, the author; but he has such keen perceptions of right and wrong that he cannot fail to put, with telling effect, the absurdity of their religious position. And deny it as they may, and perhaps will, the whole world appreciates the inconsistency of their actions with their professions. Kind people pity them, while worldly people laugh at them.
Beginning with the theory that the one church of God can be divided, which is a contradiction in terms, they claim to be a branch of something that confessedly can have no branches. Then, they are not simply a branch, but a branch of a branch. And the branch of which they form part renounces them, and casts them out, but they will not be cast out. Their mother, the Church of England, does not know herself as these her children do. Then, there is one thing they can hang on to the last, even if everything else fails. They were admitted to apostolical ordination by Barlow, whom they will have a bishop, though there is no proof whatever that he was one, and while he himself denied the necessity or the virtue of the sacrament of order. “If schism,” as Dr. Newman says, “depends on the mere retention of the Episcopal order, there never was and there never will be a schism,” for bishops are as likely to be corrupted as priests. But the truth is, nobody ever pretended to any apostolical succession in the English Church until the Dissenters became so strong that, out of opposition to them, “a few Anglican prelates began to talk of pretensions which, during several generations, they had treated as a jest and a fable.” “According to Barlow, an English bishop could dispense with orders; and, according to Cranmer, with grace.” There was no pretence of any doctrine of priesthood on the part of the founders of the Church of England, and surely these intelligent men ought to have known what they intended to do. Hooker is one of their greatest defenders, and he expressly denies the necessity of Episcopal ordination. “Being about to appear before God, he sent—not for an Anglican minister—but for his friend Saravia, and accepted from his unconsecrated hands those quasi-sacramental rites which, according to Ritualistic views, he had no power to dispense.” These divines were the faithful interpreters of the mind of their church.
“‘It is quite clear,’ observes Bishop Tomline, expounding the 25th Article, ‘that the words of the Article do not maintain the necessity of episcopal ordination.’ Bishop Hall, again, though he wrote a well-known book in defence of episcopacy, gave up the whole question when he said: ‘Blessed be God, there is no difference, in any essential matter, betwixt the Church of England and her sisters of the Reformation.’ And this was the language even of men who had written the most earnest apologies for episcopal government. They never attempted to maintain that the apostolical succession was necessary to the integrity of a church. Thus Bramhall said, with easy composure: ‘The ordination of our first Protestant bishops was legal,’ i.e. it had the royal sanction; ‘and for the validity of it, we crave no man’s favor.’ Andrewes is a more important witness. Though Ritualists may not approve his subservience to that robust theologian, James I., he is still held in honor among them as almost a High-Church prelate, and is regarded as the most imposing figure of his time. Yet Andrewes, on their own principles, was as flagrant a betrayer of the doctrine of the Christian priesthood, if he ever held it, as Hooker himself, or even as Barlow or Whittaker. He not only gave the Anglican sacrament to a Swiss Protestant, Isaac Casaubon, but related afterwards, with impassioned and approving eloquence, that his friend died loudly professing with his latest breath the strictest tenets of the Calvinists of Geneva.”
There are many other points that will attract the attention of the reader, and which we cannot speak of in this short notice. The last chapter, upon “The Clergy and Modern Thought,” is particularly adapted to the superficial age in which we live, and answers all the objections which are made by the really shallow thinkers who, according to the language of the apostle, “professing themselves to be wise, have become fools.”
We bespeak for this most interesting and instructive book a large circulation and many attentive readers, who will unite with us in thanking the accomplished author for the pleasure and profit they have received from him. May God grant him yet many years to live in which to do good with his able pen!
The following letter of the author, correcting a mistake into which he had fallen, appeared in the London Tablet of February 8: