Nothing could be plainer than this argument. In any Protestant organization, the least separation makes an independent church. It could not be otherwise where there is no infallible authority and no divine government to bind all the members to one head. It must be sad to the lovers of primitive purity to know how imperfect the constitution of the early church was. Everything tended to disintegration, and a more perfect system has been found out by the wisdom of modern days. In the mind of the committee, the hand of God had nothing to do with the primitive church; for there is only one author of confusion and disorder. These learned antiquarians never heard of the See of Rome, and do not know that our Lord said to Peter, “Thou art the rock, and on this rock will I build my church.” Viewing them, however, from their own standpoint, we are glad to note their acuteness, and to congratulate them that they have not divided themselves.
It appears also that there was some disposition to consider the American Episcopal Church as a province of the English, and to treat the Archbishop of Canterbury as a kind of patriarch. This disposition was rebuked by the convention. The following are among the remarks made in the House of Deputies which show that the quasi mission of the Bishop of Lichfield was fruitless:
“The right reverend gentleman who has taken so strong an interest in this subject has made a proposition, and the proposition is that we should become one great province, if you please, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as metropolitan of these United States for the nonce, and that in all these conferences the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the great metropolitan or patriarch, is to preside.
“I know that many are wont to call the Church of England the mother church. I hold that she is not. If so, I claim her to be nothing but a very poor stepmother. The church in this country never was perfected till she got her perfection by the consecration of Seabury from the bishops of Scotland; and if we acknowledge a mother other than the mother church of Jerusalem (which I am not prepared to acknowledge), we must acknowledge Scotland, not England.
“I could say a great deal more on this subject—full of it I am; but, under the circumstances, I think I have said enough to satisfy the members of this house that they had better let it alone, and wait till the bishops tell us what they think of it. [pg 467]They are the persons interested. They accepted the first invitation without asking us ‘with your leave’ or ‘by your leave.’ Now, after they have been bluffed, and this church, I would say, insulted as it has been by the Dean of Canterbury, and by the prearrangement of keeping out the very question which these gentlemen, at a large expense of time and money, went to attend to, why not leave them first to express their opinion? My word for it, from what I know of the self-respect of the members of that house, if you wait for that, you will wait to the end of the term.
“There are several parties to this movement, of different temperaments. One of them is the great apostolic prelate whom we have welcomed twice to this convention—the illustrious prelate, of whom I speak with the most unbounded admiration as a churchman, as a gentleman, as a historian, as a man. In every capacity in which I can know human nature, he deserves honor and affection. I do not enter into the motives of this movement, but I simply say that he is affirmatively moving, in my belief, to gratify what he has largely developed in his great nature—the power of organism. He does wish, I have no doubt, something like an organic union of the two churches of the two great English-speaking races. That movement, to a certain extent, is creditable and desirable, but to a certain other extent it is extremely dangerous and utterly inadmissible.”
The organic unity of the Anglican with the American Episcopal Church is as far from perfect as the union of provinces would prove if the primitive system, as stated by the learned committee, were adopted. The independence of the two churches is as complete as that of the Presbyterian or Methodist denominations in this country. Neither is bound by the doctrinal decisions of the other. This being the case, we hardly understand the full significance of the ceremony by which an “alms-basin” was presented by the General Convention to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Bishop of Lichfield, explaining his part in the august rite, says:
“It was my happiness to present that alms-basin to the Archbishop of Canterbury in concert with one whose loss we all lament, who is now with God in his rest—Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio, who, hand-in-hand with me, each of us holding the alms-basin by one hand and on bended knee, presented that alms-basin for the Lord's table in S. Paul's Cathedral, on the fourth of July, on that occasion.”
One of the members of the House of Deputies tells us that
“This basin was procured from the Messrs. Kirk, of the city of Baltimore. The price of it was one thousand dollars, and it is said to be the finest piece of work of silver and gold and precious stones combined that has ever been made upon our continent. It was sent through the hands of the Bishop of Lichfield, who presented it on bended knees to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be placed upon the altar of S. Paul's Cathedral; and in this basin the bishops of the Church of England made their own offerings first. It is understood that the basin is to be preserved by the archbishop and transmitted to his successors, to be used in all future times at the consecration of English bishops and the opening of the Houses of Convocation, and upon all public and great occasions in which the Church of England is interested, and to be preserved as a pledge and token of unity and good-will between our own church and our mother Church of England.