The bill is doubtless peculiarly vulnerable, and Mr. Gladstone did not spare its weak points, amply demonstrating its dangerous scope and character, and the extreme probability of its leading to convulsions far more serious to the welfare of the Established Church than what he termed any panic about Ritualism. It enforces the observation of the rubrics with a rigidity dependent only upon episcopal discretion in the use of a certain dispensing power. The bishops may protect whom they please, provided they are ready with written reasons for vetoing the proceedings against the accused, which is certainly [pg 045] an adroit expedient for catching obnoxious ritualists and letting offenders of another class escape. All might work well if only bishops will be discreet.[14] Mr. Gladstone showed, however, that he entertained profound doubts of the discretion of twenty-seven or twenty-eight bishops. But, whether his fears are well grounded or not, many minds would agree with him in recoiling from such slippery legislation, although, on the other hand, he launches himself into a course of which it would be difficult to foresee the results. In his six remarkable resolutions he not only reduces the bill so that it should only effect its real objects, but he explicitly asserts the impolicy of uniformity in the matter of enforcing the rubrics. It is really little less than the repeal of the Act of Uniformity, and the six resolutions involve the abolition of that religious settlement which has prevailed in England for more than two centuries. Finding them rejected by an overwhelming majority, Mr. Gladstone withdrew them; “but they may yet furnish a fruitful contribution to the discussion of the position of the Church of England.”
But if, as we have seen, the Broad-Church section openly proclaims its deep mistrust of its ecclesiastical rulers, and one object of the Evangelical “Church Association” is declared to be “to teach them the law,” it is reserved for the organs of the extreme ritualistic party to treat their bishops, week after week, to an amount of supercilious insolence, which is occasionally varied by invective and abuse, unsurpassed in the annals of even Puritan polemics. In the Church Times for May 22 we find a lengthy monition, headed in double-sized capitals, “What the Bishops ought to do,” and which, in a tone of mock compassion, thus commences: “It has been a hard time lately for our Right Reverend Fathers-in-God.... According to their wont, their lordships have seemed, with one noble exception, to give their support to Dr. Tait's plan for stamping out ritualism.” “The gods have evidently a spite against the primate, or he would scarcely have committed such blunders, etc.” “The poor archbishop has, however, excuse enough for his peevishness.” “We have been compelled repeatedly, in the interests of truth, etc., to point out what their lordships ought not to do; unfortunately the occasions which necessarily call forth such remarks occur too frequently; it is therefore only right that we should also give the bishops the benefit of our own experience, and explain to them how they might hope to gain that respect which they certainly do not now possess.” And further on the same modest writer requests his ecclesiastical superiors to remember that they are immensely inferior to many of their clergy in natural gifts, mental culture, and parochial experience, adding: “Take, for instance, the question of confession. It is evident from their lordships' utterances respecting it that they are in the darkest ignorance both as to its principles and practice, ... and this though there are plenty of clergymen who, by [pg 046] long experience in the confessional, are well qualified to instruct their lordships about it.”
Now, this is too unreasonable! As if an Anglican bishop ought fairly to be expected to trouble himself about an obsolete custom that had practically disappeared from the Anglican Prayer-Book, of which there is no mention in the Catechism, and none in the communion service but one ambiguous phrase which may mean anything![15]
But to return to the Church Times, which with its compeers of the “extreme” school seems to do its best to expose the Babel of confusion in which it dwells, and which its own voice does its little utmost to increase. From this we learn that “it is now decided by archiepiscopal authority, and illustrated by archiepiscopal example, that truth is not one, but two.”
Why only now, we should like to know, when no true successor of the archapostate Cranmer could consistently teach otherwise—Cranmer, of whom his biographer, Alexander Knox, writes as follows:
“To form a church by any sharply defined lines was scarcely Cranmer's object.... He looked more to extension than to exactness of periphery.” And this man, “whose life was the incarnation of theological and moral contradictions, and whose creed was only consistent in its gross Erastianism, left these as his double legacy to the national Establishment, of which he was the principal contriver.”[16] The same writer (Knox) demonstrates the success of Cranmer's idea in another place, where he describes the constitution of the Anglican communion in the following remarkable words: “In England, as I have already been endeavoring to show, all is peculiar. In the Establishment, the theology common to Luther and Melanchthon was adopted in the Articles, but the unmixed piety of the primitive church was retained in the daily liturgy and occasional offices. Thus our church, by a most singular arrangement of Providence, has, as it were, a Catholic soul united to a Lutheran body of best and mildest temperament.... May we not discover traces of the All-wise Hand in these principles of liberality, which are implanted in the very bosom of our Establishment by the adoption of articles that are deemed by different men to countenance their different opinions?” And Bishop Burnet, in the Introduction to his Commentary on the Articles, declares that “when an article is conceived in such general terms that it can admit of different senses, yet even when the senses are plainly contrary one to another, both (i.e. persons of opposite opinions) may subscribe to the Articles with a good conscience, and without any equivocation.” [pg 047] Well indeed did Dr. Newman describe these articles as the “stammering lips of ambiguous formularies.” After these confessions of Anglicans themselves, what reason have they to be surprised if their present archiepiscopal authority decides that truth is not one, but two?
The same ritualistic organ we have been quoting speaks of a certain proposal as one which could only be made “by a madman or a bishop.” In the Church Times for June 12, under the title of “The Worship Bill in the Lords,” we find the following courteous, charitable, and refined observations: “The scheme devised by Archbishops Tait and Thompson for harrying the ritualists, and nearly pulling down the Church of England in order to do so, like that lord chief-justice in China who burnt down his town-house to roast a sucking-pig, is not going quite as its authors hoped,” etc. Again: “But Dr. Tait has been contented to remain to the present hour in entire ignorance of the laws, usages, and temper of the Church of England, and therefore it is impossible for the most charitable critic to give him credit for religious motives. The best that can be said of him is that he has a creed of some kind, which is Erastianism, and therefore prefers the English Establishment to the Scottish, as the wealthier and more dignified of the two. [The bishops] have collectively betrayed their trust, and convinced churchmen that the episcopal seats in the House of Lords are a weakness and not a strength to the church.” “This misconduct of the bishops will do much to destroy the unreal glamour which their official position has enabled them to throw over the eyes of the moderate High-Church clergy, who now learn that no considerations of faith, honor, and duty have the least weight with their lordships when any personal questions intervene, and therefore their wings will be clipped pretty closely when,” etc. “But there is, we are thankful to say, a deep-rooted distrust of the bishops,” and “even archiepiscopal mops and brooms cannot drive back the waters of ritualism!” With specimens such as these before us, we do not wonder that Dr. Pusey, who is a gentleman as well as a Christian, thought it advisable at the opening of his speech before the recent ritualistic meeting at S. James' Hall, against the archbishop's bill, to express his hope that the words of S. Paul would not be forgotten, “Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of my people.”
Before quitting this part of the subject there is one thing we wish to say. Let these men be content to settle their own quarrel with each other and with their bishops as best they may, but let them, if they will not hear S. Paul, remember a command that was given amid the thunders of Sinai: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”; and let them, if they can, refrain from “evil speaking, lying, and slandering” not only against the Catholic Church in general, but also against the noble church in France in particular, whose close union and devoted filial obedience to her Head, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, they appear to regard with a peculiar and malignant envy. Would that it were a holy emulation instead!
These men dare to say that the church in France has been “brought to ruin”: that it is “Rome and its agents who have [pg 048] procured that ruin,” and by means which they “will expose on a future occasion.” They aver that there is not a canonical authority, but “an absolute despotism,” “a hateful absolutism” exercised by “the bishops over the inferior clergy” (in which statement we cannot but perceive a reflection of the perpetual episcopal nightmare which troubles the ritualistic dreams at home); the said inferior clergy being described as “veritable pariahs, who from one day to another, at the caprice of a bishop, can be reduced to become crossing-sweepers or cab-drivers”—a “reduction” which we are allowed to suppose must be very common from the additional declaration that “it is a principle with the bishops to crush the wills of their clergy,” while they themselves, “being merely the prefects of the Pope, have in their turn to submit to a tyranny no less painful,” the Pope making himself “lord and master more and more”; in fact, “the only person who is free in the Roman Church, ever since the Council of Trent, is the Pope.”[17]
Elsewhere in this same exponent of reckless ritualism we find the following singular justification of the tone so habitually adopted by that party towards their spiritual superiors: “We hear a good deal about the reverence of the elder tractarians for bishops and dignitaries, but we fail to see the merit of their conduct when we reflect that it cost us a disastrous exodus Romewards.” An apparently unconscious testimony to the inevitable tendency and final result of respect for lawful authority.