It thus not unfrequently happens that the adoration of the consecrated elements practised and inculcated in one parish by the Rev. Mr. A. is in the very next parish denounced as idolatry by his neighbor the Rev. Mr. B.;[19] and in cases where the one gentleman happens to be [pg 051] appointed to succeed the other in either parish, what must be the confusion of ideas produced in the minds of the hapless parishioners with regard to the only two sacraments which their catechism teaches them are “generally necessary to salvation”?
Every judgment given by the authorized tribunals of the Establishment on matters of doctrine recognizes by implication that the real strength of the Church of England lies in the indifference of the English people to dogmatic truth. We quote the words of Mr. Wilberforce: That which dishonors the Church of England in the judgment of all other Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, is its great merit in the eyes of its own members. They want to profess their various religions, from Calvinism to semi-popery, without impediment, and the Church of England is the only community in the world in which they can do it. Even professed unbelievers desire to maintain that institution for the same reason. A church which teaches nothing is in their judgment the next best thing to no church at all; thus the Pall Mall Gazette often writes against Christianity, but never against the Church of England. What unbelievers fear is a church which claims to be divine and which teaches only one religion. “We have a regard,” says the rationalistic Saturday Review, “selfish it may be, but very sincere, for the Church of England as an eminently useful institution. If the Liberation Society chuckles over the revelation of a ‘divided church,’ the only way to check-mate it is to make all varieties of doctrine equally lawful, though they are mutually contradictory.”
Again: when such a man as Lord Selborne says that the opposition to the archbishop's bill is based on the idea that “every clergyman is to be his own pope,” and Lord Hatherley that “every one was determined to have his own way,” and the Bishop of Peterborough that “those clergymen who were so loud in crying out against the tyranny of the bishops arrogated to themselves a right to do exactly what they pleased”; “every clergyman wishing that there should be excipienda in favor of the practices in which he himself indulged, but objected to include those of his neighbor in the list,” and that “every one was equally anxious to be himself exempted from prosecution, and equally jealous of the power of prosecuting his neighbor”—the real character of the so-called “Catholic revival” in the Protestant Church of England was acknowledged by the most eminent partisans of that institution. Ritualism, they perceive, is simply Protestantism and the right of private judgment in their extremest form. How vain it is to exorcise such a spirit in a sect founded on the right of revolt, and so utterly indifferent to positive truth that, as the Bishop of Peterborough frankly confessed, the word compromise is written all over the pages of the Anglican Prayer-Book, was undesignedly admitted by Lord Salisbury. “There were,” he said, “three parties in the church, which might be described as the Sacramental, the Emotional, and the Philosophical, and the great problem to be solved was how to reconcile their views.” The problem, he knows, is insoluble. The very men who profess to revive Catholic dogma can only suggest a “considerate disagreement,” [pg 052] which in plain words is an arrangement to betray God's revealed truth by an impious compromise with error.
Before closing this rapid and imperfect notice of the present state of the Anglican Communion, a reflection suggests itself upon which we must say a few words. It may reasonably be asked, What is the authority which the ritualistic party professes to obey? They refuse the right of the state, to which their community owes its being, to rule them in matters ecclesiastical; they refuse obedience practically, whether professedly or not, to their bishops, for whom they appear to have neither affection, confidence, nor respect; and they not only refuse submission to her whom they themselves acknowledge to be the “Mother and Mistress of all churches,” but they openly express their sympathy and admiration for those who rebel against her authority, invariably taking the part of the revolted against the Catholic Church. “Is there, then, any authority upon earth to which they allow themselves responsible, and if so, where is it to be found?”
We give the answer in the words of the able writer quoted above:[20]
“Anglicans having destroyed, as far as their influence extends, the whole authority of the living church, they affect, since they must obey something, to reserve all their obedience for what they call the primitive church. The late Dean Mansel tells us that some of the worst enemies of revealed truth employed the same pretext. ‘The earlier deists,’ he says (naming five notorious ones), ‘carried on their attack under cover of a reverence for primitive Christianity;’ and he goes on to ask, ‘Has such a supposition ever been made, except by wicked men desirous to find an excuse for their transgression of the law?’ Now, this is exactly the attitude of Anglicans towards the authority of the church. They exalt her prerogatives, and admit that she is ‘infallible’; but they deny in the same breath that she has the power to teach or to ‘pass decrees,’ because that would imply the obligation of obedience, and they are resolved to obey nothing but themselves, and therefore they have invented the theory of the Christian Church which may be enunciated in the following terms:
“ ‘The church of God, though destined by her Founder to a divine life, has become by degrees a mere human thing. In spite of the promises, her decay began with her existence, since even the apostolic sees all “erred in matters of faith.”[21]She was designed to be One, but is now divided. She was intended to be universal, but ... it is far more convenient that she should be simply national. She still has a voice, but cannot use it. Her decrees would be irreformable if she had not lost the power to make any. She is theoretically infallible, but her infallibility may be corrected by any intelligent Christian who feels qualified for the task. She has a right to enjoin obedience, but everybody has a right to refuse it; for though obedience was once a Christian duty, yet, since there is no longer anything to obey, this particular virtue has lapsed, and every one is a law to himself. It is no doubt her office to correct the errors of others, but unfortunately she has not yet succeeded in detecting her own. “Every tongue that resisteth her in judgment she shall condemn,”but meanwhile it is quite lawful for every tongue to condemn her..... Unity is her essential mark, by which she was always to be recognized, but as [pg 053]it has no centre it is now purely chimerical. The great teachers of Christendom fancied the Pope was that centre, but this was evidently delusion. It was in the beginning a condition of salvation to “hear the church,” but as she has lost her voice nobody can be expected to hear her now, and the conditions of salvation are changed. It used to be her business to impose terms of communion, but it is the peculiar privilege of modern Christians to substitute others for them. The defection of millions in the earlier ages, who became Arians or Donatists, did not in the least affect her unity or impair her authority; but the rebellion of certain Englishmen—whose fathers had obeyed her for a thousand years, or of Russians, who have invented a local religion and do not even aspire to an universal one—is quite fatal to both. Of all former apostates it was rightly said, “They went out from us because they were not of us,” but no one would think of saying this of men who live under the British Constitution, because they have a clear right to “go out” whenever they please.’ ”
Such is the Anglican theory, ... in the face of which the Anglican prophets go to their temples, and loudly proclaim, “I believe in One, Holy, Catholic Church.” The natural result of such teaching is that a majority of Englishmen have long ceased to believe in anything of the kind.
Nor is the Anglican theory about the Catholic Church a more impossible absurdity than what they profess to believe, and apparently do believe, about their own, although they do not state their belief in the bare and unambiguous manner in which we will state it for them.
That sect “existed,” they tell us, “before the so-called Reformation, which was only a trivial episode in its history. It left the Church of England exactly what it was before, and only made it a little more Catholic. If its founders called the Mass a ‘blasphemous fable,’ they must have intended that it was the most sacred rite of the Christian religion. If, whenever they altered their new Prayer-Book (which they did very often), it was always to make it less Catholic, this was probably in the hope that its doctrine would improve in quality as it lessened in quantity. If its bishops for many generations persecuted Catholics to death or tortured them as ‘idolaters’ this was only a quarrel of brothers, and they were as deeply enamored of the Catholic faith as those whom they murdered for professing it. If for more than a hundred years they gave the highest dignities to men who had never received episcopal ordination, that fact proved nothing against their reverence for the apostolic succession, or their conviction that they possessed it themselves. In like manner their casting down altars (in some cases making them into paving-stones), and substituting a ‘wooden table,’ in no way affect our constant declaration that the doctrine of the Christian sacrifice was always most firmly held and taught in the Anglican Church. That they allowed their clergy every variety of creed may have been one way of testifying their conviction that truth is one. Their constant execration of the Catholic faith must be interpreted as meaning something quite opposite; in the same way, if you suppress the Homilies and reverse the Articles, which for some sagacious reason were written as they are, you will find the genuine theology of our founders.