The bishops at Lambeth were so fearful of disobeying the injunctions of the Spectator not to “discuss creeds,” or to attempt to “discriminate between truth and error,” that they did not even venture to rebuke Bishop Gregg or to take any steps against this schism. Indeed, how can they be sure that he is not right and that they are not wrong?
The first Pan-Anglican Synod, convoked eleven years ago, the London Times says, “excited some curiosity, mingled with more ridicule and remonstrances.” But it discharged its “apparent functions” to the satisfaction of all concerned. That is—
“It afforded to a great many hard-working gentlemen the opportunity of taking a holiday under the guise of an episcopal progress. A certain number among them it enabled to render an account in person to their constituents in England of the value they had received for the funds entrusted to their hands, and to beg for more. Over and above these material objects, the synod professed its aim to preserve Anglican churchmen throughout the world in theological harmony. This, too, it accomplished, at least negatively. English churchmen were able to testify that Protestant bishops from the east and from the west resembled each other very closely in demeanor and in their forms of thought. They even had, surmounting the obstacles of their local accent, the very tone of voice which no other body of clergy throughout the civilized world can boast, and which gives Church-of-England ministers a virtual monopoly of the clerical sore throat. Our visitors, whose episcopal residences and cathedrals are scattered over the globe, carried home, we believe, an equally good report of church conservatism in the mother-country.”
But the subtle mind of the late Bishop of Winchester, who was the reputed author of this episcopal picnic, had deeper views at bottom. He intended the first Pan-Anglican Synod as an answer to the sneer that the Church of England is a local accident, without any principle of spiritual authority, growth, or development. The synod was held, but the Bishop of Winchester was disappointed: the bishops would do nothing; they would not even order Bishop Colenso to the stake; and, “as clergymen, what they manifested above all else was that the Anglican Church in England and the Anglican Church out of England resemble each other almost to identity. The special peculiarities of the Church of England come into even more prominence abroad than at home. We are more impressed with the spirit of the state church carved out by King Henry VIII. when we meet with its foreign professors than we are in the country of its birth.” How biting is this sarcasm, and how deeply it must cut into the heart of the Anglican or the American Episcopalian who stills fancies that the mind of England is true to Anglicanism!
The Lambeth Conference which has lately ended was as barren of results as was its predecessor. On the day before its first meeting a number of the American and colonial bishops went down to Canterbury, where Dr. Tait, perhaps as an undress rehearsal of his anticipated elevation to the post of Protestant Pope, had “the chair of St. Augustine” brought forth, enthroned himself in it, and delivered a discourse. The audacity of this performance was extreme; perhaps the thoughts which it must have suggested to the spectators will yield their proper fruit. In face of the disjecta membra of a creed before him Dr. Tait had the extreme rashness, not to use a harsher term, to say in this discourse that he and his hearers “had advantages which the great St. Augustine had not,” for “they stood nearer to the pure, primitive Christianity of the apostles than St. Augustine stood, ...” and that St. Augustine’s faith, which is that of the whole Catholic Church to-day, was “a sort of semi-pagan Christianity.” St. Augustine preached in England in the sixth century, Dr. Tait talks in the nineteenth; which is “nearer,” chronologically, “pure, primitive Christianity,” and which is nearer, doctrinally, the faith that St. Augustine received from Rome or that which Dr. Tait has received from Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth?
On the next day, July 2, the conference opened at Lambeth Palace. There were “something like eighty-five prelates present,” of whom forty-three were from the colonies and the United States. It seems that there are ten bishops unattached, living in and around London, who had expected to be invited and who were disgusted at being left out; but it is explained that “the primate felt that the line must be drawn somewhere, and these prelates had no jurisdiction, even of a delegated character,” so he drew it at them. Before entering the chapel to receive holy communion the bishops adopted the following declaration:
“We, bishops of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, in visible communion with the churches of England and Ireland, professing the faith delivered to us in Holy Scripture, maintained by the primitive church and by the fathers of the blessed Reformation, now assembled by the good providence of God at the archiepiscopal palace of Lambeth, under the presidency of the Primate of All England, desire, first, to give hearty thanks to Almighty God for having thus brought us together for common counsel and united worship; secondly, we desire to express the deep sorrow with which we view the divided condition of the flock of Christ throughout the world, ardently longing for the fulfilment of the prayer of our Lord, ‘That all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they may also be one in us, that the world might believe that thou hast sent me’; and, lastly, we do here solemnly record our conviction that unity will be more effectually promoted by maintaining the faith in its purity and integrity—as taught in the Holy Scriptures, held by the primitive church, summed up in the creeds, and affirmed by the undisputed general councils—and by drawing each of us closer to our common Lord by giving ourselves to much prayer and intercession, by the cultivation of a spirit of charity and a love of the Lord’s appearing.”
Is it not extraordinary that men of intelligence will persist in befogging themselves with phrases about “the deep sorrow” with which they view the divided condition of the flock of Christ throughout the world, and their longing for the fulfilment of the prayer of our Lord for the unity of his people? The flock of Christ is not divided; it has never been divided, and can never be divided for the reason that he not only prayed for its unity but willed its unity, and provided infallible means for the preservation of its unity.
The communion service over, Dr. Thomson, the Archbishop of York, pronounced a somewhat remarkable discourse, in which Catholic truth, Protestant error, and fanciful theory were strangely mixed, from the words of St. Paul, “But when Peter was come to Antioch I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.” He exposed the fallacy of the theory that the great apostle of the gentiles and the first Supreme Pontiff were in antagonism to each other, and he did this ably; but he ended his sermon with the following absurd passage:
“More than one writer has been pleased to point out that in the first century there were three periods, in which three apostles—Peter, Paul, and John—predominated in succession; and they think they can trace the same succession in the larger field of church history, so that the Petrine period ends at the Reformation, and the Pauline succeeds it, whilst the time of St. John is supposed to be the beginning. There is something fanciful in this arrangement. Yet pardon the fancy for the truth that underlies it. And when Peter falters, impulsive, and is inconsistent with himself, and Paul withstands him to the face, let the third apostle enter on the scene and remind us that we can afford to use the largest charity whilst we hold still the firmest trust. His contribution to the eternal diapason of the church’s faith and love shall be this: ‘Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God.... And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also’ (1 John iv. 15, 21).”