I think that I need add no more on this head: but I will refer to the Subscriptions of Protestant Churches, before I pass on. It is very commonly said at present that “Subscription” does not secure the Uniformity of opinion which it aims at, and thus shows itself to be as useless as it is vexatious,—(as if, forsooth, any one supposed that absolute uniformity of thought could be attained by any means in the world). Dr. Stanley has not omitted this; but once more I must hold him to facts.
“It was one of the misfortunes,” (he says, p. 36) “incident to the Reformation, that every Protestant Church by way of defending itself against the enemies that hemmed it in, or that were supposed to hem it in on every side, was induced to compile each for itself a new Confession of Faith.”—This is scarcely doing justice to our Protestant friends, in limine. They had to do something more than defend themselves against enemies; they had to form some bond of union among themselves. If they were not to be merely scattered units, to be attracted in time to the largest bodies near them, they were obliged to find some principle of cohesion among themselves; and they who refuse to allow them to make “articles” or “confessions” ought in charity to suggest some other plan. To have separated from a compact body like the Roman Church and profess nothing positive, was surely an impossible course.—But Dr. Stanley further says, “The excess of Subscription on the continent over-leaped itself and has led to its gradual extinction, or modification.” (p. 37.)
It seems to me a very narrow philosophy which thus disposes of so great a fact as this, that “every Protestant Church” had this sort of instinct of life and self-preservation. Is it not as legitimate at least to infer that there may have been something in the very nature of things to prompt this unanimity of action? And is there no lesson to be learned from the undoubted fact that none of the Protestant communities have preserved their original standard, but have descended towards neology everywhere in proportion as “Subscription” has been set aside? and that the Church of England has for three hundred years exhibited a singular uniformity of belief, while maintaining her Subscriptions? Practically, I see nothing, then, in the example of Foreign Protestantism to encourage the proposed relaxation; but everything the reverse. Even the small and diminishing bodies of Nonconformists in England have failed, (notwithstanding their gaining in orthodoxy by their proximity to us), to keep up their reputation,—as their ablest men allow. But what would have been their condition, if, like ourselves, they had had no Discipline? [24] Surely in their efforts at holy Discipline they all bear a witness for Christ which puts us to shame.
Let Dr. Stanley, if he can, find any Christian body without Discipline—without Confessions, without Articles, without Subscriptions, which has been able to preserve itself at all; for until he does so, we must tell him that all the facts are against him.
Alleged practical evils of Subscription.
III. I now, my Lord, must pass to the third topic, in the consideration of which I thought to include all that remains in Dr. Stanley’s pamphlet which could be supposed by any to be of argumentative value—viz., the alleged practical evils of “Subscription” in the Church and the University. Here I feel that our English people will take a deeper interest in the matter, than in any antiquarian or historical disquisitions; and here Dr. Stanley and his friends speak with a confidence which with many will pass at once for demonstration. And if there were grounds to suppose that a method of Subscription, like ours, worked such mischief as they say who call for this change, no traditions of the Revolution, or of the Reformation, or of the Primitive Church, ought to tempt us to retain it. But let us not put the matter in an unreal light, while pretending to go back to former and better days. Freedom to think as you please in Religion, while retaining your place in the Church, was never conceded at any of the times to which Dr. Stanley has appealed; but was foreign to the principles of every class of Christians. Yet if the evils of Subscriptions are such as we are now assured, things cannot be suffered to remain as they are.
But broad assertions can frequently be only met by like broad assertions; and I hope that I shall not be thought disrespectful if I thus treat some now before me.
“Contradictoriness” of the Articles and Prayer-book.
(1.) It is said that the Subscriptions are made to documents “contradictory to each other in spirit;” (p. 22) and that this is felt by those who are called on to sign the Prayer-book, and the Articles;—the former being devotional and sublime, the latter scholastic, and less impressive;—the former emanating from ancient sources, the latter being the product “of the Calvinistic, and in some measure even the Scholastic period.” (pp. 16, 17.) This is popularly but scarcely correctly put; but I would ask, whether the difference between the “two documents” is greater than between Aquinas’ Summa, and his Pange Lingua?—or between any man’s didactic statements and his devotional offices? And if not, then how cannot the same man honestly sign both—each in its plain and obvious sense? Personally, I do not feel the least difficulty in the case; and I cannot recollect meeting with any clergyman who could sign the one, and yet had difficulty about the other, except as to a few phrases here and there. The general “contradictoriness,” which is affirmed by Dr. Stanley, I believe then is not commonly perceived by the Clergy, and I do not myself perceive any other difference than the nature of the case demands. The purely Theological language of the earlier Articles—then the mixed statements of the “anthropology,” as it is called—and the terms of the Sacramental Articles,—may almost in every instance be traced in Catholic fathers, from St. Augustine to St. Bernard. And yet they are not recondite, but so intelligible to educated English people, that some years ago as a matter of edification I went through them, with a class of fifty of the laity in my parish, and a few clergy, who for several weeks were glad to devote attention to the subject; and I venture to think that the idea never occurred to one of us, that there was the least want of harmony between the two documents. We really did not see the “calm image of Cranmer” reflected on the surface of the “Liturgy,” as Lord Macaulay fancied he did (p. 18); and as to the “foul weeds in which the roots were buried,” we did not discover them there;—(nor did Lord Macaulay, I suppose, as it was not his custom to go to these “roots.”) I think I am entitled, then, to meet the charge of the “contradictoriness” of the Articles and the Prayer-book, with an assertion that there is a thorough inward harmony, which not a few of us feel; and we cannot be talked out of this conviction by the contrary assertions of microscopic thinkers. I should grant, of course, that it would be a “practical evil” of no small kind, demanding immediate redress, if I could admit any real opposition between the Formularies which we have to sign. But I unreservedly deny it. I know indeed what objectors would mean when they say this: but I know also that the same objectors would find “contradictoriness” in different parts of Holy Scripture; and I am thankful that I do not find it, after many years’ steady work at both Old Testament and New.