Chapter I. The Established Church of England (General)

I. IT was not the original intention of the sixteenth century " reformers " to substitute, tout court> the principle of private judgment for that of Catholic authority — rather to substitute a national authority. This national authority was to consist, practically, of Convocation with the sovereign at its head, who should give to the spiritual decisions of a more or less spiritual body, the same kind of royal assent as was given to the decisions of Parliament in temporal matters. This, at least, seems to have been the intention of Elizabeth, an intention that was carried out more or less adequately even up to the times of the Stuarts. It has only been through the later development of the Constitution that the authority of Parliament, and, above all, of the Privy Council, has been substituted (greatly to the resentment of that High Church party which has always more or less existed within the borders of the Establishment) for the supposed spiri< tual authority of the Crown.

This position, therefore, still hotly claimed by High Churchmen, has a real historical basis, and is not nearly so intolerable, even to Catholic eyes, as what has be come the situation in practical politics — viz., that a body of men none of whom need belong to the Established Church should be the supreme authority in the matter of that Church's faith, nor so intolerable again as that other position — never really a part of the original idea of the first founders of the " Reformed Church" — of purely private judgment. If once the Catholic idea of authority be rejected — the idea, that is, of a Supranational Church presided over by an in fallible head — the next best expedient, so to speak, is exactly that with which the Church of England originally began — of a religious synod whose decisions, in order to receive national authority, must be ratified by a supreme personage whose assent is also required in temporal laws passed by a secular assembly named Parliament1 The sovereign thus becomes the link between Church and State, the culminating point in which both unite; he has, to some extent, an ecclesiastical as well as a secular character; as is shown, it is claimed, by the ecclesiastical garments — stole, alb, and girdle — with which from time immemorial he has been clothed at his coronation. One more indication still remains at the present day of the original design with which the " Reformers " set out, in the fact that Convocation is still summoned by the writ of the

1 This is the position of the Russian " Orthodox " Church, and indeed must be the ultimate condition, in some form, of every National religious body.

sovereign in the same kind of manner as are the Houses of Parliament.

2. The theory, however, has utterly broken down practically, as, indeed, it was bound to do. Men, both within and without the borders of the Establishment, began, inevitably, to ask themselves by what right a national authority had been set up in matters of religion. There was at least, they said, an arguable position in defence of the Petrine prerogative; there was none whatever for a national prerogative, except one that might be extended indefinitely and graduatedly in the direction of private judgment. If it was necessary for each nation, owing to its own character and temperament, to have a Church of its own, it was equally a fact that no nation is completely of one character and temperament; but that a nation consists of groups exactly as in a parallel manner the world consists of nations. Congregationalism, therefore, came into existence within fifty years of the establishment of this new national authority. And, ever since, the principle has been extended both within and with out the Establishment. Sect after sect has sprung into existence outside its borders; school of thought after school of thought within. The piece of rock, so to speak, detached from its position in the Rock of Peter, has crumbled into fragments, and even into grains; until one can see at the present time tens of thousands of individuals adhering to the State Church for reasons of association, convenience and even agreement with many of its principles, who acknowledge, for all that, not the smallest inherent i *

weight in its decisions bearing upon their own conscience.

3. It is this, of course, that makes it so extraordinarily difficult to deal with the Church of England as a whole, either as an adversary or a friend. It is possible — as has been found by the writer — to find casually gathered within one room three ardent adherents of the Establishment, religious and well-educated men, utterly unable to agree among themselves as to what are the very foundation principles of the Church to which they belong. National authority, except in a legal sense, has practically vanished. It is possible to find within the limits of a stone's throw one Anglican divine who preaches practically the entire cycle of Catholic doctrine with the exception of that bearing upon the prerogative of Peter; another who denies in scarcely veiled language the Corporal Resurrection of Jesus Christ as well as His birth of a Virgin; another whose utterances are so calculated and obscure as to defy reasonable analysis.

Partly, however, this has been the result of the de liberate policy of Queen Elizabeth and her advisers. It was her wish, without a doubt, to include within the National Church as many professing Christians as possible, from Catholic to Calvinist; and in this, for a while, she succeeded. Indeed, even at the present time, there are as communicants, and even ministers, in the Church of England, men who in dogmatic matters are practically the one or the other. At the present day there are a few clergy who teach explicitly the infallibility of the Vicar of Christ, as well as others who could sign with scarcely any hesitation the Confession of Geneva.

It is therefore at the present day very little help towards the determining of a man's religious views to learn that he adheres to the Establishment, for each party or school of thought within her borders claims that its own interpretation of her formulas is the true one. There is one party, perhaps the most historically correct of all, claiming that all are equally legitimate, that all have an equal though not an exclusive right to teach their respective views. An instance perhaps will illustrate this position.

In the Catechism, as it stands to-day in the Book of Common Prayer, there is a certain statement as to the Presence of our Lord in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, that runs as follows:—

11 [The inward part or thing signified is] the Body and Blood of Christ which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper."

Now it is well known that the Anglican doctrines concerning the Real Presence, tolerated even up to the present day, run from teaching very like Transubstantiation on the one side, to something resembling Zwinglianism on the other. (It is safer to say, perhaps, with the late Archbishop Temple, that almost anything may be taught except actual Transubstantiation and actual Zwinglianism. He expressly included Consubstantiation within the range of permitted doc trines.)

Now it will be noticed that the above-quoted answer in the Catechism is designed, with quite extraordinary skill, to include the two extremes of the doctrine on this point permitted to Anglicans. In the first two phrases " The inward part " or " thing signified," the child is, so to speak, given his choice between a real Substance actually present, or a Res not actually present, but symbolized. The rest of the sentence depends entirely for its meaning upon the emphasis put upon the words. The " Receptionist " emphasises the words "by the faithful"; the High Churchman puts his accent upon " verily and indeed taken and received". And the Broad Churchman finds in the doubtfulness of the definition, a doubtfulness of the thing defined. This is, however, but one instance out of many.1 And it is impossible to doubt in face of the history of the times when the Articles and Prayer Book were originally drawn up and successively revised, and of the wide divergence in the views of those responsible, that it was indeed the deliberate policy of the author ities to expand the limits as widely as possible, and to provide formularies that would satisfy as many parties as were capable of being accommodated. It is this, then, that makes it so difficult to determine what exactly is the teaching of the Church of England on disputed points. It is easy to determine which views are tolerated; it is impossible to determine which are authorized. That party then, as we shall consider later, which seems to have most right to speak in the name of the Church of England, consists of those who teach that she has no fixed views upon most of these

1 Also Articles of Relig., nos. xvii, xxi, xxxi, xxxii, etc.

disputed points, but permits the most wide and the most varying interpretations.

4. A further difficulty in determining what is the Faith of the Church of England lies in the extraordinary character of the changes and the revivals that have taken place within her borders. It is now this, and now that school of thought that is predominant. Up to the close of the seventeenth century the High Churchmen, springing from the Stuart revival, more or less held the field. There succeeded to them the reign of Latitudinarianism, culminating in such men as the Socinian Clarke, and Tindal, opposed respectively by Waterland and Butler. Under John Wesley, at the close of the eighteenth century, personal religion, and the sense of personal responsibility, inspired by an intense realization of Grace and the Atonement, came to the front. Finally in the Oxford Movement the old sacramental system that underlies much of the Prayer Book, ideas of Church authority and of corporate religion, revived once more, and produced the present race of High Churchmen who have done so much to " Catholicize " within national limits the old Church of the Reformers. The result is that there are succeeding schools of recognized Anglican divines* no two of which are in complete accord together, yet not one of which can properly be called disloyal to the Church of England. And to each such school it is possible for every party at present existing in the Church of England to appeal with confidence, and in it to find its justification.

The result is, of course, that there is no established body of authorized Anglican doctrine to which appeal can be made; and there is, in the Catholic sense, no proper theological course for candidates for the ministry. The " theological colleges " range, in their doctrinal standpoints, from something very like Catholicism to something very like Calvinism. At Ely, for example, the doctrines of Penance and of the Real Presence are plainly taught and acted upon, and the life of the place is largely modelled upon that of Catholic seminaries, though with far fewer safeguards; at Kelham the life and the course of studies are really seminarian, and even monastic; while at Ridley Hall, at Cambridge, the teaching is markedly Protestant, and the life constructed upon such lines as those of the " prayer-meeting " and " Scripture-unions ". And these colleges, with the numerous grades to be found between them, in such places as Mirfield, Cuddesdon, Ripon, Lincoln, and the rest, are accepted by the bishops as recognized training-places for the Anglican ministry, and of equal responsibility.

It can easily be seen then how inadequate from the Catholic point of view must be the theological studies of the Anglican clergy — and, indeed, this is inevitable from the very nature of the Establishment. It may be said almost without exaggeration that there is not one dogmatic text-book recognized simultaneously by all the bishops, not one author satisfactory to the entire Bench. Certain books and writers are commonly re cognized — Pearson on the Creed, Waterland on the Eucharist, Harold Browne on the Articles; but these books are distinguished for their " comprehensiveness "

THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF ENGLAND g and "safeness" rather than for any clear dogmatic teaching. Examinations for Orders, therefore, range over a very vague kind of area: books such as those just mentioned are commonly the principal dogmatic text-books: a history-book or two dealing almost exclusively either with the first three or four centuries of the Christian era, or with the Reformation period; the Greek Testament, treated almost entirely from the critical, the historical, and the ethical point of view, with particular reference to one gospel and one epistle; a biography of some uncontroversial kind of saint; the writing of a sermon; and a little " pastoral theology " — these subjects form the substance of the entire examination. Moral theology finds no place in the scheme; and those clergy who from the character of the parishes in which they will take up work, or from their own private views, will include the hearing of confessions among their activities, are left entirely to themselves to pick up what knowledge they care to gather as regards the guidance of souls and the principles of morality. Of course the bishops cannot do otherwise, since they have to rule men of such diverse views; but the result is none the less lamentably in coherent.

To sum up then, before passing on to a detailed consideration of the various schools of thought that find their place to-day in the Anglican Communion; we notice first that there is no actual living Voice to day within her borders — or, if there is, it has not yet been identified — at whose word the theologians must be silent. This voice is claimed for the Privy Council by one party, for Provincial Synods (never actually held) by another, for the "Catholic Church" (under stood in a peculiar sense, and to be discussed later) by yet another. Yet there has been up to the present no common recognition of any one of these authorities by all the parties together. The bishop, generally speaking, is supposed to be the censor of doctrine in his diocese, yet those of his clergy who differ from him in dogma have no hesitation in disregarding his directions. There are formularies indeed to which we are directed by each school in confirmation of its theories; but they are formularies drawn up with the obvious, and indeed avowed, intention, of being patient of practically all the systems of belief with which the Anglican Church abounds. Certainly the average High Churchman, and even the Ritualist, is justified in appealing to the Prayer Book in defence of his position — it was intended that he should do so. But so it was intended that the Low Churchman should also do. Finally there is that school, commonly called Broad Church, taking up the very reasonable position that, since the Established Church deliberately re frained from deciding those controversies, the most loyal attitude of her children is to imitate her example. She permits the doctrine of the Objective Presence to be held, yet she also permits it to be denied. She con demns the " Romish doctrine... concerning the Invocation of Saints," but does not profess any doctrine on the point other than the " Romish "; she repudiates " Sacrifices of Masses," but she does not repudiate (or enjoin) any other undefined doctrine of

THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF ENGLAND n

Eucharistic Sacrifice. While it is open then to her children to stand on this or that side in their inter pretations of her formularies, the most loyal attitude —that which is most in accordance with her mind-is to refrain from positive affirmation or denial on these disputed points. Her children may have their minds formed on those matters, but she herself has not1

1 An example of what has been said may be seen in the missionary activities of the Church of England. The two great parties, " High " and "Low," are represented respectively, roughly speaking, by the " S.P.G." (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel) and the " C.M.S." (Church Missionary Society). Of these two, at least until recent years, the C.M.S. has been far more active and far better supported at home; but the S.P.G. on the other hand in its actual organization in the mission-field and a more or less "Catholic," as opposed to merely national, ideal, seems in advance. Again, until recently, there has been practically no co-operation between these two societies, representing as they do two very diverse religions. The C.M.S. works on an emphatically Protestant basis, and in union with the undenominational " Bible Society " whose object is the translation and distribution of the Scriptures; while the missions established or sup ported by the S.P.G. comprise such centres as those which teach the whole range of Catholic doctrine and practice, including, for example, the famous " Six Points "—(eastward position of celebrant, altar-lights, vestments, mixed chalice, wafer-bread, and incense) and even such devotions as the Angelus and the use of " Holy Water ". In England the public is more or less accustomed to the phenomenon of two or more religions in one Church, but the effect on the native mind abroad is said to be disastrous, especially when it is remembered that in mission ary countries there is not to anything like the same extent the shadow of the Law to check extremes on either side. The native sees on the one side a man resembling in all externals of his life and appear, ances a Catholic priest — a celibate, and living often a life of hardship and isolation and even asceticism; and on the other a pleasant European household, with father, mother, children and servants: he notices also that the S.P.G. missionary very frequently devotes the greater part of his life to the work, if not the whole of it (as do the Catholic mission-fathers), while the C.M.S. missionary, except in a few rare instances, looks forward to returning home in a few years. There could not be a greater contrast than between the two; both are estimable and hard-working people; both are equally accredited ministers of the Church of England; yet except in these two points they have hardly anything in common, beyond the use of a common Bible and Prayer Book from which each selects points that tend to fall in with his particular view of the Christian Faith. Quite recently, however, the S.P.G. by encouraging, and indeed sending representatives to, an " undenominational " Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, is threat ened with the loss of many of its High Church adherents, who see in this act a participation in " schism ".