Chapter V. The " Low Church " Party

IT has been seen how the main stream of activity in the Church of England runs for the most part to-day in High Church channels— such activity, that is to say, as is evident from statistics, from imposing buildings, from organizations both of life and work, and from literature of various kinds.

Yet the original tradition of Anglicanism, as it comes down apart from the Oxford Movement, is far from dead, though it is undoubtedly dying. That it is dying, as a national or popular force, may be seen from such facts as that the party possesses no journal or magazine that can be taken seriously, that its members are continually complaining of their lack of representatives upon the episcopal bench, that their activities are seldom to be seen manifesting themselves amongst the slums of the great towns, that scarcely any contri butions to theology issue from their ranks, and that they scarcely possess one thinker or preacher whose name is known outside his immediate circle. Yet that it is not yet dead may be seen from the enthusiasm with which the <f Church Missionary Society"— a strongly "Evangelical" body— is supported, from the success which the party possesses as a drag upon the extravagances on the other side, and from the fact that it can still produce a few eminent men whose devotion and convictions are at any rate beyond question.

i. Their religious position may be summed up in the phrase " Established Protestantism ". For, firstly, they are essentially "Protestant," and glory in the name. In their eyes Rome is not at all an "erring sister"; still less a branch of that Tree of which they, too, form a part. The Catholic Church is for them the abomination of desolation — a scheme of thought so utterly apostate from true Christianity as to have be come practically the supreme enemy of the Gospel all the more dangerous because it is clothed in the garments of religion; a scheme of thought, too, so utterly absurd, so obviously unchristian, so evidently worldly and corrupt, as scarcely to need refutation. It is pleasant, however, to observe that in recent years this judgment, while unmodified in its attitude towards the Catholic system, is becoming a little more tender towards Catholics. Some theory of " invincible ignorance," some recognition of the possible sincerity of some Catholics, and some share in the new spirit of general toleration, are perhaps responsible for this increased charity.

As a positive system, too, the party is built upon Private Judgment pure and simple. In Ireland, for example, where the Anglican Church is almost entirely of this colour of thought, and where it can be studied more easily than in England, theological discussions between ministers and people are comparatively common in the newspapers. In these discussions it is interesting to notice the wealth of Scripture that is poured out —each text being fired as a kind of shot against oppon ents—the positive statements made on personal grounds alone, and, above all, the tone of absolute and assumed equality between shepherds and sheep. There is not, usually, the slightest trace of any deference to human authority, beyond that which is due to one who has had more leisure and opportunity for studying the Scriptures: there is not the faintest recognition of any inherent right in the minister, as minister, to define the oracles of God. Each man has equal access to the Written Word of God— the only source of Truth;— and each man therefore has an equal right— ceteris paribus—to argue and deduce from those premises.

2. The positive system of belief thus deduced con sists of a few absolutely orthodox statements; for the Low Church party is as little affected by modern criticism and liberalism as it is by the " Catholic revival". Down to the words in the Apostles' Creed, « I believe in the Holy Ghost," it may be said, as a rough kind of comment, that the Low Church belief is completely at one with the Catholic Faith. The phrase that follows, " I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints," is to them one article rather than two; for to them the " Catholic Church " consists of all worshippers of God united to Him by faith in Jesus Christ— emphatically an in visible, and only very secondarily, a visible body. " The Forgiveness of Sins " in their eyes has practically nothing to do with Baptism, and still less with any thing resembling in the faintest degree the Sacrament of Penance; it is, in its most emphatic aspect, the effect rather, at least in the case of adults, of a religious crisis, whether short or long in duration, known as Conversion. And with regard to the last two articles of belief, once more there is no essential difference between the Low Church party and Catholics, except in respect to belief in Purgatory— a belief utterly and entirely repudiated by the former, who hold that at the moment of death the soul passes at once to its eternal destiny.

The centre of gravity, however, of the Low Church creed, rests in the Person of Jesus Christ, with regard to whom, on the positive side so far as it goes, that faith is unwaveringly orthodox. On the subject of His Divinity, His Virgin Birth, the Atonement wrought by Him in the Sacrifice of the Cross, His Resurrection, Ascension, Session and Return— all is in accordance with the Faith of Christendom. It is rather on the means by which the benefits of His Life and Death are appropriated, and, above all, by which the Truth of the Christian Revelation is preserved intact and promulgated to the world, that they part company completely with Catholicism; and it is on those points that they judge the Catholic Church to be so completely apostate from the Christian Faith. (It is only the exceedingly ignorant amongst them who seriously charge Catholics with heterodoxy with respect to the Person of Christ.) It is necessary to take these points more or less in detail.

(i) Any idea of the extension of the Incarnation through the Sacramental system is completely alien to their minds. Christ instituted the Sacraments — yes (at least Baptism and Communion): but those rites are scarcely more than actions done in the visible world to denote and to signify mysterious operations of grace which are, so to speak, not more than symbol ized by the ceremonies. Baptism is a kind of earnest of God's good will and Providence towards the child, an expression of His desire that all men should be saved and this one in particular; but the true " birth of the Spirit" takes place at Conversion — at that moment or period at which the soul turns consciously to Jesus Christ as her Saviour, and appropriates through faith the benefits ot His Life, and still more of His Death.1

So too with Communion. It is an expression of the soul's faith and communion with God, as it is an expression, and even a kind of symbolical means, of Christ's communion with the soul. He is present there in a special sense, since first " two or three are gathered in His name," and second, because they are gathered there for the performance of a ceremony particularly and intimately identified by Himself with His Passion. But He is present there — as has been said by a Low Church leader, "At the Table, not upon it". In no sense are the consecrated elements

1 Occasionally a copy of the Book of Common Prayer may be met with in which are erased the words used in the Baptismal Service after the pouring of the water, " Seeing now... that this child is regenerate ".

His real Body and Blood, not even in the mysterious and undefined manner held by the moderate High Churchmen — they " remain " (as the " Black Rubric ' states) "in their natural substances" — they are, that is mere bread and wine, yet they become the symbols and, indirectly from their use, pledges of that Body and Blood which were offered on Calvary, but exist now only at the Right Hand of the Majesty on high. The treatment and manner, therefore, of these cere monies, is perfectly in accordance with the belief held about them. The font is generally not used as was intended; there is placed within it a small bowl of water with which the rite is performed. Nor is there any kind of punctiliousness as to the administration of the rite; a drop or two of water, sprinkled almost casually towards the child, is considered sufficient. So too with the service of the Communion. It is celebrated often in the evening, and persons who have had their devotion stirred by the previous sermon, are begged to remain and participate. It was put forward a few years ago by a well-known leader of this party, as a plea for Evening Communion, that by celebrating the service at this time it was possible to induce people, in an access of devotion, to partake of the " Lord's Supper " who had had no previous intention of doing so. The manner of celebrating it, too, is significant. The minister stands at the north end of the Table — for reasons that will be discussed presently — robed in surplice and scarf. There are no candles used, since these savour of " Popery," unless absolutely required for the purpose of giving light; there is, generally, no cross upon the Table, an alms-dish occasionally takes its place. (In the Irish Church the cross is categorically forbidden.) The service is then read by one or more ministers, who divide if necessary the words between them; and the bread and wine are distributed occasionally (and until recently when the bishops interfered) with the words of administration spoken not to the individual but to a whole railful at a time. The distribution is made in such a manner that crumbs fall in all directions, as may be verified by a visit to any such church on the day following a celebration of the rite, and at the close of the service the fragments left on the paten, and the remainder of the wine in the cup, are usually dealt with by the church- verger. Any thing resembling ablutions by the minister is avoided deliberately, as likely to encourage a superstitious belief in the objective sanctity of the consecrated elements. There is not, in all this — or even in the custom common until the middle of the nineteenth century of throwing the fragments ot the consecrated bread to the birds in the churchyard — the faintest intention of irreverence; no more than in the custom occasionally witnessed in Italy of throwing upon the floor the water that has been used for the Lavabo. The bread, in the eyes of such persons, has no sanctity at all; or whatever trace of sanctity it had has vanished with the fulfilment of the purpose for which it was used.

(2) A parallel line of thought is to be found in the attitude of the Low Church party towards the Sacrifice of the Cross. Just as union with Christ requires no sacramental rite for its efficacy, but is consummated by the individual through the interior working of faith; so, too, with the Sacrifice of the Cross, there is needed no ceremony for its perpetual re-presentation before God. The Atonement was wrought once for all upon the Cross, and was " finished " there, once and for all, yet remaining always efficacious for souls who cast themselves upon its merits; and Christ remains, therefore, the one and only Priest, who needs no ministerial priesthood through whom He may act. Any idea, therefore, of a Sacrifice of the Altar is to this school of thought the supreme treason; and in no sense whatever is the Communion Service a sacrifice, except so far as men offer themselves there to be united with the Victim in Heaven, or so far as the praise and thanksgiving of the worshippers compose a kind of sacrifice. Further than this, the utmost that can be said is that the service recalls to men's minds that sacrifice wrought once and for all, by the dis playing of the bread and wine that symbolize, but are not, the Broken Body and the poured out Blood.

It is to avoid the idea of sacrifice therefore that the minister stands at the north end of the Table. Rightly or wrongly, what is known as the " Eastward position " (that is the standing of the minister with his back to the people) is taken to symbolize a sacrificial attitude; and many fierce controversies and heart-burnings have been the result of indiscretion in this matter. The proper place to stand, in Low Church opinion, is at the north end of the Table, as one presiding over a feast or meal, in which there is no shadow of a sacrificial meaning, and no essential distinction made between pastor and people. Whatever priesthood there is on earth lies only in the priesthood of the people who, by the fulfilment of the Old Law in the Person of Jesus Christ, and the consummation of all sacrifices on Calvary, now enjoy direct access to the Father through the Precious Blood, and need no longer any intermediary between themselves and God. It is in virtue of this doctrine too that so intense an hostility exists in the Low Church party towards any veneration paid to Mary or the Saints — since that veneration, it is thought, necessarily implies an idea of mediatorship other than that of the Great High Priest.

(3) What has been said of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, applies even more strongly to the rite of Confirmation to which, as to the remaining four sacraments, the name " Sacrament " is strenuously refused.1 It would seem even as if there were a certain hesitation on the part of Low Church men as to whether the ceremony were instituted by Christ at all; but there is no hesitation among them in denying to it the gift of any sacramental grace tied to the laying on of hands by the bishop. Its object, in their view, is merely that of the renewal of baptismal vows and the assuming, so to speak, on the part of the candidate, formally and solemnly, of the responsibility of his own soul.

Again, the Sacrament of Penance is recognized in no shape or form. The Commission to forgive sins given by our Lord to His Apostles, and thence, in a

1 Article XXV can easily be applied by the Low Churchman in support of this view.

certain sense to His future disciples, is really nothing else than a command (accompanied by a promise of power) to preach the Gospel by which sins are for given; and, in the case of individual ministry, to bring home to the penitent soul, chiefly by " apply ing" to her Scripture promises, the assurances of forgiveness.

Holy Matrimony and Holy Order are, in the same manner, considered to be no sacraments. They are, at the utmost, solemn ceremonies, blessed by God, in which, in the one, the union of a man and woman is consecrated by Divine grace, and in the other a man is set apart for the ministry of the Gospel. In the one, again, the indissolubility of marriage is certainly not insisted upon as a doctrinal fact, however much sentiment or seemliness may urge it: in the other, anything resembling a doctrine of apostolic succession is absolutely denied. It is difficult to arrive exactly at what is held in this party concerning Episcopacy: for the most part it would seem as if it were believed to belong to the bene esse of the Church, especially with regard to Church government; but it is certainly not held to be of the esse of Christianity. It is from among this party, as much as from the " Broad Church " School, that recent demands have been made for the " exchange of pulpits " and for " Corporate Communion Services" at which Nonconformists are to communicate,1 and although Establishment is valued very greatly, curiously enough, by this otherwise spiritually-

1 The late Dean Stanley, in Westminster Abbey, on a well-known occasion, deliberately admitted a professed Unitarian to Communion.

, minded party, it is not because Episcopal Ordination is thought to confer any grace or blessing that cannot equally well bs obtained from a Nonconformist imposition of hands. Finally, Extreme Unction is of course as utterly unrecognized and repudiated as it is, indeed, in the Prayer Book itself.

3. The first important public function then of the minister is thought to be in what is very nearly considered to be the sacrament of the pulpit. It was the custom of an eminent Low Church bishop who died a few years since, to instruct his Ordination candidates to this effect, and to assure them that he had not the faintest intention in any sense of making them " priests," since there was no such thing in the Christian Church as a priesthood other than that of Jesus Christ on the one side, and of the whole faithful laity on the other. The " preaching of the Gospel " then — that is the proclamation of the Atonement through the death of Jesus Christ, and the manner in which by faith that Atonement is laid hold of by the individual soul (a manner theoretically indeed open to the charge of leading to Antinomianism) — this is the principal function of the true minister of Christ. It is the sermon then — the " preaching of the Word" — that is surrounded with the most pomp and ritual of all Church ceremonies as used by this school. Great controversies have raged in the past concerning the proper habit to be worn by the preacher; at the present day, however, although in a few churches the Genevan gown still survives, for the most part the surplice, hood, and black scarf have won their way. The sermon still remains, however, the real point of interest; the minister mounts the pulpit with what is almost a sacerdotal air, and the congregation settles itself, Bible in hand, to verify the texts from Scripture, and to assure itself that the true Gospel is properly preached.

4. Now the claim of the Low Church party truly to represent the tradition of the Church of England, is about as good a claim (if not slightly better) as the claim of the Ritualists. It is perfectly true that their treatment of the Prayer Book seems scarcely quite fair in a few points — for instance, in their manner of explaining the certainly strong passages in which the Sacrament of Penance appears to be described — yet, their treatment of it is scarcely as much one-sided — at any rate so far as the Articles of Religion are concerned — as the Ritualist's manner of interpretation. On the other hand the Low Churchman has, as a whole, the support of history behind him. If he vehemently re pudiates the " Massing-priest " with all that belongs to him, so did the Church of England with one consent during the period of the " Elizabethan settlement," and, indeed, until the Oxford Movement, practically ever since. The Ritualist may be able, with a few gaps, to trace a thread of theology similar to his own, running down the 300 years of Anglican life, but there is no question that the rest of the fabric is Puritan. The very lethargy and material irreverence universal in Georgian days, the exaltation of the pulpit, and the practically universal vulgar view, still surviving in most country places, of the parson as being primarily a man who preaches, and only in a very secondary and doubtful sense a " priest"-— all this is a witness to the fact that the Low Church party are more true to the main principles of the Establishment as conceived by its authors, and as guided by circumstances, than are their Ritualist brethren. Probably however, as has already been said, it was the intention of the Elizabethan reformers to include as many parties as possible, and if the Puritans can claim the prior and principal place, it is not necessarily to the exclusion altogether of the school represented by the Caroline and Oxford divines.

5. With regard to what would seem to be the best manner of dealing with Low Churchmen, a few obser vations may here be made.

(i) It must be remembered that he is usually entirely ignorant of theology as the word is used by Catholics. He has very little acquaintance with, and no respect for, the Early Fathers; 1 his one and single book is the Bible. Even the Prayer Book itself, though tolerable, is not satisfactory. It still has, here and there, to his mind, shreds of Popery embodied in its fabric. Yet he can use it, with mental reservations. Now his love of and his real acquaintance with the Scriptures have both their good and their bad points —good, because a devotion to the written Word of God must, obviously, always be good; bad, because he has already made a mental mosaic in his mind of certain texts, and interprets all the rest of the Scrip tures solely with reference to them. An interesting and significant fact is that a few years ago there was 1 There are, of course, a few exceptions to this statement.

issued by members of the Low Church party and others a " marked Testament," in which the « Evangelical texts "—that is, words bearing on the Atonement, the power of the Precious Blood, justification by faith, and the rest— were heavily underlined, whereas all texts bearing upon the institution of the Sacraments and the priesthood were severely left alone.

It is extraordinarily difficult, and rather fruitless, therefore, to argue on Scriptural grounds with the Low Churchman. He has these well-known texts, from Gospels and Epistles alike, at his fingers' ends| and can discharge them with extraordinary rapidity and accuracy of aim. And any attempt to meet them by others is useless, since these others are always held to be nullified, or rather interpreted away by those in which he himself places reliance. Neither is it of the slightest use to quote Fathers or theologians, since these, in so far as their words are significant of Catholicism, are held to be tainted with Popery.

(2) The argument then must be made to rest rather upon common sense. It may be pointed out, for in stance, with advantage, that as a Rule of Faith, Private Judgment acting upon Scripture direct, would scarcely have been of avail in days before the Canon of Scripture was closed; that even in the present day this Rule of Faith is fruitful of division rather than of union, since it has produced above two hundred sects in England alone, each claiming that its own is the most perfect presentment of Christ's Gospel; and finally it may be asked what is to be made of this professedly infallible Rule of Faith if it leads a soul— as it has led so many — to the conclusion that the Catholic Church was intended by Christ to be the sole guardian of Truth. Of course the Low Churchman has answers to all these observations; yet, if victory is to be gained, it would seem that its path must lie in this direction rather than in the bandying of texts from the Scriptures.

(3) A third point to remember is that in certain lundamental doctrines the Low Churchman is refreshingly orthodox in these days of "new thought"- There can be no better foundation in fact for the building up of the full truth than that of the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation and the Atonement. It is true that by this party, with the exception of a few theo logians, these doctrines have been most inadequately studied— it would probably be easy, that is to say, in the course of a comparatively short conversation, to entangle the average Low Churchman in a perfect net-work of his own heretical remarks; yet, on the whole his instincts are sound and orthodox; he is not heretical, in these matters, through conviction, but rather through ignorance. With regard to the rest of his beliefs, too, his errors are negative rather than positive; his negations are false, but very few of his affirmations. He denies Priesthood, not because he disbelieves in its existence, but because he thinks that any earthly derived priesthood (other than that under stood vaguely by him to belong to the whole people of God) is derogatory to Christ's Supreme Office: in the same manner he believes earnestly in intercession, but refuses to seek that of the saints in heaven, and for a similar reason. So, once more, he believes that any sacrifice on earth is derogatory to Calvary, and any belief in real Sacramental grace, to the sole Author of grace. His errors then are the result of confusion of thought and narrowness of outlook and unbalanced zeal, rather than of any positive falsehood. He is so tenacious of certain truths that he rejects others that appear to him incompatible with those he holds already: he is so certain of God's sovereignty that he suspects every man who claims to represent Him; so convinced of the value of faith that he denies that of works.

It seems then that he may best be met upon the platform of those truths which, happily, he holds in common with Catholics — though probably he would deny the fact. It is at least something that he loves God so passionately, and is so jealous for His honour, that he relies so utterly upon the power of the Precious Blood. And, if he can but be made to understand that Catholics hold, as firmly as he himself, those fundamental truths of Christianity, he may perhaps be induced to hear an account of how those other doctrines that seem to him so completely contradictory of the " Gospel," in reality illustrate and extend that " Gospel," making its power effective and real in a manner other than that of mere emotionalism and ardour of feeling. He will listen patiently and reasonably if he is but once persuaded that for the Catholic, as for him self, "Christianity is Christ".

One further point may also be noticed— viz., that the Low Churchman, unlike the Ritualist, has but little to unlearn. He claims no " orders " that must be repudiated, no sacraments to be denied. His progress therefore into the Church is usually the more steady.