Chapter VI. The "Broad Church" Party

IF it is difficult sometimes to define exactly the prin ciples on which other parties in the Church of England take their stand, it is far more difficult in the case of the "Broad Church" School, since their very essence is, so to say, undefinibility. Where the High Church party makes a precise statement and the Low Church party contradicts it, the Broad Church deliberately leaves the question open as being at least only doubt fully essential to Christianity. A good example of this is seen in the attitude taken up by various schools of thought towards the doctrine of the Sacrament of Holy Order and the consequent need of the Episcopate. The High Churchman holds that the Episcopal office is necessary to the transmission of Orders; the Low Churchman, practically, at any rate, denies it, recog nizing as the ministers of Christ men who have never received Episcopal ordination: while the Broad Churchman seeks a kind of union of the two statements by holding to the Episcopate as a "historic" fact, and therefore desirable. It is exactly in his refusal to make precise statements either affirmative or negative in his endeavour to look to " tendencies " rather than to events, to " aspects " rather than to points, to broad surfaces rather than to defined outlines — that he is characteristic of his school.

i. His whole position then, with regard to doc trine, is of this nature; and it would be impossible therefore to give any adequate summary of his exact creed. Further, the difficulty is increased by his wish to move with the times, to avail himself, as it is said, of the new light thrown by modern thought upon the old problems, and to be, above all things, a child, if not a leader, of his age — an age which is above all things fluid and transient. Certain principles, how ever, he has; and it is of these principles — illustrated in certain points — that a short account should be given.

(i) To some extent he holds to an idea of progressive revelation. Certainly, he acknowledges, a new flood of light burst upon the world with the coming of Jesus Christ; but the contents of that light can only proportionately be understood as it passes through the various mediums of thought of various centuries, temperaments and civilizations. Revelation is only truly revelation so far as it is assimilated by those to whom it comes; and it is to this process of assimilation, and even of verification, that the Broad Churchman looks with particular interest. He wel comes therefore with zeal all the movements of modern criticism and affects to fear nothing from their development. Truth, he says rightly, can be no enemy to truth: if, therefore, we find that modern discovery, in whatever field, tends to modify or even overthrow principles considered hithe-rto established, we must welcome their action. It may very well be that con clusions sufficient for an earlier and less well-informed age, are insufficient for our own; yet we must not fear the shifting of old boundaries and the re-stating of old doctrines, for the Spirit of Truth must ever guide us more and more into all Truth.

(2) A second characteristic of the Broad Churchman is this: that while the old "orthodox" theologian looked, so to speak, to Revelation first and to its effects on conduct second — certain that what is revealed by God must affect conduct — the Broad Churchman tends to reverse the process, and to apply to what professes to be the Revelation of God the test of its effect on conduct. Does this or that dogma — he asks himself —help me and my neighbour to live better; does it answer questions for which life demands an answer? For if not, if it is merely speculative and theoretical; it probably is not a vital part of Truth at all, but merely the result of human reasoning and deduction from in sufficient premises. It is interesting to observe how this latter attitude of mind has developed from the origins of the Broad Church School — in themselves absolutely sound. It was the laudable wish of men like Charles Kingsley, Maurice, and even of Dean Stanley himself (though he went farther than his friends in the direction of heterodoxy), merely to re lease orthodoxy, as they thought, from the realm of barren statement and creed into that of conduct and social reform. The inevitable result — in a Church that possesses no final authority in a Living Voice — is the present Broad Churchman. Belief is not so much released into conduct, as confined by it: dogmas which cannot be made to square with modern thoughts and needs are apt to be dismissed as " barren," and there fore untrue.

(3) The ultimate end of Broad Churchism must therefore be that system known as " Pragmatism "; that attitude towards Revelation which consists in accounting as " true " — though not necessarily as being absolutely true in themselves — all principles which help on what is thought to be the highest and widest life of the world in general. It may or may not be true, literally, that the Personality of Jesus Christ was actually Divine — Divine, that is, in a sense in which men are not and never can be divine — but if a confession of Christ's Divinity brings about good that is, at present at least, impossible without it, then let the Divinity of Christ be an article of the Christian Creed. It had better be taken as " true," in any case. This, however, is an extreme case. It would not be at all fair to accuse Broad Churchmen, as a class, of Pragmatism pure and simple. Many of them are, as a matter of fact, considerably orthodox, so far as they commit themselves to positive statements. It is only as an end to which the school appears to be moving, that Pragmatism has been mentioned at all.

2. The general attitude then, of the Broad Church man is purposely vague and undefined. He shrinks from positive and dogmatic statements; and, so far as he commits himself to them, he is conscious, probably, of assigning a slightly different meaning to the words from that held by his High Church or Low Church brother,

So NON-CATHOLIC RELIGIONS OF ENGLAND

He is apt to look, like the Modernist, to the "value" of the dogma, more than to its alleged objective facts. He believes, except in extreme cases, in the historical articles of the creed, which he repeats sincerely enough — he believes, for example, in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, but insists rather upon the " value " of this than upon its fact: the supremacy of Christ over death, the survival of His Spirit in the world — these are to him matters to be insisted upon, rather than upon the actually empty tomb. A few, however, of the Broad Church leaders go farther than this, and deny, in scarcely veiled language, such doc trines as that of the Resurrection, or of the Virgin Birth; and yet continue to minister in the Church of England. It need hardly be said, therefore, that, in respect to the Sacraments, the average Broad Churchman does not believe in any sense as the Catholic believes. He may insist, as he occasionally does, on the " value " of the Sacraments, and the desirability of frequenting them, since they were instituted by Christ, and tend to bring the worshipper into sympathy with Him; he may even assert, after a manner, their objectivity and " reality "; yet he does not mean by these statements that which the Catholic means. A Broad Churchman, for example, would regard as the grossest superstition, any belief that Baptism made any difference whatever to the destiny of a dying child; certainly he would baptize a dying child if opportunity offered, from a sense that the action was seemly, customary, and according, probably, to Christ's intention; but he could not bring himself to believe that its omission was

THE "BROAD CHURCH" PARTY 8t really significant. With regard to the rest of the sacraments — which he might or might not call by that name — he would take up the same attitude. He would not denounce, with the Low Churchman, the Sacrament of Penance, nor, with the High Churchman, urge it: he would think it was a useful discipline for some souls, and, on the plane on which he conceives of " reality," might even allow that absolution had an "objective" value; yet, probably, he would never make his own confession, thinking it the sign of a strong and liberated soul to be able to obtain the effects of the rite — the assurance of pardon and union with God — by other means. For his sense of sin is not acute — of sin, that is, as conceived by the Catholic to be the deliberate opposition of the human to the Divine Will; he is apt rather to picture it as the result of ignorance, or environment, or heredity. Its effects, he deplores, and its " reality " he allows: yet it is scarcely as an outrage that he thinks of it.

It is perhaps wit h regard to Holy Matrimony that the Broad Churchman is most charac teristic of him self. Here, in the Catholic doctrine, he would say, we have an ideal, urged even by Christ Himself; but, considered in the light of modern thought, we see that it can be no more than an ideal. We cannot force upon an age that refuses discipline, an ideal which it cannot even understand. We must therefore be reasonable and charitable. Certainly it is not seemly that, after a divorce, the guilty party should be re married with the Church' s blessing — since the Church stands for an ideal, even if it cannot always command it. But the innocent party is altogether another matter. Let us then draw the line at this point; let us re-marry the partner that has not sinned; let us urge the guilty partner not to re-marry at all; and if he insists upon it, let him go to the registry office and find his own level there. We should be unfaithful to our trust if we made any further concessions.

From this kind of argument, which is frequently used, will be seen the kind of dogmatic straits to which the Broad Churchman is brought. The " innocent party " is apparently unmarried, since a re-marriage can take place; but the "guilty party" is still bound! It is even more significant to reflect that this dilemma causes the Broad Churchman no mental discomfort.

3. It will be plain then, from the foregoing remarks, that the Broad Church party is not a dogmatic school, as are the other parties in the Church of England, It is a tendency, a point of view, a system of interpretation, far more than it is an actual group divided from other groups. And this is the more apparent when it is noticed how it has affected those who, in externals, would seem to belong to one or other of the other parties. It is becoming notorious, for example, that the High Church party, and even some of its more prominent leaders, are tending to show traces of Broad Church principles. Clergy will use, for ex ample, Ritualistic ceremonies, will teach Sacramental doctrine in its most defined form, and yet deny the exclusive elements that, historically speaking, have always found a place hitherto in connexion with those doctrines. They will clothe their bishops in purple and pectoral crosses, and yet advocate reunion with Nonconformists and Swedes: they will use incense, and yet desire an "exchange of pulpits". This, however, is comparatively innocent beside other inno vations. They will surround the celebration of the Communion Service with full Catholic ceremonial, and yet teach — for example — that there is no security for the continued Presence of Christ in the consecrated elements if these are used for other purposes than those for which the Most Holy Sacrament was directly instituted — thus making the Sacramental Presence to depend upon a remote human purpose, rather than upon the direct intention of the celebrant in the use of Christ's own words of consecration. Or again, they will teach the Divinity of Christ on one page, and on the next the " Kenotic theory," to such an extent as to deprive that Divinity of any reality.

Even in the narrower limits of the Low Church party, the Broad Church tendency is having its effect — especially in the sphere of Biblical Criticism; and it is remarkable to notice how a body of religionists, originally taking its stand upon the Bible and the Bible only, and rejecting human tradition as liable to error, is beginning to swing in some instances, to the opposite extreme; to admit the claims of criticism which, if established, completely subvert their position — whatever effect such claims may or may not have upon the Catholic attitude — and to rely once more on that " general sense of Christendom," which, in other words, is nothing more nor less than Tradition in disguise. The only phenomenon in Protestant history comparable to this swing of the pendulum, is that gradual movement by which Protestant Christendom, originally taking its stand upon Justification by Faith only without works, now preaches Justification by works without Faith. It was originally said that if a man had living faith, his works were unessential; it is now said that it does not matter what a man believes, so long as his life is right. This too, then, is the effect of the Broad Church movement, tending as it does to reverse Protestantism without restoring Catholicism.

4. As to the method of dealing with a Broad Churchman, nearly all must depend upon circum stances. There are, roughly speaking, two lines of approach.

(i) The first, and most obvious, consists in trying to make him think along intelligible lines — lines, that is, where statement can be met by retutation or assent or distinction — in a word, the scholastic method. If he can but be induced to enter this arena, there can be no doubt as to with whom the victory will rest. The example given above of the development of the Broad Churchman's method of thought in the instance of divorce, is a sufficient illustration of the kind of dilemma in which he must continually find himself. A further example may be found in the recent controversy among Anglicans as to the effect of the Act of Parliament legalizing marriage with a deceased wife's sister. The situation is as follows: In the authoritative table of "prohibited degrees" this marriage is denounced as against the Divine Law. Yet the law of the State now explicitly denies the statement, and the Established Church therefore finds herself in a difficulty. The solutions offered are various. The intransigeant High Churchman denies the validity of the claim of the State, refuses to celebrate such unions, or to admit to Communion such persons as contract them — with the legal consequences. The scholar admits that the Church of England was wrong in her original statement, and deplores the lack of dispensing power that would make all right. But the Broad Churchman, desiring as he does to believe that the nation and the Church are more or less coincident — that the State is the nation on its secular side and the Church the nation on its ecclesiastical side — endeavours to maintain that the nation has actually corrected the Church's law, or, rather, that the Church has no law apart from the State. We find therefore a bishop, here and there, categorically direct ing his clergy to perform the ceremony when it is required, without waiting for Convocation to readjust the ecclesiastical code.

Now if, as has been said, it is possible to induce the Broad Churchman to formulate his principles — to translate them from " tendencies " and " aspects " into statements and arguments — some progress may be made with him. But the difficulty is to do so. In nine cases out of ten he refuses to enter the scholastic arena, since it is one of his more intelligible principles that it is exactly in this arena that religion has suf fered. Religion, he thinks, is not so much a matter of statement as of " values"; he distinguishes sharply, like the Modernist, between "religion" and "the-

°l°gy>" refusing to the one any adequate relation to the other. Religion, he says, cannot, in vital matters, be reduced to arguable premises: no intellectual premise can be adequate to, or coincident with, Divine truth; and it is from the lack of perfect coincidence, from the slight lacuna or errors that must creep into even the origins of theological statement, that the vastly mistaken conclusions of scholastic theologians have been drawn.

(2) An attempt therefore must occasionally be made to meet him on his own ground. Since he will not fight with recognized and tried weapons, he must be encountered with his own. It is, of course, much too large a subject to be discussed here, but it may be noticed that there at any rate has been made more than one attempt to produce Catholic apologetic of this kind.1 We need, however, if it may be said with deference — a great deal more of this sort of work; since it would seem as if the " Broad Church " line of thought is ex tending itself very rapidly among all denominations. A few arguments — or rather suggestions of arguments — may perhaps be mentioned here.

(a] So far as the argument that conduct is the test of truth has value — and it has, of course, considerable value — it supports the Catholic claim in an absolutely startling manner. Mr. Devas works out the argument throughout his book, showing how Catholicism has been the working principle throughout the whole of the Christian era of practically everything that can be called progress or civilization. In more than one of late Mr. Charles Devas' " The Key to the World's Progress," as well as the earlier books of Fr. Tyrrell, are admirable examples.

Mr. Chesterton's books l— who, though not a Catholic, writes whole-heartedly on the Catholic side— the argument is driven home, showing how with the rise of " modern thought " there has been a revival of that old pagan despair, inertia and pessimism which Catholicism and Catholicism alone succeeded in overthrowing.

(£) A further development of the same idea reveals the fact that Catholicism and Catholicism only passes the test of " human experience," in so far as it has succeeded, and still succeeds, in uniting the most dive-se classes of minds and temperaments. If truth is judged by its wide power of appeal, it is certain that Catholicism and not " modern thought" emerges triumphant. Even the most enthusiastic modern thinkers do not claim that their system can have much success amongst the poor and the ignorant— at any rate at present; whereas Catholicism seized at once upon the uneducated, and at the same time has held and holds minds of the highest possible culture and education. So far as " human consciousness " witnesses to truth — human consciousness in its widest sense — it is to Catholicism that it points as the one religion that stands above the limitations of nationality, period and education.

(c) Thirdly, a religion that is to be of any working value to the average mind — and the " average mind " is even more characteristic of the human race than is the abnormal! — must emphatically not be one of mere tendencies and aspects incapable of definition. If anything is certain in psychology it is that a working religion must also be capable of being presented in 1 " Orthodoxy," " Heretics," G. K. Chesterton.

those terms under which the ordinary mind lives and moves, however many " tendencies " and " aspects " it may present to the more analytical mind. Now it is of the very essence— and not a mere accident — of Broad Church thought, that Christianity as conceived in the modern method is incapable of precise definition; it is against precise definition that the movement is directed. How then can it be claimed by the new party that their system of thought passes the very test to which they appeal — viz., human experience and assimilation? Neither can it be retorted that Catholicism is then merely the religion of the vulgar, and that it will pass with the march of education; since it is universally recognized by Catholic theologians that the definitions of the Church by no means exhaust the contents of those truths which, at the same time, in intellectual terms they adequately describe.

Such then are two or three suggestions of arguments in the Broad Church manner, which may legitimately be used by Catholics. It is, of course, true that such reasoning is completely inconclusive to the Catholic mind, accustomed as it is to receive truth along scholastic lines, fenced and defined by irrefutable logic. Yet where the whole scholastic method is distrusted, another method is necessary if the Faith is not only to be guarded but diffused. Neither are these argu ments more than three or four suggestions drawn from apologetic writers who have begun to realize the need of the new method in the present day. Our literature on this subject is confessedly imperfect and immature. It is to be hoped that with the growth of the new attack, the new defences may be developed. And it must be remembered also that "victories" in the scholastic sense are not to be looked for in this conflict. So far as the fight is to be on modern lines, it is paralleled by the modern field of ordinary warfare. It is no longer a matter of sword against sword, with definite blows and parries exchanged hand to hand, with victories perceived, as soon as gained, in the visible flight of the enemy. It is rather an affair of heavy artillery, discharged at a distance, of large flanking movements and demonstrations — in fact of tendency against tendency, and general judgment against general judgment. The results can only gradually be gathered, as well as the fruits of the certain ultimate triumph.

NOTE. — The Scottish Episcopalians form an unestablished community in Scotland of a largely English character — they are known indeed commonly as the " English Church " — they are governed by bishops in Synod and are in communion with the Anglicans, though not under the jurisdiction, in any sense, of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Their history is a highly chequered one, especially in Stuart times, when the unpopularity of Archbishop Laud and his attempts to force Episcopalianism upon the whole of Scotland caused " prelacy " to be hated almost as much as " popery " itself: they were largely identified with Stuart interests, and their cause sank with the cause of Charles I.

With respect to dogma they accept the same official faith as that of Anglicanism, but have on the whole a greater tendency to be uniformly High Church and even Ritualistic. This is partly encouraged by the fact that their Prayer Book differs in certain points from the Book of Common Prayer, and approximates, especially in the Comm union Service, more nearly to a

Catholic model. The definitely Low Church party has very few adherents amongst them; but there exists a strong section whose object is to anglicise the conduct of the services, and which has met with sufficient success to establish a permissible use of the Book of Common Prayer as well as of their own liturgy. The prevalence of High Church principles on the whole, however, is shown by such things as the common use of the cope and mitre by a majority of the bishops, and the per mission, under safeguards, to reserve the sacrament in a tabernacle. They have produced several divines eminent for learning as well as for piety.

On the whole, therefore, it may be said that the Episcopalians, at any rate in recent times, have a very creditable record. They are a small, rather aristocratically inclined body, whose influence upon Scotland as a whole is practically negligible, but whose sincerity, zeal and refinement of both learning and piety are beyond question. They claim, of course, to represent the ancient Catholic Church of Scotland; but their claim, unsupported as it is by the prestige of Establishment or of the possession of the ancient buildings and revenues, can hardly be said to be taken seriously by anyone but themselves and their High Church Anglican sympathizers.

The " Church of Ireland," now disestablished, con sists of Irish Protestants who, to the distress of the Ritualist, are in full communion with the Church of England. They too, like the Scottish Episcopalians, are not in any way under the jurisdiction of Canter bury, but are governed by their own bishops, and further possess a Prayer Book on the lines of the Book of Common Prayer, but considerably altered in a markedly Protestant direction. All mention of absolution, for instance, is carefully omitted, and by their Canons their ritual is severely restricted.