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Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont filmds en commenpant par la premidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la dernidre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selor. le cas: le symbols — ► signifie "A SUIVRE ", le symbole V signifie "FIN". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmds & des t9ux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clichd, 11 est filmd i partir de Tangle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 i COME HOME; AN APPEAL ON BEHALF OF REUNION. BY THE REV. JOHN LANGTRY, M.A., D.C.L. Rural Dean of Toronto. Sometime Procurator of the Promncial Synod of Canada. AUTHOR OF "CATHOUC VERSUS ROMAN," "HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN CANADA," - PRESBYTERIANISM. "THE CHURCH'S WARFARE," ETC., ETC. TORONTO : THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED. MDCD. if 229603 EX 'So'^l LS4 Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada in the year one thousand nine hundred, by Rev. John Langtry, D.C.L., in the office of the Minister of Agriculture. PREFACE. This treatise is the result of the writer's Parochial experience As he has gone about from house to house he nas fo>.\nd the haziest and most unscrip- tural views prevailing about what the Church of Christ is, and what are the essential doctrines of the Christian religion. It is held, generally, that the only thing that is of any consequence at all, is the safety of the individual soul, the assurance of per- sonal salvation, based upon a sensible and generally sudden conversion. The position and claims of the Church of Christ and the imperative authority of the doctrines of the Faith are never thought about, or if they are forced upon the attention, they are pushed aside with some shallow traditional platitude. It never occurs to the ordinary man or woman that there is any Church existing in the world to-day that has a right to command their allegiance and their services, or that there are certain doctrines which they must believe or cease to be Christians. They know that Christ founded but ops Church, but they either think that it has ceased to be, or that it is a vague, shadowy, unorganized, invisible unreality, made up of all good people of all Denominations, and that the Churches that exist around us are vol- mmmmmmmmm !v PI? E FACE. untary associations, all standing upon an equal foot- ing ; and that each individual as he contemplates them stands above and independent of them all, and is at liberty to choose whichever of them he likes best, and consequently that he may believe or reject whatever doctrines may, or may not, commend them- selves to his judgment. The claim that there is a Church that represents Christ — that is invested with His authority — that speaks in His name, that is assured of His presence and her own perpetuity — and that the doctrines to which she has borne wit- ness from the beginning are not matters of option, but of obligation, is scouted as the narrowest bigotry. The following incident in the writer's experience will illustrate the ordinary attitude on this subject : As he was visiting from house to house in his parish, he asked a man who came to the door if they be- longed to the Church of England. He said, **No, we are all Methodists here ; " to which the writer replied, •« That's a pity." The man said, ♦♦ I don't see why you should say that ; I guess the Church does not make any difference. We won't be asked when we get to heaven what Church we belonged to." The answer was, " Perhaps not, but we are not there yet. Now I suppose that the best that you or 1 can hope is that we are on the way thither." "Yes," he said. The reply was: ''Now suppose you were going to England, you would not say to yourself : ' When I get to England the people won't ask me in what boat I came, whether on a raft or in a bark canoe, cr a schooner or a Cunard steamer, and therefore it does not make any difference by which of ^■p PREFACE. V these I attempt the voyage.' As a wise man, who had the journey yet to accomplish, you would say to yourself, * Now, which of these is the best and safest boat for me to sail in.' " He said, ♦• Yes, that is a fact." It is not known to the writer whether he ever acted upon that conclusion, as he moved away from the Parish before long. It is the aim of the follov/ing pages to summarize the teaching of Holy Scripture on the subject, and to point out that the popular noiions not only have no support in its sacred pages, but are a positive contradiction of its teachings. And that the Church to which Christ gave His promises occupies a posi- tion in the maintenance and propagation of the truth, and so in the work of the world's salvation, which is demanding the serious reconsideration of all Protestant people. In the historical chapters, the reasons assigned by the several Denominations for their separations are given, as far as possible, in their own language. And it is pointed out that almost without excep- tion those reasons have been abandoned, at least in practice. It is incidentally pointed out in the following pages that the position, prerogatives and claims of the Church of Jesus Christ being accepted, the dis- pute as to which of the existing Bodies, has a right- ful claim to the allegiance of Christian people is a mere historical question, and is reduced to very nar- row limits. It is at once evident that no Body calling itself a Church that has come into existence in recent years, or, in fact, at any time since Christ's ascen- vi PREFACE. sion, can be the same Church which He founded nearly 1900 years ago, and to which He gave His promises. It is further evident that no human society can appropriate or confer upon itself the privileges and prerogatives which He conferred upon the Church He founded. Or, in other words, that men cannot make a Church. That is the preroga- tive of Jesus Christ its Head alone. The shallow theory which has been noised abroad amongst us since the principal part of this book was written, viz. : That Christ did not organize a^y Church at all, that He just preached His doctrines, and instilled His principles, and lived His life, and then left men to organize or not to organize them- selves into whatever kind of society they might pre- fer, is, the writer trusts, sufficiently confuted by the positive teaching of Scripture which he has summar- ized, and by the refutation of "The Invisible Church " theory, found on pages 17-26. The doctrines discussed in the last ten chapters are those which are chiefly objected to by our sepa- rated brethren. It has been the writer's endeavor to state plainly what he believes to be the Church's position on each of them, to give a few of what seem to him the most cogent arguments from Scripture and primitive writers in support of that position, and to point out the agreement of the auth- orized formularies of the older Denominations with that position. He is quite aware that what he has adduced might, on each of these points, be vastly in- creased. He hopes, however, that it will be sufficient to lead to more thorough investigation on all these PREFACE. VII points, and will help to clear away the mists and clouds that surround these primal questions, in the consideration of the all-important subject of the restoration of unity, viz.: What is the Church? and What are the doctrines of the Faith? The writer is quite aware that he is under unknown obligations to many authors for whatever of worth there may be in these pages. He wishes to acknowledge his special obligations to Haddon and Stubbs, Councils and Re- main's English Church, to Cutts' "Turning Points of English Church History," Curteis' Bampton Lec- tures, Dr. Mines' " Presbyterian Looking for the Church," John Knox's "History of the Reforma- tion," Dr. Coke, and a multitude of others. 1,1 I-I..1I iii.ipwfupipir I •p«Bii|iip«ppmiMP«nr "COME HOME. INTRODUCTION. The story is told by a popular writer, of a mother and her daughter who lived in their an- cestral home, amid the silence and beauty of the Northern mountains. After awhile the daugh- ter grew weary of the monotony of her life. The peace and comfort and safety of that High- land Home were of no consequence to her. She had heard of the stirring life and vast oppor- tunities of the Southern Capital. H^r desire to see it and explore its mysteries became over- mastering in her life, and one day, in spite of her mother's entreaties and tears, she left the home of her childhood, and was soon lost sight of, as she plunged into the sea of human life that surges and swells on the banks of the Thames. Her mother pined in lonely grief, with a heart ready to break with the great- ness of its love. From the day her daughter went away, through winter and summer, by ,c INTRODUCTION. n.ight and day, the cottage door was left open ; "lest," she said, ''Jennie should come home some night, and, finding the door closed, should go away to come back no more." For a long time she could find no trace of her daugh- ter, until by the advice of the police she had her own photograph with the words " Come Home " on it, distributed in the places where such girls were likely to g<^. The device was successful. The invitation met the eye and went to the heart of the wanderer. And late one night Jennie, disappointed and weary, came back. With hesitating steps she entered the open door of the well-remembered home of happy bygone days. Instead of the haughty bearing and heavy reproaches with which she expected to be received by her mother, she was welcomed back with tenderest embrace and tears of unmixed joy. Will the reader pardon the writer, who loves his Mother, the Church, if he sees in this story the picture in general outline, at least, of much in the past history and present attitude of the Church of England towards her children who have left her fold, and have sought new interests in other homes than hers. Like that lone mother she has ever brooded over their departure with aching heart, and, with her door kept wide open for their return, she is calling to them ever to INTRODUCTION. II "Come Home." It will be the endeavour of the following pages to draw in outline a portrait of that Mother Church, and to re-echo with all earnestness the entreaty "Come Home" that has gone out from her to all her separated children. In answer to that entreaty it is being said by a great many people at the present time, what right has the Church of England to give such an invitation ? Is it not another piece of arro- gant assumption on her part ? Why should I think of her as my spiritual Mother ; my natal home? I never belonged to her, I was not born in her, nor was I brought up in her. She did not act very much like a spiritual Mother to my parents or to me, she did not provide any spiritual privileges for that part of the country where we lived. There was no Church service within ten or twenty miles of our home, and naturally we went to the Methodist, Presbyter- ian or Baptist services which were near; and, after awhile, we joined them and became mem- bers of one or other of these Churches. And now you come to us and invite us to leave them, and to come home, as you call it, to the Church of England. Why should we do so, we have our own Church ? It may have been a mistake or an unkindness, as you are in the habit of saying, for the originators of these Churches to I 12 INTRODUCTION. n have withdrawn all the godly, earnest people who united with them from the Church of England ; which much needed their prayers, their offer- ings, and their work to enable her to provide for her scattered flock. But now it is different; they are organized Churches, and as far as I can see, they are just as good, and some of them a good deal better, than the Church of England. They are more in earnest in preaching the Gospel, more liberal in supporting it, and more active in helping on the work of the Church than your Church of England people are. They do not spend their money on social entertainments and display, they do not squander it upon theatres and balls, and horse races and clubs. Their Church is their club, and they give to it and support it, and work for it, better than your people do. And besides, in my judgment, it does not make any difference to what Church a man belongs if he is only a follower of Christ. We shall not be asked when we get to Heaven to what Church we belonged. For my part, I do not think it makes the least difference, and so I do not see why the other Churches should listen to the invitation of the Church of England to enter into union with her ; or why the indi- vidual members of these Churches should leave their own Church and join her, with the idea that they are returning to their own true home. Mi INTRODUCTION. '3 Thus many earnest Christian people think and argue at the present day. But even if all these assertions were true, and some of them, in some measure, at some times and in some places are true, still there surely are most constraining reasons why they should listen to the entreaty that has gone out from the Church of England to all who have separated themselves, or are living in separation from her, to rally to and re-form around the historic Church of this realm. rr j CHAPTER I. WHAT IS THE CHURCH? Now, in order to see the force of these reasons we must first consider carefully, and get clearly into our minds, what the Church of Christ— the Church of the New Testament — really is, what are its functions, privileges, and duties, and what is its present relationship to Christ, its Head. There is no subject on which men's minds at the present day are in such utter con- fusion as about the meaning of the simple word " Church," as it is used in the New Testament. Generally it is assumed that the word is rightly used to describe any number of professing Christians, who have organized themselves into a society for preaching what they conceive to be the Gospel of Christ. It has been urged by a distinguished theological Professor of Toronto, that *' Christians are commanded thus to organ- ize themselves according to their affinities ; and that the national, political, geographical and doctrinal affinities of men are a justification of, and form a proper basis for these separate and separating organizations." And then it is gen- v«. l6 WHAT IS THE CHURCH? erally assumed that, when organized (no mat- ter by whom), they become Churches in the New Testament sense of that word, just as truly Churches as that Church which was instituted by Christ Himself, and has existed from the begin- ning. When it is pointed out that the Church of the New Testament is declared to be one body, not a multitude of bodies ; that it is in- vested with the loftiest privileges, that it is de- clared to be the ** Body of Christ," *' The Bride of Christ," the " Lamb's Wife," " The Habi- tation of God through the Spirit," and that the members of the Church which Christ organized are declared to be members of Christ, it is re- plied that the true Church of Christ, of which these things are affirmed, is an invisible com- pany, made up of all good people, all truly converted men and women, and that the Chris- tian societies that are called Churches, exist for the purpose of producing members of this in- visible community, and that those who produce the largest number of such members have the best right to be called and considered Churches of Christ. This is the popular notion, which is very widely accepted as the true Evangelical view of what the Church of Christ is ; and yet it has not one shred of foundation in the New Testa- ment or in the early history of the Church. It M : IVHAT /S THE CHURCH? 17 \ , is in point of a fact, a wholly mDdern theory, which was evolved by a necessary logical sequence from the Calvinistic view of election and predestination ; and which offered a ready explanation of, and a justification for, the un- limited sectism of our modern Christianity. For more than fifteen hundred years of the Church's life this theory was unknown ; and there was no uncertainty then in men's minds as to the meaning of the word "Church." It was used everywhere and by all, as the desig- nation of the visible organized Christian Society, which our Blessed Lord founded at Jerusalem, and which the Apostles and those called to share their ministry extended and established throughout the world. That this use of the word was and is its only legitimate use, is established by the following considerations : First, it is evident to the casual reader of the New Testament that our Lord Jesus Christ became incarnate, not only to make an atone- ment for sin, not only to teach men the truth concerning God and themselves, not merely to set before them an example as to how human life ought to be lived ; but that, in addition to this, He came to establish a Kingdom, to found a Church to represent Him, to carry on His work, to be the instrument of His will, to con- vey to men the benefits of His incarnation and TVr i8 IVNAT la THE CHURCH? atonement, to be the witness and keeper of His word, the ground and pillar of His truth. In those New Testament Scriptures, which were addressed especially to the Jews, this Church is usually designated by the term "The Kingdom of Heaven " or, " The Kingdom of God." Under this title the Church, which the Messiah came to establish, had been foretold in Daniel's great prophecy of the Kingdom of the God of Heaven which shall never be destroyed. Our Lord Himself, in St. Matt, xvi, i8, 19, uses the terms "Church" and "Kingdom of Heaven " as interchangeable, or convertible terms. Both John the Baptist and our Blessed Lord proclaimed the setting up of this Kingdom as the immediate result of His coming. Of the thirty-nine parables which are recorded in the Gospels, nineteen are parables of the King- dom ; and, it is evident beyond dispute, that, by the expression " Kingdom of Heaven " as used in them, He means the Church in its present imperfect and mixed condition. The propagation and reception of the Kingdom is described in the parable of the sower, in which three out of the four classes to whom it should come are nothing benefited by its coming. Its condition, as having bad people as well as good in it, is set out in the parable of the tares and wheat; its small beginning and rapid extension, , tVf/AT /S THE CHURCH? t9 in that of the mustard seed ; the hidden trans- forming work of the Spirit of God in it, in that of the leaven ; the draw-net describes the intermingling and final separation of the good and bad in this Kingdom of Heaven ; and, finally, that by this term He means the Church on earth, is placed beyond dispute by the declaration that, at the end of the world, the angels shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend and them that do iniquity. There are none that offend or do iniquity in the Kingdom of Glory, no tares among the wheat, no bad fish intermingle with the good there. The description can only apply to the present probationary state of that kingdom in which good and evil are forever mingled, and forever struggling for the mastery. But, though the Lord, when speaking to the Jews, describes the new society which he was founding under the the title of " the Kingdom," it is to Him that we owe the name " Church," by which, at all times from the apostles' days downwards, the Christian society has been most usually designated. " Upon this rock " (that is, of St. Peter's confession of His Deity, as most of the Fathers interpreted it) "I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." And again He directs that an of- fending brother who refuses to listen to private admonition is to be reported to " the Church:' i io WNA r IS THE CHURCH "The word "ecclesia," translated by our word "church," means a company called out of the general mass of the people. Just as Abra- ham and his seed were ealled out of the rest of mankind, and formed into a separate Church, so individuals are called out of all nations, and formed into a distinct Christian society. This society is not made up of a number of people merely holding Christian doctrine, and bound together by a mere community of sentiment. They who belong to it are called out of the world, the kingdom of darkness, and are translated into the Kingdom of Light. It is not an invisible, unorganized brotherhood, made up of all good people ; for our Blessed Lord Himself organized it into a Kingdom of which He is Himself the Head and King. It, has, moreover, its subor- dinate officers, its laws, its badges of authority, its oaths of allegiance, its mode of admission, its tests of loyalty ; and it is invested with power to extend and perpetuate itself. It is not, then, as supposed in these days, an invisible company of true believers only, for it is made up of good and bad members ; some that offend and do in- iquity, who will not and cannot, be gathered out, till the harvest, the end of the world, is come. If the Church, described in the New Testa- ment, which our Lord founded, and to which WHAT J S THE CHURCH? 31 He gave His promises, be invisible, then clearly every visible thing upon earth, calling itself a Church, is not only unscriptural and wrong, but is guilty of fraud, of a wicked at- tempt on the part of a mere human society, by appropriating a name which does not belong to it, to delude people into the notion that in join- ing it they will secure to themselves the prom- ises and privileges which belong to another so- ciety altogether. It would be guilty of the same kind of dishonesty as would be perpetrated by a new firm taking the name of an old and well established house in order to gain for itself the credit and custom that belong to the old and secure establishment. The term *' Church " oc- curs more than a hundred times in the New Testament, and is never once used as the name of an invisible brotherhood, but always as the name of the whole or some part of that visible organized Body to which Christ Himself applied it. And how, indeed, could the Church be in- visible? Our Lord says, "tell it unto the Church," but if the Church be invisible how could the command be obeyed? how could the injured brother find an invisible Church? or how could an invisible Church hear the com- plaint, or speak to, or reprove, an offending brother? Our Lord describes His Church as a 22 WHAT IS 7 UK CHURCH? fold, but how could the fold be invisible, or a flock be gathered into a fold which is invisible? He prays that the Church may be one, that the world may believe that the Father had sent Him, but how could the world see or be influenced by the unity of an invisible body ? How again could a man be cast out of an invisible Body ? If he is a good man you cannot cast him out, for (according to this theory) he belongs to the invisible Church because he is good ; and if he be a bad man, you cannot cast him out, for he does not belong to this invisible Church and never did, for it is said to be made up of the elect, or of truly converted, godly men and women only. How again could a great persecution come upon an invisible Church (Acts xi. 26) ? or how could the Apostles have ordained Elders in every Church if the Church were invisible (Acts xiv. 27)? or be brought on their way by an invisible Church ? How could those at Rome salute an invisible Church ? How could the least esteemed be set to judge in an invisi- ble Church ? How could Saul make havoc of an invisible Church, or Diotrephes cast men out of it ? How could the Elders feed an invisible Church, or Timothy take care of it ? Was the Church at Corinth, which had in it members guilty of shocking incest, and many others who were carnal and walked as men, an invisible WHAT JS THE CHURCH? n Church made up wholly of truly converted men and women? Or the Church at Pergamos, which was infested with abominable heretics called Nicolaitanes r Or the Church at Thya- tira, of whicli Jezebel was a member, or that at Sardis, ready to die, or at Laodicca, with so little zeal that it was only fit to be spued out of the mouth of Christ? Were all these invisible Churches, made up only of true believers ? No. The word is not used in that sense at all, in the New Testament, or in early Church literature. There is an "invisible Church" which is made up of those who have kept the faith and finished their course, the vast company of those who have passed out of the Body into the pres- ence of their Lord ; that company is now invis- ible to us ; but that is noc what is meant by the " invisible Church," and the term Church is never applied to them in the New Testament, though they are ever-living members of the one Church. The theory that the Church of Christ is an in- visible association was invented to meet a diffi- culty and to justify the multiplicity of Denomi- nations. It is evident, however, that it does not satisfy those who put it forth, because they are at once indignant if it be even suggested that thevis- ible Denomination to which they belong is not, or by any possibility may not be, a branch of 24 WHAT IS THE CHURCH? that visible Church which has existed from the Apostles' days to these. And so we come back to the conclusion that the term '* Church " is used in the New Testament only to describe that visible organized body which, like the human body, has its outward form animated by an in- ner life, made up, while in this state of proba- tion, of good and bad members, of tares and wheat, of wheat and chaff, of good fish and bad, of foolish virgins and wise, of living branches and withered of the one true Vine. It is to this Church — this visible organized society, whose history can easily be traced from its beginning in the upper room at Jerusalem down to this day — that Christ gave the promise of His own abiding presence, and which He sent on its way with the assurance that, whatever its difficulties and perils might be, the gates of hell should not prevail against it. It was this Church which H«s Apostles declare again and again to be His Body (Rom. xii. 4, 5), (i Cor. X. 17; xii. 12), (Eph. i. 22; iv. 12; v. 23), (Col. i. 18; ii. 19; iii. 15), in which He dwells, through which He acts, by which He is repre- sented among men, and carries on His work in the world. The members of this Church are made members of Christ (i Cor. xii. 13-27). She is the Habitation of God through the Spirit (Eph. ii. 23). h !• '!• WHAT IS THE CHURCH? 25 I i It is this Church which is called "the Bride of Christ" (Rev. xxi. 2; xxii. 17), "the Lamb's Wife," because she is forever united to Him by His incarnate life communicated to her, and through her to His children. On the very day after His baptism He began to call this Church out and to gather it around Him. Then He proceeded to organize it into a vis- ible society by the appointment of the twelve Apostles, whom He sent forth to proclaim, as He Himself had donej that the Kingdom of Hea- ven was at hand. He appointed other 70 to aid them in their work. He promised to be with them always, even unto the end of the world; He declared to them, "as My Father has sent Me, even so send I you" ; He assured them that they should be endued with power from on high to fit them for their work ; He in- vested them with authority to bind and to loose ; He appointed a definite outward form. Christian Baptism, for admitting new members into His Kingdom, and prescribed laws for their govern- ment when admitted and laid down principles for the guidance of their life. It is being maintained by the new sceptical school that Christ did not organize His Church at all. That He just taught the truth and in- stilled principles into men's minds and then left them to organize themselves as they pleased. 36 WHAT IS THE CHURCH? But surely the utter condemnation of such a theory is written plain on the very face of Holy Scripture. If ever there was an organization on earth, the Church was such when our Lord left it. A firm is organized when its directors are chosen, its officers appointed, its employees en- gaged, and only awaits the coming of the man. aging director. Such was the state of the Church before the day of Pentecost. This Church, thus called out and organized, began its super- natural life of the One Spirit in the One Body, on that day, in the upper chamber in Jerusa- lem. The Lord had prepared it a body in the 1 20 who were gathered together there awaiting the fulfilment of His promise of the Comforter. And, just as the Holy Ghost breathed into Adam's body the breath of life and he became a living soul, so the same Holy Ghost came upon the outwardly organized Church, filling it with supernatural life, making it a living entity in Him, and sending it forth on its great mission to evangelize the world. And every- where they that gladly received the word were baptised by the One Spirit into that One Body, and became members of that One Body. This Body, then, is Divine in its constitution ; for Christ organized it. It is Divine in its life, for the Holy Spirit dwells in it, as its Creator, incor- porating it into Christ. It is Divine in its acts ; WtiAT JS THE CHURCH? ^j and ordinances ; for Christ dwells in it as His own Body. And the voice of inspiration tells us that as there is only one Spirit, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, so there is only one Body to which these high privileges and promises belong. This D:vin- Society had, as we have seen, its begmnmg in the upper chamber at Jerusalem and all its members were Jews. From Jerusalem' It soon extended to other places. First, Philip preached the truth in Samaria and established a Church there by admitting his converts into the One Body by Baptism. Then the Gentile pro- selyte, the treasurer of Queen Candace, was ad- mitted mto this Society in the same way ; then the Gentile Cornelius and his household. The Church has spread until it embraces Jews, Sa- maritans, Proselytes, and Gentiles, and still Je- rusalem is the centre of interest ; the Mother Church of the world. After this, the sacred history tells us that the Church was next established at Antioch the great and luxurious capital of Syria- then in Cyprus. Then Barnabas and Saul' who had been separated for this special mission, passed over into Asia Minor and preached in Pisidia, Antioch. Iconium, Lystra and Derbe ; ordaining Elders everywhere to take charge of the new Churches. Then in a 28 WHA T IS THE CHURCH? second journey, Paul and Silas passed westward through Galatia founding new Churches, until guided by a vision, they passed over into Mace- donia, the first Apostolic Heralds of the Gospel in Europe, gathering congregations and planting churches in Macedonia and Greece, at Philippi, Thessalonica, Barea, Athens, Corinth, and fin- ally returning to Asia. Then, after two years' residence at Ephesus, and two years' imprison- ment at C^serea, St. Paul went as a prisoner to Rome ; more than twenty years after the Church in Jerusalem was founded. And, as appears from Romans xv. 21 and 22, he was the first Apostle that visited the Imperial City. And so we see in ever-widening circles, either by the ministry of the Apostles themselves, or of those whom they ordained in every city, the Church was extended and congregations (or branches of it) multiplied in one land after an- other, till the whole known world was permeated with this new leaven, and filled with the spread- ing branches of this rapidly developing mustard tree. During the Apostolic days this body thus extended was everywhere designated by the one substantive word, '* the Church.'''' It is called "the Church" more than 70 times in the Acts and Epistles. After a time it became customary to add the adjective, Catholic — meaning univer- sal or for all — for the purpose of distinguishing WHAT IS THE CHURCH? 39 the Church which was intended to extend to all lands, and to embrace all people, from the Jew- ish church, which was meant for one race and was confined to one small corner of the earth. Before long this word Catholic took on (as is not uncommon in the history of language) a second meaning, and was used to distinguish those who held the whole truth from the heretics, who (as their name implies) chose parts of the truth as their creed. Another adjective, "Apostolic," was added to the description of the Church, as in the Nicene creed, to distinguish the Church which the Apostles founded and presided over, from those bodies which separated themselves, and took their name from their founder, or fav- orite doctrine. This Church also received local designations from the cities or countries in which it was established as the Church of Jerusalem, of Antioch, of Alexandria, of Rome, of Gaul, of Britain, of Spain. In ordinary conversation, however, the other adjectives were dropped, and it was spoken of as the Church of Ephesus, of Rome, of France, or of England, or (more gen- erally) as " the Church " ; everybody knowing that the body intended was the Catholic Aposto- lic Church of Gaul, of Rome, of England. But everywhere it was the same body, organized in the same way, ruled by the sameofiicers and general laws ; animated by the same spirit ; 30 WHAT IS THE CHURCH? preaching the One Gospel ; professing the One Faith ; the Church in one land owning and ow- ing no subjection to the Church in another ; but living in perfect union and communion, and all co-operating in the one great effort to turn the world to Christ. If difficulties arose or new doctrines were promulgated, they were either composed by the Bishop on the spot, or reported to a council like that described in the 15th chap- ter of the Acts of the Apostles. These councils were of a local, provincial, or general character. If the questions were of sufficient importance the Bishops of the whole Christian world were sum- moned, in order that by their testimony the truth might be settled and difficulties removed. And thus was the "one Faith once delivered " defin- ed, confirmed and settled, while the interpreta- tion of Apostles and inspired men was still living and remembered in the Church. Such, then, in brief outline, was the Catholic Church, when the name Catholic was first given to her ; such was her condition as she emerges through the dust and darkness of her first encounter with an unbelieving world, into the clear light of historic times. A Spiritual King- dom existing in outward bodily form, owing obedience to her invisible Head and Lord, and yet herself visible. Her Bishops in every dio- cese invested with the same authority, and WHAT IS THE CHURCH? 31 ! I* Standing upon a footing of perfect spiritual equality, her doctrines defined and defended, and her discipline settled by a church parlia- ment, representing the diocese, the province, and, when need arose, the whole world. The facts established then are : — First. — That the Church spoken of through- out the New Testament, the Church which Jesus said He would build, which St. Paul says He did build upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the Head Corner Stone (Eph. ii. 20), is a visible organized Society with its officers, members, mode of initiation, rules of conduct, and object clearly defined. Second. — That this outwardly organized So- ciety grows out of a unity of life communicated, and is the Body of Christ, in which He dwells, a living entity in Him (Eph. i. 22). Third. — That it is the Habitation of God through the Spirit. He lives in and acts through it. Its ministry of the word, its sacra- ments and ordinances and acts, are all His, per- formed by those who are His agents and instru- ments. To this Church thus organized and animated by the Spirit of God three promises are made: — First. — That Christ the Lord will be with her all days to the end of the world. vmfmssssB iMH 3a WHAT JS THE CHURCH? Secmid. — That the gates of hell shall not pre- vail against her. Third. — That she shall finally be purged from all iniquity and presented at last a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Her members are the members of Christ. Her Ministers are the Ambassadors of God. Her sacraments are the hands by which He gives into the hand of Faith stretched out, His gifts of grace, and life and peace. It clearly is of paramount importance that we should belong — and should know that we belong — to a Church which can clearly establish her right to claim these tremendous promises and privileges as her own, rather than to a community of which none of these things can by any logical process be certainly affirmed. This is our answer to those who say that it cannot make any difference to what Church a man belongs ; that the Church cannot save us and that we shall not be asked, when we get to heaven, to what Church we belonged, etc. There is only one Church to which these pro- mises were made. It is your solemn duty to find it and to be in it. CHAPTER II. IS THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND THIS VERY CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES IN THIS REALM? We saw that the Church which Jesus founded, to which He gave His promises, upon which He conferred such high privileges, was and is an organized visible society with its outer form and inner life, a living, abiding entity. It grew out of Christ. It is built upon His person. It is His own appointed instrument for conveying His incarnate life to us. It is the great world- wide and time-long witness to the truth of His history. It was organized and instructed by Him. It began its heroic task of converting the world at His command, when in the upper chamber at Jerusalem He had poured out upon it His regenerating, illuminating, guiding Spirit. From that centre it spread with noise- less rapidity, creeping on from village to village, from town to town, from land to land, till, with- in a very little while, it had reached the utter- most bounds of the West, and had spread to the North, East and South, into lands far be- yond the bounds of the Roman Empire. It trntmrn 34 IS THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND was, as we have seen, called the Catholic Church, because it was the herald of God's whole truth to all men. It did not set itself to subvert or absorb the secular power, but to strengthen and establish it, by purifying and elevating human life in every land ; and so, while it was everywhere one and the same body, in perfect union and communion throughout all its parts, it yet, in subordination to its great central truths and principles, accommodated it- self to the political conditions of its surround- ings. And so there grew up the national sub- divisions of this One Body, such as the Greek, Italian, Spanish, French, and English branches of the one Catholic Church, all of them subject to the supreme legislative government of the whole body — the General Council. Whence, then, came the Church of England? It is now made clear beyond dispute that the Celtic part of the Island had been almost, if not wholly. Christianized long before the coming of Augustine in 596, and that that Celtic part (in- cluding Wales, the Kingdom of Strathclyde, and Scotland) embraced quite half of the terri- tory of the whole island. We learn from Ter- tullian, who wrote about A.D. 208, that districts of Britain inaccessible to the Roman arms — that is the Highlands of the North and West — had been subdued to Christ. A little later, k THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES? 35 A.D. 239, Origen speaks of Britain as having one religion, and tliat one the religion of Christ. (Homil. iv. , in Ezekiel). Constantius, the father of Constantine, is said by Sozoman to have favoured and supported Christianity in Britain, and Eusebius, the historian, in more than one passage, implies the existence of a Christian British Church. There was certainly a large and regularly constituted Church in Britain be- fore the end of the third century, for at the im- portant council held at Aries, in A.D. 314, three British Bishops were present, and affixed their signatures to the decrees of that council. St. Athanasius says that the British Church ac- cepted and assented to the Faith defined at Nice in A.D. 325. His language leaves no doubt that British Bishops were either present in person, or afterwards signified their adhesion to the decisions of the Synod of Sardica, A.D. 347. Three British Bishops were present at the mis- guided Council of Rimini, A.D. 359. St. Chrysostom, writing in A.D. 367, speaks of the British Isles as possessing churches and altars. In fact, the evidence of the existence of an organized Church in Britain before the coming of the Roman mission, is overwhelming. When Augustine landed he found a Bishop, Luidhart, and his attendant priests, who had come from France with the Christian Queen r 36 IS THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Bertha to reside in the court of the yet heathen Ethelbert, King of Kent ; and about two years after Augustine's arrival, we have a detailed ac- count of his interviews with seven British Bishops and many learned men from their fam- ous monastery ot Bangor. Augustine claimed, among other things, their acknowledgment of himself as Archbishop of England, by virtue of his appointment by the Pope. They replied : "We know of no other obedience, except that of love and perfect charity, that is due to him whom ye style Pope, nor that he has a claim and right to be Father of Fathers? Further, we are under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Caer-Leon-upon-Usk, who is under God ap- pointed to oversee us, and to make us keep the spiritual path." Augustine was enraged and threatened — "Since, then, ye refuse to work under my direction for the conversion of the Saxons, ere long, by a just judgment of God, you shall have to suffer from the Saxons the bitter pains of death." And it was not very long before an Anglo-Saxon king, still pagan, marched at the head of his tribe to the very spot where the conference had been held ; and, over- throwing the Welsh army, massacred the whole of the monks of Bangor, to the number of 700, and razed their monastery to the ground. " It was a national tradition among the Welch," r \ THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES? 37 says Thierry, " that the Chief of the Roman mission had instigated this invasion, and pointed out the monastery of Bangor to the pagans of Northumbria." Be this as it may, the event supplies an additional proof of the existence and extent of the ancient British Church. But, you are perhaps asking, whence came this numerous ancient British Church? In replying, we may at once dismiss as mere myths the legends about St. Paul, Caractacus, Joseph of Arimathea, and King Lucius, being founders of the British Church. They have no historical basis. There never was any King Lucius, such as the Roman Catholic legend describes. There can be but little doubt in the mind of any one who will take pains to study the matter that Christianity came into England mainly from Asia Minor through the Greek colonies at Marseilles and up the Rhone. During the early Christian times there was close and continual intercourse between the Greek colonies of the Lower Rhone and the Greek settlements of Asia Minor, of which Ephesus was the centre. Greek civilization was extensively diffused in the interior of south- eastern Gaul. The Church that flourished at Lyons and Vienne in the second century was unquestionably Greek in its origin. The mar- tyrs' names are Greek. The first Bishops were 3ii /S THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND If 'I ! Greek. The great Irenaeus, the second Bishop, wrote in Greek. The narrative of the martyr- doms of the Rhone was sent, not to Rome, but to the Greeks of Asia. Irenseus took sides with the Greeks in their disputes with Rome about Easter and the rebaptization of heretics, and he rebuked the Roman bishop sharply for his harshness towards the Asiatics. We learn from him that the Church at that time extended not only through this district of the Rhone, but along the left bank of the Rhine towards the English Channel. When persecution broke with such sudden fury upon this Church towards the end of the century, thousands were slain, but thousands fled towards the West, and sought shelter from the Roman persecutors among their kinsmen amid the forests of the West. Britain was as yet free from the persecutor's flail, and, as many as could, passed over to their Celtic kinsmen living there, and hid themselves in the remote districts of the island ; carrying with them not only the story of their sufferings, but the mes- sage of their faith ; winning many to the religion of Christ, and thus accounting for Ter- tullian's saying, '* Et Brittannorum inaccessa Romanis loca Christio vere subdita sunt," and for the large number of bishops, monks and priests that were found among the Celts at the THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES? 39 coming of the Saxons. Bede (B.I.C. 15), des- cribing the horrors of the Saxon invasion, tells us that the priests were everywhere slain before the altars ; the prelates and the people, without any respect of person, were destroyed by fire and sword. Some of the miserable remainder being taken in the mountains, were butchered in heaps ; some with sorrowful hearts fled beyond the seas — fled to Ireland, no doubt, as they were being driven to the west by the ferocious Saxons. These became the harbingers of the faith to Ire- land, just as their Gaelic kinsmen had been nearly twocenturies before to England. vSt. Patrick, who was a Scotchman, seems to have been the first to carry on a successful missionary work in that island. His success, however, was only tem- porary. The land lapsed into heathenism after his death, and the abiding conversion of thai island was accomplished by St. David, St. Gildas and St. Chadoc, three Welsh saints of the ancient British Church, who went to Ireland at the request of King Anmire, to restore eccles- iastical order ; because, as he states in his letters, the Irish had lost the Catholic faith. This Irish Church soon became famous throughout the world for its learning and .nis- sionary zeal. During the seventh and early eighth centuries it was one of the most influen- tial Churches in Christendom. From it at an 40 IS THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND % early date went out those famous missionaries Columba, Aidan, Finnan, Chad and Wilfred, who finally converted the greater part of Saxon England to the faith, as well as wide districts on the continent. For although Augustine, the Roman mis- sionary, was at first successful in converting the kingdom of Kent, and through his agents, Essex, East Anglia and Northumbria, yet, when the first Christian kings died, the still half-heathen masses of the people returned to their old ways. Christianity, as planted by the Roman missionaries, was everywhere S'"ept away, heathenism everywhere rei.tored, and the final re-conversion cf the five principal king- doms of the Heptarchy was accomplished by the Celtic missionaries. Wessex, the last of the heathen Saxon kingdoms, was converted by an independent mission of the Prankish Gauls, under Birinus. So that Kent was the only one of the Saxon kingdoms that really owed its surviving Christianity to the Pvoman mission. The English Church then, owes its origin, chiefly, not to the Roman Church, as Roman controver- sialists maintain, but directly to the Scoto-Irish Church, and ultimately to the Greek-Asiatic Church. This historical record is confirmed by the fact that the British Christians followed the Ephesene, and not the Latin Liturgy, and customs. THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES? 4« The whole Church, then, of England, Ireland and Scotland was one ; and the Roman mission had only resulted in contributing the one small kingdom of Kent to this final result. Through- out the island, with the exception of this small corner, the liturgy and customs of the ancient British Church prevailed. The differences be- tween this British or Galilean liturgy, and the Roman of that day were not important, and there is no evidence of conflict or hostility between the Churches of British and of Latin origin. The Roman usage with regard to the time of keeping Easter was finally accepted as the result, not of constraint, but of an intelligent discussion of the matter ; and the liturgal differ- ences were left undisturbed, so that different uses prevailed in different parts of the island, even until the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. was issued. But the Church of England itself thus consti- tuted was autocephalous— it had no headship outside of itself— it was wholly independent of Rome. It managed its own affairs and governed itself, and no more thought of submitting its actions to the approval of the Pope, than does the Church of England of to-day. The claim of the Pope to patriarchal and appellate jurisdiction was not unknown, but it was repudiated. Wil- fred, Bishop of York, in a quarrel with the 42 IS THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Archbishop of Canterbury and the King of Nor- thumbria, was the first Englishman to appeal to Rome, A.D. 680. This was a direct violation of the Church principles of that age, for the Pat- riarch of Rome had jurisdiction only v/hen both partifs agreed to refer the cause to him. To appeal from a national English Synod, from an English King, and an English Metropolitan, was not to be tolerated by the free spirit which pervaded the land ; and, consequently, when Wilfred returned with a Papal decision in his favor, and on the strength of it demanded to be restored to his diocese, a council oi clergy and laity was aesembled, and unanimously deter- mined that the appeal was a public offence, and the Papal letters an insult to the Crown and the nation. Wilfred was condemned and imprisoned for nine months, and became for many years a wandering outcast. By the Archbishop of Can- terbury, Theodore, the Papal mandate was equ- ally disregarded, although the decree declared that all persons, whoever they might be, who should attempt to infringe that decree, should be smitten with an everlasting anathema. At the end of the next century, A.D. 790, the English Church, under the guidance of Alcuin, resisted the action of the Church of Rome, and the command of the Pope, and rejected the ven- eration and service of images, to which the THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES? 43 Roman authorities had committed themselves, " as a thing which the Church of God utterly abhors." The claims of Rome were now being constantly pressed, and, though they made some progress, they were constantly resisted. In the year A.D. 805 the English clergy in synod addressed a letter of remonstrance to Pope Leo, on the custom which had been growing up of late of the English Metropolitans being obliged to go to Rome to solicit the pall from the Pope. They pointed out that it was an innovation ; and, in consequence, the Pope sent the pall the fol- lowing year to Wilfred, without requiring his presence at Rome. For the next hundred years — till the middle of the tenth century — the Danish ravages and final conquest of the land, not only suspended the progress of the Papal power in England, but almost swept Christianity from the land. Dur- ing this time, however, the principles of the for- geries of Isidore were being propagated and ac- cepted everywhere in the west; and so, when the Church revived again in England, it was surrounded by a wholly different atmosphere. The whole ideal of the constitution and govern- ment of the Church was changed ; Papal sove- reignty was being enforced ; under the inspira- tion of Rome, the secular clergy — as the men who were married and lived in their parishes mm 44 IS THE CHURCH OF ENGLAX.D were called— were being driven out ; clerical ce- libacy was enforced, and the Benedictine monks (those eager agents of the Papacy) were being intruded into the places of the parochial clergy everywhere. The inveterate preference of Edward the Con- fessor (1042-1066) for foreigners, and his cons- tant practice of putting foreign churchmen into English sees, are well known. Increased con- nection with the continent, where Rome was already supreme, meant increased subjection to the Papal claims. We now, for the first time, hear of bishops going to Rome for consecration or confirmation, and of the Roman Court claim- ing at least a veto on the nomination of the English King. One of the avowed objects of the Norman con- quest was to bring the English Church more com- pletely under the control of the Papal See. For this end the Pope gave his sanction and blessing to the robber chieftain, and sent his legate to assist one of the most ruthless tyrants that ever lived in trampling the life out of the English Christians, and in driving English Bishops from their sees to make room for Frenchmen and Italians, who would be the ready instruments of the Papal will. And yet the Conqueror claimed and exercised an ecclesiastical supremacy far exceeding that THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES? 4.^ exercised by Henry VIII. He would not allow any one of his subjects to receive any actual Pontiff of the Roman city as the Apostolical Pontiff, except by his orders ; or to accept his letters unless they had first been shown to him- self. The Archbishop of Canterbury was not allowed to enjoin or prohibit anything, except it were in accordance with his will, and had first been submitted lO him. He asserted his right to stay excommunications, or purely Church censures, and he robbed monasteries and churches and shrines in a way that throws Great Hal's sacrileges altogether into the shade. And yet, as he was promoting the extension of the Papal power, he was not so much as remon- strated with by the supreme Pontiff. Rufus, his son and successor, went still fur- ther. All Church preferments were openly administered for the benefit of the royal revenue. Whenever a prelate or beneficed clerk died, the royal officer at once seized the benefice and held it for the benefit of the Crown, until such times as a clerk could be found who would pay to the royal exchequer the price at which the prefer- ment was valued. A system of universal simony was introduced. The See of Canterbury was kept vacant for years, and the king appropriated the revenues. When, at length, Anselm was appointed Archbishop, he resisted the king's 46 /S THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND exactions, and upheld Pope Urban, with whom the king had quarrelled. But it is remarkable that the Bishops of England, in the spirit of their ancient independence, advised the Arch- bishop " to give up this Urban, who could never be of any advantage to him, and, casting away the yoke of servitude and asserting his freedom as became an Archbishop of Canterbury, to be ready to support the king." And it is remark- able, too, that when Anseimfled to the Pope for help, he was kept hanging about the Papal court for years, and could obtain no definite answer to his appeal until the king died. Then came the long quarrel with Henry I. about in- vestiture, which involved the question as to whether the clergy were to be subjects of the King or of the Pope. Henry declared in his quarrel with Anselm, "1 will not endure in my kingdom anyone who is not my subject." On the appointment of Ralph as Anselm's successor the Pope wrote an angry letter complaining that the See of Rome, which had by this time (A.D. 1 1 14) pretty well established its sovereign-' ty on the continent, was treated by the English Church and king with scant reverence. No appeals came from England, no questions were referred to Rome for decision. The English Church presumed to act independently. To remedy this state of things the Pope sent An- THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES? 47 selm, a nephew of the late Archbishop, as his permanent legate to England. This was a new and unheard-of claim. Special legates had been sent for special purposes, but the establishment of a permanent legate had never been tolerated. When the attempt became known in England the excitement was intense and general. Bishops, abbots and nobles met in London and sent an embassy to the king, who was at the time in Normandy, and the result was that the Papal legate was forbidden to enter England, and the Pope acquiesced and withdrew him. The English Church was tricked by another Pope into allowing the appointment of such an officer. The dispute between the Archbishops of York and Canterbury about superiority was referred to the Pope, and he settled the question by appointing the Archbishop of Canterbury, who claimed superiority, his permanent legate, and so making him superior to his brother of York. It has been well said that the Arch- bishops of Canterbury were thus stripped of their rights and clothed with the shadow of them. And still the strugr^le went on, the Papacy ever pressing its claims, and the kings and Church of England struggling against them, and ever and anon resisting and rejecting them. As the result of this struggle, during the next reign the Council of Clarendon was held ; and by its 48 /S THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND decrees no appeal was allowed to be carried be- yond the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury, i.e. to Rome, except by the king^'s special per- mission. No excommunication or interdict could be published without his sanction. All appointments of bishops were henceforth re- quired to be by election, and every bishop was now obliged to declare himself the liege and subject of the King, not of the Pope. When John had basely surrendered his crown and kingdom, it was the Church of England, under the leadership of Archbishop Langton, that was chiefly instrumental in extorting from him the Magna Charta, which enacts in its first clause that the Church of England shall be free, and retain all her laws and ancient liberties in- tact, including the liberty of election. The Pope annulled the great Charter, and excom- municated the Primate and his supporters, and styled John, who went raging through the coun- try accompanied by bands of cut-throat mer- cenaries, his beloved son in Christ. But neither Primate, nor Church, nor people would yield to his threats, and the Charter was maintained and our English liberties secured. The year 1225 is notable in English Church history, as having witnessed the first systematic attempt of the Pcpe to use the benefices of the English Church as a source of revenue for him- THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES? 49 self and his court. The demand was simply laughed out of court. The king and bishops were as one, and sent a message back to the Pope that when other parts of the Church uni- versal had acknowledged its obligation, they would not be found lacking. It was well known to all those present that a similar demand made by the Pope on the Church of France had just been rejected with indignation. Through the agency of the friars and the un- faithfulness of the kings who now entered into agreement with the Popes, as the readiest way of obtaining the appointment of unworthy persons, who were willing to pay them for appointments, the English Church was now fearfully oppressed. The Pope obtruded foreigners into the best liv- ings, claimed the right to nominate the Primate and ievy taxes upon the clergy as he pleased. The most valuable livings were kept vacant for years, and their revenues appropriated, some- times by the King, sometimes by the Pope. There was long and determined resistance to these claims on the part of the English Church ; led, at first, by Archbishop Rich and Bishop Grossetete, who, in 1226, made answer to a new demand of the Papal legate for money for him- self, " We will bear these things no longer. Let him support you who sent you here without any request from us." Grossetete went to the 50 /S 77/ E CHURCH OF ENGLAND Papal Court, and in the presence of the Pope said, " The cause, the fountain, the origin of the evils that are crushing the life out of the Church of England is this Court of Rome, not only ^-e- cause it does not correct these abominations because, by its dispensations, provisions and collocations to the pastoral care, it appoints not pastors, but destroyers of men ; and, for the sake of providing a livelihood lor one man, hands over thousands of souls to eternal death. It commits the care of the flock to ravening wolves. This Court has filled the world with lies, has put to flight all modesty, has taken away all confidence in documents, has lent all boldness to falsifying one's word." This prolonged and bitter struggle led t passing of the sta,:utes of Provisors in 1307, which prohibited Papal taxes and appointments; and the statute of Praemunire, 1335, which pro- hibited appeals to Rome. The National Church, having begun to assert her rights, began now to review her doctrines, and to discover that just as the rightful legal position of Churches had been overborne by Rome, so, too, the purity of primitive doctrine had been grievously obscured and corrupted by the accretions fostered and up- held by Rome ; and that in both respects much needed to be done to recover what had been lost. The result of this discovery was the ooen revolt THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES? 5" from the doctrine ct\ the mediccval Church, which took place in England under the leader- ship of John Wycliffe, during the latter half of the fourteenth century. This struggle was marked by many revolutionary and heretical opinions. The attempt to repress it issued for the first time in England in the burning of her- etics, but it went on with varying intensity and success, till the final overthrow of Papal preten- sions was reached. In 1399 the Parliament solemnly enacted " that the Crown of England and the rights of the same have been from all past time so free that neither chief pontiff nor anyone else outside the kingdom has any right to interfere in the same." •' 1 rom the end of the thirteenth cen- tury," says Zollinger, " and constantly during the fourteenti 'hey hud resisted the encroach- ments and extortionate demands of the Roman Court, with the united force of King and Par- liament. And so there are no statutes recog- nizing the jurisdiction of the Pope or the right of the Pope to appropriate benefices in England, or to levy taxes and imposts, or to appoint offi- cers. These things grew up by custom ; but they grew up illegally, either against the pro- visions, or, at any rate, without the sanction of the law of the land. Ever since the Conquest there had been a continuous struggle between 5* /.V THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND !f 1' the intruding foreign element and the national element, and the men who conducted the final emancipation of the English Church from the Papal power 'vere able to look .ack over the history of the nation and see that if this foreign influence were removed there could be nothing to hinder the National Church from shaking off the terrible evils under which it had so long been groaning. The opportunity for the com- plete overthrow of this foreign in.luence came in the quarrel of Henry VIII. with the Pope. That quarrel grew out of the basest motives, and it was conducted by Henry and the Pope on the basest principles, and was decided on the one hand and the other by purely self-indulgent considerations. The Pope was not the noble and intrepid champion, as Roman Catholics would have us believe, of the sanctity of Christ- ian marriage and the purity of Christian life. The inner history of the negotiations leaves no doubt that he was ready enough to take Henry's freely offered gold, and secure his powerful sup- port, and annul the marriage, as other Popes had annulled precisely similar marriages. But he was afraid of the mighty emperor, Charles V^, who steadily and naturally resisted the divorce of his aunt Catherine. He offered, how- ever, to allow Henry to have two wives, as a way out of the difficulty. With that quarrel we THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES? 53 have no concern, except that in the Providence of God it brought the opportunity for the com- plete emancipation of the Church of England from the thraldom in which she had so long been held. Her enslavement had been brought about by the agreement of Kings and Popes ; for the tyrants of the Norman line discovered before long that it was far easier for them to obtain per- mission from the Popes than from the Klnglish Church and people, to lay hands upon the Church's revenues, and to appoint unworthy favorites to her offices. And so they supported the ever-growing Papal demands, and enforced them as far as they could by fire and faggot upon an independent and resisting Church and people. The cry for deliverance from the in- describable corruption, venality and oppression had been going up for over three centuries, and now in the quarrel of those long-combined powers of evil the opportunity for that deliver- ance came. Henry VHI. held all Papal doc- trines and remained a Papist in everything except submission to the Pope, to the end of his life. Cardinal Manning, who after his version expressed such extreme contempt for iiistory, once truly wrote : " If any man will look down along- the early English his- tory he will see a standing contest between the rulers of the land and the Bishops of Rome. The Crown and Church of 54 /S THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND \\' '<• I The overthrow of the Papal sovereignty first, and then the rejection of the Papal corruptions of doctrine, was the action of the whole Church. It was not that a new Church sprang up and overthrew the old, or that the old was abolished and a new one started in its place. It was the old Catholic Church of England, that had its beginning far behind the days of Augustine, that rose up in its might, and flung off the accre- tions of ages, and re-formed itself upon the model of Holy Scripture and the primitive Catholic Church. Pugin, endorsed by Dr. Newman, says : " Every great cathedral, every diocese, every abbey was duly represented in that important synod (the convocation which renounced the Papal supremacy), and yet the deed is signed, not by the vox populi, but by the voice of convocation. The actors are the true and lawful bishops, and the clergy of England. One venerable prelate alone protests (not against the abolition of Papal supremacy, but against England with a steady opposition resisted the entrance and encroachment of the secularized Ecclesiastical power of the Pope in Eng-land. The last rejection of it was no more than a successful effort after many a failure in strugg-les of the like kind. And it was an act taken by men who were sound, according to Roman doctrine, in all other points. As for schism, they have done no more than take off from their necks a yoke which Christ never laid upon it, and that, too, not when it was meekly imposed, but when through tlio wickedness of men it became intolerable." THE CHURCH GF THE APOSTLES? 55 the proposed supremacy of Henry). He is speedily brought to trial and execution ; his accusers are Catholics, his judges are Catholics, his executioner is a Catholic, and the bells are ringing for high mass in the steeple of St. Paul's as the aged bishop ascends the scaffold to receive the martyr's crown." The act was the act of the ancient Catholic Church of England lopping oft with her own hand that excrescence of Papalism, which in the days of her ignorance and helplessness she had allowed to grow there, though not without pro- test. No honest man denies that infamous things were done in the Reformation period, as well by the fierce bigotry of Mary as by the des- potism of Henry. "It was the Catholics," says Pugin, "of Henry VHI 's time, who executed the monks ; they did the same to Protestants in Mary's reign; but both executions were in ac- cordance with the decrees of the State and Cath- olic Parliament." Mr. Beard, an advanced Lib- eral, says in his Hibbert lectures (1883) : " We must take some pains to understand a fact which more than any other differentiates the English Reformation ; I mean the contin- uity of the English Church. I speak as a historian, and not as a theologian. It is an obvious historical fact that Parker was the suc- cessor of Augustine, just as clearly as Lanfranc 56 /S THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND and Becket Wareham, Cranmer, Pole, Parker ; there is no break in the line. The succession, from the spiritual point of view, was most care- fully provided for when Parker was consecrated. Not even the most ignorant controversialist now believes in the Nag's Head fable. The canons of the pre-Reformation Church, the statutes of the Plantagenets are binding upon the Church of England to-day. There has been no break in the devolution of Church property. It is impossible to fix the point at which the transi- tion of the Catholic Church into a Protestant one was made (pp. 311 and 12) just because it never was made." The Reformation in England was set going, and carried out, on the principle of keeping the continuity of the then existing Church un- broken.* Its old office books were retained as the basis of the revised formularies ; its 11 *"No other Reformed Church, " says Dr. Satiday, "kept ill view the usage of the early centuries so steadily and per- sist ntly, .... it was agreed that the practice of the Churcli of the first four General Councils, when it could be ascertained, was binding. But this principle covered a number of thin,.^s which the more advanced Reformers objected to as Roman. In fact it might be said that the Church of England only discarded what express proof of scripture compelled it to discard, whereas of Calvin and Zwingle it would be true to say that they only retained what express proof of scripture compelled them to retain " (' The Conception of the Prjeathpod '), THE CHURCH Oh THE APOSTLES? 57 ancient orders of ministers, its creeds, its sacra- ments and sacramental rites, its ceremonies and its canon law, except where they conflicted with the new condition of things, remain as they were in Catholic times. There is no trace in the English Statute Book of the disestablish- ment and disendowment of the pre-Reformaiion Church, and the establishment of a new Protes- tant one in its stead. There has been no such transfer from that day to this. The continuity was unbroken ; there was no Roman Church in England from the beginning of the Reformation, except during the brief reign of Mary, when the English Church submitted again to the Papal yoke, until the eleventh year of Elizabeth. In that year the Pope excommunicated the Queen, a/.d set up a separate schismatical Roman com- munion in England ; so that the Roman Church, in addition to its manifold corruptions of doc- trine and practice is a schism and an intrusion, and the Church of England to-day is, beyond all dispute, the ancient Catholic Church of this realm, reformed and restored : and they who have left us to join the Church of Rome, under the persuasion that they were being received into the Catholic Church, have committed the very sin they thought they were renouncing, and have separated from the Catholic Church to become members of a schismatical communion. !!' S8 IS THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND To bring this truth to the light, to force it upon the recognition of the world, to vindicate it for her own children, and to claim the whole heritage of faith and order and worship, which belongs to her as the ancient Catholic Church of this land, has been and is the very central aim of what is called the High Church movement. It needs no argument to show that the Church of England by the good providence of God occu- pies a position in which she not only has the right but is in duty bound to call aloud to all who have left her to " COME HOME." CHAPTER III. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. The Church of England, then, is not a Church of the Reformation, as is sometimes asserted. She was not brought into being by the action of Henry VHI. or of EHzabeth. She is the same Church, which (previously existing in a frag- mentary condition in the kingdoms of the Hept- archy) was united in one under Archbishop Theodore A.D. 673. The same Church of which it is enacted in the first clause of the Magna Charta "The Church of England shall be free." The same Church which in 1307 protested against Papal taxes and appointments, and in 1335 pro- hibited all appeals to Rome. The same Church which, as Dr. Dollinger declares, "from the end of the thirteenth century and constantly during the fourteenth had resisted the encroachments and extortionate demands of the Roman court. This Church, when the opportunity came, in the quarrel between the king and the Pope, who had too often in her past history acted together in corrupting and oppressing her, rose up in her might and threw off those corruptions." This 59 I II: 60 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. was done in the most orderly and Catholic way. It was not the act of the State. It was not the act of the king. " It was the act of the Church herself, in her regular convocations, and by the mouth of then existing unreformed Bishops — men who were using every day the Sarum missal, were freely holding transubstantiation, the seven sacraments, auricular confession, and many of whom afterwards stiffly refused any further changes. It was by these men in the convoca- tion of 1 53 1 — three years before the Crown took action, that the Church of England cast off from her neck the fatal incubus of the Papal supre- macy " (Curteis). And not only so, not only did The convocation of the Province of Canterbury, in the 27th year of Archbishop Warham, on the iithFeb., 1531, passed unanimo consensu, the following declaration: Ecclesiae et Cleri AngHcani cujus singulareni Protectorem unicum et suprenmm dominum, et (quantum per Christi legcem Hcet) etiani suprem- um caput ipsius majestatem recognoscemus. " (Wilkes III, 724). The convocation of York did the same. This was three years before the king and Parliament took action. Again in '533 the convocation requests the king to withhold annates and first fruits from the Pope, and if he make process . , . then that the obedience of the people be withdrawn from the see of Rome. In 1534 six great Abbeys renounce the Pope's usurped supremacy. In 1538 convocation appeals to a gen- eral Council. Lingard says (IV, p. 253) that among all the Bishops of England only one man, Tonstall of Durham, thought it his duty to protest against the act of convocation which in •535 severed England from the Papacy. He says further that the oath of the king's supremacy was taken by Fisher of Rochester, and in all probability by Reginald Pole. 1 1 I 4 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. 6i the Clergy after three days' debate, thus break with Rome : not only did the Laity, assembled in Parliament, afterwards endorse what was done, but also the Universities, the Cathedral bodies and even the great Monasteries themselves ex- pressed their full concurrence with the action of the convocations. It is impossible to conceive, therefore, of a more thoroughly unanimous movement of the English Church, expressing its concurrence in the most legitimate wiiy ; and by the actions of those who were her true repre- sentatives and governors at that time. And, having thus freed herself, she proceeded, as a national branch of the Catholic Church had a recognized right to do ; not to originate a new Church, not to introduce new modes of worship, new ordinances, new service books, new canons and a new ritual ; no, but to revise and translate and adapt to her altered conditions, those that had long been in use, and to present them for the sanction of the vState, which then fully and fairly represented the lay element of the Church. And all this was done without the slightest thought of separating from the communion of the Catholic Church, or of doing aught which was not recognized as being within the jurisdiction of the several national branches of that Church. She had no idea of breaking off communion with the Church of other lands, but only of setting 62 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. her own house in order, according to the best light she had ; for she has declared "In these our doings we condemn no other nations, nor prescribe anything but to our own people only." She hoped that the example she was setting of an orderly, sober-minded, and conservative refor- mation might commend itself to other national Churches, and that a future general council, to which she declared herself ready to submit, might impartially review, modify or expand what she had done, as might seem best for all the national Churches. Thus Bishop Jewel in 1562 writes: "When, therefore, the expectation of a general council was very uncertain we proceeded, and have ac- cordingly done that which may both be lawfully done, and which hath already been often done by many pious men and Catholic Bishops, i.e., to take care of our own Church in a provincial synod. For so we see the Ancient Fathers ever took that course before they came to a general and public council of the whole world. And this position is justified by Lancelot the Roman Canonist, who says that 'things which are en- acted by these (provincial councils) even the Catholic Church receives.' " Convinced of the abuses, corruptions and superstitions that had crept into her during the long ages of her history, what more could the J !' THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. 63 Church of England have done to purge her own conscience, and to conciliate the good will of all professing Christians? What greater claim could any body have to the allegiance of all people within her jurisdiction than that which her his- tory supplies? Why then has she been assailed on the right hand and the left, through the whole period of her reformed history ? Why have so many who nationally owe her their allegiance and support, separated from her, and done everything in their power to hinder, depress and destroy her? The answer to this question is very important. It can only be satisfactorily given by recalling the history of the Reforming and the Reformed period of the Church of England's life; and by stating, as far as possible, in their own language, the reasons given for their action by those who have assailed her and separated from her. It is not necessary to trace here the gradual usurpations of the Roman see, or the way in which corruptions in doctrine and superstitions in practice had crept in, and been promoted by Papal influence and example. It is enough to remember that matters had reached such a pass that the greatest of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical historians has deliberately written, " For four centuries, from all nations and in all languages, were thousandfold accusations raised against the 64 THE CHURCH OF ENGLASD REFORMED. iti y ambitions, tyranny and greed of the Popes, their profanation of holy things, and their making all the nations of Christendom the prey of their ra- pacity. So that a reformation of these monstrous abuses could not have been much longer de- layed." When the strain could no longer be endured, and the outbreak came, the reaction was terrible. The same authority tells us that within 20 years after Luther burnt the Papal Bull, two -thirds of the entire Western Church had renounced the Roman obedience and had joined the reform- ing movement. The excitement and bewilder- ment were overwhelming, the old moorings had given way — the ship was drifting. Men had not time to consider the theoretical principles in- volved in their action. They did not for the most part intend to separate from the Church or to start a new one, but only to correct abuses that lay thick around them on every side. Under the blinding influence of the long-endured Papal Supremacy they had lost all true conception of what the Church of Christ is, and of its divine constitution and order. Many of the Bishops were known to them, rather as civil than is ecclesiastical functionaries. Barons .! nd T who lived in lordly castles, kept sta s, went to war like other rulers, live in lu ly, and too often in licentiousness. And so I. ither, THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. 6s 1:1 Zwingle and Calvin carried on their several movements without them ; setting their author- ity and guidance at defiance, as Zwingle did ; and refusing, as Luther did, to concede to them their rightful place, even when they renounced their high worldly estate, and cast in their lot, as many of them did, with the reforming movement. The result of it all, however, as far as the conti- nent was concerned, was the breaking up of the divinely constituted organization of the Church — the rejection of and withdrawal from the Church of Apostolic origin, and the substitution for it of several new organizations, having no organic connection with it. So that the Reformation movement on the continent soon became a revo- lution, which swept away not only the ancient constitution of the Church, but also changed the doctrinal basis and that mode of worship which had had the sanction of the Christian world in every land from the very days of the Apostles. In England the movement was carried on on altogether different principles. There the aim was not to destroy but to reform, not to pull down but to restore, not to abolish but to re- pair. And so the ancient constitution of the Church, with its three orders, Bishops, Priests and Deacons, was retained. The ancient creeds were re-imposed, the ancient Service Books translated, revised and adapted to the needs of the changed conditions. 66 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. Now though this plan of Reformation was adopted at the outset, and persevered in through- out the whole course of her reforming history, yet the mind of the English people was greatly influenced, almost from the beginning of the movement, by what was being done by the Re- formers on the Continent. The Lutheran wave, which was more moderate in tone, and more conversative in action, greatly influenced at first the movement in England. Before long, how- ever, it was followed by the far more radical and sweeping wave of Calvinism, so that many of the leaders of the movement in England, includ- ing Iidward VI himself, became altogether dis- satisfied with the character and results of the En^r- lish Reformation. They were taking steps for giving it a f^ir more radical character, when their operations were speedily brought to an end by the death of Edward and the accession of Mary. Mary set herself at once to restore the Papal power and to extirpate all the authors and fav- ourers of the Reformation. As a result many of the English Reformers sought safety in flight. They for the most part took up their abode at Geneva and Zurich and Frankfort. On the death of Mary they came flocking back to Eng- land thoroughly enamoured with the Calvinistic system of doctrine, discipline and worship. They were full of zeal for its establishment in England, THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. 67 in lieu of the Reformation, which up to this date had been carried on on Catholic lines. Their desire, however, was not to set up a separate or- ganization or to make a new Church, but to Calvinize and prtsbyterianize the Church o( England. To accomplish this end they labored with amazing energy and zeal during the whole time covered by the reigns of Elizabeth, James I, Charles I and the Commonwealth. Mozley says, "Their fanatical preachers overran the land like locusts, and spread their doctrines with the zeal and license of preaching friars. They abounded and sprang up with luxurious and prolific growth all over the Church, many be- came preachers without any ordination or author- ity ; they were a frenzied, froward, and undisci- plined mass, and full of angry enthusiasm." Hume says of their preachers, " They affected a furious zeal for religion, morose manners, a vul- gar and familiar and yet mysterious cant, while the people were infected with a dismal fanati- cism." Macaulay says, "The tests of real god- liness which the Puritans set up, when they had their own way, were the sad-colored dress, the sour look, the straight hair, the nasal whine, the speech interspersed with quaint texts, the abhor- rence of comedies, cards and hawkings. The sincere Puritans were swallowed up in a multi- tude of the worst sort of worldly men, who talked !. If ,1 68 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. w about sweet experiences and comfortable texts of scripture, and yet lived, many of them, in the constant practice of rapacity and secret debauch- ery." The result was that during the reigns of James I and Charles I, Calvinistic principles and Calvinistic Theology, and Theory of Church government became dominant not only among the people, but among the Bishops and in the Universities. Their influence and numbers moreover stead- ily increased. When Parker was made Arch- bishop he found himself in command of un- controllable forces. The Bishops and Clergy generally were so thoroughly Calvinized, that for the most part they accepted the Prayer Book not for what it was, but for what they expected to be able to make it. Grindal, and Sandys, and Parkhurst, and Cox had returned from their exile at Zurich, or Frankfort or Geneva, thorough adherents of the principles of Calvin, and filled with zeal to teach them to the English Church. Moreover the drift in this revolutionary direction had become so over- whelming, that there were now no candidates for orders but those who sympathized strongly with the Calvinistic system. y\nd what was of more serious importance still, there were now no theo- logical text books but the Institutes of Calvin. The text books of the middle ages, written by THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. 69 Aquinas, Peter Lombard and Dun Scotus, etc., had long ago been condemned and consigned to the flames. Hooker, and Andrews, and Taylor, and Pearson had not yet written. Calvin's In- stitutes were the only system of theology in reach, and they alone were used in both the Universities for the instruction of the Clergy of the Church of England for more than two gene- rations. The substance of their teaching is tersely summarized in the Westminster Confession of Faith, and cannot, as far as the writer can see, be acquitted of absolute F'atalism. It declares (i) " Ggu from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and un- changeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass." Again, " By the decree of God, for the manifes- tation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death. These angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly and unchangeably designed and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished." "Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life God . . . hath chosen in Christ unto His own glory, out of His mere free grace with- out any foresight of faith or good works or per- severance in either of them, or any other thing ra !.; ssuoa 70 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. V. ^ l\ ■' i^^i'-i in the creature as conditions or causes moving Him thereto, and all to the praise of His glori- ous grace." " Neither are any other redeemed by Christ effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified and saved but the Elect only." *'The rest of mankind God was pleased ... for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures to pass by and ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sins, to the praise of His glorious justice." (Chap. HI., Confession of Faith.) Again, (Chap. X.) "All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only He is pleased, in His appointed and accepted time, ef- fectually to call." "This effectual call is of God's free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, who is alto- gether passive therein. Elect infants, dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit. . . . Others not elected . , . cannot be saved." The whole Confession of P'aith is based upon and permeated by this doctrine. I make no comments upon the meaning of these statements. I will give it to you in the language of the Ori- ginator and Propagators of this system. Calvin says: "Pred""sti nation we call the eternal decree of God, by wiiich He hath determined in Himself what He would have to become of every indivi- dual of mankind, for thev are not all created THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. 71 with a similar destiny ; but eternal life is fore- ordained for some and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or other of these ends, we say he is predes- tinated either to life or death." Zanchius, the Swiss Reformer, declares that "llie reprobate are bound by the ordinance of God under the necessity of sinning," and Beza, his country- man, "that God hath predestinated not only unto damnation but also unto the causes of it, whomsoever He saw meet. And Calvin again says of God's designs in relation to sinners, "He directs His voice to them, but it is that they may become more deaf ; He kindles a light, but it is that they may be more blind; He pub- lishes His doctrine, but it is that they may be made more besotted ; He applies a remedy, but it is that they may not be healed. And Peter Martyr, another Confrere, says, " God supplies wicked men with the opportunities of sinning, and inclines their hearts thereto ; He blinds, de- ceives and seduces them. He by His working on their hearts, bends and stirs them up to evil." And John Knox says, "The reprobate are not only left by God's suffering, but are compelled to sin by His power." Toplady, a Church of England Calvinist, among other awful utter- ances, says, " The sentence of God which rejects the reprobates is so hxed and immutable that it ■i\ .,;C 72 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. is impossible that they should be saved though they have performed all the works of the saints, and therefore it is not true that those who perish through their own fault might have been saved through grace, if they had not ceased laboring for saving grace." Men thus trained believed in the total deprav- ity of human nature, and taught that the Chris- tian life began in the secret election of a few, in- stead of in grace given to all in baptism. They denied that salvation was offered to all through the Cross of Christ. They substituted the con- gregation of the elect for the visible Church, and consigned the vast majority of the human race to everlasting damnation without any fault of their own. These new Clergy had lost the Catholic Church tradition, were ignorant of the Church's Theology, and did not understand her worship. The Universities and Bishopricks and chief benefices were filled with Calvinists who did not believe in or want the Church's system. Universal debasement of worship was the natural result, Churches neglected and dirty, chancels closed ; the Holy Table profaned by being- moved out into the Church and put to the commonest uses. The Holy Eucharist ceased to be the great service of the week ; it was now only administered three times a year. The Prayer Book had been practically settled I: THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. 73 as we have it to-day, before this system of doc- trine and sentiment became dominant in the Church. And not only were the Constitution and Ordinances which it embodied, but its doc- trinal and devotional system, so wholly unlike that which had become popular, that men of honest and logical minds could not long endure the inconsistency. And so there grew up almost from the first, two parties — those who accepted the established organization of the Church under Bishops, not as of divine obligation, but as a convenient, and on the whole, the best form of Church government ; which had the advantage of being imposed by lawful authority ; they obeyed the Prayer Book, to which they had no conscientious objections. These formed the Anglican party, and were the progenitors of the High Church party of to-day, though occupying a more hesitating position as to the character oi the Church, and the authority of the Ministry. Others, desiring a simpler service and ritual, and a doctrinal system wholly at variance with that of the Prayer Book, formed the Puritan Party. They held rigidly to Calvinistic doc- trines, and wished to substitute i'resbyterian for Episcopal government, they objected to any distinctive clerical dress, to kneeling at com- munion, to the use of the sign of the cross in baptism, and the ring in marriage. And thus E 1 l(ri Ksm If' ■'■ 74 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. there grew up those who conformed without any strong convictions, and those who would not conform under any conditions ; neither, how- ever, thought of leaving the Church of England, they merely strove with one another for ascend- ency. The Anglican felt it his first duty to maintain the national solidarity, by enforcing the adopted national system, of religion upon all. The Puri- tan set himself to purge that national system from what he regarded as superstition and Pop- ery, and to mould it after his own Gospel sys- tem ; each, therefore, sought to crush out the other. Queen Elizabeth was greatly perplexed by this internal strife, and was soon forced to take action. In September, 1560, she issued a decree to prohibit the defacing of carved work in Churches, and the destruction of painted windows, and shortly afterwards a decree to remedy the shameful negligence and irreverence with which the Churches were kept, and the Sacraments administered. Parker, who was then Archbishop, endeavor- ed to effect a compromise, and enjoined as a minimum of observance the use of the surplice in Parish Churches, and of the Cope in Cathed- ral and Collegiate Churches, kneeling at the Holy Communion, a decent vesting of the Holy Table, the use of a Font, and a distinctive cler- THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. 75 ical dress out of Church. Many of the Puritan leaders suffered deprivation rather than obey ; and these non-conformists were supported not only by a large number of the people, but by the Courtiers and the Bishops, many of whom refused to enforce the Advertisements, as the Archiepiscopal and Royal injunctions were called. Proposals were made in Parliament for the abolition of the practices which the Puritans disliked. The Queen, however, nipped the movement in the bud, and forbade Parliament to discuss any religious question, that had not received the approval of Convocation. The Puritans w^ere enraged, and resolved to carry the war into the enemies' country. Episcopacy was now fiercely attacked, and the Presbyterian system, as established at Geneva, was persist- ently advocated. Cartwright and Travers, the leaders of the Puritans, put forth a book of discipline, adapt- ing the Presbyterian system to the circumstances of the Church of England. They proposed to institute classes of Presbyters for Episcopacy to govern the Church, control Ceremonies and Ordinations. Ordinations by Bishops to be al- lowed as a ceremony required by law, but hav- ing no spiritual significance. It was not long, however, till the Puritan ministers refused to have' anything to do with the prescribed services. ill .■ L ■hi hi 76 Tf/E CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. They hired others to read the appointed prayers, and they came in when these were finished and preached the sermon. It was now plain that what they aimed at was not reform, but the aboH- tion of the Church of England. It was no longer a question as to whether changes of cere- monial and ritual could be devised to satisfy ten- der consciences, but whether the historical con- tinuity and structure of the Church of England should be destroyed, and a new religious body created in its stead. And so the strife grew more bitter. The Puritans now poured out the venom of their wrath against the Bishops in the Martin Marprelate ^ racts. On the accession of James I eight hundred Puritan ministers petitioned for the abolition of Confirmation, the sign of the cross in baptism, the ring in marriage, and the terms "priest" and "absolution" in the Prayer Book. The Hampton Court Conference was the result of this appeal. It soon, however, appeared that the Puritans demanded nothing less than the founding of a new Church, the alteration of the Articles, so as to teach particular election, and reprobation, indefectahle grace and the denial that salvation was purchased for all. And so the conference accomplished nothing, and the strife went on through the whole of James' reign with varying success. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. 77 Charles the First by his lack of tact and politi- cal wisdom, greatly exasperated and increased the Puritan forces. Laud had set himself from the first to put down the rampant Calvinism of his time. When he became Archbishop he looked around him for allies, but there was no help anywhere. The Universities were Calvinistic, the Bishops from the Archbishop down were Calvinists. The Parliament was intensely Cal- vinistic, and so were the people. Laud saw no help but in the Royal prerogative, and so, unfortunately, he set himself to develope, and then to use the absolutism of the King, to crush the dominant faction. This led to the identifi- cation, in the popular mind, of Puritanism with democracy and of the Church with absolute monarchy. Laud was led through political exi- gencies to courses and actions utterly wrong. And these were used by his enemies for that complete alienation of the people, which issued in the overthrow of Church and Kingdom alike. Cromwell hated the bigotry of the Presby- terians, and the success of his arms meant the triumph of Independency, which became now the dominant religion of the land. All, how- ever, were allowed the free exercise of their religion, except Papists, Prelatists and Anti- nomians ; in other words, all who were Cal- vinists, and they only. ■ \ 78 THE CHURCH OF ENGLANb REFORMEti. II: I I, .,1 • ri^i Eight thousand of the clergy of the Church were driven from their livings. They sought to maintain themselves by becoming tutors and private chaplains. Cromwell, however, passed an act forbidding them to teach or perform any rite of the Church or to use the Book of Com- mon Prayer, under pain of banishment. When at last the land, utterly sickened of Puritan rule, restored the Kingdom in the person of Charles II, the Church came back with him. The Savoy Conference was held with a view to reconciliation, but with the old result. The Convocation then proceeded to review the Prayer Book. More than 600 changes were made, and all in a Catholic direction. The term " Priest " was restored to twenty-seven places from which it had been expunged in the second Prayer Book, and the terms " Pastor" and "Minister" altogether cast out, except where they have no technical significance. The reformed Prayer Book was adopted by both Houses of Parliament and annexed to an act of uniformity which required all ministers to use the Prayer Book and none other, to repudi- ate the Solemn League and Covenant, to declare it unlawful to take up arms against the King. And all who had not been Episcopally ordained were required to be so ordained, before the 20th of June following. About sixteen hundred with i!^ THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. 79 their followers went out, and founded the Pres- byterian separation in England in 1662. For 130 years the Church had been in the throes of reformation. The struggle for ascend- ency was ended. But the Church started on her career with more than six thousand of her clergy aliens in conviction, in heart and in sympathy; and with too little honesty to lead them to act upon their convictions, rather than their inter- ests. It is a wonder that the Church survived. The transmission of the evil tradition of that time is the secret of the Church's division and weakness to-day. We must not be impatient if the evil in our day seems great and intolerable. The whole drift and tendency has been changed. The Church will yet, in spite of her present difficulties, be restored to her rightful heritage, will possess her own land, and, entrenched in her own fortress as the Reformed Catholic Church of this land, will go forth with banners, and be the rallying point for the reunion of the divided, scattered, distracted Christian hosts of to-day. It is easy, however, to see how this long strife within and without has hindered her progress, and has seemed to justify those who adhere, and those who have returned to the obedience of unrcformed Rome. DoUinger says that while during the first twenty years of the Reformation 'I 11 * t!I a i. .\^h -'O THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. movement two-thirds of the Western Church broke away from the Roman obedience and joined the Reformation movement, yet before fifty years more had passed the condition of chings was exactly reversed, and two-thirds of Europe had returned to the Roman obedience, while one-third remained Protestants ; and that this order has continued with little alteration down to our own time. He attributes this change partly to other causes, but chiefly to the multiplied and multiplying divisions among Protestants. It certainly has been so in Eng- land ; had it not been for the early importation of this Calvinistic leaven, and it^ consequent divisions, there would in all probability never have been a Roman Church set up amongst us, and if certainly would to-day have no alluring power if we could only heal our divisions and re-form on the basis of the first days. CHAPTER IV. WHY DID THE INDEPENDENTS LEAVE THEIR HOME, THE REFORMED CATHOLIC CHURCH OF ENGLAND? The Independents, or Congregationalists, as they are called in our day, were the first, in point of time, to separate from the Reformed Catholic Church of England. They were led by the Rev. Robert Brown, a regularly ordained clergyman of the Church. He was a hot-head- ed, turbulent sort of man, who had thoroughly imbibed the Calvin istic system of doctrine, but who speedily outstripped his Genevan teachers. He had been early brought into contact with the Anabaptists, who had been expelled from Hol- land because of their fanatical and anarchical principles, and had settled in Northamptonshire, where his ; irish lay. He seems to have reject- ed their caiuinal Anabaptist doctrines, while he very earnestly adopted their theory of Church Govern mem;. He began at once to advocate universal schism, or separation into individual congregations, as the normal and most desirable condition of the Christian Church. Those who 8i 4 gj WHY DID THE INDEPENDENTS LEA VE? had learned from Calvin the Presbyterian view of the ministry, had no idea at first of separat- ing from the National Church. What they de- sired and labored for was to Calvinize and Pres- byterianize the Church of England. They de- nounced schism, and continued in the Church of the land, until they became its dominant ele- ment. They only separated when, owing to the anti-Caivinistic reaction that had set in at the time of the Restoration, they plainly saw that all hope of their success was over and ended. The Rev. Robt. Brown agreed with the Pres- byterian Puritans in holding Calvinistic doc- trine ; but, on the question of discipline or Church government, he was thoroughly per- suaded that what they regarded as the divinely revealed and universally binding polity, was unscriptural and evil. He therefore refused to co-operate any longer with them. In 1588 he began to form separate congregations in accord- ance with his new theory, and in the year 1570 he took the field openly, and summoned every Puritan who would listen to him, to break up the National Church into as many incoherent fragments as there were congregations. This was being done at the very time that the Pope, convinced that England would no longer submit to his usurped supremacy, was drawing up his shameful proclamation, which he pub- iVHY DID THE INDEPENDENTS LEA VE? ^3 lished the same year, excommunicating Eliza- beth as a heretic, releasing her Lords and Com- mons from their oath of allegiance, and forbid- ding anyone, under pain of anathema, to obey her laws. It is not to be wondered at, that the preacher of schism and confusion in the National Church should at such a time be summoned be- fore the ecclesiastical commissioners, and stern- ly bidden to hold his peace. Brown seems to have been in no humour to suffer martyrdom for his cause, so he at once withdrew to Holland, where he expected to find among the Dutch Calvinists ready adherents to his new system. In this he was altogether disappointed, and, after a brief sojourn there, he removed to Scotland, where the Calvinistic party were now carrying all before them. But not meeting with a very welcome reception in the Northern Kingdom, he returned to England in 1585. Under the powerful protection of his uncle, Lord Burleigh, he published several books and tracts, which contain all the stock arguments of iiis followers to this day. For this action he was solemnly excommuni- cated by the Bishop of Northampton, and strange to say, headstrong and rebellious man as he was, he at once submitted himself to the Bishop, withdrew from his work of division, and spent the last forty-five years of his life in quiet seclu- ^1 I M w 84 WHY DID THE INDEPENDENTS LEA VE? n ;t 11 V sion in the Church of England. He died in the year 1630. He had, however, effectually sowed the seeds of revolution both in Church and State ; these took root and grew, until they issued in the dethronement and decapitation of the King, the abolition of Episcopacy, and the overthrow of Presbyterianism. In doctrine, as has been stated, the Independ- ents were as one with the Presbyterians and the Genevan Reformers. Their dispute with these was wholly one of discipline or Church Polity. The Presbyterians, in common with the whole Church before them, held the theory of the Div- ine authority of the ministry. They differed from us in holding that this authority resided in and was transmitted by the Presbyters, instead of by Bishops, as we, in common with the whole Catholic Church, maintain. In the time of the Long Parliament the assembly of Presbyterian Divines asserted their theory by a formal vote, and nearly induced the Parliament to pass a law to that effect. The Independents started from the directly opposite principles. In reality, it was the assertion that the people are the legiti- mate source of authority in religious matters. They maintained that any number of religious men might form themselves into a Church ; and that such Church had the power to govern itself, to originate its own ministry, to elect its own WHY DID THE INDEPENDENTS LEA VE? 85 ministers, and finally that there is no difference of order between the ministry and the laity. They have always, however, been greatly offend- ed if it is assumed that these ministers, whom they themselves regard as only laymen, are not on terms of perfect equality and authority with those who hold the loftiest sacerdotal doctrines. They asserted the right of every separate con- gregation to maintain a perfect independence in the government and administratior" of its own affairs ; so that all questions of f discipline and membership were decided / a majority vote of the congregation ; and from this decision there was no appeal. Hence every congrega- tion was at liberty to hold any theological opin- ions and to adopt any mode of worship at pleas- ure. This was, of course, a rejection of the truth plainly taught in Holy Scriptures, and held by the Catholic Church in every age, and in every land, that there is One Faith once for all deliv- ered, imposed upon the Church, and which must be held by all Christians. It assumes that the sin of schism, so sternly denounced in Holy Scripture, cannot exist ; as it is not only light, but a duty, to divide the Church up into congre- gational fragments ; and that if any man or set of men choose to withdraw from one of these fragments, he can start another Church which I 86 WHY DID THE INDEPENDENTS LEA VE? W V h^ will stand on a perfect equality with that from which he separated, and will in no sense be a schism from it, and yet, anti-scriptural and sui- cidal as this theory seems, it is perhaps only the logical outcome of the Calvinistic notion that the Church in its New Testament sense is not an organized visible body at all, but only a spiritual association, consisting of God's elect scattered throughout the world. It was held, Firsts that all careful and elab- orate organization seems to contradict this theory, and to assume for itself that importance which belongs not to it, but to the true, invisible Church of the elect. And so these revolutionists held that all larger and grander schemes of organization than that of the Congregation were wrong in principle and dangerous in practice. Each separate and isolated congregation is therefore held to be a sovereign state, possess- ing the absolute and uncontrolled right to manage and settle its own affairs whether of doctrine, ritual, or discipline. This was and is the cardinal doctrine of Congregationalism. Second. It is held, in addition to this absolute congregational independence, that every congre- gation is bound to reject every relic of secular interference ; and so all modern Congregation- alists maintain, though they thought very differ- er.tly at first, that it is a duty to reject all public WHY DID THE INDEPENDENTS LEA VE? 87 moneys, and to maintain such organization as is permissible by payments on the part of the laity out of their private property. Third. This loose and curious system was held to be Divine and not human, and is, there- fore, a matter of awful and positive obligation. Submission to it is submission to the will of Christ ; rejection of it is rejection of the com- mand of God. Now it is on these three pillars that the whole structure of Congregationalism of the present day stands. If they are true they convict the whole Christian world of gross misconception of what the Church was meant to be ; and they necessitate the overthrow of all the existing or- ganizations of Christendom. Happily it needs no elaborate argument to discover the untruth of this strange theory. One cannot help wondering how it was ever de- vised or how it has stood in the face of the plain declaration of Scripture. For, so far from there being as many separate independent bodies as there are congregations, we are told expressly that there is One Body, and that Christ is the Head of the Body, the Church. And, so far from each congregation being left to settle its own faith, we are told expressly that there is but One Faith, the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints. And, so far from discip- [ I f m <>i Ei ■ ■|i: : 88 WHY DID THE INDhPENDENlS LEA VE? line being left to the judgment or will of each congregation, St. Paul appeals to the judgment and practice of all the congregations, as being definitive in this matter, "we have no such cus- tom, neither the Churches of God." We read that the Churches {i.e., the different congregations of the one Church) were estab- lished not in their faith, but in the Faith. The subject, however, need not be further pursued. Congregationalism itself has practi- cally abandoned the whole foundation upon which their separation was based. The people no longer believe in the Calvinistic doctrines, and the ministers dare not preach them, even if they still think them true ; and the theory that the Churcii consists of isolated congregational fragments, each standing apart and complete in itself, has also been abandoned. In the year 1834 a Congregational union was formed for the purpose, indeed, of acting together for the over- throw of the English establishment. That Union has extended itself throughout the body, and is continued to this day, its objects be- ing precisely similar to those aimed at by the Synods and assemblies of other Christian bodies. Apologies are made and imaginery safeguards set up to conceal from themselves and others the abandonment of their fundamental principles, which this Union implies. No ingenuity, how- I WI/Y DID THE INDEPENDENTS LEA VE? 89 ever, can veil the obvious truth that this Union exists simply to provide de novo, and amid a cloud of imaginary safeguards, precisely that bond of Union which the Church had safely provided for her people more than fifteen hun- dred years before Congregationalism came into being, and which, common sense suggests, is essential to the Orthodoxy, stability and progress of the Kingdom of God. Congregationalism, like all the separating communities, has broken up into numerous groups. One large section, both in England and America, having lapsed into Unitarianism, and many others holding all shades of philoso- phical and religious belief. For the purposes of this treatise it is not necessary to pursue the his- tory of these separate sections. In effect, they have all abandoned what they regarded as the constraining principles upon which their separation was based. Like the other bodies of Puritanical origin they have practically abandoned that Calvinistic system of doctrine, the root out of which their whole sys- tem grew, and they have put to shame their Progenitors' notions about plain churches and simple attire, by the elaborateness of their ecclesiastical structures, and the gorgeousness of their adornment. And so all the reasons which led to their separation have been practi- 90 WHY DID THE INDEPENDENTS LEA VE? cally abandoned or found by long experience to be unworkable. Their Mother, the Reformed Catholic Church of England, therefore, keeps her doors wide open and calls aloud to them to-day through the din of the many confusing voices that are sound- ing in their ears, *' Come Home." There is no liberty of thought or action which any reasonable man can desire, that is not secured to him in the Congregation, in the Diocese, and in the Church as a whole, while there is cast around him the strength and guidance and consolation and courage which a great company of Believers professing One Faith, worshipping One God, trusting in One Lord Jesus Christ, animated by One Inspiring Spirit, and pressing towards one hope, can alone impart. Therefore the call is '' Come Home;" let us be On^ Family of God, and dwell in the One House of God. 1 ( CHAPTER V. WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE FROM THE REFORMED CATHOLIC CHURCH OF THIS REALM? The next great secession, following close upon that of the Independents, which rent and weak- ened the Reformed Church of England, was that of the Romanists. All the changes effected during the reigns of Henry VHI and Ed- ward VI, and up to the eleventh year of Eliza- beth, had been either actively welcomed, or pas- sively acquiesced in, by the whole English peo- ple. Opinions differed widely as to the wisdom of what was being done, and ought to be done, but no separation from the ancient Church of the land had yet taken place. There were 9,400 priests in England, and less than 200 of these refused to conform to the changes that were be- ing made. It is said that the Pope, Pius V, made it known to Elizabeth through his Legate that he would sanction the reforms already effected and allow the first Prayer Book to be used, if the Queen and Church of England would acknowledge his supremacy, and return to the Roman obedience. 91 ■' a T I m IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 lie 1.4 IM M M 2.2 M 1.6 ^<^# ^ i*^ ^>- w s^. /^ y Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 % 92 IVffY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? ■ lilt When this was refused, he at once issued the disgraceful Bull, A.D. 1570, in which he ex- communicated the Queen, released her subjects from her allegiance, and set up a rival Roman Catholic Church in England. It was not the ancient Catholic Church of the land, for she had reformed herself on Catholic principles. It was a new institution in England, introduced for the purpose of subverting the ancient Catholic Church. This action of the Pope, however, compelled men to choose between allegiance to their own ancient National Church, and alle- giance to him who was at that time universally acknowledged throughout the West as the visi- ble Head of the Church, the Vicar and Vice- gerent of Christ. A considerable number of those who were more or less afraid of the lengths to which the Reformation had gone, now with- di'ew from the Church of their Fathers, and joined the new schismatical Roman Communion, which the Pope was introducmg. Like the Independents, who had briefly pre- ceded them in their secession, these Roman re- cusants, as they were called, separated mainly on a matter of external order, or Church gov- ernment ; only they went in opposite direc- tions. The Independents had persuaded them- selves that a democracy was the sole divinely appointed form of Church government ; the WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? 93 Romanists, on the other hand, clung to the Papal despotism as of absolutely divine authority and perpetual obligation. They, therefore, felt themselves constrained to render implicit obedi- ence to whatever Christ's supposed Vicegerent should order. And so, when he called upon them to separate from the ancient Catholic Church of the land and join his new Commun- ion, many of them feU that there was no course open to them but to cb^n - Their numbers, however, were not great, and on the death of the Queen of Scots, by which their hopes of re- establishing the Papal supremacy were crushed, many of the recusants returned to the National Church. In our own day Roman proselytisers make such constant boasting of the number of con- verts they are making, that many uninformed people think they have become a great power in the land. It has, however, been recently ascer- tained that the whole number of really English- born Romanists does not exceed 180,000, while even the Baptists number 700,000, and the In- dependents not less than 1,000,000. Their great political influence is due wholly to their prepon- derence in Ireland, and their dominance there over all candidates for political honors. The question, however, in which we are at present interested is, On what grounds did this second 94 WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? ■ i m-' |t ', secession take place, and why is it so persistently maintained ? The manifest answer is, that the men of that time who joined the Roman secession were de- ceived, and the men of the present time refuse to be undeceived. The truth about the Pope was not then known. It was everywhere sup- posed, at that time, that Christ before His As- cension, had organized the Church just as it was known to the men of mediaeval times. It was believed that Peter was a real Pope, and that he had presided in his Cathedral at Rome for twenty-five years, seven months, and eight days, and that he ruled the Church just as Innocent III or Martin V were ruling it at that time. All the history of the Church, as the best men then knew it, every canon, letter and quotation from the Fathers went to confirm this impression , and establish the fact of Peter's monarchy over the whole Church, and his transmission of that authority to the successive occupants of the Roman See. If ever any one was disposed to question the correctness of that teaching he was referred to St. Cyril of Alexandria in the fifth century, who was quoted as saying, ** Just as the Son of God received from His Father the government of the Church and of the nations, so that every knee must bow to Him, so the same ample power did WHY Din THD ROMANISTS SEPARATE? 95 He commit to Peter and his successors." He was referred to St. Augustine as saying '* Rome hath spoken, the question is settled ; " to St. Cyprian of the third century, saying, " How can he believe himself to be in the Church, who forsakes the chair of St. Peter," and to Irenreus of the second century, saying, "It is necessary that all depend upon the Church of Rome, as on a well-spring or a head." And even Anacletus, the second successor of St. Peter, A. D. 78, was quoted as saying, '^ Let all the more important and difficult cases that may arise be referred to the Apostolic See, for so the Apostles decreed under the express bidding of the Saviour." How could any ordinary man feel safe in abiding in his own National Church of England, when he saw her renouncing this authority, and herself cut off in consequence from communion with that Church which they upheld, and M'^hich he had been taught to regard as the Mother and Mistress of all Churches. If he was not satisfied with this proof he was referred to a whole series of ante-Nicene Popes, including St. Peter him- self, all supporting the Papal claims. The Council of Sinuessa, A. D. 303, was referred to as having enacted ** That the first See is to be judged by no man," though it is now certain that no such Council was ever held. The Council of Nicea itself was quoted as ordering 96 WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? m \m. r - I that all Episcopal appeals be taken before the Bishop of Rome. St. Augustine, the most authoritative teacher of the West, was quoted as placing the decrees of the Popes upon the same level of inspiration as the Bible itself, and say- ing " the Epistles issued by the Holy See form part of the Canonical Scriptures." And yet it is now and has been long known, and for the most part acknowledged e/en by Jesuits and Popes, that these passages are one and all a series of gross forgeries. There is not even one of-them that has escaped the hand of disgraceful imposture. But the most daring and most shamefal im- posture of all, by which honest men in mediaeval times were deceived was the forgery of what is known as the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals. These forgeries were produced by an unknown forger in the 9th century, and consisted of a collection of letters, purporting to be written by thirty of the earliest Popes of Rome, during the first four centuries of the Christian era. The object of the writer of them was to exaggerate and increase the Papal prerogatives and power, at the expense of the rights of the Bishops. The strange thing is that these wholesale and bare- faced forgeries were implicitly believed in, even by the most learned men of that time, for seven centuries, and their imposture was never publicly WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? 97 detected till the era of the Reformation. When, however, it had been exposed by Protestant writers, it was soon acknowledged by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Tarragona in Spain, then by Cardinal Baronius, the great Roman Catholic historian (A.D. 1607) ; then by Cardinal Bellar- min (162 1) ; and, since tha" time, the most devoted adherents of the Roman See have been oblig.^.d to acknowledge the vast imposture. Pope Pius VI, 1789, judged it to be worthy of the flames. And yet this transparent forgery did more than anything else to establish the Papal autocracy, and to deceive men of the i6th century into withdrawing their allegiance from the ancient Catholic Church of England, and transferring it to the heretical intrusion which the Pope had set up. This, then, was the first and chief reason for the Roman secession in England. The Pope claimed then, as his predecessors since the closing years of the eleventh century had con- tinued to claim, to be God's Vicegerents upon earth, set to watch over the several religious and political conditions of mankind. That, as such. Kings and Princes are absolutely and universally subject to the Pope, so that, as Gregory VII expressed it, he could give, or take away at his will. Kingdoms, Duchies, Earldoms, in a word, the possessions of all men; mm 98 WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? ■SH! that all Bishops derive their authority from and are absolutely subject to his will. The leaders of the Reformation in England had the grace and the courage to reject these absurd and extravagant claims ; and that re- jection was the chief cause for the Roman separation from the ancient Catholic Church of the land, and for setting up in opposition to it, now reformed, the Roman Catholic Schism. TRANSUBSTANTIATION. In addition to this chief cause, there were others of a doctrinal character, the rejection of which seemed to the men of that time to be in direct opposition to the transcendent place and power which they had been taught to believe belonged in its fulness to the Roman Commun- ion. One of the chief of these was the doctrine of Transubstantiation, as then current and be- lieved in throughout the West. That doctrine, as explained in the summa Theologiae of Thom- as Aquinas, taught that " the substance of the bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist is by the prayer of consecration miraculously converted into the Body and Blood of Christ, so that, after that prayer has been said, the bread is gone, and so is the wine. The accidents as the schoolmen called them — that is the shape, the color, the taste, the feel, the smell — remain un- ^ WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? 99 changed." But the accidents of nothing, have no substance whatever ; they are appearances and they are nothing more. This gross conception of the Eucharistic mys- tery, based upon the realistic philosophy of Aristotle, which has long ago been exploded, the Church of England has condemned as un- scriptural and inconsistent with the very nature of a sacrament, and as having led to a debasing and shameful traffic in holy things. Instead of this carnal prying into this mystery of God unveiled, the Reformed Church of Eng- land contented hi^rself with declaring that this great sacrament has ' ' its outward part, the bread and the wine, which the Lord hath command- ed to be received," and " its inward part, the Body and Blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper." The communicants are as- sured in the Communion Office that " if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive that Holy Sacrament, then we spiritually eat the Flesh of Christ and drink His Blood. We are one with Christ and Christ with us. We dwell in Christ and Christ in us." And in the XXV HI Article she declares that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the bread which we break is the partaking of the Body of Christ, and likewise the cup of ^ lOO WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ, which are given, taken, and eaten only after a spiritual and heavenly manner ; and the means by which they are received is faith." All attempts to solve the mystery by which the outward sign is identified with and conveys to believing souls the inward grace are purpose- ly avoided. This change in the conception of the Holy Eucharist from the realm of the natural to the supernatural ; from the grossly carnal to the spiritual, was the second reason assigned by the Roman party for separating from the ancient Church when reformed, and for setting up a new rival Communion in the land. WORSHIP. In the mediaeval Church, worship had become very complex. It was defined by the great Masters, such as Thomas Aquinas, as being of various kinds and degrees. The distinctions tended greatly to confuse the minds of ordinary Christians as to the very character and meaning of worship — the worship of the Blessed Virgin, of Saints and Angels, and the semi-worship of relics, pictures, statues, and holy places, were theoretically defined as differing from one an- other, and from the worship due to God ; but in language, attitude, and act, they were not and are not distinguishable. There is nothing like t WI/Y DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? loi these prayers in the Bible, and the Church of England as reformed will not permit their use to her members. She has swept away all wor- ship except the worship of God. For this reason, again, those who thought the Church was going too far, separated from her and set up a rival Communion. SALVATION. The very basis of salvation had become great- ly obscured in the practical system and teaching of the Roman Church of that day. The teach- ing alike of Holy Scripture, and of the Primi- tive Church makes human salvation to be God's work, and God's free gift. He wrought out that salvation upon the Cross. He confers that salvation upon us as a free gift, when He adopts us into His family in Holy Baptism. He im- parts to us His life, that life which is hid in Christ, that life which He came into the world that we might have, and have in ever-increasing abundance, to be the divine leaven to leaven our human nature, to be in us the power of God unto salvation — that we may grow up into Him, that our bodies may be temples of the Holy Ghost, an habitation of God through the Spirit; that Christ may be in us, our hope of Glory. Our part is not to earn salvation by what we do, or feel, or say, but to realize it as His work, r .; I'i i l! •' 102 WHY DID THE ROMAIC ISTS SEPARATE? to accept it as His free gift ; to live the same life in Him, to trust not in ourselves, our feel- ings, or our works, but in Him ; and to seek to become, as He intended us to be, the instruments of His will, workers with Him, as He works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure ; or, in other words, we are accounted righteous be- fore God only for the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deserving. For asserting this scriptural and rational position, which calls for the constant exercise of the faith of the mind, the trust of the soul, the love of the heart, and the allegiance of the life, as the conditions of continuing in that state of salvation to which we have been called, and for rejecting that system which transforms the whole work of salvation into a material, commercial, transaction making it to depend in the conception of the people, in its inception and end, upon so many Mass<5S offered, so many prayers said, so many acts of penance performed, so many''good works done ; and transforming the whole life of the Christian into a bondage of fear, instead of a glad service of love to a loving father, ** So much pay for so much work. done, the toil of a slave, not the love of a son " ; for making this change among others, a considerable number of English people separated from the ancient Church of England WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? 103 as reformed, and joined the rival Papal Com- munion. PURGATORY. The popular doctrine of Purgatory prevalent at the time of the Reformation, and still generally accepted by uneducated Roman Catholics, is that at death souls not good enough to go to Heaven or bad enough to go to Hell, are de- tained in Purgatory for some time, that they may be purified from the stains of sin, and be made fit to be engulfed in the infinite sanctity and purity of God. They are represented there as suffering pains in fire and torment intolerable, God only knows how long. Sir Thomas Moore, in his works, p. 316, says : " Torments incom- parably greater than the bitterest anguish of this life." The key of Heaven (Bellarmine) teaches (De Purgatoro lib. H.) ''tb- 1 the fire is corporeal, that souls suffering in it are sure of salvation and that they may be aided, their sufferings diminished and shortened by the prayers of the faithful." Upon this doctrine is based the whole present system of indulgences as practised in the Roman Church. An indulgence, which the Pope, as the treasurer of the superabundant merits of Christ and of His saints, is said to be empowered to grant it is held, secures deliver- ance for him to whom it is granted, for whatever time it specifies, from the pains that would have il T' ;i !: u t04 WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? to be endured during that length of time, if it had not been obtained, seven years, or fifty-six thousand years as is sometimes mentioned, the length of time depending upon the sum paid for the indulgence. This Roman doctrine concerning Purgatory, pardons, etc., the Church of England when reformed rejected, "as a fond thing vainly in- vented and grounded upon no warranty of scrip- ture, but rather repugnant to the word of God," (Art. XXII.) There is no trace of the doctrine in the primitive church. It is distinctly contra- dicted by Justin Martyr, A.D. 135; by Irenaeus, A.D. 170; by Tertullian, A.D. 218; by Lac- tantius, A.D. 330; by St. Hilary, A.D. 360; by St. Ambrose, A.D. 398. It was first formu- lated in an Indefinite way, in the beginning of the 7th century, by Gregory the Great. It had, however, become so embedded in the mind of the mediaeval church, that many of her other children left the ancient Catholic Church of England, and joined the new Roman Schism because she rejected this among other doctrines then generally held. OTHER CHANGES. i'.i i;»i The other principal changes which led to this first departure of her children from the ancient home was, first the enactment that '* the public ii WHY DID THE RO2MANISTS SEPARATE? 105 services of the Church should be conducted in a language understanded by the people," an en- actment which must surely commend itself to the common sense and charity of all men. Secondly, that the Lord's Supper should be administered in both kinds, or that the cup should not be denied to lay people, a change which Holy Scripture seems not only to sanc- tion but imperatively to demand, and which the universal practice of the first fourteen hundred years of the Church's history abundantly justifies. And thirdly, the permission to Bishops, Priests and Deacons to marry, as other men do, at their own discretion. Whatever may be thought about the desirability of clerical celibacy, no ont who knows the corruption of life, the open and winked-at concubinage that resulted from the enforced celibacy of the later mediaeval times, can withhold his assent from the wisdom of this change. For these reasons and others of minor import- ance the Church of Rome refused to hold any further intercourse with the Church of England, separated from her, and set up a rival commun- ion within her jurisdiction, and drew away a large number of her children. No argument is needed to prove that the separation for which Rome is responsible, does not destroy the continuity or Catholic character of the Church of England, any more than a [ i ■MM '"I ,; :;)';,, J ■'''i • !;■; I 1 ■ • M Klf I!.:! 106 IV//V DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? quarrel between two sisters would destroy the rights and liberties and life of the younger, if the elder became very angry with her, and would not have any intercourse with her, be- cause she would no longer submit to her dicta- tion and guidance. Now, it is quite true that the Roman Catholic Church has not formally aban- doned any of the doctrines or usages for the rejection of which she cast out our name as evil, nor has she formal!/ acknowledged the position of the Church of England as justifiable ; but, practically, her theory of supremacy over the civil powers is abandoned and can never again be effectually revived. Second. — Her doctrine of Transubstantiation, based upon the realistic philosophy which has long been exploded, is not held by any intelli- gent Roman Catholic. The doctrine of their best theologians when stated uncontroversially, has become the same as ours. Third. — Her doctrine of purgatory, as ex- plained by the best men, explodes the corporeal fire of Bellarmine, and represents the purgatory in which they now believe as differing but little from the progressive sanctification which seems to be necessarily implied in a life lived in the presence of the Lord in the land of the inter- mediate joy. Fourth. — Again, as to the sole object of wor- ship, Roman Catholic controversialists insist, \ WHY BID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE? 107 \ whatever their great theologians may have taught, or whatever their uneducated people may believe or do, that they know of no object of worship but God only ; and that all the ex- uberance of devotion, expressed in speech and act towards the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, is only intended for Him who is the fountain of all being, and all love. The other points mentioned, the conduct of the services in a language which the people understand, the marriage of the Clergy and the communion in both kinds, do not in the face of what their own earlier infallible teachers have said, admit of any further argument. And so we say to our brethren who have been brought up in, or who have submitted to, the Roman obedience, there never was anything in what the Catholic Church of England actually did, to justify your separation, and your setting up a rival communion. You admit tiiat you were deceived and misled by false documents and traditions into that separation. There is no reason therefore why you should not, there is every reason why you should, in the interests, not alone of peace, but of faith and charity, listen to the voice of your true Mother the Ancient Catholic Church of England, as she calls to you loudly and long, "COME HOME." '%§i I Hua Mm ! I.; 1 '■' . rii II I t CHAPTER VI. WHY DID THE PRESBYTERIANS SEPARATE FROM THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED? We have seen in Chapter III that the Calvin- istic system in doctrine, polity and worship, had won many converts in England even before the death of Edward VI. Their numbers and in- fluence began rapidly to increase on the return of the Marian exiles. These came back com- pletely enamoured with the whole Calvinistic system, and filled with zeal for its establishment in England. Their aim, however, at first was, as we have seen, not to set up a separate organi- zation or to make a new Church, but to Calvin- ize and Presbyterianize the Church of England. For the accomplishment of this end they laboured with unceasing energy and zeal. The Congre- gationalists, as we have seen, became impatient at the slow progress that was being made, and, being persuaded that Presbyterianism was not, after all, the divinely ordered system of Church government which it claimed to be, they separ- ated from the Church of England, the only re- ligious body then existing in the land, and in io8 WHY DID THE 1 RESBYTERIANS SEPARA TEP 109 1570 organized a new Church of their own. Some of the more aruent Puritans of the Pres- byterian type soon followed their example, and established a few congregations on the Presby- terian plan hereand there throughout thecountry. The first Presbytery being set up at Wands- worth in 1573. It would seem, however, that they intended these to be congregations of the Cli'irch of England, and models and foretastes of what the}'' were persuaded the whole Church of England would soon become. They hated schism, and under the pressure of the govern- ment they seem to have subsided, or, at all events, n.^t to have extended their organization. They, however, worked assiduously within the Church for the substitution of the Presbyterian form of Church government for Episcopacy, and the substitution of the doctrines and- forms of worship of the foreign Calvinistic Reformers for those of the Church of England. And, had it not been for the rapid rise and vigorous resist- ance of the anti-Calvinistic School under Laud, the Church of England would have been trans- formed into a Presbyterian sect, with its accom- panying Calvinistic doctrines, and debasement of worship. The failure to bring about this result, when success seemed to be just within their grasp, contributed not a little to array the whole Puritan party against the King in his r \ il ♦ : ? I )., i- ' I:; -'' 1, 1 lo IV/IV DID THE PRESS YTERIANS SEPARA TE ? impending conflict with the Parliamentary and popular government. It was certainly this failure which led the Parliamentary party into their humiliating alliance with the Presbyterians of Scotland, one of the conditions of that alli- ance being that the English Puritans should adopt the Solemn League and Covenant, which bound by oath those who subscribed to it to extirpate Popery and Prelacy, that is, to abolish the Church of England, and establish Presby- terianism in its place. SCOTCH PRESBYTERIANISM. It must, however, be remembered that the Presbyterianism of the British Isles, Presbyter- ianism as we know it, did not originate in Eng- land, but in Scotland. Presbyterians constantly tell us that they did not separate from the Church of England, that they never belonged to it, and that their uniting with it would not be a return to their old and natal Home. This is, of course, technically true. They did not belong to the Church of England, but they did belong to the Church of Scotland, which, like the Church of England, was a branch of the Catholic Church, the same body existing in different lands, living in union and communion with her. And while it is verbally true that they did not separate from the ancient Catholic Church of England, they m^V DID THE PRESB YTEPIANS SEPARA TE ? i ii did separate from the ancient Church of Scot- land, which is the same thing. Hume tells us that the movement which cul- minated in the establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland " was begun by many of the English Preachers, who were terrified by the severity of Mary's government, seeking asylum in Scot- land. The refugees propagated their own con- victions, and filled the land with a just horror at the cruelties that were being perpetrated by the Roman Catholics. As the Queen Regent of Scotland, though governing the kingdom with moderate and prudent counsels, was a Roman Catholic, certain lay leaders of the Reformers — the rJuke of Argyll, his son Lord Lome, the Earls of Morton and Glencairn, Erskine and others, observing the danger to which they were exposed, entered into a bond or association, and called themselves the Congregation of the Lord, in contradistinction to the existing Church, which they denominated the congregation of Satan." The unwise conduct of the authorities, both in Church and State, greatly exasperated these Reformers, and increased their numbers. And when the irritation was at its worst, John Knox arrived fresh from Geneva, where he had spent some years in banishment, and where, from his converse with Calvin, he had imbibed the highest enthusiasm of that sect, which was ff?p" ^f If 112 WHY DID THE PRESS YTERIA NS SEPA RA TE ? augmented by the native ferocity of his own character. He soon acquired uncontrolled auth- ority in the congregations and in civil aifairs. He constantly declaimed with the utmost vehe- mence against the idolatry and other abuses of the Church of Rome, and under the spell of his vehement oratory the people were roused to the utmost frenzy ; they pillaged the monasteries and churches, broke the images in pieces, tore the pictures from the walls, smashed the stained windows, overthrew the altars, scattered about the sacred vessels, and not only dismantled, but in the end, completely pulled down and destroyed the ancient Churches. Every cathedral in Scot- land, with the exception of that of Glasgow, which was saved by the spirited conduct of the citizens, and that of Orkney, which was saved by its distance from the scene of violence, was destroyed. The historical order in Scotland was as follows: In 1555 Knox took the lead of the Revolutionary Reformers. He abolished ordination. The first Book of Discipline was practically his. It de- creed (see page 508, Knoxs' History): "Other ceremony than the public approbation of the people and declaration of the chief minister that the person there presented is appointed to serve the church we cannot approve, for albeit the apostles used imposition of hands, yet, seeing IVHY DID THE PRESB YTERJANS SEPARA TE? 113 the miracle is ceased, the using of the ceremony we judge not necessary." This continued to be the use for eighteen years, and during that time there was no ordination, Presbyterian or Epis- copal. Then Melville, who had returned from the continent in 1574, persuaded them to adopt the Geneva form of ordination, but the ordainers were not themselves ordained. On this point Dr. Littledale writes: "There is no evidence, and no probability that any evidence exists, that the present Presbyterian pastorate in Scotland has even Presbyterian orders. For Knox abol- ished the imposition of hands at ordination. This lasted for eighteen years, and there is no evidence that when imposition of hands was re- introduced the old, merely elected pastors, were thus ordained, or that any other than they under- took to ordain the new ministers. And as the Priests who turned Presbyterian when the Scot- tish Church was again overthrown in the civil war, were kept in the background and not suf- fered to ordain, nothing was effected by their agency. Not a single Presbyterian minister in modern Scotland can produce even probable evi- dence that he can trace back his orders to a genuine presbyter." Scottish Presbyterianism is of Erastian origin, the creation of an Act of Parliament. The Bishops and ecclesiastical authorities generally 1 14 IVHV DID THE PRESB YTERIANS SEPARA TE ? I lMl| h !'"■ opposed the movement. The civil authority was appealed to, and the Parliament of 1560, by its authority, published " The Confession of Faith, professed and believed in by the Protestants within the realm of Scotland." On December 20, of the same year, these Protestants held their first general assembly and began operations as an organized denomination, being as yet only a small part of the community, and in opposition to the church and clergy of the ancient Church of Scotland. The wave, however, went on swelling, and sweeping all before it. The Bishops of Orkney, Caithness and Argyle joined the movement. Other Bishoprics became vacant by death. As the law then stood it was only Bishops who could draw the Episcopal revenues, only Abbots who could lift the rents of the abbey lands, and " as many of the lords of the congre- gation hungered and thirsted more after the corn fields of the monks than after righteousness, the Archbishoprics, Bishoprics and Abbacies were continued. They were, however, filled up with- out any regular or canonic::l consecrations, and it was everywhere whispered that the patrons had bargained with the presentees that a portion of the Episcopal revenues was to be handed over to them. This led to their being stigmatized as Tulchan bishops — they were only stuffed calves set up to make the cow give her milk.' Jf // Y DID THE PRESB YTERIANS SEPA RATE? 115 (Dr; John Cunningham S. Giles' Lecture, page 163). This TuichTH episcopacy continued till 1610, when, under the influence of James I, three persons, Spottiswood, Lamb and Hamilton, went to London, and were consecrated Bishops. On their return they consecrated the men who were in possession of the sees, and so the Church in Scotland, which had all along continued Epis- copal in name and in outward form, now became such again in reality. Andrew Melville returned from a ten years' residence in Geneva in 1574. He added great vigor and zeal to those who preferred a Presby- terian form of church government. His party continued to increase, till in 1637 ^^ey drove those of the Episcopal clergy who would not submit to Presbyterian rule out of their places in the Church. But the establishment of Presby- terianism at this period was no act of the Church. The clergy of Scotland, Hume says, '* were not the leaders. On the contrary, the laity, appre- hending a spirit of moderation in that order, re- solved to domineer entirely in the assembly. They meant to abolish Episcopacy, and, as pre- paratory thereto, they caused to be solemnly read in the churches an accusation against the Bishops, as guilty, all of them, of heresy, sim- ony, bribery, perjury, cheating, incest, adultery, f h 11 : It; ! p m ij 1 1 6 W'// K D/D^ THE PRESS YTERIA NS SEPA RA TE ? fornication, common swearing, drunkenness, gaming, breach of the Sabbath, and every other crime which could be thought of." The General Assembly, which met at Glas- gow, Nov. 17, 1638, and which was the highest ecclesiastical authority in the land, consisted by law of the King's Commissioner, the Bishops, the Inferior Clergy and the Lay Delegates. The Bishops protested against the assembly on the ground of illegality of the election of the Depu- ties, and refused to attend. The Marquis of Hamilton, as King's Commissioner, had the legal right to dissolve assembly, and he did so on the 29th of November, 1638.. After this dissolution of the assembly — in the absence of the Bishops and Ecclesiastical Autho- rities — Episcopacy was abolished, and Presby- terianism set up. Then followed the Rebellion and the Commonwealth. On the restoration of Charles II, 1660, the Episcopal clergy that survived were brought back to their places in Scotland as well as in England. On the 15th December, 1661, four persons were consecrated for the Scottish Epis- copal sees. On their return they filled up by consecration the other sees, as before, in 1637. Sydserf, of Galloway, was the only Scotch Bishop that survived the rebellion and remained faithful to the Church. The Earl of Glencairn WHY DID THE PRESB YTERIANS SEPARA TE? 117 has left it on record that the Episcopalians were six to one of the Presbyterians in Scotland at that time. This small remnant continued, how- ever, as a sect, in opposition to the Church. The act which has led to the Presbyterians being called the Church of Scotland is of later date. When William of Orange came to the throne in 1668 the Bishops and clergy generally, according to the notions of that time, felt them- selves bound by their oaths of allegiance to sup- port the House of Stuart as legitimate heir to the Crown, when James II abdicated. It is on re- cord that Compton, Bishop of London, stated to Rose, Bishop of Edinburgh, that William was satisfied that the great body of the nobility and gentry of Scotland were for Episcopacy, and that he had directed him to say that if the Epis- copalians of Scotland would undertake to serve him, he would support the Church and order, and throw off the Presbyterians. (Letherby's His- tory of the Non-Jurors, p. 416). They refused, and William, by an order published October 19th, 1689, took the Revenues of the Scotch Bishops and put them into his pocket. Ever since that time they have been paid into the royal exchequer. An Act passed in the Scotch Parliament, through the King's influence, on the 24th of April, 1690, gave the Presbyterian seceders the possession and control of the Church m 1 8 Wff V DID THE PRESB YTERIANS SEPA RA TE ? ilfi i ■ n % \ s f i l« .'4 edifices and property ; and on the 7th of June following the " Westminster Confession of Faith," was declared by the same authority to be the allowed and established confession of faith in Scotland, and the Presbyterian Church gov- ernment and discipline established, ratified and confirmed. The Bishops and Clergy refused compliance, and continued their ministrations as before, as far as the tyranny of the laws and Presbyterian intolerance made it possible. A large number of the people adhered to them, and the historical continuity and identity of the Church in Scot- land was not affected by its disestablishment. Nor could the establishment of a Sect, under a title which belonged to the Church, make it to be what it was not before — the Church of Scot- land. Our Blessed Lord came into the world not merely to preach a Gospel or set an example, or offer an atonement, but to establish a Kingdom, to found a Church. That Church He declared He would build upon a rock. The rock upon which He did build it was, St. Paul tells us. Himself, " He is^ the one only foundation, the chief corner-stone." The whole building rests upon Him, grows out of Him, lives in Him, is one with Him — His body. He appointed its officers, gave its laws, prescribed its ordinances WH V DID THE PRESS YTERIANS SEPARA TE? 119 of initiation and continuance, organized it as a visible outward society, animated by an inner hidden life ; made it a Divine Institution ; made its officers His representatives ; invested them with His authority ; promised to be with them to the end of the world, and sent them forth \o convert the nations. Starting from Jerusalem it spread from city to city, from land to land, till it reached the limits of the then known world — everywhere one and the same Church, living in union and communion ; its ordained and em- powered ministry the depository of its authority ; the organ of its extension, who, by admitting men into it, extended it from place to place and from age to age. In one place and another it fell into heresy, superstition ^and worldliness, but never until Zwinglius and Calvin arose did any man dare to set aside this Christ-commis- sioned ministry, to overturn this Divine Institu- tion and substitute another institution, which had no organic connection with, and had received no authority from, this historic institution or its rulers ; but, separating from the one and setting aside the other, set up a wholly new society which, after a while, they called a church. This was the fruitful mother of what are called the churches of the divided and distracted Christen- dom of to-day. It has been held, logically enough, that if these Reformers had a right to :, ■M ':. lii 120 WHY DID THE PRESB YTERIANS SEPARA TE ? found a new church, having no organic connec- tion with and deriving no authority from the old historic Church of the ages, because its founders did not approve of the doctrines and practices that were current at the time, then those that did not approve of their doctrines and practices had just the same right to separate from them and form new churches, possessing all the rights and privileges of those who first separ- ated. This principle they repudiated, and so it comes out that, while the majority of the people of Scotland ultimately became Presbyterians, it was not brought about by the Presbyterianizing of the Church of Scotland, but by the Erastian action of the English King William III in seiz- ing the revenues of the ancient Church of Scot- land, and handing them over, together with the possessions of the churches, to the separated Presbyterian organization which he had estab- lished by law as the Church of the land It was, however, by the aid of the Presby- terians of Scotland that the Puritans of England succeeded in capturing and decapitating the King, in overthrowing the Church, in establish- ing Presbyterianism as the religion of the land and in setting up as supreme a Presbyterian Assembly at Westminster. In 1644 an ordi- nance was passed authorizing Presbyters to ordain ministers and enacting that all so ordain- WHY DID THE PRESS YTERIANS SEPARA TE ? I2t ed should be held as legal ministers of the Church of England. In 1646 another ordinance was passed for set- tling the Presbyterian form of government. The Assembly of Divines published their Confession of Faith, and a larger and lesser catechism founded upon it. This was followed shortly after by an ordinance abolishing the office of Bishop and selling their lands. It has been necessary to give this brief historical sketch that we may have clearly before us the causes which led to this ever-to-be-lamented separation, and the way in which it was brought about. No doubt political considerations played a most important part in all the movements of this time ; but, on its religious side, the causes of the separation were those which we have seen operating in the whole Puritan movement, and were the same causes with slight variations, which led to the Independent and Baptist schisms, viz. : the determination of the Separ- atists to make the doctrines of Calvin the basis of their whole religious system ; to substitute Presbyterian for Episcopal government, to sup- plant the liturgical worship by such extempore utterances as are prescribed in the directory. They objected so strongly to the stateliness of churches and their rich adornment that under the leadership of Knox they dismantled and pulled them down. H 122 WIfV DID THE PRESS YTERIANS SEPARA TE ? (■: ,1 . i \ . They objected to the traditional attire of ministers and substituted for it the Genevan gown or the black coat. They objected to the use of the ring in marri- age, of the sign of the cross in baptism, and of the retention of Confirmation as an ordinance of the church. Their guiding principle was to abolish what- ever had been abused to superstitious purposes, or used in what they called idolatrous worship. And, as there was hardly anything in the wor- ship of the mediaeval church that escaped their charge of idolatry, almost everything that had been consecrated by the use of ages was ruth- lessly condemned and rejected. The practical question for us now to consider is, do these things now stand in the way of reconciliation and the restoration of the ancient unity of the Church. Clearly the great fundamental foundation cause of the separation has ceased to exist. Calvinism is not preached by the ministers and is not believed by the people. First. — The church polity, or form of church government by Presbyters only, is no longer held to be of Divine obligation, as the men who made the Presbyterian Church thought it was. The position now generally taken by Presby- terian ministers is, that there is no Divinely pre- WHY DID THE PRESB YTERIANS SEPARA TE ? 1 23 scribed mode of government, and that each religious body is at liberty to adopt whatever form it pleases. The objection to liturgical worship has been practically abandoned and in many congregations liturgical forms are being introduced more and more, and whore they are not being used, the prayers offered by the minister, which the people were taught to regard as the spontaneous utterance of the Spirit, are, for the most part, carefully prepared, and, in many cases, written out and committed to memory. (See Beecher's published sermons and long prayers.) Again, the objection to stately and richly furnished churches is surely dead and buried, as all denominations are now vieing with each other in the magnificence of their ecclesiastical structures, and in the costliness of their equip- ment. The same is true of the organ, which was not long ago regarded as a substitution of the devi! for the beauty of the human voice, but is now everj^where used to assist and guide the voice, to uplift, dignify, and make worthy the service of song. The ring, if not actually given in mar- riage, is insisted upon as an accompu.nying gift as a token and pledge of an unending affection. The cross, if not yet stamped upon the brow in baptism, as a token that the baptized belongs to 1 24 l^ffy DID THE PRESS YTERIANS SEPARA TE ? Christ and is pledged to follow Him in the way of the Cross, is worn upon the breast as an evidence of the wearer's faith in the Crucified. And so, as all the old standard and once conscientious objections are practically aban- doned or are no longer felt to be obligatory, the Mother calls in pleading tones to her long- separated Presbyterian children, whom for their strong Christian characters she venerates, and for their noble Christian goodness she loves, " COME HOME." Let us dwell in one house and be one family. Ill CHAPTER VII. WHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE FROM THE NATIONAL CHURCH REFORMED? The Baptists began their existence in England as a separate Denomination in the year 1633. They were, strictly speaking, a secession from the Independents. They were speedily joined by a number of Puritans who up to this time had continued in the communion of the Church of England. A fanatical sect of Baptists had existed in Hol- land since the year 1535. These ran into ex- cesses that were not only subversive of all reli- gion and all government, but of all society. They were, therefore, sternly repressed by the government of the day, and many of them who sought refuge in England were put to death by Henry VIII, Edward the VI, and Elizabeth, as enemies of the civil government. The existing Baptist Denomination justly dis- claims any organic connection with these An- archists, and yet it is more than probable that, like the Congregationalists, they learned their leading principles from them. Many individuals 125 126 WHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? who had imbibed their convictions had settled in the Northeastern counties ; and though they seem not to have organized themselves into congrega- tions, they were yet very zealous in propagating their opinions, and as they succeeded in convinc- ing those Churchmen who originated the Con- gregational body, that their views of church polity were not only of Scriptural authority, but of binding obligation upon the consciences of all men, so it is in every way probable that the originators of the Baptist Denomination had learned their characteristic principles from the same teachers. The Presbyterian and Independent secessions were ostensibly caused by questions of church polity. The real cause, as we have seen, was doctrinal. The founders of both of these separa- tions had accepted the Calvinistic theory of pre- destination and election as the basis of their whole doctrinal system. It was, as we have seen, impatience at the long-continued failure of the Presbyterian party to Calvinize the Church of England from within, which led the impetuous founder of Congregationalism to secede and try to give expression to the doctrine of an invisible church in an almost unorganized community of Christians. The Baptists ostensibly separated on questions connected with the sacraments and the Church's WHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? 127 external means of grace. The real cause, how- ever, lay deeper, and was in reality the same as in the two former cases. They felt themselves justified, as one of their leaders has stated, in making a secession (i) for the exercise of a more strictly Calvinistic doctrine ; (2) for the exercise of a more vigorous and exclusive discipline ; (3) for the practice of a more literally Scriptural ritual in the matter of Baptism. The basal principle of their action was their conception of the Church as an invisible Com- pany of the Elect, in the Calvinistic sense of that word. No others could belong to the Church, and so they would admit none who could not give evidence of that faith and repentance which they held would always be imparted to the elect at the time of their effectual calling. The Church was, therefore, a spiritual, social club, an association for the enjoyment of happy Chris- tian fellowship. Children and immature per- sons, who cannot exercise repentance and faith, cannot be admitted into it. And as Baptism is the divinely-appointed mode of initiation into the Christian society, it was logically held that it was a mockery, if not a sacrilege, to administer it to them. They did not deny that children might be, that many of them necessarily were, of the number of the elect, but they held that until they could give the required proof that^ they 1^ ia8 lV//y DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? Jl I i i were, it would be a mockery to go through the outward form of admitting them into a society to which they could not possibly belong, if they were not the subjects of electing grace. And so, when they teach their children Chris- tian truths, they teach them as outsiders who may one day be brought in or who may not. If they help them, it is not as children of God, as their own brothers and sisters, as members with themselves of the family of Jesus Christ ; it is as objects of pity, and as potential members of Christ's Kingdom ; they may, they do, teach them to call God their Father, but they will not allow them to think of themselves as being yet His children. The Baptists did not deny that hypocrites and ungodly people might gain ad- mission to their society or Church, by professing and seeming to possess the evidences of effectual calling; but as their aim was to make the Church pure they would not admit any about whose spiritual state they were not satisfied, and when convinced of their hypocrisy, they held it was their duty to excommunicate and expel them. How different is all this, from the Catholic con- ception of the Church as set out in Holy Scrip- ture, as a net which in its wide sweep gathers in fish of every kind, good and bad. As a vast and varied field, where the tares are mingled with the wheat, where Christ's husbandry has to be car- P. \ WHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? 129 ried on, Christ's building constructed ; where risks have to be run, and dangers encountered. A nursery of heaven where the spiritually and physically young are gathered, that they maybe brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. A school of Christ in which the children of God are being taught the truths of the Gospel, that they may grow in grace and in the knowl- edge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. An habitation of God through the Spirit, in which souls are being fashioned by His moulding hand after the pattern of Christ Jesus; where spiritual lepers are taken to nurse and to be cared for ; where ignorance is welcomed, that it may be taught ; weakness borne with, that it may be strengthened ; childhood gladly received, that it may be loved and guided, and developed into the measure of the stature of Christ. This is the Catholic conception of the Church. It was this conception as manifested in the Re- formed Church of England that the Puritans generally, and the Baptists with special emphasis rejected. This is plainly set out in the Baptist Confession of faith, p. 1664 (ap. Neal III, 563, Ed. Tolman) : "Jesus Christ, by His death, did purchase salvation for the elect God gave unto Him ; the gift of eternal life is given to them and to none else. Faith is the gift of God wrought in the hearts of the elect by the Spirit of . \\ 130 WHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? God. All those that have this precious Faith can never finally nor totally fall away. The Church is a visible society of saints called and separated from the world, joined to their Lord and to each other, in the practical enjoyment of the ordinances commanded by Christ their Head and King, called thither to lead their lives in this walled sheepfold and watered garden." Again (Camp's Baptist History, p. 198), '* the Baptists would admit no members of their churches, but on personal profession of repent- ance and faith. Every church (congregation) was a family of believers, the Church in their estimation was a holy society." These then were the views of the Baptists with regard to the Church and of those who were fit subjects to be admitted into it. But in addition to this they attached extreme importance to a mere ritual act. It seems more than probable, from the intimations in Holy Scripture, and from what we know of the practice of the Primitive Church, that baptism was at first, if not always, at least generally, administered by immersion. This is a symbolical act, setting forth the great truth that in baptism, all who rightly receive it are buried with Christ to the old life of the flesh, and raised up in Him to the new life of the Spirit. On this ground the Baptists insist that it is no baptism at all, unless in it sadministra- WNY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? «3' tion this symbolical ritual act is strictly observ- ed. The Catholic Church had for ages relaxed the strict observance of this ritualistic act, and held that a sacrament is validly administered, if the right material and the right words are used. And, while she has set forth immersion as her general rule, as embodying the most expressive symbolism, she has yet held that the application of water, with the appointed words, either by effusion or pouring or sprinkling, is valid ; the former symbolizing the outpouring of the Spirit of God, and the latter the sprinkling of the blood of Christ. The Church of England Reformed prescribes immersion as her general rule, but allows effusion or pouring as an exception. In practice this theory is exactly reversed — though it is more than probable that had the Baptists continued in the Church, their strong convictions would have secured the universal observance of her prescribed rule. It is need- less to say that an addition to these fundamental reasons for their separation, the Baptists carried with them all the traditional prejudices of their Puritan progenitors as detailed above. The practical question is, how do they stand to-day with regard to the reasons upon which their schism was based. They are no doubt the narrowest and most intensely bigoted tradition- alists of all existing Denominations. And, on 132 WJIV DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? J '/ ¥^^ tl ! the ritualistic principle as to the mode of admin- istering baptism, they are as strong as ever ; but, on the question of organic union, they have, like the Congregational body, quite abandoned their initial position, and restored in their Bap- tist union, however they may disguise ii- from themselves, the very central corporate union which it was one of the chief objects of their separation to destroy. They have also, like all their Puritan co- operators, abandoned their objections to the architectural beauty and costliness of churches, and their elaborate equipment ; and are outvy- ing their rivals in the magnificence of their ecclesiastical structures and in the costliness of their adornment. They have not, it is true, re- stored those long-used clerical vestments which so specially stirred the wrath of their forefathers, but they have adopted a distinctively clerical attire of their own, which is as contrary to their primal principles as would be the restoration of the more dignified vesture of the historic Church. The most important point of all, however, in this connection is that the Baptists, in common with the other Denominations of Puritan origin, have practically abandoned that Calvinistic system of doctrine, which lay at the very founda- tion of their separation, and of their exclusive conduct. Their people no longer believe in the WffY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? 13.1 fatalistic doctrine of those irreversible decrees which assign a certain very limited number of individuals to Heaven, and with the most arbi- trary unconcern consign the great mass of man- kind to Hell. At least, if their ministers do be- lieve it, which is inconceivable, they dare not preach it. This fundamental change of front takes away the greatest barrier to their listening, as individuals, or as a corporate body, to the call that has gone out from the Mother Church of this Empire to abandon their uncertainties, and come back, it may be, to the home of their child- hood, or, at all events, to their ancestral Home, the Historic Reformed Catholic Church of Eng- land. It is well known that they have not heeded that call, and will not heed it yet. Because, while they have practically abandoned the doctrine of fatalistic decrees, they still cling to the necessity, as a qualification for baptism, of repentance and faith, which they once looked for, as indicating to them who those elect souls are who alone can become members of the Church ; and whom they might therefore admit to its sacred enclosures. With a far more superficial way of thinking they now maintain that the candidate for bap- tism must manifest, or, at least, profess repent- ance and faith, because they still hold to the theory that only true believers, only truly con- i 134 WHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? verted men and women, can be members of the Church : a notion which their own long history and daily experience prove to be as impossible of attainment in practice as it is unscriptural in theory. The Baptists have not succeeded any better than other people in securing a community of saints, in the modern sense of that word. And while all Christians believe that the very purpose of the Church's existence is to convert and sanctify and save the souls of men ; and, while only those in whom that work has been accom- plished will be found in her in the end, they yet acknowledge that she must have in her many souls varying in every stage of spiritual develop- ment and, alas, of spiritual decay. There are branches fruit-beariug, withering, withered, and dead, in the true Vine, which is Christ in His life incarnate extended through His Church, but every withered and dead branch was once a liv- ing and growing branch ; a figure which teaches the same lesson as that of the tares and wheat growing together, the wheat and chaff lying to- gether, the net with its fishes good and bad, not to be separated till the shore is reached. And that lesson is that the Church, which will be presented to the Father at last without spot or wrinkle or any such thing is not, in this time of probation, and was not intended to be composed only of matured Christians, but of men, women. WHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? 135 and children, who, on account of their manifold imperfections, have need to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. *' But," it will be said, " this may all be true enough ; indeed our own experience has proved it true, in spite of all our care to have it other- wise in the existing Church of the present time ; but that does not alter the fact that only those who have repentance and faith are fit subjects to teach and then to baptize. The Lord Jesus de- clared ' He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. ' The Apostles required the profession of faith from those whom they baptized. There is no command to baptize children, and there is no instance of children being baptized in the New Testament, which surely would have been the case, had it been intended that any but actual believers were to be baptized." It might be sufficient to reply that, instead of having a right to expect a specific command to baptize children, if they are fit subjects for baptism, the case is, in all reason exactly reversed. We should have a right to expect, nay to demand a com- mand not to baptize children, if they are not fit subjects for baptism. Baptism, by the confes- sion of all, is the act of admission into the new covenant. Now, remember this, the Apostles to whom our Lord gave the commission to I ;; ii' 136 IVHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? baptize were all Jews: as such they were quite familiar with the fact that children, their own children, and the children of converts from heathenism were admitted into the covenant of God, when they were eight days old. They were familiar with the fact that the children of converts were baptized as well as circumcized. They were sent to convert all nations, and to admit them into the covenant of God by the ordinance of baptism. Would they not instinc- tively, necessarily, do what they had always seen done? viz. : Admit into the family and household of God believers and their children. Claudius Ccesar issued a decree that all the world should be taxed. What would the taxers do? Enrol only grown people, because there was no command to enroll children. Surely they would interpret that general direction by an appeal to what had always been done, and following that custom would just do what they did do, enrol parents and children alike. So would she Apostles Act. And if the baptism of children be the mistake that the Baptists think it to be, would not the merciful Lord, in very charity, have distinctly told them not to baptize children. And as to the contention that only believers were intended to be baptized, or were baptized. It may be sufficient to call attention to the fact WffV DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? »37 that Holy Scripture only speaks to, or ot those who are capable of understanding, or acting upon its declarations. What is said to, or of those to whom its message comes, does not apply to the heathen, or to those to whom the message has never come, and determines nothing as to their responsibility or condition, however much curi- osity might desire to know what is to become of them. So here when our Lord says, " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, .ind he that believeth not shall be damned," He is evi- dently speaking to, and of those who are capable of exercising faith, and to whom the Faith, i.e., that which is to be believed, is to be made known. He is not thinking of the heathen or of children, who have no opportunity of know- ing the truth, or who cannot believe. Other- wise, if it be maintained that this declaration applies to them at all, then the awful conclusion follows that He is pronouncing the absolute damnation of all children, and of all the heathen, who cannot believe, or who have had no oppor- tunity of hearing what they ought to believe ; for He says, " He that believeth not shall be damned." And, as to the fact that faith was required of those whose baptism is recorded in the New Testament, that was of course inevit- able. The Gospel was preached to Jews and Gentiles. They must first believe the Gospel, :•!)■ ' ! -i t.i'- ■ i ii ■n^ m 14 ^f '::1. ■M • ;* i , V m Si : i; 'i : M'! if -s.- I 138 H^^F Z>/Z) 7W^ BAPTISTS SKPARATE? before they could be admitted into the Gospel kingdom or the Gospel Church ; and so the first converts were necessarily grown-up people. The relation of their children to the Kingdom must be determined by other considerations — the teaching of the precedent revelation in the Old Testament — of God's will concerning them — the declaration of our Lord as to their special fitness for the Kingdom of God, and the established practice of the existing Church. For it must be remembered, as a fact that has most important bearing upon the interpretation of Holy Scrip- ture, that the Church was in existence, and was spread throughout a large part of the known world twenty years, at least, before one book of the New Testament was written, and forty, fifty, sixty years before they all were written. And, secondly, that those books when written were ad- dressed, not to the heathen or to uninstructed peo- ple, but to Christians who were instructed in the truths of the Gospel, and were familiar with the sacraments, ceremonies and usages of the Church as they had been taught by Apostles and Evange- lists. They would not therefore be instructed as to usages with which they were familiar; and so the fact that the Church, from the earliest times of which we have any historical record, baptized infants without a word of protest, makes it probable that there were young children in WHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? >3 some, probably in all, the whole households of whose baptism we read ; especially when we know that the households of those days, wher- ever it was possible, included a retinue of slaves and dependents, and this makes it more than probable that believers and their children were included in the records of the New Testament. At all events, we reach this conclusion that, even if there is neither command i>or practice in the New Testament to lead to the baptism of children, yet there is no command and no prac- tice recorded that prohibits that practice. In fact, as understood by the Apostles, who were Jews, the Baptismal commission was a positive command to baptize children as well as grown people. Then the practice of the church in every land for fifteen centuries, without com- plaint or protest must be to most minds, a con- clusive proof that the baptism of children originated with Our Lord and His Apostles. And so for the final settlement of this dispute we are thrown back upon these questions : — What is Baptism ? What does it mean ? What bene- fits does it confer? Who need these benefits, and who are fit to receive them ? To answer them we must remember what has already been established, i.e., that the Church is an outward visible organized society, with its officers and laws, modes of procedure, and prescribed 140 IVHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? \\ Ml manner of initiating new members. Now all are agreed, whatever they may think about the benefits it confers, that baptism is the appointed mode of initiation into the Christian society, so that even if a man knows the truth and believes it, und is trying to live by it, he is not a member of the Church, therefore not a Christian, until he has been initiated in the appointed way into the Christian society. But we have further to remember that that outward visible society, is a Divine Institution and has an inward spiritual life. It is the Body of Christ, instinct with His life. Its members are the members of Christ. For by one Spirit have we all been baptized into one Body (i Cor. xii. 13), and so together have become "the Body of Christ and members in particular" (v. 27). This is an elementary truth with which all Christians ought to be familiar, for ** Know ye not, writes the Apostle (i Cor. vi. 15) that your bodies are the members of Christ." Again, the Church is the dwelling place of the Holy Ghost. '* I will send you another Comforter who dwelleth with you and shall be in you." "The habitation of God through the Spirit"; that Spirit is the Spirit of adoption, the spirit by whose action we were adopted (see i Cor. xii. 13 just quoted) and the gift of God at our adop- tion. For the answer, in the first Christian ser- WffV DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARA TE? 141 mon ever preached, to those who asked what shall we do to be saved was, '< Repent and be baptized in the name of the Lord and ye shall receive the remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the promise is to you and your children." So that the Apostle again asks, with the assumption that there can be but one answer, ** What? know ye not that your Body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God" (i Cor. vi. 19). " Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? " (i Cor. iii. 16). Baptism, then, is not a mere outward Jewish rite, by which the congregation acknowledges the fact that the person being baptized has al- ready become a true Christian, it is a solemn sacrament instituted by Christ as the means, the outward act, by which the Holy Ghost adopts us into the family of God, makes us His chil- dren, forgives us our sins, incorporates us into Christ, makes us members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones (Eph. v. 30), and saves us by translating us from the kingdom of dark- ness into the kingdom of His dear Son (Col. i. 13), making us the Habitation of God through the Spirit, that we may be the agents of His will, the instruments by whom His work is to be carried on in the world, ** workers to- gether with Him." iiii! iii' 143 IVHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? Who, then, are they who need these gifts? Do not children need the forgiveness of sins ? St. Paul says they are " the children of wrath even as others" (Eph. ii. 3) ; that is, they belong to a fallen race, have a sinful nature, which is 8 exBpoH^ the enrmy of God, which will soon manifest itself in act. They are under the curse of a sin doomed race, and they need to be translated into the Kingdom of forgiveness and of grace. They are aliens from the household of God and need to be adopted into the family of God, that they may have the help of its moulding influ- ences and be nurtured with the sincere milk of the word. They need the indwelling of the Holy Ghost to take the things of God and shew them unto them, and so to enlighten their minds, renew their hearts, change and sanctify their lives. They need to be united to Christ, made members of His body, that they may be animated by His spirit, and be strong in the Lord. No Christians believe that their children can turn to the Lord, and live in Him in their own strength, without these gifts. And yet all Christians, Baptists as well as others, desire and hope and pray that their children may turn to God, n.ay be converted and live. They expect these graces to be given to their children in order to secure their conversion ; and yet they IVHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? '43 deny in act that they need them, or are capable of receiving them. But, surely, if God can give these gifts, and children can receive them, in order to qualify for Baptism, He can give them (as He has certainly promised to do) in Baptism ; and if Samuel, and John the Baptist, and Christ, the ideal man, could receive the Holy Ghost the Comforter, even from their mother's womb; and if St. Timothy from his childhood could know the Holy Scriptures, there is nothing in our human nature to prevent all children receiving the same gifts from God. To insist, as is done, that repentance and faith must be exercised be- fore these gifts can be conferred, is surely an unconscious reversal of the Evangelical idea of salvation. That idea is, and it is a scriptural and a just one, that salvation in all its parts is altogether God's gift ; that it is not produced, and does not depend upon our acts or deserving, so that we can only be saved because Christ freely gave Himself for us all. We only can repent and believe because the Holy Ghost is given to enlighten our minds, to convict us of sin, to take the things of Christ and shew them unto us. Now, repentance and faith are acts, not of our own hands but of our own minds and hearts, our own acts, which, though impelled by the Spirit's working, we may perform or may refuse to perform. To insist upon their exercise as a necessary pre-condition to God's Holy 'I ■i 11 i '44 JV//y DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE? Spirit being given, is to reverse this Gospel teaching and to make salvation depend, in the first instance, on our own action. But, no. Faith and repentance are ^ired in those who are capable of exercising them, not because the Holy Spirit cannot operate upon the minds and hearts of those who are not convert- ed, but because they are the necessary condi- tions of a mind and heart not alienated from God, not living in active opposition to Him, and in rejection of His grace. There are two conditions, in one or other of which the adult mind must be, either occupied and filled with the things of the world, or possessed and r» ^d by the Spirit of God. It isahouse thatcannc empty; the strong man armed keeps his goods until he is overcome and thrust out. Repentance is the thrusting out, the turning from other things ; the opening of the door of the empty house ; and faith is the hand that reaches out for the gifts of God, and embraces and receives and welcomes the things of the Spirit. So faith and repent- ance are required, not because they make or merit the grace, but because they remove the barriers and open che door. But that the Spirit can act upon hearts and minds where there is no closed door, and no conscious barriers opposed, is placed beyond a doubt by the instances already cited, by the ex- perience of our own houses, and by the thou- WHY DID THE RAPIISTS SEPARATE? '45 sands upon thousands of little children who are manifestly under the illumination and guidance of God's Blessed Spirit, and who, as they grow up into mature Christians, will tell you that they cannot remember a time of alienation in their lives, or when it was not their chiet desire to love and please God. This manifestly ought to be the normal condition of our Christian hor es, the normal experience of our Christian lives ; and it is because Christian parents do not believe in the reality of God's grace given, do not look for and rely upon the operations of God's Spirit in the teaching and training of their children, that there are so many marred homes and broken- heart'^d mothers. An ' so the pleading Mother says to her Bap- tist ch Iren '' Come Home," not only because they have found what they once thought the constraining reasons of doctrine, discipline, or ceremony to be mistakes, but because the ground on which they still stand aloof is a foundation of sand, which their own Spurgeon says is rapidly being washed into the valley of unbelief, and which is working spiritual disaster in thousands upon thousands of their children. Their Mother needs their prayers and sympathy and help to make the Church upon earth, as far as it is possible, that actual communion of Saints for the realization of which they have heretofore been vainly striving. *' Come Home." 1 :i 1 1 r ii i j 1 i ; ■ ., i, ■ : 1 ;, ! J CHAPTER VIII. V/HY DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE FROM THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED? This. Denomination was founded in 1646 by George Fox, son of a Coventry weaver, by occu- pation a cattle drover. He was a young man of a serious and devout disposition, but was greatly lacking in education and was somewhat unbalanced in mind by religious enthusiasm. The Denomination is said to have got its name from one of his hackneyed expressions, "fearing and quaking at the name o^ the Lord." The word "Quaker" was therefore a nickname. The Denomination has always claimed as its proper designation "The Society of Friends." The Congregationalists and Romanists sep- arated from the Ancient Catholic Church of the land in the same year. They both alleged ex- ternal order or church polity as the ground of their separation. The Presbyterians and Bap- tists also separated, ostensibly, on a question of government and ritual. The real cause as we have seen was doctrinal, though they seem, from the stress laid upon external matters, to have 146 WHY DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE? H? been scarcely conscious of the real cause of their disaffection. The Quaker separation, on the other hand, grew out of an intense, overstrained dislike to theological systems and doctrines, and to all ritual and outward expression of faith or reli- gious emotion. They believed in the entire spirituality of the Gospel, and laid themselves cut to secure and set ^orth a pure and spiritual worship. It is evident that Fox had no intention at first of separating from the Ancient Catholic Church of the land. Like Wesley in later days, his aim was to gather together a society of the spiritual worshippers within the church. He hoped, as far as he had any definite plans, that the§e would be able to leaven and transform the whole Chris- tian community, or at all events to counteract, in some measure, the mere externalism which at that time characterized Church and Dissent alike. The Calvinistic wave which swept over west- ern Europe, and swallowed up the first Lutheran impulse, was now aominating everything in England. The whole Puritan party, which embraced the great mass of the people, both in the Church and outside of it, was thoroughly committed to the Calvinistic system of doctrine and discipline. It was the fashionable religion *' 1;.:!? 148 WHY BID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE? ■i 11 \^'-^ I ' \' \ \ : ' ii i 1' '■(■ ' ll: h ■■ ill . i 1 : ■'i^i i of the time. A hard, outward formalism was the natural result. A strict Sabbatarianism, and a gloomy ritual of life, which repressed all the spring and gladness of youth, banished song from the sanctuary, and expressed itself in sour looks and nasal speech and canting Scripture phraseology. No wonder that a young, ardent, devout, but untrained mind, like Fox's, was utterly repelled by this outwardness, and felt that true religion must in the first place be a thing of the heart, and not of these outward ob- servances or eternal decrees. Fox felt, though he was only able vaguely to express \l, that, if Calvin's philosophy of the ways of God be true, if all is settled by an inscrutable and irreversible decree, the fate of every man sealed before he was born, and that not upon any intelligible or spiritual grounds, but siniply because God willed it, then God's ways find no response whatever in the heart, Gods sovereign decrees awaken no adoring sense of justice, or even of goodness in the mind, and the strong conviction that the elect of heaven remain such, be they of what moral character they may (that renovation, in fact, has nothing to do with eternal salvation), then the whole system becomes outward, formal, mechanical, fatalistic. Fox seems to have known but few of the clergy of the Church, and those he did know, were not of the charac- WHY DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE? 149 ter to help him. He consorted chiefly, as he tells us, with the dissenting ministers, and it was the perception of the fact that there was a cold, pitiless Pharisaism ruling in the hearts of these men, who had persuaded themselves that they at least were of the number of the elect, that distressed and repelled Fox, and made him feel more convinced, that not the decrees of God, and not any mere conformity to the outward ordin- ances of religion, but the inner spiritual life, and personal consecration of the whole ma^i to God, was the essential thing in the Christian religion. Fox was, however, a man of undeveloped and untrained intellect ; and so, while he saw clearly that the scaffold was not the building, he was not able to see that the building could only be car- ried up a very little way without the scaffolding. He therefore set himself to pull down the scaf- folding, to abolish all creeds, confessions and systems of theology, all ritual, all the outward ordinances of religion, which the wisdom of the Saints had accepted, or had built up, to be at once the landmark, and the fitting expression of the devotional life. Instead, therefore, of en- deavoring to rekindle the lire, and to infuse into the Church's formularies, ordinances and sacra- ments that spirit of true devotion to which they bore witness, and for which they called. Fox and his followers set to work, as it has been II Mij ,1: ' 1, ■ ■ ' ! 1'^ ^1 lit^ii'i 150 WHY DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE? well expressed, to break the engine in pieces, because the fire had sunk too low, and its work was being so imperfectly done. The true conception of the Church, as a di- vinely planned and constituted visible society, with its inner supernatural, spiritual life, was lost amid the blmding confusion of eternal de- crees. And so the first thought that occurred to good men in those miserable Puritan times, was that the coldness, and deadness, and formal- ity of which they complained, were due to the Church and her ordinances, even though they were ready to admit t^hat some of those ordinances were of Divine institution. Instead, therefore, of stirring the embers and fanning the flame of the Church's life, that was burning so low, they separated themselves, and then set to work to carry oflf the living coals and burning brands to kindle a fire of their own, or in other words to construct another Church out of the stones and timbers of the abandoned house, which Christ had planned and His Apostles had built, and to substitute ordinances of their own inven- tion for those of Christ's appointment. Fox seems to have been led by his limited acquaintance with the clergy of that day to infer that the general opinion of the Church was, that all that was needed to qualify a man for the work of the ministry was a degree from -< W : -I WHY DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE? 151 Oxford or Cambridge. He persuaded himself that the discovery, that this was an utterly mistaken conception of the ministerial office, was communicated to him by direct Divine rev- elation. " As I was walking in the fields," he says, "on. the first day morning, the Lord opened unto me, that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to fit and qualify men to be ministers of Christ ; and I wondered at it, because it was the common belief of the people." Had not Fox been a man of such limited education and reading, he would have known that his supposed discovery was one of the universally received axioms of the Church from the beginning, and that it is the very essence of the qualification which the Church of England looks for in those whom she admits to the sacred order of the ministry. The Bishop says to those who present the candidates, " Take heed that the persons whom ye present to us be apt and meet, for their learning and Godly conversation to exercise their ministry duly." And to the candidates individually he says, *' Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon you this office and ministra- tion, and will you apply all your diligence to frame and fashion your own lives and the lives o^ your families according to the doctrine of ;l .1 ll^ i ! 'I '"I III!; n : •, 1 , ■ i ' 1 ' '.. 1! li ! 1 \ 1 152 WHY DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE? Christ ?" Or as George Herbert, who lived in Fox's time, puts it, ** Think not when they have read the Fathers or schoolmen, a minister is made, and the thing is done. The greatest and hardest preparation is within." And so the Church, as she speaks through her services and authoritative teachers, has always held that the inner life and consecration to God is the essen- tial thing in all human service ; and that the Church, as an outward organization with her ministry, and ritual, and creeds, and services, and sacraments, is only the shell of the living creature ; the body in which the life flows, and through which it acts, the means and not the end, the casket and not the jewel. And yet Fox tells us that it was the discovery by revelation, as he supposed, of a limited part of this great truth that led him, indirectly, to withdraw from the Church's services, and set up a schismatical worship. It is, however, more than probable that as Fox and his followers went on develop- ing their conception of the entirely spiritual character of the Church, they were instrumental in no small measure in awakening the ancient Church of the land to a fuller apprehension of the spiritual doctrine about the ministry which she had always held. The second great doctrine taught by the founder of Quakerism, and the one which be- WffV DID THE Q UAKERS SEPARA TE? 1 53 came the centre and ruling conviction of the society which he founded, was the doctrine of the universal inward light ; by this they meant some impersonal spiritual influence, correspond- ing to the promised indwelling illumination and guidance of the Holy Ghost. So that this dis- covery, as well as the last, (though Fox, amid the strange fatalistic teachings of that time, seems never to have been taught it), was a doctrine of the Catholic Church from the beginning. The Church had learned it from St. Peter (Acts ii, 39) that the Holy Ghost is God's covenant gift to all His adopted children ; and from St. Paul, that the bodies of Christians are the temples of the Holy Ghost which is in them (i Cor. vi, 19). She has, therefore, taught her children to believe that the illuminated conscience is the shrine and vehicle of the spiritual life within, the voice by which the indwelling Spirit speaks for the guidance of man. And so in Holy Scrip- ture we are exhorted not to quench that light, not to grieve and drive away that blessed guest, not to silence his voice, but to listen to it and follow it. No doubt this great and consoling truth was greatly obscured by the Calvinism that so widely prevailed during the earlier years of the 17th century, both in the Church and among the separated communions of the time. Fox, again, seems never to have been taught it, and J =t i •}''U . : : i 1' ^! ' ■ i 1 1 l. 1 t . 1 p I': '• ■ 1 IS4 WHY DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE? SO he supposed that its discovery was a direct revelation from God to himself. As a result, however, of their theory about the inward light, Fox and his followers were soon led to reject all the external media, by which Christians of every generation had been helped. The only exception to this sweeping spiritual- ism is found in the fact that they receive the Holy Scriptures, and use them for the purpose of setting forth and teaching the truth. This exception is, however, rather apparent than real, as it would seem that they do not regard the Scriptures as one of God's appointed instrument- alities for conveying His truth to the soul, but only as being a record of what the inner light has made known to men of other times ; and so as being in harmony with the truth which is being communicated by that inner light to men now. All other external means of com- munication between God and the soul, creeds and services and sacraments and instructive ritual they altogether reject. In their assemblies which are held in a plain, square room utterly void of any colouring or adornment, they sit in solemn silence, no one opens a book, no aid to meditation or prayer is vouchsafed, all wait in silence, listening for any faint still whisper of the inward voice which is to unseal some lips in vocal prayer, instruction WHY DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE? 155 or exhortation. It is hard to understand how even these escaped condemnation as external aids to the Spirit's inner work in a community, where the dread of symbolism was so great that the hat is not removed from the head, the knee re- mains unbent in prayer, and where no sign of at- tention or interest or concurrence in what is being said can be detected. As a result of this extreme anti-ritualism, not only have all external acts of worship been abolished, but the two great sacra- ments of our Lord's own institution have been allowed to disappear. The Baptism of the HolyGhost and the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ are not dependent (says one of their authoritative writers) on these outward ceremonies. " If we have Christ dwelling in our hearts," they say, "what need of these external receptions of Him? We can spiritually com- municate. The Communion is not the only way to feed on Christ, nor Baptism the only way of admission to His love." This, however, was no discovery, or new revelation as they suppos- ed. The Church Catholic has always held that while God has appointed outward means for our help through which He assures us of His gifts conveyed. He can Himself dispense with those outward aids and convey His gifts directly to the soul. This teaching has been repeated and re- echoed from the days of Justin Martyr, who p} IM 156 W/IY DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE? taught that many a good heathen, like Socrates, is saved by the Redeemer, and is virtually a Christian, though he has never heard of Christ at all with the outward hearing of the ear. And so Tertullian teaches that martyrdom for Christ is as good and valid as Baptism ; and Augustine says, "Believe and thou hast eaten." And so the Church of England teaches that when occasion demands it, a man may eat and drink the Body and Blood of the Lord without the use of the sacramental symbols, and the spiritual communion of the sick who are physic- ally incapable of receiving the outward part of that Holy Sacrament, has been practised in all ages of the Church. That is one thing ; but deliberately to reject ordinances which Christ has Himself instituted and commanded to be observed is altogether a different thing ; and it is hard to see how it can be acquitted of a blasphemous disparagement of His Divine authority and wisdom. It will, how- ever, be seen from what has been said that the supposed revelations out of which Quakerism grew rest upon merely partial statements, or extreme exaggerations of doctrines which the Catholic Church of England Reformed, has set forth as strongly as they can be set forth ; and that the very existence of Quakerism is trace- able to an ignorance of those doctrines, caused Jr//y DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE? 157 by the obscuration of the all-prevailing Calvin- ism of the times. The Quakers, like other separatists, have broken up into several sections, all holding with more or less tenacity to some part of the stock of doctrine, with which they started ; but many of thein, however, abandoning the grotesque and extravagant practices which their principles led them to adopt ; and others of them adopting theories of the religious life, with practices cor- responding, which are as contradictory of the principles and practices of their progenitors as anything that is to be found in the Mother Church of England from which they separated. To these and to all who bear the Quaker name that Mother stretches out her arms in earnest entreaty, assuring them that they will find in her creeds and formularies of worship and sacra- ments as well as in the writings of her author- ities and teachers, every doctrine for which they have contended, set forth with due regard for the harmony of the Faith ; and that they will find in her an escape from that vortex of uncer- tainty and unbelief which is threatening to swal- low up their children, if not themselves. And so to her Quaker Friends she calls, through the darkness of sectarian mists, " Come Home." CMAFTER IX. WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE FROM THE CATHOLIC CHURCH REFORMED? The origin and development of Methodism is so intimately associated with John Wesley, that the cause of its separation from the National Church will best be studied by a brief recapitu- lation of his history. John Wesley, then, was born in the year 1703 at Epworth, in Lincoln- shire, of which parish his father was rector. He graduated at Oxford in 1725 and was shortly afterwards ordained deacon. In the next year he was elected to a fellowship in Lincoln College, which he retained for twenty-seven years, and by the income derived from it, he was supported during all the period of his laborious evangeli- zation till his marriage in 1752. It will thus be seen that he came upon the stage in the darkest period of the Church's history. After the stern repression of tb liian rule, a terrible reaction in t^ tf-in- dulgence set in. During. ici^^. 'CI iles II and James II gross licentK iisne? polluted the land, and the Church was in no p sition to stand '58 WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? 159 the rising tide of corruption. Cromwell as has been narrated had driven from their livings 8,000 of the loyal clergy of England. Many of these fled to the Continent, many died from starvation, many wore out their lives as servants or ostlers. Their places were filled up by Cromwell with Independent, Presbyterian, and Baptist minis- ters. When the Restoration came, these were required to conform to the Prayer Book and ser- vice of the Church of England, and be episco- pally ordained or give up the livings into which they had been obtruded. All with the exception of about 1,600 did conform. But, as there was not a sufficient number of the expelled clergy left alive to supply the places of these i ,600 ; men uneducated and unqualified were ordained to occupy the parishes. Thus, with a clergy, two-thirds of whom were disloyal, and many of the rest unqualified for their place, the Church began her career after the Restoration. Is it any wonder that worldliness and licentiousness gained headway, and that the Church could not hold her own ? Then came the reign of William III, who was by education a Dutch Calvinist, and so out of sympathy with the Church of Eng- land to which he conformed. He knew that he owed his crown largely to the Puritan party, and his sympathies naturally went out to them. He was an exceedingly clever ruler, but he was !f :;i li * % 1 i I i i i6o ^F//F /;//:> T/fE METHODISrS SEPARATE? by no means a religious man. And so he filled all the Bishoprics and livings, as they became vacant, with worldly-minded partisans, known as the Latitudinarian clergy, that is, men who did not care very much what they believed or did. He suppressed Convocation, and so tied the Church hand and foot. Then followed the reign oi Oueen Anne, during which a strong re- ligious revival set in, and the land literally teemed with religious societies, many of which survived down to Wesley's time. Then came the blighting reign of the first two Georges, with their German and Lutheran sympathies, their Latitudinarian and political Bishops, Deans, and Rectors. And then the general coldness, langour and lack of enthusiasm that character- ized everything connected with the Church in the first half of the eighteenth century. All dis- senting bodies in the country, as well as in the Church of England, slumbered and slept; a dry rationalism had taken possession of the land, the Church's ablest men were employed in intel- lectual contests with Deists and Unitarians ; while an equally dry morality and stoical praise of virtue formed the subject of the preaching at that time. Amid this religious atmosphere the Wesleys, John and Charles, both loyal clergy- men of the Church o; England, began their work. While still at Oxford, oppressed by the ■■■■ Hi IVHV DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? i6i spiritual deadness and worldliness that prevailed around them, the Wesleys and half a dozen other clergymen formed a united society, which they described as a company of men having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other in working out their own salvation. It is, therefore, they said, expected of all the members of this society that they shall continue to evidence their desire of salvation (i) by avoiding evil of every kind ; (2) by doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as possble, to all men ; (3) by attending on all the ordinances of God, such as the public worship of God, the supper of the Lord, fastings or abstinence. " These," they say, "are the general rules of our societies." "In short," as the Rev. J. H. Curteis says in his Bampton lectures, " the Wesleys were in those days very much what would now be called Ritualists. Thev did not profess to invent new practices of devotion, but sought simply to revive what the Church already had. They sought and obtained the sanc- tion and counsel of the Bishops, and so devoted themselves to the work to which they seemed to be called in the Church. That work before long took clear shape as the herculean task of reviv- ing, amid the cold rationalizing atmosphere of « ,1 ht i '■! - i |1 l'' 162 WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? the eighteenth century, a real love of religion, an enthusiasm for the Church and her system, and a sustained spirit of prayer and devotion to good works." During this first period of Methodism it was cradled in the Church of England ; it was fed by her sacraments ; it was methodized by that very orderly life of her whose framework is laid down in the Prayer Book ; it wa > encour- aged and directed by her Bishops, and it was given a home and starting place in her beautiful houses at Oxford. It arose and was fostered within the Church of England ; and it was not until its leaders went astray into foreign pas- tures, importing from Moravians, French Con- vulsionists, and Calvinistic Puritans, doctrines and methods of conversion which the Church of England never has and never can sanction, as the normal and necessary conditions of the reli- gious life ; not until then were the pulpits and buildings of their own Church closed against them, and the countenance of the English Bishops withdrawn. J" 1735 Joli" Wesley, at the instance of Dr. Benton and the celebrated non-juror, William Law, whom Wesley constantly consulted and from whom he imbibed his spirit of zeal, came as a missioner to America. The work was un- dertaken in the noblest spirit. Its object was first to minister to the settlers of Georgia, and si.: WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? 163 then to evangelize the red Indians. Wesley de- voted himself to this work with a zeal and en- durance which has seldom been equalled. Jts results, however, were such as neither Wesley nor his friends ever dreamt of. On his voyage out he met with a bishop and twenty-six elders of the Moravian Society, coming out as mission- ers to the German settlers in Georgia. In his enthusiastic and self-dissatisfied frame of mind, he was greatly captivated by their confident, tranquil, yet fervid piety, and he at once became closely identified with them. At Savannah, the centre of his American mission, he was opposed for his strict obedience to the ritual and discip- line of his Church, and was denounced as a Romanist. He also incurred the wrath of the Governor of the colony by practically jilting, on the advice of the Moravians, a young lady, a relative of the Governor, and when she fiercely resented his treatment of her, he publicly excom- municated her. For this and other trumped-up charges he was put under arrest, and after vainly demanding a trial, he escaped from Savannah by night, and with two companions walked through the woods from Savannah to Charleston, with nothing to guide them but a blazed line on the trees. On his return to London he became a regu- lar member of the Moravian vSociety, and from Peter Bohler, their leader, he learned to ' 1 ': Il '.'f ll. Si II j- I I ( i i i 1 ' t 164 IV//V DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? believe that: (i) When a man has living faith in Christ then he is justified. (2) This living faith is always given in a moment. (3) And in that moment he has peace with God, (4) which he cannot have without knowing that he has it. (5) And being thus born of God he sinneth not, (6) and he cannot have the deliverance from sin without knowing it. This, they said, "brings serene peace and steadfast tranquillity of mind with deliverance from fleshly (unholy) desire, and from every outward and inward sin." This, Mr. Wesley felt, was very unlike his own ex- perience. He was a man of devout, earnest, loving faith, humble, penitent, believing, and in labors most abundant ; but to their rapturous faith and freedom from sin he had not attained. Becoming persuaded, however, that it was the very Gospel of Christ, he resolved not to rest till he had attained it. "I want that faith," he used to say, ' ' which whoever hath is freed from sin. The whole body of sin is destroyed in him. He is freed from fear, having peace with God through Jesus Christ. I continued to seek it," he says, " (though with strange indifference, dulness and coldness, and unusually frequent relapses into sin), till Wednesday, May the 24th, whe" listening to one reading Luther's exposi- tion ^f faith," he says, " I felt my heart strange- ly warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for JVHV Dir THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? 165 salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins and had saved me." This he called his conversion, and afterwards spoke of it as "being born again," ''being made a new creature/' etc., though surely it was a very quiet transaction, very different from the ecstatic conversion which the Moravians describ- ed, very unlike what afterwards passed as the test of conversion in the Methodist Society. Surely, though we would not call it a new birth or a new creation, it has been no unusual ex- perience among unexcitable Christians in every age of the world. If it meant conversion from sin to God, that is what the Church in every age has striven after, and, by God's grace, has been ever attaining. If it meant passing from half- consciousness and immaturity to full conscious- ness, filial assurance, joy and peace in believing, then that, as every true child of Christ knows, has always been part of the Church's regular system of teaching. All her aids and step- ping-stones and sacraments are meant to lead towards that goal ; that, according as persons grow in grace, so they may grow in confidence and certainty of their condition. But that was not what Wesley meant. The change was in his estimate nothing less than a transition from heathenism to Christianity. It was the change which the Moravians had taught him to believe a:,\ Jt>., i66 Wffy DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? Mi-. it \ ! ' : 1 - i ! ' '"■' \ ' % ,* in, though it very little corresponded in its cir- cumstances with the picture which they drew. Shortly after this experience Wesley withdrew to Germany and lived for some time among the Moravians at Hernhuth. These hunted Bohe- mian followers of Huss and Wycliffe took up what Luther at first taught about faith. For you will remember that, when pressed by his opponents to define what he meant by faith, Luther made answer that faith could not be de- fined, it must be experienced. It was not a belief of the truths of the Gospel, with a conse- quent trust in Him whom those truths proclaim- ed. It was a supernatural vision of God by which the soul is filled with ecstacy, joy and peace. This was the view the Moravians had communicated to Wesley. " He returned home, however, after a brief residence among them, as Luther returned from Rome, not a little shaken in his allegiance to their system. Indeed, short- ly after this he broke from them altogether, set up a sort of English Moravian Society of his own, and organized his society with bands, and class meetings and watch-nights on the model of the Moravian societies. His feelings as a Churchman rebelled against their ultra-spiritual- ism, repudiated their doctrine that sacraments and outward means were naught ; and protested that a man must do something more than wait 'ii WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? 167 in quietude until the influence of God's Spirit comes upon him, and fills, like a rising tide, all the sluices and channels of his soul " (Curteis). Wesley says that *' he found the dreadful effects of the Brethren's reasoning. My soul was sick of this sublime divinity " (Southey, p. 211), and so before long he withdrew from the Moravian- ized society in Fetter Lane, with about seventy followers, and began to preach in the Foundry. Stevens, in his "History of Methodism," Vol. I, p. 108, says : " Methodism owes special obligations to Moravianism. It introduced Wesley into that regenerated spiritual life, the supremacy of which over all ecclesiasticism and dogmatism (i.e., over faith and discipline), it was the appointed mission of Methodism to assert. Wesley derived from it some of his clearest theological ideas ; the plan of reforming national churches by forming little churches in them. In many details of his discipli' ^:; .ve can trace the influence of Moravianism." C erman mysticism had done its work on Wesley ; and its doctrine of regeneration into God's kingdom by an interior convulsion of the mind has left its mark upon Wesleyanism for all future time. Wesley was throughout his life an emotional, impressionable man, and just as this extrav- agance was being absorbed into his returning English Church common-sense, Wesley was !' I ' r v^ i68 WHY DID THE METHODjlSTS SEPARA TE? carried away by another stream of French fan- aticism. And the singular phenomenon of an epidemic, religious hysteria commingling with the dangerous extravagance of the Methodist Moravian doctrine about the new birth, swept him clean away from his moorings. " The French Convulsionists, who about this time brought their curious mental malady into Eng- land, were refugees from the atrocious dragon- nades of Louis XIV, maddened by his abominable and relentless persecutions, deprived by his edicts of all that life held dear, robbed of their children at the sweet age of seven years, broken on the wheel, hunted among the mountains of the Cevennes, beggared, insulted, tortured, massa- cred. What wonder that these poor Protestants lost the balance of their mental powers and en- gendered an hysterical disease, a disease which under its strangely irritable forms is well knov/n to medical science and is highly infectious ? " (Curteis). The Calvinists of the Cevennes sup- posed it to be the work of the Spirit to susli,in them in their terrible trials. But the very same disease broke out among the Roman Catholics themselves at Port Royal. In the previous century it threw whole nunneries near Bordeaux into wild confusion. In the sixteenth century it had been known in Italy as the dancing mania br tarantism. The number of those affected by it iVffV DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? ,69 was beyond all belief. People joined the throng and caught the infection through the eye. Neither young nor old were protected from its infection (Becker's Epidemics, pp. 107-115). In the Middle Ages the same kind of epidemic was of frequent occurrence. The delusion arose in Germany, and was manifested by a convulsion which in the most extraordinary manner infuri- ated the human frame. The victims fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion, complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death (Geo. Fox, Journal, p. 100). These hysterical refugees arrived in great numbers in London and Bristol, about 1739, shortly after Wesley's return. They were sup- posed to be prophets. Men's minds were filled with a new religious enthusiasm, and so the epi- demic broke out. In several places where Mr. Wesley was expounding the Scriptures many persons trembled and fell down before him ; some cried aloud; others appeared convulsed, as in the agonies of death. Many of these declared that they had at the time above-mentioned such a deep sense of the nature of sin that they were constrained to cry aloud, for the disquietude of their hearts. In others there was no evidence of true conversion, or godly sorrow for sin, or joy and peace in believing (Coke's Life of Wesley, p. 177). Meeting after meeting and sermon K ill W 1' ^^* M 1 ' ,1 if' ; 170 WNV niD THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? after sermon was interrupted by men and women of all ages and conditions falling down in con- vulsions and crying aloud for mercy. Scores were sometimes strewed on the ground at once. While Mr. Wesley was preaching on Monday, May 2 1 St, " one and another and another were struck to the earth trembling exceedingly. Others cried with a loud and bitter cry. . . . One dropped down close to one who was a strong as- serter of the contrary doctrine. While he stood astonished at the sight, a little boy near him was seized in the same manner. A young man who stood behind fixed his eyes on him and sunk down himself as one dead, but soon began to roar out and beat himself against the ground (Coke, p^o'^e i88), so that ten men could scarcely hold him. A traveller was at one time passing by, but on pausing a moment to hear the sermon he was instantly smitten to the earth. A Quaker who undertook to admonish the people against these strange scenes was himself struck down as by an unseen hand. Speaking of the work in America, Coke says (page 483) of the quarterly meeting at Jones' chapel, "the Divine power came down upon the people before one preacher arrived. When they came up they found num- bers weeping both in the chapel and in the open air. Some were on the ground crying for mercy, others in ecstasies. . . . Some were lying as in W/^Y DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? 171 the pangs of death ; many were as cold as clay and as still as if dead. So that among six or seven thousand people there were few compara- tively that had the proper use of their bodily powers." All this fitted in so well with the new doctrines about instantaneous conversion, and of being sensibly and at a given moment born again, that it was at once interpreted as the miraculous birth-throes of the new life, as the sensible strivings of the Holy Ghost with re- luctant, sinful souls. Wesley was quite honest but exceedingly superstitious in falling into this snare. His success, as may be easily imagined, was marvellous. The land was filled with the fame of his mighty achievements. The move- ment spread like wildfire, both in the old world and in the new. And so the one great charac- teristic doctrine of Methodism, the doctrine of the new birth through instantaneous and sensible conversion, became from this time doubly ac- centuated ; and, notwithstanding Wesley's own return to a more tranquil, healthful, and Church- manlike judgment on all these points, this has become the stereotyped and characteristic mark of Methodism ever since. In his sermon on the nature of enthusiasm, vol. 6, p. 441, Wesley speaks again like an English Churchman. " En- thusiasm," he says, "is undoubtedly a disorder of the mind. It is not any part of religion ; ' 1 M 1' ft 172 ir/n' /)//) ////i METHODISTS SEPAFATK? I fj quite the reverse. Religion is the spirit of a sound mind. . . Beware you are not entangled therewith. It easily besets those who fear or love God. Trust not in visions, or dreams, in sudden impressions, or strong impulses of any kind. Beware, lastly, of imagining you shall attain the end without using the means conducive to it." A great deal has been said by Methodist writt rs and orators about Wesley being refused leave to preach in the churches, being perse- cuted and driven out of the Church of England. But surely, in the first place, it was an extra- ordinary course for an ordinary clergyman to pursue, to abandon his parish, then claim the world for his parish, and go up and down the land claiming the right to preach in any and every church as he pleased. What would be thought of a Methodist minister now if he were to abandon his own circuit and claim the right to preach in any Methodist Church anywhere ? Would he be allowed to do so, especially if he assumed the right to preach because the minister did not preach and did not know the Gospel ? But Wesley was welcomed nearly everywhere at first in spite of all this. It was only when he took up the new doctrines of the Moravians and Convulsionists that he was generally excluded. Wesley, as quoted by Coke, p. 182, says so him- IV//V DID THE MRTIIODISTS SEPARATE? 173 self. " I was forbidden, as by general consent, to preach in any church (though not by any judicial sentence) for preaching such doctrines. This was the open and avowed cause. There was at the time no other, either real or pretend- ed." The Church, as a whole, was no more responsible for the mob violence and persecution to which Wesley and his followers were exposed than she was responsible in our own day for the riots at St. George's-in-the-East, or at St. James', Hatcham. The charge that Wesley was driven out of the Church of England is manifestly and absurdly untrue. He was never driven out, and he never went out. Both he and his brother lived and died as Priests of the Church of Eng- land. In a recent number of the Methodist Times the editor says, " There is no doubt that John Wesley never by any formal act withdrew from the Church of England, and he was never formally expelled." In his Journal, October 1790, p. 478, he tells us that all the clergy of the town were present at his preaching ; and that, on the invitation of the rector, and with the hearty consent of the Bishop, he preached in the parish church. On the 24th of the same month he says : "I preached in the church of Spittalfields to a num- erous congregation, and in St. Paul's, Shadwell, in the afternoon, which was still more crowded," I ;4i IVHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? On Friday, the 14th of the same month, he says : "Afterwards we went into our own parish church. I preached at two " (ib. page 477). Again, on Wednesday, 22nd September, 1790, he says (ib. p. 474) : "I preached once more in the Temple church on * All things are possible to him that believeth.' " He was not, therefore, at the close of his ministry excluded from the churches, and, if his own testimony is to be believed, he never separated from the Church. On April 14th, 1760, he said : "Whoever separates from the Church will separate from the Methodists." In 1746, he said : " I dare not renounce com- munion with the Church of England. As a minister I teach her doctrines ; I use her offices ; I conform to her rubrics ; I suffer reproach for my attachment to her." In 1756, he says : ' My brother and I closed the conference by a solemn declaration of our purj.os3 never ^o separate from the Church of England." In 1785, " Finding a report spread abroad that I was just going to leave the church, I openly declared in the evening that I had now no more thought of separating from the Church than I had forty years ago." In 1789, " I gave them all a plain account of the design of Methodism, namely, Not to WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? 175 separate from the Church, but to unite to- gether all the children of God that were scat- tered abroad." In 1789 (fifteen months before hi^ death), he said : " I declare once more that I live and die a member of the Church of England, and that none who regard my judgment or advice will ever separate from it." " Love the Church of England and resolve never to separate from it. Do not despise her prayers, do not call your society a church, nor your preachers ministers, nor your houses meet ing houses, call them plain preaching houses." (Code of Direction, 1797). So little at the time of John Wesley's death was Methodism regarded as a new Church, that on his epitaph on the marble tablet in the New Chapel, City Road, John Wesley was spoken of as " the founder of the Methodist Societies, and as the patron and friend of lay preachers,' words that have since been era'^ed or changed. In Wesley's mind his preachers were laymen. Two years after his death the Conference sol- emnly declared that Wesleyan teachers were o ily preachers and expounders, and the new- fangled ordination scheme was rejected. The fact is, there was no intention in Wesley's mind of separation from the Church. His ob- ject, if we may believe his words, was simply a •I i •I ■ I'' I '' ^;|[ !!! 176 IVHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? revival of religion within the Church of Eng- land. Looking around him for the means which could be either used or adapted to effect the object in view, he found ready to his hand the idea which had been broached half a century before by Spencer, the great leader of the piet- ist revival in Germany. This was no other than what he called Ecclesiohe (little churches), "or confraternities within the church, governed by certain rules, walking orderly and methodic- ally under their appointed leaders, visited and encouraged from time to time by their founder or some lay exhorter sent by him, and all com- mitted to the care and guidance of the parochial clergy. Wesley's society was nothing new or astonishing at that period ; on the contrary, London seems literally to have teemed with such religious societies early in the eighteenth century." (R. Watson's Life of Wesley, p. 73). " And all these societies required before admission a testimony of the candidate's sense of spiritual things, and of his sincere intention to lead a religious life." (Tyerman's Life of Wes- ley, L, 217.) But not only did Wesley not leave the Church ot England, he steadfastly adhered to her doctrines. " He often observed (writes Coke, p. 496), that in the course of fifty years he had never either premed'tatcdiy or willingly varied :',{ ■ 1 ; i WffV DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? 177 from the Church of England in one article either of doctrine or discipline," with the excep- tion of preaching in the fields and using extem- porary prayer on certain occasions. He him- self said just at the end ci his life : " I hold all the doctrines of the Church of England ; I love her liturgy ; I approve her plan of discipline ; I do not knowingly depart from the rule of the Church unless in i. :)se few cases \yhere I judge there is an absolute necessity. I dare not sep- arate from the Church. I believe it would be a sin to do so. I have been true to my profession from 1730 to this day" (Sen cxv., vol. iii, p. 267). It is not easy to reconcile Wesley's teaching, as learned from the Moravians, about instantaneous conversion and the new birth with this statement. It is certain, however, whether he returned to his earlier convictions, or held the two systems concurrently without attempting to reconcile them, that he did hold the doctrines of the Church of England, not in a general way, but in exact detail. Twenty years after what he called his conversion, he says : — " Ey baptism we are admitted into the Church, and conse- quently made members of Christ, from which spiritual, vital union with Him proceeds the in- fluence of His grace on those that are baptized." "By water, then, as a means we are regen- erated or born again." "And the terms 'being I- if iii ^iii^To H*' 1 78 IV// V DID THE ME TffOD/S TS SEPA RA TE ? ' "' I }h' ^\\^ '!)!!: regenerated,' or ' being born again,' or ' being born of God,' in Scripture always exp-esses an inward work of the Spirit, whereof baptism is the outward sign . . . And the outward sign duly received is always accompanied with the inward grace." (Wesley'p Works, xix. 281.) Again, " Baptism is a precious means whereby this faith and hope are given to those who diligently seek." (Wesley's sermon 74.) Again, he says, " It is certain our Church sup- poses that all who are baptized in their infancy are at the same time born again." "The whole office for the baptism of infants proceeds upon this supposition. Nor is it an objection of any weight against this, that we cannot comprehend how this work can be wrought in infants. For neither can we com- prehend how it can be wrought in those of riper years. (Sermon 45 in the New Book.) He was equally explicit in his statements about the Holy Communion : " We believe there is, and always was, in every Chris ian Church an out- ward Priesthood ordained by Jesus Christ, and an outward Sacrifice offered therein, by men authorized to act as ambassadors of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God." (Journal, vol. ii, p. 4.) Again : *' We freely own that Christ is to be adored in the Lord's Supper ; but that the elem.ents are to be adored we deny." II til ' i WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? 179 (Wesley's Works, vol. x, p. 117). He says, '< The sacramental bread was daily received in the beginning by the whole Church of Christ . . . as the grand channel whereby the gift of His Spirit was conveyed to the souls of all the children of God." (Ser. xxvi.) Again, he says : *' The benefits of receiving the Holy Commu- nion are (i) the forgiveness of our past sins, and (2) the present strengthening and refreshing of our souls. The grace of God given herein con- firm to us the pardon of our sins, and enables us to leave them. Ch . Body and Blood is the food of our souls l gives strength to per- form our duty and leads us on to perfection." But it will be said, if Wesley held the Church's doctrines, did not separate from her himself, and forbade his followers to do so, why did he found th^ Methodist Church and ordain Methodist ministers? That is just what he himself says he did not do. The quotations given show that his object was not to found a Church, but to revive the spiritual life of the Church by a society within ber. He was in no true sense the founder of a Methodist Church. His new doctrines and his actions, however, led, by a logical sequence which he did not see, to a separation. And as to preach- ers, whom he always called lay preachers, he declares solemnly in the cxxix. sermon of an . b ' S i I i . I — ff k[ 4 I a I li I I 1 80 WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? edition of his sermons which he himself pub- lished in 1788, known as his "Korah sermon," but suppressed in recent Methodist editions of his works, in answer to the question, in what light are we to regard ourselves? "As extra- ordinary messengers raised up to provoke the ordinary ones to jealousy. In order to do this you are to do that part of the work to which we appoint you. But did we ever appoint you to administer sacraments or to exercise the priestly office? Such a design never entered into our minds. It was farthest from our thoughts." Again: "The Methodists are not a sect or party, they do not separate from the religious community to which they at first belonged. They are still members of the Church, and such they desire to live and die." Wesley believed that the prophetic or preaching oifice was sep- arate, or at least separable, from the priestly or ministerial. And so he says : "You whom God hath commissioned to call sinners to repentance must consider that it by no means follows from hence that ye are commissioned to baptize or administer the Lord's Supper. Ye never dreamed of this for ten or twenty years after ye began to preach. Ye did not then, like Korah, Dathan and Abiram, seek the priesthood also. Ye knew ' no man taketh this honour to himself but he that is called of God, as was Aaron,' PlWiEVl W/fV DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? i8i Oh ! contain yourselves within your bounds, be content with preaching the Gospel?" Did space allow, quotations on all these points could be vastly increased. Those quotations, however, make it plain that Wesley was resisting strong pressure .om within. There was evidently a wide-spread desire among his followers, and especially among the preachers, to separate from the Church, and for the preachers to assume the functions of the ministry. Accordingly, we find that the year after Wesley's death, in spite of his protestations, they put it to the lot in their conference as to whether they should ad- minister sacraments or not, and the lot said " no." The next year they took an open vote, and the vote said "yes." And they took that as divine guidance. The preachers, however, were not ordained till 1836, that is 45 years after Wesley's death, and then not by the clergy of the Church of England who had joined them, but by preachers who were confessedly laymen. The ordainers were the president, ex-president and secretary of the conference for that year, and two other lay preachers. The president and ex-president were Jabez Bunting, Richard Seece, and the seretary, Robert Newton. All of them were preachers who had never received an ordination with the laying on of hands from anybody whatever. Up to this time they 9t I 11 yM f ' '\ 11 'f il' " ! f !' ; 1 1 )! : -^1 ^!;: 1 8 2 WH Y DID THE ME THODIS TS SEPA RA TE ? had adhered to the principles laid down in the conference of 1793 : "We have never sanctioned ordination in England either in this conference or in any other, in any degree, or even at- tempted to do it." Surely if it be held that the president and his associates were presbyters without ordination, so were the preachers on whom they laid their hands, and so did not need it ; but if they were not presbyters, and did need it, then the president and the others were not presbyters, and could not confer the office. Nor can any intelligent reason be given why the itinerant preachers should assume to them- selves the priestly power and deny it to the local preachers ; for whatever commission the itiner- ants possess, the local preachers possess the same. But, it will be said, what is the use of recall- ing facts like these? The marvellous success of Methodism, both in winning converts and in turning men from sin to holiness, is a sufficient commission to all the functions of the ministry without ordination. That success has, no doubt, been marvellous. It is impossible to read the accounts of the movement written by Methodists themselves without been stirred with sympathy for their position, and without feeling how powerfully the argument of success, as sanction- ing all they have done and giving authority for lV//y DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? 183 it, appeals to their minds. However, we may reconcile it with our theories and convictions, it is evident that God has been working- with them and by them in wondrous ways. That, how- ever, can afford no ground for assuming that success, even of a spiritual kind, proves that any claims men may set up for themselves are of divine appointment. The success of the Salvation Army has been greater, and its spread throughout the world more rapid, than anything which the history of Methodism dis- closes, and they will maintain that its spiritual achievements have been greater also. It would hardly do, however, to assume that the commis- sioners and captains are divinely invested with all the functions of the Priesthood by that success. What, again, are we to think of the great Benedictine movement of the sixth century, which stemmed the rushing inundation of Pagan and Arian barbarism, and whose evan- gelists by their earnest preaching and labors throughout Europe won the world back to Christ, and secured the charters of our modern civilization ? They were lay preachers, all of them ; were they by their labors and success consecrated to that priesthood which they never sought or claimed? And if not is it the success or the claim that makes men ministers? ' 4 - I ^1 '! I 1 84 JVHV DID THE ME T HOD IS TS SEP A RA TE ? Or take again the results of the great preach- ing revival of the thirteenth century, a revival which scattered lay evangelists by tens of thou- sands over the face of Europe. At first they humbly submitted to the clergy, but soon claimed to be their superiors, pushed them aside, they took their endowments from them. Did their success make them priests of God? What, again, of the results attained by those memor- able Reformers before the Reformation — the Beghards, the Lollards, and similar confratern- ities of laymen ? To their labors the success of the Reformation was certainly due. Did that success sufjply a sufficient ordination to an office to which they did not aspire? (Curteis.) Clearly it will never do to lay such burdens upon any fortuitous success. The Word of God, the practice of the Church, the principles of reason, must be the light by which we walk, and not by the sight of our eyes blinded by the glare of success, or the light of fanatical emotion. If we were to judge by apparent results, as to whether God's plainly declared will had been changed, oris still binding upon us, then surely we would be justified in assuming that the vSeventh Commardment had been abrogated, as illegitimate children manifest just the same physical, intellectual and moral qualities as those born in lawful wedlock. But no ; God's declar- Wfl V DID THE METHODISTS SEP A RA TE ? 1 85 ed will must be our guide, and the guilt of trans- gressing it cannot be measured by any apparent results, or seeming success ; nor can we expect God to change the laws of His natural order, to convince us that He has not changed His mind, or broken His word, or made a mistake. And, beside, we cannot judge of results by any limited or temporary success. It is only when the battle is over and the campaign ended that we can know the results of any great move- ment. What has seemed to be a great success for a while, may be found in the end to have been the most absolute failure, regard being had to the final achievements of the cause which we have been seeking to promote. A divided household — confusion of f^ith estrangement of brethren — lowered tone of mor- ality — debased worship — opposing testimony — lost authority — are certainly a heavy make- weight to set over against the assumed justify- ing success. Our present enquiry, however, is what obsta- cles to reunion does this history disclose. In doctrine, none. That is, if the Methodist people do not reject the teaching of their founder and the doctrines of their first book of discipline, then there is no reconciliation on this head needed. Then as regards the basal conception of the i rr • 1 IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // if Is, V, ^ ^A ^M 1 A ■^ 7i 1.0 I.I If i^ IIM 2.2 6 |40 2.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 .« 6" - ► V] <^ /] /^ K' ^ ol%/ '/ # /A Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) fl72-4S03 i86 WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? \ w fVil \A'A\ %% V- I religious life, the necessity of a sensible in- stantaneous conversion by an interior convulsion, that is practically abandoned ; at least in the more intellectual spheres of Methodist work. The Camp Meeting, and the Protracted Meet- ing, and the Experienc Meeeting, occupy a very unimportant place to-day, compared with that assigned to them thirty or forty years ago. For the wild excitement and spasmodic convulsion' has been generally substituted to-day the very quiet and tame affair of making a public profes- sion of religion. Men have discovered that the strong hysteri- cal emotions, which it was sought to produce in former days, form no necessary part of true conversion, and have issued far more frequently in a lowered faith and hardened heart than in any true turning of the soul to God. The obstacles to a reunion, which ought never to have been needed, are human sentiments and denominational pride, which Christian men ought resolutely to crush out as obstacles to a restored brotherhood, and the fulfilment of our Lord's deepest desire. There is nothing either in doctrine or in practice that could not be ex- plained, restated and adjusted ; and what is best and most effective in both systems be retained in the reorganized and reunited body, and, therefore, the Mother stretches out her hands to II WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE? 187 her Methodist children, and calls with heartfelt entreaty '' Come Home," let us dwell together as brethren, and strive together for the Faith of the Gospel instead of striving, as is generally the case now, against one another. r .. r W I I ; u 1 If! ill < I B< ' I'll' 'M, '.'111 1 -■ i 11! i I, 1 9} li *,l H !'inH CHAPTER X. WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? It is evident from the foregoing examination of the origin and history of the various Denomi- nations that tney have either themselves aban- doned, at least in practice, the reasons assigned for their separation ; or those reasons have been found to be based upon defective information ; or upon forged and misleading quotations. We would, therefore, naturally expect that on the causes which seemed to constrain men into sep- aration being removed or found to be of no con- straining force, the divisions which were based upon these causes would be abandoned ; and that, in the interests of economy, both of men and money, in the interests of the power of truth, which is almost inconceivably diminished by our divisions, and in the interests of brotherly love and charity which are so hindered and destroyed by our Denominationalism, men would desire and seek above all things to bring about a reconciliation between the shattered fragments of the Christian host. We know that it is not so, and that the only movement that has been i88 IV//V ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? 189 made in that direction has been made, not by those who made the separations and left their natal Home, but by those from whom they separated opening wide their door and stretch- ing out their hands with the earnest entreaty, *' Come Home." It is said that every effect has its cause. What then is the cause of this alienated attitude of the Denominations ? Why is it that neither as De- nominations, nor as individuals, are they seek- ing or desiring to restore the unity which, under what they regarded as their constraining prin- ciples, they broke? For in every case they left the church of their fathers and refused any longer to hold communion with her ; she did not in any case turn them out. No doubt Denominational pride has a great deal to do with this continued attitude of aliena- tion. Most of them have been wonderfully suc- cessful ; and that success has seemed to them to be an assurance of the Divine approbation of their action. Then the acceptance for so long a time of the now abandoned doctrines and exploded theories, has built up a sectarian character and view of what the Christian life is, and has created a religious sentiment and atmosphere differing widely from that of the historic Church ; and this sentiment is a more powerful factor in keep- m 190 WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? ing up the divisions than any surviving or ener- gizing divergency of doctrine. And yet, while the doctrines and usages which caused the separation have so largely been aban- doned, there are doctrines held by the Church of England, which were also once held by the Denominations, which are alleged by them as reasons for their not entertaining the thought of the restoration of unity. SACERDOTALISM. It will be said, for instance, by many, " True, we may have abandoned Calvinism, and may have found out that the notions of our predeces- sors about the necessity of extempore prayer are not tenable; and that the form of Church gov- ernment for which they contended is not of Divine obligation; but the Church of England believes in sacerdotalism, and she calls her min- isters Priests, and we know that sacerdotalism is unscriptural, and that there are no Priests in the Christian Church. We could not, therefore, even think of uniting again with a body that holds to such erroneous doctrines." Now let us consider what there is in this objection. It is quite true that the Church of England calls her ministers Priests in no less than 45 places in the Prayer Book. It is quite true that the words Pastor and Minister, which had crept into the second book of Edward VI, I WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED^ 191 were rejected at the last review, and the word "Priest" substituted for them in 27 places. It is quite true that she has a very solemn service for making men Priests who were not Priests before — that she professes to invest them with very high and far-reaching prerogatives; and we are persuaded that she would not be true to Holy Scripture if she took any lower view of the place and importance of the ministry of reconciliation. And ye'., if by the somewhat appalling word sacerdotalism, you mean that the Church ot England believes, and teaches, that there is a class of men called Priests, who stand between the soul and God, so that there can be no access to God except through their mediation, and that they can perform acts which are of saving value without any reference to the faith and penitence of the sinner; if this is what you mean by sacerdotalism, then it is the very opposite of what the Church believes and teaches. For, instead of thinking of the ministry as a wall be- tween the soul and God, it is set forth as one of the ordained ways of bringing each individual soul to God. Its office is to take the penitent by the hand of faith and lead him into the inner sanctuary of God's presence and pardoning grace. It is a bridge to help us over, not a wall to bar us out. In opposition to this it is argr.ed that Presby- 192 IVffy ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? \> L P. « ter or Elder was the name of an officer, or rather a set of officers in the Jewish synagogue, and so it is contended that the word Priest, which is only Presbyter writ short, means just what that title meant among the Jews, and is used to describe one who is empowered to teach, exer- cise discipline, and administer religious rites and ceremonies. It is assumed that these were the functions of the Jewish Elder, and that they substantially describe what are the duties and powers of the Christian Priest. But a very slight examination of the facts would have made it plain that these were not the functions of the Elders at all, or indeed of any other officer of the synagogue, ana they who adopt this theory have been misled by a very shallow piece of reasoning, based upon etymology. Surely the practical question for us is not what may have been the etymological meaning of the word Presbyter or what its significance as used by the Jews, but what was its meaning when adopted by our Reformers, anu incorporated into the very web and woof of our Prayer Book. It is surely utterly useless to appeal to the etymological use of a word to determine the sense in which it may have been used in any subsequent age of its history. "Words," it has been well said, "are not fossils, which, being transplanted from one bed of matter to another. '/ ■HHHPOTI WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? 193 / preserve their primeval form from age to age.*' Everybody knows, who knows anything about the history of language, that words are continu- ally changing, enlarging or contracting their meaning ; some sinking down to baser and others being elevated into nobler uses. The word king, for instance, etymologically means a wise man ; but does this give a full description of the functions and powers of the persons now designated by that title. Again, the word idiot means etymologically a private person, as dis- distinguished from one who holds some office ; does that word now describe the conditions of all who have not secured some office for them- selves. The word silly means etymologically blessed, but does any one argue that all silly people are blessed or that the blessed are silly, and so we need not turn to the etymological meaning or Jewish use of the word Presbyter to find out its significance to us English Church people. The question is, what did it mean when adopted as the designation of the second order of the ministry in the i6th century. Now every- body knows, who knows anything about the matter, that at the time of the Reformation the word Priest was the ordinary term by which everybody expressed the meaning of the word Sacerdos which was used in the Latin Service books, as the official designation of the second ;.iii^dk-^inrm^W^nbiM!<- ii'l^iii'H I '4 :;! !i i J'S 194 H^^F ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? order of the ministry. The Priest of ordinary conversation was the Sacerdos of the sanctuary. "The term," as a thoughtful living writer has expressed it, "had become fixed in the mind and conscience of England, as the only natural word to express what they certamly believed in a sacerdotal ministry." If it had been the purpose of the Reformers to reject the ideas universally attached to that name, they must of necessity have abandoned the name itself. This is what actually was done wherever under the Refor- mation movement the idea of Priesthood was rejected, as in Scotland, Switzerland and France. So that the fact that the English Reformers de- liberately adopted the term Priest, of the mean- ing of which at that time there could be no doubt, makes the inference clear that they in- tended to preserve also the ideas which that term conveyed to the mind of everybody at that time. This is put beyond question by the fact that the ultra-Reformers who developed into the Puritans of England and the Presbyterians in Scotland, rejected the term Priest simply because of the popular ideas attaching to it; and they urged the English Reformers to substitute for that word the words Pastor and Minister. Now the English Reformers, who finally settled the Prayer Book as we have it, though disposed to make every possible concession in order to con- IV//Y ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? 195 ciliate as many as they could, yet not only de- liberately refused to displace the term Priest in favour of Minister, but on the contrary they in- troduced the term Priest instead of Minister into 27 places from which it had been removed in the 2nd Book of Ed. VI, and they entirely cast out the term Pastor, which was the favorite appella- tion of the Nonconformists, except in two cases where it has not destinctive significance. It is impossible to conceive a more decisive proof of the mind of the Church of England, her deliberate and final judgment, than that which is here supplied. The question had come to a distinct issue, with full knowledge of the circum- stances and of the consequences involved, with a powerful and popular opposition in favour of the Presbyter view. In face of that opposition, and wiih full knowledge of the consequences of their action, the Bishops calmly and deliberately decided, without one dissentent voice, to reject the terms Minister and Pastor, which, accord- ing to the Presbyter view, were the correct terms, and to maintain and restore the term Priest which the Puritans held was unscriptural and misleading. And it is well for us to re- member that the divines who conducted the Savoy Conference, in which the English Church has thus deliberately, formally and finally re- jected the Presbyter or Pastor view, was made iq6 llV/y ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? I ! 1 . I i'\-\\ It. ■, up of many of the most learned and honoured names in the English Church- Sheldon, Cosin, Morley, Sanderson, Walton, Gunning, Pear- son, Sparrow and Thorndike ; and, moreover, that the whole stream of English Church writ- ers, from that day to this, who can be regarded as theologians, are definitely against this mere Presbyter view of the ministry. So that as honest English Churchmen who accept her for- mularies as meaning what they were intended to mean, the question for us is settled. The anti-sacerdotal, mere Presbyter view has no standing ground whatever in the English Church. That theory was first propounded by Grotius, who was a Dutch Presbyterian ; it was adopted by Seldon, a learned Lay Elder in Cromwell's Council of Divines. It was devel- oped by Vatvinga, another Dutch Presbyterian. But it never received any real countenance from any divine of the Church of England. But in order that we may avoid the sin of erect- ing unjustifiable barriers to block the way of re- turn to the old Home for ourselves and others, let us consider the matter in the light of Holy Scrip- ture, which is supposed to contradict any doc- trine of sacerdotalism, and also in the light of common sense which is supposed to be outraged by the very idea of a Priesthood. And first, as to Holy Scripture ; does it teach WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? 197 or does it condemn the existence of a Christian Priesthood ? Let us examine first the sixth verse of the first chapter of the Revelation of St. John. The Apostle has been rehearsing the great things that Christ has done for us. " He loved us, He washed us from our sins, and as a crowning act of His grace, He made us Kings and Priests unto God ? " The Greek reads : Kai iiToiqatv yjfi(i<; /Sao-iXciav, iepci9 rul ©eoT Kai irarpi avrov. which are translated in the revised version "He made us to be a Kingdom, to be Priests unto His God and Father." The words "to be " in both clauses have nothing corresponding to them in the original. The words Kingdom and Priests are in apposition, and describe, not two opposed and contrasted gifts, but the same gift contemplated on different sides — the inward, and the outward. Our Blessed Lord came into the world, according to prevenient prophecy, to found a Kingdom. Both He and His forerun- ner proclaimed that its establishment was at hand when He came. He told Pilate on the judgment-seat that His Kingdom was not of this world, and He said to His Disciples on one occasion " the Kingdom of God is within you." By which words He did not intend to teach, as some have inferred, that His Kingdom was an invisible, unorganized, intangible something; II 11 i V 11 if.! i ft: fy\\\ \ Li' ■ i 1 T ,A' jL II 1) 1 t.t Mh Mil 3^ 1 M ill' 1 J ^ 198 PT^r ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED ? for He Himself constituted it as an organized visible society; which persecuting Jews and heathens soon proved to be of a very tangible character. He was contrasting His rule with the rule of earthly potentates. The kings of the earth only concern themselves with the out- ward actions of men ; they exercise discipline upon their bodies, and so coerce them into obedi- ence to their laws. He, on the other hand, would concern Himself with the thoughts, desires, motives and affections of men ; He would set up His throne within, and seek by His Spirit in all things to direct and rule their hearts. By the truths He would impart, the hopes He would inspire, the enthusiastic love He would awaken in their hearts, through faith in Him whom those truths proclaim. He would constrain them into ready obedience to His will ; and thus, by His inner rule, make it possible for every true follower of His to say, *' I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." But this inward possession has its outward expression. He who has thus made us His Kingdom has also made us Priests in His King- dom. The words are spoken, not of the clergy alone, nor of the laity alone, but of the whole Christian Brothchood. St. John says of us all, men, women, and children, that He has made us Priests. It is the crowning act of His love, i-i^f.ri-aiiiiiri-Twnr WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED ? 199 What does it mean ? Many of us, perhaps, find no delight in what the Apostle sets forth as a great privilege. We have, perhaps, learned to look upon the office with suspicion, and upon the name with abhorrence. It needs only a lit- tle knowledge and a little reflection to show us that such disregard of what St. John regards as God's crowning gift to His children, is altogether unjustifiable. Now the word Icpeus which St. John here employs, is the equivalent and trans- lation of the Hebrew word " Cohen." It is translated into Latin by the word ''sacerdos," and into English by the word " Priest " ; it can be translated by no other word. And when we look into the matter we find that the word *' Cohen " means primarily and essentially, just one who transacts business for another, an agent, a representative, an instrument by whom the will of that other is accomplished. And the word fcp^ws has, originally and abidingly, precisely the same meaning. Whatever en- largement or contraction of this meaning may have at any time attached itself to this word has grown out of the character of the agency or nature of the work to be done ; but the prim- ary inherent meaning continues. It was per- haps to recall this truth that St. Paul applies the term "ambassador" to himself and others called to the same ministry, when he says (5 m 200 WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? Cor. V. 20), "Now then we as ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us : we pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." An ambassador is one sent out to represent his sovereign or govern- ment at some foreign Court ; he is their agent or representative, and he receives his instruc- tions as to what he is to do, or say, under fore- seen emergencies, and if he acts within those instructions, the words which he speaks and the acts which he performs are not his but those of the government he represents ; they bind not him but them. Now in this we have represented the essential idea of Priesthood. They to whom the title is given are God's agents to do His work, His instruments to accomplish His will. His representaiives to act in His place and for Him. And this office and privilege, St. John says, has been conferred on us all ; He hath made us Priests, men and women, and children. By virtue of our bap- tism we have been called to this dignity ; for " By one spirit," says St. Paul, *' have we all been baptized into One Body, and so have been made the Body of Christ and members in par- ticular." So elementary is this truth that St. Paul asks : *' Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ ? " " Know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost »*' .1 ■ W//V ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED ? 201 which is in you ? " '* Know ye not that Christ is in you, except ye be reprobate ? " So intim- ate is the union between Christ and His mem- bers, that we are said to dwell in Christ and Christ in us, we are one with Christ and Christ with us. So that whatever He did becomes C'irs, whatever He is we are made, He is the Great High Priest, and we are Priests in Him ; the anointing that was poured upon Him has come down to the skirts of His clothing, even unto us, and has consecrated us to this high pri- vilege. It is not the writer, it is the Spirit of God, speaking by St. John who says so, and St. Peter endorses this teaching twice over ; he says (i Pet. ii : 5), " Ye have been built up a spiritual house into a Holy Priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices well pleasing to God." i€par€v/x.a ayiov, avw^yKai TrvtVfxanKas Ovatas cvTrpotrScKTovs TO) ©€0?. And again in the ninth verse, ''But ye are a chosen nation, a royal Priesthood." ^aaiXiiov Updrcvfia. And St. Paul (Rom. XV.: 16) says that God had chosen him, among other things, that he might discharge the office of a Priest icpovpyovvTa with reference to the Gospel of God. There can then be no doubt about the teaching of Holy Scripture. The whole Christian Brotherhood is consecrated to a Holy Priesthood ; each one is a Priest, an agent, and instrument of God's will, Each has been M 202 WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? Vk\ U.i If '' appointed to do that work for Him, which per- tains to his calling and sphere in life, or which grows out of the office he holds. We are in the habit of separating the things that pertain to man's life into secular and spir- itual, and we speak and think of the spiritual as being God's work, while with the secular He is assumed to have nothing to do. It needs but little reflection to see that there is no such distinction in the mind of God. It is part of His will and work, that the human family should be sustained in comfort and enjoyment; but He has willed to accomplish this work through the employment of agents and instrumentalities. He has made lay people His Priests for this work, and, putting the necessary instrumental- ities into their hands. He holds them responsible to do that work for Him. It is His will and His work that our children should be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. He has made those who are parents and teachers, His Priests, His representatives and instru- ments for the fulfilment of that work, and has laid the responsibility upon them. It is His will and .His work to make our homes nurseries of Heaven, and schools of Christ, to make them glad, joyous and happy. He has appointed parents, and grown-up brothers and sisters, His Priests to do that blessed work for Him. i'l! WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? 203 It is His will and work that all should know the Lord, from the least to the greatest, that the Gospel should be preached to every creature. He has sent each one of us home with this com- mission, "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee." He has sent us each out into the dark world holding 'orth the word of truth, like those who travelled on the darkened streets of the ancient cities who went on thtir way holding forth a torch to guide their own feet, and throw light far along the street to all who were journeying by the same road. It is the never-ceasing work of the Great High Priest of our profession to make interces- sion in Heaven for us. He has appointed us His representatives to make prayers, supplica- tions, intercession, and giving thanks for all men ; to pray without ceasing. He is presenting forever the memorials of His passion, in the scars still visible in brow, and hand, and side, and is pleading His all-prevailing sacrifice on Calvary, in the Courts above; and He has ap- pointed us His representatives, and has com- manded us to make before God the appointed memorial, and so to spread out before the eyes of the Eternal, to represent, to hold up, to plead the Sacrifice of the Cross, yea, Christ 204 WNV ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? Himself, the living Lord, as our one only plea for forgiveness, for acceptance, and for grace. In all these He has made us Priests to our God, His agents, instruments and representatives. But if this sort and extent of Priesthood be- longs to all the baptized, what is the position of those whom the Church specifically ordains to the office and work of a Priest in the Church ot God ? How does their office differ from this ? It does not differ at all in kind, but only in de- gree, or rather in character and sphere of action. Both alike are the representatives and agents of God, the instruments of His will to do that work of God which pertains to their calling and place in life. They who are ordained to the official Priesthood have very solemn duties imposed upon them, very high privileges conferred. They represent God in His relationship, not so much to the individual or the family as to the whole congregation. Their position and work are well described in the definition of Priesthood given by Bishop Lightfoot. He says (page 264, Treatise on the Ministry) : "In a wider sense there is a Christian Priesthood, and in that sense a Christian Priest may be defined as one who represents God to man, and man to God. The Christian minister is God's ambassador to men. He is charged with the ministry of reconcilia- tion ; he unfolds the will of heaven, he declares, way ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? 205 in God's name, the absolution to the penitent ; but, throughout, his office is representative and not vicarious. He does not interpose between God and man in such a way that direct com- munion with God is suppressed on the one hand, or that his mediation becomes indispensable on the other." Again he says, "the Christian minister is the representative of man to God, of the congregation primarily and of the individual indirectly. The alms, the prayers, the thanks- giving are offered through him. He is a Priest as the mouthpiece, the delegate of a Priestly race, his acts are not his own but the acts of the congregation." The Christian Priest, accord- ing to Lightfoot, is Christ's ambassador ; His mouthpiece and representative authorized to speak and act in His name and on His behalf ; he is man's (the congregation's) representative, commissioned to speak and act in their name and for them ; this is at once the etymological and historical meaning of the word. No other view is possible. The Priest of the sanctuary, like his lay brother, is God's agent to speak and act for God in those works of his office that per- tain to God. When the minister receives the child at the font he is only the agent. It is Christ who receives him into His arms and adopts him into the family of God. When the minister pours the water and utters the words. ii 'I <: 1' 1 I J. \\% Ii 'I I] IM iv: io6 rr//^r A/f£ THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? he is only the mouthpiece and instrument of the Holy Ghost, who, St. Paul tells us, baptizes us into the One Body, and makes us members of Christ. When the Priest declares every Sun- day that he has received power and authority to declare and pronounce the absolution and remis- sion of sin, it is as God's messenger that he speaks. God alone can forgive sins ; but He might either come Himself and tell the penitent by word of mouth that his sins were forgiven, or He might, and does, send a messenger to declare and pronounce the forgiveness; and to every penitent soul that forgiveness is then and there conveyed, but it is God's forgiveness and not the messengers. When the Priest makes the ap- pointed memorial of the sacrifice of Calvary, it is only as the representative of the Great High Priest, who is presenting that sacrifice in the Heavenly precincts, and who has appointed agencies by which to recall, and plead again and again that same sacrifice. When the minister preaches it is as Christ's ambassador, commis- sioned to proclaim, not his own views or opin- ions, but the message of Christ, the everlasting Gospel, the faith once delivered to the Saints ; or, in other words, he is a Priest throughout, speaking and acting as the agent and instrument of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has called and commissioned him to do this work. WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? 207 But some one will say this word i^pcvs of which you have been speaking means a sacrific- ing Priest, and there are no sacrifices, and, therefore, no sacrificing Priests under the Chris- tian dispensation. St. John says there are sacri- ficing Priests. He says that Christ the High Priest has made us all Jepcts. St. Peter says He has made us a holy Priesthood to offer spir- itual sacrifices acceptable to God. He says He has made us a Royal Priesthood because we are a Kingdom of Priests. St. Paul says that he was appointed to discharge the office of a sacri- ficing Priest in or with reference to the Gospel of God. No sacrifices under the Christian dispensa- tion I There are no animal or bloody sacrifices; but St. Peter says there are spiritual sacrifices, which are well pleasing to God. St. Paul says there are living sacrifices : '* I beseech you Bre- thren that you present your bodies a living sac- rifice,'' (Rom. xii. i). He says (Phil. iv. 18), "that the gifts of the Philippians was a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God." The Holy Ghost exhorts (Heb. xiii. 15 and 16): *' Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips. But to do good and communicate, forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." And the Church in her Communion Office leads us to plead with God r ■. I It"' llr,i 11,' % r If" ■ n 208 WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? to mercifully accept this, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, a phrase which it has been shown was in common use, as a a description of the Holy Eucharist. No sacrifice in the Chris- tian religion I Why, it is all sacrifice. Do not the young man and maid who give themselves each to the other in Holy Matrimony sacrifice selfishness, with its wills, and choosings, upon the altar of their mutual love ? Does not the Mother give up her whole life in sacrifice — her thought and care, and love and toil and suffer- ing for her children ? Does not the Father, who rises up early and late takes rest, and wearies, and watches, and waits, give his life a living sacrifice for his wife and children ? Did not Bishop Hordcr.; who lived for forty years amid the ice and snow of Hudson Bay, offer his life a sacrifice for the love of Indian and Esqui- maux ? Was not the life of Bishop Hannington a life of sacrifice ? Was not the life of Bishop Pattison, who abandoned the highest prospects which university and family influence could bring any man, and devoted all his life to the conversion of the Cannibals of Melanesia, and at last met a martyr's death in the cause— was not his life a scrifice? Is not the soldier's life who volunteers for the forlorn hope, and storms the deadly breach, a sacrifice in his country's cause? Is not every noble and unselfish life a H7/F ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? 209 living sacrifice to God ? And do we not all, in every Eucharistic act in which we engage, unite according to his command in making the great memorial, and so in presenting anew and plead- ing the One all-prevailing sacrifice of Calvary ? And do not these sacrifices imply and require a holy and Royal Priesthood to make them ? It is sometimes said that the term " icptv? " is not applied to fhe ministers of religion in the New Testament. But it surely is so applied, unless anyone is prepared to take the utterly irrational position that one who was a "Upevs" before, is deprived of this high dignity by that very solemn act of ordination which claims to appoint him to the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God ? So that a man is debased and not exalted by his ordination — deprived of that highest privilege and gift of which St. John speaks, instead of being admitted to its highest dignity. Now it is plain that if the Church of England did not believe in a Priesthood, and in a sacrifi- cing Priesthood too, in the sense set out above, she would have failed in the fulfilment of her office as a witness to, and keeper of, the truth. What we need is not a denial or rejection of the Priesthood, but an understanding of its true character and a realization of its privileges and duties, with its resulting inspiration. Let lay- no WHY ARE THE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? >' tP men and women once realize that they have been called and consecrated to this high dignity of being the representatives of Christ, the in- struments of His will, workers with God, His ambassadors to men in the sphere in which their lot is cast, and they will not dare to live careless, useless, wasted, worldly lives. Let the Clergy once realize that they have in- deed been called to the office and work of a Priest in those things that specially pertain to the service of God in His Church, that they are ambassadors for Christ, His representatives in the world, the instruments by whom He has willed His will to be done; that upon them rests the responsibility of carrying forward that work, and so of winning the world to Christ, will not the thought mightily help them to fling self-consideration, and self-seeking, and weari- ness, and disappointment to the winds, that they may simply live in Him and for His glory. In this sense sacerdotalism is beyond dispute a scriptural doctrine; and instead of repelling ought to attract all to that communion that has constantly maintained the very truth of scrip- ture concerning it. CHAPTER XI. APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. " But I could never unite with the Church of England myself, or favor a corporate reunion of my own Denomination with her, because she believes in the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, and that doctrine I am persuaded is a mere 'fig- ment, a fable and a falsehood/ which has no foundation in Holy Scripture, and no support in the history of the Church." Thus many well- meaning and even religious people talk. But it is surely not modest talk, when we remember that nineteen out of every twenty professing Chris- tians in the world to-day believe in and act upon that doctrine ; and that among them are to be found many of the most learned, the most logi- cal, the most honest, and the most godly men of the earth. And further, that not only nineteen out of twenty of the professing Christians of the world, but the whole Christian world, with only one recorded exception, believed in that doctrine for fifteen hundred years of the Church's life. The doctrine cannot then be such a manifest and absurd figment as it is assumed. It is pro- 211 Ui APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. bably altogether misapprehended. It will, there- fore, be well for us to get clearly into our minds what is meant by the doctrine of Apostolic Suc- cession. It is simply this, that there is an established authorized ministry in Christ's Church ; and that no man can make himself a minister of Christ. That the mere fact that a man is a good man, or an eloquent man, or a learned man, or a godly man, or all of them together, does not make him a minister of Christ. That, in order to become such, he must be ordained by some one who has been himself ordained, and empow- ered to ordain others ; and that this fact carries us back from one ordainer to another, till we reach the Apostles, and Christ Himself as the first ordainer, and conferer of the right to ordain others. Now whatever theories they may hold, this doctrine is acted upon by all Denominations of Christians. There is not one of them that would recognize a young man, whatever his qualifications might be, as having a right to ex- ercise the functions of the ministry, to baptize or administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, for example, until he had been ordained. So that a succession or devolution of authority from one minister to another is held or at least acted upon by all. The dispute then between ourselves and those ') m' APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 213 who decry Apostolic Succession is not about the necessity of a succession in order to a valid min- istry, but about the time at which the succession began, and about the way in which it has been transmitted; or, in other words, as to who ori- ginated the Christian ministry, and how it has been continued down to our own time. We maintain that there are three orders of ministers in Christ's Church, Bishop, Priest and Deacon. That the supreme government of the Church, and the right to ordain others to any office in the same, were vested in the Apostles first, and was by them transmitted, not to Presbyters, but to Apostolic men, like Paul, Barnabas, Tim- othy, Titus, etc., called at first Apostles, or Angels, and afterwards Bishops, who, though designated by another name, yet succeeded to the Apostolic office. Those who deny this maintain generally that there was only one order of ministers inftituted by Christ, viz.. Presby- ters, and that the right of ordination was con- ferred upon them, and has been transmitted through them. The question then is not about the necessity of a ministerial succession in order to a valid ministry, but about what that succes- sion is, and how it has been preserved. And every objection that has been urged against a succession through Bishops, holds equally good against a succession through Presbyters, 214 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. U:\\ Now, this is not a mere question, as is often assumed, as to which form of Church govern- ment is practically the best, that is a monarchi- cal, or oligarchical, or Republican, or Demo- cratic. It is a question, which logically involves the very continuity and existence of the Church which Christ founded, and to which He gave His promises. This will be seen by the follow- ing illustration. Every visible organization or society has, of necessity, officers and rules, and some outward form for the admission of new members, and a prescribed way of extending itself from place to place, and of continuing itself from age to age. Take the Orange society or the Freemasons' society. A man might learn all about the prin- ciples and objects and rules and officers of one or other of these societies, and he might organ- ize a society on the precise model of one or other of these, or with certain improvements, and call it an Orange Lodge, or a Freemasons' Lodge ; and he might constitute himself, or get somebody else elected Master, and he might aim at the same ends, and accomplish, in a great measure at least, the same work as the original Orange or Masons' society aims at ac- complishing; yea, and he might be in everyway suited for the position of Master, and yet, un- less he had received a charter for the formation APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. of the new lodge from the Masons' or Orange society, and had been appointed Master by the officers which the one or other of these societies has authorized to make such appointments, then the lodge or society which he had formed would not be, and could not be, acknowledged as a part of the parent society, however much ir might be like it, or however much good it might be doing; he would not be recognized as having any authority to act as Master, and his new society would not be invested with any of the rights, immunities or possessions of the original society. Every organized society must act in the same way if it aims at a continued existence, and wishes to maintain any authority at all over its members. Now the question is, how has the Church, the Christian Society, extended itself from place to place, from country to country, from age to age. Through whom has it given authority for the formation of new branches, congregations (lodges) ; by whom has it appointed Masters, i.e., ordained ministers? It is not a question of words and names, for itis evident that if a man had not received authority to do this, he could not take it upon himself. At least, as representing the parent society, his act would be null and void, and the congregation which he formed would be no part of the original Church. ai6 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. ' HI ;i \i e^' Now this, it will be seen, really carries the question altogether over the discussion as to whether the chief ministers were at first Presby- ters or Bishops. It is admitted on all hands that for twelve hundred years at least the Church exercised this office of constituting new socie- ties and ordaining officers therein through her Bishops alone. She never withdrew that author- ity from them ; she never conferred it upon Presbyters or anybody else ; she never author- ized, never consented to their assuming it. Cer- tain Presbyters, or, in the case of some Churches, certain laymen, took upon themselves to ordain ministers, not only without the sanction, but in direct opposition to the authority of the parent society. The Church did not give them the authority. They simply took it ; set at defi- ance the properly appointed officers of the old society and started a new one, which was in- tended to supplant the old, to which the prom- ises and privileges of the Gospel were given. And so the continuity was deliberately broken. This admitted fact invalidates every non-episco- pal ordination of recent times, even if it could be shown, as it cannot, that such ordinations were practised and recognized in primitive times. Even if it could be proved, as it certainly can- not, that the Church was organized on the Presbyterian basis at first, and that Presbyters APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 217 had the right to ordain, it would make no dif- ference, for that assumed right had been taken from them for more than a thousand years ; and the new societies which started in the i6th century were at best only imitations of that as- sumed Primitive Organization. There was no organic connection between them. There was no devolution of authority from those Primitive Presbyters, to those of the new organizations. And if this theory of the right to ordain hav- ing descended through Presbyters be abandoned and recourse be had to the theory put forth by the Congregationalists, that the authority to ordain comes not from Christ, but from the congregation, or people, acting, of course, in their corporate capacity, then the validity of all Presbyter ordinations is overthrown, as the peo- ple never even attempted to confer any such authority upon Presbyters or laymen, and if the Scriptures be true, could not if they had at- tempted it. It is then a matter of vital importance, one upon which the preservation and continuity of the Church of the Apostles depends, that is here involved. The Church of England asserts, as w'll be seen by a reference to the preface to her ordinal, that there have always been three or- ders in the Church, Bishops, Priests and Dea- cons, and she assumes that the first of these has succeeded to the office of the Apostles, as far as N 1^1 i., H i nrt ^ili 1; 1 2l8 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. the ordination of ministers and the government of the Church are concerned. The non-episco- pal Denominations assert that the office of Apos- tle, whose great function they maintain was to witness to the Resurrection, was confined to the original twelve, and was, therefore, necessarily of a temporary character. They, therefore, maintain that there was only one order of min- isters instituted in the Christian Church, viz : Presbyters. It is true they admit that Bishops are mentioned in the New Testament ; but they contend rightly that the same persons that are called Bishops in one place are called Presby- ters in another. And so it is evident, they argue, that the persons called Bishops were only Presbyters, and, therefore, that when the office of Apostle, which was limited to the twelve, died out, the only ministers in the Church at first were of the order of Presbyters, for the Deacons were, they tell us, laymen and not ministers ; and so, they argue, as there were no other ministers but Presbyters, they are the true successors of the Apostles. They had, they say, the power of ordination and government, until they were deprived of it by the usurpations of certain members of their own order, who in every land exalted themselves over the other Presbyters their equals, and deprived them of their rights of ordination and government. APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 219 This is a plain issue ; the Church of England asserts one thing and the Presbyterians and other non-Catholic Denominations the direct opposite. In considering this question, the writer feels justi- fied in stating, after having examined the matter again and again, that the supposed change from the Presbyterian to the Episcopal orders rests wholly upon conjecture and inference, and has not one shred of positive evidence to support it. We have no statement of any writer who lived at or near the time at which the change is sup- posed to have taken place, or of any discussion or negotiation that preceded this tremendous change, or of any opposition or protest that ac- companied it or followed it. It, therefore, re- quires us to believe that all the clergy of all the world were equal in every respect — that they all possessed the same power of government and ordination, that a few in every land exalted them- selves above their brethren, and deprived them of these two prerogatives of their office, without there being any protest against it, or any record of such a change ever having taken place. And then as to the argument that because the persons, who are called Bishops in one place are in another place called Elders or Presbyters, and that, therefore, there was only one order, that of Presbyters in the Primitive Church; it manifest- ly will not bear the weight that is laid upon it. )' il k - !'t: 11 I ! 220 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION, It proves a great deal too much for our Presby- terian friends. For if it follows that because the officers of the Church are sometimes described by one title and sometimes by another, that they, amongst whom this interchange of names takes place, are all equal in office, and only hold the lowest office named ; then what of this ? The Apostles often call themselves Elders or Pres- byters. Is it to be inferred that their office and that of the Presbyter was the same ? And, if so, then surely we shall have to infer that the Deacons are the true and legitimate successors of the Apostles as well. For we find on looking into the Greek that the Apostleship is called a Deaconship in (Acts i. 17) and St. Paul exclaiming against the sin of calling disciples by the names of men, asks who then is Paul and who is ApoUos but Deacons^ by whom ye be- lieved ? and on two other occasions he calls the Apostles Deacons (Cor. iii. 5 and 2 Cor, vi. 4). So that if the fact that the Apostles call them- selves Presbyters, proves that they were only Presbyters and that Presbyters were their suc- cessors, then the fact that they more frequently call themselves Deacons would prove that they were only Deacons, and that the Deacons have just as good right as the Presbyters to claim to be the successors of the Apostles. But, further, our Blessed Lord Himself is in APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 221 one place (Heb. iii. i) called an Apostle, in an- other (i Peter ii. 25) He is called a Bishop, and in another (Rom. xv. 8) He is called a Deacon, so that if the Presbyterian argument, that be- cause certain Officials are sometimes described by one official title, and sometimes by another, that therefore the terms are convertible, and the office only that indicated by the lowest of these titles. If that argument were sound, then we should be driven to the blasphemy, I think we would call it, of maintaining that our Blessed Lord Himself held no higher office among men than the humble Deacon of the Christian Church. But it is not sound, and the explana- tion of all this talk about convertible terms and consequent equality of office, is manifestly this. The titles by which the different offices of the ministry were designated had not yet in New Testament times assumed the technical exactness which belonged to them in later times, and so those holding the higher offices are sometimes described, (on the principle that the greater con- tains the less), by the titles designating the lower orders, when the special aspect of their ministry which that title designated was being specially presented. But the reverse of this never occurs ; those who are known to have held the office of Deacon are never called Presbyters or Elders. Nor are those who are known to hav^ 222 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. M ii I :il held only the office indicated by these names (Presbyters or Elders) ever called Apostles. The name Bishop means an overseer and might fitly be used to describe the office of the Presbyter, the overseer of one congregation, or the office of an Apostle, the overseer of many Churches. The term Presbyter meant first an elder or aged man. In the church it designated generally an office of dignity and might fitly be applied, as it is, to those holding the dignity of head either of a Parish or a Diocese. The word Deacon means a servant, and in its literal and non-technical sense might be used to de- scribe the work of all who are the servants of our Lord Jesus Christ ; but in a technical sense it described those who served Him in the minis- try of His Church and in the persons of His poor. And so, leaving the names by which the offices may have been designated altogether out ©f the question, let us see whether Holy Scrip- ture furnishes any proof of the existence of the thing, the three orders or offices which the Church of England asserts may be proved thereby. There were three orders of ministers in God's ancient Church, High Priest, Priest and Levite. There were three orders during our Lord's sojourn upon earth, Jesus Christ the Great High Priest, the Shepherd and Bishop of APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 333 our souls; the twelve who had not yet been ordained to the Apostleship, that was His last act before He ascended (Matt, xxviii. 19; John XX. 22, 23); and the seventy disciples whom He sent forth to teach and preach. There were three orders in the infant Church after He as- cended. The first chapter of the Acts contains an account of the election of Matthias as an Apostle that he might take the Bishopric of Judas and be numbered with the eleven. In the xiv. chaper we are told that the Apostles ordained them Elders or Presbyters in every Church ; and in the vi. chapter there is the record of seven men full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom being chosen, on whom the Apostles, with prayer, laid their hands, and thus appointed them Deacons. In several places Apostles and Elders, and Elders and Deacons are mentioned not as one order, but as distinct orders. In the salutation of the Epistle to the Philippians, for instance, we have the three orders coming to- gether : — Paul and Timotheus to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi with the Bishops and Deacons, or, if we were to use the fixed designations of the next age, it would read Paul and Timotheus, Bishops to the Presbyters and Deacons. Then, again, we find that the authority exer- cised by the highest of these officers (Apostles aa4 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. Vi'>\ ■ ^ ' : i\ and Bishops), and the duties performed by them, are entirely different from the authority and duties of the second rank. For instance, when an Apostle gives a charge to a Bishop, we see at once that he is addressing one having author- ity, and set to rule in the Church of God. He instructs him as to the manner in which he should conduct himself towards the Presbyters, or Elders, over whom he has been placed, and lays down rules to guide him in that most im- portant function of his office, the admission of men into the ministry. On the other hand, in addressing the Elders, he refers to a totally dif- ferent class of duties. There is no allusion to these exercising discipline or government over others, or admitting others to the ministry. They are merely instructed in those duties which grow out of their relationship to a single con- gregation. Read for illustration St. Paul's in- terview with the Elders at Ephesus ; there is nothing said about discipline to be exercised among the ministry, not a word about one hav- ing authority over another to depose him — not a hint that any one of them had power to ordain. But mark the change in the Apostle's language when he writes to Timothy whom, by the uni- versal testimony of the Primitive Church, he had appointed Bishop of this same Church. Timothy was a young man, probably younger APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. tt$ than most of the I':iders of Ephesus, for St. Paul charges him, " Let no man despise thy youth," and yet every line of the Apostle's letter proves that he was invested with Episco- pal authority over these Presbyters. Look at the directions, "That thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine." " Against an Elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses." " Them that sin (i.e., the Elders thus accused), rebuke before all, that others also may fear." " 1 charge thee that thou observe these things," these rules for the discipline of the clergy, " without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality." Look again at the directions given him with regard to the ordination, first of Deacons, then of Bishop, Elder or Presbyter, The qualifica- tions he is to require, and then "lay hands suddenly on no man." "The things which thou hast heard of me commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also." Now it has be^n pertinently asked if Timothy, as we are told, was not a successor of the Apostles but only a Presbyter, and a young Presbyter too, what right had he to be receiving accusations against his brother Presbyters, and rebuking them before all? What right had he alone to reject or admit men to the minsiry? 226 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. lijif \VA\ How can these things be explained if all min- isters were equal in the primitive Church ? But listen to the voice of ecclesias' leal history, which tells us that Timothy was the Apostle or Bishop of Ephesus, and all is plain. The meaning of every direction is clear. They are just the sort of letters an aged Bishop might now write to a friend, younger in the Episcopats than himself, that he might know how to act towards the clergy of his diocese. Take again the Epistle to Titus. Eusebius tells us that he was appointed Bishop over the Churches in Crete, and all ancient writers speak of him as the Bishop of that island. And so we find St. Paul addiessing him as one possessing Episcopal authority. " For this cause," he writes, ** left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in orde" the things that are wanting, and ordain Elders in every city, as I had appointed thee." He gives him similar instructions to those given to Timothy about the ordination of men to the ministry, and then adds, "a man that is an heretic, after the first^nd second ad- monition, do thou reject." Here is certainly full episcopal authority, ordination, administra- tion, rejection or degradation, all committed to Titus. We know that there were many Churches in Crete ; why then, when men were so much wanted to nnblisn the Gospel elsewhere amid APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 227 the darkness of heathenism, was Titus with- drawn and sent to spend his life in this island, if any of the many elders there could ordain and govern as well as he ? The only solution is that Titus could ordain by virtue of his authority as a Bishop and that the others could not. In exact harmony with these Epistles of St. Paul are those Epistles addressed by St. John to the seven Churches of Asia. In these Churches, e.g., Smyrna and Ephesus, we know that there were many Presbyters ; yet the warn- ings and admonitions are not written to these Elders, nor to the Church collectively, but to the Angel, or chief officer, for the word has the same meaning as Apostle. There was evidently some one presiding over each of these Churches who was personally answerable for it. Look, for example, to that written to the Angel of the Church at Ephesus. Here we find that in A.D. 96, its chief officer is evidently exercising the same discipline over the clergy, and investigat- ing and rejecting their claims, as was imposed upon his predecessor Timothy thirty years be- fore. "Thou hast tried them which say they are Apostles and are not, and hast found them liars " ; and so, throughout, the individual ** thou " is addressed and is held responsible for the state of his Diocese. And indeed, that these Angels were the Diocesan Bishops of the 2a8 AP0ST0I4C SUCCESSION. 'W Churches named is established by far fuller and more explicit testimony than can be adduced to prove that many of the books of the New Testa- ment were written by the Apostles whose names they bear. It seems to be clear, then, that the evidence from the New Testament is conclusive that there was an order of officers, by whatever name they were called, who ordained Presbyters and Deacons, and exercised authority over both. The earliest uninspired testimony that has come down to us states, and reiterates the statement, that these highest officers succeeded to the office of the Apostles, and were at first called Apostles, and that early in the Church's history, that that honorable title might be reserved for those se'^t directly by Our Blessed Lord, these same officers were called Bishops, a name previously applied, indiscriminately, to the two higher grades of the Christian ministry, and that name has been their peculiar designation ever since. Let us see briefly whether this uninspired ac- count of the matter finds any confirmation in the New Testament itself. Is there any evidence there that the Apostles had successors or did the name and office die out with the original twelve? It is not necessary to dwell upon the case of Matthias, elected and ordained to the Apostleship from which Judas fell, though that surely indi- cates that the office was to be continued, "his APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 229 office let another take." But what of Paul the Apostle who tells us that he was appointed to that office not of men, neither by man, though he ever afterwards writes his name Paul an Apostle of Jesus Christ ? And if it be said that St. Paul was miraculously called and appointed an Apostle, we have only to turn to the case of Matthias (who was equally made an Apostle without any miracle) to see that the miracle in the case of St. Paul was an incident which had relation to his conversion, but none to his office as an Apostle. And what again of Barnabas ? We read in Acts xiv. 14, " Which when the Apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of, they rent their clothes." And again, in the 4th verse of the same chapter, " part held with the Apostles " Barnabas and Paul, and so from i Cor. ix. 4-6, we learn that Barnabas was numbered with the Apostles, and every allusion to him shows him to have been St. Paul's equal in office. And so we are told that Barnabas and Paul went about confirming the disciples, and ordaining Elders in every city, Acts xiv. 22, and they had John, whose surname was Mark, for Deacon (minister), xiii. 5. For, as St. Jerome says, speaking of Titus in the earlier part of this history, Mark had not yet attained to the same rank (Eundum gradum) which Barnabas and Paul held. Again (Rom. xvi. 7) St. Paul salutes Androni- 230 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. cus and Junias, who are of note among the Apostles, words which can bear no other straightforward meaning but that they were Apostles. When we say that Homer was of note among the poets or Stephen among the Deacons, or Peter among the Apostles, the meaning is clear : and so Calvin says Paul calls Andronicus and Junias Apostles. The fact that the> had been carried to Rome and imprisoned, before St. Paul was, indicated that they held some high official place amongst Christians. Again, if you turn to Phil. ii. 25, and read the Greek, you will see that St. Paul calls Epaph- roditus your Apostle, and speaks of him always as an equal, " my brother, my companion in labor, my fellow-soldier," but your Apostle ; v/ituv Se aTToVroiov and SO Thcodoret, an accurate writer, says Epaphroditus was called the Apostle of the Philippians, because he was entrusted with the Episcopal government, as being their Bishop ; " for those whom we now call Bishops were more anciently called Apostles." And so St. Jerome says, ** in process of time others also were ordained Apostles," as that passage to the Philippians (referring to this) declares, "It is easy to show by a reference to the Greek that there are twenty-four, at least, who are called Apostles in the New Testament, and every allu- sion to them shows that they succeeded not only APOSTOLIC SUCCESSIOA . 231 to the Apostles' name, but to their office, as the ordainers and rulers of Presbyters and Deacons. This argument could easily be extended, but enough has been said to show that the Church of England is right when she says that it is evident to all men, diligently reading Holy Scripture, that from the days of the Apostles there have been these three orders in the Church ; and that the highest of these occupied then the same position in the Church as ordain- ers and governors which they have occupied through all historic times. Let us, then, glance very briefly at the testi- mony of those ancient authors, to whose testi- mony the Church appeals. Vague, uninformed writers and platform speakers, who maintain the Presbyterian view, say that the Church was at first Presbyterian, and had only one order of ministers, but that somewhere in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th century (they differ about the time wide- ly), the whole Church, by spontaneous action, adopted the Episcopal form of government. And though there is no record, as you will re- member, of any such change having taken place, they tell you generally that the Church became Episcopal about the end of the 4th century. The most learned Presbyterians, however, Blon- del and Seldon, say that Episcopacy was estab- lished throughout the Church by the year 146. 232 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. IJ hi 'r Bishop Lightfoot, who is often quoted as favour- ing the Presbyter view, says it was established generally before the year loo, while St. John was still living. See, then, how the case stands, even taking the Presbyterian view. The Apos- tles' office was manifestly continued through the New Testament times. Many Apostles besides the twelve are actually named. And so we are called upon to believe that at their death the whole Church lapsed, silently, into the Presby- terian form, with only one order of ministers, and that again by the year 146, or in the brief space of 46 years the whole Church silently, without uproar, or protest, or discussion, again transformed herself into an Episcopal Church, and set up Bishops everywhere. Credat Judaeus. The case is not overstated. There is no evid- ence, that would be entertained by any judicial tribunal, that any such change ever took place either during the shorter or the longer period indicated. There is ample evidence that the state of things which prevailed in New Testament days, and prevailed in every part of the Church, when clear historical testimony is available, pre- vailed also without interruption from the days of the Apostles till the i6th century. Listen to this. St. John died about the year 100. St. Ignatius, his disciple, was martyred Dec. 20th, 107. In VI. Chap, of his Epistle to Magne- APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 233 sians he writes : " The Bishop presiding in the place of God and the Presbyters in the place of the council of the Apostles, and the Deacons most dear to me being entrusted with the minis- try of Jesus Christ." Again in his Epistle to the Smyrnians, he writes : ''See that ye follow your Bishop as Jesus Christ, and the Presbyters as the Apostles, and reverence the Deacons, as the command of God." Again to the Magnes- ians : '' Seeing then I have been judged worthy to see you by Darr.cs your Bishop, and by your very worthy Presbyters, Bassus and Appoloni- us, and by my fellow servant Sotto the Deacon." I could multiply similar quotations from Igna- tius tenfold. Again in the Epistle of Clement to the Corin- thians, written long before the death of St. John, he says, speaking of the Christian ministry : " For to the High Priest his own peculiar ser- vices are assigned, and to the Priests their own proper place, has been appointed, and upon the Levites their own (Diakonia) deaconship, or ministry, and the laymen are bound by the pre- cepts that pertain to laymen." He is describ- ing the Christian ministry according to what Jerome calls the Apostolical tradition, that "what Aaron and his sons and the Priests and the Levites were in the Temple, the same let the Bishop, the Presbyters and the Deacons claim to be in the Church*" 234 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. h Again Hermas, who wrote an allegorical Epistle during apostolic times, says : " The square and white stones which agree exactly in their joints, are Apostles, Bishops, Teachers, and Deacons, who lived in godly purity." These all lived and wrote during the period in which we are told by the Presbyterian scholars that there was only one order of ministers in the Christian Church. As we go on to the wider period claimed for the continuance of the one order of the ministry, the testimony becomes more overwhelming. Tertullian, A.D. 200, De Baptisimo, Cap. 27, writes : ** The right of giving it (i.e. Baptism) hath the Chief Priest, who is the Bishop, then the Presbyters and Deacons, yet not without the authority of the Bishop." Again, Clement of Alexandria, A.D. 192-220: " Even in the Church here there are promotions of Bishops, Presbyters and Deacons, which are, I think, imitations of the Angelic glory." It is useless to proceed ; the testimony becomes vol- uminous, and the. case is surrendered ; this is surely sufficient proof to satisfy any unprejudiced man that the Church of England is absolutely right when she asserts that it is evident to all men diligently reading Holy Scripture and an- cient authors that from the Apostles' days there have always been these three orders in the i APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 235 Church, Bishops, Priests and Deacons; and that the Bishops have always discharged just what are their pecuhar functions still. They alone have ordained others to the ministry. Now what is urged against this by those who reject this threefold ministry? Why, first, that the names Bishop and Presbyter are inter- changeable or convertible terms, as they certain- ly are, and are in the New Testament applied to describe the same office, that of Presbyter, and that so there was no other or higher office in the New Testament Church ; that notion has been pretty well disposed of already. Then they say St. Paul exhorted Timothy to stir up the gift that was in him, which he has received by the laying on of hands of the Presbytery, and so it is evident, they say, that Presbyters ordained. But in the 2nd Epistle to Timothy, i. 6, St. Paul says that Timothy had received that gift *' through the laying on of my hands," R.V. In the former passage '' He was probably apply- ing the term Presbytery as on other occasions to the Apostles. St. Chrysostom says, "He does not speak here of Presbyters but of Bish- ops, for Presbyters did not ordain a Bishop." Theodoret says ir this place he calls those Presbyters who have received the grace of Apos- tleship. And Theophylact says, "That is of Bishops, for Presbyters did not ordain a Bishop." I ■.,! ; i, I ;i I 236 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. Again, the advocates of the Presbyter theory appeal to a letter which Jerome wrote in anger to Evagrius, the Deacon, protesting against the insolence of the Roman Deacons in making themselves equal or superior to the Presbyters. He uses many arguments, and among others he expresses the opinion that at the very first the Churches were governed by the common coun- cil of Presbyters. But it was only at the very first, for he says, " immediately upon the rise of those divisions at Corinth, when one said I am of Paul, and another I am of Apollos," that is, while St. Paul and most of the Apostles were liv- ing, and, therefore, by. their authority. Bishops were everywhere appointed. That that is what he means is placed beyond doubt, for in com- menting on Galatians i. 19, he says, ** By de- grees as time went on others were also ordained. " What, Presbyters ? No. Bishops ? No, but Apostles by those whom the Lord had chosen, and he mentions Epaphroditus and Silas and Jude and Zenas and Apollos, and Titus and Tychicus, as instances of men who were thus ordained Apostles. We have no quarrel with Jerome, we only claim an Apostolic origin for our ministry. He askswhat do Bishops do, ordin- ation excepted, which Presbyters may not do ; a little further on he says that all Bishops, whe- ther rich or poor, are successors of the Apostles, i : ! APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. ^37 and he concludes the letter with the words al- ready quoted : " And that we may know the Apostolical tradition taken from the Old Testa- ment, that which Aaron and his sons and the Levites were in the Temple ; that let the Bish- ops and Presbyters and Deacons claim to be in the Church." The man who says this is the one great paramount authority upon whose tes- timony the whole Presbyter theory of the ordi- nation of ministers is built up. The writer has gone over this ground often, and knows it pretty well, and he can only express his amaze- ment that men of clear heads and logical minds can have clung so long to a position so absol- utely indefensible. If we could offer no better reason for the position we hold, we would be laughed to scorn. But in answer to all this it will be said by some, you may prove, you seem to have proved, all our Reformation and Post- Reformation Church Ministers to have no connection with the Apostolic Ministry Commissions by Our Bles- sed Lord, and our churches to have no organic connection with the. Church of the first days, to which the promises were given. But, after all, you are in the same plight yourselves. The Apostolic Succession, which you think so im- portant, is a chain, and we all know that if one link in a chain be broken or wanting the chain • 238 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. is no good. Now, we all know that there are many broken and missing links in the Apostolic Succession chain. So there is, and can be no transmission of authority in the Episcopal sys- tem any more than in any of the other systems. We all stand on the same footing, after all. But the succession is not a chain at all. ^* is an intricate network such as no spider ever vt. So important was the preservation of the suc- cession felt to be from the very first that although one Bishop is sufficient to confer valid orders, yet the Apostolical Canons require three Bish- ops at least to take part in every Co n sec rati '^n. So that if there were any defect or irregularity on the part of one, it might be supplied by the others. Generally there have been not three but half-a-dozen Bishops taking part in every Consecration. See how this would rk. Each of the three Consecrators was hims ,n- secrated by three others. The second step gives nine sources of authority. The third twenty- seven. So on in geometrical progression. And these sources flow in, both before and after each Consecration. So that if any defect should have occurred it would be instantly remedied in the very next Consecration. To illustrate this, take a net of wire rings, each ring representing a Bishop. Suppose a ring be broken or taken out here and there. The net before and behind APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION, 339 and around that spot remains unimpaired, and if you applied an electric current it would run through the whole, and be just as strong at the end nearest to you as if no breach had been made. The Archbishops of Canterbury have borne a chief part in all English Conse- crations. And if it had happened that ever)' one of these, from Augustine to Dr. Benson, had been an impostor, a boy, a mitred layman, the Anglican Succession would still be made perfectly valid by the other Bishops who have, equally with the Archbishops, been Consecrat- ors. So that all this talk about broken links is the utmost folly. It is surely the duty of those who seek to revolutionize the established order of Christendom, by these assertions about abundant broken links, to prove their asser- tions. Give the instances. Put your finger upon thosi Bishops of the Succession who have not been n htly Consecrated. That ther*. have been men unworthy of their office is quite true ; that was so under our Lord's own eye, and by his own act. That there were a few boys, nephews of the Popes, perhaps half-a-dozen in all, appointed to Bish- oprics that they might lay hands on their revenues, is also true. There is, however, no evidence that such boys ever attempted to dis- charge any Episcopal function, and even if they 240 APOSTOLIC SUCCESSIOl^. «!. ' ^iSi did, it would only affect those who were the immediate objects of such actions. The Suc- cession cannot be broken except by the Apos- tacy of the entire Episcopate. The intrusion of an impostor, or of one lacking Consecration, is also well-nigh inconceivable. Consecration has always been a public, formal, note ious act, at- tended by the clergy of the Diocese, the chief men of the city in which the Consecration took place, and performed by several Bishops of the province in wh'ch the new Bishop's Diocese lay. Could any man palm himself off upon the Bish- ops, upon the clergy, and upon the laity, who had not been properly Consecrated ? If any ever did, will the objector be good enough to put his ringer on him, and tell us how and when it happened? And even if he can it will, as we have seen, make no difference. The transmis- sion of the Apostolic authority and commission goes on all the same. It can only be arrested by the Apostacy of the entire Episcopate of the world. ^-.-\ |i-:;i. 1: if 1! . tr ;| CHAPTER XII. BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. " But," says many a good Christian of the present day, *' the Church of England beHeves in Baptismal Regeneration, which I regard as an unscriptural and soul-destroying doctrine. I could not, therefore, have anything to do with a Church which holds to such a supersttiion." But here again it must be remembered that all Christians without exception believed in that doctrine for sixteen hundred years of the Church's history, and nineteen-twentieths of those who profess and call themselves Chris- tians, to-day profess to believe in that doctrine, as being unmistakably taught in Holy Scrip- ture, and as lying at the very foundation of the Christian life. And among these again are to be found many of the ablest, most godly, and most learned men of the earth. There must, therefore, be some mistake on the part of the objectors, some misuse of terms, some misun- derstanding about what is meant. What meaning, then, is attached to the word regeneration, by those who denounce the Church 241 I Pi \hI 242 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. it- of England as teaching a soul-destroying doc- trine? Because beyond all dispute she does teach the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. If, as seems probable, they mean that con- scious change of mind and heart, and life, which is properly called conversion or repent- ance, then it cannot be said too positively that the Church of England does not attribute that change to Baptism any more than they do who assail her. And if it be asked what then does the term Regeneration mean, the answer surely is contained in the word itself. Generation is the begining of the natural life in Adam. Re- generation is the begining of the new life in Christ, the imparting to the soul of the seed of that new life, out of which, if properly nurtured, if not hindered and destroyed, that new life will grow. It is the leaven of Divine implanting which is given to permeate the whole being, to issue in conversion and sanctification, and to transform the whole man by the manifold opera- tions of His grace into the likeness of Christ. As Hooker expresses it, 'Mt is the gift of God which gives the soul its first inclination towards future newness of life." It is, of course, a change of state. God, by His own unmerited act, translates us from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of His dear Son. He adopts us into His family, and gives the remission of Baptismal regeneration. 243 sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost to all who are fit to receive them (Acts ii. 28). That Spirit of adoption, then given, incorporates us into Christ {\ Cor. xii. 13), makes us members of Christ (i Cor. xii. 27, and vi. 15), and so makes us a new creation in Him, so that we may grow up into Him, and may, some in one way, and some in another, attain to that renewal of mind, and change of heart, and transforma- tion of character which is included under the terms conversion and sanctification. The word TraXtyyei/co-ia translated regeneration, only occurs twice in the New Testament. In St. Matt. xix. 28, where our Lord promises His disciples that in the regeneration, the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And again when St. Paul reminds Titus (Cap. iii. v. 5), that God according to His mercy has saved us by the washing or laver of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost. The word literally means becoming again, or being born again or regen- eration. In the Epistle to Titus the word is evidently used to describe the initial act of be- coming again, the new birth, or the being made a new creation. In St. Matt, it is the descrip- tion, not so much of the act of regeneration, as of the regenerated state of being, the restored life, the new creation, the regenerated Kingdom mi 'f 844 BAPTISMAL REGEMERATlOM. '. ;i- !! of our God. In Titus, according to the undivid- ed testimony of the Church from the begining, the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, is a description of the outward and inward parts of Christian Baptism. The lan- guage would be meaningless and misleading if it were not a description of that great mystery. It is, of course, in this sense a reiteration of our Lord's teaching in St. John iii. 5, " except a man be born of water and the Spirit he can- not enter into the kingdom of God," words again which it never occurred to any Teacher for fifteen hundred years could have any other application than to Christian Baptism. It is a reiteration also of St. Peter's teaching, ** The like figure whereunto Baptism also now saves us." They all alike teach us that Baptism is God's own appointed way of adopting us into His family, of translating us from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of His dear Son, and so saving us from the state of wrath in which we were born, and so of putting us into a state of salvation through grace. The pas- sage in Titus is a fuller description than the others of the inward change, by which this is accomplished, connecting our regeneration or new birth into the second Adam with that mys- tical washing. Now, there can be no doubt that the Church BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 245 of England, as is assumed in the objections re- ferred to, believes in and teaches the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. Turn to the Baptismal Services. In the first exhortation she reminds the congregation *'that all men are conceived and born in sin, that our Saviour Christ declares that none can enter into the Kingdom of God except he be regenerate and born anew of water and of the Holy Ghost, and then she calls upon them to pray that this child may be baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, and received into Christ's Holy Church." Then in the sec- ond collect, " We call upon Thee for this infant, that he, coming to Thy Holy Baptism, may receive remission of his sins by spiritual regen- eration.'^ Again, in the thanksgiving, "Give Thy Holy Spirit to this infant that he may be born again, and be made an heir of everlasting salvation." Again, in the prayer of consecra- tion, "Sanctify this water to the mystical wash- ing away of sin, and grant that this child now to be baptized therein may receive the fulness of Thy grace, and ever remain in the number of Thy faithful and elect children." These are the prayers for regeneration in Baptism before the Sacrament has been administered. Then, after Baptism, the minister is directed to say with reference to every child baptized, "Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is re- 246 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. M'U 'li ri'? generate and grafted into the body of Christ's Church." Then in the thanksgiving, ** We yield Thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased Thee to regenerate this infant with Thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for Thine own child by adoption, and to incorporate him into Thy Holy Church." No contingent or charitable hope here, but all clear, definite, dogmatic, unmis- takable. Again, in the office for the reception of children privately baptized, the minister is directed to certify the congregation concerning the baptizing of this child, "Who being born in sin and in the wrath of God is now by the laver of regeneration in baptism received into the number of the children of God, and heirs of everlasting life." Again, in the catechism, every child is taught to say that he was made a member of Christ, a child of God and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven in his baptism, and to thank God for having called him to this state of salvation through Jesus Christ our Saviour. So, in the Confirmation service, it is declared that ^'God has vouchsafed to regenerate these His servants by water and the Holy Ghost and has given unto them forgiveness of all their sins." The very same doctrine is taught in the Art- icles. In the 27th we read ''Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference. BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 247 whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened ; but it is also a sign of regeneration or new birth, whereby, as by an in- strument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church: the promises of the forgiveness of sins and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost are visibly signed and sealed. " The same doctrine is plainly taught in the loth Article where the word baptized is represented by the Latin word Renatus (born again) which word is also in the same Article translated regenerated. So in the i6th Article, those who have received Christian Baptism and those who have received the Holy Ghost are the same. So that the notion that the Prayer Book teaches one doctrine and the Articles another, has manifestly no foundation whatever. It is not then possible to have any doubt that in the most distinct way in which it is possible to ex- press it, the Church of England does teach and require her people to believe in the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. At the revision of 1661 the Presbyterians ob- jected to the thanksgiving after Baptism on the ground that "we cannot in faith say that every child that is baptized is regenerated by God's Holy Spirit. At least it is a disputable point, and therefore we desire it to be otherwise ex- expressed." After the Bishops had referred to 248 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. St. John iii. 5 and Acts ii. 38, proving that *' Baptism is our spiritual regeneration," and that in it " we receive the remission of sins," they replied, "seeing that God's Sacraments have their effects, where the receiver doth not ponere obicem put any bar against them (which children cannot do), we may say of every child that is baptized that it is regenerated by God's Holy Spirit ; and the denial of it tends to ana- baptism and the contempt of this holy sacrament as nothing worthy nor material whether it be administered to children or not." This, though given in a few words, may be regarded as the decision of the Church of England. The Rev. Henry Melville, the eminent evan- gelical pulpit orator of London, says, "That the Church of England does hold and does teach Baptismal Regeneration would nev^r, we must venture to think, have been disputed, had not men been anxious to remain in her communion and yet to make her formularies square with their own private notions, we really think that no fair, no straightforward dealing can get rid of the conclusion that the Church holds what is called Baptismal Regeneration. You may dis- like the doctrine, you may wish it expunged from the Prayer Book, but so long as I sub- scribe to that Prayer Book, and so long as I of- ficiate according to the forms of that Prayer if'i BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 349 \ Book, I do not see how I can be commonly honest, and yet deny that every baptized person is, on that account, regenerate." (Lectures, p. 361.) The Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, in his sermon on Baptismal Regeneration, quotes the opening words of the Church Catechism and asks : "Is not this definite and plain enough ? I prize the words for their candour ; they could not speak more plainly. Three times over the thing is put, lest there should be any doubt in it. The word regeneration may by some sort of juggling be made to mean something else, but here there can be no misunderstanding. The child is not only made a member of Christ — union to Jesus is no mean spiritual gift— but he is made in bap- tism ' the child of God ' also. Nothing can be more plain. I venture to say that while honesty remains on earth the meaning of these words will not admit of dispute. It is as certain as noonday." (p. 3.) And he goes on : *' But, I hear many good people exclaim, there are many good clergymen in the Church who do not be- lieve in Baptismal Regeneration. To this my answer is prompt. Why then do they belong to a Church which teaches that doctrine in the plainest terms ? I am told that many in the Church of England preach against her own teaching. I know they do, and herein I rejoice 2SO BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. I I \\^- in their enlightenment ; but question, gravely question, their morality. To take oath that I sincerely assent, and consent, to a doctrine which I do not believe, would, to my conscience, ap- pear little short of perjury, if not absolute, down- right perjury." However stern the language the logic cannot be assailed. And, what is more, this doctrine which is now railed at as soul-destroying, was taught with the utmost distinctness not only by the whole Cath- olic Church from the very days of the Apostles, but was defined and taught with equal distinct- ness by the various Reformed Confessions ot the i6th century. In illustration of the first of these assertions, let us look at the earliest un- inspired testimony. St. Barnabas says (Cap. IX.), "This meaneth that we descend into the water full of sins and defilements, but come up bearing fruit, in our hearts having the fear of God, and trust in Christ in our spirits." So St. Justin Martyn, (Cap. LXI.) speaking of Chris- tian converts, says, " They are brought to a place where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we ourselves were regenerated." St. Clement (16-26), " That in being baptized we are enlightened, in being en- lightened we are adopted, in being adopted we are made perfect." I could multiply such q^jota- tions endlessly. The testimony of the whole BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 35, Church for sixteen hundred years is one and undivided. And the Reformers of the sixteenth century with one voice connected the blessing of regen- eration with the sacrament of Baptism. Their Confessions prove this. The Helvetic (Cap. XX.), " All these are sealed in Baptism. For inwardly v/e are regenerated, purified, and re- newed by God through the Holy Spirit, while outwardly we receive the sealing of the greatest gifts by water, by which also those greatest benefits are represented and, as it were, spread out before our eyes. " In the Augsburg Confession (Cap. IX.), rep- resenting the whole Lutheran body, we read, " They teach, concerning Baptism, that it is necessary to salvation, as an ordinance institut- ed by Christ. And that by Baptism the grace of God is conveyed ; and that infants should be baptized ; and that infants through Baptism are commended to God, and are received into the favor of God, and are made sons of God, as Christ testifies." The Saxon Confession (Cap. XIV.) teaches the same doctrine. Again, the Westminster Confession, agreed upon by the Presbyterians and Independents, teaches (Cap. XXVIII.) that "Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Christ not only for the solemn admission of the ■;i| ; li 1' ' . S-l Ik ■- 252 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. party baptized into the visible Church, but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regen- eration, of remission of sins and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life." This is afterwards limited, by the ever present pall "f Calvinism, to those who are the Elect ; but yet for all who, according to that theory, ever are regenerated. Baptism is declared to be the instrument of regeneration. Calvin himself, without any such limitation, says, " For God regenerating us in Baptism grafts us into the fellowship of His Church, and makes us His children by adoption." (Institutes, Cap. XVHI.) John Wesley, in his treatise on Bap- tism, says : ^'By Baptism we are admitted into the Church and consequently are made members of Christ its Head ; for by One Spirit are we all baptized into One Body, namely, the Church, the Body of Christ." And a little further on he says, "In the ordinary way there is no other means of entering into the Church or into Hea- ven. By water, then, as a means, the water of Baptism, we are regenerated or born again, whence it is called by the Apostles the washing of regeneration." (Works, VI., 15.) There can, then, be no doubt in the mind nf any honest man who is capabl'^ o^ ni a logical judgment, that the C ' .n^ id k BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 253 ^ nf a id teaches in the most definite and unmistakable manner the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. There can be no doubt in the mind of anybody who knows the literature of the primitive Church that this doctrine was believed in and taught as the very foundation of the Christian system from the very days of the Apostles onward ; that this doctrine was taught definitely and unmis- takably by the leaders of the Reformation in the 1 6th century was one of the fundamental princi- ples of the Reformation ; and that it was the doctrine of John Wesley, and until quite re- cently of the Methodist " Book of Discipline." But some one is saying this is all beside the mark. It makes no difference to me what the Fathers taught or what the Church of Eng- land teaches, or what the Reformers taught. They were still held in the trammels of the Roman superstition in which they had been nurtured. The question is, what does the Word of God teach. To the law and to the testimony. I am sure there is no such doctrine there. Now, it has already been made plain that there is just that doctrine there, and that there is no other doctrine of Baptism in the New Testament. Let us analyze the doctrine and compare it somewhat more fully with the teach- ing of Holy Scripture on the subject of Baptism. Regeneration means being born again, being 254 BAPTISMAL REGENERA TION. ' ii 11 !l,: . ta ;i^n i(i, 1 1 ■' ;)l made a new creation in Christ — being engrafted into Him as the living Vine, the second Adam, the new Head of the new race. This is the be- ginning of the new life, and it implies the gift of the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, and it carries with it the forgiveness of sins that are past. For there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Now these are all absolutely the gift of God. No man can confer upon himself the Holy Ghost. No man can make himself a member of Christ, or confer upon himself the forgiveness of his sins, or in- corporate himself into Christ Jesus, or adopt himself into God's family ; none but God can do the one or the other of these things. But how and when according to the New Testament does He confer these blessings unspeakable? Turn to the very beginning of the Gospel dis- pensation and read Acts ii. 37. The three thou- sand converted asked "what shall we do to be saved?" The reply was, " Repent and be bap- tized ill the name of the Lord and ye shall receive the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the promise is to you and to your children." There is no mistaking this language. God instituted Holy Baptism for the purpose of conferring the first formal act of forgiveness upon His children, and that He does not confer that g^ift upon repentance and faith alone with- BA PTISMAL REGENERA TION. 255 out Baptism is evident from the history of St. Paul. From the hour of the Revelation on the way to Damascus the persecutor became a true Believer and a true Penitent ; and yet when An- anias came to him, by God's command, three days after, he said, *' And now why tarriest thou, arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins callin^T^ on the name of the Lord." Baptism is God's appointed way of entering into the King- dom of the forgiven, of being adopted into God's family, and this is all implied in this text; for the second benefit which God confers in baptism is, according to St. Peter's teaching, the gift of the Holy Ghost. And why is that blessed Spirit given? Fwcad i Cor. xii. 12 to 27, "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one Body," then, tracing out the likeness between the human body and the Church, the Apostle concludes, " Now ye are the Body of Christ and members in particular." And so the next result is that we are made members of Christ in Baptism and continue to be God's accepted children by faith. " For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ," Gal. iii. 27 ; and then " if any man be in Christ he is a new creation." The foundations of his being have been laid again in the second Adam ; he is adopted into God's family and receives the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba, is enabled u' 2S6 BAPTISMAL REGENERA TION. n?f I* ■ !ipr ;i again to call God his Father. But that blessed Spirit does not come to the Christian soul as a mere visitor to effect our regeneration and then leave us. He comes the Lord and Giver of life to abide with us, and to be in us, according to the promise, " I will send you another Comforter that he may abide with you forever," and so St. Paul asks all the baptized at Corinth, "Know ye not that your bodies are the Temples of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God? ' * ' Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? Now if any man defile the temple of God him shall God destroy." " Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ ? Shall I take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot?" The language is too plain, too frequent, too definite to leave room for any honest doubt as to its meaning. '* According to His mercy He hath saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost," or, as St. Peter expresses it, speaking of the ark, " The like figure whereunto baptism also now saves us, not," he continues, " the putting away the filth of the flesh," as though the mere outward act operated as a charm to accomplish this end, but " by the answer or response of a good conscience " now regenerated and renewed by the operation of the Holy Ghost, the inward gift of that blessed sacrament. BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 257 And so we need not dispute with those who by their modern inventions would rob our Lord's words to Nicodemus, *' Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God," not only of all sense, but of all honesty. For if He was not speaking of baptism, as the Church for fifteen hundred years with one unhesitating voice affirms ; if He only meant to tell people that they must be converted and cleansed from their sins as water cleanses the body — if that were His meaning, then where was the sense of introducing water at all, and where was the honesty in using language which was sure to mislead. If such an interpretation could be accepted, and if men are at liberty to import into the words of our Lord Jesus Christ a meanmg which they cannot by any fair rules of interpretation, bear ; then what is the good of Holy Scripture, or of any written lan- guage at all? We may make it mean whatever we like. But, even if this passage, as one of the foundations of Christ's teaching, had to be abandoned, the result would not be changed. The Bible is full of the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, and the Bible cannot be intelli- gently interpreted by any one who does not be- lieve that doctrine. There is nothing more amazing than this, that people who profess to take the Bible for their ;,: .1 t ■ -'\- ■ 1 p" ! i 1 kin- ! r 258 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. guide, and who honestly think that they are fol- lowing its teaching, yet leave out of view, and contradict by their theories, not a passage here and there merely, but whole fields of Scripture ; and ignore, or deny, the very fundamental lines of its teaching : while on the other hand they im- port into the Bible, doctrines and theories which have not one passage from one end of the Bible to the other to support them. This doctrine of baptismal grace is an apt illustration of the one process, and the theory about the Church of Christ being an invisible thing, of the other. The one is so plainly taught in the Bible that it is hard to understand how any child can miss it, and the other is so absolutely without one shred of authority in Holy Scripture, that it is hard to understand how anybody could ever have sup- posed that they had found it in the Bible. And yet they denounce Baptismal Regeneration as a soul-destroying doctrine, and they speak of the invisibility theory as the Gospel view of the Church of Christ. But, to return, what are the conclusions to which we are led with regard to this doctrine of Regeneration ? First. — It is manifest that two very different meanings are attached to the term Regenera- tion, and t^»at the popular use of it to describe conversion, :>x the turning of the soul to God by 1% L BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 2S9 its own act and choi -e, is untheological and in- correct. The term is used to describe that grace of God by which we are united to Christ, and are made capable of renewal ; and not the act of turning to God by our own wills by which that renewal becomes manifest. Second. — It is manifest beyond all contradic- tion that Holy Scripture represents that grace, which enables us to turn to Him and be con- verted, as God's free and undeserved gift, not produced or procured by our own faith or emo- tion or work, though faith is the eye that per- ceives, the hand that reaches out to receive that gift. It is manifest further that Holy Scripture ever represents that gift as conveyed to us through baptism, for that Sacrament is the hand by which His regenerating grace is given. Third. — It is proved beyond the possibility of dispute that the Church of England teaches this doctrine and requires us to believe and act upon it. Fourth. — It is proved by the Confessions and creeds of the various Reform movements of the 1 6th century, that they teach the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration just as markedly as the Prayer Book and Articles of the Church of England. Fifth. — And further, it is proved that the whole Church, from the beginning, believed in 'M rai 260 BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. hfi and taught this doctrine as the foundation of the Christian life. What then ? Can any man, in face of these facts, allege that he can have no communion with the Church of England, because she be- lieves this doctrine ? Can he justify to his con- science the setting up of this doctrine as a bar- rier against seeking the restoration of that union for which the Lord Jesus so passionately prayed? Will he not for his own soul's sake, if he wishes to take the Bible for his guide, have to review his own position and return not only to the faith of the Gospel, but to the faith of the progenitors of his own Denomination ? How vastly does a belief of the doctrine change the whole view of our responsibility, of the Chris- tian life, the Christian home, the Christian family, the Christian brotherhood ! f tf t -f r>i. CHAPTER XIII. THE REAL PRESENCE. It is often said by earnest Christian people of these days, however greatly we may desire the reunion of Christendom we could not unite with the Church of England in a corporate way, nor can we listen to her entreaty to return to her fold as our true Home. She teaches the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord's Sup- per, and that is a doctrine which we can never, either individually or corporately, accept. Now it is clear that in matters of this kind our first duty is to understand the meaning attached to the terms employed both by those who use them, and by those who reject them. And, in this instance, is it not the case that the te'f;.!' Real Presence is used by those who reject th< doctrine it is supposed to imply, as meaning a material, corporeal presence of Christ, or in other words, as implying the doctrine of Transub- stantiation. A doctrine which is explicitely re- jected by those who use the term as expressing their belief concerning the inner significance of this Holy Sacrament ? The subject is a solemn 261 ! 61 V- ■ I 1 r I, J It! ■ '■■ W n it' Bi'{ a63 r/f^ ^£^Z PRESENCE. one, which ought not to be approached in any mere spirit of flippancy, or in any self-confident trust in the acuteness of our own reasoning powers. We are in the presence of the greatest mys- tery of practical religion ; and, in considering it, the rashness of unsanctified reason is very apt to go astray on the one side or the other, and to do dishonour to God either by low and earthly conceptions of His unspeakable gift, or by rash intrusions into the depths of a mystery which human reason cannot penetrate. John Calvin was no timid speculator in the sphere of Christian truth, and yet he says of this great mystery, " I feel and therefore confess that I am unable to comprehend it with my mind ; so far am I from wishing any one to measure its sub- limity by my feeble capacity . . . for whenever this subject is considered I feel that I have spok- en far beneath its dignity ; and, though the mind is more powerful in thought than the tongue in expression, it too is overcome and overwhelmed with the magnitude of the subject, and can only break forth in admiration of a subject which it cannot comprehend, or the tongue express." Again he says : '* Now, should anyone ask me as to the mode, I will not be ashamed to confess that it is too high a mystery either for my mind to comprehend, or my words to confess ; and. THE REAL PRESENCE. 263 to speak more plainly, I rather feel than under- stand it. The truth of God, therefore, in which I can safely rest, I here embrace without con- troversy. He declares that His flesh is the meat. His blood the drink of my soul ; I give my soul to Him, to be fed with such food. In His sacred supper He bids me take, eat and drink His body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine. I have no doubt that He will truly give and I receive." Surely every reverent mind must approach this subject with something of Calvin's fear ; and yet it is a duty to state as clearly as we can all that is revealed to us concerning this great mystery. First, then, what do we mean and what do we not mean when we speak of the Real Presence of Christ in this Sacrament ? Bishop Burnett, an extreme Protestant, says : " We assert a real presence of the body and blood of Christ, by real we understand true in opposition both to picture and imagination, and to those shadows that were in the Mosaical dispensation." In this sense we acknowledge a real presence of Christ in the Sacrament, or as the Homily on the Sacrament puts it : '* This much we must be sure to hold, that in the Sup- per of the Lord there is no vain ceremony, no bare sign, no untrue figure of things absent ; " and so we are taught in the catechism '' the "i 1 J ^ I i: i • i fi. t ,: . I i ■' >h J: m ,U ': PI ii ' T ,'! I 264 THE REAL PRESENCE. inward part or thing signified in the Lord's Supper is the Body and Blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper," or as the 28th Article has it : "Given, taken and eaten," and it follows of necessity that to be really (verily and indeed given) they must be really, truly present. It is sometimes said by ignorant writers that the Reformers of the sixteenth century rejected this term, and cast out root and branch the doc- trine which it implies. That this was the very object of their protest and attack as far as the Holy Communion is concerned. There seems to be no justification for this confident assertion. The term " real presence " was not in dispute, the discussion ^' -ts about a material, physical presence, as that is defined by the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Bishop Jeremy Taylor, the very foremost of the Church's champions against Rome, heads one of his chapters "The Real Presence, a safeguard against the Romish doctrine of Transubstantiation," and so it is quite true as is assumed that the doctrine of a true, actual, invisible, supernatural presence of Christ, that which the term Real Presence is now used to describe, was taught by the Reformers of the English Church, and, in fact, by the whole stream of her Theologians by an almost unani- U'l THE REAL PRESENCE, ^65 nious consent. But by "Real" they do not mean a material, physical, natural presence ; they do not mean the Roman doctrine of Tran- substantiation, but they do mean a true, real, supernatural presence, after a spiritual and heav- enly manner, the mode of which we neither at- tempt to explore or explain. For, as St. Augus- tine says : ** This mystery is performed by men like the others, but in a divine manner. It is performed on earth but in a heavenly manner. Things are not unreal because they are spirit- ual, or because the mode of their action is sup- ernatural and heavenly." There were three distinct positions taken at the time of the Reformation on this subject ; they have each, with more or less of clearness, been held down to our own time. First. — The Roman doctrine of Transubstan- tiation, as defined by the Council of Trent, teaches that by the words of consecration the whole substance of the bread is converted into the substance of the Body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His Blood ; so that the bread and wine no longer remain in existence, but the Body and Blood of Christ take their place. That is, Tran- substantiation required people to believe in the real absence after consecration of the outward part, the bread and the wine, in this sacrament. Q 11 ■ ti M ; HI I V 266 THE REAL PRESENCE, \r'. if (^ ! i mi Second. — The Zwinglian doctrine was the direct opposite of this. It maintained the rtcA absence of the Body and Blood of Christ, and taught that the Sacrament was merely symboli- cal ; the bread and wine were bread and wine, and nothing more, mere symbols intertded to represent and call to mind the death of Christ, His body broken and His blood shed, and so to quicken our faith by quickening our memory of the death of Christ, in the same way that a pic- ture of the Crucifixion quickens it. Then, thirdly, there was the position of the English Church, held also, in spite of some mis- leading illustrations, by the the great Lutheran Body ; that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Sup- per there is present both the outward part — the bread and wine, and the inward part — the Body and Blood of Christ, which are verily, and in- deed, taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper. This was the Catholic doctrine held by the whole Church from the beginning, until it was supplanted by the Roman dogma in the centuries immediately preceding the Reformation. Canon Sadler, a learned and careful writer of our own time, says the literal meaning of the words of Christ were held for above a thousand years in the Church, before this mode of defin- ing His presence was sought to be imposed THE REAL PRESENCE. a67 upon the consciences of believers ; a long list of passages from the Fathers, some of them reach- ing far into mediajval times, may be found in any competent Anglican writer on the subject, not one passage of which would have been written if the Fathers in question had supposed that Transubstantiation was even an allowable opinion. It may not be unprofitable to look at a few such extracts taken from these writers, who expressed the faith and moulded the thought of the age in which they lived. The first quo- tation is from St. Irenaeus, who wrote about i8o. He says, *' The bread from the earth receiving the invocation of God is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and a heavenly." The asser- tion that the Eucharist consists of an earthly as well as a heavenly reality might have been writ- ten to refute by anticipation the mediaeval theory of Transubstantiation. St. Chrysostom says: *'We call the bread be- fore it is sanctified bread ; but when Divine grace has, through the intervention of the Priest sanctified it, it is set free from the name bread, and thought worthy to be called the Lord's Body ; although the nature of bread remains, and we proclaim not two bodies, but the one Body of the Son." Theodoret says : " He who called the natural body corn and bread, and ' 1 1- Pi f IF :• ' ■ 111 1,, ■ ■ hit ^■^■^ 1 ' ^^■'M' ^BrnJ' ^^H MT^y ^ ■ jUf^ H'k- ^H'- n ^Rl ' '*■'] HHi ml. ,.^ IM;/'P| : m f ''^,'"' 'i Km ^ if' m 3|j . i;' ' ■ 1 1 ■ , l^'- 9 i ■f' yp^ ' T 1 1 1 w 3 , 1 III ii ' Ul^'t ! I' comprehend how, and after what manner, the same is there present, for the wisdom of reason must be subdued to the obedience of Christ, as the Apostle Paul teacheth." (Cran. Cat., 208.) Again he says : ^' It is evident that Christ causeth even at this time His Body and Blood to be in the sacrament after that manner and fashion as it was when He instituted it," page \o. To the statements of his catechism Cran- me'- professed to the very last to adhere, and repudiated with indignation the idea of his having deviated from the doctrine therein propounded. Of Bishop Ridley, who bore a most import- ant part in the compilation of our Prayer-Book, Wordsworth says in his Biography that he always believed and maintained a real presence by grace to faith and not a mere figure only. Certainly on his last trial at the very close of his career he expresses this doctrine most clearly and unequivocally. " In the sacrament of the altar," he says, " is the natural Body and Blood of Christ truly and really, vere et realiter, if you take these terms for spiritually by grace and effi- cacy, for so every worthy receiver receiveth the very true Body of Christ." (Wordsworth Biog,, iii. 237.) Hooker, who perhaps did more to mould the thought of his own and immediately succeeding THE REAL PRESENCE. 271 times than any other man of his time, says : '* As to the manner of the presence of the Body and Blood of our Lord in the blessed sacrament we that are Protestants and Reformed according to the ancient Catholic Church, do not search into the manner of it with perplexing enquiries, but after the example of the Primitive and purest Church of Christ we leave it to the power and wisdom of our Lord, yielding a full and unhesi- tating assent to His wordr.." In a moment of eagerness for conciliation, Hooker wrote : "The real presence of Christ's most blessed Body and Blood is not, therefore, to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receivers of the sacrament." This has been seized upon as expressing his deliberate doctrine of the Euchar- ist, and as a repudiation of any real presence of Christ in the sacrament. Those who are familiar with Hooker's writings know that such a con- clusion is the opposite of what he believed and taught. This is made plain by the following among a multitude of similar statements deliber- ately written. Thus he says : " Seeing that by opening the several opinions which have been held they are grown for aught 1 can see on all sides at length to a general agreement concern- ing that v/hich is alone material — namely, the real participation of Christ and of life in His Body and Blood by means of this sacrament." » . i" m MP i % \ >' 272 THE REAL PRESENCE. (Keble's Ed., vol. ii., p. 446.) Again, "As Christ is termed our life, because through Him we obtain life, so the parts of this sacrament are His Body and Blood ; for that they are so to us who, receiving them, receive that by them which they are termed. The Bread and Cup are His Body and Blood because they are causes instru- mental upon the receipt whereof the participa- tion of His Body and Blood ensueth," (p. 449.) Again, "Our participation of Christ in this sacrament dependeth on the co-operation of His omnipotent powers which maketh it His Body and Blood to us," (page 451.) Again, ^'Christ, assisting this heavenly banquet with His per- sonal and true presence, doth by His own divine power add to the natural substance thereof super- natural efficacy, which addition to the nature of those consecrated elements, changeth them and maketh them that, unto us which otherwise they could not be," (p. 456.) "This bread hath in it more than the substance which our eyes be- hold. This cup hallowed with solemn benedic- tion availeth to the endless life and welfare both of soul and body, in that it serveth as well for a medicine to heal our infirmities and purge our sins, as for a sacrifice of thanksgiving ; with touching it sanctifieth ; it enlighteneth with be- lief ; it truly conformeth us unto the image of Jesus Christ. What these elements are in them- ■^ THE REAL PRESENCE. 273 selves it skilleth not, it is enough that to me who take them they are the Body and Blood of Christ. His promise in witness hereof suf- ficeth. His word He knoweth which way to accomplish ; why should any cogitation possess the soul of a faithful communicant but this : O ! my God, thou art true ; O ! my Soul, thou art happy." (Book V, chap. Ixvii, 12.) Again, speaking of the Christian ministry, Hooker says : " The power of the ministry of God translateth out of darkness into glory ; it raiseth men from the earth and bringeth God Himself down from Heaven ; the blessing visible elerr'-nts it maketh them invisible grace ; it givet? iiy the Holy Ghost ; it hath to dispose of t it Flesh which was given for ihe life of the world, and that Blood which was poured out to redeem souls. . . To whom Christ hath imparted power both over that mystical body which is the society of souls, and over that natural body, which is Himself, for the knitting of both in one (a work which antiquity doth call the making of Christ's body." Book V, chap Ixxvii, i, 2.) '"Is there anything more explicit and clear and easy than that as Christ is termed our life because through Him we obtain life ; so the parts of this sacrament are His Body and Blood : for they are so to us, who receiving them receive that by them which they are termed ; The bread and cup are His Body H i 1! M ii. 't ! li- i'i r,! hi ;i.i ;,! In.- 'I > »5> ■;> >(^ Hiotographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 28n THE REAL PRESENCE. II; \':\ y, ! blood, ye have no life in you ; " v. 56, *' He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him." Then read Matt. xxvi. 26 and 27: *' And Jesus took bread and blessed it and brake it, and gave it to His disciples, and said, ' Take, eat ; this is my Body. And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, * Drink ye all of it ; for this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.' " First he says, *' The bread that I will give is my flesh." He took bread and said, " This is my Body ; " ** Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life." Then at the insti- tution, "This is my Body," "This is my blood," — that Body and that Blood of which He had been speaking before. So that St. Paul says, I Coi'. x. 16, " The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion, i.e., com- munication of the blood of Christ. The bread which we brake, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ." The account of the institu- tion of this sacrament given by St. Paul, i Cor. xi., 23, 24, 25, 26, is identical with that con- tained in the Gospels, except that he adds the words toGto TToieiTC CIS fi]v 6/xiyi/ avdfivr)(nv setting it forth as the public formal memorial of His death. That the Body and Blood may be given, taken, and received in such a way as to make the cup THE REAL PRESENCE. 281 blessed, the bread broken, the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, they must be truly and really present. So that however we approach the subject, whether under the guidance of the language of Holy Scripture or the formularies of the Denom- inations, or the testimony and interpretation of the wisest and holiest and best of the Church's teachers, we reach the same conclusion, \\z, that there is a real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, though that presence is of necessity not natural, but supernatural, ''After a spiritual and heavenly manner." So that instead of this doctrine being the great barrier, as was assum- ed, to the restoration of unity, it is itself the very centre around which that unity will form, the very bond by which the One Body will live, and be held together in enduring union. I w CHAPTER XIV. m THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. Another objection often urged against the Church of England in these days is that she tolerates, if she does actually teach, the doctrine of the ' * Eucharistic Sacrifice. " * * Now that doc- trine," says many a Protestant, *' I regard as nothing less than rank Popery, and whatever I may think of the historic claims of the Church of England, and however much I may admire the devotional dignity of her worship, I could never myself join a Church which tolerates such a doctrine, and as to corporate reunion with such a body, it cannot and will not be thought of by any evangelical Church. Until, there- fore, the Church of England purges herself of this heresy of the Ritualists, and purges herself both of the name and the thing, there is no use talking about union." But here again there must be some great un- derlying mistake. The term sacrifice, as de- cribing the Holy Communion, is not a new one invented by the Ritualists, though it has not been in familiar use in the English Church since 282 i THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. 283 the Puritan incursion until quite recent times. Yet from the earliest times it was the common designation of the Lord's Supper, which in or- dinary conversation was constantly referred to as ''the Holy Sacrifice." It is described as the unbloody Sacrifice in the Liturgies, which date back almost to Apostolic times, and which were therefore in use for centuries before Romanism arose. Thus in the Liturgy of St. James used in Jerusalem, Palestine, and Syria, the Priest says during the celebration : " We offer to thee this fearful and unbloody sacrifice," and again : " we set before thee the spiritual and unbloody sacrifice," and again: "this tremendous and unbloody sacrifice." And so in the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, ''weoiier to thee this reasonable and unbloody sacrifice." And again, in the Liturgy of St. Basil, " that we may be worthy to offer thee this reasonable and unbloody sacri- fice," and so in the Liturgy of St. Clement, probably the earliest of the surviving Liturgies, in the Prayer for the consecration of a Bishop it is said : " Grant, O God, that he may appease thee, by offering constantly and without blame or accusation the pure and unbloody sacrifice." The phrases are beyond all doubt used in appli- cation to the material sacrifice laid upon the altar. And if we turn from early Liturgies to early ;i! . I 284 THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. writers we shall find the same application of these terms. St. Cyril of Jerusalem says : '* When the spiritual victim, the unbloody sac- rifice is finished, then we supplicate God over this sacrifice of propitiation." St. Gregory of Nazienyen addressing the clergy of Constanti- nople, calls them ** Priests who offer unbloody sacrifices." St. Chrysostom speaks of the mys- tical table as ''the unbloody sacrifice." St. Cyprian says : " The Priest who imitates that which Christ did, offers a full and true sacrifice in the Church to God the Father, if he offers as he sees Jesus Christ to have offered." It is not necessary to multiply quotations as to the use of these terms in the first days, and the proofs are abundant that our greatest Eng- lish Divines since the Reformation agree with them, in the use of this language, and that, therefore, the sacrificial aspect of the Holy Com- munion is not an invention of the Ritualists. Bishop Andrewes, in the time of James I, says : * ' The Eucharist ever was, and by us is considered, both as a sacrament and asacrafice." Bishop Mede, in his treatise on the Christian sacrifice, says : '* But this commemoration is to be made to God, His Father, and is not a bare remembering or putting ourselves in mind only, but a putting of God in mind, for every sacrifice is directed unto God, and the oblation therein THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. 285 I, is hath Him for its object, and not man." Bishop Cosin, in the time of Charles II, says : ''And to prove it a sacrifice propitiatory, always so acknowledged by the Ancient Church, there can be no other requirement than that it was offered up not only for the living but for the dead, and for those that were absent." Thorndike says : ' • The Eucharist is the sac- rifice of Christ upon the Cross, which is repre- sented, renewed, revived, and restored by it." Again : **■ In the sense of the Catholic Church the sacrament of the Eucharist is a sacrifice pro- pitiatory for the Church and impetratory of the necessities thereof in regard of those prayers wherewith it is offered and presented to God in virtue of the sacrifice of the Cross which it is mystically." Bishop Overall, the author of the sacramental part of the catechism, says : " Neither do we call this sacrifice of the Eucharist an efficient sacrifice, as if that upon the Cross wanted effi- cacy ; but because the price and virtue of that sacrifice would not be profitable to us, unless it were applied and brought into effect by this Eucharistical sacrifice and other the Holy Sac- raments and means appointed by God unto that end." Dr. Brevint says : ''The sacrifice which by real oblation was not to be offered more than I 286 THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. m ' , once, is by a Eucharistical and devout com- memoration to be offered every day. This is what the Apostle calls ** to set forth the death of the Lord." Bishop Jeremy Taylor says : ** I hereby pres- ent to thy Divine majesty this glorious sacrifice which thy servants this day have represented upon earth, in behalf of my dearest relatives." Bishop Burnet, a Protestant of the Protest- ants, after speaking of different things which might be properly termed sacrifices, says : "So in this large sense we do not deny that the Eucharist is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiv- ing, and our Church calls it so in the office of the Communion. In two other respects it may be also more strictly called a sacrifice. One is because there is an oblation of bread and wine made in it, which, being sanctified, are consum- ed in an act of religion. To this many passages in the writings of the Fathers do relate An- other respect in which the Eucharist is called a sacrifice is because it is a commemoration and a representation to God of the sacrifice that Christ offered for us on the Cross, in which we claim to that as to our expiation, and feast upon it as our peace offering, according to that ancient notion that convenants were confirmed by a sacrifice, and were concluded in a feast on the sacrifice." (Art. XXXI.) THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. 287 Johi. Wesley, in a letter to his brother-in-law, says: "We believe there is and always was in every Christian Church an outward Priesthood ordained by Jesus Christ, and an outward sacri- fice offered therein by men authorized to act as ambassadors of Christ and stewards of the mys- teries of God." (Journal, vol. ii, p. 4.) Again, in his notes on the New Testament still recog- nized as an authority by the Conference, com- menting on the words, ** Do this in remembrance of me," he writes : '' The ancient sacrifices were in remembrance of sin ; this sacrifice once offered is still represented in remembrance of the remis- sion ofsin." (Wesley's Works, vol. xv, p. 259.) Again, in his sermon on the duty ot constant com- munion he writes : ** With the first Christians, the Christian sacrifice was a constant part of the Lord's Day service. For several centuries they received the Blessed Sacrament every day, and their opinion of those who turned their backs upon it, may be gathered from the ancient canon, ' If any believer join in the prayers of the faithful and go away without receiving the Lord's Supper, let him be excommunicated, as bringing confusion into the Church of God.' " Quotations from our standard Divines could be multiplied to show that the Lord's Supper from Apostolic times down almost to our own times has been unhesitatingly and constantly spoken of as the Christian sacrifice. II 288 THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. ■it ! But now, you are asking if this is so? In what sense did they, and in what sense do you use this term ? Do you mean to teach us, as some Roman writers seem to teach, that when- ever the Lord's Supper is celebrated Christ is sacrificed afresh and endures over again the pains and agony of the Cross ? We say, God forbid I No such thought ever entered the head of any instructed Anglican, and it is only because people have got into a restricted, and altogether unjustifiable way of using the word sacrifice, as describing the slaying and offering up of some living creature, that such a monstrous notion even seems to be implied. According to its etymology the word sacrifice means to perform a sacred act, and in the Old Testament the word is used to describe the offering of fine flour, of cakes, of incense, of the fruits of the earth and of other things not slain, but simply offered to God. This latter use of the word is very com- mon amongst ourselves at the present day ; we speak of a man making great sacrifices for his religion, or country, or friends, or principles, by which we mean that he voluntarily gives up for the sake of these what he might have withheld, so that the word sacrifice does not necessarily imply the immolation or slaying of a victim. And the Holy Communion possesses now the most intense sacrificial reality, no sacrifice that THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. 289 ever was presented before God in solemn wor- ship of Jew or Gentile, can come near it, in regard of the one all-important element of ancient sacrificial worship, viz., direct reference to, and close connection with the one all-pre- vailing Victim. For the real spiritual value of the old sacrifices lay not in the costliness of the victim, nor in its death and the outpouring of its blood, nor in the consumption by fire, but in the implied reference to the atoning death of Christ which pervaded the whole transaction, and in the ages preceding the sacrifice of the death of Christ there was nothing which had anything like the close con- nection with it which the Eucharist has, and that, too, by the express appointment of Christ Himself. vSo that having regard to the one thing which gave the old offerings their spiritual value, viz., their reference to the death of Christ, all the burnt offerings and sacrifices which all the Priests of Aaron's line ever offered, are in the eye of faith as nothing when set side by side with the one celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Now the sacrificial character of the Eucharist depends on the words of our Lord, ** Do this in remembrance of me," and on the words of the Holy Spirit by St. Paul, " As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do show the 390 THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. hi 1,'i; ;■;. Lord's death till He come." Two distinct mean- ings have been attached to these words, the ancient Catholic interpretation is : Do this as a solemn public Church commemoration or mem- orial of My death, and the modern Zwinglian interpretation : Do this as a means of remind- ing yourselves individually what you owe to My death — eat this bread and drink this wine, and think about Me, or about My death upon the Cross. According to the first, our Lord instituted a solemn commemoration of Himself, or of His sacrifice upon the Cross, to be performed before God and man in the whole Church gathered together in her stated assembly. According to the second He ordained nothing in fact, but an acted sermon, a means of publicly instructing or edifying individuals who by the use of certain types were severally to remind themselves of His death on their own private account. Amongst those who adopt this view, as is abundantly evi- dent by their writings, the Eucharist has degen- erated into a means of proclaiming or showing faith, not the faith of the Body of Christ, but the faith of particular persons in the fact that Christ died for them, and that they have been enabled to exercise an act of self-appropriating faith in Him. According to them, our Lord should have said, not ** Do this in remembrance THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE, 291 of me," but " Do this to show your faith in me." The Rev. W. K. Dale says the words are com- monly interpreted as though they meant nothing more than believing what Christ taught ; and the Congregationalist Year Book for 1864, says the Lord's Supper is celebrated in Christian Churches as a token of faith in the Saviour and of brotherly love. Such a view could not have been entertained for a moment by any one who looked beyond the English translation and con- sidered the meaning of the words in the original, *' TOVTO TTOUcire CIS T^v kfjJiiv avdfxvrjaiv." This could not mean " do this and think about Me," or "do this to show your faith in Me." The word Trovare is more frequently translated '♦ offer" in the Bible, than "do," and the word ava^ivqmv is never used, except with express reference to a memorial before God, and with especial reference to remembering and pleading before God; and so the words, literally translated, are " do or offer this for my memor- ial, do this as a solemn commemoration before God and your Brethren and the elect Angels of what I have done and suffered for you." This then is the sacrificial view of the Eucharist. It is the solemn Ecclesiastical memorial of the sac- rifice of the death of Christ. It is the Saviour's own ordained means of showing forth before God, and men and angels, by the very acts >. 1 292 THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. lif which we perform, His love in death — of pre- senting and pleading before God the one sacri- fice offered on Calvary — of holding Christ up between our sins and God's anger, and pleading to be pardoned and accepted in Him the beloved. And so, just as the old sacrifices were anticipa- tory showings forth of the one atoning death, which was to be, so this Holy Communion, according to the teachings of the whole Church from the beginning, is a memorial sacrifice, a commemorative showing forth of the one aton- ing death, which has been offered. And so from the beginning, the celebration of this One great sacrificial act has been the central act of the Church's worship. We learn from Holy Scrip- ture, from the earliest records of Christian His- tory, from the first drafts of Christian Liturgies, that Christian assemblies were not held as mere prayer-meetings, or meetings for mutual edifica- tion and instruction by the reading and exposi- tion of Scripture alone, but always for celebrat- ing a worship of which the Holy Communion was the central act, and the grand termination. All the other acts of prayer and praise and sup- plication centre around the breaking of the bread ; all lead the worshipper on to the recep- tion of the Eucharist by each individual present as their highest privilege and joy, And so those who disobeyed their Lord's com- i THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. 293 mand, and did not avail themselves of their high privilege of receiving the Body and Blood of the Lord, as they had opportunity, were, as the Canon quoted by Wesley enacted, publicly excommunicated and cast out of the Church. Dr. John Johnson says, that in the case of those who by banishment, imprisonment for Christ's sake, or by other violent means, were debarred from the privilege of actual commun- ion, the ancients were of opinion that the appli- cation of the merits of Christ's death might be made by virtue of the oblation only, without eating and drinking the Eucharistical Body and Blood. But the notion of the modern Roman Church, that those who are not habitual com- municants, and do not intend to be, can plead for others, and apply to themselves the sacrifice that is there being commemorated, seems never to have even suggested itself to their minds. Such persons were treated as unbelievers ; the very commemoration, the very pleading of the sacrifice of Calvary seems by St. Paul to be made to depend upon the eating and drinking, for he says, "As often as ye eat and drink ye do show the Lord's death ; " by that act we are identified with the sacrifice which we have been offering. We see then, as the sum of all that has been said, that the ordinance of the Holy Conimun- iili i] si '-I i .fii 294 THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE, ion, besides its aspect of blessing to ourselves, as a means of feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of Christ, which by the power of the Holy Ghost, and not by our faith, are made to be truly present in this great mystery, has another most important aspect as a solemn — the most solemn — act of worship towards Almighty God ; the pleading before God of the one acceptable propitiation in union with the perpetual presentation of Him- self in heaven by the man Christ Jesus, as our sole acceptable Priest — the one Head of the Redeemed family of God. Of the one aspect of this great sacrament it is said, '' Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you." Of the other, ** Do this in remembrance of me." So that instead of calling upon the Church of England to prohibit the use of this term, and to cast out the doctrine which it implies, those who under the influence of a shallow rationalism have emptied the language of Holy Scripture of all meaning, and have lei go the Faith of the Church from Apostolic times, have need to revise their own conclusions, and to stand in the way and ask for the old path and walk therein. CHAPTER XV. CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. The practice of confession and the doctrine of absolution are based perhaps almost wholly upon the declaration of our Risen Lord addressed to the Apostles, and recorded in St. John xx. 21, 22, 23, " As my Father hath sent Me even so send I you. And when He had said this He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost ; whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." There are perhaps no words in the Bible that are so universally shunned by Protestant Teach- ers and Preachers as these are. There are no other words that a great many people so heartily wish had never been spoken, or never recorded in the Bible. They are practically rejected in our day as forming no part of Holy Scripture by all the modern Denominations. What is the position of the Church of England with regard to them? What meaning does she attach to them ? It is sometimes said by those who seek to explain these words away, that they were 39s nl til 1; PI ! 396 CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. \ l.ip" addressed to St. Peter and the other Apostles as individuals, and not in their official capacity as the ministers of Christ ; and that so the pow- ers they confer, whatever they may have been, did not extend beyond the original twelve. But, surely, it partakes of the sin of blasphemy to assert that the power to forgive sins can belong to, or be exercised by any human being in his private and individual capacity, or in any other way than as the agent and minister of God, the representative of, and spokesman for Christ. God alone can forgive sins, as all sin is against God (Ps. li. 4), and a man might as well under- take to forgive a debt due to his neighbour with- out his authority as to forgive a sin against God. God alone can forgive. But He might come Himself and tell you that your sin was forgiven ; or He might send a messenger to tell you that, on the conditions that He has imposed of re- pentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ being exercised, your sins are forgiven ; but it would be God's forgiveness conveyed by His authorized messenger, and not the messenger's forgiveness. Certainly St. Paul, who was not one of the original twelve, claimed to exercise this power in the case of the incestuous Corinthian. And the Church of England has authoritatively decided for her children that the words have not a private or CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. 297 individual application. She instructs the Bishop to say to every man whom she ordains to the Priesthood, <' Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God now committed into thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven, and whose sins thou dost re- tain they are retained." She instructs every Priest so ordained, and no one else, to say in her daily service, that <*God has given power and commandment to His ministers to declare and pronounce the absolution and remission of sins to all them that truly repent and unfeign- edly believe His Holy Gospel. She requires him in exhorting people to prepare for Holy Communion, to say, " If there be any of you who cannot," in this manner, which she has been pointing out, ''quiet his own conscience, lee him come to me ; or to some other discreet and learned minister of God's word, and open his grief, that he may receive the benefit of absolution, together with Ghostly counsel and advice." And in the office for the Visitation of the Sick she instructs the Priest '*to urge the sick man to make a special confession of his sin, if his conscience is troubled with any weighty matter," and she provides a definite form by which that benefit of absolution is to be con- ferred, ''Our Lord Jesus Christ who hath left ;n # 298 CONFESSION AND ABSOTUTWN. %(' 1 X- power to His church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive thee thine offences; And by His authority committed to me I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And to set at rest all dispute about the significance of this language, Archbishop Cranmer, who was chiefly responsible for its adoption, says, in the cate- cliism which he published about the same time, *' God doth not speak to us with a voice sound- ing out of heaven. But He hath given the Keys of the Kingdom of heaven, and the authority to forgive sins, to the ministers of the Church. Wherefore, let him that is a sinner go to one ot them, let him acknowledge and confess his sin, and pray him, that according to God's com- mandments he will give him absolution, and comfort him by the word of grace and forgive- ness of his sins ; and when the minister doth so, then I ought steadfastly to believe that my sins are truly forgiven me in heaven." — Cranmer Cat., p. 202. Bishop Latimer, one of Cranmer's chief asso- ciates and co-workers, writes : " But to speak of right and true confession I would to God it were kept in England ; for it is a good thing, and those which find themselves grieved in con- science might go to a learned man and there i CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION, 299 fetch of him comfort of the word of God, and so come to a quiet conscience." Ser. on 3 Aft. Epiph. vol. ii., p. 852. Bishop Ridley, Cranmer's chiefest associate, writes: ''Confession unto the minister, which is able to instruct, correct, and comfort, and to throw light upon the weak, wounded, and ignor- ant conscience, indeed I ever thought might do much good to Christ's congregation, and so I assure you I think even at this day." Quoted by Wordsworth, Biog., vol. iii., 67. The first book of Homilies, a semi-authorita- tive document in the Church of England, de- clares unhesitatingly that *' absolution hath the promise of forgiveness of sins." (Hom. on Com. Prayer and Sacraments). The second book of Homilies recommends that if any feel themselves troubled in conscience they may repair to their learned Curate or Pastor or to some other Godly learned man, and open the trouble and doubt of their consciences to them, that they may receive at their hands the comfortable solace of God's word. (2 Pt. of Hom. on Repentance.) The injunctions given by Edward VI gives direction to the Clergy that they shall in confessions every Lent, examine every person that cometh to confess to them (No. QCardwell's Docu. Annals, T. 1., p. 10), and so Archbishop I'l J f^ p . i Bt it'. 300 CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. Parker, as one of the first acts of his office, en- quired whether any denied any of the Articles of the Creed, or that mortal or voluntary sin, com- mitted after baptism, was remissible by penance. (Strypes' Life, App. vol. iii., p. 87). Again, Canon 1 1 3 decrees that if any man con- fess his secret and hidden sins to the minister, for the unburdening of his conscience, and to receive spiritual consolation and ease of mind from him, we do strictly charge and admonish him that he do not at any time reveal and make known to any person whatsoever any crime or offence so committed to his trust and secrecy." Such a provision would have been utterly absurd had it not been notorious that confession was at that time (1604) widely made to the Parish Priest. In Episcopal visitation articles to the very close of the 17th century the following enquiries were constantly addressed to the churchwardens: First, Whether persons excommunicated were in the habit of obtaining their absolution. Second, Whether the minister exhorteth those troubled or disquieted in mind to open their grief, that they may by the minister receive the benefit of absolution. Third, Whether the minister has revealed any crimes or offences so committed to his trust and secrecy contrary to the 1 1 3 Can. The 19th Canon of the Irish Church CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. 301 of 1634 requires that the minister ^ive public notice of his readiness to receive confessions be- fore Holy Communion, and that the minister of every parish shall, the afternoon before the said administration, give warning by the tolling of the bell or otherwise, to the intent that if any have any scruple of conscience, or desire the special ministry of reconciliation, he may afford it to those that need it ; and that the people are often to be entreated to examine the state of their own souls ; that, if troubled in mind, they may resort unto God's ministers to receive from them as well advice and counsel as the benefit of absolution likewise, for the quieting of their conscience by the power of the keys which Christ hath communicated to His ministers for that purpose. The habit of going, at least frequently, to confession, seems to have dropped into disuse during the deadly Georgian era. Before the Restoration, as well as after, the habitual use of confession seems to have been common among those who were trying to lead religious lives. Jeremy Taylor, we know, acted as confessor to Evelyn, Bishop Gunning to Mrs. Godolphin, Bishop Morley to the Duchess of York, and Archbishop Sharp to Queen Anne (Wakeman, p. 40). There can, then, be no doubt in any fair mind r IP f : i< t i- . • ll i \ I il3 : 1 303 CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. as to the interpretation which the Church of England by her authoritative documents has put upon the words of onr hlcsscd Lord : "Whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted." This is perhaps not inaptly expressed by Hooker '* the judicious," as he has so long been called. " For private confession and absolution it stands thus : the minister's power to absolve is publicly taught and professed ; upon the peo- ple no such necessity is imposed of opening their transgressions unto men, as if remission of sin otherwise were impossible ; neither such opinion of the thing itself as though it were either unlawful or unprofitable." He and Dr. Seravia, his friend, constantly practised confes- sion the one to the other. Archbishop Bramhall (A.D. 1660) one of our greatest anti-Roman controversialists, says: "By special absolution the Priest absolves, or, to say more properly, God absolves by the Priest ; whose sins ye remit they are remitted. Protest- ants condemn not private confession and absolu- tion itself, as an ecclesiastical policy, to make men the more wary how they offend so as it might be left free without tyrannical imposition. By a little shame, which we suffer before one another, we prevent that great confusion of face, which otherwise must fall upon impenitent sin- ners at the day of judgment." CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. 303 Archbishop Wake (161 7) says: " The Church of England refuses no sort of confession, either public or private, which may be anyway neces- sary to the quieting of men's consciences, or to the exercising of that power of binding and loos- ing, which our Saviour Christ has left to His Church. We have our penitential Canons for public offenders : We exhort men if they have any, the least, doubt or scruple, nay sometimes though they have none, but especially before they receive the Holy Sacrament, to confess their sins. We propose to them not only the benefit of Ghostly advice, how to manage their repentance, but the great comfort of absolution, too, as soon as they shall have completed it. When we visit our sick we never fail to exhort them to make special confession of their sins to him that ministers to them ; and, when they have done it, the absolution is so full that no- thing could be added to it." So wrote Wake, and with him agree, as I could abundantly show, Jewel, a Protestant of the Protestants, and Usher, not behind him in this respect, and Overall, Morton, Crackenthorp, White, Monta- gue, Hakewell, Mason, Andrewes, Cosin, Hey- lin. Sparrow, Nicholls, Comber /heatley, and Wm. Turner and Thomas Becon, leading Puri- tans, and Donne (1631), Bayley (1626), Bishop Hall, Chillingworth, Sanderson, Hammond, I 304 CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. Jeremy Taylor, Nicholson, Kerr, Kettlewell, Barrow, Burnett, Smith, Stearn and Horn, the learned men and accepted exponents of the doc- trines of the Church of England down to our own time. The Lutherans are eminently Protestants, be- cause historically this title belongs to them, and they are quite in harmony both in theory and practice with the formal statements of the Church of England, and the teaching of the great Doc- tors of the Church of England. The Augsburg Con. II Art. says, "Confession in the churches is not abolished among us. . . . Men are taught greatly to value absolution because it is the voice of God and pronounced at the command of God : The power of the keys is commanded, and it is mentioned what consolation it brings to tempted consciences, and that God requires faith that we should believe that absolution, not less than if the voice of God sounded from hea- ven. . . . Confession is retained among us both on account of the very great benefit of absolu- tion, and also for other advantages to conscien- ces." In like manner the Saxon confession (1554) says, "As to the making private confes- sion to the Priests, we affirm that the rite of private absolution is to be retained in the Church and we do constantly retain it for many grave causes." CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. 30s Hooker, again, describes the Lutheran doc- trine and its practical working. "But concern- ing confession in private, the churches of Ger- many, as well the rest as the Lutherans agiee that all men should at certain times confess their offences to God in the hearing of God's minis- ter, thereby to show that their sins displease them ; to receive instruction for the warier carriage of themselves hereafter ; to be soundly resolved if any scruples, or trouble of consci- ence that entangle their minds ; and, which is most material to the end, that men may at God's hands seek every one his own particular pardon through the power of those keys which the min- isters of God use according to Our Blessed Saviour's institution in that case. It is their part to accept the benefit thereof as God's most merciful ordinance for their good, and without any distrust or doubt to embrace joyfully His grace so given them, according to the word of the Lord which said * whose sins ye remit they are remitted' ; so that, grounding upon this assumed belief, they are to rest with minds en- couraged and persuaded concerning the forgive- ness of all their sins, as out of Christ's own word and power by the ministry of the keys." The Westminster Confession (Art. XXX) de- crees ''that our Lord Jesus Christ, as King and Head of His Church, hath therein appointed a (■ ■!! !T 306 CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. '\ n [I ■1 1 it i it:- ■ ! ( government in the hand of church officers ; to these officers the keys of the Kingdom of heaven are committed, by virtue whereof they have power respectively to retain and remit sins, to shut that Kingdom against the impenitent both by the word and censures, and to open it unto penitent sinners by the ministry of the Gospel, and by absolution from censures as occasion shall require." And this was no mere theory, it was acted upon down to A.D. 1698 at least. The Kev. Robert Freill (1650), a Presbyterian minister, as quoted by Aytoun, in his account of the execution of Montrose, says '* that he and Mr. Law were appointed to wait on him at the time of his execution, that in case he should desire to be released from the excommunication that had been pronounced upon him, we should be allowed to give it unto him in the name of the Kirk, and to pray with him, and for him that what is loosed on earth might be loosed in heaven ; but he did not at all desire it." It may then be accepted as one of the prin- ciples of the Reformation, that the words of our Blessed Lord, " Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted," were interpreted according to their natural sense, and everywhere regarded as giving power and commandment to Bis minis- ters to declare and pronounce to His people being penitent the absolution and remission of •! i CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. 307 their sins. Or, as it is explained in the Visita- tion office, " Hath left power to His Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, and to declare to those of whose repent- ance and faith he is satisfied." " By His author- ity committed to me I absolve thee from all thy sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." It is no secret that this interpretation is widely rejected at this day by many who have subscribed to the truth of this language, as mere Romanism. But if it be Roman, then every great leader of the Reforma- tion movement, with the exception of Calvin, every great Divine of the Church of England, nay, the Church of England herself, together with the Lutherans and Presbyterians, are ad- vanced Romanists ; yea, the New Testament itself is Roman, for what other interpretation can any honest man put upon the words of the Lord Jesus, as recorded there ? Can any man in his senses believe that Christ merely meant to tell His ministers to preach the Gospel to His people, and to tell the people to believe that Gospel? Can any reverent mind believe that to make known so simple a statement He would have used language so complicated, so mislead- ing, so sure to be misunderstood, if that was all He meant ? '< What then?" you are saying. " Are we to .: 11 3o8 CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. !i accept the whole Roman system ? Is there no forgiveness apart from auricular confession, and priestly absolution ? " Some, perhaps, as they read all this, are feeling, if they are not saying it, "I will not accept this system ; I do not care what the New Testament teaches, or what the Church says." No, and certainly you are not required to accept it. The Church of England lays no such burden upon her people. She exhorts those who cannot otherwise quiet their conscience to open their grief to the minister of God, that their difficulties may be removed, and that they may receive the benefit of absolution, but she leaves every man to judge for himself, whether he needs that medicine for his soul or not. She exhorts the sick to make special con- fession of his sins, '^ if he feels his conscience burdened with any weighty matter," but only so. She teaches the doctrine, she claims the power, she imposes upon her clergy the duty of exer- cising this ministry of reconciliation with which she has entrusted them ; but she throws the responsibility of using, or not using, that min- istry upon every man's own conscience. She does not enforce it as a necessary part of the routine of the Christian life, or as a necessary condition of obtaining God's forgiveness ; and in this view the Church of England is at one with the whole Catholic Church for a thousand CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION, 309 years. Canon Carter and Dr. Pusey both quote Morinus as saying it would be untrue and abso- lutely contrary to the mind of all the Fathers to conclude that salvation could not be obtained without the exercise of penance (i.e., confession, satisfaction and absolution). They held, in the fullest and most absolute sense, the efficacy of true internal contrition. Their strong language in urging penance only implied that the grace of contrition was far mo^'e likely to be obtained through its use than without it. He says it is an axiom of theology that " True contrition cannot fail to obtain the instant remission of sins." According to the ancient penitential system, sins were classified not as venial and deadly, but as sins grievous, most grievous and less griev- ous. Idolatry, adultery and homicide were generally held to form the most grievous class. Sins considered of less magnitude, which yet were of a deadly character, were placed in the second class. The penitent was required to con- fess sins of the first class, and sometimes of the second, not in private, but aloud, before all the congregation ; and to undergo, generally, long years of shameful penance, that their souls might be saved. Private confession must often have preceded the public, where these sins were secret, but the change from the public to the pri- ! 11 1 3IO CONFESS/ON AND ABSOLUTION. U. ' I i': I vate confession was not effected till the 7th cen- tury. It is an unquestionable fact that penance, and with it confession, were not regarded as absolutely obligatory, even in the case of the most deadly sins ; and that secret sins, though of a deadly character, did not necessarily fall within the scope of the canonical discipline ; which facts sufficiently prove that the remission of sins might in the judgment of the Fathers be obtained without the use of such means. The availing power of true contrition alone, through the merits of Christ, was ever believed to be such that, even in the case of sins for which the law of the Church properly required the pen- ance, grace overflowed its ordinary channels in response to its appeal through direct and secret intercourse of the soul with God. "Why, then," you ask, "should any have recourse to either public or private confession, and the consequent absolution by the Priest?" The answer seems to be because God requires confession, and has made such high promises through absolution, as to constitute them impor- tant channels of His grace. It is only if we confess our sins that Me has pledged Himself to forgive us our sins, and the public general confes- sion and absolution in Church, and at Holy Communion are just as acceptable to God, and just as effective as private confession, if only CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. 3" they are the result of as thorough a self-exam- ination, and if they ensure as entire contrition and repentance, and if we are as able to exercise faith, and to lay hold on God's pardoning grace thus conveyed to us. For the public absolutions are not mere declarations of God's willingness to pardon, but actual conveyances of pardon to every penitent soul. It is not the future, but the present tense that is used; not " He will pardon and absolve," but ''He pardoneth and absolv- eth " now. Surely we ought to wait for that declaration with trembling penitence, and ador- ing faith. The only bar to God's full pardon, the only thing we have to fear, is the unreality and shallowness of our repentance, the insincer- ity of our faith. And one reason why private confession is commended by the Church and by all her saintly Doctors, is that it ensures real self-examination, that it secures instruction in the way of salvation, and consequent enlighten- ment of the conscience ; that it brings a man face to face with his sin ; that it humbles the penitent heart, and strengthens the wavering faith, and so secures true contrition. Another reason is that it is a great help in battling with besetting sins, and a great safe- guard in the hour of temptation. To have to tell it all out to God is not such a deterring thought as to have to tell it to God in the hear- 3»a CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. 1 i iX ing of one of our fellow-creatures. I know not a few lads and young men who have been saved from a polluted life, and perhaps from endless perdition by having grace given to them to open their grief to their spiritual pastor, and to seek at his hands the benefit of absolution and counsel. Then another reason why the Church com- mends, in certain cases, the private confession and absolution, is that which guided the primi- tive Church in her discipline, is that there are certain sins, weighty matters ol such a deadly character that they separate the soul from God, and suspend, if they do not destroy, the baptis- mal gift of life. " No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." Neither fornicators nor adulter- ers, nor liars, nor extortioners have any inherit- ance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God. For these and such as these, and alas ! they are not a few, the formal absolution and restoration to their forfeited place in Christ can ordinarily only be assured through the exercise of the power of the keys by the ministry of recon- ciliation. The thing to be concerned about is an im- penitent heart, and an unforgiven life. It is a terrible thing to go on to the close of life living in the kingdom of forgiveness without seeking, without appropriating God's pardoning grace. CONFESSIOiV AND ABSOLUTION. 3»3 There is nothing that should so fill us with shame as Christians, as to be living in a state of wrath and condemnation and not to be con- cerned about it. Do not rest then, if you can- not quiet your own conscience, if you cannot be clear in your mind as to your faith or re- pentance, if you cannot lay hold upon His par- doning grace, if you have upon your conscience the guilt of some deadly sin, then do not let fear or prejudice deter you from using the min- istry of reconciliation, which Christ has estab- lished in His Church, for the comfort of doubt- ing sin-stained souls. It is not necessary to urge upon those who have separated from, or who have been brought up in separation from, the Church cf England, that the position which she has taken on this question is not one which can justify their con- tinued alienation. If she has made a mistake in her interpretation of Holy Scripture,she has made it in common with the whole Church of Christ for sixteen hundred years, in common with all the great leaders of the Reformation, in common with the vast majority of professing Christians of the present day; and while she uses the language of the utmost clearness, and secures the right of all to use this means of grace, when and as often as they find useful to themselves, she yet does not enforce it as an obligatory observance upon I! i(,; iu 314 CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. any. Her object is to secure that confidential intercourse between the spiritual physician, who is charged with the cure of souls, and those sin- sick ones who need his skill, and this all Deno- minations strive to secure in some way between their pastors and their people. if %^ i ,. ■ |j Kl:> 1 CHAPTER XVI. PRECOMPOSED PRAYERS. Amid the wild fervor which characterized the first years of the Puritan movement, and which, with more fervid and less bellicose spirit, was the moving spring of early Methodist success, the feeling became general that men could only pray with the Spirit when they poured out, ex- tempore, the thoughts and feelings which it was assumed the Spirit of God was then awakening in their hearts ; and so there grew up amongst these people a strong prejudice against the use of Liturgies or precomposed prayers. The lead- ers, Wesley and Baxter and even John Knox, judged differently ; they saw the danger to doc- trine and to any true abiding devotional spirit, involved in the crude, undigested, unpremedi- tated utterances of illiterate men and untrained thinkers. And so they either urged upon their followers the use of the Church's Liturgy, or they tried to improve upon it by composing a Lit- urgy of their own. Their exhortations were, however, in vain. The spirit of wild enthusi- asm prevailed. Extempore praters bec.^rrc 31s hi V.f, 316 PRECOMPOSED PR A VERS. I 'i ■ ' 3' ■m \ %A II 1 rule. The Liturgies whether of ancient origin, or modern invention were banished, and the people were deprived of their legitimate Priest- hood and long cherished right to take their part audibly in the public worship of Almighty God. The feeling became general and has become traditional among the pveople that that is no prayer at all which is thought out beforehand and carefully prepared and written down. It is strange that it has never occurred to them that the Spirit of God is at least as likely to help the man who uses his powers of thinking, and knowledge and memory, while preparing in his study the prayers that are to be offered to God, as he is when thinking them out and uttering them amid the pressure and excitement of the prayer-meeting. It is strange, too. that they did not remember that Our Blessed Lord, when appealed to by His disciples to teach them how to pray, did not tell them to trust to the utter- ances of the Spirit at the moment, as the only true and acceptable mode of prayer ; but at once composed, or rather compiled a prayer, taken (all but one petition) out of previously existing Jewish collects, and that He commanded His followers to use that prayer whenever they prayed. It is probably due to this fact that they have felt that prayer to be at variance with their own assumed higher practice, that this command lilT PRECOM POSED PR A VERS. 3,7 has been persistently disobeyed ; so that the Lord's Prayer, until quite recent years, was sel- dom or never offered in their public worship. Is it not strange, again, that it did not occur to the people who introduced this innovation in public worship, that the Spirit of God, (Who was promised to guide His people into all truth, and so into the true way of worshipping Him,) had, from the very earliest times of which we have any record, guided His whole Church in every land into the use of Liturgical worship, so that four comprehensive Liturgies have come down to us, reaching back to the early years of the third century, and bearing such a marked resemblance to each other that it is a fair infer- ence that they were merely national or terri- torial adaptations of one original, the outlines of which, at least, were probably communicated to the Apostles by Our Lord Himself during the forty days in which He was teaching them the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. Is it not strange, again, that it has never occurred to those who persist in the use of extemporaneous worship that the Hymns which they sing with the greatest fervor, and which stir their hearts most deeply, even in times of revival, are most of them precomposed prayers, and that those into whose meaning they enter with the greatest fervor are just those with which rr ! 4 il run 318 PR ECOM POSED PR A VERS. they have been familiar from their childhood ; and finally, is it not strange that it has not occurred to those who object to forms of prayer, that the extempore prayers of the minister (if they are extempore) are just as much a form to everybody but himself, as if they had been com- posed by somebody else ages ago, and that they labor under this additional and fatal disadvan- tage, that congregations do not know what those forms are going to be ; and must, as each peti- tion is uttered, go through the mental process of considering, first what it means, and secondly, whether that meaning expresses his or her own wants ; and that this task is often rendered very difficult by the literary obscurity and imperfec- tion of the prayers of all but men of first-class ability, or long-continued training. So strongly have these difficulties been felt of recent years, that the men who minister to the more educated congregations have either imported wholesale into their services the prayers of the Church of England, or they have written out their own prayers and learned them by heart ; pandering to a prejudice which by their practice they utterly condemn. Many years ago the Boston Recorder, the organ of Orthodox Congregationalism, put forth the following as some of the faults of extempor- aneous public prayers. The writer of the article PR ECOM POSED PRAYERS. 319 begins by asking should prayer be converted into a sermon ? 1. Doctrinal prayer, really sermons, addressed to God but meant for the people, or some few of them. 2. Historical prayers, containing long nar- ratives for the information of persons not acquainted with the details of the facts referred to. But is narrative the business of prayer? 3. Hortatory prayers intended to stir up the zeal of the^ congregation on some subject which the minister thinks important ; but is exhorta- tion prayer ? 4. Denunciatory prayers, designed to warn the audience against certain errors or practices, to put down certain sentiments, or to awaken towards their advocates indignant feelings ; being appeals to men, not addresses to God. 5. Personal prayers, which spring from a de- sire to administer a secret rebuke, or to bestow commendation upon some individual, being ex- pressly in the mind of the person praying. 6. Eloquent prayers, in which there is a dis- play of a brilliant fancy and of polished and ele- gant language, compelling the hearer to say what a fine prayer that was, or (as the news- paper man put it), ''never before was such an eloquent prayer addressed to a Boston audi- ence." 320 PR ECOM POSED PR A VERS. 7. Familiar prayers, in which there is an evi- dent absence of that sacred awe and reverence which should fill the mind on every approach to God. This has often been taken to indicate great spirituality, enabling the individual (as the phrase is) to draw very near. 8. Sectarian prayers, indicating very clearly an attachment to a particular sect among the multitude of Christian denominations. As contrasted v/ith this how comprehensive in its charity and chaste in its spirit arc the prayers of the Anglican Liturgy, which remembereth only in prayer ** The Holy Catholic Church " ; " The Holy Church throughout all the earth " ; " All who profess and call themselves Christians." 9. Long prayers : which weary and exhaust the spirit of devotion. **This objection is ob- viated by the responsive character and continual change ot the Liturgy." This is the end of the objections enumerated by the Boston Recorder of the faults of extem- poraneous worship that had to be endured in the classic capital of New England, and from an educated and accomplished ministry. What, then, are the insufferable corruptions of doc- trine and expression, and of the very idea of Divine worship among the illiterate and extrava- gant sects that swarm over the land. The Rev. S. H. Mines, author of "The PRECOMPOSED PR A VERS. 321 Presbyterian Looking- for the Church," who spent half his lifetime in painful familiarity with these evils, thus continued long ago the con- fessedly imperfect catalogue of the Boston Recorder. ID. Self-laudatory prayers ; reciting the won- derful success of some particular branch of operations in which it is understood the speaker has borne a conspicuous part — quorum pars magna fui. 11. Un-English prayers; in which uncouth- ness and carelessness of composition offend the ear, and unfit the mind for worship. 12. Short prayers, abridged and hurried, to make way for the sermon. Some years ago Dr. Lee became famous as a preacher in Edinburgh. The English visitors flocked to his services. There was a rule, however, that strangers could not be admitted till the end of the long prayer. One day, as some Englishmen who were wait- ing manifested no little impatience, the old woman who kept the door addressing one of them said, "Ah, dinna ye weary, sir ; the Doc- tor is na lang wi' the prelemenaries." How often are the prayers just a preliminary to the all-important sermon ? 13. Blundering prayers ; in which the recut- ting of words, and the remodelling of half-fin- ished sentences, and embarrassed pauses, con- 322 PRECOM POSED PRAYERS. \ ■ I stantly occur, so painful to the worshipper and so fatal to devotion. 14. Verbose prayers or wordy prayers ; re- markable for the quantity of words and the ineagreness of devotional ideas. 15. Eccentric prayers ; tainted with the some- times intolerable eccentricities of the individual who happens to make them. 16. Unforgiving prayers ; for I have heard the remark from persons who have been half their lives attendants in extemporaneous wor- ship that they never heard in a Calvinistic con- gregation a prayer for the forgiveness of their enemies. 17. Defective prayers; which not only ex- clude some particular petitions, but which omit some essential elements of devotion, such as the confession of sin, the act of faith, the offer- ing of thanks, the oblation of alms, the recogni- tion of the Holy Trinity, even the mention of the name of Jesus. It is impossible under the most urgent circumstances that all the elements of proper worship can be combined by an im- promptu dash of the most gifted mind hurrying on to the one great thing, the sermon. 18. Commonplace prayers ; repeating until they lose all meaning the same trite and tiresome thoughts, in certain worn-out phrases and mat- ter-of-course quotations, " That we deserve to be PRECOM POSED PRAYERS. 323 made as miserable as we have made ourselves sinful," ''That others are as good by nature and better by practice than ourselves," "That sinners may be convicted and converted," "That many may be heard enquiring the way to Zion with their faces thitherward," '* That Zion may lengthen her cords and strengthen her stakes ; and that finally the Lord would bless all for whom we are in duty bound to pray." 19. Intellectual prayers ; by which the speaker seldom fails to intimate that he is versed in all the metaphysical logomachies and miserable hair-splittings of the hour. 20. Theatrical prayers ; accompanied by painful gestures and grimaces. The first Puri- tans complained of the prayers of the Church clergy, that they were not " properly gestured." The devotional exercises of their descendants make sober-minded people who have witnessed them feel the truth of the declaration, '' The old is better." 21. Bombastic prayers ; which approach the Majesty of Heaven with a solemn, grandilo- quence familiar only to an oriental Court. 22. Declamatory prayers ; where the voice becomes excited to a fatiguing pitch, and often strung to a complete falsetto. 23. Objurgatory prayers ; in which the Pastor imputes in an offensive manner before the Lord, 324 PRECOMPOSED PR A VERS li^ the departure and absence of the Spirit, and the cessation of conversion, to the unbelief and other sins of his people. 24. Inaccurate prayers ; inaccurate in facts, quotations, reasonings, and the like. 25. Presumptuous prayers ; petitioning for favors that it would be miraculous to grant, thanking the Lord for ascertained conversions, or for the undoubted translation of some deceased individual into His presence in Heaven, etc. 26. Political prayers ; which must give offence to some who are listening. Dr. Mines continues : " It is certainly wor- thy of remark that not one of the more than twenty faults that have been here enumerated, nor as many more that might be named, can be alleged against the Episcopal Liturgy. Yet within its compass, not a perfection of the Divine Being but is becomingly adored ; not a doctrine of the Divine Word but is proclaimed upon the housetops ; not a bounty of Divine Providence but is thankfully rehearsed ; not a want of human nature but is effectingly spread out ; not a relation in life but has its time to be considered ; not a class or a condition of society but is charitably remembered ; not a traveller in the wilderness, not a voyager upon the wave, not a widow in her grief, nor an orphan on her knee, not an infant at the breast, liot a prisoner or a captive PRECOMPOSED PRAYERS. in his cell is forgotten, all who are in any trou- ble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adver- sity are cared for and prayed for ; the absent and the distant with all the Church visible are remembered; the cherished dead, and the Church invisible are not forgotten ; and angels and archangels, and all the company of Heaven, are recognized and admitted to her worship." This testimony is true. It is abundantly endorsed by the greatest, most learned, and most godly members of the various communions that have separated from us. Thus (i) Dr. Dod- dridge,, the distinguished Independent minister in the middle of the last century, writes of the Prayer-Book, - The language is so plain as to be level to the capacity of the meanest, and yet the sense is so noble as to raise the capacity of the highest." 2. Dr. Adam Clarke, the distinguished com- mentator of the Wesleyan Methodists, declares: " It is superior to every thing of the kind pro- duced either in ancient or modern times; several of the prayers and services of which were in use from the first ages of Christianity." " The Lit- urgy," he says again, "is almost iniversally esteemed by the devout and pious of every Denomination, and next to the translation of the Scriptures into the English language, is /ke greatest effort of the Reformation. As a form of 3a6 PRECOM POSED PR A VERS. devotion it has no equal anywhere in the Church of God. Next to the Bible it is the book of my understanding and my heart." 3. Rev. Robert Hall, the greatest light that ever shone among the Baptists, confesses that ''The Evangelical purity of its sentiments, the chastened fervor of its devotions and the majes- tic simplicity of its language have combined to place it in the vety first rank of all uninspired compositions." 4. The New York Christian Observer^ the representative of the Dutch Reformed body in the United States, says of the Prayer-Book of our sister church in that country, *' Her spirit- stirring Liturgy and a scrupulous adherence to it, have, under God, preserved her integrity beyond any denomination of Christians since the Reformation." 5. The Rev. Dr. Cumming, the celebrated Scotch minister of London, author of many able works, says : "I shall never forget how thrill- ing I felt one clause in the English Liturgy, on my first entering an Episcopal Church. It is, perhaps, the finest sentence and the sweetest prayer in the language, ' In all time of our tribulation ; in all time of our wealth ; in the hour of death, in the day of judgment, good Lord, deliver us.'" 6. The heavenly-minded Baxter, an English \ 11 m PR ECOM POSED PR A VERS. 327 dissenter, says: *' The constant disuse of forms of prayer is apt to breed giddiness in religion, and to make men hypocrites, who shall delude themselves with conceit that they delight in God, when it is but in those novelties and varie- ties of expression that they are delighted ; and therefore, I advise forms of prayer, to fix Chris- tians and to make them sound." As Mr. Wes- ley for the Methodists, so Baxter prepared a Liturgy for the English Independents, and like the Rev. John Wesley he sought the consola- tions of the Church's Liturgy in the hour of death. Calvin left for his followers, and Luther composed a Liturgy for the Lutherans, and John Knox prepared a Liturgy for the people of Scotland. 7. The late Rev. Albert Barnes, says : <* We have always thought that there are Christian minds and hearts that would find more edifica- tion in the forms of worship in the Episcopal Church than in any other. We have never doubted that many of the purest flames of devotion that rise from the earth, ascend from the altars of that church and that many of the purest spirits that the earth contains minister at those altars, or breathe forth their prayers and praises in language consecrated to the use of piety for centuries." We now come to the testimony of more IH H • N i'' ; I!| i .1 111 i' i 328 PRECOMPOSED PR A VERS. modern writers as to the excellence of our Lit- urgy. 8. The well known Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn, a bold and original thinker, and an honest, outspoken writer, says: " We never had a doubt as to the excellence of the Episcopal service in public worship, and we are quite will- ing to leave the constant repetition of it, as the sole method of worship, to the judgment and experience of each person for himself. And if on trial the service is found sufficient for their religious wants, not only would we not dissuade men from its use, but we would do all in our power to make it more useful to them. And this we say without respect of persons. Should one of our own children find his religious wants better met in the service of the Episcopal Church than in that of our own, we should take him by the hand and lead him to the altars and confide him to God's grace through the ministration of the Episcopal communion, with the unfaltering conviction that, if he did not profit there it would be his own fault. Whether the Episcopal Church is one that builds up men in holiness, is not an open question. There are too many saints rejoicing in heaven, and too many of the nob- lest Christians laboring on earth, who have derived their religious life from the teachings and offices of that Church, to leave any impar- tial mind in any doubt on that point." PRECOMPOSED PRAYERS. 3^9 9. The Rev. G. Boardman, D.D., a very eminent Baptist minister of Philadelphia, speak- ing of the service of the Episcopal Church in the United States, says : '< In dictating a form of prayer He (the Lord Jesus) gave vent to the hturgical instincts of our nature ; for, although there are those who feel fettered by forms of prayer, the vast majority, I am convinced, are aided by them. I have the strong conviction that, in the non-liturgical churches, the congre- gation has little to do. Worship is an intensely personal act, the soaring of the individual soul in personal adoration, thanksgiving, confession, supplication, aspiration. As such, each one must worship for himself, not vicaHously. And yet, as a matter of fact, the worship of our non- liturgical churches, generally speaking, is a vicarious worship, with the exception of the sing- ing, and even that privilege is, in many instances, artistically denied us, as everything is done hy proxy. The preacher alone is heard in adoration, thanksgiving, supplication, in a word, he alone worships. Should some angelic visitor come to one of our churches and observe the silence of the congrega: ion, I am not sure but that he would imagine that a calamity, like that which befel ancient Zechariah in the temple, had befallen Christ's churchly priest- hood to-day, and he would wonder what sin his u 330 PRECOMPOSED PR A VERS. a w \% I if H^ I ' iii people had committed that they should be thus struck dumb. What we need is a return to the ancient ways and the good old paths of our fathers, falling into line with the venerable and saintly Paul, worshipping liturgically, as did John and Isaiah, David and Moses." ID. The Rev. T. K. Beecher, of Elmira, N.Y., a leading Congregational minister, addressing a lecture to his own people, thus speaks of the Prayer-Book : " The Reformed Church of Eng- land filled up nearly three hundred years in her work of purifying and simplifying ; and of all Protestant churches she best deserves the name of 'Reformed.' The Episcopal Church offers for us the most venerable Liturgy in the English tongue. The devotional treasures of the Roman Catholic Church are embalmed and buried in Latin. But in English there are no lessons. Gospels, Psalms, collects, confessions, thanks- givings, prayers, in one word, no religious form- book that can stand a moment in comparison with the Prayer-Book of the Episcopal Church in the twofold quality of richness and age. The proper name, because truly descriptive of that Church, would be, * The Church of the Prayer- Book.' The pious multitude that frequent her courts are drawn thither mostly by love of the prayers and praises, the litanies and lessons of the Prayer-Book. And, brethren, of every PRECOMPOSED PRAYERS. ,,, name, I certify you, that you rarely hear in any church a prayer spoken in Engh'sh that is not indebted to the Prayer-Book for some of its choicest periods. And further, I doubt whether hfe has in store for any of you an uplift so high or a downfall so deep, but that you can find company for your soul and fitting words for your lips among the treasures of this book of com mon prayer. ' In all time of our tribulation ; in all time of our wealth; in the hour of death ; in the day of judgment ; Good Lord deliver us: As a consequence of the Prayer-Book and its use, I note secondly, the Episcopal Church preserves a very high grade of dignity, decency, propriety, and permanence in all her public services. In nearly every newspaper you may read some funny story, based upon the ignor- ance or eccentricity or blasphemous familiarity of some extemporaneous prayer-maker. All of you here present have been shocked or bored by such public devotional performances. Nothing of this sort eve- occurs in the Episcopal Church. All things are spoken decently and in order. And so, too, of permanence, and its accumulat- ing worth of holy association ; no transient observer can adequately value this treasure of a birthright churchman. To be using to-day the self-same words that have through the centuries declared the faith, or made known the prayers 1 31 jjil 4 ; r IT 332 PRECOM POSED PR A VERS. m [.1 1 mi ■) f 1 1^ W f '.1 ■ 1 ' 1 hu j ', 1 1 I li '• 1 il i i'iti f of that mig-hty multitude who, being now delivered from the burden of the fl3sh, are in joy and felicity. To be baptized in early infancy, and never to know a time when we were not recognized and welcomed among the millions who have entered in by the same door. To be confirmed in due time in a faith that has sus- tained a noble army of martyrs, approving its worth through persecutions and prosperities ; a strength to the tried and, a chastening to the worldly-minded. To bring our children, as we were brought, to begin where we began, and to grow up to fill our places. To die in the faith and almost hear the Gospel words soon to be spoken over our own graves, as over the thou- sand times ten thousand of them who have slept in Jesus. In short, to be a devout and con- sistent churchman brings a man through aisles fragrant with holy associations, and companied by a long procession of the good, chanting as they march a unison of piety and hope until they come to the holy place, where shining saints sing the new song of the redeemed, and sing with them." The Christian at Work, a religious weekly of New York, says: " It is probable that liturgical worship will prevail ultimately, and to a large extent during the coming century. An intelli- gent observer of the trend of public opinion will PRECOMPOSED PR A VERS, 333 scarcely venture to doubt this, and it is one of the signs of the times that a distinguished pro- fessor in a Presbyterian Theological Seminary should write an article which should be printed in the chief organ of Presbyterian thought and scholarship in the United States, taking the Presbyterian Church to task for its barren ser- vices, and pleading for a liturgy. The article in question is by the Rev. S. M. I lopkins, D. D. , of Auburn Seminary, and is printed in The Presbytenan Reviev:. After picturing the char- acter of the customary services in Presbyterian churches. Dr. Hopkins says : * Through all this the congregation sits mute. They have not even the poor Methodist liberty of relieving their minds by a " hallelujah," or a '' bless the Lord." Neither do hey who sit in the seat of the learned, or unlcc ned, say *• Amen" to the prayer. The ten coi..mandments, or, as an alternative, the beatitudes, are never read. The creed is never recited. No voice responds, " Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law." No loud acclaim re- sounds, ''Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost." With close imi- tation of the Romish method, the choir and the priest have performed the tvhole audible part of the public worship. ' " Dr. Hopkins proceeds to consider ' the fatal % 334 PRECOM POSED PR A YERS, \ m w. m mistake of Presbyterianism. To make the preaching of the Gospel consist exclusively in the delivery of sermons, is the fatal mistake of Presbyterianism. Al! appropriate worship of God through Christ is the preaching of the Gospel. Devotional singing is setting forth the praises of Christ as our ** Prophet, Priest and King." The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds are full of the Gospel. In the Lord's Supper Christ is set forth evidently crucified for us. There is more of Christ in the ''Te Deum " and ** the Litany " alone than there is commonly found in two entire Presbyterian sermons. If we imagine that we have a monopoly of the exhibition of Christ as the sinners' friend and refuge, we are laboring under a profound mistake. All these services, confessions, supplications, thanksgiv- ings, creeds, psalms, and sacraments are preach- ing the Gospel ; and to ears attuned to them, and hearts in sympathy, are preaching it with a tenderness, a pathos, a power, which is not often found in the elaborate Sunday morning sermon.' " Henry Ward Beecher wrote the following description of his attendance at a Choral Church Service in England : '* The service began — you know my mother until her marriage was in the Communion of the Episcopal Church — this thought hardly left me while I sat, grateful for PRECOMPOSED PR A VERS. 335 the privilege of worshipping God through a service that had expressed so often her devotions. I cannot tell you how much I was affected. I had never had such a trance of worship, and I never shall have such another view until I gain the gate. I am so ignorant of the Church ser- vice that I cannot tell the various parts by their right names — but the parts which most affected me were the prayers and responses which the choir sang. I had never heard any part of a supplication — a direct prayer — sung by a choir, and it seemed as though I heard not with my ears but with my soul. I was dissolved, my whole being seemed to me like an incense wafted grate- fully towards God. The Divine presence rose before me in wondrous majesty, but of ineffable gentleness and goodness ; and I could not stay away from more familiar approach, but seemed irresistibly, yet gently, drawn towards God. My soul, then thou didst magnify the Lord and rejoice in the God of thy salvation ; and then came to my mind the many exultations of the Psalms of David, and never before were the expressions and figures so noble and so neces- sary to express what I felt. I had risen, it seem- ed to me, so high that I was where David was when his scul conceived the things which he wrote. Throughout the service, and it was an hour and a quarter long, whenever an amen :,*!;( j. r n '1 [■ 'i fj H: 336 PRECOMPOSED PR A YERS. occurred, it was given by the choir accompanied by the organ and the congregation. Oh ! that swell and solemn cadence yet rings in my ears. Not once, not a single time, did it occur in that service from beginning to end without bringing tears to my eyes. I stood like a shrub in spring morning, every leaf covered with dew, and every breeze shook down some drops. I trembled so much at times that I was obliged to sit down. Oh I when in the prayers breathed forth in strains of sweet, simple, solemn music the love of God was recognized. How I longed then to give utterance to what that love seemed to me. There was a moment in which the heavens seemed opened to me, and I saw the glory of God. All earth seemed to me a storehouse of images, made to set forth the Redeemer, and I could scarcely keep still from crying out. I never knew ; I never dreamed before, of what heart there was in the word amen ; every time it swelled forth and died away solemnly, not my lips, not my mind, but my whole being said — * Saviour, so let it be.' " It will perhaps be said, all this may be true from the standpoint of intellectual and literary minds, but ordinary Christians do not see these literary niceties, and would soon get tired of the everlasting iteration of the same services. To this apprehension one, who has had long ll^ PRECOM POSED PR A VERS. 337 experience of both systems, makes answer : *' This objection comes always from those who have not tried it. It, therefore, falls to the ground. To hear the daily liturgy is to hear the voice of a friend, that has supported us in sorrow, and has counselled us in danger, and has guided us in perplexity, and has raised us up from sickness, has commended our dying into the hands of the Redeemer, and has dealt ten- derly with the dead, as it committed them, earth to earth, in sure and certain hope of the resurrec- tion to eternal life. To repeat it, is like repeating those endearing household words of which the ear and the heart can never grow weary. We no more grow weary of it than we grow weary of the sameness of the air we breathe, or the light we see, or the bread we eat." (Rev. Dr. Mines.) Besides, if those who raise thi? objection will only reflect for a moment they will see that there is a constant repetition both in the congregation and in family worship of the same ideas, the same petitions, and same words, where extem- pore worship is the rule, the slight variations that are made being the result of painful effort, and the issue being in almost all cases, a mea- gre, stereotyped, limited expression of what ought to be the devotional feelings of the wor- shipper. Hi m 338 PRECOMPOSED PR A VERS. But it is unnecessary to pursue this argument further. In practice the discussion is ended. More and more day by day Liturgical worship is being restored, not in its integrity, but in a fragmentary way, which, however, carries with it the withdrawal of the objections once so strongly felt, and the surrender of the contention that extempore prayers are the necessary out- ward expression and evidence of the Spirit's presence and power. CHAPTER XVII. RITUALISM. The Church of England, says many an honest religious man, may prove her continuity with the Church of Apostolic days, and so establish her claim to be the Catholic Church of this realm ; she may explain her objectionable doc- trines and antiquated usages in such a way as to bring them into harmony with the teaching of the New Testament ; but who could think of uniting with a Church that is being given over more and more to a tawdry Ritualism ; which if it does not symbolize an agreement in doctrine with the Church of Rome, at all events makes her services scarcely distinguishable from those of that Church? Is it not, it is said, becoming more and more evident that the virus of Rome is in her veins, and that she is moving steadily and rapidly in a Romeward direction. And who that believes in the principles of the Reformation and glories in its achievements, would cast in his lot with a Church which tolerates a large and growing party within her fold, which is evi- dently bent on undoing the work of the Refor- 339 340 RITUALISM. 1, i 'M;!i:. mation, and of bringing England once more under the dominance of the Roman See. This, and much worse than this, is being said on ail sides to-day. It will be well, therefore, to con- sider this question at some length and reach, if we may, the root of the difficulty. It is then manifestly absurd to object to Rit- ualism per se, or in any form. Ritualism is the necessary accompaniment of all life. By Ritual- ism we mean the rites or outward forms, by which the actions of societies, and of individuals are regulated. And so we have the ritual, or rules of conduct of society, of common life, of royal receptions, of legislative assemblies, of the various societies. Freemasons, Oddfellows, Orangemen. They all have their prescribed ceremonies, and vestments and badges of office ; and some of them speak of their " book of cere- monies '' as their Ritual. And so with the Church ; every Christian community has its Ritual. It stands, or it bits, or it kneels, at cer- tain parts of the service. The Presbyterian minister, who wears his black gown and bands ; or the Methodist minister, *vho wears his black coat and white choker ; or the Quaker, who wears his broad-brimmed hat and long hair, is as really a Ritualist as the man who ministers in surplus, cassock and stole, or in biretta, cope or chasuble. So that the question is not whether RITUALISM. 34 » there shall be ritual or no ritual ; but, what kind of ritual, and how much of it. And that ques- tion will be decided in part, as in the affairs of common life, by prescript usage, and, in part, by the fitness of the forms, ceremonies and vest- ments to express the feelings of faith, and rever- ence and dignity which we want to express. It is, moreover, clear that there is nothing sinful in itself, in the most elaborate and gorge- ous ritual ; for God Himself prescribed, down to the minutest details, the truly gorgeous ritual of the Jewish Temple and worship. And it is fair to argue that these things must be greatly help- ful in awakening, and keeping alive, faith and devotional feeling, and in expressing, in outward act, the worship due to Him who prescribed them. It was no doubt the recognition of this principle that has led Christians in every age to erect stately churches for the worship of God, and to make them, as far as they were able, all glorious within. So that it is not Ritualism in itself, but the ritualism of those who are now called Ritualists, and which bears a more or less marked resem- blance to the ritual of the Greek or Roman Churches, that is objected to, and dreaded. If, it is argued, ritual be the outward expres- sion of doctrine or religious sentiment, as it is Intended to be, then the likeness in outward i i 34a RITUALISM. '!, ;i ■ ■ wi !■■ ' form implies agreement in doctrine and senti- ment, and such agreement it is assumed is in itself conclusive proof of corruption of doctrine, and perverted feeling. And yet it is manifest at once to everybody who is capable of thinking, that such a test is irrational and absurd. If rigorously applied it would lead to the rejection not only of many of the universally acknowledged customs of Chris- tian worship, but to many of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. The points of agreement between ourselves, for instance, and the Greek and Roman Christians, on the one hand, and the Separated Protestant Brethren on the other, are far greater than the points of dif- ference. We all alike believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God. We all accept the doc- trines of the ancient creeds as the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. We all agree in the binding nature of the two sacraments. We all teach the duty of public and private wor- ship of Almighty God. And we all agree that that worship ought to be reverent and dignified in its expression. And even on questions of doctrine and wor- ship, about which we differ most widely, there is agreement up to a certain point. Take, for instance, the doctrine of the Real Presence, about which we seem to differ most widely, yet RITUALISM. 343 all Christians believe that Christ is really present in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in some way. They only differ about the manner of His presence. But whether we believe that He is present in the Sacrament, or in the elements, after a spiritual and heavenly manner, or after a natural corporeal manner, the results, as far as the fitting ritual goes, would be the same. For if I believe that Christ is there personally so near me, then there is no attitude ot humilia- tion, no expression of faith, no manifestation of devotion and adoration that ought not to be called forth by the one belief as well as by the other. The ritual and worship that would express belief in Christ's personal presence after a spiritual and heavenly manner, or after a material carnal manner might, and probably would, be the same, and yet the doctrines in their final conclusions differ as widely as the poles. So that the question of ritual and its implied meaning cannot be settled in an off- hand way by mere resemblance or non-resem- blance to the usages of the Greek or Roman Churches. To understand this question as it confronts us in the English Church, and, in fact, in all Denominations to-day, for they are all adopting more or less of its usages, we must go back to Reformation times, and examine the sources 344 RITUALISM. 4 I I ! Sh ILL from which the divergent streams of thought and feeling have flowed down to us. The Reformation, then, as it was carried on and concluded on the continent of Europe, was in effect a Revolution. This was specially true of that movement in so far as it received its inspiration and direction from Calvin and Zwingli. It was simply the abolition of the old Church and the construction of another and a new one out of its fragments. In England, on the other hand, in design, and in result, it was the Reformation of the old Church, not the con- struction of a new. In the Calvinistic commu- nities the rule was to abolish everything which was not expressly commanded in Holy Scrip- ture. In the Church of England the rule was to retain everything that was not contrary to Holy Scripture and the Primitive Church. Under the influence of the Calvinistic rule, the ancient con- stitution of the Church, with its three-fold minis- try of Bishop, Priest and Deacon was abolished, and a society with one order of ministers substi- tuted for it. The system of necessary doctrine was changed from the historic recitals of the Creeds to a system of theology based upon eternal decrees. The ancient order of liturgical worship was abolished, and one of extempore utterance under prescribed guidance was substi- tuted for it. I ill' f RITUALISM. 345 Under the rule followed in the English Refor- mation the ancient constitution and government of the Church were retained, the ancient Creeds reasserted and imposed, as the sum of all neces- sary doctrine. The ancient mode of worship in liturgical form was expurgated from excrescen- ces and corruptions, and restored to the use of the people. The ancient ceremonies were retain- ed and only those which were manifest innova- tions, and the outcome of perverted doctrine were abolished. And so in England it was the old Church continued. This was the theory of the Reformation in England, and, in the main, its issue. They were, however, times of terrible excitement and uncertainty. The old mooring of the ecclesi- astical ship in Rome, and the Bishop of Rome, as the source and centre of doctrine and of dis- cipline, had given way, and she was driven with the winds and tossed by the waves that beat fiercely upon her ; and the fiercest of them was the Calvinistic wave which swept over Western Europe, and absorbed into itself the milder and more conservative Lutheran wave that had preceded it. It very nearly engulfed the newly Reformed Church of England. Now it is one of the strangest things in the history of the human mind that doctrines, so repulsive as those of Calvin are now everywhere v m 346 RITUALISM. ft,; ii W\. felt to be, and practices so utterly revolutionary as those which were the outcome of Calvin's system, should have captured the Protestant hosts almost without a struggle. But so it was ; first on the Continent, and then in England, Calvinism became absolutel' dominant. The theological text-books of the unrcformed Church, as we have seen, were rejected ; and as no theo- logical books of a scientific character had yet been written in England, the Institutes of Calvin, as we have seen, were the only treatises a /ail- able or used in England for the instruction of Divinity students. As a result both the Uni- versities before long became strongly Calvin- istic ; both the Archbishops, most of the Bishops, and Clergy were Calvinists. As a natural con- sequence the Laity soon followed, until we have the spectacle of a Reformed Catholic Church, retaining all the old Catholic doctrines, consti- tutions and usages, being run on Calvinistic principles. The ship was well built, refitted and strong, but the crew was mutinous, and the sailing unsteady and dangerous. Many mem- bers of the Church were widely disaffected to- wards her. They acted on the principle that whatever was old was wrong, and ought to br got rid of. They were constantly demand' that the Church should be brought formity with "the best Reformed Chu hes Cx S ■' 1 RITUALISM. 347 the Continent," instead of (what she had striven after in her Reformation), conformity with the Catholic Apostolic Church of the first ages. This strife went on until the Calvinistic, or Puritan, party triumphed in the Cromwcllian Revolution. And even when the Church was restored in the reign of Charles II with every mark of national detestation of Puritan rule, matters were not very greatly mended. As we have seen, more than 8000 of the Clergy of the Church had been driven from their Parishes by Cromwell, and their places filled with Congregational, Presby- terian, and Baptist ministers. When at the end of the Commonwealth these were required either to be episcopally ordained, and to con- form to the Prayer-Book, or resign their livings, less than 1600 of the 8000 resigned, rather than do violence to their conscientious convictions. The rest stuck by the stuff, conformed, and retained their parishes. So that the Church of England started on her career after the Res- toration, with her Creeds, Constitutions and prescribed order of worship unchanged, but with more than half her clergy aliens in belief, and hostile in sentiment to her whole doctrinal and sacramental system. This state of things naturally issued in the Latitudinarian indiffer- ence and deadness of the days preceding the 1 348 RITUALISM. .i el's, m\ il'fi^ililli ip.= rise of the Evangelical movement. That move- ment, full as it was of spiritual earnestness and zeal for souls, carried with it, as far as it re- mained in the Church of England, the Calvin- istic doctrines and traditions, and with them the abiding dissatisfaction with, and alienation from, the doctrinal and sacramental system of the Church of England, ac set out in her Prayer- Book. Godly, earnest, self-denying men, as the founders of that party were, they had caught their inspiration not from the Church's doc- trines, but from the evil traditions that had been handed down from the conforming ministers of Cromwell's intrusion. With the exception of the Wesleys and those who joined them, who held most of what are now called High Church doctrines, the leaders of the movement were Calvinists. They did not believe the Church's doctrine, they would not submit to her discipline, and they claimed the liberty to disregard her ritual. They were devout and earnest men, but they were not loyal and true to the Church of England. Their work was followed by a great revival and increase in the Dissenting Denomi- nations. It was the legitimate outcome of their teaching. Their own relationship to the Church was that of disaffected subjects ; disregarding her rubrics, mutilating her services, and seeking to change her doctrines. They might labor for ri RITUALISM. 349 what they called the Gospel or for the invisible Church of the elect of which they spoke ; but as for the Church, as we understand the Church, they never made the slightest sacrifice, much less did they give her the full allegiance of there hearts. True, large sums of money were con- tributed for religious purposes, but it was to build meeting-houses, not churches. Acting on the advice of Venn, Whitfield, Berridge, Shirley, and other leaders, chapel after chapel was built under the shadow of the Church's walls, and from the pulpits of these erections, the Church's doctrines and discipline were assailed, disparaged and ridiculed. One of these leaders, Grimshaw, a clergyman of the Church of Eng- land, built a meeting-house, and a house for the Dissenting minister in his parish. Fletcher, another of the leaders, built a chapel at Man- deley Wood, to secure Gospel preaching for the parish when he was gone. Venn, for the same reasons, when leaving Huddersfield, assisted in the erection of a meeting-house ; and when it was opened, he addressed a pastoral letter to his people, cordially recommending the Dissent- ing preacher as their minister. Butt, the King's Chaplain, used to hold the plate, in full canon- icals, at the door of the Dissenting meeting- house. Wills knowing, as he said, that the Gospel would not be preached by his successor. 1 I i'v i. J ■ ifii ml. M ■ III' I I: ll. .i 350 RITUALISM. sold his family plate to build a meeting-house. Is it to be wondered at that heartlessness and neglect spread throughout the whole body, which was thus contemned by its acknowledged lead- ers ; that there was coldness and deadness every- where ; that churches were empty ; the service of praise silenced ; the Sacraments administered but seldom, and then with slovenly irreverence; and that the Reformed Catholic Church of Eng- land being run on Puritan principles was in danger of perishing from mere inanition. Now the Oxford movement has from the begin- ing been a march hack, an earnest attempt on the part of those who initiated it, and of those who have carried it on, to recover lost ground, to restore the Church of England to her theoreti- cal position, the position which she claimed for herself when her reforming work was completed. To bring men back to actual belief in those dcc- trines which are plainly stated in the Prayer- Book, to the practice of that order of worship which is there defined, and to a revt -jnt use of her sacramental system ; in one word, to make her try to live honestly up to the system of doc- trine and worship which she has set forth as her own. No doubt great mistakes have been made and are being made by individuals, and by groups of men as to what that system really is, and as • hi; RITUALISM. Wi to the way in which it is to be set forth and illustrated in practice. But whatever the mis- takes may have been (and mistakes are incident to our fallen humanity) the object has been one — not a march forward into the camp of Rome, as has so often been assumed, but a march back to her own long deserted camp, the recovery of her own true position as a Reformed Catholic Church, professing and believing the Catholic Faith, and pledged to and practising Catholic worship as distinguished from Roman corrup- tions and superstitions on the one hand, and from her own long-allowed Puritan perversion of doctrine and prostration of worship on the other. Her march has been a fierce battle all the way, Roman and Puritan assailing within, and with- out have withstood her to the death. She has captured one stronghold after another, but it has only been to find herself confronted by some new combination of her old adversaries. Now we need not be surprised that in such a conflict that has happened which is common in the warfares of the world. As an illustration of what is meant, Kinglake tells us that as the British army marched down the hillside of the Alma, their glittering armor gleaming in the morning sun, their far-stretching ranks moving in unbroken line as one man, it was a sight of 353 RITUALISM. I'i;-; 7 h M'*' y»r: 8; ■• \ If;. V ■ ■3 ii: ■ ifij:: iNi ^f;^ hi overwhelming majesty and glory ; but as soon as the firing began, the line broke by spontane- ous action, some few sought protection from the deadly hail, behind trees, and stones and hil- lock, and some, not a few, broke away from the ranks, and rushed on single-handed and alone against the entrenched positions of the enemy ; while the great body marched calmly and stead- ily on, under the leadership of their officers. The skulkers saved their lives, but lost their honor, and the respect of their comrades. The brave, but rash men who advanced alone, were either shot down or captured by the enemy, or driven back upon the main line. It has been just thus in the Oxford march back ; there have been and there are many skulkers. There have been, and there are, many hot-headed, impetu- ous men, who have broken away from the ranks and have rushed on alone, only to be killed or captured, or driven back upon the main line, when the battle thickens. Men who have mis- taken the very object of the movement, who mis- take Romanism for Catholicism, and who have taught doctrines and introduced practices which have not only no authority in Holy Scripture, or in those primitive ages, to which the Church of England makes her appeal, but which are direct contradictio -> of the formal decrees of the Catholic Church of England Reformed. Like m RITUALISM. 353 thcii predecessors of the Evangelical profession, their position is distinctly dishonest. They are but few in number, but are very demonstrative in action, and their action is full of perplexity and peril to the main line, who are suspected of aiming at the same result. That main line, however, embracing in its ranks most of the learned, thoughtful, level-headed men of the Church, moves steadily on, teaching the ancient faith, and restoring the ancient order and wor- ship of the ancient Catholic Church. What then, it will be asked, is, and what ought to be Ritual of the Church ? All, or nearly all, admit in these days that it ought to be orderly, dignified, reverent. It is when we go beyond this general definition, and proceed to consider what it shall be, that the old dispute between Puritan and Churchman emerges. On the one hand it is maintained that whatever in the worship of the Church is not commanded in Holy Scripture or prescribed by the rubrics, was dropped and prohibited by the Reformation — is now illegal, and ought not to be tolerated. Their position is that omission is prohibition. On the other hand, we are reminded that the reorganization of the Church in England in the 1 6th century was not a Revolution but a Refor- mation, that the Church corrected abuses, lop- ped off excrescences, and rearranged her ser- IM P'-" fM h Wt[ m ^ ' WM 1 ii iff 't I Vi 1. ' ,1* ;'! 1 1 I 1 ' B '° ■■'' ■ 1 j.jjf ' Uh 1 Ij C ' 1 ' : CHAPTER XVIII. "CONVERSION." It will probably be said by some who have read the foregoing chapters, "Yes, all that has been said about the liturgical mode of worship as contrasted with the extemporaneous mode may be quite true. I certainly greatly like the stately dignity and reverence of the Church of England services, but, for myself, I could never belong to a Church that does not believe in con- version. Conversion is the very essence of the Christian life. You might just as well try to build up a stately house without a foundation, as to build up a true Christian character without conversion. And the Church of England does not believe in conversion, at least she does not preach it." Now this is a very grave accusation, the truth or the untruth of which depends altogether on what you mean by conversion. When you speak of conversion do you mean a sudden overpowering emotion, often culminating in an hysterical, convulsive paroxysm accompanied by conviction of sin ; a ser.son of darkness and 359 IF Fi Hr f:! ' ( sTrsP iiti 360 *' CONVERSION." terrors, and then a sudden breaking in of the light, with an assurance of forgiveness of sins, followed by a feeling of great peace and joy, and a life free from sin ? This is a view of conversion that came in, as we have seen, with the rise of Methodism, and has widely been accepted since, as constituting the essence of true conversion. So that none are thought to be truly converted who have not passed through some such experience as this — an experience which is spoken of as being bom again or re- generated. Now if this is what you mean by conversion, then it is quite true to say that the Church of England does not believe in it, does not teach it, does not try to produce it in the lives of her people ; because she does not be- lieve that such an experience forms any neces- sary part of true conversion. No doubt the mind under the influence of these strong emo- tions is in a very plastic, impressionable condi- tion, and truths communicated to it then often become overpowering, and impel the hesitating will "^o choose resolutely for God. And so these convulsive emotions may be, and often are, the beginning of a changed life. But, alas, how often, how generally, do they end in mere pass- ing excitement, which, when it is over, dulls the faith and hardens the heart, and debases the life of those who were led to mistake these mere ■ "CONVERSION." 361 1 of physical emotions for true religion. And so the s of Church of England, guided by Holy Scripture and and the traditional teaching of the Church from w of the beginning, does not believe in that kind of ' ivith conversion. )een But if by conversion you mean that turning 2 of of the soul to God — that change of mind and t to heart and life, which makes us true followers of ugh Christ, then your accusation is most untrue, for ince the Church of England believes in, and insists re- upon, the necessity of that change with all her by might, as the very object and end of all her the teaching and preaching. Now this kind of ioes conversion, this turning of the soul to God, is the not the cause of regeneration, or the act of be- being born again, but the natural and normal ces- result of regenerating grace. In every true the Christian home that turning to God ought to be mo- the gradual unfolding of that grace of new life, ndi- of the beginning of which we have no more ften consciousness than we have of the beginning of ting the natural life, and which grows as secretly as lese the seed sown in the soil. So that in the case the of every child dedicated to God in Holy Bap- low tism, endowed with His Holy Spirit, and nur- ass- tured with the sincere milk of the word, taught ulls to think of God as his Father and to love and the serve Him as such, there ought to be no start- [lere ling change from a state of sin and rebellion, w iiiU 362 ''CONVERSION.' into which he has never fallen, but a gradual unfolding of the inner life, a growing in grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as the man turns more and more heart and sou), to God. This is what we ought to expect, to look for, and pray lor, and to strive after in every Chris- tian home. This is what we find to be the ex- perience of multitudes in the Church. They cannot remember the time when they were not trying to serve God as His dut'ful children, and they are not conscious of any startling change in their Christian experience ; and yet they are among the most steadfast, the most penitent, the most believing, and the most devout Chris- tians that it has ever been one's privilege to know. This conversion, this turning of the whole man to God, whether it has had a conscious, or even a sudden and startling beginning, or whether it is the result of God's sanctifying Spirit, illuminatinj t le conscience and the rea- son, and turning the heart, as life develops, to God and the things that are God's, the Church of En^iland certainly believes in and teaches. And yet the mistake of those who think that she does not believe in cr teach any such doc- trine may only too easily have occurred. It was perhaps onh natural that we should have li-!il|- conversion: 363 ceased to use very much in our public ministra- tions this word, conversion which conveys a wrong meaning to a large number of people to whom we speak, and which, in the sense that is now generally attached to it, leads them to ignore or deny God's great primal gift of regen- erating grace to men. But it will not be main- tained by any fair-minded n:an who has been in the habit of attending our services that we have failed to teach the necessity of turning with the whole heart and will and life to God, which this term may be properly used to describe. The more exact and comprehensive and scriptural term, however, is Repentance, which we have not 1 think failed earnestly to enforce upon all men as a necessary condition of spirit- ual life. The Greek v^ord /xcravom means a change of mind, and by vov^ the Greeks meant not merely the intellect and its conclusions but the whole inner being — the feelings and con- science, and intelligence and will — and so re- pentance describes the change of th^ whole inner life as well as the outward expression of that change : while conversion properly only describes that chan.n in its visible consequences as they are seen in the altered principles and conduct of the man. It is true that there can be no repentance, in the scriptural sense of that term, without its issuing in conversion ; and : • ; ' i 'ft. '! i ' MM 1 ; t 1 4 ' 1 ' 1 '■ H % iM L „-w,^- 364 " CONVERSION. there can be no true conversion unless it is the outcome of genuine repentance — of a real change of mind as to what is the true end and object of life ; and a real change of heart as to the things we love and live for, and are interested about. You may be very sorry for your sinful conduct in some particular acts of your life ; you may give up those sins because they have brought you to shame, or have entailed worldly loss, or have ruined your health ; but if that sorrow has not issued in a change of aim and motives and conduct in all your life, it is not repentance or conversion. Or, again, you may from some merely personal and worldly consid- eration have changed your outward conduct altogether as far as your neighbours can see, but unless that change has grown out of a real conviction of sin, an entering into God's mind concerning all that is evil, it is not conversion in the Scriptural sense of that word. So that the terms conversion and repentance rightly under- stood may not inaccurately be used the one for the other. In the exhortation " Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out," both are terms employed to describe that change of heart and life which, as far as we are con- cerned, is the end of the Incarnation and Atone- ment, and the necessary condition of our accept- ance at the last day. " Except ye repent ye ''CONVERSION." 36s shall all likewise perish." " Except ye he con- verted ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of heaven " is said to all who are capable of under- standing and acting upon them. It is evident at once that neither repentance nor conversion is a solitary act in the life — a set of experiences passed through at some par- ticular epoch in our lives, which are then ended and done with forever ; they each ^ave their beginning — but it is only the beginning, they run on with all our life, gaining in strength and completeness, till it is done ; the mind e.jering more and more into God's mind con- cerning all that is evil, the heart and the will turning more and more to God, and the life being brought more and more into conformity with the life of Christ ; so that humility and growing penitence are the foundation and charac- teristic grace of the Christian life. It is, alas ! a grace which the new false views about conver- sion, and the somewhat older views about pre- destination and election, have eliminated from the aims and from the characters of those who have made for themselves a short and easy road to salvation. We need repentance everyone of us, every day, we need to be converted again and again from the error of those ways in which we are ever inclined to go astray. Now how is this change brought about and perfected in our 11 111 366 " conversion:' Mi i'iii individual lives. We are exhorted to repent and be converted, again and again, in language which implies that in the final act and issue the change is brought about by the action of our own mind and will, and yet St. Paul says, "Of ourselves we can do nothing." Our Lord says: "without me ye can do nothing." He says: *' no man can come unto the Father but by me," " no man can come unto me except the Father draw him." The whole work of repentance and conversion in the beginning, continuance and end, is the work of God the Holy Ghost ; through Him God works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure ; the very object of His abiding with us, and being in us, is, accord- ing to the Gospel, to convict the world of sin, to work the sense of personal guilt into each individual's soul, to bring us empty-handed and pentinent to the foot of the Cross. And not only so, but to convict the world of right- eousness, the righteousness of God, to work into the minds and hearts of men by His word inspired, and by His illuminating grace, the conviction that God Himself is not as the world of old dreamt, a monster of lust and cruelty and wrong, but the absolute good and perfect and all-loving one ; and then, that life is not all evil, and disappointment, and sorrow, tend- ing to corruption and decisy, but that it may *' conversjon:' 367 be exalted and unselfish and holy and glad and free and enduring ; that the righteousness of God may he fulfilled in us, and we trans- formed at last into the likeness of His glory ; and so supplying us with a new aim and an exalted nature to live ever with a view to that judgment which will certainly come, when we shall every one have to give an account of the things done in the body. This is the character of the change called con- version or repentance in Holy Scripture, and this is the w..y in which it is wrought. I change superseded, rendered unnecessary im- possible by the grace cf regeneration in bap- tism ? Is it not the natural result and comple- ment of that grace, its legitimate outcome and consequence ? Repentance can only be wrought in us, conversion can only be accomplished by the operation o{ God's Blessed Spirit. We must ourselves bear the responsibility of choosing for God or choosing against Him, but it is His Blessed Spirit that enlightens our minds and renews our hearts and pleads with us, and draws us on to repentance and to life ; and the great gift of God in baptism is the gift of the Holy Ghost to abide with us and to be in us ; to make our bodies temples of God, to engraft us into Christ, and make us members of His body, par- takers of a new life in Him, that the purpose of I; i 111 !< \u ■ ■ :,l ■ 11 1 i 368 •• CONVERSION." His coming according to His own declaration might be fulfilled in us, "I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly " ; that so we might walk in newness of life and grow up into Him who is the Head, even Christ. The matter stands thus : as we are born into the world we have in us only the fallen nature of the first Adam ; that nature has those facul- ties and affections, appetites and passion which fit us for our life in the world, they are ever craving after and reaching out for the things of the world, that seem fitted to gratify and satisfy our affections and passion. This is what St. Paul calls the old man, The first Adam, The carnal mind. The flesh, which he tells us wars against the Spirit, and is the enemy of God, because it sets up the things of the world in opposition to God, and leads us to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. And yet with this alluring world all around us, with these strong passions within us, with the great Tempter moving behind all outward forms of life and adapting his suggestions to the unfolding opportunity. We are required to have faith in God, to set our affection upon things above, to look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen, to go on our way looking unto and living for God. Surely we " CONVERSION." 3^9 are at a great disadvantage, surely it would be most unfair to expect us thus beset and hindered to win our way to eternal life. And God does not make any such unreasonable demand upon us ; we received our natural life with its affec- tions and appetites without any consciousness or will of our own, and to sta us fair in the race, it would be necessary that we should receive in our unconsciousness, without any merit of our own, another life with other appetites and crav- ings, and desires, and aims and interests. And this is just what God, according to the testimony of Holy Scripture, does for us. He comes to us in our unconscious infancy and, of His own love and mercy, Vv^ithout any act of our intelligence or will. He grafts us into Christ, makes us par- takers of a new life in Him, a life which has new appetites and tastes, and aims and cravings, a life which is not at enmity against God, but which has a natural appetence for God. That life im- parted in its most elemental condition is the leav- en of God which is implanted that it may spread and grow until it has leavened the whole lump and transformed the whole life. Repentance and Conversion are the work of God's Spirit. This is the way in which He, the Lord and Giver of life, works. He implants and unfolds chat new life until this change of heart, and mind, and life are brought about. The man who lived for t ' ] ••: t W% ), I ' I 'Pi M ; • f t '#' * I 'i ' -i I 370 ''CONVERSION." the world now lives for God ; his mind was filled with earthly things ; it is now set on things above ; in his grasping greed, he lived for sell, he now lives for God and his fellow- men ; his chief delight was to hold converse with the earthly-hearted and the evil, his deep- est joy now is to hold converse with God, while all his delight is in the saints which are upon the earth. This is a change indeed, and it is a change of God's working and of our choosing. Its outward conscious beginning may have been sudden, startling and impressive ; it may have risen from the ruins of a crushed heart and a desolate life ; it may have been the sudden out- come of some trembling conviction of sin, or it may be the result of the unconscious expansion of the new life within, renewing us day by day, and transforming us more and more into the likeness of Christ. And even in the case of a sudden, conscious change, in later years that change has not been the beginning, there have been long-continued pleadings of God's Spirit, a dull consciousness of living an unworthy and sinful life, a secret craving to be better, to be holier, a frequent resolving to break off evil ways and begin a new life until at last, under the inspiration of God, in some hour of strong emotion comes about the changed will, the fixed resolve, the unfaltering change in aim and " CONVERSION," 37» life ; that change, however brought about, is the work of God, the Holy Ghost, the expansion and final triumph in the soul of the new life which He has enkindled. The all-important question for each one of us is not how it has been brought about, whether by sudden change or slow development, but rather this, has it been brought about in my case at all? Have I been converted to God at all? Have my natural appetites and passions been subdued, exchanged for others that are spir- itual and heavenly ? Am I living just as worldly people live, seeking first, seeking always my own profit and enjoyment? Am I just as full of pride and boastfulness, just as untruthful, just as impure in mind and heart, just as grasping as those who do not profess to be Christians at all? Am I leading a life of repentance now? Is my mind being enlight- ened, my conscience awakened, my heart re- newed ? Am I turning more and more from those things which the natural heart craves, and living more and for those which faith de- scries ? This is the question for you and me : Are we growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? Or have we so far received the grace of God in vain? "Except ye repent ye shall perish;" " Except ye be converted ye cannot enter in." ■Il * ■ > ■i;i i lll'l! ^ ):,-■' !;:?! ;i.;^ ' li;| i 1 it'i l;| I ' f f ' 1 1 ' 11 :.. i. 1] ! ' \ kl- 'f^i 1 ih^ i '?■'■ ■ 1 ' ' ' 1 k r ^ 5 y CHAPTER XIX. REUNION. The object of tlie preceding chapters has been to call attention to the fact that the reasons assigned by the older Denominations for their separation from the Reformed Catholic Church of this Realm have either been abandoned ; or they have been found impracticable as working theories ; or they have been proved to be based upon quotations, which fuller investigation has shewn to be, either absolute forgeries, or an utterly perverted application of the utterances of some early writer. And further, these reasons having thus collapsed, it has been shewn that the objections to the doctrines held by the Re- formed Church of England, which are alleged as justifying a continued state of alienation and separation, are either based upon a misappre- hension of the meaning of these doctrines, or are such as contradict the plainest statements of Holy Scripture, and the testimony and the teach- ing of the whole undivided CI urch. It is not necessary to trace the application of these facts to the minor modern Denominations — numbering 372 REUNION. 373 or it is said between two and three hundred — they are all based upon some exaggeration, or modi- fication, or new combination of the principles of the first Separatists. They all alike start with the assumption that men can make a Church. That any number of professing Christians, agreeing with one another as to doctrine and discipline, can form a new Christian Society for the propagation of their convictions ; and that such Society so formed becomes, after a while, at least, as much the Church of Christ as that Society which He Himself founded, and which can prove its continued historical exist- ence from those days to these. A little reflection will make it plain that this fundamental assumption, upon which Denomina- tionalism is based, is irrational and unscriptural ; that it overthrows all authority, and is fatal to the maintenance of the Faith once delivered to the Saints ; or, in other words, to any definite doctrinal statement of the Truth. It is irrational to suppose that He who came into the world to establish a Kingdom, or, in other words, to found a Church ; and who cer- tainly did establish a visible organized society, which He declared to be "His Church," '< His Body," '' His Bride," " the Habitation of God through the Spirit," "the ground and pil- lar of the truth," " the family and Household of IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I ]- 140 is 2.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 ■^ 6" ► ^. /a /A i? / Phctographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S80 (716) 872-4503 fi? & % 374 REUNION. I - God ;'* against which He promised that the gates of hell should not prevail — because He would be with it all days to the end ; which He constituted to represent Himself, and carry on His work. It is surely irrational to suppose that He who did all this, would authorize any of His followers to organize other Societies, holding other doc- trines, observing other customs, and trying to hinder and defeat and pull down His own Insti- tution. And not only so, but that, after the rival organizations had gone on for a little while, as mere human societies, that He would invest them with all the promises, privileges and pre- rogatives of the Church which He Himself had originated, and would make them in every respect equal to it. The theory is so manifestly irra- tional, that to propound it, is to impeach the wisdom and common sense of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is clean contrary to Scripture. It is the direct and continued contradiction of the will of our Lord. He founded but one Churchy and not many Churches such as we see around us now. To that one Body He gave His commis- sion to convert the world — to feed the lambs and sheep of His fold ; upon it He conferred His authority to exercise discipline ; to it He gave His promise of perpetuity and final victory ; for its members He prayed with passionate earnest- ness, " That they all may be one, that the world *■ an REUNION. 375 may believe that Thou hast sent Me " ; that is, that seeing- the unity and brotherly love of the Christians, men's natural consciences would cry aloud to them, that that unity was an exhibition of the power of God in the souls of men, and would lead them to faith in Him. And we have only to look a little way on to see how close the danger was. v/bioh He fore- saw. In the very first of the Epis.lv <, we find that the earthly and carnal elements are at work, separating the Jew and Gentile converts in the Roman Church. We find the Apostle urging upon them the remembrance of the truth that • ' We are all the one body in Christ, and every one members one of another," (Rom. xii.5); we find him rebuking this spirit separation sternly, and bidding his faithful followers "To mark them that cause divisions and offences, contrary to the doctrine which they had learned, and to avoid them." (Ch. xvi. 17). We find him pressing the same truth upon the Corinthians (i Cor. iii. 3, 4), and telling them, in the language of the sternest rebuke, that "whereas there were divisions among them, and one said I am Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ," that they gave proof that they were "yet carnal and walked as men." In almost every Epistle similar lan- guage is uttered. Now we have only to lift up our eyes upon the 376 REUNION. '.: ■ "4 \\ ' face of divided, distracted Christendom to-day to see that if there was need of that prayer being of- fered at the first, there is ten thousand times more need that we should offer it from the ground of the heart now. For a while the Saviour's prayer was, in the main, fulfilled. The Church which began at Jerusalem spread herself into all lands. And everywhere she presented herself to men as the One Body, united to her One Head, which is Christ, and with one mind and one mouth bore witness to the one truth of the Gospel. The heathen world, distracted and paralyzed by the endless contradictions of its philosophies and religions, looked with amazement upon this wondrous brotherhood ; which, by its unity of faith and bond of spiritual kinship, united men of varying instincts and tastes and nationalities in the loving bonds of the One Body. And see- ing it they exclaimed, ''See how these Christians love one another." And so in thousands, they embraced a faith which was doing for men what no philosophy and no religion had ever done be- fore. So that in the brief space of three hun- dred years, the Christian Faith had permeated and leavened the whole wide range of the civilized world ; yea, and many dark regions beyond. And so heathenism with its gorgeous rites and complicated systems of religion and philosophy, which had been Duilt up through so many ages. •? ii I mamm REUNION. 377 crumbled to pieces before the advancing Cross of Calvary. The stone dug out of the mountain had fallen upon, and had ground to powder these helpless superstitions. Again when the hordes of Barbarians, crowd- ing in upon the Empire from every side, trampled under foot the ancient civilization, and with it this earliest Christianity : once more the One Body arose from the dust, and by the proclama- tion of the One Faith and the exhibition of the One Brotherhood, the conquerors were con- quered, and a second and savager heathen world was won to the obedience of the Faith. Every generation witnessed, not merely a few hun- dred or a few thousand individuals, but whole nations born again to God. But after a while, when success had crowned her efforts, the spirit of worldliness and superstition and corruption crept in, and these before long issued in endless and grotesque heresies, and then in the great schism between the East and West, which had been threatened for many generations, and was finally consum- mated in the thirteenth century. Then came the breaking up of the household of Faith into the endless sects which disfigure the face of the Christian world to-day. Then followed an absolute paralysis of the missionary spirit, the offerings and the energies of men being absorbed 37^ REUNION. t 1\ \\ ii 'i w .h 1 ' * H:' iiii ia, .It " in the strifes and bloody wars that grew out of that great upheaval. We all know that, after a while, this missionary spirit blazed out again, and that it has spread and burned on with a fervor that would have done credit to any age. And yet — though millions of treasure have been spent, and rivers of martyrs' blood has been shed — the confession of all is that the results have been miserably inadequate — a few hundreds have been converted here, and a few thousand there ; but what is that compared with the results that followed the preaching of a Columba, an Aidan, an Augustine, or a Boniface. Surely where we are able now to count our thousands and tens of thousands we ought to be able to count our millions, and hundreds of millions. And the cause of this failure is not far to seek. We are told that, in one small province of India, it was recently ascertained, that there were twenty different Christian Denominations, each labor- ing for the conversion of the heathen, but each laboring with equal earnestness for the conver- sion of each other's converts. And what was the effect ? It was the effect which our unhappy divisions are producing in every land. The heathen said, "Gentlemen, when you can agree among yourselves as to what this Christianity is, then we will consider it ; but for the present we will abide as we are." REUNION, 379 One of our own Canadian missionaries, who has been working for many years in Japan, stated at a public meeting held here not long ago tha. this very objection, stated in these very words, was the one most frequently urged against the Christian religion in that country ; and he said that the Methodist minister working in the sane field with himself said to him one day: ''Mr. , it IS a matter of great surprise to me that, with our mitnifest and manifold divisions, we make any converts among this people at all." Surely then the cry that is coming to us with an ever-increasing intensity, through the open doors of the vast heathen world, "Come over and help us," is a loud and piercing cry to all Christian people to reconsider their attitude one tov/aids another, to reform and reunite in the One Body, that they may go forth like an army with banners to the conquest, and, with one mind and one mouth, proclaim the One Faith in the One Lord, to the unnumbered hosts who throughout the wastes of heathendom are per- ishing for lack of knowledge. These are the effects of our Denominational- ism upon the unconverted nations of the East ; but they are not the only or the chief reason why we should strive, by prayer and supplica- tion, and by personal effort, to end this terrible spectacle of a house divided against itself. The 38o REUNION. ^k iff chief reason, of course, is that, in the light of the above-quoted Scripture, it is a manifest con- tradiction of the will of our Lord Jesus Christ. The next reason is that it destroys charity and separates from, and arrays against one another, those who ought to be living in the bonds of the closest brotherhood, and striving, not against one another, but together co-operating for the faith of the Gospel. The spectacle of one of our American villages has often been described, with its few hundred, or it may be few thou- sand inhabitants, and with from half a dozen to half a hundred rival churci^es, each striving to live at the expense of the others, and using every effort to withdraw their adherents ; each little community living in isolated alienation, if not in hostile antagonism, to every other ; each straining every nerve, and resorting to every trick to raise money enough to maintain itself, and most of them receiving grants from their respective missionary funds ; instead of contrib- uting, as in many cases they might largely con- tribute, towards sending missionaries to remote settlements and heathen lands. Oh, what a waste of money, what a waste of men, what a waste of learning, of study, of mental effort, is involved in this unscriptural Church-making prerogative which Protestantism has claimed for itself, and which has shattered the anti-papal REUNION. 381 hosts into these helpless fragments ; what alien- ation between those who ought to be walking together in the house of God as friends has it effected ; how has it paralyzed the voice of authority with which the Church ought to speak, and to deliver her message ! How many ingenuous minds have become confused amid the jargon of voices calling to them come with 'IS, until they have first stood aloof, and then looked on in unbelief and scorn upon the shame- ful conflict, until, at this morr.ent, we are threat- ened with the loss of vast territories that have long ago accepted the Faith. Cast your eye over the face of Christendom to-day, and see what dangers are threatening us on every side. Can we think of Germany, the birthplace of this Church-making sectism, as being any longer in any true sense a Christ- ian land. Dr. Chrislieb, one of the staunchest and ablest of the defenders of the ancient Faith, drew this picture some time ago of the con- dition of his native land, and judging from what one hears and reads matters have n.)t greatly improved since: "Wherever you go," he says, "into the lecture room of the learned professor, or into the council-chamber of the municipality, or the barrack of the soldier, or the workshop of the mechanic, or into what- ever place of public or social resort, everywhere you hear the same tale, that the old Faith has fr i!fi A i H K di^i : ^--f - . 5 ;j flflSCf ' 11 >f ' ■ 1 ■. * i ■ : ' 3- . i,.:i i i- IBa ii M li ■ h UiM ; 383 REUNION. become obsolete. The advance of modern science, it is said, has made all real belief in it impossible. Only fools or ignoramuses even profess to believe in it any more. And the results of this widespread unbelief are every- where apparent. No new Churches are being built, and no old ones repaired. Only five per- sons in a hundred, it is said, taking the whole of Protestant Germany, ever go to Church, and in the Capital only one person in a hundred. Everywhere religion is contemned and shoved aside, and the clergy, in spite of the vast learn- ing and great ability of many of them, are utterly unable to stay the spreading deluge." Looking out upon the present aspect of the world, a recent writer says : *' The natural result has followed — just now the papers are announc- ing that there is throughout Germany the most frightful outbreak of immorality of every kind, which the Church and the Government are alike powerless to restrain." No wonder that Strauss, one of the greatest of Germany's sceptical writers, asks at the end of his career, can we any longer think of ourselves as Chris- tians ? and he answers honestly we cannot. The Church of Rome is certainly not offer- ing any effective barriers to the swelling tide of unbelief. One of the most learned of the 'verts to that Church says : '' It must be confes- REUNION. 383 sed that Protestantism has no monopoly of the scepticism and atheism of the age." He might almost have confessed that Rome has very nearly a monopoly of it ; for it is an ascertained fact that for hundreds who read Strauss in Germany there are tens of thousands in France and Italy and Spain who devour the writings and adopt the sentiments of Renan. France, it is well known, has never recovered from the breach she made with Christianity in 1793, when Roman Catholic Priests and Bishops were amongst the foremost to renounce the Faith and blaspheme the name of Christ. And no man can look beneath the surface of what is transpiring in that unhappy land now, without seeing that the strife is not between the civil government and the Jesuits, bu<^ between athe- ism and the only form of Christianity which they recognize. And what is happening in France has happened in Belgium, the most Catholic Country, as was boasted, in Europe, and is happening in Spain and Italy and Austria. In England, of course, things are very different. Everybody is aware now that there has been a revival of religion going on in that land for the last fifty years which has no parallel in the whole history of the Christian Church ; that more Churches have been erected and restored, more parsonages built, more schools founded 384 REUNION. \w .i I and supported, than were built during the whole three hundred years that preceded them ; and that there is a life and activity in the Church of England, a spirit of love and labor, such as was never witnessed before. Yet there is much passing even there to make thoughtful men sad. It is well known that many of the foremost names in literature are introducing their readers to a world in which God reigns not, and that many of the acknowledged leaders of science are open and avowed atheists ; while men, who ought to be foremost in defending the ancient Faith, are busily engaged in tearing up the foundation upon which the whole superstructure rests. As to the state of things on the American Con- tinent it is unnecessary to speak. The dark wave of unbelief which is sweeping up over all the earth is already breaking audibly upon our shores. The alienation from religion, and the unconcerned disregard of its claims is perhaps the most marked feature of our American life. One of the most thoughtful, learned and ortho- dox of the New York Clergy has not hesitated to express the belief that the world (as it lies around him) is falling back with rapid strides into the very condition in which it was nineteen hundred years ago ; that the very same philo- sophical speculations are being agitated, the REUNION. 38s le whole Ti ; and urch of such as is much len sad. ore most readers nd that ence are n, who ancient up the tructure an Con- le dark over all )on our and the perhaps ;an life. 1 ortho- esitated it lies strides lineteen 5 philo- ed, the same doubts expressed, the same theories put forward as to the origin of life and all things. The same contemptuous disregard of re- ligion is beginning everywhere to be manifested as marked the days before the coming of Christ ; while throughout the West a rude atheism is the pervading type of unbelief. Enough, how- ever, has been said to bring home to us the fact that not only does the comparative failure of missionary enterprise, but the present aspect of the Christian world, call aloud to us to consider what can be done to unite the scattered forces of Christendom against these impending dan- gers. It is not meant that all these evils can be traced directly to the unhappy divisions of Christianity, and yet there is but little doubt that those divisions have started men on the paths which have issued in this wide departure from the Truth. Rome herself is responsible for those divisions which she now so bitterly anathamatises. The first departure from the position of the Primitive Church, which teaches that the truth is one and unvarying, that the Faith was once for all delivered, that the office of the Church and of her individual members is not to find out new truths, but to hold fast, and witness to, and explore and propagate the old truths, taught us 386 REUNION. l:% I by Christ and His Apostles ; she firs*^ taught men that the truth was to be found not in the word of God aind the testimony of the Church, unvarying through the ages, but in the opinions and dictation of a single infallible individual. The leaders of division only followed in her steps, only they made every man his own infal- lible guide, and taught him that he is to find the truth, not in the testimony of the Church, but in his own individual opinion, or fancy, as to what Holy Scripture might mean. And men have only been following on in that track till they have come to the conclusion that it does not mean anything at all ; that anything they may fancy is true, or that nothing is true. But, however this may be, it is clear that the prayer of our Lord leaves us no room to doubt that the Christian world, in its present divided and dis- tracted condition, will never be able to grapple with and overcome this widespread revolt. It may indeed be met and defeated here and there by laborious argument. But it would vanish away like smoke in the presence of a united Christen- dom. Another evil which necessarily flows out of this living contradiction of the will of our Lord is the practical overthrow of discipline. The low- ering in the whole Christian community of the claims of truth and righteousness. There is a REUNION. 387 •'* taught ot in the Church, opinions dividual, d in her wn infal- s to find Church, fancy, as And men track till It it does ling they ue. But, lie prayer >t that the and dis- grapple evolt. It d there by nish away Christen- ws out of our Lord The low- ity of the here is a constant struggle going on amongst the various bodies into which we are divided, to gain con- verts, and so increase their own strength and influence ; and the result is that those who have been censured or reproved, or even excommuni- cated, for some immorality or heresy, in one Church pass, on some idle pretence, into another, and are generally welcomed with open arms, and rejoiced over as men who have been at last enlightened, and have escaped from some unfair or degrading system into one more enlightened and true. And so a constant low- ering of faith and practice is going on, and all wholesome discipline in the Church is being rendered every year more difficult. Another evil resulting from our divided con- dition is the expulsion of any definite religious teaching from our public schools, and the con- sequent dishonor of God's Holy name. I assume that there can be no difference of opinion among Christian men about the desirability of instruct- ing the children of our schools in those truths, upon the reception and practice of which, if the Faith be not all a uelusion, their eternal destiny depends. And yet, in consequence of sectarian jealousy and rivalry, such instruction is practically ex- cluded from those public schools where the great majority of our people must be educated. 388 REUNION. Hence our children are taught all the principles of secular education, all the facts of history and geography and science — all the precepts that are expected to guide them to usefulness and respectability in the world — as things about which all men are agreed, and the importance of which is denied by no one; but religion is omitted as either a thing not of sufficient im- portance to occupy any portion of the precious hours of childhood and youth ; or as a matter so uncertain, debatable and unimportant that the safest way is to let it alone. It is the earnest hope of the writer that the foregoing pages may do somtthing towards removing some of the difficulties, zeal or imag- inary, that are keeping not a few earnestly reli- gious people from even desiring, and much more from seeking, and praying for, that reunion for which our Lord's Eucharistic prayer is still ascending. They will, at all events, it is hoped, lead to better understanding of the posi- tion and claims of the Church of England; and enable those, who have thought that she is standing aloof from what are called the Churches, in mere pride of fancied superiority, to see that she cannot, even for the peace of heaven, surrender what she believes to be her transmitted inheritance, as the lineal descendant and lawful representative of the Catholic Apos- principles istory and lepts that Iness and gs about n porta nee eligion is icient im- i precious a matter tant that • that the towards or imag- sstly reli- nd much for, that tic prayer ents, it is the posi- and; and that she ailed the periority, peace of :o be her ascendant lie Apos- REUNION. 389 tolic Church of this Realm ; and so that while she is ready to submit to every humiliation, to forego every personal predilection, and to make every concession that is consistent with truth and righteousness for the sake of union, she yet cannot, in very fidelity to her Lord, do anything that would imperil the historical continuity of that Body to which the promises were made, and upon which the prerogative of which we have been thinking were conferred. The writer has striven throughout this treat- ise to state, with all possible clearness, what he believes to be the position and claims and doc- trines of the Church of England, and to advo- cate them briefly but earnestly. He is how- ever aware, that if ever the hour of reconciliation comes, many concessions, not of doctrine, but of custom and modes of procedure, will have to be made, or such a wide liberty agreed upon as will make room for whatever sentiments and ways of work have been found most potent and useful in any of the existing Christian divisions. If ever this hope of reunion be realized, it is evi- dent that, if it is ever to embrace the whole Christian world, it will have to be formed around some existing Church that has preserved the historical continuity of the Body to which the promises were made. He trusts that he has given persuasive reasons enough to show that 390 REUNION the F?.eformed Catholic Church of England ought to be the rallying point of that reunion, whatsoever modifications of her outward order may be determined upon. England reunion, ird order NOTE, PAGE 253. The Crisis. — Such an outcry has been made about the crisis in Enjjfland, that the impression has become general outside the Church that the whole Churcli of England is marching hot haste to Rome. The following figures, care- fully compiled by Church Bells, will show how childish the out- cry is : The whole number of the Clergy in England about 23,000— Extreme Ritualists, 372 ; extreme Low Church, 1,800; Ritualists disobeying the Archbishop's judgment, 30 ; obedi- ent to opinion, 22,970. 'i I INDEX. INTRODUCTION. PAGE The mother and her daughter— An illustration— The in- vitation — The answer to invitation — Charges against the Church ...... 9 CHAPTER I. WHAT IS THE CHURCH ? Confusion of thought about the Church — Association by affinity — Names by which Church is called — Claimed for an invisible Church — Invisible theory the result of Calvinism — Christ came to found a Kingdom — The proof of this — Meaning of word Church — Disproof of invisibility — The theory does not satisfy — The Body of Christ — The Bride of Christ — Organized — New theory — Made^ a living thing — How the Church spread — How designated — Catholic, why— Why called Apostolic — Local designations — How governed — The things estab- lished — The promises . . . . • '5 CHAPTER II. IS THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND THIS VERY CHURCH IN THIS REALM ? How the Church grew— Subdivisions— Whence the Church of England — Proofs of early existence —What Augustine found — Conference with British Bishops — Myths of origin— Real source — Greek colony of Rhone — Eflfect of persecution— Saxon invasion (Bede)— St. Patrick — Real foundersof Irish Church — Its fame — Re- sult of Roman mission — Different uses — Auto- cephalous — Wilfred's appeal — Rejected images — Pro- test re Papal Pall- Danish ravages— Changed condi- tions — Edward Confessor— Papal veto — Object of Norman conquest — The Conqueror's action — Rufus' simony — Anselm — Pope's complaint — Permanent le- Y 393 • i . 394 INDEX. gate -King- John— Pope claims English benefices — Rich and Grossetete — Statutes of Provisors — Statutes of Praemunire — John Wycliffe — DoUinger — Henry the VIII. — The Catholic Church rejects Popery — Mr. Beard — Continuity — Roman Church a schism . . CHAPTER III. PAOI-: 33 ^ ■ THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED. Reformation work of Church, not King — The Convoca- tion — Not a new Church — General Council appeal to — Her claim as Reformed — Why assailed— Cause of Reformation —Effect of Luther's action — Mistake of Luther — Result of his action — Reformation in Eng- land -The two waves — Edward the VI. — Refugees — Their return— Fanatical preachers — Archbishop Par- ker — Text books — What they taught — The effect — Rise of Anglican party — The Puritan's doctrine — Growing strife — Street attire — Cartwright and Travers — Hired others to sayprayers — Hampton Court Confer- ence — Laud — Cromwell and Presbyterians — 8,000 ex- pelled — Savoy Conference— Episcopal ordination — Source of present divisions — Effect of strife . . 59 CHAPTER IV. WHY DID THE INDEPENDENTS LEAVE THEIR HOMES THE REFORMED CATHOLIC CHURCH OF ENGLAND, Founder, the Rev. Robert {Brown —Took up Anabaptist theory of the Church— Agreed with Presbyterians in doctrine — Beginning of separation — The year of Eliza- beth's excommunication — Brown's closing history — How they differ from Presbyterians and from us — Their theory — Not satisfied with it— Contrary to Scrip- ture — The logical outcome of Calvinism — Their first principle, supremacy of each congregation — Second principle, rejection of secular interference — Third, of Divine obligation of this polity — Contrary to Scrip- ture— They have in practice abandoned both doctrine and discipline — Come Home . . . .81 CHAPTER V. WHY DID THE ROMANISTS SEPARATE FROM THE REFORMED CATHOLIC CHURCH OF THIS REALM ? The reforms accepted by all till eleventh year of Eliza- beth—Less than 200 priests seceded — Pope offered to ft PAOK 33 59 8i REFORMED INDEX. sanction what was done— Roaian schism began 1570 — Like Independents alleged Church discipline — Limited number still — Were deceived— False notions of Papacy — Forged evidence — Discovered and ac- knowledged—Second reason, doctrinal changes— Transubstantiation — Third reason, " worship " — Fourth reason, " salvation "—Fifth reason, "purga- tory " — Other reasons (a) vulgar tongue, (fi) both kinds, (c) clerical celibacy— Reasons abandoned or un- tenable . . • • • • • CHAPTER VL WHY DID THE PRESBYTERIANS SEPARATE FROM THE CATHOLIC CHURCH REFORMED? Originated during Marian persecutions — Their object and eflforts— Began in Scotland— Hume's account — John Knox— Historical order— Succession broken— Of Erastian origin— Return of Melville— Charges against the Bishops— By Act of William of Orange called Church of Scotland— Not the majority of Scotch peo- ple — Episcopacy abolished 1646 — The cause of the schism— What they objected to— All abandoned in practice ....#.. CHAPTER Vn. WHY DID THE BAPTISTS SEPARATE FROM THE NATIONAL CHURCH REFORMED ? Began 1633 — Fanatical predecessors— Ostensible cause of separation — The real causes — How they regard their children— Conception of what the Church is— Catholic conception— Their reasons for rejecting this— Their Ritualistic position— Have abandoned their doctrinal basis— Their present basis as to infant baptism— Ex- amination of their argument — The actual position- How dispute must be settled — First, what is baptism? — initiation — Into a Divine society — Body of Christ — The habitation of God— Results— Who need these gifts . • . • • • CHAPTER VIIL WHY DID THE QUAKERS SEPARATE FROM THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED ? Origin— Contrasted with others —Anti-Ritualists — The religionism of that time — Fox's companions— His own 395 PAGE 9> 108 125 lil I, a f ; ' llil; ' 1 1 L 396 INDEX, accouiil of his calling — Did not know the Church's doctrine — Tiie "inward light" — They reject all ex- ternal media — The results — Exaggerations of true doctrines— Broken into several sections . . PAOB 146 CHAPTER IX. WHY DID THE METHODISTS SEPARATE FROM THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OF ENGLAND REFORMED ? Grew out of the life history of John Wesley — The con- dition of the Church at this time — The religious societies — The beginning of the Methodist Society — The Wesleys Ritualists — The cause of opposition — Wesley's sojourn in America — The results of it — Origin of Methodist view of conversion — His visit to Hernhuth — The effect of it — The French Convulsion- ists — The effects — The cause of his exclusion from the Churches — His re-admission— His relationship to the Church — The beginning and progress of the schism — Jv!Stilication offered won't stand — Old theories generally abandoned — No justification for continued division ..... CHAPTER X. WHY ARE DIVISIONS CONTINUED? The reasons that produced them abandoned — Why not return ? Reasons given — Sacerdotalism — What the Church of England teaches — The Presbyter view examined — What do Scriptures say ? — What is the meaning of the word priest ? — What is his office ? — All Christians share this office by virtue of their union with Christ — All work of benediction His — We His instruments and agents — How does official priesthood differ? — Lightfoot's definition — No sacrifices — No sac- rificing priests — Proof to the contrary. The term " hiereus " not applied to Church or Christian minister — What we need ..... CHAPTER XI. APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. "A figment," by whom held — What it means — The real dispute — Involves continuity of the Church — Every society must be governed by officers and rules — 158 188 [lurch's all ex- )f true PAGE 146 E CATHOLIC he con- eligious )ciety — tsition — of it- visit to ivulsion- on from nship to of the d — Old tion for Why not hat the er view t is the office ? — eir union -We His -iesthood —No sac- rhe term 1 minister 158 188 -The real h — Every i rules — INDEX. Through whom has the Church exercised this author- ity? —For 1,000 years through bishops — Never with- drew it — Never conferred it upon Presbyters — The Congregational theory — The Church's theory— The convertible term argument proves too much — The testimony of Scripture on the subject — How the case stands — Earliest uninspired testimony — Igna- tius — Clement of Rome — Hermas — Clement of Alex- andria — Jerome— Succession not a chain — Could not be destroyed ...... CHAPTER XH. BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. A soul-destroying j doctrine — Generally believed — The meaning of the word — Does the Church of England teach it— The baptismal services, catechism and articles— Position of Bishop at Revision, 1661 — Tes- timony of Rev. Henry Melville — Rev. C. H. Spurgeon — Teaching of first Christian writers — Of the Reformers —And Confessions— Of Wesley —The doctrine of the Bible — The conclusions ..... CHAPTER XHI. THE REAL PRESENCE. First duty to understand the meaning of terms— The greatest mystery of practical religion — Calvin on this subject — Bishop Burnett — Meaning of " Real Pres- ence " — Three positions at Reformation — Roman — Zwinglian — Catholic — Primitive writers, Irenaeus, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Pope Gelasius — St. Augus- tine— The Reformers— Cranmer — Ridley — Hooker — Bishop Field— Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Andrews — What the Church teaches— The doctrine of Presby- terian catechism — The German confession— John Knox— Wesley — The langu? of our Lord — Cannot be an obstacle to reunion ..... CHAPTER XIV. THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. Not invented by the Ritualists — Used from the beginning — Liturgies — Fathers English Theologians — Burnett — V/esley — What does it mean — The word sacrifice — All depends upon meaning of the words " Do this in re- 397 HAOB 211 241 261 398 INDEX, ! ; 1; 1 J i|a. i! 1 \ |Si H \ r^H . 1 H; (i. ' ' -^ 1 \ '. 1 ' i-. 'ii PAOB membrance of Me"— What do they mean — Non-Com- municatinj; partaking — The two aspects — The old way ....... 282 CHAPTER XV. CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. Based upon St. John xx: 21, 22, 23 — A scripture rejected - The individual explanation — The true ona — Lan- guage of the Ordinal — Visitation office- Exhortation to Holy Communion — Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley — First book of Homilies— Injunctions— Canon 113 and 19th of Irish Church — When habit died out — Hooker, Bram- hall, Wake — A multitude of others -Augsburg confes- sion — Saxon confession — Westminster confession — A principle of the Reformation — Not the Roman system — Ancient penitential system — Why have recourse to — Reasons — The essential thing — No ground for sepa- ration ...... CHAPTER XVI. PRECOMPOSED PRAYERS. Praying with spirit — Not so Baxter, John Knox, John Wesley — But no avail — The Spirit's help — Hymns sung with greatest fervor — Extempore prayer a form — Objections to extempore worship — Dr. Mines' eulogy of Liturgy — Doddridge, Dr. Adam Clarke, Robert Hall, Dr. Cummings, Baxter, Barnes, Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Boardman, T. K. Beecher— The Chris- tian at Work, Dr. Hopkins, Henry Ward Beecher on choral service — Objections urged by those who have never tried ...... CHAPTER XVII. RITUALISM. Objection stated — Ritualism a necessity of life — Nothing sinful in gorgeous ritual — God prescribed it — The Rit- ualism of the Ritualists — Test of likeness irrational — To understand the question must go back to Reform- ation times— Character of Reformation on Continent — In England — Calvinistic wave — Its effect — After the Restoration — Tendency of the Evangelical moveoient — Its leaders— Their heritage— Oxford movement a march back — Mistakes — Kinglake — Illustration — The 29s 315 PAOK 383 INDEX. Struggle — What ought ritual to be — Two opposing postulates — Both probably wroiig— What the Church needs — Unimportant — What harm— Disloyalty . 399 PAUK 339 CHAPTER XVIII. CONVERSION. Church of England does not believe in conversion — What is meant by this charge ?— True conversion — The cause of the mistake — Repentance more compre- hensive word — Not a solitary act — Loss of the spirit of penitence — God's work— Not superseded by regen- eration — The true position — The great struggle — The new life God's gift — The effect — The all-important question ....... CHAPTER XIX. 259 295 REUNION. The retiuit of previous enqui'-y — Minor Denominations — Primal assumption of Denominationalism — Irrational — Contrary to Scripture — The beginning of the evil — The condition at first — The effect — The savager heathenism — The age of schism — Missionary failure — Why? — Cry of heathen world — Schism contradicts will of our Lord — Destroys charity— AnAmerican village — The loss of fields long won — Christlieb — The result — The Roman Church — France — England — America — The first departure — Others followed — Loss of discip- line—Irreligious schools — The object aimed at 372 315