ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM OR SOME COMMENTS ON CERTAIN EVENTS IN THE 'NINETIES MGR. MOVES, D.D. CANON OP WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1906 NIHIL OBSTAT. GUUBLMUS CANONICUS GILDKA, S.T.D., Censor Deputatus. IMPRIMATUR. GULESLMUS PRAEPOSITUS JOHNSON, Vicarius Qeneralis. WESTMO.NASTERII, die 12 Januarii, 1906. PREFACE THE chapters of this book appeared substantially in a series of articles in The Tablet, at various dates between 1890 and 1899. By the courtesy of the Editor, I am allowed to republish them in book form. The motive which prompted their composition, and now induces me to republish them, was simply the conviction that certain principles of faith are more easily set forth in the light of concrete illustrations than by abstract statements, and that such concrete illustrations are most conveniently sought in the facts and incidents of the religious world of our time. That must stand as an apology for turning the attention of the reader back to some of the happenings of the last decade, which, however belated as facts, may still do duty as object- lessons of the principles involved. J. MOYES. 18th January, 1906. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE -v I. THE LAMBBTH JUDGMENT AND ANGLICAN OBEDIENCE - - 1 II. THE EVE OP THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT 3 III. THE VATICAN COUNCIL THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION - 8 IV. WHY NOT AN ANGLICAN PATRIARCHATE ? 13 V. A THREEFOLD RIFT MONASTICISM, RITUAL AND ORDERS - 17 VI. THE "RECONCILIATION" OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 23 VII. ALTAR AGAINST ALTAR 27 VIII. CONTINUITY LETTERS OLD AND NEW 31 IX. THE RECEPTION OF THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT - ... 33 X. THE LESSON OF THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT 37 XI. DIVISIONS AND ECCENTRICITIES 45 XII. DOUBLE-DEALING IN WORSHIP 49 XIII. ARCHBISHOP BENSON ON THE " ITALIAN MISSION " - - 56 XIV. ARK WE AN "ITALIAN MISSION"? 59 XV. WITH WHOM is " THB ANCIENT CHURCH OF ENGLAND " ? - 61 XVI. A POPULAR STATEMENT OF ANGLICAN CONTINUITY - - 78 XVII. A DIOCESE AS AN OBJECT-LESSON IN CONTINUITY 88 XVIII. THE CATHOLIC CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH AND THE ROYAL SUPREMACY 98 XIX. AN ANGLICAN EPISCOPAL ELECTION 107 XX. ANGLICANISM AND MONASTICISM AND PENITENTIAL WORKS - 117 XXI. ANGLICANISM IN AMERICA How THE REFORMATION is BEING FOUND OUT 123 XXII. AN ANGLICAN ENTHRONEMENT CONTINUITY BY CONTRASTS - 135 XXIII. PASSION SERVICES IN ENGLAND WHO WINS ? - - - 142 XXIV. AN ANGLICAN MONUMENT 149 XXV. ANGLICANISM IN IRELAND" THE CHURCH OF ST. PATRICK " 156 XXVI. LAY REPRESENTATION OR LAY DICTATION IN THE CHURCH AN IRISH SYNOD 163 vii viii CONTENTS CHAPTER PAOB XXVII. ANGLICANISM AND THE ERASTIAN PBINCIPLB - - - - 171 XXVIII. A PAPAL ENCYCLICAL 178 XXIX. ANGLICANISM AND THE EASTERNS 182 XXX. EASTERN CHRISTIANITY 192 XXXI. AN INVITATION TO TAKE PART IN ANGLICAN WORSHIP - - 206 XXXII. RELICS AND RELIC- VENERATION 225 XXXIII. ANGLICAN APPROPRIATION WHY NOT APPROPRIATE THE POPE? 233 XXXIV. AN ANGLICAN CHURCH CONGRESS WHO is THE ALIEN ? - 241 XXXV. A SAMPLE OF Low CHURCH OPINION 247 XXXVI. ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY AT AN ENGLISH CHURCH CONGRESS 255 XXXVII. ANGLICANISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF PURGATORY - - - 260 XXXVIII. DR. PLUNKBT AND HIS OKDINATION OF CABRERA - - - 271 XXXIX. THE MITRE AT BRISTOL 281 XL. ANGLICANISM AND DIVORCE 284 XLI. A PICTURE OF Low CHURCH ANGLICANISM WHAT THEY THINK OF us 292 XLII. ANTICHRIST IN ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY .... 295 XLIII. A DEDICATION SERVICE AT PETERBOROUGH .... 301 XLIV. THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT AND THE PRIVY COUNCIL - - 310 XLV. THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT AS AN EIRENICON .... 317 XLVI. ROME AND THE STATUTE OF PHOVISORS 326 XLVII. ANGLICANISM AND THE APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE - - - 343 XLVIII. ANGLICAN THEORY ST. PETER AND THE APOSTLES AND THE BISHOPS 361 XLIX. WINCHESTER AS AN OBJECT- LESSON OF CONTINUITY - - 373 L. WINCHESTER, A LANTERN LECTURE 384 LI. THE WINCHESTER PRIORS 390 LII. A WINCHESTER BISHOP WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM - - - 393 LHI. A WINCHESTER SCHOOL CHAPEL 398 LIV. WINCHESTER WORSHIP 404 LV. WINCHESTER SCHOOL 412 LVI. VOTIVE CANDLE-BURNING 422 LVII. A CHURCH CONGRESS AND AN APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE - - 429 LVIII. ANGLICANISM AND THE NESTORIANS 443 LIX. AN ANGLICAN CONCEPTION OF CHURCH UNITY - - - 458 LX. ARCHBISHOP BENSON ON ST. GERMAN OF AUXBRRB - - 469 LXI. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOD-MADE CHURCH AND OF THE MAN-MADE CHURCH 474 LXII. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANGLICAN CRISIS - - - - 481 INDEX 493 CHAPTER I. The Lambeth Judgment and Anglican Obedience. f (JULY, 1890.) WE are in July, 1890. How will the Lambeth Judgment be received ? Anglicanism casts the Scripture into the bosom of the Primitive Church and the Fathers, only that it may use its private judgment and its own sweet will in interpreting all three. Anglicanism rejoices in the wild liberty which comes of having no restraint save the Bible and patristic tomes on the shelf and its Church formularies the dead rule, which cannot control when it is being set at naught, nor -cry out while it is being misinterpreted. Will this wilful and wayward child of misrule lay aside her way of self-interpreting the things that are silent, and listen and obey when for once she has to deal with a living voice, and when it is the head of her own household who speaks to her ? Were we to judge by The Church Times, the discipline of obedience which comes of dealing with a living voice is but little to the temper and taste of Anglicans. Five months ago it warned the Archbishop that he must not expect from them compliance with his judgment. Under the rather uneasy title, "Are we Lawless?" it made the following manifesto. (The first sentence is so much truer than even the writer can have intended.) Where there is no true authority there can be no true obedience. To submit to the Archbishop putting himself in a false position, and claiming that arbitrary authority which no one but God has a right to claim, is really disrespect and disobedience to the Arch- 1 2 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM bishop in that position in which God has placed him as primus inter pares, the President and representative of the Bishops of his Province. The Rock is quite correct in its supposition that one of our chief objections to Rome is that Romo claims that absolute obedience which God reserves as due to Himself alone, and wo object to Popery at Lambeth as strongly as at Rome (4th July, 1890). Last week, writing upon the eve of the Lambeth Judg- ment, the same journal adopts, in perhaps more moderate terms, the same unbending attitude : The Archbishop of Canterbury to-day at Lambeth delivers the long-expected judgment in the case of the Bishop of Lincoln. It is idle to attempt to disguise the fact that the decisions on the points involved have been looked for with intense anxiety, particularly by those who long for some expression of authority on points of ritual, and the doctrine which is involved in them. . . . The opportunity for such an authoritative interpretation of the laws of the Church of England has not yes been reached. The Archbishop's claim to be &judex solus to try his suffragans has not passed without protest. and though the judgment to be delivered to-day will be, no doubt, accepted as a learned contribution to rhe great ritual contest for this it cannot fail to be it nevertheless remains that th.3 Court sitting at Lambeth does not commend itself to the judgment of able canonists as being competent in the present case. The decision, of course, affects the Bishop of Lincoln alone, and he alone will decide what his ultimate course will be, but that we have reached the final stage in the grean controversy we do not believe, and, there- fore, prayerful patience is still demanded of th ise who have faith in the ultimate vindication of the Catholicity of the Church of England. Apropos of which The Record says : We notice with regret that some of our contemporaries have broached the extraordinary doctrine that ths Archbishop's Judg- ment affects the Bi hop of Lincoln alone, and is of no general ap- plication. We earnestly trust that for the credit of the English clergy no more will be heard of a notion which has neither sense nor morality to recommend it. ... There is something ludicrous in the idea that th.3re are, if there are, clergymen in England who can persuade themselves to disobey the law with an easy conscience because they have not been personally ordered to obey it. How far the Archbishop might turn from disobedient High Churchmen to seek obedience in the Low Church, or the opponents of the Bishop of Lincoln, can be gathered from THE EVE OF THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT 3 the fact that they are at this very moment considering the advisability of an appeal from his judgment. The tribunal of the Primate of all England is, after all, but a Court of Second Instance. The appeal evidently lies higher up. There is a curious law in the nature of Power by which it travels in a circle and ends where it begins. The point from which it set out by way of institution is the source to which it finds its way back by way of appeal. That apparently the Church of England should seek by the declaration of its own mem- bers its last point of appeal in that chamber of the Privy Council where Thomas Cromwell first drafted the statute of the Eoyal Supremacy, teaches a lesson to those who are fond of the study of origins. CHAPTER II. The Eve of the Lambeth Judgment. (16TH AUGUST, 1890.) ONE of the most remarkable signs of the times is the atti- tude of the Anglican body to the impending Lambeth Judg- ment. The judgment itself is not expected to be given before the first week in December. But word has gone forth that it will be adverse, at least in its main bearing, to the friends and followers of the Bishop of Lincoln. It is but natural that those who are chiefly affected by the coming decision should foregather and take counsel together as to the manner and spirit in which they are going to receive it. It is not just yet a question of obeying or resisting. Time enough for either when the judgment shall have been formally delivered. But the interval has been found to be useful in formulating a policy, in closing up the ranks, and in choosing the ground for future action. As to what that future policy and ground will be, the speech and action of Anglican leaders during the last week leave no possibility for doubt. First, we note that an effort is made to discount the importance of the coming 1* 4 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM decision. Secondly, a determination is shown to discredit the judgment beforehand by denying its validity, and by limiting its practical effect to the case of the person indicted. The whole policy might be summed up as one of " Don't care," combined with what is known in France as the atti- tude of Quand meme. The following is a fair sample of the " Don't care," or the natural desire to hush down and pooh-pooh the import- ance of the Archbishop's decision. The Eev. T. 0. Marshall, the Organising Secretary of the English Church Union, writes as follows in The Church Review : I have not met with any one of any school of thought in the Church who is particularly anxious for the judgment to be delivered. Why should we be anxious ? We all know now, and have known for the last twenty yeavs, all that can be said about the seven points at issue. I was told the other day that of all men really anxious in London as to the judgment, it was Cardinal Manning. . . . We are all too busy and too well assured as to our position to trouble our heads as to what the judgment is likely to be, or when it will be delivered. But is it so ? Pace Mr. Marshall, it seems that no less than 136 incumbents of London, members, for the most part, of his own society, were not too busy to assemble last week and hold a meeting expressly to consider the very matter referred to. Their deliberations were long, earnest and exhaustive. They drew up a number of propositions of the highest practical importance. Moreover, The Church Times assures us that these propositions, far from being lightly considered, " had been disseminated throughout the country for a fortnight," and " were re-published with the names of their introducers ". The importance of the meeting and of its work was further marked by a " general expression amongst the clergy that it was advisable that a full and accurate digest of the speeches should be prepared and circulated ". These facts do not at all fit in with Mr. Marshall's descrip- tion of the Anglican body as being too busy to trouble their heads about the judgment. At all events they show that a public profession of nonchalance or indifference is not meant THE EVE OF THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT 5 for a moment to preclude a policy of earnest speech and energetic action. The meeting just mentioned embodied this policy in certain propositions. These lose nothing of their force if read in the light of the speeches which accompanied them. We have the authority of The Church Times for saying that (save only one portion of the last) they " were approved nemine contradicente ". It seems therefore only reasonable to accept these propositions as the authentic and unanimous manifesto of this section of Anglicanism, and the forecast of its future action. They voice what I have endeavoured to express as the Quand meme. The first declares flatly that the Archbishop has no spiritual jurisdiction to try the Bishop of Lincoln, and that the " Synod of the Province " is the only competent tribunal for the purpose. It will be remembered that the one point which the Archbishop has decided is that he has jurisdiction and that his Court is the proper tribunal The 136 in- cumbents, however, review and reverse this, his first decision. One is inclined to ask If it be thus in the green wood, what will it be in the dry ? This first resolution suggests a very far-reaching inquiry. Where is the living authority or Court which can decide what is or is not within the Archbishop's jurisdiction ? I say " living authority," for dead authorities, such as canons and decrees of early councils, obviously require authoritative application and interpretation, so that the question only repeats itself until we find a Court or actual authority to apply, interpret, and enforce them. The second proposition states that the Archbishop, by admitting the spiritual authority of the Privy Council, has deprived his judgment of all spiritual validity. Taken seriously, such a resolution has an ominous signifi- cance. It logically means that Anglicanism will regard as null and worthless all future judgments from Lambeth, until an Archbishop can be found who will claim spiritual juris- 6 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM diction, distinct from and independent of the authority of the Crown, as exercised through the Privy Council. That prac- tically amounts to a self-granted dispensation from ecclesi- astical obedience, and one of which the term extends liberally far into the remote future. It may be fairly doubted if its authors intended it to mean so much, or to carry so far. The third declares that some of the points raised (" altar lights" and "mixed chalice") are matters of "(Ecumenical Authority," and as such are above the interference of even a Provincial Synod, much more of an Archbishop's Court. This resolution lifts the whole question of Anglican practice up to a totally new plane, and places it far beyond the reach of any hostile legislation, whether from Lambeth or St. Stephen's. It means that on these points and presumably on the whole six or seven there exists in England no autho- rity competent to forbid or to restrain their usage. Even the ideal Archbishop of the future, who is to defy the Privy Council, would himself be powerless to deal with them. Here one cannot help congratulating the 136 incumbents upon having entrenched themselves upon immeasurably higher and nobler ground than mere interpretations of suc- cessive editions of the Prayer-book, which seemed to assume that Cranmer, Parker, and their collaborators, were endued with some mystic gift of rubrical finality. We welcome the fact that Anglicanism for the future makes frankly its appeal to authority outside of England, namely, to (Ecumenical Authority. That such an (Ecumenical Authority is not a dead or lapsed, or in abeyance, but must of its nature be a living, speaking, judging, authority, is a further truth to which sincere and logical minds may be trusted to find their way in due season. The last proposition states that any condemnation of the Bishop of Lincoln would affect himself alone, and would have no binding effect upon the belief or action of others. It is not easy to see why, if the third proposition be true, even the Bishop of Lincoln should be held subject to a decision from which every one else is to be free. Then it seems to imply that the Archbishop has power over religious THE EVE OF THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT 7 persons, but not over religious practices. Moreover, it would reduce the Archbishop to the tedious necessity of blowing out only one set of altar lights at a time, and even that only after a troublesome process of litigation. In fact one correspondent of The Church Review gleefully suggests that " should the Bishop of Lincoln be forced into giving up the use of lights personally, a hundred churches should at once adopt them, new centres of Eitualistic influence ". Apparently there are lights which kindle the lights and of a kind which the Archbishop cannot extinguish. It will be thus seen that the attitude which Higher Angli- canism has taken up in view of the authority of Dr. Benson lacks neither boldness nor clearness. The Archbishop has given one judgment that upon his own jurisdiction and he is going to give another. The section of the Anglican body on which, in the person of Dr. King, he is sitting in judgment, proceeds without waiting further to turn the tables, and in an informal court of 136 incumbents, practically sits in judgment upon him. His first decision is rejected without ceremony. His second, which is not yet even delivered, is prospectively nullified and torn in shreds by four separate resolutions. That this defiance of the Lambeth Judgment was the very object of the assembly, and that the forestalling of the decision by a previous refusal to submit was part of a policy advisedly adopted is calmly admitted by The Church Times. The raison d'etre of the meeting was that a protest against the Court itself should be prepared for general acceptation, before the judgment had been pronounced, in order to show that it was un- influenced by its findings ; and also to show what was ultra vires of even a Provincial Synod to forbid. In the meantime the proceedings have not passed without some very outspoken comments from another section of the Church of England. The Record, which claims to voice the Protestant masses of the country, sums up the position as follows : No Court is good enough for the law-breaking clergy, and, on the other hand, every Court has hitherto condemned them. It is 8 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM impossible not to connect these two facts. Giving the very fullest scope for the exercise of self-conceit, it is difficult to believe that the extremists still retain much confidence in the legality of their innovations. They have reached a further stage. They virtually admit their disloyalty to the Reformation. They claim freedom to do and to say whatever they are pleased to think would have been done and said by the "Catholic Church" at some undefined epoch and without attention to the existing laws in either Church or State. That is the present position of the extreme High Church party. It is scarcely necessary to add that it is not only subversive of the union of Church and State, but it is also in sharp antagon- ism to the survival of the Church of England as a Christian body separate from and protesting against the Church of Rome. Such are the conditions and such the mental atmosphere in which an Archbishop of Canterbury has been called to the unwonted task of delivering an authoritative judgment. CHAPTER III. The Vatican Council The Immaculate Conception. (30TH AUGUST, 1890.) ONE reason why an Anglican critic considers that our con- clusions are likely, as far as Anglicans are concerned, to fall short of conviction, is that " the Vatican Council is far too recent in 1870 for ' sincere and logical minds ' not to re- member how the dogma of the Infallibility was not argued but carried by force ". Therein lies a contention which, to be true at all, implies a great deal. Rome with railways and telegraphs in the nineteenth century is not like Eimini in the fourth. Nor is it quite an easy task to " force " an (Ecumenical Council of some 600 bishops. However, to examine it. Let us look the fact fairly in the face. On 18th July, 1870, 533 bishops assembled at the Vatican, solemnly voted the dogma of Papal Infalli- bility. According to the hypothesis, they did not believe in it. Pius IX. forced them to act and speak as if they did. He compelled them to do violence to their conscience, to perjure themselves and deceive the whole Catholic world. THE VATICAN COUNCIL 9 He made them one by one say Placet when they would have wished to say non Placet. More wonderful still ! One would have imagined that when the bishops escaped from Eome and returned to their respective dioceses, then at last they would have been free. Not so. Acting still under the in- fluence of their recent terror, they could not shake off the spell, and they addressed to their flocks eloquent pastorals asking them to accept the dogma as the revealed word of God. In fact, the entire Episcopate more than a thousand bishops in one way or other thus expressed to Eome their hearty adhesion to the Decree. The forcing of the Council in urbe was after all but child's play compared to this achieve- ment of forcing the entire Episcopate in orbe. Then, more wonderful still. The coercion employed for such a gigantic effect could hardly be a hidden one. At least, by those upon whom it was exercised, it must have been seen and felt. And yet, of the 533 bishops, all have either not perceived it or have kept the secret, if they did. In Eome or at home, the majority have not published any expression of protest or complaint. Some, like Cardinal Manning, and men of like calibre of truthfulness in other nations, have even gone out of their way to bear public witness that the Council was absolutely free. Such is the fact of the Forced Council. It is a case of ecclesiastical hypnotism upon a world- wide scale. I have no wish to burlesque it, but rather to state it in its plainest and simplest bearings. It might mean more than I have described, but from its very terms it could not mean less. I cannot doubt that the writer in The Church Times believes it. He would not assert it if he did not. But when he asks others to believe it too, his request will not be found to be an easy one. Many men will feel that this stupendous force-fact is im- measurably harder to accept than Papal Infallibility. The same article finds a further objection "in the Papal Bull of 1854, when the Blessed Virgin's own birth was interpreted in the teeth of pronouncements of the Saints and Doctors of the Church to be like to that of her Divine Son, free from all taint of original sin ". The above is intended to convey with general accuracy the import of 10 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM the definition upon the Immaculate Conception. It would be unfair to treat it as if it were meant for a precise or scientific statement of the doctrine. The terms used, however, are at least suggestive of some measure of mis- conception of its meaning. The exemption of the Blessed Virgin from original sin is in one sense truly enough " like that of her Divine Son ". Exemption is a negative term, and, as such, one exemption must always be very much like another. But in another and positive sense, the two exemptions could hardly be more unlike. It often seems as if a large share of the difficulty which non-Catholics feel in dealing with this doctrine arose from a tendency to approach it by the negative rather than by its positive side. After all, the exempting or the rescuing of a soul from the sin that overshadows human birth is a very real and positive work. It can only be effected by the Holy Spirit entering the soul and excluding the sin by His sanctifying grace. When He does so in the case of souls already some time in being, His indwelling purifies them from original sin already contracted. We call that baptism. When He enters the soul in the first instant of its being, His indwell- ing thereby precludes it from contracting original sin at all. We call that the Immaculate Conception. Both are His work, and one and the same work. The difference between them is radically one of time the difference between the first and a subsequent moment of a soul's existence. The difference is that which lies between a work of prevention and one of cure. (Therein also the root of other differences as to the proneness to evil.) The simple is found in the sublime. But whence is it that the Holy Spirit should do this work in the soul of the Blessed Virgin ? From precisely the same cause that He comes into our souls in baptism the merits of Christ's saving Blood applied to her and to our souls. Thus looked at from its real and positive side, the unlikeness between Christ's exemption and the Blessed Virgin's exemp- THE VATICAN COUNCIL 11 tion stands out in relief. Christ is exempt by right of His Godhead. Sin could have no part in Him. Mary, on the contrary, is exempt only through Christ. Her exemption is His work, insomuch that it is by His merits that the Holy Spirit was sent to operate in her the wonders of His grace in the initial moment of her existence (which we call Con- ception), and that sin was thus precluded from her soul. The two exemptions are not like in the sense of co-ordinates. Hers is subordinate to His, as an effect to its cause. His right is the free and gracious cause of her privilege, just as His atonement is the source of her holiness. There is one sense in which the doctrine ought to com- mend itself to Anglicans. They emphasise, and rightly so, the value and completeness of Christ's atonement. To believe that the Blessed Virgin was by Christ's merits and death saved from original sin, under the shadow of which, in the ordinary course of things, she would have fallen, is to believe that she owes more to the saving Blood of her Son than if, like others, she had merely been purified from the stain of sin already contracted. Her debt to the Redeemer is deeper and her redemption fuller than even that of the least worthy of mankind. She is of all human beings the one who owes most to the saving merits of Christ's precious Blood the one who more than all others " rejoices in God her Saviour ". Hence to us the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception glorifies and enhances the doctrine of the Atonement. Then, as to the Bull of 1854. The writer may not be aware that the Bull Ineffabilis was not issued until Pius IX. had long and carefully consulted the Church at large and elicited the opinion of all the bishops and all the seats of theological learning in Catholic Christendom. The Pope did nothing more than define what he found by universal and irrefragable testimony, to be taught and believed by the whole Church throughout the Catholic world. The Bishops of the Church assembled, as at Nicaea, Trent or the Vatican, are the Church in Council. The bishops teaching in their sees throughout the world are the Church 12 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM diffused. But the Church, whether in Council or diffused collecta vel dispersa is infallible in her teaching. The definition of Papal Infallibility was the utterance of the Church in Council. The definition of the Immaculate Con- ception was the utterance of the Church diffused. If I mistake not this principle the authority of utter- ances of the Church diffused as co-ordinate with those of the Church in Council finds recognition from leading Anglican writers. Thus, Mr. Gore, in his Roman Catholic Claims, says : A General Council is not a necessity. It was impossible for one set of causes for the first 300 y^ars, but all through that period men like Irenseus and Tertullian were not prevented from arriving at the mind of the Church by the comparison of traditions. "The i'udgment of tha Church diffusive," says Mr. Wilberforce, "is no ess binding than that of the Church collective " (p. 52). Then the writer assures us that " Anglicans have no intention to fall in the Scylla of Popery, but they do mean to steer boldly through the Charybdis of Protestant in- tolerance ". No need to say that we wish heartily well to Anglicanism in its struggle against the drag-down in- fluence of the Charybdis (which is, perhaps, a new name for the Church Association), and that we pray that it may land upon no worse Scylla than the Rock of which our Lord spoke when He promised that powers like those of the Charybdis " shall not prevail against it ". But the writer proceeds to say that Anglicanism " has, from the beginning, held the Six (Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church as its heritage for ever ; they are the foundation of its Canon Law, and what is laid down by those Councils forms part of its doctrine and discipline ". From the beginning? But at the beginning, how beauti- fully the early English Church expressed it : "First of all admonishing that the pure and holy faith of the Council of Nice shall be by all who are enlisted in God's service, firmly and faithfully held ... so that they "(the priests) "shall in all things hold, profess, and preach the Apostolic faith approved of the Holy Ghost in the Six General Councils as it has been de- WHY NOT AN ANGLICAN PATRIARCHATE ? 13 livered to us by the Holy Roman Church, and, if need be, they shall not fear to lay down their lives for the same, and whomsoever the General "Councils receive they shall receive, and whomsoever they condemn, they shall from their hearts reject and condemn " (Council of Chalcuyth, A.D. 785, Wilkins, i., 146). In those days English faith was evidently Eoman as well as Catholic. But if it be a revealed truth that the Pope is infallible, and that the Blessed Virgin is immaculate, why should it have taken eighteen centuries for the Church to find it out ? For a reason which is very simple. The body of revealed truth the Deposit of Faith, as we call it was indeed given to the Church once and for all at the beginning. It closed with the last inspired writer. It is " the Faith once de- livered to the Saints ". But the Church's explicit knowledge of what is contained in this body of revealed truth is not instantaneous, but progressive. The Holy Spirit's gift of Revelation to the Church is over and done with, but His work of enlightening the mind of the Church to see more and more clearly its inner truths, and to draw forth the conclusions which it contains, is of a necessity gradual and evolutionary and spread over the ages. It required 325 years to call forth the definition of the consubstantiality of Christ at Nicaea, and every General Council since then marks a stage of fuller and clearer insight and expression. CHAPTER IV. Why not an Anglican Patriarchate ? (27TH SEPTEMBER, 1890.) A CORRESPONDENT, who fears the signs of the times as preparing the way for a Canterbury Popedom, expresses in an Anglican journal l the following views on the prerogative of the Archbishop : For if Teutonic Christianity which, failing a German reformed Episcopate, is best expressed in the Anglo-Catholic Church through- out the world, is to hold its own against the consolidated Latin 1 The Church Times. 14 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Episcopate under the Pope, it must be consolidated itself also into one compact mass by frequent assemblies around one chair strong in associations and in influence presiding, not ruling, amongst co- equal brethren, each holding his voice and vote in freedom. A bright feature in the future of Anglicanism would be the union of the entire Anglican body throughout the English- speaking world into one Patriarchate. Then the " Church Catholic," according to the Anglican conception of the name, would go forth, like one of those triple stars of which astro- nomers tell us, on its mission of light revolving around its threefold centre Eome, Moscow and Canterbury. Three obstacles stand in the way. The first is the temper of Anglicanism itself. The idea of jurisdiction or control enters into the very meaning of a Patriarchate that is to say, if we are to take the institution in its Catholic and historic sense, and any other sense would in the present instance be hardly worth considering. "That he may have power" were the words in which the Council of Nicaea (Canon 6) first makes mention of a Patriarch. That this Nicaean " power " means power of confirmation, visitation and appeal is the practical interpre- tation given to the words by subsequent history. Hence to realise the idea of a Patriarchate it would not be enough for Anglican prelates " all over the world " to accept Can- terbury as the capital of Anglicanism, to regard it as their common centre and meeting ground, or to invest its Arch- bishop with a right to precede and to preside after the Pan-Anglican precedent at their assemblies. That would be a presidence an utterly un-Catholic ideal but not a Patriarchate. The presidence is the shadow. The Patri- archate is the substance. To create and to preserve visible and organic unity is a visible and organic work, and work proceeds from substance and not from shadow. But the substance cannot be had without its price. It would mean that Anglican prelates outside England would now, and in the future, allow the Archbishop of Canterbury to confirm their elections, visit their dioceses, and decide their appeals. Is it likely ? WHY NOT AN ANGLICAN PATRIARCHATE ? 15 The second obstacle lies in the system of Anglicanism. Its theory of the jurisdictional equality of bishops and the independence of sees is, strictly speaking, fatal to the very idea of a Patriarchate, except, of course, as a matter of mutual arrangement. The "tree system" by which one local church is supposed to go forth from another, take root for itself, and grow up independent of its parent-tree, reduces all unities greater than the diocese to the rank of a shadowy abstraction. A grove of trees is not an organisation, nor has it organic unity. The same reason the equality of bishops which is invoked to justify the separation of the Anglican Church from the Patriarchate of the West, will justify any Colonial Church in withdrawing its allegiance from the See of Canterbury. There is thus in the very household life of Anglicanism a law which prevents it from keeping its children under its own control. Such a law works adversely to the organic unity of the proposed Patri- archate. Neither are Colonial Churches, with their self- seeking temperament, slow to see the point or to act upon it. 1 A third obstacle is the liability of Anglican Churches, when disestablished, to fall a prey to ecclesiastical democracy. When such churches, by virtue of the centrifugal law at work in Ireland, Canada, British Columbia, achieve their autonomy, there at once of necessity arises the question of 1 Compare the following from The Church Times : " It will be re- membered that, in accordance with a resolution passed in the Canadian Provincial Synod, in the year 1886, a committee was appointed to con- sider the advisability of consolidating the Canadian Church, at present divided into various fragments, with no central authority to give cohesion. The committee reported in favour of a scheme of unification at the next session, in 1889, and hence, on the loth of August last, a Conference of Bishops was held at Winnipeg, and the consolidation of the various dioceses and provinces of British North America into a Canadian Church, with a Primate at its head, independent of Canterbury, will soon be an accomplished fact. According to the scheme drawn up at Winnipeg, Eastern Canada will, aa it now is, remain a province, the North-West will constitute a second province, and British Columbia will possibly constitute a third, and the Primate will of course be elected out of the Metropolitans. The Canadian Church, therefore, has taken an im- portant step. Following the example of the South African Church, it becomes a sister Church to that which owns the primacy of Canter- bury, and stands on an equal footing with the independent Church in the United States." 16 a constitution, and therein the inevitable spectre of lay re- presentation. They have hardly freed themselves from the thrall of the Koyal Supremacy and the Privy Council when they find them under the heavier yoke of the Synod and King Layman. Disestablishment or " independence " means a Synod, and one in which the masses of the laity will have a say an influential, if not a preponderating say even in matters of liturgy and doctrine. But it is precisely these masses which are still what Anglicans call "Protestant," and often of a Protestantism of an unpleasantly pronounced and Puritanical kind. What chance would men like the Bishop of Lincoln have in any Synod in which such an element was adequately represented? What measure of toleration would be given to the Real Presence, the Con- fessional, the lights, vestments and incense, and the other accessories so rightly dear to the hearts of Higher Anglicans in any of these assemblies ? Nor would it accord with the Anglican theory of the authority of Church teaching that John Brown should be called away for an hour from his farm or shop to decide in Synod what doctrine his clergy- man was to teach back to him for a corresponding hour on the following Sunday. Here there is at work another principle, this time not of organic but of doctrinal disinte- gration, and Anglicans are not slow to foresee and appreciate the danger of it. I quote from The Church Times : Unhappily, the Winnipeg Conference, in discussing the question of Synodical Government, has been led away into the devious paths of lay representation, whither the sister Church of the States has already wandered, and with disastrous results. The Canadian Bishops devise a scheme including the admission of laymen into the General Synod, whose province is to make laws concerning not only discipline, but also doctrine and worship. Unwarned by the difficulties of the Irish Church, that of Canada saddles itself with a burden which will probably do more to hinder real progress than any amount of opposition from outside, and in refusing to recognise its function as an ecclesia docens, will narrow the field where it can create an ecclesia discens. Ah, yes ! But is it such an easy problem to maintain a Church Teaching and a Church Taught (which holds its tongue and pays) upon a Reformation basis? and are Canadian Bishops, who have lambs like the Toronto Orange- A THREEFOLD RIFT 17 men in their flocks, so very much to be blamed if they feel that such a solution is wildly impracticable and if they quietly bow to the inevitable. Some day the problem may present itself nearer home, and one can only hope that be- fore then Anglicanism will have sufficiently permeated and educated the masses to convince them that lay represen- tation in a doctrinal Synod inverts the very idea of a Church and means the sheep leading and pasturing the shepherds. When Anglicanism has taught the nation the meaning and force of a Church Teaching in relation to a Church Taught, and the English people have learned the lesson (and un- learned the lesson of the English Eef ormation) , the problem of lay representation will have solved itself, and we shall be many steps nearer to the great goal of the one Fold and the one Shepherd. CHAPTER V. A Threefold Rift Monasticism, Ritual and Orders. (llTH OCTOBEB, 1890.) A CHUECH Congress is said to be an annual photograph of the Church of England. One can readily conceive that the picture, as presented by the meeting at Hull in 1890, is far from being either a perfect or complete one. But the main features of the landscape are there. The low-lying flats of Evangelicanism occupy only too much of the foreground. Beyond them are the heights of Anglicanism. Perhaps never before was more plainly portrayed the ever-widening breach which yawns between. Three papers brought out, with lurid effect, the depth of the cleavage. The first dealt with the question of Brotherhoods. The scheme for the establishment of religious orders, working on the lines of poverty, celibacy and obedience, found an able advocate in Archdeacon Farrar. He was, if anything, over- anxious to impress upon his audience that the proposed Brotherhoods would be something widely different from their 2 18 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Roman and monastic prototypes. Vows, if they were to be taken at all, were to be dispensable at sight. Vows mon- astic ones are not a sort of obligation which can easily be made to be pleasing or popular to a Protestant assembly. The Archdeacon sought to soften the hard word by confess- ing his own inability to " see any difference between a vow and a solemn promise ". He also pointed out an argument which his audience would be more ready to appreciate, namely, that to baulk the project would be to play into the hands of Rome. Their loss would be Rome's gain. That is quite true. To oppose the monastic principle is to put one's self mentally at war with all Christian antiquity. It is going out of one's way to make the theory of Anglican historic continuity more hopelessly hopeless. To the Church monasticism is both an ideal and a weapon. As an ideal, it satisfies a sacred yearning in multitudes of generous and devoted souls, who are fired by a love which is irresistible in "finding its way". If Anglicanism cannot make room for them, they will come to those who can. Then monasticism is a weapon without which a Church militant would feel herself sorely beset in battling with the forces of sin. It is the old sword with which this country was conquered for Christ. It requires to be held in hand, if the conquest is to be kept for Him. That Anglicanism, in this hour of its peril and crisis, should seek to draw it and wield it for Christ, is surely a fact which does credit both to the mind and the heart of its leaders. One may hope, therefore, that they will find amongst their body at least one high priest who will unwrap it from the cloth behind the ephod, and hand it to those who will receive it with the eager zeal of David. " There is none like that. Give it to me." Would such a gain be Rome's loss ? We may be allowed to doubt it. Let us suppose that Anglicanism succeeds in carrying out its projected establishment of Brotherhoods. Secondly, let us suppose that it further succeeds in finding men in sufficient numbers and with a sufficiently large measure of self-renunciation and the temper of obedience to make the movement a success. Finally, let us suppose A THKEEFOLD RIFT 19 (we are supposing a great deal !) that Anglicanism thus succeeds in breaking down the traditional prejudices with which the monastic system is regarded by the masses of the English people. In their success we should read our own. We should feel that the whole outcome of the movement was practically and publicly to refute one of the main theses of the Eeformation, and to remove one misunderstanding the more which lies between the One True Church and the mind of the English nation. The opposition to the scheme of Brotherhoods living in celibacy was heartily voiced by Dr. Eyle, the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool. Archdeacon Farrar had said that not 5 per cent, of the masses were touched by the Church of England. Dr. Eyle joins in the sorrowful admission : On one point I entirely agree with Archdeacon Farrar. I admit without reserve that the condition of a vast proportion of the lower orders in many of our large overgrown parishes, both morally and socially, is simply deplorable. It is useless to shut our eyes to it. I dwell in Liverpool, the second city in the Queen's dominions, and I know what I say. There is a state of things in some quarters of all our cities, within a short walk of grand town-halls and palaces, which cries to heaven against England, and is enough to make angels weep. The class of whom I speak, remember, are not infidels or reasoning sceptics, like many of the upper ten thousand in our clubs and squares. Nothing of the kind ! the mental posi- tion of the immense majority is utter indifference to all religion. They are not touched either by church or chapel. They drift on without Christ, without God, and, of course, without any moral standard. They are rightly called "the dangerous classes" by our French neighbours ; and no wonder. For they are a standing danger to Church, and State, and social order. They have nothing to lose by a general scramble, and are always ready to become the prey of those talking meddlers who delight to set labour against capital, to encourage discontent, and to make a living out of the ignorance of their fellow-creatures. These dangerous classes have stirred the heart of Archdeacon Farrar, and I sympathise with him entirely. With this point of fact, all agreement between the Bishop and the Archdeacon ceased, and the old battle of High Church and Low Church was delivered amain. Brother- hoods were needless. The actual machinery, if well worked 2* 20 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM was sufficient. Brotherhoods were impracticable. Men or means in requisite numbers would never be forthcoming. Brotherhoods would be mischievous. They would never fit in with the parochial clergy. Brotherhoods and vows of celibacy were historic failures. Experience does not favour " will- worship " and self-imposed asceticism. Such things have a great show of wisdom, and are very taking for a season with ignorant and shallow Christians. But they only "satisfy the flesh ". What would such " ignorant or shallow Christians " as St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Martin, St. Patrick, St. Columba, St. David, St. Benedict, St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Cuthbert, or St. Bede all monks and members of monastic brotherhoods have said could they have been present at Hull and heard the wonderful words of this Anglican Bishop upon the sys- tem which was to them the highest ideal of Christianity ? A Canon of the Council of Ancyra in A.D. 314 commands that any one who has vowed virginity and then broken his vow shall be considered as guilty as he who commits bigamy (Canon 18). St. John Chrysostom (before A.D. 374) wrote to a monk who had broken his vows and returned to the world, to tell him that he was an apostate, and that until he did penance he had forfeited all hope of salvation (Epist. ad Theodorum lapsum). Evidently between the mind of St. John and the mind of Dr. Eyle the angle of divergence is not far short of a hundred and eighty. A second paper which came to divide was upon that perpetual Anglican problem the setting of the " due limits of ritual ". The Bishop of Guildford went at once to the heart of the question : "And here lam confronted with this difficulty we want the due limits of ritual denned. But who is to define them ? " He contended that the Convocations were the proper bodies to accom- plish this work, and he suggested that in accordance with historical precedent there should be a National Synod. The following was the appeal made by Lord Halifax, President of the English Church Union : A THREEFOLD RIFT 21 The Church of England to-day stands at the parting of two ways. Never had she greater opportunities opening out before her ; never, perhaps, did greater dangers seem to imperil her future. How, he asked, in view of the attacks that are being made upon it it is a question which presses increasingly upon us all is the faith of Christendom to be defended, except on the basis of "the quod semper, the quod ubique, and the quod ab omnibus ". It will be said, perhaps, that these externals of worship are not essential. I know that they are not essential, but I know also and it is impossible to ignore the fact that under existing circumstances, to strike at the ritual is to strike at the doctrine with which that ritual is connected. The reply to this touching plea was made by the Low Church in the person of Canon Bardsley. His argument was plain and irresistible. He showed that all that Angli- cans are now contending for, both in their ritual and what their ritual symbolises, is the very negation of what the Anglican Church herself had done at the Eeformation, and meant the introduction of doctrines and practices which the highest authorities of Anglicanism itself had consistently disavowed and repudiated. The Canon had a wealth of historic testimony to prove his thesis. Bishop Wordsworth, of St. Andrews, says that the minister's position was changed " because the doctrine was changed. At the Reformation the Mass, with its doctrine of sacrifice and adoration, was given up, and Holy Communion introduced. Nothing else will account for the universal disuse of the position formerly used. The change, therefore, was made on principle." If these weighty words of the Bishop of St. Andrews require any confirmation, it will be found by comparing the service for Holy Communion, either in King Edward's second Liturgy, or in our present Prayer-book, with the Sarum Missal of pre-Reformation times. I will only name one fact, but it is thoroughly characteristic of the difference which runs throughout. In the Sarum Missal we have the word " altar " more than thirty times, whilst in our present, and in King Edward's Second Prayer-book, it does not occur once as describing the Holy Table. The following is also significant : That the Mass, with its doctrine of sacrifice and adoration, was given up, and Holy Communion introduced, is assumed both by Dr. Whitgift (who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury), in his controversy with Dr. Cartwright, the Puritan divine, and by Hooker, in regard to the use of the word "priest". Whilst asserting that 22 ASPECTS OP ANGLICANISM the word is derived from presbyter, Whitgift asks, "What is the use of differing about a word, when we are agreed as to the thing contained in the word ? As heretofore use hath made it to be taken for a sacrificer, so will use now alter that signification, and make it to be taken for a minister of the Gospel." Hooker declares that " sacrifice is now no part of the Church ministry," and, " as for the people, when they hear the name, it draweth no more their minds to any cogitation of sacrifice than the name of a senator or an alderman causes them to think upon old age ". The late Archbishop Lougley, during his last illness, in the charge which he prepared for his clergy, declares that "the obvious aim of our Reformers was to substitute the Communion for the Mass ". If Higher Anglicans love dearly the doctrines and ritual which they hold to be " Catholic," how difficult it must be, in the face of such testimony from within, to believe that unbroken historic continuity can be found for one or the other within the Establishment ! Perhaps the most striking proposition was that which came from the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin on the matter of " Home Ee-union ". Nonconformists, he held, might be united to the Church provided they accepted the Historic Episcopate. But their ministers? Would they submit to re-ordination ? The Archbishop suggests a com- promise : Upon the one hand, the Historic Episcopate (as distinguished from pronouncement respecting its origin or perpetuation) must be accepted as a basis of all future Church government. Less than this we cannot demand, not merely as a matter of conscience on our own parts, but also because it is only on the observance of this condition that the permanence of organic unity can, in our opinion, be secured. But, on the other hand, while thus requiring that for the future Holy Orders shall in all cases be episcopally conferred, we must not, in my opinion, demand that all existing ministers who have received Orders from other sources shall be re-ordained. I need not adduce the reasons, to my mind conclusive, which learned and loyal members of our own Church have given for the belief that our Church has full power, without any deviation from principle or from precedent, to make this concession. Enough to repeat my own conviction, that unless we can see our way to make it. Home Re-union, so far as we are concerned, must, I fear, be regarded as nothing more than a splendid dream. Higher Anglicans believe that episcopal ordination is essential to him who consecrates the Eucharist, and that "RECONCILIATION" OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 23 for a person not so ordained to usurp the sacred function would be a scandalous profanation. Yet here is an Angli- can prelate the representative of the Anglican Church in Ireland calmly proposing to admit such ministers into his churches, and commit his people to their ministrations. When such a voice is heard from those who hold the helm, may not sincere men who sail in the ship well feel anxious for their safety ? CHAPTER VI. The " Reconciliation " of St. Paul's Cathedral. (25TH OCTOBER, 1890.) THE public " Eeconciliation " of St. Paul's marks a fresh itape, in the march of Anglicanism. The fact implies so much latent recognition of Catholic principle, that one is led to believe that the current of Anglican thought is travel- ling faster and farther than even those who are carried on its breast would be willing to acknowledge. The Church Times is abundantly right when it measures the distance covered by comparing the ready facility with which the reconciliation has been conceded and carried out last week, and the im- possibility which would have attached to such a proceeding even so late as the last century. Some foolish persons argue that because suicides have taken place at St. Paul's before this particular one, and no service of re- conciliation has followed, therefore it would have been quite suf- ficient to have allowed the old bad state of neglect to continue. It shows a remarkable growth in the religious education of the people that the reasonableness and even necessity of the course adopted by the Dean and Chapter have been generally recognised, and that a service, not even attempted before at St. Paul's in the present century, has become possible under present conditions. Henceforward, the soul of the " Aggrieved Parishioner " will have a double sorrow to bear. He has had to stand by while the chief Protestant Cathedral in the land one of the very few that were born and bred in Protestantism en- throned the Madonna above its high altar. Now he has had 24 ASPECTS OP ANGLICANISM to fold his arms and look on while the whole fabric receives " priestly absolution " ! Little wonder if the fact has so worked on his mind that he is prepared to bear witness that he detected some of the City men in the act of worshipping the reredos ! The " Eeconciliation " at St. Paul's is marked off from any compromise-like ceremony elsewhere or in previous times by the fact that there was no suspension of celebrations or services between the pollution and the reconciliation. Either it was felt that the stain was not inconsistent with the religious use of the church, or that the services were not of a kind to be seriously affected by the stain, but all went on as before until such time as the Dean and Chapter could con- veniently arrange for a service of reconciliation. The tiresome people who thrust logic into all things under the specious names of common-sense or consistency, may be expected to flourish the dilemma that either the pollution rendered the church unfit for service or it did not. If it did, no service should have been held in it. If it did not, then no recon- ciliation was needed. Such reasoners need to be reminded that the world has to find room for lovers of peace as well as for lovers of principle, and that besides the beauty of logic there is also the beauty of compromise. It is the latter that clothes and gives the charm to that masterly policy which conciliates two opposite sets of minds, leading each to believe that it has substantially gained its point, and that whatever it lacks of finished success is a mere concession to soften the fall of its opponent. Some such solution and from the facts, it is hard to discover any other seems to be present in the mind of The Church Eeview : Ijb was consonant with the genius of the Church of England, which abhors ostentation, noise and fuss. At the same time, a better and more logical course would have been to have closed the cathedral directly the suicide took place. After there have been daily Eucharists and frequent services for a fortnight, the Office of Reconciliation has the appearance, at least, of unreality, and at best is but a compromise intended to satisfy both the outside world and the natural instincts of people with reverential minds. "RECONCILIATION" OP ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 25 The spirit of compromise seems also to have found its way very far into the manner in which the ceremony was carried out. The following was the ritual adopted according to the account given in The Church Review : The Bishop then advanced, accompanied by his chaplain, to the altar, which was draped only in deep crimson, and bore neither lights nor flowers. Here, with the light only of a single waxen taper falling upon his face and book, he knelt while the Litany was monotoned. After this, the Miserere was sung, the alternate verses being taken by the Rev. W. Russell and the choir, with solemn and beautiful effect, as every worshipper under the half-lit dome knelt with bowed heads. There was a brief pause ere the Bishop rose, and standing in the misty gloom, upon the altar steps, recited the sentences in the Commination Service, the choir and congregation joining to make the responses. The Collect from the same office, asking pardon for them " whose consciences by sin are accused," and the prayer and confession following were next offered by the Bishop, who then said, "Let the Sentence of Re- conciliation now be read," and Mr. Lee again came to the choir rails, and read. . . . " The operative clause " of the sentence was in the follow- ing terms : And whereas the said petitioners have humbly besought us to be pleased to pronounca such sentence of reconciliation, and to perform such service within the said cathedral church as may be required by the ecclesiastical laws or may to us seem meet and suitable, therefore, we, the said Frederick, Lord Bishop of London, do, by virtue of and in exercise of our episcopal authority, hereby pronounce, decree and declare the said cathedral church to be exempt and reconciled from all canonical impediment and from every profanation contracted and incurred by or through the afore- said acts of suicide and blood-shedding for ever by this our definite sentence or final decree, which we give and promulge by these presents. Mr. Lee carried the document he had read to the chaplain, who handed it to the Bishop, who affixed his signature to it, and after the final blessing had been pronounced, the strange office so seldom heard was at an end. The whole of this ceremony has all the air of being ancient and liturgical. The strange fact is that it is neither one nor the other. No part or period of Christendom ever witnessed such a ceremony as described above, before the Eeformation. It may surely be doubted if the compilers of 26 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM the Prayer-book ever intended the Commination Service to be pressed into such a purpose. On the other hand, neither the Sarum use which obtained in such cases before the Eeformation, nor the form which is given in the Pontifical of Egbert of York (A.D. 732), presents any recognisable likeness to the function in St. Paul's. The Pontifical of Egbert requires a " Mass of Eecon- ciliation," with appropriate Collects, Secret and Post Communion, and a triple blessing at the end. Another Anglo-Saxon Pontifical, dating from the eighth century, requires the whole church to be thrice sprinkled with holy water, and then certain prayers (found also in Egbert's Pontifical) to be recited. According to the Sarum use which was followed in England before the Eeformation (and which is at most but a modification or variety of the Eoman rite) the ceremony would have been as follows : 1. The Bishop in pontificals would have prostrated him- self before the altar while the clergy recited the Litany of the Saints. 2. After the prayers, he would have three times sprinkled the church with holy water (using also as in the Consecration Service, salt, ashes and wine). 3. After a special preface, he would have incensed the church three times. 4. The relics of the saints would then have been borne in procession back to the church from the place to which they had been removed. 5. After certain prayers and the triple blessing, the Bishop would have sung the " Mass of ^Reconciliation " with its beautiful Introit, and of which the Collect, Secret and Post Communion are the same as given in Egbert's Pontifical. It is a far cry from the ancient liturgical rite to the modern adaptation carried out by the Bishop of London. The chief value of the Anglican ceremony is, that it helps to give public recognition to the belief that God can bless places as well as persons, and through the ministry of the Church can restore to both the blessing when lost. That there is an objective holiness or sacredness which God, the Author of all holiness, can attach to things and places, is a belief ALTAR AGAINST ALTAR 27 which is interwoven with the whole system of Christian worship from Apostolic times. The blessings and exorcisms of the earliest ritual extant bear witness to it. There is much in the temper of the times which is opposed to it. The Broad Church, with its pride of mind and Manichean hatred of matter, seems bent upon ignoring the essential dualism of the plan of the Creation and the Incarnation, and would mutilate both by driving the material out of religion. The Low Church, with its pride of person, seems unwilling to allow God to bless any part of His own work except the soul of the believer, and to resent the " sacer- dotalism " by which God deigns to make His gift pass through the human hand of His ministry. Both these schools of religious thought claim to represent Christianity. It is certainly not the Christianity of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, nor of the earliest liturgies, and Christianity, which is modern or amateur rather than historic, forfeits all rational claim to be Catholic. When Anglicanism thus publicly protests against both by an act which formally recognises the objective sacredness of place, it is doing good and sensible service and making one more step to put itself in line with Christian antiquity. Local reconciliation is not, as a rather popular writer has called it, " an importa- tion of the Middle Ages," but a phase and application of a principle the blessing of things and places as well as persons which is as ancient as the ceremonies of baptism or the rite of dedication. One can only hope that, now that Anglicanism has secured the recognition of the principle, that, when occasion presents itself, it will learn to give to it a liturgical expression more frank and less feeble than that which marked its ceremonial at St. Paul's Cathedral. CHAPTER VII. Altar Against Altar. (22ND NOVEMBER, 1890.) LET us be Anglicans just for the space of a few paragraphs. " The Establishment is a true branch of the Holy Catholic 28 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Church. Its bishops are the Catholic episcopate of this land just as truly and as rightfully as are the bishops of Italy, France, or Spain in their respective countries. As bishops of the Catholic Church they alone in this realm hold the sacred authority which belongs to those ' whom the Holy Ghost has appointed to rule the Church of God '. And the Romanists ? The nature of their position is obvious. They are intruders and schismatics. In open violation of the Canons of Christian antiquity, they come here to ' set up altar against altar,' and both deny and defy the authority of the lawful Catholic Church of the country. The Bishop of Rome who sends them hither is the author of their intrusion and the abettor of their schism. His action is an open and sustained violation of the ordinary laws of Church government." Now let us go to Bath. We are at a public meeting. That bishop on one side of the platform is Lord A. C. Harvey (the Anglican, namely, the true, and rightful, Catholic Bishop of Bath and Wells, who condemns the Bishop of Rome, who sets altar against altar, and sends priests of the Romanist schism who come as intruders into this realm and rob the souls which live in the house which the Church built). The dignitary near him is Dr. Words- worth (the Anglican, namely, the true, rightful Catholic Bishop of Salisbury, who, as above). Now to the busi- ness of the meeting. It is only to help, to start, and to support a new and Reformed Church in Italy. The new movement is being inaugurated by Count Campello (not the Catholic Count Campello, but the one who was formerly a priest of the Church of Rome). 1 Count Campello is to work amongst the Italians. A college under an efficient professor is to be founded for training priests to assist the Count in his campaign. This mission is one of ecclesiastical privateering in the territory of the Bishops of Italy. 1 Count Campello has since returned to the fold of the Catholic Church, and has made a most earnest and edifying abjuration of his errors, and has publicly expressed his deep sorrow for the scandal of his apostasy. ALTAE AGAINST ALTAR 29 Nothing without the Bishop was the great and ancient rule of Catholic order in Church work. It is based upon the injunctions contained in St. Ignatius's letter to the Catholics of Smyrna in the second century. Count Cam- pello has a work to carry out in more than one diocese of Italy. In every case it will have to be done altogether "without the Bishop". In every case it will have to be done against the Bishop. But Lord A. C. Harvey and Dr. Wordsworth, being Anglican, and therefore Catholic Bishops, cannot consistently approve that ! Cannot ? The first-mentioned Bishop takes the chair at the meeting held for the purpose. He addresses it as follows : Italy was no longer, as was once sarcastically said, a mere geo- graphical expression. It now expressed a united people of one blood, of one race, and with common political and social interests in the world. All this invested the cause with very great interest, because the more they felt the importance of the position Italy now held in the world as a nation the more they must feel the vital im- portance of that nation being influenced by the Church of Christ and guided on true Christian principles. Therefore, they felt it to be all the more incumbent upon them as far as it was in their power to help the people to acquire true notions of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He concluded by announcing his willingness to become President of the local branch of the Association formed to support the movement. Now for one Catholic Bishop (we are still Anglicans holding the Branch or Province theory as we do the Credo) to send a priest in amongst the flock of another Catholic Bishop, to work there without the said Bishop's consent, and in defiance of his authority, is an open outrage upon all canonical order. It is ecclesiastical burglary. It is the act of house-breaking applied to a diocese. The fact that it is not knives and spoons but souls that are being raided upon does not go far to lessen the colour of the ecclesiastical felony. When Lord A. C. Harvey puts himself at the head of this adventure one expects Dr. Wordsworth to step in and rescue his fellow-Bishop from the un-Catholic position in which he is plainly placing himself. This is how he does it : 30 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM The Bishop of Salisbury moved : " That the Italian Church Re- formers, under Count Campello, are deserving of the deep sympathy and effective support of the members of the Church of England". He said they had heard general principles laid down by their own Bishop, which he was very thankful to hear from him. That was to say, it was no feeling of wishing to intermeddle, but a feeling of real interest on the part of the Church, that the time had now come when they must in public show themselves ready to sympathise with those who were attempting to carry on the cause of the refor- mation of the Church in Italy. It was always held that Bishops had a double relation, both towards the Church of which they were Bishops and towards the Church universal, that there might be times when it was their duty to come forward to intervene in the affairs of foreign Churches. At the same time they knew it was an extremely delicate thing to do. They kept as much as possible in the background, and would willingly give up their interest and inter- ference as far as they had practised it in favour of any qualified person on the spot. Three things are clear as A, B, C. A. No honest man can hold a principle and publicly advocate its opposite. In political life such a double-dealer would be howled off the hustings. B. Either Anglican bishops, such as Lord A. C. Harvey and Dr. Wordsworth themselves, do not really be- lieve in the principles of the Branch theory and its logical consequences ; or C. They believe in those principles, but put them in their pocket, while they preside over a meeting which is held for the express purpose of violating them. In the name of Christian charity, we believe in B. It is happily out of the question to suppose that men like the two prelates mentioned could be believers in the Branch theory, and could, with such a belief in their hearts, stand before the face of the public to play the part of trimmers and hypocrites. The incident only proves that nothing but Truth can stand the strain of Fact. The kindliness of Anglican sympathy is much too honest and robust to be held in bonds by the spinners of theories. At the psychological moment it casts theory to the theorists, and goes out in practical sympathy to the "loneliness " of Count Campello and takes his hand and bids him God-speed in his campaign against the Pope, in tones as hearty and as genuine as those which echoed CONTINUITY LETTERS OLD AND NEW 31 from the lips of Luther or Cranmer. Only to-morrow, they will remember their lesson, and we shall be gravely assured once more that the " ' Venerable Primate of the West ' and his Bishops are the true Catholic authority of the Church of Italy". CHAPTER VIII. Continuity Letters Old and New. (22ND NOVEMBEB, 1890.) HEBE are extracts from three letters. The first was sent by the Bishop of London, through his chaplain, in November, 1890, to those who took offence at the Eeconciliation Service at St. Paul's : I am desired by the Bishop of London to write in answer to your letter to say that he does not consider the Church of England to be now, or to have ever been, a branch of the Church of Rome. The Bishop does not think that further explanation is necessary. Compare this with Letter No. 2. In the year 1246 the Abbots and Priors of England wrote a letter to the Pope. They write as his " devoted sons " and " kissing the blessed feet ". Their witness as to the Church of England in their day is as follows : " Up to this moment glorious things have been said of the ' City of God,' namely, of the English Church, which is a special member of the Most Holy Church of Rome ". l Now that is passing strange. These dignitaries of the Eng- lish Church assure the Pope in an official document that the said English Church is a "special member" of the Church of Eome. One would imagine that they ought to know, considering that they lived at the time and were themselves actual members of the English Church, and high officers in her councils and convocations. One would even imagine that they might know their own religion and the status of their own Church almost as well as the Bishop of London, who writes on the subject some six hundred years after the time. Yet the Bishop of London is able to assure his cor- respondent that the Church of England " has never been a 1 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora (Roll Series), vol. iv., p. 531. 32 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM branch of the Church of Borne " ! How it could never have been a branch (as the Bishop of London says) and yet have been not only a member, but a " special member " of the Church of Eome (as the Abbots and Priors of 1246 declare) and how the Bishop of London in 1890 can know the position and attitude of the ancient English Church better than the dignitaries of the said Church who lived at the time well, that we presume is a point upon which it may be said that " the Bishop of London does not think that any further explanation is necessary ". Letter No. 3. The following was sent by the Nobles and Commons of England in 1245 to Pope Innocent IV. (It is noteworthy that it was written at a moment when the realm was exasperated by the monetary exactions of the Curia, and when the amicable relations of England to Rome were upon this matter strained to their uttermost. It therefore registers the temper of English Catholics at the moment when the anti-curial feeling had reached its highest point of pressure.) " To the Eeverend Father in Christ, Pope Innocent, Chief Bishop, the Nobles with the whole commonalty of the realm of England send commendation, with kissing of the blessed feet. " Our Mother, the Church of Eome we love with all our hearts as our duty is. We are zealous for the increase of her honour with as much affection as we may, as the one to whom we ought always to fly for refuge, whereby the grief lying upon the child may find comfort at the mother's hand. This succour the Mother is found to impart so much the more to her child in the measure that she findeth him kind and generous in relieving her necessity. Neither is it to our said Mother unknown, how beneficial and bountiful a giver this realm of England hath been now and for long time past, for the fuller amplification of her greatness, as appeared by our yearly subsidy, which we call Peter Pence. Now the said Church, not content with this yearly subsidy, hath sent divers legates for other contributions at sundry and divers times, to be taxed and levied out of the said realm, all of which contributions and taxes, notwithstanding, have been lovingly and liberally granted." l 1 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora (Boll Series), vol. iv., p. 441. THE KECEPTION OF THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT 33 Trunk and branch Body and member Mother and child which is the more eloquent and expressive living and loving type of relationship ? CHAPTER IX. The Reception of the Lambeth Judgment. (GTH DECEMBEK, 1890.) THE Lambeth Judgment, whatever its final effect may be, has served to diagnose the Church of England. The de- gree in which such qualities as unity or authority are wanting to her constitution has been made plain to the public. The Archbishop had to deliver his Judgment to the two main parties of the Establishment. He spared no effort and left nothing undone to ensure that his Judgment should be full, exhaustive, definite and authoritative. With what result? The Advanced party, as voiced by The Church Times, says a few kind words to thank the Archbishop for all the pains he has taken, but reminds him that the Judgment he has delivered is possessed of "no spiritual validity". And the Low Church party? They repudiate it with a vehemence which is of the practical kind, by taking immediate steps to appeal against it. Was the Archbishop's Judgment a compromise? The Church Times admits that it was : We have no right to assume that he has any personal bias, and least of all that he has any Protestant bias. Yet by the force of this tendency the Judgment becomes in effect something of a com- promise. We do not impute to the Archbishop the intention of making a compromise. On the contrary, it is probably the result of the necessities of the case arising out of the circumstances in which he found himself placed (Leading Article, 28th Nov., 1890). But Bishop Alford holds that it is not : It is with great regret we hear the " Judgment " spoken of as a "compromise". There is nothing in it of the nature of a com- promise. Not a single instance of give and take. On the one side, there is no censure as to doctrine or ritual, nothing to gain, nothing to lose, entire satisfaction with the Prayer-book as it stands, a hearty reception of doctrine and acceptance of ritual as interpreted 3 34 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM and used generation after generation with the sanction of Church and State. On the other side, there is organised aggression for the introduction into our churches under the guise of Catholicity of both doctrine and ritual not Catholic but Roman Catholic. What is the intrinsic merit of the Judgment ? Speaking of the manner in which the Archbishop made out a case for the eastward position, The Church Times says : The Judgment, as a great work of patient, astute and scrupu- lously fair historical inquiry and criticism, has already excited, and is pretty sure to retain, the admiration of all impartial readers. No such exhaustive treatment of the questions has been achieved before, and it is not too much to say that in all probability the Archbishop's Judgment will be the last word on the subject, as far as history is concerned, for a long time to come. But The, Church Intelligencer gives a long and minute analysis of the Judgment, and concludes : The rest of the Judgment is equally remarkable for the badness of its " law," citing for instance the case of St. Gregory's as a valid precedent, the true "history" of which will be found given above at page 84. It would, however, require a bulky pamphlet to enumer- ate all the mistakes and mis-statements of fact, and erroneous sug- gestions of inference involved in the Judgment. So far from adducing much "new light," it is remarkable for the mere rechauffe which it furnishes of materials from Chambers, Scudamore, and Morton Shaw. Space failing, we must perforce quit the subject with the remark that to leave matters where they now stand would involve grave evils to the Church at large. Was it honest ? The English Churchman says : If this mode of reasoning were generally adopted it would not be difficult to set aside the entire decalogue. In fact it is, in principle, that which was condemned by our Lord when He spoke of making void the Commandments. It adds : We almost marvel that an Archbishop could, with a grave countenance, even read a Judgment which denies the singing of the Agnus Dei at this particular part of the service has "any association with those Roman doctrines or practices which the Church of England repudiates". Was the Archbishop's Court a competent and spiritual one ? The Church Review holds that it was : THE RECEPTION OF THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT 35 In the first place, the Court was a spiritual one, and, therefore, peculiarly suitable for such questions as those involved in the case. The Church Times argues that it was not : The success of the Archbishop's endeavour to provide a peace- ful solution of the dispute about ritual depends upon the accept- ance of the Judgment by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council when the questions come before it either in appeal from this decision, or in any future case that may come before it in the brief space that we hope remains before its place is taken by a competent Ecclesiastical Court. The above are possibly after all minor points upon which various appreciations and interpretations are all but in- evitable. Upon the main point whether it ought to be recognised, received and obeyed there is practical una- nimity. The unanimity is that it ought not. The Church Times says : We do not like to appear to receive ungraciously a Judgment which is in all essential points favourable to those whom we re- present ; but we feel it our duty still to be careful to maintain that the Judgment is of no spiritual validity (Leading Article, 28th Nov., 1890). Again : We therefore refuse to regard the Judgment as an official and binding utterance of the Archbishop, and we proceed to discuss it as his Grace's personal opinion and nothing more, although as such it must and ought to have great weight and receive very serious consideration. Bishop Alford, representing the Low Church, says : I conclude, therefore, that the Lincoln Judgment does not (if not appealed against) affect the Church of England in its decisions. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Reformed and Established Church of England has no affinity with Papal authority, nor does she possess a Canon Law distinct from Imperial legislation. Be- sides, in this instance, the Court itself failed to secure unanimity among its assessors ; the voice of the English episcopate was neither sought nor heard ; the Convocations of Canterbury and York were not consulted ; the laity were ignored ; Parliament unrecognised ; the Queen (as yet) nowhere ! Under these circumstances is it not illusive to regard the Judgment (if not appealed against before Privy Council) as binding the Church of England throughout all her dioceses at home and abroad and for ever ? Can this be the case ? 3* 36 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM The Record points out the immediate need of appealing to the Privy Council, and says : This is the point where the authority of the Archbishop's Court sinks into comparative insignificance, and where the need of a Court of properly trained judges is very much felt. We have warned our readers from the outset that the Lincoln prosecution meant trouble for the Church of England, and the outlook is not clearing ; but none the less it seems to us that loyalty to the truth and justice to our children require that these grave questions we refer especially to altar lights and the singing of the Agnus should not continue moot points, but should be sifted to the bottom. In other words, we regard an appeal to the Final Court as the inevit- able sequel to the Archbishop's marked disagreement with the previous decisions of that tribunal. The Protestant Alliance has passed a resolution express- ing their hopes that the " pernicious portions of the Arch- bishop's Judgment may be reversed " when an appeal is made to " Her Majesty, as Supreme Ordinary". The Bishop of Guildford, addressing a meeting of Church- men in Council, urged upon them the necessity of patience, and above all, besought them not " to suppose that every- body is going to conform to the Judgment at once ". In the meantime the Low Church is busy getting ready its appeal "to the Supreme Ordinary," while The Church Times makes very safely we think its appeal to the " Church at large," and declares that certain Church customs of ritual (points which the Archbishop vainly thought he had settled) are of Catholic observance and can be prohibited "by no Anglican authority". These are points of Catholic usage which no part of the Church can decide for itself, and which, therefore, no Anglican authority could forbid. That is very high ground. Is there not a statute of pramunire to punish those who carry ecclesiastical appeals out of this country ? Then we have been told so often that the Church of England was a " National Church," absolutely " free and independent of foreign control ". Now it turns out that in all important matters of worship and ritual the Church of England is to be governed and controlled by the THE LESSON OF THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT 37 usage of the " Church at large," namely, by a body, of which the vastly preponderating majority, and with it the deciding authority, must always be outside of England. Only minor details are to be left to the discretion of " any Anglican authority ". One cannot but draw a long sigh of relief at this breaking down of the theory of insularity in which the Establishment has been ice-bound since the days of the Re- formation. When England once begins to look for its standards of religion across the Channel, it may be trusted some day or other to look over the Alps, and her heart may turn to the old spot where she knelt and prayed in the centuries gone by. After all, minds must grow weary in finding that the " Church at large " is a mute abstraction of Anglican theorists, connoting an informal mass of dis- tracted religious opinion. The living teaching concrete unity around the Chair of Peter is what the soul of Anglicanism is unconsciously yearning for. Nor will it rest until it finds it. CHAPTER X. The Lesson of the Lambeth Judgment. (13TH DECEMBER, 1890.) THE expected happened. The Lambeth Judgment resulted in a compromise. The Archbishop had before his tribunal practically the two main representative sections of the Establishment. The Church Association was there under the figure-head of " Eead and Others ". And the English Church Union was there in the person of the Bishop of Lincoln. The Archbishop had laid before him seven points for decision. The problem has been a long and a hard one. He has worked it out and with a leisurely liberality in the matter of time which might have excited the jealousy of the Eoman Congregations. He has steered his way so evenly between the seven points, that he has left four upon the one side and three upon the other. Seven is an odd number, and better could not have been expected. Ablutions, east- ward position, the Agnus Dei, and the altar lights, go to the Bishop of Lincoln. But the public mixing of the chalice 38 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM (not the chalice mixed in the sacristy beforehand), the virtual concealment of the manual acts at consecration, and the signing of the Cross at Absolution or final blessing, are con- demned, and pass as so many points gained to the credit of the Church Association. The Archbishop has drawn his line fairly down the middle, and, it seems to us, by using a double standard. There is the Reformation standard, which admits or excludes according to the mind of the Reformers expressed in the composition and rubrics of the Prayer-book. There is the Catholic Antiquity standard, which accepts or rejects ac- cording to the primitive usage of the Church. If the Arch- bishop had used either standard singly, one of the two parties would have had it all their own way, and the other would have been utterly discomfited. That " might be legal but it would not have been expedient ". But by using judiciously both standards the verdict is divided, a working compromise is achieved, and the litigant parties are sent away, either equally satisfied or equally dissatisfied as the case may be. Thus, by an appeal to the Antiquity standard, the Bishop of Lincoln is assured that he may keep his altar candles burning. But en revanche (here the Archbishop lays down the Antiquity and takes up the Reformation standard), he is told that he must stand out of the way and let the people see what he is doing at the consecration. Now, as a matter of fact, there is good reason for holding that the use of altar lights at Mass is not nearly so ancient or so primitive as the concealment of the elements. Far from insisting on the people being allowed to see what was being done at the consecration, the ancient usage insisted on precisely the opposite, and was so much in earnest about the matter that it very practically enforced its point by causing a curtain or veil to be drawn at the consecration, for the express pur- pose of concealing both the priest and the elements. It was only a considerable time after the consecration that the curtain or veil was withdrawn and the consecrated elements exposed to the worship of the people. St. John THE LESSON OF THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT 39 Chrysostom teaches his people in the fourth century that " we taste of the Body which is adored by the angels," and adds, ' ' when the Sacrifice is borne forth and Christ, the Lamb of the Lord, is sacrificed . . . and when thou seest the curtains drawn back, then think that the sky above us is opened, and that angels are descending " (Horn, in Ephes., iii. 5). However, average Protestant public opinion can, if need be, stand the altar candles, but not the curtain nor even the back of the celebrant, so the Bishop of Lincoln gets his lights, but to appease the Eeformers he must learn to stand aside and conform to the unpatristic, unprimitive practice of an exposed consecration. The Lambeth Judgment qud Lambeth is over. Only the historical lesson or significance of the event remains. One part of the impression left behind is a pleasant one. In the Anglican body the trial has been an event of the first magnitude. Nothing but a vast volume of religious earnestness upon all sides both in the litigant parties in- volved and in the public at large could have made it so. The country and the period in which a cause cdlebre of national importance is fought out over the reading of a rubric can hardly go down to posterity charged with the great nineteenth-century sin of religious indifference. On the one side, under the brusque exterior of its unlovely Protestant vehemence, the Low Church is conspicuous by its honesty. It has a filial love for the Eeformation and the Eeformers, and small blame to it it zealously and loyally defends what it loves. It wants Eidley's Candle not the Eoman one. Then its position has been a trying one, and is likely to become more so. It feels that we and the in- evitable Jesuits are standing behind the Eitualists, whispering into their ears, and guiding their hands. (If we are not, our doctrines are.) We teach these allies our insidious beliefs, our drill and our tactics, with a thousand and one pretty practices, and then throw them out in front of us as skirmishers. Thus spiritually they act as the irregular forces the light auxiliaries fighting side by side with the 40 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM legions of Rome. They penetrate the outworks of Pro- testantism. They capture the altars and the pulpits. They plant wherever they go the old flag of the Mass and the Confessional. It is not in Protestant human nature to see all that and be silent ! The Low Church, in face of such an invasion, waxes wrathful in its zeal, and that it should do so is only a proof that it believes what it professes, and loves what it believes. Even when it finds a moment to look over the heads of the offending Ritualists and to tell us never so plainly how heartily it detests us, as the real and original cause of the trouble (as it did in a recent manifesto), we cannot but feel refreshed by the ring of sterling King David-like vigour and honesty which vibrates in every word of the pious imprecation. The fact that the Low Church, even in the face of odds, is resolved to do battle for its beliefs from Court to Court, even up to the steps of the Throne, is public proof if proof were needed that its religious honesty is unquestionable, and that its practical energy is equal to its honesty. The case for the Ritualist side would be made out, not perhaps on other grounds, but from another point of view. Their position has a very real claim upon the consideration of Catholics. Our Mother, the Catholic Church, the Spouse of Christ, is divinely fair. She " wounds hearts," as the inspired writer says of her, "in one of her eyes". Her heavenly beauty and queenly grace make themselves felt even when seen from afar, and by those who are not of her household. Souls that have once seen the Vision and felt the charm can never be as if they had not seen it nor felt it. They are irrevocably disillusioned from what they feel to be the hopelessly selfish and narrow ideals of the Re- formers. They are never more likely to be held in bonds by the thirty-nine leading strings of the Anglican Reformation. To love what is Catholic becomes a spiritual passion, and prompts them to realise it in their souls and in their sur- roundings. That a struggle to force the ideal to fit into the actual personal and national framework should result in an adaptation that is inconsistent and unhistorical, is only something to be expected. That men who have seen so much should not have light, or perhaps always the clearness of light which means courage, to see their way further, and to find the Church where alone the Church can be found with Peter is pity enough to make angels weep. But even so, there is much to make us rejoice. That so many of these wandering children should feel the unconscious heart-yearning for their true Mother ; that they should love her even from afar ; that they should feel the joy of her doctrines and the irresistible winningness of her ways 1 ; that they should kiss her very shadow upon their desolate altars, and love to adore "in the place where her feet have stood " all that to us is surely matter for sympathy, glad- ness and thanksgiving. Catholics who love the Church, and who are blessed in possessing what these lost ones are wistfully seeking, have a mission to help, rather than to blame them, when their yearnings lead them into ways that are less than logical, and into conduct that is less than consistent, or even into devices which, judged by legal standards, seem less than just. The Lambeth Judgment registers the rising influence of this new religious ethos not Catholic, but philocatholic and while we never forget for a moment that heresy is heresy, and irredeemably hateful as such, and while we feel that usurpation and simulation of the Church's title and claim are things which the charity of truth can never permit us to condone, we can afford to give the aspirations of a new generation so evidently in good faith, and " seeking the face of God," a place in our hearts and a happy record in our memory. With such evidences around us we can look hopefully ahead, and at the risk of allowing our hearts to play the prophet, we can trust that England before the coming century has reached its close may see a noon-day of Catholic light and practice of which we were worthy to witness but the dawning. Leaving the Lambeth Judgment considered in its relation to Anglicans, and passing to the same considered in its relation to Anglicanism, the reflections which arise from it are of a much less agreeable kind. The lesson most plainly taught by the event to the public at large, is the utter hollowness and helplessness of the system which 42 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM produced it. I explain. To begin with, there is a want of honesty of method. Why, for instance, should the whole fabric of these huge proceedings be constructed upon a dis- guised underthought or arri&re pensde ? Everybody knows but by tacit agreement nobody apparently dares to speak his thought that the whole of this trial is a battle, not of ritual, but of belief. Why, in the name of English and Christian candour, are the issues not straightforwardly stated and plainly pleaded as such ? The Church Associa- tion, and all that section of the Establishment which for the purposes of the late trial was labelled " Bead and Others," know perfectly well in their heart of hearts that when they attacked the Bishop of Lincoln it was not that they cared a button of his cassock whether he stood eastward or westward, or mixed his chalice, or lighted his candles ; but what does matter to them, and matter much, is that he should seek to do what they are determined he shall not, namely, bring back the doctrine of the Mass and tran- substantiation into the Church of England in reversal of the work of the Eeformation. And the Bishop who is thus attacked knows equally well that it is not the symbols, but the doctrines which underlie the symbols, that are at stake in his impeachment. The Archbishop, who sits in judgment upon both, knows it better than either, and all England knows it with him. Then upon this basis of knowledge we have a long public trial extending over several weeks, learned counsel pleading for days at a time, the Archbishop maturing his decision for months, and then producing a judgment which requires no less than five hours to deliver. And yet, in all the indictments, in the pleadings, in the judgment, never even once is the question of belief directly alluded to ! Can any one explain the mystery ? Belief is the question which is at the root of the whole proceedings. It is the question which alone is of synodical importance. It is the question which is deepest in every- body's heart and uppermost in everybody's mind. And yet, by common consent, all agree quietly to pass it over untouched and unmentioned, and fight the whole battle, if battle must be fought, over such wretched counters as minutiae of rubrics and ritual. THE LESSON OF THE LAMBETH JUDGMENT 43 Such a fiasco is just all that is opposed to the dignity and reality of Apostolic or Canonical procedure. What would a Synod of Bishops in the fourth or fifth century have said of such a conspiracy of doctrinal timidity and evasion ? Their ecclesiastical vocabulary, rich as it was, would not easily have found a word sufficiently expressive of contempt for such a pitiful system of oiKovo^ia. Their first question to the Bishop of Lincoln would have been What do you believe on the points at issue? Brought before them, there would have been no disingenuous tabooing of the crucial question of belief, nor would they have suffered for a mo- ment any fencing round the real issue. They would have tackled it at once, and with Christian courage and candour, they would speedily have drawn up a special creed-formula on the points mooted, and tested the accused by asking him to accept and profess it. They would thus have decided the question for him and for all others by a clear and unmistak- able doctrinal judgment, sanctioned by an anathema to fall upon those who would fail to receive and obey it. The matter of belief once settled, matters of rubric would naturally settle themselves. That is primitive Christian procedure in its noble straightforwardness, and anything more utterly unlike the Lambeth method could not easily be imagined. But it may be urged, and with undoubted reason, that the Archbishop could not be expected to enter into the funda- mental or under-question of doctrine. In these days of divided opinions such things cannot be easily or prudently done. The defining of Articles of Faith, outside of Catholic unity, has become anachronic and impracticable. Both sections represented in this trial have much too large a standing room in the Establishment for one easily to displace the other. (The Arian would have danced for joy if that principle of consideration for numbers had only been known in his day. Had it had a place in the procedure of Christian antiquity we should never have been troubled by the Nicene Creed.) The Eeformation has practically landed all religious organisations formed on its basis into a paralysis of doctrinal judgment, by which the tongue of their Churches is powerless to decide with authority any question of faith even to teach 44 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM men the meaning of the most elementary Christian rite, or to tell them what substance they receive when they go to Holy Communion. Hence it is that in appreciating the outcome of the Lambeth trial, to the note of hollowness as shown by the evasion of the question of faith, we have to add the note of helplessness, which alone justifies and explains it. Its voice to the nation is pitiful. " Anglicanism cannot tell it whether the Mass is the ' Propitiatory Sacrifice of the New Law ' or a ' blasphemous fable ' nor can it even say whether the Sacrament is Christ's true Body to be adored of the faith- ful or bread and wine which it is idolatry to worship it may be one or the other ! but the Primate can decide whether or not it is in accordance with precedent to light candles on the altar, or whether the minister can mix a drop of water with the wine in the chalice, or whether he can make the sign of the cross in blessing the people." Truly the Lambeth Judg- ment is eloquent eloquent in showing, not what an Anglican Primate of all England can do, but how much there is that he dare not do, and how much trouble he must take in not doing it. Compare all this very unreal and unprimitive shall we say, very un-English? trifling with the straightforward manliness with which English Bishops dealt with these very questions before the Beformation. " Answer me shortly," said Archbishop Arundel, in 1407, to a priest who was suspect of Lollardism, " belie vest thou that after the consecration of this foresaid Sacrament there abideth substance of bread or not?" The priest faltered and equivocated, and had ample time during some years of im- prisonment to reflect on the futility of his equivocation. The English Church by the voice of her Primate and his fellow- bishops in 1413 (a century and half before Trent), dealing with the powerful courtier, Sir John Oldcastle, went again straight and plainly to the point, and to the very heart of the question : " The sayth and determination of holy churche touchyng the Blissfull Sacrament of the auter is this : that after the Sacramentall wordes ben sayde by a presfc in hys Masse, the material bred that was bifore is turned into Christ's verray Body, and the material wyn that was bifor is turned into DIVISIONS AND ECCENTRICITIES 45 Christ's verray blode, and so there leweth no material brede ne material wyn, the wych wer ther byfore the seying of the Sacramental wordes Sow lyve ye this article ? " This is followed up with a still more irresistible test question : " Christ ordeined Saint Petir the Apostell to ben his vicarie here on erthe, whos see ys the Church of Borne ; ordeyning and graunting the same power that he gaf to Petir shuld succede to all Petirs successours, the wych we callyn now Popes of Rome, by whos power in churches particuler special ben ordeyned prelates, as archbysshoppes, bysshoppes, cur- ates, and other degrees, to whom all Cristen men ought to obey after the lawes of the Church of Rome. This is the determination of Holy Church. How fele ye this articule ? " (Wilkins* Concilia, iii., 355). Had the present Archbishop any real continuity with the traditions of the Catholic primates who sat in the Chair of St. Augustine, or with the Catholic synods of antiquity, in- stead of wasting time and strength over " six points " of rubric and ritual, he would have drawn up six plain articles of belief the teaching of the Church of England upon the Sacrifice of the Mass the Real Presence, Confession, Priestly Absolution, Invocation of Saints, and Prayers for the Dead and with this statement in his hand, he would have asked the Bishop of Lincoln after each " The sayth and determina- tion of Holy Churche is this. How fele ye this articule ? " In such a method, honesty, reality, Apostolic courage, Christian candour, and English straightforwardness would all have been there. As it is, where are they ? CHAPTER XI. Divisions and Eccentricities. (20TH DECEMBEB, 1890.) ANGLICANISM is a system of divided thought, and therefore of divided action. At the present moment it is confronted by an incident which shows how this evil of dividedness pursues it wherever it goes, even to the ends of the earth. 46 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Bishop Blyth is the Anglican " Bishop of Jerusalem and the East". He has been living and labouring in the city which he has annexed to his title. Now, as Anglicanism is loud in its recognition of the rightful jurisdiction of the Orthodox Churches of the East, according to Anglican principles there ought to be no such bishopric at Jerusalem, and Dr. Blyth ought never to have gone there. His very presence, much more his title, is a permanent intrusion and insult to the Orthodox Patriarch and a standing stultification of the principles which Anglicans are never wearied of pro- fessing to their Eastern friends. The Church Times appreci- ates and recognises this initial difficulty : The whole history of the Jerusalem bishopric is painful to the Anglican mind ; and no wonder. The origin of the venture is told in Newman's Apologia, and every student of that work is familiar with the account there given of the effect produced by it upon the Tractarians. It was to them a scandal ; and in the case of Newman at least it was one of the predisposing causes which impelled him Homewards (Leading Article, 12th Dec., 1890). It sums up the subsequent history of this Eastern venture as follows : Three bishops, Gobat, Alexander and Barclay, lived, reigned and died. . . . They only succeeded in inflicting upon the Eastern Church all but irreparable damage. They prejudiced her cause in respect of her relation to the Orthodox Communions of the East. Small wonder that Greek Christians in Jerusalem have had in the past some difficulty in recognising the Catholicity of the Anglican Communion. Not long ago this remarkable see was vacant. One might naturally ask if Anglicans really regarded this bishopric as an ecclesiastical monstrum, why did not they protest against an attempt to fill up the vacancy? They did so. The Church Times having stated " that it was with a feeling of relief " that Churchmen hailed the prospect of its discontinuance, adds : But they went farther ; they urged that the time was come to make the bishopric cease altogether. . . . No more representative and more typical assembly of English Churchmen can well be ima- 'ned than that which disapproved the action ultimately taken by his race (namely, in consecrating and sending out a new bishop). DIVISIONS AND ECCENTEICITIES 47 But in that case in view of the contradiction between such a bishopric and Anglican principles ; and in view of the disapproval of the " representative and typical assembly of English Churchmen " it would be impossible that any loyal Anglican could be found to accept it ! Not at all. Dr. Blyth is an Anglican. The Church Times gives him its recognition : " He is an able man, fearless and outspoken, and thoroughly Catholic." He accepted it and went. Once there, and placed in a most un- Anglican position, Dr. Blyth did his best to act up to his Anglican principles not to the rigour of their logical conclusions, for that would have been to return home, but to make matters work smoothly with the Eastern Bishops. His rdle seems to have been not so much that of a missionary Bishop as of an Anglican representative at the see of the Orthodox Patriarch. This is expressed in other words by The Church Times : He has made the heads of the Greek Church understand that the Anglican Church is not a Protestant sect, that it regards the claims of the Orthodox Communion with unfeigned respect, has no wish to interfere with its mission, and condemns the proselytis- ing of some of its own irresponsible and self-appointed agents. Dr. Blyth has determinedly kept himself strictly within his own boundaries ; and his position, so far as he himself is concerned, is at any rate understood by the Orthodox Bishops. Now comes the enemy of discord. The agents of the Church Missionary Society are not the least in the world men of that type of Anglicanism which includes Dr. Blyth and The Church Times. They are at work in and around Jerusalem. They abhor the beliefs and practices of the Eastern Churches, especially with regard to the Mass and the Blessed Virgin, as superstition and idolatry. They consistently strive to make converts from the subjects of the Patriarch. The Patriarch protests, and as these agents are nominally under Dr. Blyth, the position becomes un- pleasant and untenable. It is useless for Dr. Blyth to remonstrate with the missionaries that their action is in violation of Anglican principles. They do not believe in the 48 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM alleged Anglican principles, and are not likely to consent to be hindered and hampered in their work by the theories of the English Church Union. Nor can the Bishop send them away. They were there before he came, and they are sent and paid by the Church Missionary Society. Thus the battle of Low Church and High Church is virtually transferred to Jerusalem and worst of all to be fought out under the sharp eyes of the Easterns ! The crisis is thus graphically stated by The Church Times : The C.M.S. has in its hands the appointments to most of the chaplainoies. It is jealous of the Bishop, and ignores him when and where it can. It conceives its true mission to be to the Greek Christians, not, as it really is, to the Mohammedans. It encourages ardent proselytising. It excites jealousy and suspicion of the Anglican Communion, and it is doing less good in consequence to the cause of education than it did formerly. Under this last head the damage done is grievous. Dr. Blyth shows by statistics that in the schools of the C.M.S. there are, as a rule, few non-Christian children, and in two particular ones absolutely none. The cause of Christianity is thus exhibited to the Mohammedan world as torn by factions which prey upon one another, the C.M.S. being more eager to convert Greeks from Orthodox Christianity to Calvinism or Lutheranism than to win the Moslem to Christ. The same organ thus sums up the entire position : To sum up the state of affairs, there is, on the one hand, a Bishop of the Anglican Church representing in his views and character and policy her best traditions, cultivating friendly relations with the Orthodox Church, making the Greeks to understand our true posi- tion, eager and ready to prevent proselytising, and wishing to turn the energies of the C.M.S. against Mohammedanism. On the other hand, he is nominally ruler of a body of workers who are not ap- pointed by him, who for the most part are out of sympathy with him, who pursue a different policy, and show but scant deference to him even in such matters as the curious constitution of affairs has left in his hands. It would seem that the episcopal office is thus stultified. And whatever good Dr. Blyth may do in a personal way in his intercourse with Greeks is counterbalanced by the spectacle of so-called Episcopalians ignoring the claims of their Bishop. Either the C.M.S. must let the Bishop be truly a Bishop, or Dr. Blyth will be forced to abandon a position which has become un- tenable. Truly Anglicanism has found a child of sorrow in its Jerusalem bishopric. DOUBLE-DEALING IN WOKSHIP 49 CHAPTER XII. Double-Dealing in Worship. (3RD JANUARY, 1891.) CHRISTMASTIDE is the season of Fairy Tales. May I try to tell one ? I have no doubt that in the days of happy memory the reader has been told of the Fairy Godmother who once upon a time was possessed of a magic wand. And who- soever was touched therewith upon the forehead was forced to tell the whole truth, and to speak out or write down his whole mind, just as he felt it at first thought and with- out reserve. When the subject had turned himself mentally inside out, a second touch of the wand checked the flow of revelation, and restored him to his original state of discretion. That is the theme, and the chain of situations created by the wand-touching is, by immemorial prescription, left to the choice of the teller. We claim the privilege. In the closing days of 1890 Archbishop Benson sat in his study at Lambeth, pen in hand, ready to write a Pastoral to his clergy. Whereupon the mischievous fairy appeared and applied her wand. The spell worked at once, and the Archbishop forthwith wrote as follows : " It is my painful duty to have to deal in the Church of England with two distinct sets of doctrines. " There is set A, which maintains the Propitiatory Sacri- fice of the Mass, and the Eeal and Objective Presence of Christ in the Sacrament. There is set B, which denies that Christ ever instituted any such sacrifice, holds such a belief to be an outrage against the completeness of the Atonement, and repudiates the Eeal and Objective Presence as super- stition and idolatry. For general purposes, these rival sets might have been called in the concrete High Church and Low Church, or, for specific purposes, they may be called the English Church Union and the Church Association. Names matter but little. What does matter is that they are two great antagonistic realities. Were it merely a matter of believing, nothing would be simpler and easier 4 60 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM than to allow each to enjoy its own beliefs in peace, and to call ourselves ' comprehensive ' for doing so. But the point where the trouble endless trouble ! enters in, is that each set has its own way of celebrating the Church service. " Set A, in order to declare to the world that it believes in the above-named doctrines Sacrifice of Mass and Eeal Presence celebrates the service with lights, incense, vest- ments and genuflections. And set B, to show that it denies them as Cranmer and the Keformers denied them accepts the Prayer-book in the spirit in which Cranmer and the Eeformers framed it, and advisedly excludes and eschews all and every ritual accompaniment that would imply the idea of Sacrifice or Christ present in the Sacra- ment. " Each set has its own method, and to each set its method is simply the flag of its doctrines. "Now they called upon me to judge between them. I was not asked to settle their doctrinal beliefs. Nor would either party have flinched by a hair's- breadth from their position if I had. But I was privileged to adjudicate upon some details as to how much each party might show of its flag certain points in the celebrating of the service. " Consequently, I must address them as follows : I am willing to trust to your unity and loyalty. What method shall you follow ? In the first place, you need not make any changes at all. But if you find that your congregation is practically unanimous on the matter, you can within the limits of the Judgment adopt the ornate method A (which expresses belief in doctrines of Sacrifice and Eeal Presence). But if you do, you must be careful to provide at the same time, for those who want it, a service according to method B (which denies them). You will bear in mind that method B, the ' simpler method,' is true to the Prayer-book, and as a true pastor (while adopting at other times method A), you will delight in following method B for the benefit of those who believe in it, like it, and claim it." DOUBLE-DEALING IN WORSHIP 51 Now here the fairy applied the restorative touch. The document written under the spell was not given to the public. That which later on saw the light was differently worded. All the plain statement as to the opposed sets gave place to an excellently tempered optimism which gracefully covered the rents, and gratefully accepted certain unities of the Church of England as compensation for her disunities. All that was said and felt as to the Judgment is com- pressed and subindicated as follows : The Judgment speaks for itself. It would be out of place for me to expand, compress or re-state its conclusions. I am ready to trust the living spirit of unity and loyal faithfulness among us. Coming to what the lawyers call the " operative clauses," we have the following : As to the particular observances which the Judgment of the Court has found allowable, I feel confident the clergy of the diocese will be with me when I make it my own undoubting recommenda- tion and earnest request that the clergy will make no changes in the direction of adopting any of them in their conduct of Divine service, unless, at the least, they are first assured of the practical unanimity of their people in desiring such change. (Which being interpreted means : Do not light your candles, or mix your chalice, or sing the Agnus Dei, or put up flag A generally unless a preponderating number of your people are with you.) Next, in the event of such adoption, we have a provision in behalf of set B (the plain people) : And that, even if any do, in accordance with the clear sentiment of their people, make any change within the limits of the Judgment, yet they will make it their bounden duty to provide at the most convenient hours, especially on the first Sunday of the month, and at the most frequented hour, administration of the Holy Com- munion which shall meet in all ways the desire of those parishioners whose sense of devotion seeks and feeds on the plain and quiet solemnities in which they have been reared, which they love, and in which their souls most perfectly "go in and out and find pasture". That means, while the mass of your people adopt the doctrines and practices of set A, remember that there may 4* 62 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM be a section who believe exactly the opposite. You will have to minister for both, and be A to the A and B to the B. Finally, it concludes with a justificatory plea for the B people : Those simplest forms are liturgically true. The people have a right to them, and through them the true pastor will delight to be one with them, to break for them the Bread of Heaven, to feast with them on its inmost spiritual realities. He will fear no loss when, like his Master, he girds himself to serve them and pay them all observance. Far be it from us to imply that the Archbishop is in- sincere. On the contrary, the whole Pastoral (save a rather petulant digression about ourselves) is decidedly eirenical, and bespeaks an earnest effort to calm troubled waters and guide all for the best in a position of difficulty and responsibility. The insincerity is not in the Arch- bishop, but inherently and impersonally in the Anglican system, which harbours yes and no under the same formu- laries. This insincerity of system in the shape of incon- sistency is being perpetually projected into the acts and facts of Anglicanism. It is natural that in speaking to Anglicans of Anglican difficulties, the Archbishop should make use of Anglican locutions. It is equally natural that these locutions should be of a kind to soften rather than to sharpen the hard edges which demarcate Anglican differ- ences. They are very properly intended to drape, and not to denude, the angularities of its frame-work. If we have ventured to translate a few of them into that fairy-wand language (which not all of us find it at all times convenient to speak), it is merely that our concern, as outsiders, is with the facts in their simplest religious import, and plainest outcome for our own information, and in nowise with the motives or intentions, least of all with the domestic contro- versies of either the writer of the Pastoral or those to whom it is written. But a far more serious side of the incident is a question of ecclesiastical ethics. We are vividly conscious of the DOUBLE-DEALING IN WORSHIP 53 consequences which have so often overtaken Anglican writers who have undertaken, with the courage of amateurs, to con- strue passages from our books of Canon Law or Theology. JT O/ Mindful of such dangers, we cannot but feel much diffidence in attempting across the pale any exact interpretation of Anglican utterances. Such interpretations are generally affected by side-lights, corporate traditions, or local know- ledge in which a Catholic can hardly be supposed to share. We are bound, therefore, to make the amplest correction for parallax, before accepting the passages given above, as the basis of an argument, much less of an accusation. But, after all, plain English has usually a plain meaning. I invite the reader's attention to the clauses quoted from the Pastoral, and beg that he will turn them over, and see whether, by any means, he can honestly deduce from them any other meaning than the following. It contains a Direction. The Archbishop allows his clergy to hold a High Church service, within the limits of the Judgment (namely, with lights, previously mixed chalice, singing of Agnus Dei, etc.), but enjoins that the clergyman who makes use of this ritual shall on one Sunday in the month hold a Low Church Service, or, at least, for the benefit of those who prefer it, a simpler service, in which these points are ad- visedly left out. If there is anything strained or unfair in this reading of the Pastoral, all that I construct upon it, of course, falls to the ground, and is withdrawn by anticipation. But assuming that the above represents the mind of the Archbishop, let us see what his Direction means morally and practically. Here is a High Church Vicar who has just received the Archbishop's Pastoral. He is a member of the English Church Union and the confraternity of the Blessed Sacra- ment. Sincerely and conscientiously he believes in the Eucharist as the Propitiatory Sacrifice of the New Law, and in the Real Presence of Christ. (If we are to credit the High Church organs there are many such.) He believes both of these doctrines to be a precious part of the Catholic Faith, which, in loyalty to Christ, he can neither by thought, word or act, doubt, dissemble or deny, at peril of his soul's salvation. He teaches these doctrines eloquently from his 54 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM pulpit. He teaches them from the sanctuary, with the higher eloquence of liturgy, by the lights, the incense, the priestly vestments, and, above all, by his practical homage and deportment towards Christ, whom he believes to be present on his altar. All this the Archbishop's Judgment apparently allows, or can be construed to allow. Now here comes the crux. On one Sunday of the month the Archbishop commands him to become, so to speak, another man. There is a section of his flock who fiercely hate and deny these very doctrines which he loves and cherishes as the "Faith Catholic". For one Sunday per month he must become outwardly and publicly one of them. For he must minister according to their mind, and elementary religious honesty requires unanimity between the minister and those for whom he ministers. He believes that the service is the Sacrifice of the New Law. He is to put aside all Sacrificial vestments, put out the lights, and conduct it in a way which was both arranged and used and intended for the express purpose of denying that it is a Sacrifice at all. He believes that his Master, Christ, is present in the Sacra- ment. But to suit these non-believers, he is to dissemble this belief, and to act in a way expressly designed to be the public and practical and liturgical denial of His Presence. He knows and his people know that these ceremonial adjuncts were suppressed at the Reformation for the very purpose that their suppression might sternly express a public denial of the doctrines they symbolised. He is now asked, while holding the doctrines, to fall in with the suppression, and pro tanto with the expression of denial. He is to treat externally what he believes to be Christ as a mere piece of blessed bread, and to withhold from Him publicly the slightest act of recognition or act of adoration. In other words, he is to worship what he believes to be the Real Presence with those who worship it, and outwardly deny it with those who deny it ! The unfortunate man must be ready to serve " under two flags," and adopt a system of rubrical Vicar-of-Brayism for the benefit of his disunited congregation. He can imitate " Catholic Antiquity" and Dr. King, the Bishop of Lincoln, for three Sundays, provided that he will play Cranmer and Dr. Ryle, the Bishop of Liverpool, on the fourth ! DOUBLE-DEALING IN WORSHIP 55 It would be puerile to plead, as the Archbishop pleaded, that the ceremonies have no doctrinal significance. His own people, and his fellow-Bishops have been much too straight- forward to adopt for a moment such a plea. 1 Even The Times in a leading article dismissed it as unreal. No one will doubt for a moment the honesty and sincerity of the Archbishop. Yet to our minds such a direction as that which he has given, to celebrate High for the High, and Low for the Low, could have but one meaning. It reads to us as a direct sanction of liturgical double-dealing. It is worse. It is the principle of double-dealing which implies, in many cases, the crushing of conscience. It is worse. It is double-dealing in the sanctuary and applied to the most Sacred, Solemn and Central Act of Eeh'gion. Heresy, indeed, with its inherent inconsistencies, throws all things hopelessly out of gear, and puts honest and honourable men into positions of crucial difficulty. But who could have foretold that such a direction for double-dealing in the ministry could have gone forth in the name of religion from the chief Anglican Bishop in truth-loving England ! It is, perhaps, unfair to attempt an insight into the meaning of the proceedings, by projecting the case by an effort of imagination into our own Communion. Very real points of analogies, of course, are wanting. But sufficient remain to enable Catholic readers to realise it in some measure for themselves. 'The Secretary of the Church Association promptly declared that " the feeling that the Archbishop can make the Adoration of the Host harmless by saying that the rites which express it mean nothing at all, can hardly be sustained. He might as well pronounce that ice does not freeze, nor fire burn." The Anglican Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol most sensibly pointed out in a pastoral : " It is impossible to deny that there are usages and ceremonies which are intimately connected with doctrine, and are tenaciously maintained, and just as tenaciously opposed, because both parties know that doctrine is the moving principle. Such usages will never be disposed of by the declaration that they are to be under- stood to have no doctrinal significance. Neither party will admit this, and controversy will continue with even increased asperity. In attempt- ing to lay down limits of ritual, limits of doctrine will commonly have, in some form or other, to be regarded as a part of the problem, and it is idle to think it can be otherwise" (Pastoral, Guardian, 14th Jan., 1891). 56 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Let us suppose for a moment that a portion of our people have come to disbelieve in transubstantiation. Imagine an order thereupon being issued to our clergy commanding them to celebrate the Mass as usual for those who believe in it, but, once a month, for the benefit of the non-believers, to say Mass without lights, or vestments, and enjoining them to be careful not to genuflect to the Blessed Sacrament ! There are more than a quarter of a million of priests in the Catholic Church. One may fairly doubt if, in the vast array, there is even one who would not consider such an invitation as an insult to his manhood and his conscience. CHAPTER XIII. Archbishop Benson on the " Italian Mission ". (10TH JANUABY, 1891.) THE Archbishop, Dr. Benson, in his Pastoral of January, 1891, devoted a special paragraph to " the Church of Borne ". It is a " digression," he says, which he " felt bound to make ". This digression is short, but pregnant with the many things which the Archbishop has to say. First of all, he assures his clergy that he is not afraid of us. I feel that to say so much as this gives to those who are uneasy the right to ask men if I do not fear that men are in danger of being led to the Church of Rome. I answer, I do not. He ascribes the existence of such fears to the recollection of the mischief wrought by us when Eome was dominant in this land. Considering how much wrong Christianity and this country suffered during the Roman domination, I do not wonder that fears arise. Whereupon he gives three reasons why he considers that such fears are groundless. These reasons are sufficiently simple. First, the Church Service is in English. Secondly, it is largely made up of Scripture. Thirdly, the clergy are married men. (If there is anti-climax in the arrangement, the Archbishop is responsible.) ARCHBISHOP BENSON ON "ITALIAN MISSION" 57 But I do not think this will lead to Rome. With my predecessor, I believe that, while our service is in this mother-tongue of ours, and is the glory of it, and Scripture makes so large a part of it, and inspires the whole, and is in every home and every hand, and the clergy are citizens and fathers of families, there will be no following for Rome. Anticipating the objection that these reasons, however good, have not, after all, prevented such a following in the past, he holds that the progress of the Catholic Church in England is much more of the brick-and-mortar kind than in the shape of spiritual conquest. It has been shown that in all these years she has effected here a multiplication of edifices and institutions, but not of souls j that she makes no statistical progress. Finally, he claims that the " Ancient Church of England " is with him (the Church of Augustine, Theodore, Dunstan, Anselm and Becket ?). He calls the Catholic Church of this country the " New Italian Mission," and holds that it will not succeed in making converts from his clergy or people. No. The Ancient Church of England is with us. I do not fear that the new Italian Mission will make anything of our clergy or people. This is a digression I feel bound to make. Thus the Archbishop began his digression with three reasons and he ends it with three statements. The reasons speak for themselves. We review the statements in inverse order. He says that there is no reason to fear that we shall make anything of his clergy or people. That depends very largely upon the facts. We can only judge the facts of the future by those of the past and the present. Whether these furnish any security for the Archbishop's fearlessness is surely some- what open to question. It is said that from the beginning of the Tractarian Move- ment until now Rome has won over to her fold more than 500 of the Anglican clergy, and, during that period, a very much larger number of the laity of all ranks and classes. That, for the interval given may, or may not be, a large capture. Yet it would be difficult to single out any other 58 instance in Christendom where one religious body has, apart from political motives, taken over so much from any one other religious body, and, that in the face of such odds, inside the same space of time. Had the Church in France, Spain or Italy or even the schismatic Church in Eussia had to suffer a transference of its subjects in anything like the same proportions, it may be doubted whether the spiritual authorities would have had the calmness and cour- age to treat it as nothing, or regard the seductive causes as something from which they had nothing to fear. If Dr. Benson is satisfied from his side, we, from ours, are not dis- posed to complain. We only feel that Anglicanism rules off its losses very pleasantly more pleasantly than most people can find heart to do when the balance is paid in souls. Then, apart from our progress as reckoned by the enu- meration of converts, there is the progress of our doctrines the blessed penumbra which the light of faith within the Church casts into a wide circle of souls outside our pale. It is a phase of progress which is of national import, and one of which the influence is far too wide and too subtle to be tangible to any process of statistical measurement. The doctrines of the Mass, Confession, Invocation of our Lady and of the Saints, Purgatory, Prayers for the Dead, Monasticism, have all been deftly working and winning their way into the conscience of a large section of the English people. They are giving colour and shape to the religious life, thought and worship of the nation. A hundred years ago, and the Establishment employed all its strength to denounce and refute these very articles of Catholic faith. Now it lends us some three or four thousand pulpits to have them preached. We know for " our fathers have narrated it unto us " what was the teaching, belief, worship of the English Church on all the above-named tenets during the Stuart, Caroline and Georgian eras. The Archbishop can see for himself what it is now. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, dense walls of dogmatic prejudice and hostility on all these points blocked our path. Now, at the end of it, there is not one of these walls these bastions of the Reformation Jericho which is ARE WE AN "ITALIAN MISSION"? 59 not breached from within and from without, and a stream of men is ever pouring through to us. If the Archbishop be the acute observer of the age which a man in his position can hardly fail to be, these facts cannot be silent in his ears. Taking the whole body of Anglican religious belief, he must know that the doctrinal centre of gravity has changed. He must know that the change is significantly great. He must know that the change has been Homeward. In the face of such facts, can he believe, or ask practical Englishmen to believe, that there is nothing to fear from the side of Kome ? A life-movement like the above is not likely to stop short at the end of the present century. Were an astronomer of religious bodies to take his stand and observe the whole of the phenomena from a neighbouring planet, he would lay down his telescope with a clearly formed conviction. The English Church, he would tell us, is gradually moving under and into the influence of a larger body. The curve of doctrinal deflection and the ratio of attraction are becoming more and more marked. In the laws of religious, as of physical, attraction, the attracted body moves not less but more rapidly the nearer it approaches the body to which it is attracted. " Movement there is," the Anglican will exclaim, " but it is towards that which is Catholic, and not to that which is Eoman " ! Good ; but we believe it is to both. Those who are outside a circle can hardly draw nearer to it without drawing nearer to its centre. Every Catholic truth tends to Rome by its own weight. Only let the movement go forward, and we are quite willing to trust to grace and the inherent logical unity of truth for the sequel. CHAPTER XIV. Are we an "Italian Mission"? WITH a sudden descent to the level of mere Littledaleism, Archbishop Benson has allowed himself to speak of us as the " New Italian Mission ". The Church of which we are the members includes the 60 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM bulk of Christendom. She evangelised this island when its name of England had not yet passed over human lips. During the course of her history many weapons have been tried against her. The most pitiful and the most hopeless of all would be that of name-calling. But the Archbishop in calling us an " Italian Mission " may have felt there is a sense in which the expression can be conceived as appropriate. It is undoubtedly true that we hold our jurisdiction by our communion with the Apos- tolic See of Eome. In common with the rest of the Catholic Church, we are subject to it. (The expression is not ours. Pope St. Gregory the Great said that he did not know any Church which was not subject to it. 1 ) We stand to it in the relation of "members to a head". (The expression is not ours. It was used by the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, addressing Pope Leo, and submitting to him their decrees " for confirmation and assent " Mansi, Concil. Collectio, torn, vii., o. 147, 156.) On the other hand, it is just as true that Borne is in Italy. If these two conditions suffice to constitute an " Italian Mission," they are abundantly verified. But hi that case "Italian Missions" are about as old as Christianity. It is a fairly long time since Irenaeus in the second century singled out the Apostolic See as the centre with which " all churches must agree ". It is longer still since Eome began to be in Italy. Perhaps the most noteworthy instance of an " Italian Mission'" in this sense was that of St. Augustine and his fellow-monks who came here from Eome and founded the English Church and the Primatial See of Canterbury. That was an Italian Mission par excellence. It was precisely owing to its being so successful that the Archbishop enjoys by the law of the land his rank and title, and is able to sit in judgment on the Bishop of Lincoln, and to write the 1 St. Gregory, speaking of the Church of Constantinople, says : " Who- ever doubts that it is subject to the Apostolic See? That is constantly avowed by the most pious Emperor and by our brother Eusebius, the bishop of that city." Speaking of an African bishop St. Gregory says : " As to what he says, that he is subject to the Apostolic See, if fault is found in bishops, I do not know any bishop who is not subject to the Apostolic See" (Letters of St. Gregory, lib. vii., 64 and 65). "THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF ENGLAND" 61 Pastoral which speaks of the origin of his Bishopric so disparagingly. In every other sense the Archbishop's epithet is ah 1 that is illogical. Our union with the Apostolic See connects us with the See of Eome. It does not connect us with Italy any more than it connects us with Spain or Portugal. According to the practice of Christian antiquity Sees are named from cities, not from tracts of country. Bishoprics which are styled " Southern Europe," " Queensland," " New Jersey " or " Ohio," strike a jarring note of modernity and incongruity into the ears of all students of Church history. Thence, we are Eoman not Italian. We are "Eoman" in the sense that we have the Bishop of the Eoman See for our spiritual head. But we are no more Italian than we are French, or German, or American, or Christian Chinese. Italy is the name of a nation. We are Catholics. Our Church is the mother of the nations, but she wears the badge of none. She could never be dwarfed or degraded into a mere National Church. As Catholic, she is the Church of " all nations," and in her beloved fold all frontiers of nationhood disappear and lose their significance. The Spouse of Christ cannot be draped in the Italian tricolor any more than she could be roUed up in the Union Jack. CHAPTER XV. With Whom is " The Ancient Church of England"? THE Archbishop claims that the " Ancient Church of England is with him ". To us the whole history of the Ancient Church of England says just the reverse. The Archbishop's entire position his raison d'etre since the Eeformation, is based upon the principle that the ' ' Bishop of Eome has no jurisdiction in this realm of England ". Our whole position is based upon the opposite principle, that the Bishop of Eome, as successor of St. Peter, has juris- diction over the whole flock of Christ, and, therefore, in England and every other part of the Christian world. The Church history of this land is with us, and proves to us with overwhelming and irresistible evidence that from the 62 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM very foundation of the English Church Papal jurisdiction was both exercised and recognised in this country. Here, for instance, are ten main facts : 1. Foundation, St. Augustine and his fellow-monks, who first preached the Gospel to the English people and laid the earliest foundations of the English Church, were sent and commissioned from Eome by Pope St. Gregory the Great. They came "in obedience to the Pope's com- mands " (Bede, Hist. Ecc., i., 23). The Pope gave to St. Augustine " authority " to found the two metropolitan sees and the suffragan bishoprics (ibid., i., 29). The English Church was thus born in an act of Papal jurisdiction. This could not be explained away as a mere missionary expansion by which St. Augustine was sent to form and found a Church, which once established was to be autonomous or indepen- dent. The very Pope in question, St. Gregory, held that he was successor of St. Peter, and that St. Peter received from Christ the " charge of the whole Church ".* Hence, despite his disclaimer of the title of " universal bishop " in its exclusive and unorthodox sense, St. Gregory undoubtedly taught and acted upon the doctrine of Papal jurisdiction, and we have his own words affirming that all Churches, even that of Constantinople itself, are " subject to the Apostolic See " (Letters, 46; vii., 64, 65). An English Church independent of the jurisdiction of the Apostolic See could not have en- tered into the mind of either St. Gregory or St. Augustine. The English Church itself evidently accepted St. Gregory's authority as universal, as Venerable Bede, writing nearly two centuries later, says that the " Blessed Pope Gregory . . . bore the pontifical power over all the world " (Ecc. Hist., Book II., chap, i., transl. Giles, p. 62). 2 2. The Pallium, St. Augustine and his successors in the See of Canterbury for nearly a thousand years either 1 " To all who read the gospel, it is plain that by the voice of the Lord the charge of the whole Church (' cura totius ecclesiae ') was given to the holy Prince of all the Apostles, St. Peter " (Letters, xxxii., Book IV. ; Mansi, Collect. Cone., ix., 1207). 2 That St. Gregory taught that he as the successor of St. Peter had a primacy not merely of honour but of authority over the whole Church is fully admitted by the most recent Anglican writer on the subject, the Rev. P. Dudden, B.D., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, in his Gregory the Great, vol. ii., pp. 224 and 411. "THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF ENGLAND" 63 went or sent to Borne to ask for the Pallium, the Y-shaped stole, which was laid on the tomb of St. Peter. The investi- ture with the Pallium by the Pope conveyed the fulness of the Archiepiscopal authority and certain powers of metropolitan jurisdiction enabling the receiver to consecrate suffragan bishops. Thus Pope Honorius, writing to Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 634, says : " Wherefore, according to your request, and to that of the Kings our sons, we do by our present order, acting in the place of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, grant you authority that when either of you is called by the Divine Grace to Himself, he that survives shall ordain a bishop in the place of the deceased. For which purpose, we have sent Palls to each of you, for the celebra- tion of the said ordination, so that by the authority of our command, you may make an ordination pleasing to God " (Bede, Hist. Ecc., ii., 18). In the grant to Dunstan the Pope sends the Pallium to enable him to act as the " Vicar " of the Apostolic See (vices agere) (Labbe, Councils, ix., 643). The notion that the Eoman Pallium given to the English Archbishops was merely an honorific decoration like the be- stowal of the Garter, is absolutely inconsistent with the terms of the letters which accompanied the grant, as well as with the well-known facts of English history. Kemble, a non-Catholic writer upon the Anglo-Saxon period, speak- ing of the Pallium, shows by a number of texts that it was given and accepted as "conveying powers which without it could not be exercised ". To those who urge that the gift was an act of Papal usurpation, he very aptly replies : " The question is not whether the Eoman See had the right to make the demand, but whether usurpation or not it was acquiesced in and accepted by the Anglo-Saxon Church ; and on that point there can be no dispute " (Kemble's Anglo- Saxons in Britain, vol. ii., p. 370, note). So great was the importance which the Archbishops of the English Church attached to the Pallium, that they usually made the whole journey of nearly 1,000 miles to the Eoman Court to receive it ; or, if they were invested with it here in England, it was their custom, out of reverence, to walk barefooted in solemn procession to meet the Eoman envoy who brought 64 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM it, and to prostrate themselves on the ground before re- ceiving it (MaskelTs Monumenta, ii., 316). Archbishop Courtenay, although present at a consecration of bishops, would not presume to lay on hands ' ' because he had not yet received the Pallium" (Anglia Sacra, i., 121). Thus, from St. Augustine to Cranmer, during the long line of some ten centuries of English history, the Primates of the English Church in all great functions stood arrayed with the Pallium as the visible symbol of the Papal origin of their jurisdiction. 3. Archbishop Theodore. In the year 664 Deusdedit, the Archbishop of Canterbury, died. The two English kings, Egbert of Kent and Oswy of Northumbria, sent a priest named Wighard to Borne, with a request that he might be made Archbishop. Wighard died at Eome. Thereupon, Pope Vitalian chose a monk called Theodore, and appointed and consecrated him to the See of Canter- bury. On arriving in England, Theodore made a visitation of the various dioceses, and so thoroughly organised the English Church that the main diocesan and parochial framework which it preserved up to the Eeformation is in large measure attributed to his ability. In 673 he held a Council at Hertford, and in the Acts of this Council Theo- dore declares himself appointed by the Pope. " I, Theodore, unworthy bishop of the See of Canterbury, appointed by the Apostolic See." It was thus to a bishop, chosen, con- secrated and commissioned by the Pope that the early Church of this country owed mainly its consolidation and organisation and the first framing of that diocesan and par- ochial fabric which it maintained substantially for nearly a thousand years of its history. The English Church was thus not only founded, but moulded and shaped by bishops appointed by the Apostolic See. 4. St, Wilfrid, About the year 679 Theodore, consider- ing that the diocese of York was too large, divided it into several parts. St. Wilfrid, the Archbishop of York, aggrieved at the division, appealed to Eome. The Pope confirmed the partition of the diocese, but decreed that Wilfrid himself "THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF ENGLAND" 65 should be allowed to make it, and select the new bishops. When St. Wilfrid returned and produced the Papal letter to this effect, King Egfrid of Northumbria, and certain bishops assembled with him, refused to accept it, and alleged that it had been obtained by bribery. They cast St. Wilfrid into prison for nine months. On his release, St. Wilfrid went to Rome and obtained from the Pope a fresh mandate in his favour. Returning to England, he showed the mandate to Archbishop Theodore, who, as Wilfrid's companion and biographer, Eddius, tells us (Gale, p. 73), " honouring with fear the authority of the Apostolic See, by which he himself had been sent," at once expressed great sorrow for having treated St. Wilfrid unjustly, and wrote to King Aldfrith in his favour. In obedience to the Papal judgment St. Wilfrid had the dioceses of Hexham and Lindisfarne, and finally those of Ripon and York restored to him. Thus the Papal judgment was fully enforced. Soon after the death of Theodore, St. Wilfrid had a dis- pute about Church lands with the Primate, Berthwald, and the neighbouring bishops. Again he appealed to Rome. Pope John VI. heard the case and decided in his favour. The Primate received the Papal decision, and urged the Kings to accept it. King Ethelred of Mercia received it with all obedience. King Alchfrid of Northumbria at first refused to obey, but soon after, on his death- bed, repented and ordered that " his heir should fulfil the Apostolic judg- ment ". The Primate assembled a Synod at Nidd and read the Papal letters. These, the Primate explained, required one of two things either that peace should be made with Wilfrid and his lands restored to him, or that all concerned should proceed to Rome to have the whole case tried by the Holy See. If any one refused to accept these alternatives, " he must understand, whether he be King or layman, that he is excommunicated, and that if he be bishop or priest, that he is stripped of all rank of ecclesi- astical dignity " (Eddius, Iviii.). When some of the bishops protested that this meant the alteration of what had been agreed upon at Osterfield " between Theodore, who was sent by the Apostolic See, and King Egfrith," the Abbess Ethelfleda bore witness to the King's repentance and to 5 66 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM his dying wish that "all the judgments of the Apostolic See concerning St. Wilfrid should be fulfilled," and to his charge to his successor to that effect. Thereupon, Berechfrith, the King's representative, said : " This is the will of the King and his princes that to the commands of the Apostolic See, and to the instructions of King Alchfrid we should render obedience in all things " (Eddius, Iviii.). Peace was accord- ingly made, as the Papal mandate had enjoined. St. Wilfrid, now advanced in years, was willing to be content with the bishoprics of Hexham and Kipon, which were accordingly restored to him. Such is the final and decisive act in the case of St. Wilfrid, as authentically described by a contemporary witness, Eddius, the most ancient of the historical writers of England. It bears witness to the recognition of Papal authority as paramount to mere local or temporal obstruction in the Church of the Anglo-Saxon period. 5. The Liturgy, The Liturgy used here in England was the Eoman rite. 1 In the Council of Cloveshoe held in A.D. 747, the bishops of England required that the Church festivals " and in all things pertaining thereto, in the rite of Baptism, the celebration of Masses, in the Church music, shall be kept according to the copy which we have received in writing from the Eoman Church. And in like manner, the festivals of the Saints shall be kept on one and the same day according to the martyrology of the said Eoman Church, with the psalmody and music thereto appertaining " (Canon 13). They also decreed that in the Church services no one was to presume to read or sing what was not sanc- tioned by common use, but only "what comes from Holy Scripture, and what is permitted by the custom of the Eoman Church " (Canon 15) (Haddan and Stubbs, Ecclesi- astical Councils, iii., 367). To secure complete uniformity with Eome, not only books and vestments, but even choir- masters were brought from Eome for the purpose (Bede, Ecc. His., iv., 17, 18). 1 Sarum, York, Hereford, etc., were not distinct rites but merely various " uses " of one and the same Roman rite, with slight modifica- tions borrowed from other Western sources. "THE ANCIENT CHUKCH OF ENGLAND" 67 In the Canon of every Mass said in England from the earliest times l the Pope was publicly prayed for, and in precedence of the Archbishop and of the King. In the Sarum Missal, used in England before the Eeformation, the prayer is for the Catholic Church, " with thy Servant, our Pope N., and our Bishop N., and our King N." In the Missal of Leofric, who was Bishop of Crediton in Anglo- Saxon times, it reads: "With thy most Blessed Servant, our Pope N.," etc. Alcuin, the great English scholar of the ninth century, says that they are schismatics or cut off from the communion of the Catholic world, who, on account of dissension, omit the name of the Pope in the Sacred Liturgy. "It is evident that those, who, on account of any disagreement, discontinue the customary commemoration of the Apostolic Pontiff in the Mass, are separated from the communion of the whole world " (De Divinis Officiis, c. 10). Not only in the Sacred Canon of the Mass, but in the Bedes or Bidding prayers which on Sundays and greater festi- vals in all the cathedrals and parish churches of England were said in the vernacular before or during Mass, and were responded to by the people, the Pope was publicly prayed for. " And therefore, after a laudable consuetude, and a lawful custome of our Mother Holy Churche, ye shal knele down praying your speciale prayers for the iii es- tates, concernyng all Christen people : that is to saye, for the Spiritualtye, the Temporaltie, and the soules being in the paynes of Purgatorye. Fyrst, for our holy Father the Pope, with all hys Cardinalls, for all Archbyshops and by shops, and in especiall for my lord Archbishop of Canter- burye, your Metropolitaine," etc. " Secondly, ye shal pray for the unitie and peace of al Christen Eealmes, and specially for the noble Eealm of England, for our sovereign lord the King, for the Prince," etc. (from the English Festival, quoted in Rock's Church of the Fathers, ii., 366). The form used in Anglo-Saxon times prayed for " our Pope in 1 The practice of praying for the Pope in the Canon of the Mass was already established long before the conversion of England. The Council of Vaisson in A.D. 529 decreed : " It has seemed right to us that the name of the lord Pope, whoever presides over the Apostolic See, shall be recited in our Churches" (Canon 4) (Mansi, viii., 725). 5* 68 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Rome, and for our King, and for our Archbishop " " Thittan wo gebiddan for urne Papan on Borne, and for urne Cyning, and for ne Arceb." (Church of the Fathers, ii., 355). Thus, in every Mass, and in every cathedral and parish church in the land, generations of English men and women from age to age heard every Sunday of their lives the recognition of the Pope as their spiritual head, both in the Liturgy and in the popular " Bidding of the Bedes ". 6. Peter's Pence, The offering of Peter's Pence, or a sum of money yearly sent to the Pope, was commanded by English law in the Anglo-Saxon period, and was made obligatory in the same manner as the ordinary tithe. In the laws of King Eadmund is the decree, "Tithe we en- join on every Christian man on his Christendom, and church-shot and Eome fee" (Thorpe, i., 244). In like manner in the laws of Canute it is decreed: "And let God's dues be willingly paid every year . . . and Rome Fee by St. Peter's Mass" (Kemble, ii., 547). 7. Legatine Councils in Anglo-Saxon Times. As far back as the eighth century the Pope sent Legates to this country to convey the Apostolic commands, to correct abuses, and to report on the state of the Church. Thus, about the year 787, Pope Adrian I. sent two Legates called George and Theophylact. The report which the first of these Legates made to the Pope upon what they had seen and done is still extant, and it furnishes an authen- tic testimony as to the attitude of the English Church of that time to the Holy See. The report describes how the Legates arrived at Canterbury and were received by the Archbishop, and how, during their stay, they " gave ad- monition where necessary". It continues: "Journeying thence we came to the palace of Offa, King of the Mercians, and he, on account of the reverence due to Blessed Peter, and the honour due to your Apostleship, received with ex- ceeding great joy both ourselves and the sacred Letters which we had brought from the Supreme See. Then Offa, King of the Mercians, and Kynewulf, King of the West- Saxons, called together a Council. We delivered to it your "THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF ENGLAND" 69 sacred writing, and they forthwith promised that they would correct themselves from their faults." A Council was then held at York, and the King of Northumbria and Archbishop Eanbald were present. The Legate, after describing the assembly of the Council and the need of correcting existing abuses, continues his report to the Pope : " We have drawn up a list of headings of the several things, and have arranged them in order, and have read them over in their hearing, and they with all subjection of humility, and with evident readiness, received your ad- monition as well as our own, and they promised in all things to obey the same. Then we gave them your letters to read, charging both themselves and their subjects to observe your sacred decrees." The first heading or chapter in this Council contains the following : " We admonish . . . the bishops of the several Churches that in their yearly synods they examine diligently concerning the said Faith the priests who are to teach the people, so that they shall in all things hold and profess and preach the Apostolic Faith and Catholic Faith of the Six Councils attested by the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Eoman Church has delivered it unto us, and that if need be, shall not fear to lay down their lives for the same" (chap. i.). Another chapter requires that bishops and prelates shall be models to their subjects, and adds : " And for this purpose we recommend that the synodal edicts of the Six General Councils, with the Decrees of the Eoman Pontiff be fre- quently read, and observed, and that the state of the Church be corrected according to their standard, lest anything new be suffered to be introduced by any one, and schism to arise in the Church of God " (chap. iv.). - The close of the Council is described by the Legate in the following words : " We have put forward these decrees, most blessed Pope Adrian, in the public council before King Aelfwald and the Archbishop Eanbald, and all the bishops and abbots of the country, with the senators and leaders, and the people of the land. And they, as we have said above, with all devotedness of soul, vowed to observe them in all things to the uttermost of their strength with the help of God's mercy. And they have signed it by the sign of 70 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Holy Cross in our hand, as taking your place, and then with earnest pen have imprinted the same on this page, marking it with the sign of the Cross." (Then follow the solemn signatures of the king, bishops, nobles, etc.) The Legates then held a Council in Mercia, at which King Offa and laenbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the rest of the bishops of the country were assembled. The chapters agreed upon at York were each read in Latin and in Anglo-Saxon. The same cordial acceptance of the decrees and the Papal admonitions followed. "With one voice, and with eager mind, they all gave thanks, and promised to keep the admonitions of your Apostleship in all these statutes, by God's assistance to the best of their strength and with all their hearts " (Beport of the Legates in Haddan and Stubbs' Ecclesiastical Councils, iii., 447-460). 8. The Making and Unmaking of an Archbishopric, About this time (A.D. 787) Offa, King of Mercia, desired that the dioceses which lay within his dominions should form a distinct ecclesiastical province, separate from York and Can- terbury, and that the See of Lichfield should be raised to the rank of an Archbishopric. He petitioned Pope Adrian and sent an embassy to Home to obtain the authorisation for the proposed changes. The Pope granted the petition, separated five dioceses from the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canter- bury, erected Lichfield into an Archbishopric, bestowed the Pallium upon Higbert, as the new Archbishop, and gave him jurisdiction over the five suffragan sees, which composed the new ecclesiastical province. 1 Later on the new arrangement was found to be unsatis- factory, and in A.D. 801 King Kenulph, the successor of Offa, sent an embassy to Eome, and petitioned Pope Leo, in the name of his kingdom, to restore the division of the 1 According to the historian of Offa, these changes were carried out at the Council of Calchuth held by the Papal Legates (Wilkins* Concilia, i., 152). On the other hand, the Legates' report to the Pope does not mention them. What is certain is that the authorisation for the creation of the Archbishopric, the bestowal of the Pallium, and the transference of the five sees from the jurisdiction of Canterbury, were all authori- tative acts of the Pope. This is clear from the letter of Pope Leo to King Kenulph. 71 country into its two original provinces, and to give back to Canterbury its former precedence and jurisdiction. His letter reveals to us more clearly and authentically than anything else could the spiritual relation and attitude of an Anglo- Saxon King to the Papacy. It is as follows : " To the most holy and most loving lord, Leo, Pontiff of the Sacred and Apostolic See of Eome, Kenulph, by the grace of God King of the Mercians, with the bishops, princes, and every degree of dignity under our authority, sendeth greeting in the sincere love of Christ. " We give thanks to God at all times, Who amidst the tempests of this life is wont to guide the Church which He bought with His precious blood, to the haven of salvation, and to illumine her with fresh light, by means of new leaders, when the former have been taken to their reward, so that thus she is obscured by no darkness of error, but treads the way of truth without stumbling. 1 Hence, with good reason, does the Church, throughout the whole world, rejoice that the true Eecompenser of all good has taken up to Heaven for his everlasting reward, Adrian, the most glorious Pastor of His Flock, while nevertheless His tender Providence has provided for His sheep a leader who knows how to conduct the Lord's Flock to the fold of life not less high. And we, who live at the farthest corner of the earth, in like manner, rightly glory beyond all others, that his exaltation is our salvation, and his prosperity our perpetual joy, for whence you derive your Apostolical dignity, thence we derived the knowledge of the true Faith." 1 To say that the Church is so guided and illumined in this succession of its leaders as to be obscured by no darkness of error and to tread the path of truth without stumbling is, for its" time and place, a very fair statement of Church Infallibility and, we might say, of Papal Infalli- bility, since it is to the Papal Succession the death of Adrian and the accession of Leo that the King is obviously referring. In 1412 the English Church is more definite on the point. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of the Province, after affirming the Divine institution of the Papacy, say plainly : " For this is that most blessed See, which by God's Almighty grace, is known never to have erred from the path of Apostolic tradition, and has never been stained or overcome by heretical novelty ; and to it, as the Mother and Mistress of all other Churches, the excellent authority of the holy Fathers ordained that all matters, and chiefly those relating to Faith, should be referred for decision and sentence" (Letter of Archbishop Arundel and Suffragans, Wilkins' Concilia, in., 350). 72 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM The King then makes the following profession of his Catholic obedience : " Wherefore, I deem it right to render humble obedionce to your holy commands, and to fulfil with my whole strength whatever your Holiness will consider it right for us to do, and if anything shall appear to you to be opposed to right, to avoid it forthwith, and to have no part therein. " And now, I Kenulph, by God's grace King, humbly implore your Excellency, that I may as I wish, without any offence, be allowed to address you upon our progress, so that you may with peace receive me into the bosom of your affection. And thus may your bountiful blessing qualify me, who have but little merit of my own, for the work of the ruling of my people, so that I and my people, whom your Apostolical authority instructed in the elements of the Faith, 1 may be, through your prayers, defended by the Almighty against the attacks of adversaries, and our King- dom, which by God was given, may by God be extended. " This blessing which all the Kings who have held the sceptre in Mercia, have merited to receive from your prede- cessors ; this I myself humbly beg ; and this from your Holiness I desire to obtain ; that you would above all accept me as your adopted son, even as I love you as a father, and ever embrace you with all the strength of my obedience." The King then states the dissatisfaction which has been caused by the new arrangement of these provinces, brought about by King Offa and the late Pope, and the desire to revert to the original plan, and to restore to Canterbury its former precedence and jurisdiction. He concludes in these terms : " We do not blame either of these persons, whom, we believe, Christ has rewarded with eternal life. But never- theless, we humbly beseech your Excellency, to whom the Keys of Wisdom have been worthily given by God, that you 1 Certain writers have claimed that evangelisation of the northern and midland parts of England is to be credited not to Roman mission- aries but rather to the Celtic missionaries from lona. The co-operation of the Celtic missionaries and their recuperation of a large section of England is a well-known fact, but it is clear from the above that the tradition of Mercia itself, as far back as the eighth century, ascribed its conversion to the Apostolic See. "THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF ENGLAND" 73 would examine the case with your counsellors, and that you will deign to write back to us whatsoever it will seem right to you that we should observe in the future, so that the seamless coat of Christ may not suffer any rent by dis- sensions amongst us, and that by your sound doctrine, we may, as we desire, be directed into the unity of true peace. " With great humility, and at the same time with great affection, we have written these things to you, O most blessed Pope, earnestly entreating your clemency, that you will return a just and favourable answer to those things which were of necessity submitted to you." The King then commends to the Pope his envoys who are charged with his gifts, and concludes in that formula which became a tradition in the English chancery : ' ' May God Almighty long preserve you in His keeping, to the glory of His Holy Church ". The Pope replied to King Kenulph, "to the most excel- lent prince, my son," and promised to grant his petition. Accordingly, on 18th January, 802, he addressed an Apos- tolic brief to Ethelheard, Archbishop of Canterbury, in which, by Apostolic authority, he restored the full primacy and precedence to the See of Canterbury, and reduced the number of ecclesiastical provinces to the original two, as had been ordained by Pope Gregory the Great. The Pope's sentence in this brief is as follows : " Wherefore, by the authority of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, to whom by the Lord God was given the power of binding and of loosing, when it was said, ' Thou art Peter, and upon this Book I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it, and to thee will I give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth it shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed in Heaven,' even so, according to the judgment of the sacred Canons, We, however unworthy, holding the place of the same Blessed Peter, the Key-bearer of the Heavenly Kingdom, grant to thee, Ethelheard, and to thy successors, to hold by inviolable right for ever in thy Metropolitan See, all the churches of England, as it was in times past, subject 74 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM to your jurisdiction. But if any one which we trust shall not come to pass shall attempt to contravene this the authority of our sentence and Apostolic charter, by Apostolic aijthority we decree that whether he be archbishop or bishop, he shall be deposed from his bishopric. In like manner, if he be priest or deacon, or in any other grade of the sacred ministry, he shall be deposed. If he be one of the laity, let him be King or Prince, great person or small, he shall be excommunicated. This charter of perpetual privilege We, by the authority of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, whose office we exercise, grant to thee, Ethelheard, and to thy successors. For the security of which we have subscribed it with our own hand, and commanded it to be signed with our name " (Haddan and Stubbs' Councils, vol. iii., 537). Such is the Papal Decree by which the Primate of the English Church recovered his control over the Diocese of Lichfield and the other Sees of Mercia. An Archbishopric is necessarily a centre of jurisdiction. Hence to create a new Archbishopric, and to invest it with jurisdiction over a number of suffragan sees withdrawn for that purpose from Canterbury, and in like manner to dismantle the said Arch- bishopric, to release the suffragan sees from its jurisdiction, and to restore both it and them to the jurisdiction of Canter- bury, are evidently and eminently so many acts of high ecclesiastical jurisdiction. These acts of jurisdiction were exercised by the Pope in this realm of England in the very midst of the Anglo-Saxon period, and the authority of the Pope in exercising them is not only fully recognised by the English Church and nation, but is petitioned for and invoked in terms of cordial obedience and submission. 9. Westminster Abbey, According to the charters of the Abbey, and, therefore, to say the least, according to the most authentic tradition of its foundation, Westminster Abbey was built by King Edward the Confessor in obedience to a judgment of a Pope, and as a mark of the devotion of the English people to the Apostolic See. The account of its foundation which may be seen in the "THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF ENGLAND" 75 charters is as follows : King Edward, while still in exile in Normandy, vowed that if ever he were restored to the throne of his fathers, he would go in pilgrimage to Eome and make his thanksgiving to God at the tomb of the Apostles. When, by God's providence, he was put in possession of the king- dom, he prepared to set out for Eome in fulfilment of his vow. But his counsellors implored him not to leave the realm at a time when his presence was so much needed. The King, bound on the one hand by his vow, and anxious on the other to safeguard his kingdom, agreed to depute a number of bishops and nobles and send them to Eome to lay the whole matter before the Pope, promising to abide by his judgment. The Pope received the embassy, heard the case, and delivered judgment. " By the authority of God, and of the Holy Apostles, and the Sacred Council," he absolved him from the vow, and added, " We command thee in the name of holy obedience and penance, that you distribute to the poor the money which you had prepared for the expenses of this journey, and that you construct a new or rebuild or enlarge an old monastery in honour of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles " (Wilkins' Concilia, vol. i., 316). The fulfilment of the Papal judgment was the foun- dation of Westminster Abbey, dedicated to St. Peter. The Abbey, therefore, as far as the traditions of its charters can assure us, stands in our midst as the everlasting monument of an Anglo-Saxon King's devout obedience to the Apostolic See, and of a Pope's Apostolic authority exercised over and cordially recognised by an Anglo-Saxon King. 10. Testimony of Catholic Belief, The records of the Anglo-Saxon people leave us in no doubt as to the Articles of Faith which were believed and taught in the Church of that period. Genuine Eeformational Protestantism and Monasticism are two ideas which are antagonistic and mutually incompatible. The one takes its stand on the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone, the other on the value of asceticism and penitential works. Hence Luther very logically ceased to be a monk when he became a Pro- testant. The dominant feature of the Anglo-Saxon Church was its monasticism. Its great missionaries and bishops 76 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM were monastic, monasteries covered the land, and more than six Anglo-Saxon Kings laid aside their crowns to be- come monks. Hence the religion of the Anglo-Saxon Church was essentially and diametrically opposed to that basal Pro- testant belief of Justification by Faith only, which one of the Articles of the present Church of England declares to be a most wholesome doctrine. There is thus the difference of a fundamental principle between the reb'gion of the Anglo- Saxon Church and the religion of the Anglican Reformation. In other Articles of Faith a like opposition is evident. The Anglo-Saxon Church believed in the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass. St. Bede says: "In celebrating Masses, we immolate anew to God to help our salvation, the Sacred Body and precious Blood of the Lamb, by which we were redeemed " (Homily in Vigil. Paschae). They believed in the Beal Presence. St. Bede says : " Christ washes us daily from our sins in His own Blood, when the memory of His Blessed Passion is renewed at the Altar, when, by the inef- fable hallowing of the Spirit, the creature of bread and wine is transferred into the Sacrament of His Flesh and Blood " (Horn., i., 14). They believed in confession. The ecclesi- astical laws, of which the translation into Anglo-Saxon is attributed to Aelf ric, require that ' ' a man shall declare to his confessor every sin that he ever committed either in thought, word or deed" (Wilkins, i., 276). They believed in the invocation of the Saints. The Canons under King Edgar say : " When any one wishes to make the confession of his sins ... let him kneel down humbly before God upon the ground in adoration and shedding of tears : he asks Blessed Mary, with the holy Angels, and Apostles, and Confessors, and Virgins, and all the elect of God, to intercede for him with the Lord" (Thorpe, Ancient Laws, ii., 260). They believed in Purgatory and Masses for the dead. Cuthbert, describing the death of St. Bede, says : " He spoke to each in turn, reminding them and entreating them to celebrate Masses and to pray diligently for him ". St. Bede himself devotes a chapter of his history to recording a vision of Purgatory as a "place of flames and frost" (Hist. Ecc., v., 12), and another to showing the power of the Mass when offered for a captive (iv., 22). Cuthbert relates that "THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF ENGLAND" 77 the relics of the Saints were carried in procession on the day before the death of St. Bede in A.D. 735. Thus both in the doctrines of Papal jurisdiction and in the other doctrines of Catholic Faith the Anglo-Saxon Church is with us, and just as clearly it is not with Dr. Benson and the Church of the Anglican Reformation. Here are ten other facts : 1. William the Conqueror was crowned by Papal Legates, and was himself a suitor in a marriage case at the Court of Rome. Hence, he most practically recognised Papal juris- diction. 2. Papal Legates carried out the reorganisation of the English Church in a number of Councils presided over by them, and summoned by authority of the Roman See (Wilkins, i., 323). 3. Lanfranc caused two English Bishops (one an Arch- bishop of York) to go to Rome and surrender their pastoral staffs into the hands of the Pope (Eadmer, Hist. Novell., 6-7). 4. The transfer of sees, as in the case of Lincoln and Exeter, was made by the authority of the Pope (Charter of Lincoln Cathedral ; Preface of Leofric's Missal). 5. Disputed elections and all causa major es were de- cided by the Court of Rome (Bishop Stubbs (Const. Hist., iii., 315) admits that between 1215 and 1264 there were no less than thirty of them). 6. The Archbishops and Bishops of England, for centuries before the Reformation, took publicly a solemn oath of al- legiance to the Pope. " I will be faithful to Blessed Peter, and to the Holy Roman Church and to our Lord the Pope. . . . The Roman Papacy I will be their helper to maintain against all men. . . . The commands of the Holy See I will observe with my whole strength and cause them to be observed by others. So help me God and these holy Gospels" (Rymer, xiii., 256). 7. The Constitutions drawn up by the Papal Legates, Otho and Othobon, formed part of the Canon Law pleaded in the Ecclesiastical Courts of England (Lyndwood's Pro- vinciale Constitutiones Legatinae). 8. By the Canon Law of England a whole class of sins 78 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM and censures were reserved to the Holy See, and could only be absolved by the Pope (Lyndwood's Provinciate, 314). 9. In 1246 the English Bishops declared to the Pope that England had been "ever specially devoted to the Roman Church," while the English Abbots and Priors protested that the "English Church has many glories," and is "a special member of the Holy Church of Rome ". 1 In the previous year the nobles and Parliament of England while complaining of the excesses of curial exactions, assured the Pope " Our Mother, the Church of Rome, we love with all our hearts, as our duty is ... to whom we ought always to fly for refuge ". 2 English Kings again and again declared their obedience to the Papacy and their belief that it was instituted by Christ. 10. For nearly two centuries before the Reformation the vast majority of Bishops were appointed by Papal provision, namely, by the direct authority of the Pope, and by Papal Bulls issued to that effect (see Le Neve's Fasti). It would be easier for Dr. Benson to lift Great Britain out of the ocean than to remove these facts from the struc- ture and fibre of English history. And it would be easier for him to turn the island round until the Orkneys faced Calais, and Dover looked into the Arctic, than to give to these facts any other direction or significance than their plain historical meaning, that the ancient Church of Eng- land was one that held, and not one that denied that " the Pope hath jurisdiction over this realm of England ". CHAPTER XVI. A Popular Statement of Anglican Continuity. (17TH JANUARY, 1891.) A LETTER published in The Times in January, 1891, puts in a plea for the continuity theory of the Church of England. It does so mainly by stating a number of reasons why 1 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora (Roll Series), vol. iv., p. 531. 3 Ibid., p. 441. POPULAR STATEMENT OF ANGLICAN CONTINUITY 79 English Boman Catholics are to be regarded as an " Italian Mission," and why they cannot be considered as being one with the ancient Church of England. These reasons are seven : 1. Because " their Church (the Church of the English Roman Catholics) is presided over by the hierarchy estab- lished by Pius IX. forty years ago". 2. Because " till then they were the old Roman Catholic Nonconformists of the country, descendants of those who seceded from the Church of England in 1570, in compliance with the Bull fulminated by Pius V." 3. Because if they were the same as the Ancient Church they would adopt the saying of Gregory the Great, " Who- ever calls himself Universal Bishop is the precursor of Anti- christ ". 4. Because if they were the Ancient Church they would " allow the cup to the laity which they partook of in Eng- land until 1283 ". 5. And would allow "marriage to the clergy which was not absolutely prohibited until the eleventh century ". 6. "And would leave " Transubstantiation to be an open question, as it remained until the close of the twelfth century". 7. And would " surrender the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception decreed in 1854, and Papal Infallibility decreed in 1870 ". A glance at these reasons will show that they fall into sets. In the first we may bracket the opening two ; in the second, the remaining five. The first set attacks our organic, and the second our doctrinal continuity. Let us give each a fair chance, and allow full play to the force of each argu- ment. To begin with, we may note that if the reasons 4, 5 and 6 possessed any force whatever, they would only prove that the breach of continuity lies, not between us and the Pre- Reformation Church, but between the Pre-Reformation Church and the English Church of some antecedent period. If giving communion in one kind, the observance of clerical celibacy, or Reaching the doctrine of transubstantiation are 80 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM enough to constitute a breach of continuity with a Church which did not hold by these observances, every one knows that all these practices and teaching were authoritatively sanctioned by the English Church during centuries which preceded the Reformation. Then it is quite clear that the English Church for many centuries before the Reformation is in continuity with us, who do all these things, and not with the present Anglican Church, which repudiates them. In that case, the writer has gone out of his way to prove that the breach of continuity is to be found not with us but in Anglicanism, and that a gap of several centuries to say the least yawns between the Ancient Church of England and the Anglican Church -established at the Reformation. Would he then restore us the property which belonged to the Church of that intervening period ? What is this continuity of ours which the writer is assail- ing? Nothing more simple. In the Catholic Church we are bound together in one belief and one body. By this unity we are one with one another all the world over. We are the one flock of Christ, holding the one faith, sharing in the same worship and under the one pastorate of the successor of St. Peter, to whom our Lord committed the chief shepherdship. We are united in more ways than one. When we take up the Angel's golden rod to measure the matchless sym- metry of the city of God, instead of laying it flat over the surface of the world, we may point it downward through the course of the centuries. When our unity is thus revealed, not in space, but in time not in place, but in period we call it continuous one- ness or continuity. Catholics in one age are in continuity with Catholics in every preceding age. And for two reasons. They hold the same belief and offer the same worship. They are subject to the same chief pastoral authority. By the first, they are one and the same faith. By the second, they are one and the same body or society. The first is doctrinal and liturgical, and the second is organic continuity. POPULAR STATEMENT OF ANGLICAN CONTINUITY 81 Such is the position. Now for the seven arguments against it. In the organic set, the whole attack seems to us based upon a misapprehension. We Catholics of England are not, never have been, and as Catholics never could be, a mere local Church complete within ourselves. The writer has taken us for one. That will be made clear by an hypo- thesis. Let us suppose that he were right, and that we English Catholics formed a distinct Church of our own, and that our organism was terminated and completed by our local hierarchy. Let us further suppose that from certain causes that hierarchy collapsed or was swept away, and, after an interval, a new one was substituted. Such a sub- stitution might be accepted pro tanto as a breach of con- tinuity. The second could hardly be called the continuous successors of the first, for there is no tertium quid to connect them or to convey that inflow of church life from one to the other, which is the very meaning of continuity. But it is just from any possibility of such a calamity that our Catholicity saves us. Our organism is not insular or local, nor at the mercy of local causes. It is, and always has been, part of a world-wide body of which the centre is the See of Rome. If the local pastorate of England were to apostatise or to be driven out of the land, the chief pastorate in the Apostolic See over the faithful here in England would still remain. To it, as much after the collapse as before it, English Catholics would still be subject. Under it they would still remain in perfect continuity with the Church at large, and through it with the English Church of their fore- fathers. Whether the Chief Shepherd pastured them by mission- aries, or by Vicars Apostolic, or, finally, restored to them a hierarchy, their position as part of the one flock would remain absolutely unchanged, and their continuity with every part and period of the flock would remain absolutely uninterrupted. Local parts of the Church flourish or fall, or are swept away by storms of persecution. The centre and main body remains, and from it, as time and tide permit, 6 82 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM the channels of life flow forth again to recover what was lost, to raise what has fallen, and to restore what has per- ished. As the See of Peter is the centre of our unity, so it is the main trunk of our continuity. Catholics, of course, were not wanting in England between 1534 and 1570. But even if every Englishman had con- formed to the Establishment, and if during that interval no Catholic could have been found in the country, then the first convert who returned to the Church would have no sooner stepped within the circle of Catholic unity than by the very fact he would have found himself sharing in the continuous life of the Church. He would have become one body with it. He would have placed himself in organic continuity with the Church of his forefathers and with the Church in all times and places. Hence, no changes of mere local pastorate or hierarchy can affect the flow of our continuity. This truth is as plain as the fact upon which it rests one of which the whole world is witness that the Catholic Church is one visible body of which the life is shared by all its members. The task of impugning our continuity, which lay before the writer in The Times, was a remarkably simple one. He should have proved one of two things either that the Ancient Church of England was not one body with the Catholic Church and the Apostolic See, or what would do just as well that we Catholics of to-day are not. Until he has done either, he has done nothing. Things which are organically one with the same thing are organically one with one another. We may note that besides organic, and liturgical and doctrinal (in other words, ecclesiastical), there is another form of continuity. It consists in the sameness of persons or fabrics or property, and may be called personal or material continuity. A Christian gentleman has a private chapel and a chaplain. Both he and his chaplain apostatise and be- come Mohammedans. He uses his chapel as a mosque, and his chaplain acts as priest. Here the gentleman and his chaplain are precisely the same persons after their POPULAR STATEMENT OP ANGLICAN CONTINUITY 83 apostasy as they were before it. They worship in the same building, and possess the same property. Nothing is changed except the religion. This sameness of persons, buildings, endowments, is personal or material continuity. It is obviously independent of Church continuity, since no one would pretend that they belong to the same Church as they did before their apostasy. Far be it from us to com- pare Anglicanism with a non-Christian system, for we might easily have supposed that the gentleman became either a Lutheran or a Calvinist, but we use the illustration to point out that clearly we must have something more than the same race of people, the same religious edifices, the same religious property to make up a claim for Church continuity. It is chiefly to this material continuity the part which a non-theologian may safely judge, but so useless for its Church application that Mr. Freeman bears anxious testi- mony when speaking of the English Reformation, in a passage which is often enlisted into the purposes of Anglican controversy. The something more as essential as the soul is to the body in completing the continuity of a Church, is sameness of religion, in other words, organical and doctrinal and liturgical continuity. But the remaining set of five ? In the first, the writer asks if we are prepared to adopt the saying of St. Gregory the Great, who sent St. Augustine to England, that "whoever calls himself Universal Bishop is the precursor of Antichrist " ? We answer. We adopt it heartily and unhesitatingly. We only make one proviso, one much too reasonable that any fair-minded person could be unwilling to grant it. We ask to be allowed to adopt St. Gregory's words according to St. Gregory's meaning, namely, according to the sense, in which from the context of his letter, his other writings, his acts and life, it is plain that he intended them. St. Gregory denied that any one could be called " Uni- versal Bishop " in the exclusive sense, or as he himself says over and over again, in a sense which would deprive all other patriarchal sees of their rights, or concentrate the 6* 84 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM whole episcopal power of the Church in one person in such wise that, if he fell, the whole Church fell with him. The title thus understood implied that Christ had embodied the whole bishopric of the Church so exclusively in the person of one man, that all other bishops were to be to him but mere deputies or dependents. St. Gregory denied such a doctrine, and we deny it with him. The authority of the Church dwells in the whole Episcopate. The Episcopate is of Divine institution. The Bishops are not mere delegates of the Pope. They are his brethren and fellow-judges. They have been constituted by God the Holy Ghost with him to rule the Church of God. They are with the Pope sharers of his commission, and sharers of his solicitude. That fellowship or brotherhood does not for a moment exclude their obligation to use their authority as pastors in union with and in subordination to him, to whom Christ gave charge of the whole flock and the power of " confirm- ing his brethren ". Hence in the very letter in which St. Gregory denies the application of the title in its exclusive or monopolising sense (even to St. Peter), he declares that every person who can read the Gospel knows that " St. Peter the Prince of all the Apostles received from the Lord's lips the charge of the whole Church" (Epis., lib. iv., xxxii.). Nothing certainly seems to have been further from the mind of St. Gregory than to deny for a moment the supremacy of his see over the Bishops of the Church. His whole life, letters and Pontificate were devoted to upholding it. His letter to Felix of Sardica, containing a sharp reprimand and a threat of punishment, is a fair example of the way in which he could express his authority to a recalcitrant Bishop. Far from supposing that he as "Pope had no jurisdiction in England," he committed all Bishops there to Augustine's rule, and gave him " authority " to found the hierarchy. Upon the authority of his see his testimony is absolute. As we have seen, in Letter XII. (lib. ix., Ind. ii.), speaking of Constantinople, then at the height of its power, he says : " With respect to the Con- stantinopolitan Church, who doubts that it is subject to the Apostolic See?" "I know not," he says in Letter LIX., POPULAR STATEMENT OF ANGLICAN CONTINUITY 85 " what Bishop is not subject to it, when fault is to be found with him." His letters are filled with judgments and acts of jurisdiction and concessions of the Pallium with grants of vicarial powers addressed to Bishops all over Christendom. We have, therefore, no fear in adopting any of St. Gregory's views as to Papal jurisdiction. And the remaining four ? They are based upon an assumption. They beg as some- thing to be conceded to them to begin with, a principle which is the utter reversal of the Church's life and history, namely, that any movement of doctrinal or disciplinary de- velopment is incompatible with Church continuity. Precisely the reverse is true. We hold that such development, far from being out of harmony with continuity, is essential to it, and inseparable from it. It is just because the Church is the same from age to age, that she is able to adapt her discipline to the changing conditions of each. In traversing the centuries, she carries her Treasure of Truth her Faith and Morals unchanged. But by the very law of her life she unrolls it forth as she goes. She draws from it those inner truths and consequences new to man but old to the Gospel and which are not less a vital part of itself than the main articles of her Creed. She is the Scribe divinely learned in the Kingdom of Heaven drawing forth " from her treasure old things and new ". From this unfolding of the Truth-Treasure goes forth that sublime procession of her dogmas which extends from Nicaea to the Vatican, and which we call the Development of Doctrine. The very nature of such Development postulates continuity, just as a process of reasoning postulates the identity and continuity of the mind which reasons or to carry the analogy into a lower domain as growth and expansion postulates the identity and continuity of the individual tree thus growing and expanding. The glory of our Catholic Faith is that it is based on nothing less than the Word of God, and the Word of God without alloy. Development therefore is not the absorption of non-revealed matter, but the unfolding of that which has always been contained in revealed matter. Continuity is the logical basis of development, and develop- 86 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM ment, in things vital and intellectual, is the outcome of continuity. Hence in .testing a religious system on the score of doctrinal continuity, we must look at once for its doctrinal development, we must look sharply to see whether the process has been true or false, regular or irregular, healthy or unsound, straight or perverted. But if we find it not at all, the system is dead, as the igneous rocks upon the ledge of an extinct crater, and we may take no further trouble about it. The writer who, in feeling the pulse of a religious system, and finding the doctrinal movement present, argues thereupon, not to the presence of life but to the absence of continuity, is surely far from even the first elements of a sound diagnosis. But when we propose to answer arguments like numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, we should go straight to the point. People do not get to the point by first principles, but by last conclusions. Then a word to each. The " cup to the laity " means either the administration of our Lord's Blood or of the chalice which contains it. If the first, we do not withhold it from the laity, for it is given to them in the Host, since our Lord's Body and Blood are inseparable. If the second, it is no longer a question of what is given, but a manner of giving it a matter of mere rubrical regulation which has nothing to do with continuity. " Marriage of the clergy " is not a matter of doctrine, but of discipline. The Church which tolerated a married clergy in the first few centuries, because she could not find a sufficiency of others, tolerates it no longer, because she can. That it was " not absolutely prohibited until the eleventh century " is untrue. It was absolutely prohibited to the priesthood and those in major orders in the third and fourth centuries. The prohibition is implied in the Apostolical Canons (25) and plainly set forth in the Councils of Elvira (A.D. 310) and Ancyra (A.D. 314), the Decretals of Popes Siricius (A.D. 385), Innocent I. (A.D. 405), and the decisions of Gregory the Great to the Sicilian Bishops, and implied in his directions to St. Augustine here in England (Bede, i., 27). POPULAR STATEMENT OF ANGLICAN CONTINUITY 87 In certain parts of Germany, as here, under a Primate like Stigand, discipline was at times sadly relaxed, and the task of bringing the misguided stragglers into line was not always quickly or easily accomplished. But the law of the Church was always in force, its observance and recogni- tion never ceased to be canonical and general, while its violation was never more than local or spasmodic. Dean Plurnptre, a Protestant writer, concludes an exhaustive article on the subject (Diet. Christian Antiq.) by thus speaking of the action of Pope Hildebrand or Gregory VII. in the eleventh century : " Enough has been said to show that when Hildebrand entered on his crusade against the marriage of the clergy, he was simply acting on and enforcing what had been for about seven centuries the dominant rule of the Church. The confusions of the period that had preceded this had relaxed the discipline, but the law of the Church remained unaltered." On Transubstantiation the writer falls into the error of supposing that a doctrine in the Catholic Church is an "open question" until it is denned. The word "transub- stantiation " was adopted by later councils as the word " consubstantial " was adopted at Nicsea. But we hold that the doctrine of transubstantiation was never an " open question," in the sense that the Lutheran or Calvinistic doctrines had ever a standing ground in the magisterium of the Catholic Church. Papal Infallibility and the Immaculate Conception are definitions evolved in the ordinary course of doctrinal de- velopment, and no more affect the continuity of the Church than the definitions of the o^ioovcna at Nicaea, the @eoTo/eo 7rpovTroKeifJiV(i)), just as truths are evolved from principles or premises in which they were, not explicitly, but implicitly (OVK aveirrwyiJLGvws a\\d avveTrrvyfjuevo)^) contained. This process is denned as an unfolding or development from within, in contradistinction to an addition to the Faith from with- out (7rpoo-0rjKf)). The principle was ably expounded by the Bishop of Ehodes to explain the inclusion of the Filioque clause in the Creed. It was substantially the same as the principle pointed out by Vincent of Lerins as profectus or progress, and noted by the schoolmen as " non profectus fidei in fideli, sed profectus fidelis in fide," viz., not an increase of the Articles of Faith in the mind of the Faithful, but an increase or progress of the mind of the faithful in the Articles of the Faith. In such a work the Church does not add to her message any more than a man adds to his cloak when he unrolls it from his portmanteau. Let me suppose that the doctrine X has been folded up in two other doctrines V and W, which are its logical premises. It is clear that X always existed in them (as for instance the doctrine of the Homoousia denned at Nicaea is contained in (a) the Unity of the Divine Nature, and (6) the Divinity of Christ, and the Theotokos in the (a) Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin, and (b) the Unity of Christ's person), and thus we can truly affirm that from the very beginning X was held by the Church in its implicit or folded-up condition. Yet a very long lapse of centuries may pass over before the Church arrives at the stage where she folds it out, and reaches or works out the conclusion. Before that time X may not have been de fide, namely, a known and denned Article of Faith. (It might even happen that during that stage X might be denied or called in question, as, for instance, in the case of certain Catholic Churches of Asia which are said to have rejected in the third century the term Homoousia, that the Council of Nicssa insisted upon and defined as an ANGLICANISM AND THE APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE 351 Article of Faith in the fourth. 1 ) But after that stage X becomes explicitly de fide, and binding on Catholic belief. If we ask why, the reason is obvious. Because faith is due to that which we know to be contained in God's word. Before the definition, the Church had not assured herself, and consequently had not affirmed that X was contained therein. After that time she became sure, and from that moment and concomitantly with such certainty there arose the obliga- tion of believing it and requiring it to be believed. In this work of doctrinal evolution, which connotes the Church's growing insight into the fulness of the meaning of her Message, the Church is assisted or guided, but not in- spired. Her inind is left free to make the perceptions, work out the conclusions, to adjust the applications, and to work its way under the direction of the Holy Spirit, but in human fashion, to the required definition according to the lights and means which lie at her disposal. Hence, like all works of human industry, the results are written in the texture of time and of circumstance. But the Holy Spirit, pledged to guide her " unto all truth " provides by unfailing assistance, that in this process the Church shall be preserved from error. He does not lift her up by inspiration and spirit her over the bridge, but by His assistance, He is the parapet wall on either side, which prevents her from falling or deflecting as she walks her way across it. In this august function of doctrinal definition, upon which the Church's life and the world's guidance so much depend, by far the most important and the most precious of all her helps and resources must ever be Holy Scripture. It is the materia ex qua, the quarry of all her dogmatic conclusions. Hence in the conciliar debates which precede definitions of faith, and still more so in their natural introduction, the debates of the Theological Schools throughout the world, which for centuries previously have threshed out the issues and shaped Church opinion, there is and must be a constant appeal to the text of Scripture. 1 See Newman's History of the Arians, chap, ii., 4. 352 ASPECTS OP ANGLICANISM A glance at the pages of Passaglia's work on the Im- maculate Conception, or the chapters of the Vatican Council, would suffice to show how this appeal is made the very groundwork of all doctrinal research and definition. In both these forms of appeal the Appeal for proof and the Appeal for guidance the Catholic Church is unceasingly occupied in fulfilling the direction to " search the Scriptures ". The third form of Appeal is that which for want of a Better word we may call the appeal against. It is clear that in the foregoing cases the word " appeal " is used merely in the sense of having recourse to a means. We turn or appeal to Scripture for corroborative proofs of what the Church has defined, and also for guidance before she makes a decision. But when she has spoken we cannot appeal to Scripture against her. I may appeal to the testimony of my witnesses to show that a judge's decision was right, or to urge him to pro- nounce a given sentence, but all that is clearly a very different matter from appealing over his head to a superior court and against his decision. In the Catholic Church there is not any appeal against the Catholic Church, either to Scripture or any other au- thority. Such a "dividing against itself" has no place in God's kingdom. It is to be found elsewhere. Moreover, I am debarred from making an appeal against the Church to Scripture, for the plain reason that the Church herself is the accredited expounder of Scripture, and conse- quently the two authorities form but one and the same tribunal. The appeal against, therefore, is not as I might flatter myself to the Scripture versus the Church, but simply an appeal from the Church's judgment of the mean- ing and content of Scripture to my own individual judgment of both in other words, an appeal which can only be de- scribed as " Scripture according to the Church " versus "Scripture according to me". If Mr. Gore uses the word "free appeal to Scripture" in the first two meanings, he is at one with us and the Catholic ANGLICANISM AND THE APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE 353 Church, but then the characteristic which was to mark off Anglicanism from Bomanism has vanished and melted away. But if he uses the word in the third and un~ Catholic sense the appeal against and singles out such a principle as a characteristic of Anglicanism as distinguished from Boman- ism, we are only too sorry to think what an unhappy amount of truth lies in his contention. He would thus erect, indeed, a fence between him and us, but only by doing what surely many of his brethren will witness with sorrow by removing the sole barrier which could be regarded as separating the Anglican system, with its earnest yearnings and its Catholic ambitions, from the sad common ground on which all Protestantism and all heresies, past, present and future, must forever take their stand. Whether the appeal to history and the appeal to private judgment in its more direct form furnish any sounder cri- terion, we may leave for future inquiry. But, in the mean- time, Mr. Gore's first characteristic seems to us to either mean absolutely nothing at all to the Protestant masses, or a great deal too much for the nobler ideals of the English Church Union. Mr. Gore claims for Anglicanism that it is distinguished from Bomanism, not alone by one characteristic mark, but by three. He writes down as the first the free appeal to Scripture. We have already attempted to state some of the difficulties which appeared to us to attach to the use of this criterion. He adds to this two others. These we may call briefly the Appeal to History and the Appeal to Conscience. It will be more satisfactory to allow Mr. Gore to convey his meaning in his own words. After describing in the terms which we cited the free appeal to Scripture as " the governing consideration in the way of the justification of the Anglican position," he adds : There is another. It is that Catholicism must exist in such a form that it can really be free in the face of history ; maintaining no document as part of the faith which cannot, under the demands 23 354 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM of history, be really substantiated as having always belonged to the faith of the Church. And then, thirdly, a Catholicism which can frankly and legitimately challenge an appeal to the individual con- science and personality. I believe these are three main positions of Anglicanism among other branches of the Catholic Church : free appeal to Scripture, attitude of freedom, and free appeal to historical investigation, and that it challenges and lays on the individual conscience that amount of responsibility which is the truth of what we call private judgment. Here Mr. Gore takes his stand upon ground which is admirably clear. It is the ground of the Three Appeals. He describes the Anglican position as a Trilateral, of which free appeal to Scripture forms one front, free appeal to history a second, and free appeal to conscience a third. But when we come to look into it, these three are one. And it is Mr. Gore's last word that gives the clue to the synthesis. I may constitute myself the judge of what is or is not contained in Scripture. And having done so, there is certainly no reason why I should not, with equal fitness, be to myself the judge of what is or is not the true reading of history. And finally, having heard what Scripture and history have to say upon a given point, I may sit as Judge Ego in Supreme Court of Conscience to decide too whether it is true or false, right or wrong. And while I am doing so, I may with very pardonable generalisation speak simply of " Scripture " when I really mean my interpretation of Scripture, and of " History " when I mean my reading of history, and of " Conscience " when I mean the opinion which I have pronounced as to whether a given proposition is righteous or unrighteous, reasonable or unreasonable. But the beginning, middle and end of the whole process is plainly Private Judgment. It is the one and the same weapon of Private Judgment with its point turned in three directions, and exercised in the triple domain of Scripture, history and personal opinion. ANGLICANISM AND THE APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE 355 Naturally and necessarily there is in all three a scope within which the exercise of Private Judgment is not only legitimate but indispensable. There is a sphere, especially in matters of history, and in ultimate decisions of conscience, in which I am bound to judge for myself, and in which, if I do not, no other person can or will. All the same I have to guard against self-deception. I have to ask myself whether all this means that Scripture, History and Conscience are my Court of Appeal, as Mr. Gore implies or something widely and sadly different, that I am the Court of Appeal sitting in judgment on matters of Scrip- ture, History and Conscience. I may find out that these three authorities are not my judges, but simply the three departments in which I myself pronounce judgment ! In this world we have to deal with two Ideals. Both are beautiful and good, but one more so than the other. Fortu- nately we have not to part with either, but only to follow each in its own plane of application. We take the first, which we may call the Ideal of Free Thought. It would be surely hard to find a Triad of names more august than those which Mr. Gore has invoked Scripture, History and Conscience. God's written word the memory of mankind and the holy of holies, with its shekinah of God's guidance within the human soul. Little wonder that men should seek as a worthy usher to such thrones a fourth, Liberty one hardly less lovable and sacred than themselves. That in Scripture we should possess God's Holy Word, that by History our minds should be enriched with the consciousness and experience of the race, and that by Con- science we should have God's voice within us, are indeed blessings beyond comparison, and that we should possess and use them freely as the Giver intended them to be possessed and used, must be assuredly God's best interest and our own. If it is this possession and use that are meant by " appeal," then the very system of Catholicism demands such an ap- peal, and within its true limit the more free and full and frequent the appeal the better. 23* 356 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Let us not underestimate the value of such an Ideal. Few things are more beautiful or precious than liberty, and the noblest of all forms of liberty is liberty of thought. It is good that our minds should be free to examine freely whatever is contained in Scripture, in history, in science, and to form their judgment thereon. Had God left man to himself, this mental freedom the Ideal of Free Thought would have been not only good, but probably the best and highest condition we could conceive for mankind. But the Ideal of Liberty and Truth-seeking, high and worthy as it is, is, after all, the less noble of the two. A second and higher Ideal is that of Divine discipleship. When God takes us into His confidence, and becomes Himself our Teacher, and shares His Divine Mind with us, a new and higher era begins for us, and a second and nobler Ideal starts into being with the fact of God Revealing. God has thus intervened, not to take our mental freedom away, but to cap it with a gift which is higher still namely, Eevelation. It is good that we should be free to think and judge as we please. But it is better still that God should speak to us. It is good that our minds should be free to seek Truth in all places. But it is better still that the Truth itself should speak to us, and, like the Spirit, say " Come ". If it is a blessing that we should have absolute liberty in all things to think and judge for ourselves, it is a still greater blessing to be, as the Prophet says, " taught of God ". But it is to be observed that we cannot enjoy the higher Ideal Eevelation or discipleship without suffering a loss or limitation of the lower Ideal Freedom of Thought. Freedom of thought, by its very meaning, requires that we may question all things, and that every question shall remain open to our investigation. But from the moment that God speaks, His word closes to free discussion every question upon which He pronounces. We cannot, with either reverence or reason, hold a dubitative inquiry into the truth of what we know that He said. ANGLICANISM AND THE APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE 357 Hence it comes that these two greatest of Ideals are mutually exclusive of each other on the same territory. We can have each in its own domain. But we cannot have both on the same subject-matter. When Eevelation comes in, Free Thought goes out. What Eevelation occupies, Free Thought must evacuate. We cannot have God's word on a point and still hold ourselves free to question it. In other words : We can use our Private Judgment freely until we find God and His Eevelation, but once having found it, we can- not use our Private Judgment to test for ourselves the truth of what He tells us. Why will not Protestant writers honestly face the facts of their position, and why will they persist in vaunting their freedom of inquiry in the same breath in which they thank God for His revelation ? They can have one or the other. But no logical Christian can have both. Eevelation means restriction of the area of Free Thought. To see exactly how these principles work in the Catholic system, I have only to go back and put myself in the posi- tion of an inhabitant of Judaea in the days of Christ. I have been to Christ, have witnessed Him work His miracles, and have listened to His preaching. I have heard His claim, and I have had put before me the proofs of miracle and prophecy which go to establish it. I inquire into the evidence, and prayerfully test and weigh it, asking myself if this " be indeed the Son of God ". All this examination into Christ's claim makes up the first stage, and clearly it is throughout one of Private Judgment. The case is one which is ultimately decided in the court of my individual conscience. Christianity does not, therefore, bar or exclude Private Judgment. On the contrary, it makes its very primary appeal to it. It demands it, and makes room for it. The function of Private Judgment is to do for the would-be believer what St. Andrew did for St. Peter bring him to Christ. (Archbishop Whateley might surely have spared himself several pages of a very elaborate argument against the 358 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Catholic system could he have but read what is stated on this point in the elementary chapters of Catholic theology.) When I have convinced myself that Christ is indeed the Son of God, come here on earth to he my Teacher, the first stage that of inquiry has closed, and the second stage that of discipleship has begun. But in it Private Judgment ceases to act. When Christ teaches me a given truth for instance, the fall of Jerusalem I cannot say to Him, " All this catas- trophe which You foretell seems to me flatly contradictory of the glorious promises of Isaiah. I would gladly believe Your words, but I feel that it is contrary to Holy Scripture." If I believe at all that Christ is God, or if I am at all a Christian, I cannot to use a current phrase "think for myself " on what He teaches me, or go behind His teaching, or appeal to Scripture against what He tells me. It is equally clear that if Christ teaches me a given truth, I cannot proceed to test it by reference to history. I cannot say to Him : "I would believe what You say, were it not that there is what appears to me an overwhelming amount of historical evidence against it ". If Christ teaches me yes, and history appears to me to say no, it would be clearly treason to my Christian faith to appeal from His teaching to history. My reading of history may be wrong, but He is God, and His teaching must be right, and as for me as a Christian, there cannot be even a shadow of hesitation as to which I must accept. Nor when He teaches me the stupendous doctrine of the Holy Trinity, with its mysterious Unity of Nature and Threeness of Persons, can I say to Him : "I cannot see the truth of this doctrine, or reconcile it with my individual reason, and, therefore, I must decline to believe it". I can only say : " You are my God and my Teacher. Whatsoever You say must be true. It is not for me to judge Your word, but to accept it and believe it." " Speak, Lord, for Thy servant listeneth." " Thou art the Son of God. Thou hast the words of Eternal Life." So it is that Christians, by the very nature and tenor of their Christianity, are bound to make a surrender of their ANGLICANISM AND THE APPEAL TO SCEIPTURE 359 Private Judgment, and lay it at the feet of Christ, and Christ's very position as the Eevealer requires that they should do so. By the very fact of recognising a Divine Teacher, they recognise that there is, and must be, a circle of truth covering the whole content of what He has taught, within which all discussion, except for corroboration and ex- position, is necessarily closed, and within which there can be no questioning appeal to Scripture or to history or to the individual judgment. Not indeed that the economy of Eevelation infringes upon our liberty in any one of these three domains, any more than the revelation of the Beatific Vision hereafter will in any true sense diminish our freedom. If it exempts a given area of truth from our questionings, it is only because it gives us over that area a higher and better form of our liberty. If I put into the hand of the miner in the morn- ing before he goes down into his mine the nugget of gold that he is about to seek, I may be said indeed to limit or take away his liberty of search for that particular piece of gold, but surely not in a manner that he is likely to object to. The possession of truth must ever be something nobler than even the quest of it. The Ideal of Eevelation and discipleship does not impugn the Ideal of Free Inquiry, but it transcends and supersedes it, inasmuch as by the fact of God's speech the sure possession of the truth is substituted for that which is no longer necessary the free research after it. The position which Mr. Gore would choose for Anglican- ism by his free and triple appeal, seems to us to be, in last analysis, based on a return to the lower Ideal from the higher, and to be at least suggestive of a reversal of the natural order by instituting an appeal from the higher to the lower, and testing the data of Eevelation by the exercise of Free Inquiry. It seems abundantly clear that if the Church of Christ is the accredited expounder of Eevelation, and continues on earth Christ's office of Teacher, and is the Living Authority in which Christ so teaches "all days" that He could say, 360 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM " Who heareth you heareth Me " my attitude towards the Church in the nineteenth century, as far as discipleship is concerned, must be precisely the same as it would have been towards the Apostles or to Christ Himself in the first. I may and must use my Private Judgment until I find her and verify her claims ; but having found her, a new era begins for me. Thenceforth, I am face to face with the Divine Teacher. The stage of free and doubting inquiry is over, and the higher stage of discipleship has begun. What the Church teaches me as part of Christ's Eevelation will certainly preclude within the area of its content all exercise of Private Judgment. I cannot argue with God or His Messenger. The Church carries the light of Revelation for Christ, and within the circle of its rays there can be no place for dubitative discussion or inquiry. If we believe that she is Christ's infallible mouthpiece, charged to say to us what He Himself said, there can be no appealing from her either to Scripture or history, or to my Personal Judg- ment, any more than there could be were I standing before Christ who sent her. The conclusion which seems to flow from these facts is as follows : As surely as God has made a Revelation, and as surely as He has founded a Church to convey to us that Revela- tion, so surely must that Church have around her a circle of truth, inside of which there can be no appeal to any other authority, and in which any appeal could be nothing less than a treason to God the Revealer. The Catholic Church, if she speaks for Christ, who sent her, must necessarily speak like Him, and " as one having authority ". If it had fallen to the lot of Mr. Gore to set forth the criteria of such a Church a Church really teaching for Christ, and whose authority, supreme, final, peremptory and decisive, rings forth in the anathema sit of Catholic antiquity the very first duty which would have confronted him would have been that of insisting on this higher attitude of discipleship for her members, and of claiming for her a ANGLICAN THEORY 361 territory of truth inside of which there neither must nor can be freedom of sceptical inquiry or appeal. There may indeed be inquiry into the credentials of the Church, as Christ's Messenger, or into the credentials of Christ Himself, as the Divine Teacher, but the truth of these credentials once conscientiously established, there can be logically or loyally no questioning inquiry or examen dublta- tivum, as the theologians say, into the truth of the teaching. Dealing with the Anglican system, Mr. Gore has been led to do and we think quite rightly precisely the reverse. When he assures us that Anglicanism is marked off from Eomanism by the fact that it allows from its teaching a free appeal and a threefold appeal, he appears to us to go out of his way to furnish what is the unanswerable proof that the system which he thus describes cannot possibly be any part of the authoritative Church which Christ sent to teach in His name. A Church which carries Christ's message to mankind, and Christ's authority to teach it, can suffer no appeal from her teaching. If her message and teaching authority are Divine, she is bound to insist on them, and there is nothing to which we can appeal from them. If they are not Divine, she has no business to teach us at all. CHAPTER XL VIII. Anglican Theory St. Peter and the Apostles and the Bishops. (18TH FEBEUAEY, 1893.) NOTHING is more reasonable than that those who are sincerely attached to the Anglican system should band themselves to- gether to defend it, and it is decidedly better for them, and for us, that if they are to labour to establish its claims at all they should do so in the most direct, intelligent and practical way. From a Catholic point of view a movement of Anglican apologetic is in many ways welcome and hopeful. It can hardly proceed at all without at every step submitting and 362 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM keeping present to the mind of the English people momen- tous religious issues notably those between Anglicans and ourselves which it is our first and highest interest should be constantly and closely considered. No doubt it is equally our interest that the true answer should accompany the state- ment of the issues, and here the movement may diverge from us; but it is immeasurably better for us, and for the cause of Catholic truth, that the nation should think of these questions, even amid the mists of misguided plead- ing, than that it should cease to think of them at all. We have sufficient faith in the constitution of the human soul to feel sure that if it only thinks and prays often enough, and long enough, and earnestly enough on any question, in nine cases out of ten it will think and pray itself into the right. It is not from thought but from religious ignorance and indifferentism that we have any reason to fear, and if with the desolation of heresy and unbelief the land is laid desolate, it is not from thinking but from the want of thinking, and that prayerful thinking which Holy Writ calls "thinking in the heart". But it interests us not less than Anglicans that the case between us should be clearly and effectively stated. That is to say, it cannot be good for apologists on either side that time and effort should be wasted in mistaking each other's position, or in mutual misunderstanding of each other's terms and tenets, or in the weariness of making long argumentative strides which are not in the way. The first condition of success ought to be accuracy of aim. If the arguments supplied are to meet the purpose for which they are intended, they ought to be presumably of a kind which would hold the Anglican reader firm in his convictions, even if it should be his lot some day to talk the matter over with a well-instructed Catholic friend, or to study it for him- self in an accredited manual of Catholic doctrine. Let us take as a fair sample an argument which The Church Review put into the hands of its Anglican readers : It is an equally sound theological axiom that "one passage of Holy Writ must not be interpreted so as to contradict any other passage ". Therefore, on this point, as well as on the point men- ANGLICAN THEORY 363 tioned last week, it would be bad theology to interpret St. Matt. xvi. 18 as making St. Peter "the Foundation of the Church "- i.e., the source of all ecclesiastical and spiritual power, authority and jurisdiction for we find in very many passages indeed that such a proposition is explicitly and implicitly refuted. (1) Our Lord, in giving His Apostles their commission and authority to act in His Name, as spiritual guides of the world, addresses them all in terms of absolute equality e.g., "Whatsoever ye shall bind" (St. Matt, xviii. 19); "Go ye and teach" (St. Matt, xviii. 19); " I send the promise of the Father upon you " (St. Luke xxiv. 49) ; ". . . ye remit . . . ye retain" (St. John xx. 22, 23). (2) The Acts of the Apostles tell us that Christ gave to all His Apostles, equally, instructions as to how to govern and regulate the affairs of His Church (Acts i. 2). (3) Not only have we records of these general intimations of Christ's will that the Apostles should be reckoned equal, but we are told repeatedly that He refused to nominate any one of them as chief (St. Matt. xx. 26-28 ; xxiii. 8). To meet such a plea the Catholic would at once feel that the best reply would be found in a simple explanation of the teaching of the Church. For the Anglican argument has hardly proceeded beyond its opening sentence when it seems to fall into a singular misapprehension of the Catholic position. The Catholic doctrine that St. Peter is the Foundation of the Church, is apparently taken to mean that we hold St. Peter and, presumably, his successors the Popes to be " the source of all ecclesiastical and spiritual power, authority and jurisdiction ". Here we have a supposition which the Catholic would certainly not be prepared to admit, without first making limitations of the most serious kind. For instance : the other Apostles were not ordinees of St. Peter. We take St. John. His Apostolic power (" ecclesiastical and spiritual power, authority and jurisdiction ") means simply two things. Primarily, it includes the power of Order, namely, the fulness of the Priesthood which Christ shared with His Apostles. To wit : The power of offering the Sacrifice of the Eucharist. The power of forgiving sins. The power of giving the Holy Ghost in Confirmation. 364 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM The power of transmitting this Priesthood by Ordination. These are the powers of the High Priesthood. But secondly, there is the authority or commission to exercise these and other powers over Christ's flock, and that we call Jurisdiction. Obviously, Order is more important than Jurisdiction. First, because it is inherent in the person, while Jurisdiction is not ; and, secondly, because Order is usually presupposed by Jurisdiction. Order and Jurisdiction are thus the two elements of Apos- tolic Authority. Does Catholic faith teach that St. John derived them from St. Peter as from a source ? By no means. With regard to the chief and most essential power of Order, with its group of constituent powers which make up the fulness of the Priesthood, we are taught that the Apostles received them immediately from Christ. For these powers are given in a Sacrament. And in a Sacrament Christ deals with the soul directly and immedi- ately. St. Thomas Aquinas therefore teaches that when the consecrating bishop conveys the priestly powers to the person to be ordained, he acts only instrumen tally, even as the baptiser does to the baptised. The grace and the power are directly from God (3, q. 82, c. 10). If I am baptised by X, the grace of regeneration wrought within me does not pass to me through the soul of X. The inflow of grace into my soul is directly from the Holy Ghost, whom Christ sends into it to work its sanctification. The part of X is to do with due intention the outward sign of the Sacrament, the pouring of the water and pronouncing of the words. His action is extrinsic. But to it is annexed the work of the Holy Spirit, which is direct and intrinsic. That is why this effect is the same, whether X's soul be saintly or sinful, for X's soul is outside of the work, save as to the intentional doing of the outward sign. In other words, the minister of a Sacrament is not the channel of the grace conferred, but only the outward instrument of a Sacrament in which the Holy Spirit Himself immediately be- ANGLICAN THEORY 365 stows the grace upon the recipient. (Hence the deplorable mistake made by Protestants who imagine that in the Catholic Sacramental system the priest " comes between " the soul and the Saviour.) As the collation of the priestly powers of Order are Sacra- mental, the same law holds good in an ordination. Thus, not only St. John but every other Apostle held the fulness of his priesthood immediately from Christ. Hie est qui baptizat. And every Catholic bishop holds the fulness of his priest- hood in precisely the same manner at the present day. The Pope is no more a source in the one case than St. Peter was a source in the other. The Pope is the ministerial head of the Church on earth, just as the bishop is the ministerial head of the diocese. But Christ is not only the Supreme Ministerial Head of the Church, from whom all ministers derive authority, but the Vital Head of the Church, from whom all receive super- natural life and sanctification. But the secondary power of Jurisdiction ? Did St. John receive his jurisdiction from St. Peter ? Catholic faith has never insisted on such a belief. Christ Himself gave jurisdiction to His Apostles. Leading theologians at the Council of Trent, like Lainez, maintained that all the Apostles received their jurisdiction immediately from Christ. Others, like Salmeron, thought that they re- ceived it from Christ, " but through Peter " (Session xxiii.). But the mere fact that the point was an open one at Trent, and so remains in Catholic theology to the present day, plainly bears witness that no article of Catholic faith re- quires us to hold that the Apostles derived from St. Peter, as from a source, either their power of Order or of Jurisdiction. That the Apostles should look to St. Peter as their chief, and as the one to whom Christ gave the power of confirming them, and that they should exercise their Divine Commission in such measure of subordination as Church Unity might re- quire, is sufficiently intelligible. But St. Peter's supremacy, as taught by the Catholic Church, does not at all require that 366 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM he should have been the source of spiritual power, whether of Order or Jurisdiction, to his brother Apostles, and Angli- can arguments merely weaken their own relevance and point as often as they assume it to be otherwise. Let us pass from the Apostles and consider the bishops. Bishops are not theologically the same as the Apostles. The Episcopate is not quite upon the same level as the Apostolate. Undoubtedly the bishops, taken collectively, are the suc- cessors of the Apostles. Undoubtedly they possess, with them, the fulness of the same High Priesthood. Hardly any form of zeal would be more pitifully short- sighted and un-Catholic than that which would seek to glorify the Papacy by persistently minimising the constitu- tional status and dignity of the Episcopate. It is certainly not the policy of the Papacy itself, as we see by the eloquent letter addressed by Leo XIII. to the Bishops of Spain. The Episcopate is Christ's handiwork, and none but a sacrilegious hand can be lifted to impair its prerogative. It can never be a service to the Spouse of Christ, " all fair " in the stately symmetry of her faultless form, to depict her after the manner of those grotesque figures of the ordinary caricature of the comic press, in which a colossal head is seen to rest upon a mere pedestal of dwarfed and diminished members. Catholicity is ecclesiastical beauty, and beauty is balance and proportion. Thence we take it that earnest-minded Anglicans "who are rightly jealous of aught that would mar in the Church of Christ the maintenance and diffusion of the Apostolic dignity as inherited by the Episcopate, would surely find in a closer study of the Catholic system enough to fulfil their highest ideals, and certainly enough to remove their apprehensions. But theology least of all can afford to ignore facts. There are two facts which differentiate the Apostles from the bishops. The first fact is that the first bishops were not co-opted into the Apostolic College. They were not numbered with the Twelve. They were not added to the Apostles' own ANGLICAN THEORY 367 body, or made fellow-Apostles. They were, at the most, mere appointments made by one or other of the Apostles. The second is that the Apostles, in thus constituting the bishops, did not place them upon the higher plane of the Commission to the Universal Church upon which they themselves stood, but upon the lower one of limited and local Jurisdiction. The Apostles held from Christ a joint universal jurisdic- tion over the whole earth. The bishops were given by the Apostles a local and limited jurisdiction solely in the places to which they were appointed. Hence if the Catholic system makes a practical distinction between Apostles and bishops, it can hardly be said that in doing so it is acting arbitrarily, or that it is merely animated with an architectural purpose in lowering the floor around the Apostolic Chair of Peter. The import of this difference between the status of the Apostolic College and the Episcopate makes its mark in the Catholic system in the following distinction : We believe that the Apostles received not only their power of order immediately from Christ, but their power of juris- diction as well. Catholics believe in like manner that the bishops of the Church inherit the same fulness of the High Priesthood, and receive the plenitude of the power of order immediately from Christ. In this, the fulness of their High Priesthood, all bishops, whether of Rome or of Little Eock, are absolutely equal and alike, and this community in the substantial possession of the plenitude of priesthood fixes for ever the relation and attitude of the Sovereign Pontiff to the bishops as that of fraternity, and one in which he ever addresses them as his " Venerable brethren ". But Catholic theologians teach that the bishops' power of Jurisdiction is imparted to them by Christ, not immedi- ately, like that of the Apostles, but through the Apostolic See as the centre of Unity ; for power to rule a part of the flock of Christ can obviously only come from him whom Christ commissioned to feed and pasture the whole. Those 3G8 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM are rightful bishops, as the Council of Trent teaches, whom St. Peter and his successors, as the divinely appointed Chief Shepherds, assume into a share of their solicitude. That the powers of Order, which are Sacramental, should be conferred immediately by God, while powers of Juris- diction, which are not Sacramental, should be conveyed im- mediately from men, is an obvious and natural distinction. Cardinal Hergenrother expresses this truth by saying : " Theologians teach that the power of Order of bishops pro- ceeds immediately from God ; not so the power of Juris- diction, for this is given to men to confer ", l It is only in this sense, as far as jurisdiction is concerned, and as far as the bishops of the Church are concerned, that St. Peter and his successors can be rightly described as the " source " of ecclesiastical authority. While the bishops hold the main element of their spiritual power the power of order immediately and inalienably from God, they hold the second element of their authority and jurisdiction from Christ, through the Pope. But here again Catholic belief interposes an important qualification. We are to remember that the fact that the bishop thus holds his jurisdiction from the Apostolic See does not at all put him in the position of a mere deputy or delegate of the Pope. He is invested with ordinary jurisdiction as a true Shepherd over a given portion of Christ's flock, and takes his rightful place as one of that body which the "Holy Ghost has appointed to rule the Church of God ". It may be of interest to note the precise difference which exists between ordinary and delegated authority. It is very much like that which lies between a gift and a loan. (A gift once conferred becomes the possession of the receiver, and the receiver cannot without just and lawful cause be deprived of it. A loan is something not given but merely entrusted to the receiver and may be recalled by the giver.) When a person is appointed by the Pope to a given bishopric, he be- 1 Catholic Church and Christian State, vol. i., 180. ANGLICAN THEORY 369 comes the incumbent or possessor of the see. He receives an office or post which is a normal part of the order and constitution of the Church. Hence jurisdiction is annexed to the post, and is conferred with it. And because it is thus annexed to the post, and therein to the person appointed to it, it is called Ordinary jurisdiction, and the person appointed is called the Ordinary of the Diocese. He holds possession of the office by the law of the Church, and nothing but a grave offence on his part against the law of the Church or some grave necessitating cause would justify any deprivation or suspension of his jurisdiction. A bishop's diocese is thus his freehold, as long as he observes the Church's law and works in due obedience to the supreme Church Authority. Delegated authority is upon quite a different basis. It is merely entrusted for a time to the receiver for a given purpose, and may be recalled at pleasure. The receiver is merely a deputy, or delegate, or vicar, and like a nuncio or a commissary may have his powers withdrawn at any moment, since they are held not by law or possession but by the good pleasure of the delegator. It is precisely because the Bishop's authority is ordinary and intrenched in the law and constitution of the Church, that we can readily understand how in the earlier centuries diocesan bishops were appointed without immediate reference to Borne, whereas in later times bulls of appointment were required. In order that a bishop should be duly appointed he must receive jurisdiction over the flock assigned to him. Such jurisdiction can only be conferred by the Supreme Church Authority. But the collation of it may be conceived as being made in one of two ways. The Supreme Authority may say to the bishop, I appoint you bishop of X and give you jurisdiction. Or the Supreme Authority may say to the Church, as often as a see is vacant and as certain forms have been duly fulfilled in the election of a bishop, I recognise the person so elected and confirmed as having jurisdiction. In the first case, the authority collates jurisdic- tion personally ; in the second case, it collates it, so to speak, automatically by the mere fulfilment of the law. The one is ab homine the other a jure. In the earlier period (especi- 24 370 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM ally when recourse to a common centre would be difficult and troublesome) the method of collation would naturally take the form of annexing the jurisdiction to the due fulfil- ment of legal conditions. Later on, in a more highly de- veloped organisation, it would be open to the Church Authority or to its supreme depository, the Pope, to insist on the personal method of collation. For in either case the chief authority in the Church is the source of jurisdiction, insomuch as it either personally bestows the jurisdiction, or it makes, or maintains, or accepts the law by which the jurisdiction is attached to the fulfilment of legal conditions. In either case it is cum Petro et per Pctrum. The opinion which would regard the bishops as mere lieu- tenants or vicars of the Sovereign Pontiff is one which is rejected and discredited not only in the schools of Catholic theology but by the Papacy itself. 1 Thus the bishops, invested with the power of order im- mediately from Christ, and with that of jurisdiction from His vicar, occupy their thrones throughout the Catholic world as true successors of the Apostles, and in their united phalanx around the Chair of Peter still present to the world the perpetuity of " Peter in the midst of his brethren ". Nor would the texts which are cited do much to help the Anglican reader, who either learns for himself or from others the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy. Our Lord gave His spiritual power and authority to His 1 " Although it may be within his (the Pope's) power to limit the jurisdiction of a bishop, the bishop does not on this account become a mere deputy or vicar of the Pope. The bishops now as ever are called Ordinaries. ... As long as the Episcopal office is an essential element in the organism of the Church, which it will be to the end of the world, so long will bishops be no mere Papal vicars " (Cardinal Hergenrother in Catholic Church arid Christian State, vol. i., 194). So also Leo XIII. in his letter Ad Anglos. "Just as it is necessary that the authority of Peter should be perpetuated in the Eoman Pontiff, so by the fact that the bishops succeed the Apostles, they inherit their ordinary power, and thus the Episcopal Order necessarily belongs to the essen- tial constitution of the Church. Although they do not receive plenary or universal or supreme authority, they are not to be looked upon as vicars of the Roman Pontiff, because they exercise a power realty their own, and are most truly called the ordinary pastors of the peoples over whom they rule " (Leonis XIII., Ada, vol. xvi., p. 197). ANGLICAN THEORY 371 Apostles in common, and in so doing He obviously addressed them as one body. The Apostles were thus each empowered, and were (whether directly or "per Petrum") commissioned by Christ. Moreover, the commission of each extended over the whole Church at large. " They were each invested by Christ," says Cardinal Franzelin in his treatise De Scriptura et Traditione, " with authority to act as pastors, teachers and guardians of the faith for the Universal Church." But community is not the same as equality. A king, addressing the officers of his army on the eve of a campaign, might say : " Go ye and fight my battles. I give you authority to conquer new countries, and to bind or release their people." Each officer would undoubtedly hold his commission from the king. It would not at all follow that there might not be amongst them one to whom would be given the chief command, and with whom the rest would be called upon to work in that measure of subordination which is a condition of all corporate and combined action. Our Lord, while commissioning His Apostles, who by their number connoted the Universality of His Church, was careful at the same time to lay His finger pointedly upon one, so as to provide for the no less essential note of its Unity. For as Universality postulates many, so Unity postulates origin from one. As the personal unit of the Church's structure, Christ singled out St. Peter " the source of unity, beginning from one," as St. Cyprian beautifully expresses it. In the Gospel two features mark off St. Peter from the rest of the Apostles. The first is, that the power of " binding and loosing " which Christ gave to the Apostles collectively, He gives also by a special and individual grant to St. Peter. " To thee will I give the keys, and whatsoever thou shalt bind shall be bound in Heaven." The second is, that there are certain powers and promises given to St. Peter distinctively and by name, and which are not mentioned in reference to the other Apostles. To him, by name, is given the character of " Eock " or foundation of the Church. To him, by name, is given the charge to feed the Flock lambs and 24* 372 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM sheep, people and pastors. To him, by name, is given the office of " confirming his brethren ". For him, by name, is offered Christ's omnipotent prayer that in doing so " his faith shall not fail ". Christ's action as set forth in the Gospels is thus clearly twofold. There is his action towards the Apostles collec- tively, and there is His action towards St. Peter individually. Both are equally plain, and it would be the merest trifling with the Sacred text to open our eyes to the one and to close them to the other. No Christian will believe that Christ was wont to do and say things arbitrarily or aimlessly. His act and word which fasten upon St. Peter, making him the special recipient of what the others received only in mass, and again making him the recipient of what the others, as far as the text goes, received not at all, cannot be treated as nugatory or meaningless. Catholics see in them a Divine and deliberate purpose of the first magnitude -the wisdom of the Redeemer securing the unity of His Church. This purpose obviously defines their purport. They cannot mean less than the bestowal not of a mere honorary primacy but of the substantive and controlling powers without which the unity of free agents would be shadowy and ineffective. Wherefore, Our Lord's promises to Peter denote to us a command-in-chief amongst his brethren, which in no way weakens but on the con- trary, by supplying the unifying agency, completes the Divine Commission and prerogatives conferred on the body of the Apostles. There was a time when the doctrine of St. Peter's su- premacy in all its Catholic fulness and clearness was as plainly present to the conscience of England as it can be to our own at the present day. It was an English king Edward II. who thus eloquently expressed it in a letter to the College of Cardinals in 1314 . " When Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, had consummated the work of our salvation, and was about to return to His Father, in order that He might not leave the Flock which He had bought with His Blood bereft of the AN OBJECT-LESSON OF CONTINUITY 373 guidance of a Shepherd, he delivered over and entrusted the care of it, by an incommutable ordinance, to Blessed Peter, and in his person to his successors, the Eoman Pontiffs, that they might govern it in succession ; and willed that the Eoman Church, who is the Mother and Mistress of all the faithful, for the time presiding, holding as it were the place of God upon earth, should direct by her salutary teaching the peoples of the said Flock scattered throughout the whole world in the way of Salvation, and show them at all times how it becomes them to behave in the House of God " (Wilkins* Concilia, ii., 450). The whole Flock handed over by Christ to the care of St. Peter. And in Peter's person, to his successors the Eoman Pontiffs. And that by an " incommutable ordinance ". So that the Eoman Church is by Christ's will Mother and Mistress of all the Faithful. And holds the place of God upon earth. So that she may direct the Flock over the whole world in the way of Salvation. Truly, if our fourteenth-century ancestors arose from their graves to-day, our theologians would have but little to teach them in the matter of Eomanism. CHAPTER XLIX. Winchester as an Object-Lesson of Continuity. (29ra APKIL, 1893.) THE first week of April, 1893, witnessed a remarkable Anglican function at Winchester. On 8th April eight hundred years ago, the monks of Winchester felt the quiet routine of their daily life fluttered by a joyful flitting. They migrated from an old and venerated church, in which they had until then lived and prayed and sung, and took up their residence in their splendid new Minster, the present Cathedral of Winchester. 374 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM The present occupants of the cathedral differ in certain matters of faith, of discipline, which it is needless to specify, from the monks of Winchester. To the enormous bulk of Christendom, whether in the West or in the East, these differences are vital ^so much so that the mere mention of any analogy between the religious life of the old tenants and the new would evoke precisely the same smile of ap- preciative humour at Moscow as it would at Madrid. Nevertheless, Anglicanism in such matters is splendide audax, and it has kept, and with special solemnity, the eight-hundredth anniversary of the memorable day when the dedication of the Minster was celebrated by the Norman bishops and abbots and monks and clergy of 1093. 1093 is a fairly advanced hour in the day of English Church history. The celebration of such an anniversary would seem to mean nothing less than an attempt to unfurl the flag of Anglican continuity upon the very rampart of the Middle Ages. The signification of the event to an Anglican mind can hardly be better expressed than in the words of The Church Times : On 8th April, 1093, the Cathedral Church of Winchester was solemnly dedicated, and on Saturday and Sunday last the eight- hundredth anniversary of that great event was commemorated within its walls, portions of which were standing eight centuries ago. The preachers, the Dean of Winchester and the Bishop of Newcastle, could not do otherwise than dwell on one special aspect of the festival, the witness of those venerable walls to the wonderful continuity of the Church in England. "Where," asked the Dean, " would be found a better symbol of the continuity and the corporate life of the Church of England than in the record of eight hundred years during which our countrymen had worshipped there ? " No one who has learnt to prize liturgical worship can without emotion remember that the prayers he hears to-day have been heard by myriads of Churchmen of preceding generations not only in England, but in other parts of Christendom. But an event like that of Saturday brings the thought home in a deeply significant and forcible manner, and we may feel certain that the Churchmen of Winchester diocese realised then, as they never realised before, how the ancient liturgy has preserved the faith in their own portion of England, and how deep are the roots which the Church has struck into our national life. AN OBJECT-LESSON OF CONTINUITY 375 If history could be rewritten and reversed, or if the Re- formation could be antedated by five centuries, and if the mediaeval bishops and clergy who built and consecrated the Minster in 1093 could be proved to have abjured the Pope and subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles, and to have burnt their Missals and used the Book of Common Prayer, the paragraph in The Church Times would hardly require any substantial change in its wording. No doubt the passage we have quoted does no more than put into words what many conscientious men of our time believe or dearly wish to believe. It is hard for earnest- minded men who have loved the beauty of God's house, who have appreciated the charm of that which is Catholic, and who have felt the winning majesty of that which is ancient and historic, not to strive loyally to project their ideals if so be it they can into a system, and into surroundings which time and home, and kin and country, have made per- sonally dear to them. We know that it may not be. But one may surely well believe that God, who ordereth all things sweetly, and from end to end reacheth mightily, will make use of such pathetic ambitions and ideals as guiding lights to lead men to where all that they loved, even from afar, can alone be found in its true and blessed fulfilment. To such truth-seekers there could hardly be presented a happier object-lesson of the Ancient English Church than that which they may find for themselves in the annals of Winchester. Any one of a thousand points on the area of the land would equally well suffice, but as Winchester has been chosen, so we may conveniently accept it as the spot upon which we can test the value of the Dean's claim of continuity. Such a study is, we take it, the best commentary upon the celebration of the 8th of April. Winchester and the Kingdom of Wessex can claim what to our mind is a noteworthy and distinctive honour. It owed its conversion and ecclesiastical foundation to a special mission sent directly from the Pope. 376 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM It was evangelised, not by any missionary of lona, or by any disciple of St. Augustine, but had all for itself St. Bir- inus, who came straight from the Chair of Peter bearing the commission of St. Peter's successor to work for the faith in England. St. Bede (Hist. Eco., in., 7) chronicles the fact as follows : " At that time (A.D. 635) the West Saxons, formerly called Gewissae, in the reign of Cynegils, embraced the faith of Christ at the preaching of Bishop Birinus, who came into Britain by the advice of Pope Honorius. having promised in his presence that he would sow the seed of the holy faith in the inner parts of the dominions of the English where no other teacher had been before him." The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that in the year 648 the Minster was built by order of King Kenwalk at Win- chester, and "hallowed in the name of St. Peter". Two years later St. Birinus, the "Apostle of Wessex," died, and Bishop Hedda had his remains translated to the great cathedral. Thus the Church of Winchester was Petrine not only in its dedication, but Eoman and Papal in its very foundations. The crucial issue whether at this epoch the Holy See exercised substantive authority over the English Church may be illustrated by the words of the same Pope Honorius in writing to King Ed wy : " We have sent two Palls to the two Metropolitans Honorius and Paulinus, to the intent that when either of them shall be called out of this life the other may. by this authority of Ours, substitute another bishop in his place ..." (St. Bede, ii., 17). His letter to Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, is not less authoritative : "Wherefore pursuant to your request, and to that of the Kings, Our sons, We do by these presents, in the name of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, grant you authority that when the Divine Grace shall call either of you to Himself, the survivor shall ordain a bishop in the room of him that is deceased. To which effect also, We have sent a Pall to each of you, for celebrating the said Ordination ; that, by the AN OBJECT-LESSON OF CONTINUITY 377 authority of Our precept, you make an Ordination acceptable to God " (St. Bede, ii., 18). If historical evidence means anything, St. Birinus came hither under the Commission of a Pope who had no doubt whatever about his authority over the Primates and bishops in England. Such Pall-giving, with the express transmission of sub- stantive powers of jurisdiction, seems to us to estop for ever any conscientious mind from accepting the theory that the relations between the Anglo-Saxon Church and the Apostolic See were merely those of the missionary and Mother-Church character. For instance, could we even conceive the Archbishop of Canterbury sending a pall " from the body of St. Augustine " to the Anglican Bishop of New York, to enable him " by this authority of ours " to consecrate the new bishop in Boston ? If such a claim were urged, it would need no great power of imagination mentally to reproduce the nervous diffidence, the timid persuasiveness, the flowing periods in which the operative clauses would be masked in Scriptural references and historical allusions, and sublime generalities. But it would require no imagination at all to picture the naked and terrible American plainness of the answer that would come back across the Atlantic. The mere whisper of such a claim would suffice to arouse American Anglicanism into an attitude which would make the repetition of the attempt for ever impossible. What is so wildly impracticable for the Archbishop of Canterbury in regard to his missionary offshoots outside the British Empire, was both possible and practicable, natural and normal, for Pope Honorius over kingdoms that yielded no civil allegiance to Eome or to Caesar. He exercised " this authority of ours " over the Church in England and through St. Birinus in the very foundation of Winchester. 1 1 That such was the constant tradition, and the undoubted convic- tion of the Winchester Church itself " our countrymen " of the " eight hundred years " to whom the Dean appeals as witnesses of Anglican continuity is written large in the Greater History of Winchester, com- 378 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM The present clergy of the cathedral hold their positions by signing the formula that the Pope " hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England ". Is this organic contrast, by which one set of men accept and hold what the other rejects and repudiates, the " symbol of continuity " to which the Dean alludes in his sermon? Winchester has the imperishable glory of being the start- ing-point from which began the apostolate of St. Boniface and the conversion of Germany. From a monastery near Winchester, in A.D. 718, Winfrid or Boniface set out for Borne, armed with a commendatory letter from Daniel, the venerable bishop of the diocese, who, three years later, himself went to visit the Holy Father. Pope Gregory II. commissioned the English monk to go forth on his task of converting the German tribes " in the name of the Indivisible Trinity, by the inviolable authority of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, with the dispensation of whose doctrinal teaching we are charged, and the place of whose sacred see we administer ". 1 Never was a mission more distinctively Papal (or ought we to say Italian?) than that of the Winchester missionary. The Pope invested Boniface with the Pallium, and made him his " Legate of the Apostolic See ". And in return Boni- face took an oath of obedience to the Pope. He stamped the imprint of his own Romanism upon the face of the German Church. posed by Thomas Budborne, the monk of Winchester, in the latter half of the fifteenth century. This writer cites Archbishop Theodore (A.D. 679) as saying : " It is not our will, and it would ill-become us, during the lifetime of our most holy brother Hedda, to injure his diocese in any way by diminishing it ; seeing that he so splendidly ennobled the Church of Winchester, by transferring, by the authority of Pope Agatho, the body of the most Blessed Birinus, Apostle of the West Saxons, from the city of Dorchester, where it was kept, and at the same time with it the See, to the city of Winchester ; and by whose labour and zeal the seat of Episcopal dignity was, by the Apostolic mandate, then for the first time confirmed to the same city" (Anglia Sacra, i., 193). lu ldeo in nomine Indivisibilis Trinitatis, per inconcussam auctori- tatem beati Petri, Apostolorum principis, cuius doctrinae magisteriis dispensatione fungimur et locum sacrae sedis administramus, modes- tiam tuae religionis instituimus " (Letter of Pope Gregory II. to St. Boniface ; Haddan and Stubbs, Ecc. Councils, iii., 363). AN OBJECT-LESSON OF CONTINUITY 379 Writing to Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, a report of his work, and of the proceedings of a council of bishops which he had held at Frankfort (appended to the Acts of the English Council of Cloveshoe, A.D. 747), St. Boniface says : "In our Synod we have decreed and professed, "1. To hold while life shall last the Catholic faith, and unity, and subjection to the Eoman Church. "2. To be subject to Blessed Peter and to his successor. "3. To hold Synods once a year. "4. The metropolitan bishops to seek their Palls from that see. "5. To seek to follow canonically in all things the precepts of St. Peter, that we may be counted amongst the sheep entrusted to his care. "And to this profession we have all agreed and sub- scribed, and we have sent it to the Tomb of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles. And the Eoman clergy and Pontiff have joyfully received it " (Haddan and Stubbs, Ecc. Councils, in., 377). Othlonus, the biographer of St. Boniface, who wrote about the beginning of the twelfth century, professes to give the words of this oath : "I, Boniface, by God's grace Bishop, do promise to thee Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and to thy Vicar, Blessed Pope Gregory, and to his successors, by the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the Indivisible Trinity, and by this Thy most sacred Body, to observe all fealty and the purity of the Holy Catholic faith ; to remain, God help- ing, in the unity of the same faith ; in which, without doubt, every Christian must seek salvation ; never to consent at the persuasion of any one, to anything contrary to the unity of the common and Universal Church, but, as I have said, to show in all things my faith, purity and helpfulness to thee, and to the interests of thy Church to which was given by the Lord the power of binding and loosing, and to thy Vicar and to his successors. And if I shall find bishops acting against the ancient laws of the holy fathers, I will have no communion or converse with them. But rather, if it shall 380 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM be in my power to hinder them, I will do so ; if not, I will faithfully and immediately denounce them to my lord the Pope. "And if which God forbid I should ever attempt to do anything against the tenor of this promise, by any manner, device or occasion whatsoever, may I fall under the guilt of eternal judgment, may I incur the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira, who dared to practise a fraud upon you, even as to things which were their own. "The written form of this oath, I, Boniface, unworthy Bishop, have written with my own hand, and I have laid it on the most sacred Body of St. Peter, so that as prescribed, I have, God being my Witness and my Judge, made an oath, which I promise to fulfil " (see Acta Sanctorum, torn, xxi., 462). Now, here we hold in our right hand the subscription of Winchester's greatest saint and missionary. And here we hold in our left that other subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles which the present Dean and clergy of Winchester have signed, repudiating obedience or subjection to the Pope. Is it in the relation of the diametrical antagonism which exists between the one and the other that the Dean discovers the symbol of continuity ? Amongst the dales of Derbyshire stands Chatsworth, one of the stateliest of the stately homes of England. Minds possessed by a sense of historic values are wont to regard the palatial fabric as the fitting frame of its noble library, just as they look upon the library as the worthy casket of its priceless treasure the old Anglo-Saxon Service Book, known as the Benedictional of St. Ethelwold. The fortunate feature of this venerable volume is that it is profusely illustrated. Side by side are pictures and prayers. The pictures are of saints, of priests, of vestments, of acolytes with censers. The prayers are blessings, formulas used by the bishop for the various festivals throughout the year. We have but to turn over its leaves, and there passes before us a panorama of the faith and worship of the Anglo- Saxon Church. AN OBJECT-LESSON OF CONTINUITY 381 There are the blessing-prayers to be used on the Feast of the Annunciation. And there opposite is the fair figure of Our Lady, robed in jewelled attire, enthroned under a canopy, while the angel stands by to declare his message. The inscription runs : " Here standeth the Heavenly Messenger proclaiming to Mary, 'Behold, Blessed One, thou wilt bring forth Him who is both God and Man '." l Here is the prayer for Candlemas day : " Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of Heaven and Earth, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, listen to Thy unworthy servants crying and praying to Thee. We beseech Thee, Lord Almighty, and Eternal God, who didst create all things from nothing, and by Thy command through the work of the bee didst make to come forth this wax or moisture, and who on this day didst hear the prayer of the just Symeon, we humbly beseech Thee, that Thou wilt deign to bless and sanctify these candles for the use of men whether on land or on sea, by the invocation of Thy most Holy Name, and by the intercession of Holy Mary, Thy Mother, whose feast we keep to-day, and by the prayers of all Saints, so that while this Thy people bear them with honour in their hands, and sing Thy praise, Thou mayest hear their voice from Holy Heaven and the throne of Thy Majesty, and may be merciful to all who cry to Thee, and whom Thou hast redeemed by Thy precious Blood, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, God, world without end." Here is the prayer for the Feast of St. Peter's Chair : " O God, who madest Blessed Peter the Apostle in such a way to be the chief, that amongst the very Princes of the Faith he obtained the Primacy (principatum) , and having received the princely power on earth was made the door- keeper of Heaven, so that he might admit whom he would as citizens of the kingdom, look down upon Thy people with Thy wonted mercy, who didst uphold the footsteps of Thy most holy Apostle upon the sea, and didst wash away his sins in his tears, so that through his intercession and 1 A. transcript of the Benedictional with plates of illustrations by John Gage may be seen in vol. xxiv. of the Archceologia. 382 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM award he may by pardon lead the flocks committed to his care where he himself, both shepherd and door-keeper, recompensed by Thee, rejoices in glory." St. Ethel wold, who used this Benedictional, was Bishop of Winchester the same who melted down the church plate to buy bread for his starving flock. He found in his cathedral certain canons who were suffi- ciently relaxed to think that in defiance of the laws of the Church they might serve God more easily in the married state than in the celibacy of the secular or monastic clergy, and so possess Christ's hundredfold reward and "wife and lands " at the same time. The good Bishop who was so tender to the starving poor had no pity to waste on these domesticated clerics. His action, as Eadmer l tells, was prompt and practical. One day, when the choir was singing the Communion verse of the Mass, " Servite Domino " (" Serve ye the Lord with fear, and rejoice unto Him with trembling. Embrace discipline lest at any time the Lord be angry, and ye perish from the just way " Ps. ii. 11), the Bishop suddenly entered the cathedral, carrying a portentous bundle under his arm. "Have you been paying attention to what you have just been singing? " he inquired of the canons. " We have," was the tremulous answer. " Then," said the Bishop, " if you wish to serve the Lord with fear, and to rejoice to Him with trembling, embrace dis- cipline, that is to say, the monastic habit." Whereupon he unrolled his bundle before the eyes of the astonished canons. It was found to contain several sets of monastic habits or cowls. These ominously corresponded to the exact number of the canons. St. Ethelwold, with his supply of monastic clothing before him, then and there gave his canons their choice of two alternatives either to put on the cowls and embrace the monastic life, and live up to the requirements of their sacred state, or else to clear out of his cathedral. "Either straight away you accept this discipline, or in this very instant you will be swept out from 1 Eadmer's Vita Sti. Dunstani, Anglia Sacra, ii., 219. AN OBJECT-LESSON OF CONTINUITY 383 the livings and corporate life of this place." Clerical celi- bacy or the door ! l St. Ethel wold's "jamjamque " meant no further trifling. The effect was worth whole years of ecclesiastical process or preaching. The right minded were promptly clothed, and " served the Lord with fear ". The recalcitrant betook themselves elsewhere, and St. Ethelwold filled up their places with monks from the Abbey of Abingdon. We have here St. Ethelwold as the exponent of Anglo- Saxon Church worship and of clerical celibacy. One is tempted to ask on which of these points the in- tercession and invocation of the Saints, or clerical vows of celibacy would the Dean of Winchester or his clergy like to found their claim to continuity ? Would he take St. Ethelwold's prayers with their Petrine and intercessory doctrines ? Would he take St. Ethelwold's monastic habit with its corresponding obligations ? Putting the cowl aside as out of the question, we may ask, would he care to make public use of that prayer about the candles in Winchester Cathedral on the 2nd of next February ? And if continuity be not in the principle of Supreme Church Authority and if it be not in the principles of faith and wor- ship and if it be not in the standard of Church life and dis- cipline is it really worth while asking where else it may or can be? What can it avail any Church to possess a mere tenant- continuity ? To worship inside the same walls, the same Christ with the same official grades of ministry cannot be a continuity worth claiming, for all this and more might have existed just as truly in the Anglican Church had the Tudor sovereigns forced her to be Monophysite, Nestorian, or even Arian. But all this Winchester Catholicism, of which we have but faintly traced the outline, belongs to a stage of our Church history when the Dean's period of "eight hundred years" had not even yet begun. 1 " Sed aut disciplinam in praesenti apprehendetis aut loci istius beneficiis et conversation! hinc eliminati jam jamque cedetis." 384 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM In the next chapter we may be allowed to seek for the " Symbol of Continuity " in the corporate life of the centuries which followed. In Anglo-Saxon Winchester we find not continuity but contrast. There can never be continuity between Yes and No between the Yes of SS. Birinus, Boniface and Ethel- wold, and the No of the Anglican Prayer-book and the Thirty- nine Articles. CHAPTER L. Winchester, a Lantern Lecture. (13TH MAY, 1893.) THE wider the mirror, the fuller the reflection. Winchester in Norman times took rank as a royal city. Kings dwelt, and Courts resided, and Councils of the realm were held within its walls. Windsor and Winchester were, in fact, the two foci around which the majestic sweep of Norman royalty revolved. Thus the features of Anglican continuity, which might be excusably dim in the old and simple Saxon city, could hardly help being revealed, if they were to be revealed at all, in the fuller and fiercer light which beat upon Win- chester as a centre of royal action and national life in the years which followed the Conquest. The Dean of Winchester himself encourages us to this quest when he appeals to the Church history of Winchester and its cathedral as the witness of Anglican continuity. We look at the record. Our task is to " find the continuity ". We take the 800 years. That is to say, we traverse the span from the year 1093 to the recent Anglican celebration and the preaching of the Dean's sermon. But we beg for a short twenty-three years' preface to make room for an event which riveted upon Winchester the eyes of all England in the fourth year after the Conquest. The drama of Winchester's annals can hardly be sketched in the compass of these pages, save in a series of scenes. WINCHESTER, A LANTERN LECTURE 385 Suppose, then, that we have a Lantern Lecture. We are in a public hall. The gas is lowered, until the lime-light disc glows upon a screen which hangs in front of the platform. The first slide that we cast upon its surface is Winchester in 1070. An assembly of Church and State. Bishops and abbots are mingled with knights and barons. In the centre of the group stand four famous figures. The stout strongly built man, whose stern face seems hardly less iron-cast than the helmet above it, is William the Conqueror. The three ecclesiastics at his side are Ermenfrid, and the Cardinals John and Peter, all three Legates of Pope Alexan- der II., who have arrived from Eome. They have come to put the English Church in order. They begin at the top. They are about to exercise one of the most stupendous acts of Apostolic jurisdiction one which happily was never needed but twice in the whole course of English history the deposition and degradation of an Archbishop of Canterbury. Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, has proved himself a schismatic and a rebel to the Pope. He has usurped the Pallium, which he sought and obtained at the hands of an antipope. Pope Alexander II. has sent his Legates with a demand that Stigand shall be deposed and degraded, and that an absolutely clean clearance shall be made of all prelates whom he has consecrated. 1 Here, in this very Council, the sentence of degradation and deposition is pronounced by the Legates in the presence of the King. The Archbishop and his brother, the Bishop of Elmham, and all who have resisted what the Thirty-nine Articles describe as the Pope's " jurisdiction in this realm," are rooted out as weeds from the Church of England. We find that practically the whole work of the reorganisa- tion of the Church in this country a reorganisation so com- plete that only the occupants of two sees in the whole 1 Bemigius, in his profession of obedience to Lanfranc, mentions the mission of the Legates from the Pope with orders that all who had been ordained by Stigand should be deposed or suspended (Stubbs' Constitu- tional History, i., 306 n.). 25 386 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM kingdom were left unchanged is carried out under the direction of the Eoman Authority exercised by these Legates. We gaze upon this great and solemn national act at Winchester, in which the hand of St. Peter is laid so heavily and wholesomely upon the English Church. Then we look upon that other assembly of men that met last month, holding in their hands the Book of Common Prayer with its enclosure of the Articles. Is it herein between the inclusion and the eocclusion between the recognition and the repudiation of the Supreme Church Authority that we are to find the Dean's continuity ? But perhaps the Winchester Council of 1070 is rather a Eoyal than a Papal one ? And possibly was it called rather by the King's than the Pope's Authority ? Let us put the question to the Legates and the Bishops there standing around the altar. For reply, they hand us the writ or summons, in virtue of which they are assembled. We cast it on the screen, and it reads as follows : " Although the Eoman Church has the duty of seeing to the correction of all Christians, nevertheless, more especially does it belong to her to inquire into the morals of your conduct, and by the diligence of her Visitation, to repair amongst you the Christian Eeligion in which she of old instructed you. "With a view to fulfil this debt of solicitude, We, the unworthy (qualescumque) ministers of Blessed Peter the Apostle, and taking the place of, and armed with the au- thority of our lord Pope Alexander, have come to your shores, to hold a Council with you, so that we may pull up whatever has evilly grown up in the Vineyard of the Lord of Hosts, and plant whatever will be for the benefit of souls and bodies. " By Apostolic Authority we, therefore, invite your brother- ship to share in so great a solicitude, and to meet together at Winchester on the third day after next Easter all excuse put aside and you will warn all the Abbots of your diocese to accompany you, showing to them these our letters." 1 1 Wilkins' Concilia, vol. i., 323, WINCHESTER, A LANTERN LECTURE 387 Between a Council called together at Winchester by Papal authority, to enforce a Papal mandate of the first magnitude, and an assembly of clergymen also met together in Win- chester, whose very position and work are based on a rejection of Papal Authority, there is a relation. But it is not that of continuity. Another scene. The inside of the old cathedral at Winchester. It is Whitsunday of the same eventful year, 1070. On a throne on the sanctuary, mitred and vested, sits Ermenfrid, the Pope's Legate. Bishops, abbots, priests and monks form a circle around him. The priest kneeling at the feet of the Legate is Walkelyn, the King's Chaplain. The Papal Legate is consecrating him Bishop of Win- chester. The High Mass, with the stately ceremony of the conse- cration, is over, and the bells are ringing, and the Te Deum is swelling through the minster in joy and thanksgiving for the new pastor that the Apostolic See has given to Winchester. We shall see him again. Another joyful ceremony. It is an April day of 1093 (the one of which the Anglican occupants of Winchester Cathedral have recently kept the 800th anniversary). This time the old surroundings have passed away, and wondering and admiring crowds are surging between the mighty walls and under the lofty roof of the new Cathedral. The flower of the English Church and State have come to the hallowing. The old Wintonian chronicler's heart swells with the patriotism of his place as he puts it on record that " almost every Bishop and Abbot in England " is there, and that they have come " with exceeding gladness and glory " maxima ezultatione et gloria 1 to consecrate the stately fabric that J Annales Ecclesiae Wintoniensis, Anglia Sacra, i., 239, 25* 388 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Winchester has raised to the honour of God and of St. Peter and St. S within. The consecrating Bishop is Walkelyn, whom last we saw at the feet of the Papal legate. The new minster is Walkelyn's work, and a shadow flits across his face as he thinks of his next meeting with the Eed King, for he re- members how in his unsparing zeal he, the Bishop, has swept out of existence a whole royal forest to accomplish it. As he passes from the chancel, and traces with his pastoral crook the mystic alphabets to the God of All Knowledge athwart the spacious nave, he well may feel with holy pride that few of the mitred prelates at his side will return to their homes throughout the land to find a nobler temple or a lovelier shrine than he and they have blessed this day at Winchester. How great would have been Walkelyn's surprise and horror if some prophetic angel could have bent down and delivered to those assembled the dread message of the future : " Eight hundred years from to-day, another ceremony will take place within these walls which you have built, and here on this spot which you have hallowed, men who have renounced the authority of the Apostolic See will meet to celebrate a service specially framed to take the place of the Mass by those who will have rejected the Propitiatory Sacrifice of the Altar as ' damnable idolatry '. To you the Mass is essentially a Sacrifice, and its very meaning and merit is that thereby the blessedness of the Sacrifice of Calvary is imported into your worship, and brought home to your altars at all times and all places. To you it is that or nothing. To you the Sacrifice is the very soul of your service. But those who will meet here on this day eight centuries to come, will keep the commemoration with a service in which the very idea of propitiatory Sacrifice will have been purposely abjured, and the very word will have been utterly blotted out and banished from its liturgy." And this to Walkelyn ! Walkelyn, who was consecrated by the hands of the WINCHESTER, A LANTERN LECTURE 389 Pope's own legate ! Walkelyn, who is even now going up to the high altar to celebrate the " damnable idolatry " ! Can the Dean of Winchester even picture to himself the wrath and consternation with which such an announcement would be received in such an assembly ? There are mailed hands down there in the nave that would have gone swiftly to the hilts of their weapons at the mere mention of such a catastrophe. The pastoral staves in the sanctuary would have trembled and shaken like pines under the north wind in anger and abhorrence at the mere thought of such an apostasy ! Hardly would those sturdy barons find in their fierce Norman tongue oaths sufficiently strong, and hardly would those bishops find in their Pontificals anathemas sufficiently blighting and bitter wherewith to denounce what they would have called, in those days of unmincing speech, a " heretical pollution ". They would probably have applied to such a commemora- tion the same straightforward adjective which the Eeformers prefixed to our "idolatry". But who could depict the speechless bewilderment that would have fallen upon the throng if the barons were sud- denly asked to stay their hand, and the bishops were besought to stay their ban, on the ground that between themselves sons and sworn defenders of Holy Church as they were and the future abjurers of the Pope and the Mass there was, after all, nothing but historic harmony and Catholic continuity ! We may doubt if the sense of humour in the eleventh century would have risen to the occasion. Norman bishops and barons were not by any means safe people to jest with, and truly the Dean of Winchester may congratulate himself that he had eight whole centuries between himself and those with whose work he was claiming continuity. Had his sermon been delivered to them, and had they but had as much as a hint of its meaning, it would have re- quired a whole bodyguard of angels to have saved the minster from the need of a further ceremony of reconcilia- tion. 390 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM There yet remain a few slides upon our list, and turning away from that uncompromisingly Catholic and Papal as- sembly that met at the hallowing of the minster in 1093, we may be allowed to seek farther on in the life of Winchester for some trace of the Dean's symbol. In the meantime we can only remember that the sainted dead are without anger. We cannot doubt that many of the good bishops and monks and faithful laymen, whose dust awaits the resurrection beneath the floor of Winchester Cathedral, will have watched with prayerful emotion the recent assembly held within its walls. What is " bound" on earth " shall be bound in heaven," and it is not for the Church in heaven to bless what the Church of Christ upon the earth has banned. But they in the light of God's countenance will surely have seen there what even our feeble charity here on earth fails not to see a generation which in all sincerity is seeking the face of God according to its light. And surely at least will they have blessed and we may join them in blessing that yearning cry of earnest souls, heartsick of the selfishness of the Eeformation, seeking so pitifully where it is not to be found, the beauty and peace of what is ancient and beautiful, sacred and true, traditional and Catholic. CHAPTER LI. The Winchester Priors. (10TH JUNE, 1893.) WE cast upon our lantern screen the figure of a stately prelate vested in cope and mitre. On his finger gleams a richly jewelled ring, and on his hands are the ceremonial gloves. A very type of the grand ecclesiastic of the Middle Ages. Of what see is he the bishop ? He is not a bishop. An abbot ? Not even an abbot. But he wears a mitre ? THE WINCHESTEE PRIORS 391 Evidently. And a ring? Undoubtedly. Yet he is only a prior the Prior of St. Swithun's, at Winchester. Then whence all this glory of episcopal insignia ? It is the privilege of his monastery. Eome has sealed the light of her favour upon St. Swithun's, and its priors, mitred, gloved and ringed, and sandaled, walk side by side with the bishops and abbots of the land. It happened in the days of King Henry III. The See of Winchester was a much-coveted post. When it became vacant in 1250, King Henry III. besought the monks to choose his brother Ethelmar or Aymer de Lusignan. Aymer was then a young man in minor orders, and only in his twenty-third year. The monks were willing to overlook his youthfulness, and duly elected him to the See. The Pope, in spite of strong opposition from the barons of England, who loved not Aymer, confirmed the election, but withheld consecration for ten years, so that the candidate had ample time to arrive at the age of episcopal discretion. Thus Winchester was for ten years under the rule of a Bishop-elect. Eoyal Winchester was privileged to witness within its walls more of State pageants and Church processions than almost any other city of England, and yet even in the long red-letter list of its memories few could have excelled the splendour of that day in July, 1251, when Aymer, the young Bishop- elect, was received by the whole city in solemn procession, and King Henry III., with all his Court, was there in person to bid him welcome. But when the festivities were over, and the normal round of Church life resumed its course, Aymer possibly for want of the discretion for which the Church was waiting found time to quarrel with the monks. His ways were hard, and his hand was heavy upon them. It was all about certain disputed claims upon a piece of 392 ASPECTS OP ANGLICANISM Church property. But fighting one who was a Bishop-elect and the King's brother to boot was uphill work for the monastery. The King himself offered to intervene and negotiate a settlement. But the monks and very naturally had reasons of their own for thinking that the position would not be improved by an arbitration of which the impartiality was more than doubtful. Besides, they knew of a better way, especially in a case where kings or kings' brothers were concerned. " Our Lord the King," says the old chronicler, " wished to make peace between Aymer, the Bishop-elect, and the monks of Winchester. But the convent looked forward to better terms which could be obtained from our Lord the Pope. And so they refused the offer, and they were not mistaken " (Annales Wintoniensis, Anno MCCLV.). So William of Taunton, the prior, betook himself to Rome. Terms were arranged which the Pope confirmed, and Aymer and the monks were once more started in the beautiful ways of peace. But a long residence at Borne had endeared the Prior William to Pope Innocent IV. In their intercourse the Holy Father had learned the tale which, no doubt, had not lost from want of sympathetic telling of the trials of the monastery at Winchester and how much it had suffered in many ways by the youthful zeal of the Bishop-elect. As a compensation, and to show that Eome was not un- mindful of its duty to show publicly its sympathy with the oppressed even when kinsmen of kings were the oppressors the Pope granted to Prior William, and to his successors in St. Swithun's, the right to wear the dalmatic, the mitre, the ring and the sandals 1 (Annales Wintoniensis Anglia Sacra, I, 310). Thus it was the hand of St. Peter to whom they turned for help in the hour of sorrow and need, that clothed for all future time the priors of Winchester with these highest insignia of ecclesiastical distinction, and marked them out 1 The grant is mentioned in the Calendar of Papal Letters, vol. i., p. 305. WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM 393 as specially honoured and favoured amongst the priors of England. One may wonder what any of these priors, whose very dress was a constant reminder of what Winchester owed to Kome, would have said, could they have listened to the Dean's recent sermon on Continuity. Would they not have pointed to their mitres, and held up their gloved hands and their ringed fingers, and shaken their croziers, and have demanded of the preacher to tell them what in the name of English honesty did all these things mean if the successor of St. Peter " hath not any jurisdiction in this realm of England " ? CHAPTER LII. A Winchester Bishop William of Wykeham. (24TH JUNE, 1893.) THE fairest, fullest and brightest page of Winchester Catholicism is that which bears the venerated name of William of Wykeham. In the olden time the parish priest was the " person " or living embodiment of the parish, and the bishop was the " person " of the diocese, and the Pope, as Archbishop Peck- ham tells us, was the " Person of the Apostolic See ". In a historical, as well as in an ecclesiastical sense, William of Wykeham will remain for all time the person of Winchester. His name is inseparably wedded to the place. The traditions of the place are welded with his fame. No educated Englishman now or in the future can ever pronounce the word Winchester without thinking of William of Wykeham. Who was he ? We turn to our lantern and screen to answer the question. The scene before us is the Lady Chapel of the minster at Winchester. The altar lights are mirrored and multiplied in the sur- 394 ASPECTS OP ANGLICANISM roundings of silver adornment, and the very table of the altar itself is of silver and gilt. 1 The priest with the shaven crown and the long flowing chasuble is the monk called Pekys, who comes to this chapel daily to say the Mass. For here is said the Mass of our Blessed Lady the " Mary Mass " of the day. The poor peasant youth who kneels close by, devoutly hearing the Mass dreaming perhaps of a day when he too may be privileged to say it is called William Longe, or simply William. Just now one name is thought to be enough for such as he. Later on, when he becomes suf- ficiently important to need two names, they will call him William of Wykeham, from the village in which he is said to have been born. He comes here faithfully each day to assist at the Holy Sacrifice, and to pray with the priest in the words of the old Sarum Missal, " that we who truly believe her to be the Mother of God, may with Thee be assisted by her prayers, through Christ our Lord ". Devotion to the Mass (which is devotion to Christ as our High Priest and Victim) and devout invocation of the Mother of God, are the two most genuine marks of the traditional English, as of every other Catholic. We have before us another altar, with its towering cross and glistening lights. In front of it seated on a throne or faldstool is William Edington, Bishop of Winchester. At the vacancy of the see in 1345, the King wrote in his favour to the Pope, and the Holy Father, wishing to gratify his "most excellent son, the King of England," set aside a candidate whom the monks had elected, and by Bulls of Pro- vision, ex plenituditie, Apostolica potestatis, appointed William Edington to the See of Winchester. The Papal license for his consecration with the copy of the Oath of Fealty to the Pope, to be signed and returned to the Eoman Chancery, was issued in February, 1346 (Calendar of Papal Letters, vol. iii., p. 26). 1 Inventory of Winchester Church Goods in vol. i., Dugdale, Mon- asticon. WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM 395 And the gratified King upon his side has made the new bishop a prelate of the Order of the Garter, which he has just founded " in honour of the Blessed Virgin and out of his singular affection for her," and has further ordained that the grant shall descend to his successors, the Bishops of Winchester. Nor were the honours ill bestowed. Holding one of the wealthiest sees of England, Bishop Edington comes down to us as one who, much too kind- hearted to wait or make others wait for the hour of his will- making, emptied himself during his life-time of all his worldly goods, and distributed what he possessed into the hands of Christ's poor. 1 Before this good Bishop kneels the youth William, now a cleric, well taught in the sacred learning of the time. He holds forth his hands for the priestly consecration, and on the outstretched palms the Bishop traces the cross of the sacred anointing, while he says in Latin : " O Lord, deign to consecrate and to sanctify these hands by this anointing and Thy blessing, that whatsoever they shall consecrate may be consecrated, and whatsoever they shall bless may be blessed and hallowed in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ." Then the Bishop puts into William's hands, thus sanctified and consecrated, the chalice with wine and the paten with a host, and says " with a slow voice " the words which make more full and explicit the form of priestly ordination : " Receive the power to offer sacrifice to God, and to cele- brate the Mass both for the living and the dead, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Such is the formula in the ancient Winchester Pontifical, used for centuries at the minster such, too, is the formula used in our ordinations to-day. (But such is not the formula nor is such the intention and belief according to which the present Bishop of Win- chester either ordains or was ordained.) This ordering of the clergy which was carried out for centuries in the sanctuary of the minster is the most vital 1 He had already given 1,000 to the hospital of St. Cross. 396 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM function of church life. It is there, in the very flow of Apostolic power and ministry, that we find between the new and the old tenants of the Cathedral, not " continuity," but a chasm which is as broad and as deep as the Reformers, with their ordinal framed to express their vehement denial of the Sacrificial Priesthood of the new law, could dig it. Another scene. A room in the Royal Palace. Seated at the table we see England's mighty ruler, King Edward III. Around him are his courtiers and councillors. The table is covered with plans and drawings of castles and churches. At his right hand stands William, now even higher in the Royal favour than his bishop and patron, William Edington of Winchester. His genius for mathematics has procured for him the post of the King's chief surveyor in the construction of the buildings and public works of the realm. His statesmanlike prudence has won for him the confidence of the King, who has made him Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. Ecclesiastical preferments have been showered upon him, and immense revenues pour into his hands, only to be poured forth again for the public weal. And so it has come to pass that the peasant boy who heard Mass in the Lady Chapel at Winchester takes his stand with the princes of his people in the courts of kings. We have before us the High Altar of the old Cathedral of St. Paul's. It is Sunday, the 10th of October, in 1367. On the Altar we see the lights burning in the ponderous silver candelabra which flank the cross. Before it we note " a beautiful silken frontal richly embroidered with flowers and golden crowns," and having "in the centre the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary seated, with our Saviour and the Blessed Trinity, all in silver upon golden thrones ". 1 1 See Inventory of Church Goods of St. Paul's, A.D. 1245 and 1402, vol. 1., Archceologia. WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM 397 The prelate, seated upon a throne in the sanctuary, and wearing the "mitre encrusted with pearls and precious stones," 1 is the primate, Archbishop (a short time after Cardinal) Langham, whom the Pope has translated hither from Ely. At his feet kneels William of Wykeham to receive epis- copal consecration. They read the Bull of Provision by which Pope Urban V. has appointed him to the See of Winchester (Anglia Sacra, i., 317). We hear the authoritative words of the operative clause of the Bull the echo in England of the Papal sentence pro- nounced in Consistory : " All of which things having duly weighed and considered, We, with the advice of Our said brethren, and by Apostolic Authority, have Provided for the said Church of Winchester in the person of the said William, acceptable to Us and to Our brethren by the claim of his afore-mentioned merits, and We have appointed him thereto as its Bishop and Pastor, fully committing to him the care and administration of the same, both in spirituals and temporals." The head and hands of William of Wykeham are anointed with chrism. The pastoral staff is blessed and placed in his hands. The episcopal ring is blessed and placed on his finger. It symbolises the fact that he is wedded to his Spouse, the Church of Winchester. The mitre is blessed and placed upon his head. The Book of the Gospels is placed in his hands. Then the newly consecrated Bishop bends lowly to his metropolitan and consecrator and be- takes himself to a side chapel, where, according to the rubric of the Sarum Pontifical, he celebrates the Mass of Our Blessed Lady. Two stately buildings. One at Oxford, the other at Winchester. William of Wykeham has happily brought to his see his genius and zeal for construction. And, more happily still, 1 See Inventory of Church Goods of St. Paul's, A.D. 1245 and 1402, vol. 1., ArchaQloc/iq,. 398 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM the chiefest work which he has begun to build up is the education of his diocese. His is not the ideal that educa- tion can be cramped into the narrowness of mere diocesan machinery. He knows that education to be preparatory must begin there, but he knows also that, to be adequate and complete, it must not end there. Bather must it go forth and expand its lungs upon the broad field of a national basis. He has therefore resolved to found two great colleges, each of which shall be the complementary of the other. One is to meet the local need at Winchester and one is to be founded at Oxford, which the first shall feed and to which it shall lead up, and whither his best clerks shall go, to share in the intellectual light and life of the great Catholic and national Alma Mater and thence return to shed it upon his diocese. This double institution so wisely planned and so muni- ficently carried out is the chief glory of Wykeham, just as Wykeham is the chief glory of Winchester. May we not, then, feel that we are very much at the heart of historic Winchester if we enter for a moment into its famous school and see for ourselves the method and manner in which it was founded. Here, if anywhere, we ought to discover some trace of the Dean's "record of continuity". CHAPTER LIII. A Winchester School Chapel. (Bra JULY, 1893.) ONE more scene upon our screen. The Chapel of Winchester College in the year 1525. The scene has in it something of the pathos which belongs to last days. It might be called, indeed, one of the closing years of the pax Catholica which had rested upon the land for nearly a thousand years. But a short time later, and Henry VHI. began to feel the anguish of his troubled con- science, and then matters moved speedily as they neared the end. But here, in 1525, we are still in the light of the Catholic A WINCHESTER SCHOOL CHAPEL 399 day ; the terrible to-morrow has not yet come, and before us we have an English College Chapel, just as it stood on the eve of the Eeformation. It will be for us not only to take in the general view, but to examine the picture some- what in detail. It is a duty to be painstaking when we are in search of the Dean's "record of continuity ". There upon the high altar stands " the Tabernacle of gold " encrusted " with precious stones and pearls," and adorned with " ymages of the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Virgin in crystal ", l It is the truly royal gift of King Henry VI. to the College of Winchester. On either side stand "the silver candlesticks," "gilt," "wreathed" and embossed, averaging in weight about two pounds each. Above them towers the lofty silver-gilt " crucifix," bearing "the Founder's arms," and weighing more than thirteen pounds. Images ! Look around. Here is the "Silver Ymage of the Blessed Virgin and Child seated ". It is said to have been the gift of the great Cardinal Beaufort "the Cardinal of England," as they proudly used to style him. It is nearly a stone weight of solid silver. There, too within two ounces of the same weight are " Two Ymages of the Blessed Virgin and the Archangel Gabriel supporting a silver-gilt bowl with a lily and Crucifix ". Here, weighing 142 ounces of silver, is " a great Tabernacle, with Ymages of the Blessed Virgin and Child, and an angel on either side holding a candlestick in his hands, and an ymage of St. Paul above ". There on one side is a smaller " Silver-gilt Ymage of the Blessed Virgin and Child standing ". The silver-gilt image of the Saint on the other side represents " St Swithun, " one of the patrons of Winchester. 1 Summary of Contents of the Vestiary in the year 1525, given in the Annals of Winchester College, by T. P. Kirby, M.A., p. 230, in which also all the objects which follow may be found, 400 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Then, how eloquently Catholic is the adornment of the Sanctuary ! As we look upon it, we seem to see the lights gleam upon the altar, and to witness once again the glorious movement of the High Mass. Eight before us, the altar wears the frontal "of white damask worked with golden roses, and green and yellow- green branches in silk ". It has " the Crucifix in the middle, the Virgin Mary, St. John and the Nativity " on the left side. On the opposite side is the triumphant scene of our Lord rising from the Tomb. In the centre is the Angel Gabriel saluting the Mother of God as Blessed amongst Women. It hangs there in the central point of the church, as a small Catechism teaching graphically as only the things of sight can teach the great triptych of Christian truths the Incarnation, the Eedemption and the Resurrection. And in the vestments, what a glowing sunset of colour white, red, blue, green and gold. There is the set of "white silk" vestments, with the " orphrey of red satin," the " chasuble figured with a Crucifix, the Virgin Mary, and damask flowers on the back ". There, too, the white vestment, " with orphrey of green satin worked with gold : for the Mass of the Virgin ". Or the set of red vestments " made out of the robe which the Most Christian Prince, King Henry VI., gave " ; and the chasuble which has " the Crucifix on the back and the Trinity on its upper part ". Or the set of red damask, with its " orphrey of cloth of gold ". On the back is " the Crucifix, and at the foot two Angels and St. Peter," worked in " cloth of gold ". Or the set of " blue velvet, worked with golden stars and crowns," and the set of " blue velvet," with the " orphrey of cloth of gold worked with a Crucifix, Mary and St. John," the chasuble having " three Angels on its back," and over them " the Trinity ". Or a set " of green silk, with orphrey of cloth of gold the gift of the famous Bishop Waynflete. Embroidered on the back of the chasuble is the Adoration of the Magi " the A WINCHESTER SCHOOL CHAPEL 401 three Kings of Cologne and the Virgin and the Child ". And again, "Our Blessed Lady and St. Joseph," with a fore- ground of golden roses. The Trinity the Atonement Our Lady St. Joseph St. Peter St. John ! Surely it is easy to read in such a brilliant book what were the truths, and what were the Saints that were uppermost in the minds and hearts of our Catholic ancestors. The other accessories of Catholic worship are not less significant. There is, for the Blessed Sacrament, " the pyx of crystal mounted in silver-gilt " nearly six pounds in weight " with a cover and foot, and images of Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and St. John on the top, and three precious stones ". There is the " silver chrismatory, set with stones," which contains the consecrated oils used in the conferring of Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders and Extreme Unction. Here are no less than seven "silver" and "silver-gilt thuribles ". The arm of the altar- boy must have ached on the morrow of a great function during which he had been swinging the " great silver thurible, weighing 72 ounces ". Here are silver "incense boat and spoon" the "silver holy water pot and sprinkler" the "two gold phials" or cruets, used at Mass, and engraved with " the Arms of France and England". These silver-gilt tablets, oblong or circular, with a handle above or behind, are for service at Mass. They are given to the people to kiss, as a symbol of fraternal peace and intercommunion just before the Communion. Hence they are each called a "Pax," or an " instrumentum pacis," or an " osculatorium pacis". Here are eight of them. Let us put them side by side and note the inscriptions. For, as the Pax was in constant use, piety naturally prompted the engraving on the part to be kissed of some subject which would appeal to Catholic devotion. 26 402 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM The first has enamelled on it " the ymages of the Crucifix, the Blessed Virgin, and St. John ". The second has " the ymages of the Crucifix and the Blessed Virgin and St. John, with twenty-four white roses ". The third has " an ymage of the Crucifix ". The fourth has " an ymage of Jesus Christ ". The fifth has the " ymages of the Virgin and the Child, and white and red roses ". The sixth has " an ymage of the Crucifix set with stones and inscribed with the Gospels ". The seventh has " an ymage of the Saviour inscribed with the Epistles ". The eighth has " the ymage of St. Peter and St. Paul, inscribed with the Epistles and Gospels ". The Crucified Saviour, Our Lady and St. John, St. Peter and St. Paul such were the well-beloved figures which, Sunday by Sunday, were devoutly pressed to the lips of the generations of the faithful at Winchester. There is the great " chalice and paten of gold ". With it are twelve silver or silver-gilt chalices (averaging twenty-two ounces each), enamelled or embossed with images. We set them in a row, and watch how they reproduce the Catholic lessons embroidered on the vestments. Let us note the inscriptions and images as we pass along the line. "The Holy Trinity." " The Blessed Virgin and St. John." "God" the Father, seated on a throne and "with out- stretched hands ". "The Crucifixion with the Blessed Virgin and St. John." "Jesus Christ." "The Blessed Virgin and St. John." . "The Blessed Virgin and St. John." " Jesus Christ." " The passion of St. Thomas the Martyr." " The Crucifixion " and " Jesu " on the paten. "The Crucifix between two trees" and the " Holy Trinity " on the paten. "The Crucifixion with the Blessed Virgin and St. John," A WINCHESTER SCHOOL CHAPEL 403 and on the paten "An ymage of the Saviour seated and with outstretched arms ". " The Crucifixion with the Blessed Virgin and St. John," and on the paten " An ymage of the Saviour ". " The Crucifixion," and on the paten " An Agnus Dei " or Lamb of God. " The Crucifixion, the Blessed Virgin and St. John," and on the paten "the Holy Trinity" and the words "Let us bless the Lord " and " Jesu ". "The Virgin and the Child" and the words "Jesus Christ, Son of God," and on the paten "The Lord is the Protector of my life ". "The Crucifixion" and an "ymage of God" on the paten. "Jesu Christe," and on the paten "Let us bless the Father and the Son". How emphatically and persistently this iconography of the Winchester chalices teaches us the strength and ardour with which the faith of the English Church identified the Sacrifice of the Mass with the Sacrifice of the Cross the altar with Calvary and felt that the Saviour of mankind is not less truly in the hands of the priest than He was in the arms of Mary, and that He rests not less really upon the paten than He did in the crib at Bethlehem ! We have here in their authentic fulness and clearness the apparatus of religion as it existed in Winchester before the Eeformation the ancient religion of the land. But is it does it look like the religion of the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles ? In such sacred memorials we read indeed a graphic record which our fathers in the fervour of their faith loved to trace upon all that was most precious of their gold and silver. It is a record which tells its own tale with a voice which nothing can silence. Its import is one which goes directly home to the inmost depth of the Catholic heart and con- science. It is all that and more, but it is not the record of the Dean's continuity. 26* 404 ASPECTS OP ANGLICANISM CHAPTER LIV. Winchester Worship. (15TH JULY, 1893.) IT is still the year 1525, and we are standing in the College Chapel at Winchester. We have seen its church furniture. We have now to witness its worship. The College is eminently a " House of Prayer ". William of Wykeham was above all things a man of action and construction. He had handled the weightiest affairs of the State. Undertakings of national magnitude and import- ance had issued safely and successfully from his hands. He had done England's message in foreign lands, and embas- sies of delicate import had been, with the happiest results, entrusted to his keeping. Who would have marvelled if we had found in this great mediaeval prelate, on whose mind the Court and the public life of the nation had made so large an impact, somewhat less of the love of prayer, and of appreciation of its needful- ness, than we should have naturally looked for in a bishop of cloistered views and monastic temperament ? And yet it was very much otherwise. Piety and prayerfulness were amongst the most prominent features which William of Wykeham stamped upon his foundation at Winchester. Let us try to measure the volume of its daily devotion. We begin with what we may call individual prayers. Those eleven priests, dressed each in a black robe, reach- ing to the ground and surmounted by a hood, are the Warden and the ten Fellows of the College. (A.) This morning, as soon as they had risen from their beds (cum de lecto surrexerint), they have said : 1. The Antiphon and Versicle of the Holy Trinity. 2. The prayer " Almighty and Eternal God ". 3. The prayer for the soul of the Founder (Collect in our Missal of the Mass of Holy Trinity). " God, who amongst Thy Apostolic priests, hast bestowed on Thy servant, our Founder, the episcopal dignity, grant, we WINCHESTEE WORSHIP 405 beseech Thee, that he may also be joined to their perpetual society. Through Christ our Lord." (B.) Then during the day, at an hour which each may choose for himself, they will say for the souls of King Edward III. and certain members of the royal family, for the soul of the founder and for the souls of his parents : 1. The Psalm " Out of the Depths ". 2. Kyrie eleison, etc. 3. Our Father and Hail Mary. 4. The prayer "Incline, O Lord ". 5. " O God, the Creator and Eedeemer of all the faithful," etc. (inserting "John and Sibylla," the names of the father and mother of William of Wykeham). 6. "0 God, who amongst," as above. (If any of the eleven should inadvertently allow the day to pass without saying these prayers for the dead, he is to be careful to supply for the omission on the following day.) (C.) Again, after High Mass each day, when the office of None has been said, and before the warden leaves the choir, they say for the soul of the Founder : 1. The " Out of the Depths ". 2. Our Father and Hail Mary. 3. " God, who amongst Thy Apostolic priests," etc., as above. 4. " Absolve, we beseech Thee, the soul of thy servant." 5. " May the soul of our Founder, and the souls of all the faithful departed, by the mercy of God, rest in peace." (The above Psalm and Collects are familiar to all Catholic readers, and will be found in any Catholic Prayer-book.) (D.) After grace at dinner, the same prayers are recited. (E.) And in like manner after grace at supper. Thus, no less than five times each a day, the bond of Catholic Communion was lovingly renewed between the living and the dead. And the Warden and his Fellows lifted up mind and heart in the beautiful liturgy of the Church to pray for the soul of their Founder. And William of Wykeham was intensely in earnest about these prayers. He writes it down in his Statutes of Foundation that he 406 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM wants them to be said day by day and not until the Refor- mation but "for evermore " : " Did volumus singulis diebus in perpetuum ". And in laying this conscientious obligation this tithe of prayer upon those who benefit by his donation and founda- tion, he most clearly gives them to understand that it is not a matter which he will suffer to be treated lightly. "Upon all of which things," he says, "before the Most High God, with all strictness we charge the conscience of each and of them all." 1 In no part of Christendom, save in the religious bodies born of the Reformation, is intercession for the dead regarded as other than a holy and wholesome duty of Christian love. Devout Anglicans, naturally wishful to find standing- ground upon the practice of Catholic antiquity, are ever and anxiously assuring us that on this matter the teaching of their Church is at one with the East and with our own ; and they point, in evidence of their plea, to the existence of certain guilds, and to the service of Requiem elaborately celebrated in certain of their churches. On such a point, we could heartily wish that they were right. For in being so, they would have come at least one step doctrinally nearer to us than they have been. But we do not think that they are. At least, they have brothers, blunt of speech, who say " No " and who say it with all possible plainness to every one we know. If these, the true-bred Reformational Protestants, were right, the worst we could say would be that they acted con- sistently on what we believe to be their heretical convictions. But if the higher Anglican contention were in any sense right, and if prayers for the dead were really an Anglican doctrine, ah ! then the actual authorities at Winchester would be well and wisely employed in preparing the answer which they, in common with all those who have lived in his house, and eaten his bread, will have to give to William of Wykeham at the day of Judgment. His voice still rings in their statutes, and surely must sound in their ears. 1 Super quibus omnibus ipsorum omnium et singulorum conscientias apud Altissimum onerarmts (Statutes, c. 28). WINCHESTER WOESHIP 407 " Upon all of which things, before the Most High God, with all strictness, we charge the consciences of each and of them all." Now we turn to the public services. The order of these for each day has been by the hand of the Founder minutely specified. Several times each day the Warden and the Fellows and Chaplains assembled in this chapel to celebrate cum cantu &t nota the daily round of the Church's worship. Matins and Lauds about dawn. Prime the Church's morning prayer about sunrise. Terce. Mass. Sext and None during the day. Vespers and Compline (the Church's night prayer) at the close of the day. " In like manner we decree, ordain, and will, that every day, throughout the year, Vespers, Matins, Masses, and the other canonical hours of the day shall be devoutly celebrated with chant and music in our said College near Winchester by the Priests, perpetual Fellows of the said College, and the Chaplains and Clerics engaged for this purpose, as afore- mentioned, according to the use and custom of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury, and the distinction and ordinance hereinafter set forth " (William of Wykeham's Statutes, c. 29). Here we have the Canonical round of daily Sacrifice, prayer, and praise, by which the College threw its voice into the great chorus of worship, which swelled so joyfully from every church throughout the land, and in which the voice of England herself sung her glorious part in the great concert of Catholic Christendom. Surely never was unity like to the Church's unity ! But the daily worship of the College was not to end here. Around these, the central and canonical offices, was raised a setting of supplemental services rich in the harmony of faith and charity. Let us examine them more closely at hand. 408 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM We are standing before one of the side chapels. At the altar is a priest, vested in " a black velvet chasuble," on the back of which is a representation of our Lord's " Sepulchre ". 1 He is saying the Mass for the Dead. We hear him saying the Collect, Deus qui inter Apostolicos, for the soul of William Wykeham, and also the Collect Fidelium Deus, the same which we still say after the psalm " Out of the Depths ". If we can approach sufficiently near to the altar we can hear the whispered words of the Canon verbally the same as it is said at our altars to-day : " Which in the first place we offer Thee for Thy Holy Catholic Church, to which vouchsafe to grant peace, as also to preserve, unite, and govern it throughout the world, to- gether with Thy Servant Clement our Pope, and Eichard our Bishop, and Henry our King." s And just before the Communion, we can hear the words of that most pathetic part of the Eequiem Mass a Mass in which all is so full of sacred pathos when the priest, taking our Lord, "the Lamb as if slain," into his hands, thrice appeals to Him, by the blood in which He washed away the sins of the world, to give rest to the souls of the departed : 1 Inventory of College Chapel Goods, A.D. 1525. 2 When in 1893 Sir John Stuart Knill, the Catholic Lord Mayor of London, recognising that law of ordinary Christian decency, which gives the spiritual precedence over the temporal, placed the name of the spiritual Sovereign of Christ's kingdom before that of the temporal Sovereign of these realms, he was but following with genuine Catholic and Christian instinct one of the most venerable and historic usages of the English nation. Before the Reformation daily at every altar in England, in the recitation of the Canon, and Sunday by Sunday in every parish church throughout the land in the vernacular recitation of the Bidding-prayer, the generations of the English race invariably prayed for the spiritualty before the temporalty, and for the " Pope " before the " King ". The action of the Lord Mayor was, in every sense, far more truly English than that of his critics, and was, in fact, the faithful reproduction of the traditional practice of the whole English people for nearly a thousand years of their history. So any one who looks into a Sarum Missal or into an ancient form of Bidding-prayer may easily see for himself. So prayed in their parish churches the Barons who won for England the Great Charter. So prayed the victors of Poitiers, Crecy and Agincourt. The Lord Mayor might well rest content to be as English and loyal as they. WINCHESTER WORSHIP 409 " Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, Give to them rest everlasting ". We turn to another side chapel. Here the priest at the altar is vested in one of those " white silk " chasubles with " golden orphreys " mentioned in the inventory of 1525. He is saying the Mass of Our Blessed Lady. William of Wykeham specifies that this Mass shall be said each day, with its usual Collect, and the Postcommunion prayer which we say this day at the end of the Angelus. In this Mass, the statutes prescribe the five following collects : The first, of Our Lady, as above. The second, for the Bishop of Winchester. The third, for the King. The fourth, for the soul of William of Wykeham (Deus qui inter Apostolioos). The fifth, for the souls of the parents of William of Wykeham and all the faithful departed. At another side chapel is said a third Mass according to the feast of the day. A fourth and fifth Mass are said for certain friends and benefactors of the College. Finally, a sixth and seventh Mass are said with the Collects for the founder. Thus according to the will and ordinance of William of Wykeham no day (save only Good Friday) ever closed over Winchester College Chapel that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was not offered up seven times upon its altars. 1 The first of these was of Our Blessed Lady, the third of the Feast, and the rest for the souls of the faithful departed. How does this daily sevenfold celebration of the Sacrifice 1 We also decree, ordain, and wish that every day for evermore except Good Friday seven Masses, for fixed intentions, be devoutly celebrated in the aforesaid chapel after the Matins and Prime for the day. Of which the first shall be of Holy Mary (William of Wykeham, c. 29). 410 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM of the Mass Mass of the Blessed Virgin, Mass for souls in Purgatory stand in " continuity " with that passage in the Dean's Prayer-book which speaks of such "sacrifices" as " blasphemous fables " and " dangerous deceits " ? Let us go to a Sunday's service. The Warden, Vice- Warden, Fellows and Scholars are all to be " personally present at First and Second Vespers, at the Matins, at the Masses, at the processions and the other canonical hours ". The Warden, Vice- Warden and Fellows and the older Scholars occupy the stalls. The Warden wears over his surplice the grey almuce or tippet a mark of ecclesiastical dignity. The Vice- Warden, the Fellows and Chaplains wear their " almuces furred or penulated," while the Scholars are attired in simple white surplices over their black cloth robes, which reach to the ground. This solemn assistance of the whole College community at the Offices of the day is insisted upon not only on Sundays but on all the great festivals of the Church. " And, moreover, we decree, ordain, and will that on the Feasts of Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, on Feasts of the Holy Virgin Mary, the Trinity, Corpus Christi, All Saints, the Dedication Feast of the Chapel, the Nativity of St. John, and the Feast of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul, the Warden, Vice- Warden, or one of the Senior Fellows of the College, shall personally, with its proper chant, solemnly celebrate the First and Second Vespers, the High Mass, and the other (canonical) hours of the day, and carry out the same with completeness in the aforesaid chapel " (Statutes of William of Wykeham, c. 29). There is yet another scene which marked itself memorably in the yearly round of the College life. We are once more in the College Chapel. This time the altar is draped in black. The stalls are filled with the Warden and Fellows, and all the Scholars are assembled to take part in the service. It is still in the dim light of the dawn, and they are WINCHESTEE WORSHIP 411 singing the Office of the Dead for the soul of the Founder on this the obit, or anniversary of his death. We can hear the beautiful words of the Invitatory, in which the Church, freeing our souls from all the narrow limitations of time and place, and death, carries them up to God, in whom there is nothing but Life, and in whose life, by a real intercommunion, we meet again and recover those whom we have lost here below : " Begem, cui omnia vivunt : venite adoremtts ! " " The King, to whom all things live, come let us adore." Later on we witness the High Mass, in which the name of the Founder is mentioned in the Collect. We hear the sacring bell while the Victim of Salvation is offered in pro- pitiation for his soul upon the altar. Year by year, as this day returns, the same great act of Catholic faith and unforgetting charity will mark the grati- tude of the Winchester School to the great Bishop whose zeal and munificence called it into existence. Let us sum up. Personal prayers for the soul of the Founder said five times a day by the Warden and Fellows. Litanies, Psalms and Office of the Dead said daily by the priests. The Canonical hours seven times each day. Seven Masses said in the chapel each morning. The Mass and Office of the Dead solemnly sung upon the obit. These are the conditions upon which men were to live in the house, and eat the bread of William of Wykeham. But times are changed, and certainly people have changed with them. Must a certain latitude not be allowed in in- terpreting conditions written in days so different from our own ? Would William of Wykeham himself really insist upon the observance of these conditions in a strictly literal or grammatical sense ? May we not well believe that such an insistence on the letter of his statutes would be largely 412 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM inconsistent with the broad-minded wisdom and practical good sense of the great Bishop of Winchester ? On that point, we had better allow William of Wykeham to speak for himself. " By the tenor of these presents, We decree, ordain and will, that by no means, and at no time, shall it be lawful for the Bishop of Winchester, for the time ruling, after it shall please God to withdraw us from this life nor for the War- den or Fellows of our aforesaid College either now or those that shall be, individually or collectively, nor for any other person of whatsoever dignity, state, rank, or condition he may be, to issue, frame, ordain, decree or promulgate any new statutes, ordinances, rules, constitutions, interpre- tations, changes, injunctions, declarations or other expound- ings, repugnant to or derogating from, differing from, or out of harmony with, or contrary to, these our present statutes and ordinances set forth or to be set forth, or not in accord- ance with the true and plain understanding of the same. " Nor do we wish that by any custom or abuse or any occasion whatsoever, should any departure be made from the intention and terms of our statutes and ordinances. We are unwilling, moreover, that any interpretation should be made concerning the same, or about them, except ac- cording to the plain sense, the common understanding, the literal and grammatical meaning which most aptly belongs to the case or pretended doubt about which any question may be raised " (Statutes, c. 45, conclusion). If there remains any loophole of escape for the conscience of those who have radically changed the worship of the Win- chester School, it is certainly not due to any lack of vigilance and foresight on the part of William of Wykeham. CHAPTER LV. Winchester School. (22ND JULY, 1893.) WE have reached the last slide of this lantern lecture. It presents to us what in our estimation is one of the most salient and the most significant features of William of Wykeham's School at Winchester, WINCHESTER SCHOOL 413 We cast it upon the screen. Three rows of white oblong figures with something attached as a pendant to each. For a moment let us reserve the reading of the riddle. William of Wykeham, in founding his school, had a strong desire that it should last for ever. As he himself affirms over and over again, its constitution was to be "in perpetuity ". But this ensuring of perpetuity, by which an institution is sent safely down through centuries, until it reaches the remotest posterity, is not by any means so simple a matter as might at first sight be expected. Many potential enemies have to be provided against. To begin with, William of Wykeham was only a diocesan bishop. Water does not rise above its own level, and things created by diocesan power can never rise above diocesan authority. The bishop's power is precisely that of his suc- cessors. How was he to protect his foundation against those who would come after him ? If an institution rests on merely a diocesan basis, the power of the ordinary over it is measured upon his pastoral responsibility, and is necessarily great. His goodwill is the breath of its nostrils. His dis- favour is almost proportionately fatal. Canon Law throws its safeguards over benefices and vested interests, but what can shield a purely diocesan college or at least its working prosperity against the power of him whom the Church recognises as the sole legislator of his diocese ? An average episcopate, if hostile, is quite sufficiently long, if not to suppress if not to wreck at least to enfeeble unto death any institution which, by its diocesan calibre, rests more or less in the hollow of the hand of the bishop. What bishop, in founding a College, can be sure that it will run the gauntlet of his successors? It only requires that there should be one or two unfriendly in the long line of succession, and his institution may perish from lack of patronage. It is a part of its diocesan condition that it should live to a large extent at the mercy of the ordinary. It might of course happen that all the bishops of the diocese for time evermore would see things in quite the 414 same light, and would be one and all unanimously in its favour. But as human affairs go, the chances would be a hundred to one against such a contingency, and one to a hundred would represent, with average accuracy, the institu- tion's chances of perpetuity. There are Church institutions which like our ancient Universities or Public Schools were called upon to dis- charge functions of almost national importance. They could not be founded in the air, nor could they set foot on English soil without standing on the territory of a bishop. Yet never could they have fulfilled their role of national useful- ness had they received no measure of emancipation from local Episcopal jurisdiction. Then there were possible enemies to be contemplated from without. Large landed endowments are potentially at the mercy of the State. One sovereign might be favourable and allow the enfeoffment to be made. Who could answer for his successors ? Or, even if they too were friendly, they might be displaced by dynastic revolutions, and who could tell how far the new regime would ratify the charters or privileges of its pre- decessor? In troublous times, even the law itself could not always ensure security of title or undisturbed possession of property. The mediaeval remedy for all these dangers to perpetuity was a Papal Bull of Privilege or Exemption. It may be doubted if any remedy could ever be found to render any institution perfectly proof against all changes of time and tide ; but a Papal Bull in the Middle Ages went probably as near to doing so as anything ever had done in the past, or as anything ever will do in the future. It was the highest attainable guarantee of stability. For example : In founding his College, did the Bishop fear that the course of ages might give him an antipathetic or capricious successor who would pull down what he had raised up ? He procured a Papal Bull of Foundation. WINCHESTER SCHOOL 415 The Bull lifted his College up, and placed it on a super- diocesan basis. The possible successor might be as hostile as he pleased, but the College as an institution was above his reach. It was taken out of his hand and placed in the strong hand of St. Peter. Did the Founder fear that the possible successor, if unable to suppress it, might harass it, curtail its freedom of action, and hamper its liberty ? He procured for it a Bull of Exemption ; or if he wished it still to remain under the jurisdiction of the ordinary, he had its liberties assured by a Bull of Privilege. The possible successor would know that any attempt upon liberties thus guaranteed, would be met by the College by protest, and appeal to Canterbury or Eome, and that the mere presentment of the Bull would decide the appeal in its favour. Did a lawless baron seek to harry the property of the Institution ? Did even a wilful or wayward Sovereign of the realm seek to suppress it ? The Papal Bull cast over the Institution and its lands a protection, to which, by the polity of the Middle Ages, Sovereigns and Barons felt it both a duty and a need to render respect. If dynastic changes displaced a Sovereign from the throne, or discredited his charter, the Papal Bull would remain in force, and would find recognition from the new ruler not less than from the old. Were even a foreign prince to invade the land, as did William the Conqueror, the Papal Bull would challenge the conscience of the victor as successfully as it had done that of the vanquished. An infraction of such a Bull would render the offender " cujuscwmque dignitatis" liable to answer for his trans- gression before the Sovereign Pontiff ; and would at the very least open the way to have the issue adjudged by the highest, the most permanent, and most peaceful tribunal in Christen- dom. It was thus, that amid the fierce struggles and upheavals of mediaeval life, a Papal Bull conveyed to a given institution, as far as it could be conveyed, a share in that perpetual 416 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM solidity and stability which could only be sought and found in the Bock of St. Peter. If the ancient English Church is so rich in venerable and national and time-honoured institutions, and if in her galaxy of Collegiate churches, and schools, and foundations there is so much that survived when most things else passed away, and stood firm while all things else were transformed ; and if thus they were able to confer upon the nation the enormous advantage of that continuous and age-long service which forms the chiefest charm of historic glory, may we not justly feel that at least a part of that result is due to the fact that for so long a time they were shielded from the caprice of friends, and the covetousness of foes, by the Papal Bulls of Exemption and Privilege that lay side by side with the Eoyal Grants in their Chartularies ? It is one of the most hopeful signs of the times in which we live that a large and influential body of Anglican thinkers and writers has turned a wistful, sympathetic and searching gaze into the centuries of English religious life which pre- ceded the Eeformation. We can hardly believe that they will long continue to do so without being irresistibly led to seize upon and appreciate, in their true meaning and scope, the dominant features of mediaeval church-life, and, what is not less important, to compare them, in the light of recent experiences, with the conditions under which they them- selves live and struggle for even a modicum of nominal Church independence. Granted that they bring to the study of the problem earnestness, honesty and learned research all of which we take as unquestionable granted the due measure of time for the evolution of thought and the gradual removal of traditional preconceptions we love to hope that the conclusion borne in upon their convictions will be one of deep and far-reaching importance. In the present order of things, and in the inevitable trial of strength which must ever go on between the Church and the world, men will not easily discover a more solid or splendid guarantee of true Church liberty than the possession of a fulcrum of security and resistance outside the country, and beyond the realm and reach of the Civil Power. WINCHESTER SCHOOL 417 Without such a fulcrum to serve as a standing-ground and backing, the precious victories which St. Anselm, St. Thomas and Stephen Langton won for the English Church would never have been attempted, much less achieved. A complementary truth is that a Church can never be " national " (in the sense of having no centre outside the national territory) without putting its freedom at the mercy of the State, and lapsing into a condition of ecclesiastical enslavement. Applied to a Church, "national " and "independent" are terms which, in closer analysis, will be found to mutually exclude each other. It is a truth which is written in the life of nations, and one over which the Anglican and the Greek may clasp hands in sorrow and sympathy. Few men seem to have appreciated the value of Papal Authority, as a guarantee of liberty and stability, more keenly and clearly than did William of Wykeham, and those who succeeded him in the management of the school at Winchester. Let us observe that to obtain a Papal Bull was not in the least a simple or easy matter. It required a petition to the Roman Court, couriers to carry it, and proctors to present it, and advocates to promote it. It involved a lengthy pro- cess, and much had to be said and done, and urged and answered, before the leaden seals were attached to the hempen or silken cords, and the portentous parchment was placed in the hands of the couriers to carry it back to England. It meant months of labour a thousand miles' journey to and fro, over sea and land and, were it merely for the expense of couriers or proctors, a bill of costs which would kindle the admiration of a modern lawyer. If William of Wykeham and the Wardens of Winchester had thus sought out and procured but one such Bull, we should have possessed in their doing so an unanswerable proof of the practical nature of their recognition of the Pope's spiritual jurisdiction in England. But, in point of fact, they did something more than this. 27 418 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM We turn to the screen to read the riddle and unfold the interpretation thereof. William of Wykeham and the authorities of Winchester College petitioned for, and procured, not merely one Papal Bull. They sought for and obtained no less than thirteen. The thirteen oblong figures cast on the screen are the thirteen Winchester College Bulls, with their pendant seals, bearing the images of St. Peter and St. Paul. Let us indicate their import. 1 The first is the Bull of Foundation granted by Urban VI. The second is a Bull obtained from Pope Boniface IX. to allow the Warden to hold benefice with cure of souls. The third is a Bull enabling the Warden to let the lands of the College on lease. The fourth is a Bull granting to the College the right of free sepulture. The fifth is a Bull allowing the Warden to exchange his benefice. The sixth is a Bull " allowing the Warden and Scholars to have Masses performed cum notd et alta voce and Sacraments administered in the precincts of the College ". 2 The seventh decrees that all oblations and legacies shall go to the College and not to the diocesan. The eighth enables the Warden and Scholars to retain all burial fees and oblations made within the College. The ninth empowers " the Warden and Scholars to have a belfry and bells ". The tenth allows the College Chapel and Graveyard, in case of desecration, to be reconciled by a clerk in Holy Orders using holy water blessed by the bishop. 1 The synopsis of these Bulls may be found in Annals of Winchester College, by T. P. Kirby, M.A., p. 4. Their purport may be seen more fully stated in the Calendar of Papal Letters, vol. iv., 333, 354, 387, 390, 391, 397, 422, 439, 440, 441 ; vol. v., 171, 172. As a matter of fact the number of Bulls issued from the Eoman Chancery in favour of the College was at least nineteen. 2 Ten perpetual secular priests, assisted by three clerks and sixteen boys, were appointed for the singing of the Mass and Divine Office (see Summary of Bull of Confirmation in Calendar of Papal Letters^ vol. iv., 422). WINCHESTER SCHOOL 419 The eleventh grants 100 days' relaxation of penance and forty years' indulgence to all who visit the Chapel and help in its construction. The twelfth allows the Warden and members of the Foundation to receive Holy Orders from any bishop in com- munion with the Apostolic See. The thirteenth grants to the College the revenues of certain alien priories. Such a picture is surely a fair object-lesson of the manner in which Papal Authority interpenetrated the whole fabric of religious life in Pre-Beformation England. We turn to the Bull of Foundation. It was issued by Pope Urban VI. on 1st June, 1378, and despatched to the Bishop of Eochester as Papal Commis- sioner for its due execution. Let us read the tall Gothic characters, translating as we go: " Urban, Bishop, the Servant of the Servants of God, to Our venerable brother, the Bishop of Eochester, health and Apostolical Benediction. " The sincere devotion which Our venerable brother William, Bishop of Winchester, bears to Us and to the Eoman Church, deserves that We should look with favour upon his requests, and more especially upon those which have for their object the good of religion, the diffusion of salutary knowledge, and the salvation of souls. "We have had recently laid before Us the petition of the said Bishop, in which it is set forth that, desiring by a happy barter to exchange the things of time for those that are eternal, and the things of earth for those that are of heaven ; and considering that the knowledge of letters pro- motes the observance of justice, and betters the conditions of human life ; he proposes, for the increase of Divine worship, for the honour and glory of God, and for the salvation of his soul, and the souls of his parents, his suc- cessors, and others of the faithful of Christ, out of the goods lawfully acquired or hereafter to be acquired by him, whether in regard of his own person o;- of the Church of Winchester entrusted to his care, or from other sources, to institute a 27* 420 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM College of seventy poor scholar-clerks, who are to live in community and study grammar in a suitable and respectable place chosen for the purpose, near the city of Winchester, and also to found and build and sufficiently endow one house with a chapel or oratory for the aforesaid College." William of Wykeham had in his patronage the parish church of Downton, in the diocese of Salisbury. He wished to have the revenues of this church added to his own mensa or household income, so that he might the more easily support the poor scholars of his College at Winchester. He asked the Pope to let him have it. The second clause in the Bull recites the petition : " And whereas, on the part of the said Bishop who, it is stated, has from his own goods given the necessaries of life to the grammar scholars studying in the said city we have been humbly petitioned out of the graciousness of the Apostolic See l to deign to grant him permission to do the aforesaid, and in order that they may be the more easily and becomingly supported, to unite, attach and perpetually incorporate the parochial church of Downton in the diocese of Salisbury, which belongs to the patronage of the Bishop of Winchester for the time ruling, to the household income of the said Bishop." The third is the operative clause, authorising both the foundation of the College and the annexation of the Down- ton revenue : " Therefore, We, yielding to the petitions of your brother- ship, by Apostolic Letters command that, an endowment for the chapel and for the maintenance of the said scholars, and for meeting the cost of those set over them, having been duly provided by the said Bishop, you shall grant permission, with Our authority to the said Bishop to in- stitute, found and build the aforesaid College, house and chapel, and as soon as the aforesaid College has been built, to unite, incorporate and annex with the same authority, the aforesaid parochial church perpetually to the aforesaid 1 " De benignitate ApostolicA dignaremus" WINCHESTER SCHOOL 421 Episcopal income, even although it should be, with all its rights and appurtenances, generally or specially reserved to the disposition of the Holy See." The rest of the clause provides for the vicar at Downton, and secures the endowment from any devolution to other purposes. The Bull concludes with the usual formula : " We declare henceforth null and void whatever may be adversely attempted, whether wittingly or unwittingly, by whatsoever authority. Given at Borne, at St. Peter's, on the Kalends of June, in the first year of Our Pontificate " (A.D. 1378). If ever there was a palpably plain Papal Foundation, it was William of Wykeham's College of Winchester. On the 25th of July, 1893, the authorities of the College have kept its quincentenary. The Archbishop of Canterbury preached on the occasion. It is with such facts looking him in the face that he was constrained to make out a case of " Anglican Continuity". What could he do in such a position but fall back upon the Lambeth quadrilateral and its data which are radically and emphatically Protestant. 1. "A valid Apostolic ministry" which two-thirds of Christendom refuses to recognise, and which more than one of his suffragans holds to be non-essential. 2. " Two Sacraments out of seven " and so little security with regard to their meaning, that his clergy are free to deny the spiritual regeneration in the one, and are equally free to teach the Eeal Presence or Eeal Absence in the other. 3. " Two Testaments " with freedom as to the interpreta- tion or inspiration of any particular passage of each. 4. " Two Creeds " repeated verbally, in the same terms, by persons who individually take the most diverse and opposite views as to the meaning of its articles. As if unity were in the material paper or the sounds and letters, and not in the truth signified ! It is with such fragile and threadbare strands that the Archbishop has had to weave the cord of his continuity. The Nestorian was condemned at Ephesus, and the 422 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Donatist was denounced by St. Augustine. But is there anything in the above fourfold element that the Nestorian and the Donatist did not possess in a far higher, fuller and clearer, and more unquestionable measure than the modern Anglican ? And yet who will regret if that which is highest and best in the Anglican Communion shall feel itself impelled in these later times to remind the English people of the glorious tale of the olden days, and to read the book of the Chronicles of bygone years to soothe the restless vigil of the sovereign people ? Mardochai's part in the past and place in the future will be safe in the hands of Him who prompted both the reader and the listener. CHAPTER LVI. Votive Candle-Burning. (23RD SEPTEMBER, 1893.) A MERE straw floating upon the face of the current often serves to indicate the direction or mark the height of the tide. We may be allowed to accept a comparatively trifling in- cident which recently occurred at Shoreditch as the register- float of the rising tide of the Anglican movement. This, which is or was a few weeks ago the latest read- ing, points to the line at which votive candles are bought and burned before the image of Our Blessed Lady. The Society of St. Osmund held the festival of its patron at the Church of St. Michael in Shoreditch. The Society devotes itself to the admirable work of promoting the study and revival of the ritual of the ancient English Church the ritual which slipshod tongues too often glibly describe as the " Sarum Kite," when they mean the Sarum Use, to wit, the " Eoman Bite according to the use of Sarum ". A correspondent of The Church Times records that the festival was duly celebrated by " High Mass " that " the service was elaborate," or, as a daily contemporary had expressed it, " the spectacle was truly superb " that not VOTIVE CANDLE-BURNING 423 only the clergy, but even the servers were arrayed in " apparelled albes and amices " that the music was so " severely Gregorian throughout " that a part of the congre- gation (with whom we can partly sympathise) felt it to be disappointingly " Archaic " and last, though not least, that "after the service the Angelus was rung on the big bell of the Church ". We may not be able to give the august name of Mass to the ceremony. Nor may we feel ourselves in a position to say more than that God will not fail to reward, wherever He finds it, the piety and sincerity of His worshippers. But we can at least gladly do justice to the excellent motives which prompt the revival of the historic features of ancient Catholic worship, and feel both grateful and hopeful for the educational influence which such functions cannot fail to have upon the religious opinion of England. The Society had done its liturgical best to honour the Feast of St. Osmund, but it was not responsible for the burning of the votive tapers before the image of Our Lady. Apparently some one in authority, who approved of the practice, and who had learned to love its simple and devo- tional beauty, felt and, we think, very correctly that the meeting of such a society was a singularly fitting occasion on which to recommend it more prominently to the notice of the public. No doubt the majority of the members of a society, whose minds would naturally be familiar with pre-Eeformation ritual, would see in the votive tapers lighted before the Madonna nothing more than a fresh and pleasing note of harmony with ancient English practice. There are two reasons why Anglicanism should have wel- comed the introduction of the practice of burning votive tapers. The first is, that the Anglican body has it much at heart to prove that it is continuously one with the ancient Church of England. But nothing was more common in the olden time than 424 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM for the English people to take a quantity 'of wax which was then very much dearer than at present and make it into a coil of thin taper they called it a " trindle " and burn it as a votive light before the shrine of Our Lady or the Saints. Eeginald of Durham describes it as " Candela multo saepius plicamine involuta," and tells us that there were sometimes as many as sixty-six folds in the same coil. St. Aelred, in his life of Edward the Confessor, relates how " an unhappy woman was carried to his tomb, and her mis- tress having a wax-light of her stature, continued in vigils and prayers ". So deeply had the practice entered into the religious customs of the English people, that they loved to provide for its being done for them even after death. Thus in 1467 Baldwin Cocksedge bequeaths "a cow, sufficient to provide for 11 Ibs. of wax-lights, to burn before the statue of Blessed Mary in the chancel of St. Peter's Church at Feldsham ", 1 Long centuries before Baldwin left the "cow sufficient," the Abbot, Henry of Glastonbury, in A.D. 1126, bequeathed a pension of 50 shillings " to the keeping of a wax-light to burn constantly before the image of the Holy Virgin Mary in the old church of Glastonbury ". And Hugh, Bishop of Durham (A.D. 1154), " caused to be hung before the altar three silver stands, with their branches in silver, with inserted pieces of crystal, in which burning lights day and night perpetually should shine in honour of the holy father St. Cuthbert and his relics ". 2 It was a work in which the laity loved to have their share. Wimark Papedi gave the rent of two houses in Norham, and Eustace de Fenwick gave yearly 2 Ibs. of wax, and Robert Fitzroger gave 20s. from the profits of his mills "for lights around St. Cuthbert's tomb ". 3 1 Church of Our Fathers, iii., 272 et seq. (Wills of Bury St. Edmunds, 44) ; (2) ibid. (Johannes de Glaston, de rebus Glaston, 166). *Anglia Sacra, i., 722; Historic, Dunelmense, Gaudfridi de Colding- ham. 3 Church of Our Fathers, iii., 414 (Rames's St. Cuthbert, 99). VOTIVE CANDLE-BURNING 426 Matthew Paris is a monastic historian whose patriotic insularity and Luther-like tongue generally find him favour with certain Anglican writers. He shows us that this practice of burning lights before Our Lady was well known in England when even the Great Charter itself was yet unsealed. He tells us that the Abbot William (A.D. 1214) " ordained a wax-light, which we are accustomed to twine with flowers, should burn day and night before the small statue of Mary, on her principal feasts, and the processions which are held in her honour". Perhaps the most characteristic instance of an old English bequest, and one most happily representative of the devotion of the ancient English Church, is that selected by Dr. Kock, taken from the Wills of Bury St. Edmunds. In 1463 John Baret, of Bury, made his last will and testa- ment, and was specially anxious that his painted image of Our Lady should be hung up against a pillar near the space enclosed about Our Lady's altar. It was to have a bracket or " baas " supporting it, and shielding it from above a canopy or "hovel," with its sides resting on the bracket. Just in front of the bracket he wished to have placed his brass candlestick with its " pyke," or spike as we should call it. On the spike he desired to have burning a taper, for the cost of which he had provided in his will, and which was to form part of five tapers which the Guild of the Nativity kept burning in front of the angels with the chimes which adorned the image of Our Lady of the Pillar. It' I wil that the ymage of Oure Lady that Robert Pygot peynted, be set ^t,p ageyn the peleer next ye peloos of Seinte Marie Awter. With the baas redy thereto, and a hovel with pleyn sides coming down to the baas. And in the myddes of the baas my candylstykke of laten with a pyke to be set afore a tapir, I have assygned unto ye V taperes longgyng to the Nativitie gylde which stant alofte afore the Aungelys with chymes to be set about Our Lady of the Peller (Wills of Bury St. Edmunds, 19). These methods show the mind and practice of the mediaeval English Church. 426 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM In the name of continuity, why should not Anglicanism go and do likewise ? Another reason why Anglicans should burn lights before Our Lady is that Anglicanism claims to be Catholic, to make its appeal to the universal custom of East and West (e.g., as to fasting communion), and to fall into line with the Catholic Church on all those points in which East and West are united. Hence, next to being traditionally English, and having the mark of antiquity, the most powerful recom- mendation of votive candle-burning ought to possess would be the note of ubiquity. The practice of Western Christendom is as a household word to all of us. We can all easily recall the familiar scene which presents itself on entering one or other of our churches here, or some of our great cathedrals abroad, when we discern beyond the gloom of the aisles the brightly illuminated corner where the votive tapers gleam around the statue of Our Lady. We can see the flitting forms of those who kneel for a while, each fervently asking the prayers of the Mother of God for what they have most at heart, and we watch them passing in front to place lighted on the socket or spiket a taper which they leave burning behind them to beautify and brighten the altar of Our Lady while they pass on their way to the work to which the world has called them. It may be some anxious mother praying for the sick child at home, whose illness is just at the crisis, or perhaps for the too dearly beloved prodigal who is at home no longer or it may be for the boy at sea whose parting was but yesterday or it may be some schoolboy jubilant and thankful for the happy passing of a dreaded examination or it may be a sister solicitous for the perseverance of a brother or a father proud and grateful for some achievement of his son any or all of the thousand and one small joys and sorrows and solicitudes that make up the pathos of daily life. And in each the Catholic prays or thanks Our Lady for her help in obtaining from God, the sole great Giver from whom good gifts must needs come through the One Mediator, the wished-for favour, VOTIVE CANDLE-BURNING 427 and he lays the light on her altar as naturally as the Pro- testant would place a flower on the work-table of a mother, or a wreath on the statue of a statesman to whom he feels politically or patriotically grateful. Nor is this instinct of piety confined to the West. Mr. W. Palmer (Fellow of Magdalen College) relates what he witnessed when, as an Anglican clergyman, he visited Russia, in 1841, to negotiate, if possible, some basis of union between the Greek Church and his own. Describing the Cathedral of the Assumption at Moscow, he mentions the practice of hanging lamps and burning lights before the Iconostasis, the great stand or screen which contains the pictures of Our Lord, and Our Blessed Lady and the Saints : " Also there were huge silver lamps hanging all round the Iconostasis across the church, and below the solea, four im- mense chandeliers of solid silver, hanging in the centre of the church, and two standing candelabra perhaps six feet high, with platforms round the central wax-light on each, for the tapers which the devotion of the people might light there." 1 In his account of his visit to the celebrated church at Kazan, Mr. Palmer says : " There was an abundance of pious gesticulations, bowing and crossing, kissing the icons, prostrating and touching the ground with the forehead (sometimes with an audible thump), and bowing and crossing again, and by men, young and old, as well as by women, and small slender wax-lights were bought within the door at a sort of counter and lighted and set up to burn (as if in the name a Vintention of those who had set them up) on the great mannalia (candelabra) which stand in front of the Iconostasis." (In the sentence which follows, the very wording reminds us of John Baret's will made in Bury, in 1463, with its provisions as to the " baas," and the "pyke " for his votive "tapir".) " Which have a sort of platform round the base that is 1 Notes of a Visit to Russia, 433. 428 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM of the great candles, with a multitude of little sockets and spikes for fixing candles offered by private devotion." l In Russia, as in the ancient English Church, the practice was one which entered into the simple religious habits of the poor. The author cited continues : " One day when I went again my drosky-driver, at the door of the church, gave me back a kopek from his fare, ' to set up a candle,' that so, as he was unable to leave his horse, his prayer might be represented by his candle." 1 The Church Times in discharging its duty of summing up the correspondence which had flowed freely in its columns, and in giving judgment upon the practice referred to, has, strangely enough, condemned it as "Modern and Eoman ". As regards the selling of tapers in church for devotees to buy and set up before the image or picture of this or that Saint, the whole thing is such a manifest imitation of modern Roman prac- tice, without a shred of ancient usage, or of Anglican tradition, to excuse it, that all genuine English Catholics must with one voice denounce it. " Modern " is not a word which we usually apply to the practice of English Cathedrals and Abbeys in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ! "Roman" is not an adjective which can be fairly fixed on the practice of the multitudes of Greek Christians who throng the Church at Kazan or the Cathedral of Moscow ! We venture to think that, to those who understand it, the condemnation will pass, and that the practice will re- main. Catholics who behold such indications of a fuller realisation of the beauty of Catholic belief and devotion winning its way outside the fold, can only pray that the breath of the Divine Teacher may speedily fan into flame the smoking flax which He " will not extinguish ". 1 Notes of a Visit to Russia, 41. 2 Ibid. AN APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE 429 CHAPTER LVII. A Church Congress and an Appeal to Scripture. (4TH NOVEMBEE, 1893.) THE recent Church Congress has made plain to the public that the divisions which rend the Anglican Communion grow wider and deeper year by year. Divisions in themselves can never afford matter of satis- faction to any Christian heart. But there are movements which cannot be effected _ without divisions, and which not the less are of a healthy and hopeful kind. Who, for instance, will not rejoice that religious thought in England, actuated, no doubt, by the candour and energy of the national character, presents so little of that deadly stagnation which marks the torpid Protestantism of Sweden and Norway, or even of that stark imperviousness with which Calvinism has opiated some of the countries nearer home ? And who will regret that the time has passed away for ever when that element in the Anglican Church which has come to love and feel the beauty of that which is Catholic will be content to lie mute and benumbed, and undistinguishable from the mass of semi-Puritan Protestantism which repre- sented Anglicanism during the dismal decades of the Caroline and Georgian periods ? That the forces which make for truth and light and beauty should shake themselves free, and draw themselves farther and yet farther apart and finally disentangle themselves from those which keep them back and hold them down, naturally means division and conflict even disruption. But it is a breaking-up, and a breaking forth which has in its way the nature of an exodus and an evolution, and one the progress of which can cause no intelligent regrets either to ourselves, or, we should say, to those most concerned. That it is a war waged upon essentials there can be no kind of doubt. The higher section of Anglicanism has taken up its ground and staked its future for better or worse upon the doctrines of 430 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM the Christian Sacrificial Priesthood and Apostolic Succession. These beliefs, which lie at the foundation of creed and wor- ship, are now written once for all upon its banner, and one which it is not likely to strike or to lower in the face of the enemy. Moreover, with its eyes turned eastward and past- ward if not Eomeward it is quite resolved to accept these doctrines in their Catholic sense, and to suffer no word- quibbling by which " priest " may be construed into elder or minister, " sacrifice " into " praise in the mouth of the worshipper," and Episcopacy into a mere optional and ad bene esse condition of Church government. To its credit be it said, it is not prepared to stoop to the childish and dishonest device of the speaker at one of the Grindenwald Conferences, who made a proposal that both parties should unite in accepting Episcopacy, but that each one by a process of mental reservation? should be left free to understand the word in its own sense. Higher Anglicanism is too honest not to recognise that union, to be real as conscientious men understand it, must be one of sense and not merely of sound a belief-union, and not a mere word-union, and that any effort made on any other basis would be the merest trifling with religion. It is in this sense, we take it, that its position found expression at the Congress. The Eev. C. Gore put the case very forcibly in the paper which he read upon the relation of the Church of England to other bodies : Once again, then, we must maintain the four Catholic elements which I have enumerated above, and amongst these the Apostolic Succession of the ministry through the Episcopate, which alone can be shown to have possessed the authority to confer valid orders. Now as the maintenance of the Scriptural appeal precludes a hope of immediate reunion with Rome, so the maintenance of the Apos- tolic Succession precludes the hope (if it otherwise existed) of rapid reunion with the Nonconformist bodies as wholes. For, first, we cannot admit Nonconformist ministers as " validly ordained ministers of the Word and Sacraments ". If there are some Anglicans who, with nothing but amiable motives, would desire to do this, I would ask them to consider two points only (1) Are they seriously pre- pared, on their own principles, to contemplate a step which what- ever would be gained by it must inevitably cut them off from 431 communion with the whole of the vast proportion of Anglican Churchmen in Britain, America and the Colonies taken together, who by no stretch of the imagination can be conceived as likely to accept the ministry of persons whom they believe to be not so rightly ordained as to admit) of their celebrating a valid i.e., secure Eucharist ? It will be observed that Mr. Gore here insists upon the Scriptural appeal. He regards it as the sheet-anchor of faith, and the only effective restraint upon the arbitrary teaching of the clergy. To state this test in his own words : We have retained the Catholic tradition in creed, in Sacraments, in liturgy, in the Apostolic Succession of the ministry through the Episcopate, and we have prevented this original Catholic tradition from becoming corrupted or unduly narrowed, according to the constant tendency of tradition to one-sidedness and accretion, by restoring and emphasising the appeal to Scripture as the unceasing criterion of the Catholic faith, " so that whatever is not read there- in, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of faith ". It is this com- bination of two main elements in the Christian religion tradition and Scripture which is the characteristic distinction of the Angli- can Church, and it is along the lines of fidelity to this characteristic that lies our duty and our opportunity. And now to apply it : Thus, as against Rome, it is worth while maintaining the Scrip- tural appeal. We could individually obtain the Roman Communion by submitting to the doctrines, for instance, of the Treasury of Merits, of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and the Infalli- bility of the Pope. As, in fact, these doctrines did not belong to the original Christian faith, so no candid inquirer can reasonably pretend to find their certificates in the New Testament. Now, this appeal to the New Testament, as the final criterion of what belongs to the faith of our salvation, is the essential for maintaining the Catholic Church, not only in purity, but also in its original large- ness. Here Mr. Gore's whole argument goes to enforce the truth that no doctrine must be taught or imposed upon the Angli- can Church unless (as he in another part of the same paper expresses it) it can " be verified by frank inquiry in Scripture ". Thus he first of all lays down a statement of doc- trine viz., Apostolic Succession through the ministry of the 432 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Episcopate, necessary to the validity of orders and to a valid Eucharist. Then he furnishes a standard of doctrine appeal and verification by frank inquiry into the Scripture. Let us see how Mr. Gore's statement will stand the test of his own standard. The Immaculate Conception, the Treasury of Merits, Papal Infallibility, are to be rejected because " no candid inquirer could reasonably pretend to find their certificates in the New Testament ". A long list of Catholic theologians, from Scotus to Passaglia and Lambruschini, thought otherwise. A host of universities, colleges and seats of ecclesiastical learning, and a multitude of bishops all over the globe were consulted by Pius IX. before the definition of the Immaculate Conception. These (as did the late Cardinal Newman in his letter to Dr. Pusey) testified their belief that the doctrine finds its justification in Holy Writ. A fairly large number of theologians and bishops were present at the Council of Trent, which approved the doctrine of Indulgences, and at that of the Vatican which defined Papal Infallibility. All these theologians, universities, bishops, knew that the claims of these doctrines to be defined as an article of faith lie chiefly in the fact that they are explicitly or implicitly contained or indicated in Holy Scripture. In giving their verdict for the definition, they conscientiously believed and asserted that there are many passages of both the Old and the New Testament in which these doctrines are sufficiently mentioned. Still more did they maintain that they were implicitly contained in and required by the structure of the spiritual truths. Does Mr. Gore ask us to believe that this multitude of presumably learned and religious men Council of Trent and Vatican as well must be dismissed as not possessing even one "candid inquirer" who could even "reasonably pretend " to find what he believed he found in Scripture ? But this by the way. It is not with the Immaculate Conception, or Papal In- fallibility, or the Treasury of Merits, that we are just now AN APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE 433 concerned, but with Mr. Gore's own statement of belief, and the test or standard which he himself in the same breath enunciated with it. We wish to see how the one fits in with the other. When Mr. Gore tells the Anglican Church that she must maintain the doctrine of Apostolic Succession and Episcopal Ordination as a necessary condition of a valid Eucharist, he naturally believes by the conditions of his own test that this doctrine is one which has its Scriptural Certificate and is verified by frank inquiry into Scripture. He says so : It cannot, clearly, be discussed as a matter of historical evidence in a fraction of twenty minutes. But I would say this How any one who, with an open mind, reads the Acts, the Pastoral Epistles, the Epistles of Ignatius, the Epistle of Clement, and the record of the second century tradition as represented by Hegesippus and Irenseus a body of literature that can be read through in a few hours can doubt the immense strength of the doctrine of the Apostolic Succession, I am at a loss to imagine. But, after all, what is the precise value of the above ? It is simply a record of Mr. Gore's mental experience of the impression which a given course of reading has left upon his mind. Also an assurance that he is at a loss to imagine how any one with an open mind could arrive at a different conclusion from that which he has found in it. Now the interest of the religious public is not mainly in any one's personal experiences or in the results of his read- ing. Bather is it in the determination of principles and in the means and method of arriving at objective religious truth. No doubt Mr. Gore is satisfied that he sees the doctrine contained in Scripture. That is not the point. But the point is this. When he asks the Anglican body to maintain that doctrine, can he at the same time give it any better guarantee than his own personal insight as to the required Scriptural certificate ? Or can he give to the Anglican body any serious reason why his reading and views on this par- ticular matter should be accepted and followed preferably to that of other members of the Establishment who, with equal talent and equal sincerity, and with precisely the 28 434 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM same Scriptural and patristic documents under their eyes, have arrived at an exactly opposite conclusion? Mr. Gore may be at a loss to imagine how they can do so ; but then again the point is not what measure of sur- prise he or we may feel at such a result, but that it is a plain public fact that they do so. And as long as they do so the difficulty of a determinant criterion remains and cannot be got rid of. When it is a question of saying what is or is not contained in Scripture why should the reading of Mr. Gore or Mr. Gore's section of the Anglican Church be ac- cepted rather than that of other people ? Why? Will the answer be that the doctrine is contained in Scripture so plainly that any one "with an open mind" and " by frank inquiry " can see it there ? If so, there arises a difficulty. What are we to think of the many pious and learned scholars to be found in the ranks of Lutheranism and of English-speaking dissent? Surely non-Episcopal Protes- tantism has produced many eminent students of both the Bible and Church History. It would be easy to call up before our imagination an international and fairly representative committee formed from its ranks say, Professor Fairbairn and Principal Cave in England, Professors Bruce and Duff in Scotland, Professors Schaff and Briggs in America, Professors Harnack and Weiz- sacker in Germany, with writers like Dr. de Pressense and G. Monod from France. We may say that all of these men and legions of students behind them have made the Bible and early Church History more or less their life-study. Now none of them has found in one or the other the doctrine of Apostolic Succession in the sense in which Mr. Gore expounds it. Have none of these men an " open mind," and have none of them made a " frank inquiry " ? They have certainly failed to find Mr. Gore's conclusion. Must they be set aside as incapable or uncandid, and dis- missed without consideration like the theologians of Trent and the Vatican ? AN APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE 436 But to test the working of Mr. Gore's criterion we have no need to go outside his own Communion, nor even out- side the walls of the Church Congress. If it only requires an open mind and a frank inquiry to find in the New Testament the doctrine of Apostolic Suc- cession as a condition for the validity of the Eucharist, how are we to explain the fact that a very large and also a learned section of the Anglican Communion has utterly failed to discover it? The same platform which sustained Mr. Gore while he read his paper, supported the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. He has read the New Testament and presumably the sub-Apostolic writings which Mr. Gore says may be read in a few hours. And yet, so far is he from having found there anything which teaches the need of Apostolic Succes- sion for a valid Eucharist, that he has made, and is ready to make again to-morrow, an offer to the Nonconformists that if they will only go over to Anglicanism he will take their ministers even as they stand, and, without any attempt at re-ordination, send them just as they are to minister the Sacraments in the Anglican Churches ! They must not go to the Nonconformists and ask them to give up everything, when they themselves were not prepared to meet them half-way. That most interesting paper read by Mr. Gore seemed to deal more with the question of home absorption rather than home reunion. It seemed to him almost like the invitation of the spider to the fly. It was his definite opinion that it would be necessary to adopt that course to which Mr. Gore had referred, and that was to allow all those ministers of other denominations that had been called to the ministry by some solemn rite in other denominations to be accepted without re-ordination. The Archbishop's offer is about the most plain and prac- tical way in which he could express the sincerity of his con- victions. But he may, perchance, have in him something of the wild freedom of the Celt the irresponsibility of the Dis established. Then let us take a bishop from the very heart of the Church of England. 28* 436 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM We find him in the Presidential chair of the Church Congress. The Bishop of Worcester may be justified in feeling that as an Anglican bishop, and bishop of the diocese in which the Congress was held, he had a right equal to that of Mr. Gore to speak with a representative voice for the Church of England. He, too, not less than the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, must have studied the New Testament and the records of early Christianity. But he, too, has not succeeded in seeing therein a vestige of the conclusion which we are told it only requires an open mind to find in them. He dearly loves Episcopacy, but he has found neither in Scripture nor tradition anything which would lead him to believe that it is necessary for a valid Eucharist. He asks, in fact, very much the same question we our- selves have been asking, and says : I should like to know why the one authority is better than the other. At all events, I claim my right to stand here as a Bishop of the Church, loyal to my principles, firmly believing that Episco- pacy is the best form of government, but not conceding / never will concede it that it is necessary to the validity of the Sacraments. Is it want of an open mind, or is it the want of a frank inquiry ? There is at least one great authority within the Anglican Communion against whom no one would care to insinuate a lack of either. The late Bishop Lightfoot gave not a few hours but a lifetime to the work of research on those very Scriptural and early Christian documents which Mr. Gore has cited. He, too, by years of inquiry, arrived at certain conclusions which are stated in his essay on the Christian ministry. He holds that the New Testament gives no " direct and undisputable notices of a localised episcopate in the Gentile Churches ". He speaks of the episcopate as a " development in the later years of the Apostolic Age," and adds that even this development was not " simultaneous and equal in all parts of Christendom ". AN APPEAL TO SCRIPTUKE 437 Institutions which are essential to the work of the Church may have their powers and prerogatives developed, but they themselves clearly cannot be the fruit of develop- ment. If an Institution is necessary it must be perpetual and ab initio. Here his view tallies completely with his famous declara- tion that " the Church of England has no sacerdotal system and interposes no sacrificial tribe between God and man ". The reader rises from the study of Dr. Lightfoot's works with the conviction that in the author's mind, Episcopacy rests not upon a doctrinal, but upon an historical basis. These are conclusions which fit in admirably with those of the Bishop of Worcester and the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, but they would require to be stretched and ex- panded far beyond the vision and will of Dr. Lightfoot himself before they could be made to cover Apostolical succession as the necessary condition of the validity of the Sacraments. Thus it seems to us that it is precisely Mr. Gore's own test the appeal to Scripture which mercilessly beats down Mr. Gore's own doctrine, when it is set at work under the most favourable circumstances, and within the very pale of his own communion. But if Mr. Gore maintains his doctrine on the strength of this test, then his position is, to say the least, a remarkable one. He stands before the religious world, and proclaims the principle No doctrine to be believed or insisted upon as part of Christian faith unless its certificate can by an open mind and frank inquiry be seen in Scripture. Then, what happens ? Immediately the multitude of bishops and theologians from Trent and the Vatican crowd into the witness-box and say : " We see in the Scriptures and in Scriptural principles contained and indicated the doctrine of Indulgences, the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility." To these Mr. Gore would make answer : " You see too much. You see what is not there. No 438 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM candid person could pretend to do so. You may stand down. You are disqualified." Then their place is taken by the representatives of Lutheran and Dissenting erudition, who cry : " We with all the learning and piety at our command, and with full liberty of conscience, have searched the Scriptures, and in vain have we sought in it the doctrine of Episcopacy which you have just professed as something which is written there and must be maintained as part of the Gospel." To these Mr. Gore would practically reply : " You see too little. You cannot see what there is to be seen. Why you cannot, I am at a loss to imagine. If after searching all your lives, you cannot find what should be found in a few hours' reading, you must stand down. You, too, are disqualified." Finally come surging before him the evangelical masses of his own communion, headed by Anglican bishops, canons, and archdeacons, who say : "We yield to no man in our love of Episcopacy, but we have studied the New Testament and the writings you mention, and we are conscientiously convinced that they contain no proof whatever no scriptural warrant that Episcopacy is an essential condition for the validity of the Eucharist." To these would Mr. Gore reply : " You do not see enough. You are scripturally short- sighted. You do not see the Scriptural certificate which I can see most plainly. You, too, must give place to those who can see more clearly." When Mr. Gore has calmly put down some thousands of Catholic bishops and theologians on the right of him (for they see too much in Scripture) and then the multitude of dissenting Protestants on the left (for they see not at all) and finally a whole mass of his own Church in front of him (for seeing not enough) then only just in himself and that section of Anglicanism which agrees with him, shall we find what is left when his test has completed the circle of its sweeping application. That would mean that a large part of Christendom would AN APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE 439 pay a rather severe penalty for not seeing eye to eye with High Church Anglicanism. And then the disqualified world at large may be tempted to ask after all, why should Mr. Gore's intuitions of Scripture be imposed as a rule of faith upon the whole Anglican Communion ? And why should his tenets be proclaimed as something which " must be maintained " ? We say so much, not in the least that we dissent from the doctrine of Apostolical succession, as Mr. Gore expressed it, but that we altogether, as Catholics, dissent from the standard by which he holds it, in the way in which he applies it, and because we believe the test, in the sense he proposes it, to be arbitrary, personal, ultra-Protestant, utterly unworkable everywhere, and most of all, in Mr. Gore's own communion. For there is no logical middle course. Such issues whether a given doctrine is or is not con- tained in Scripture must always be tried either by the in- dividual conscience upon their own merits, or by a judgment of Church authority. If the first, we have private judgment and undiluted Protestantism if the second, we cannot send the appeal back to Scripture itself from the Church's judg- ment on Scripture, without jumping into the other alter- native. Nor would Mr. Gore, we assume, require explicit mention in Scripture of all doctrines to be held as of faith. If he did, he would have to part with the Homoousia and the Theotokos, and much of the work of the first four General Councils. But, if he admits that the Scriptural certificate of the doc- trine may be an implicit one viz., implied in the great truths taught by Scripture then the difference between him and us is not, so far, one of principle, or that he assigns to Scrip- ture a higher place than we do but simply between his insight and that of our Councils, and that the Councils of Trent and the Vatican believed that they found in Scripture certain conclusions which Mr. Gore has not found in it very much as he himself sees there certain conditions of valid Sacraments which Dissenters, and even bishops of his own Church, cannot see in it. 440 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM But by Scriptural appeal we fear that he means some- thing more than this a something which we think places in his hands the banner of Protestantism which we are wont to consider quite safe in the vigilant keeping of men like Archdeacon Farrar. In a word, we have to ask ourselves, do the extracts which we have cited from Mr. Gore's paper imply that it is lawful for every one to appeal from the Ecclesia docens to the text of Holy Scripture ? No Catholic rejects the appeal the appeal understood as a recur sus to the Scripture and to the Fathers. The Church insists upon such an appeal, both as the confirma- tion of her doctrine, and as a standard which she herself uses in forming her definitions of doctrine. But an appeal to Scripture against the Church and against what she has defined, and as a. corrective of her authoritative dogmatic teaching, is a totally different case. Such an appeal is un-Catholic, and for two reasons. First, because the same Holy Ghost Who inspired the sacred writers "abides forever" in the Church, "guiding her to all truth " viz., guiding her to expound and develop truly and infallibly the " all truth," both written and delivered, which Christ has confided to her. We cannot appeal from the Holy Ghost guiding the Church to the Holy Ghost inspiring Scripture. God is One. We have precisely the same guarantee for the Church's inerrancy as we have for the inspiration of Scripture. But, secondly, it is the purest fallacy to suppose in such a juncture that the terms of the appeal are the Scripture on one side and the Church on the other, and that the appeal runs from the Church as the judex a quo to the Scripture as the judex ad quern. That might be conceivably the case if the Church pro- fessed to teach a doctrine say X purely of her own consciousness, while Scripture said nothing about X, or even excluded it. But the Church does not profess, and has never professed, anything of the kind. In all that she defines, she professes AN APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE 441 to be guided by what is laid down in Scripture, or what is postulated by the truths taught therein. Her definitions are based on her conscientious and divinely guided reading of Scripture, as her dogmatic Bulls and Constitutions abund- antly affirm. Then it is quite clear that when I appeal about the doctrine X to the Scripture, it is the merest assumption to label my case as an appeal to Scripture versus Church. It is simply an appeal to My reading of Scripture versus the Church's reading of Scripture. If this be Mr. Gore's meaning, which we should be very sorry to misrepresent his test turns out to be the very ancient and, however much varied, the unique method of heresy from the beginning the cry of Luther to the Legate, protesting his readiness to submit (provided that the Church of God, instead of teaching him, would come down from her chair and argue the matter out with him, and by a disputa- tion, pleading at the bar of his individual judgment, would prove to his satisfaction that her doctrines are contained in Scripture !). It is the old, old story of private judgment versus Church authority. It is Protestantism of the purest and simplest kind. That is more than we are accustomed to expect from the higher levels of the Anglican Movement. The whole view of the Anglican Church as revealed by the Congress to an outsider, is that of a Church cleft in two or shall we say, two Churches living for the time under one roof. The cheers which greeted Mr. Gore's generous allusion to reunion with Rome, and those which hailed his reference to reunion with Dissent, marked sufficiently well the line of the cleavage. The spectacle drew from the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin the candid avowal that the chasm between Anglicans themselves was deeper than that which separates Anglicans from outsiders. (A statement which may be true of the other end of the comparison, but which we feel bound to disclaim for ourselves, 442 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM for whatever may be said of points of mere doctrinal or ritual likeness, the highest Anglican Church is immeasurably nearer to the lowest dissenting one than it is to us, and yes is not more clearly cut off from no, nor East farther removed from West, than is that which is Catholic from all that is not Catholic.) Even the Anglican Bishop of Edinburgh and Professor Stokes not only felt but expressed their conviction that the principles which obtain in the party represented by the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, are such that any attempt to act upon them in the way he proposed " would rend the Church in two". Both the speakers and their audience must be logical enough to know that if their words are true, the Church must be already rent in two in her conscience and convic- tions. Putting chasms and clefts away from our minds, we are tempted to use a higher, if not a happier figure. Astrono- mers at times draw our attention to some remarkable star that is traversing our firmament. Later on they inform us that what we have seen is not a single or united body, but a double star, viz., in reality a compound object made up of separated parts. Finally, they point out how the narrow- ing and expanding of the lines on the spectrum analysis denote that the parts are rapidly rushing away from each other, and that one part is rapidly departing into the distance, while the other is as rapidly drawing near to us. Catholics who have read the reports of the Church Congress will be reminded of the reading of the spectrum, and will watch with prayer and hope the movement of the lines, trusting that grace may happily hasten that glorious process of light and law by which Catholic truth draws towards itself souls that are its own by the sweetest and subtlest and strongest of all attractions. ANGLICANISM AND THE NESTORIANS 443 CHAPTER LVIII. Anglicanism and the Nestorians. (17TH MARCH, 1894.) THE comparative method is not without interest when applied to the study of the various forms of religion. We proceed to make an experiment. We take as terms of comparison what we shall call the Two Departures. We use the word "departure" because it is a neutral, and non-question-begging term, and by it we mean the exodus of a body of Christians from the communion of the Apostolic See. The first of the two is the departure of the Nestorian body, or as they are now commonly called the Assyrian or East Syrian Christians, which took place in the fifth century. The second is the departure of the English Church at the time of the Eeformation. These two points make interesting foci for the sweep of comparative deductions. They are about as far apart in date and place as we need care to have them. One is ancient ; the other is modern. One is Eastern ; the other is Western. There are more than a thousand years of time and more than a thousand miles of space between them. We choose the Anglican departure to begin with. There is no need to recapitulate the familiar features of the English Eeformation. But for the purpose in view, it will be sufficient to single out a few that will be readily recognised as the most salient and the most influential. The Eeformation in England, as soon as by the death of Henry VIII. it felt itself free to follow its own impulse, shaped itself at once into its true and natural bent, and struck with all its strength at three of the main and popular Catholic doctrines. These were : 1. The doctrine of the Mass as a Propitiatory Sacrifice. 2. The doctrine of Purgatory and Prayers and Masses for the Dead, 444 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM 3. The doctrine of the veneration and invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints. This triple denial has its witness both in the records of the time and in the texture of the Anglican articles and liturgy. The denial of the Sacrificial character of the Eucharist so vehement in the mind and heart and hand of Cranmer expressed itself in the substitution of a Communion-service for the Sacrifice of the Mass. It was emphasised by the utter deletion from the Prayer-book of the idea of the Eucharist as a propitiatory Sacrifice. It was eloquently brought home to the popular mind by the public removal of the fixed or stone altars, and the significant substitution of mere wooden tables in the midst of the chancel or church, at which plainly robed clergymen ministered without chasuble, lights, or incense. The second denial was carefully embodied in the Articles. Article XXI. declared that " the Sacrifices of Masses, in which it was commonly said that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits ". It was practically enforced by the suppression of some two thousand chantries, and the complete cessation of the Masses for the Dead which were being daily offered throughout the land. The third denial was set forth in Article XXII. , which affirmed that amongst other things " the Invocation of the Saints was a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God ". This was abundantly illustrated by the public removal of shrines and images, the deliberate exclusion of the Ave Maria, the Litany of the Saints and all invocatory prayers from the reformed Prayer-book. It was finally supported by an Article (XXV.) specially framed to approve the Homilies, and in these any intercession on the part of Saints is strenuously disputed, and in them it is carefully taught that invoking angels or saints means believing in them, and believing in them is " most horrible blasphemy against God and His Holy Word ". 1 1 " So that invocation of prayer may not be made without faith in him on whom they call : but that we must first believe in him, before ANGLICANISM AND THE NESTORIANS 445 So far, we take it, the English Eeformers have made their mind and meaning remarkably clear. They have stamped it plainly and indelibly so that all that run may read it upon the face of English history and upon the face of the Anglican formularies. We turn to the other point of the comparison. The Nestorian departure from Catholic unity took place in the earlier decades of the fifth century. When Nestorius and his following were condemned and excommunicated by the General Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431, for denying the unity of Person in Christ, and the prerogative of the Blessed Lady as Theotokos, or Mother of God, the sect sought safety in Persia, just outside the lines of the Eoman Empire. The anathemas of the Eoman Pontiff might run the wide world over, but the sword of the Eoman Emperor, which a certain type of the Eastern mind feared very much more than the anathemas, stopped short at the frontier. Thus Nestorianism stepped across the border, and defied both Pope and Emperor. It found a leader and organiser in Barsumas, who, in A.D. 435, became Bishop of Nisibis. Barsumas sheltered himself under the protection of Phero- zees, King of Persia. He won the patronage of the King, by cleverly pointing out the advantages from a civil point of view which would accrue from the existence of a national church which would have its centre of allegiance inside and not outside his own territory. This policy was followed up by a bitter persecution of all who refused to conform to the new sect. As Gibbon expresses it, " Nestorianism was en- couraged with the smile and armed with the sword of despotism," and " the blood of 7,700 Catholics, or mono- physites, confirmed the uniformity of faith and discipline in the churches of Persia ", l The work of Barsumas was taken up and continued by we can make our prayer unto him, whereupon we must only and solely pray unto God. For to say that we should believe either in angel or saint, or in any living creature, were most horrible blasphemy against God and His holy Word . . . " Homily on Prayer. 1 History of the Decline and Fall, ch. xlvii. (vol. viii., 341, A.D. 1791). 440 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Babaeus, a married layman who, in A.D. 496, became Bishop of Seleuceia. This prelate, with commendable consistency, lost no time in calling a synod, which sanctioned the marriage of the bishops and clergy. We should be disposed to describe Barsumas and Babaeus as the Eomulus and Kemus of Nestorianism in Persia. But as their work was successive and not contemporaneous, we may more correctly say that they were to Nestorianism in the fifth century very much what Thomas Cranmer and Matthew Parker were to Anglicanism in the sixteenth. Defiance of the See of Eome and the majority of Catholic Christendom appeal to the interest and ambition of the Civil Power repudiation of extra-national authority uni- formity enforced by penal coercion a readiness to bid for domestic solace for the clergy ! These are all notes with which we are fairly familiar in the Western Refor- mation. Thus, were we to limit our comparison of the two de- partures to their organic features, we should be ready to admit that there are certain analogies which cannot be said to be wanting. But when we pass from the organic to compare their doctrinal features, it is by unlikeness rather than by likeness, and by antilogies rather than by analogies that we are confronted. The object of our inquiry is to ascertain what is the measure of doctrinal resemblance between two terms : (A) Nestorianism. (B) Anglicanism as defined by the Reformation. To possess ourselves of an accurate notion of Nestorianism as it is and as it was, we shall summon four witnesses. The first of these will be the more welcome, because he is, if we may so speak, a hostile one. In 1842 an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. G. P. Badger, was sent by the S.P.C.K., armed with commendatory letters from Archbishop Howley and from the Bishop of London, and devoted several years of missionary labour in Persia to the study of Nestorianism, with the avowed object of bring- ing about a mutual understanding, a co-operative, if not a ANGLICANISM AND THE NESTORIANS 447 corporate union between the Nestorian Church and his own. He has embodied the results of his experiences and researches in two volumes, entitled The Nestorians and their Ritual, a work which has come to be accepted as a standard authority. But as Mr. Badger, both as a Western and a Protestant, may naturally not be expected to bring to his task upon all points the insight of a Syrian, or even perhaps the expert knowledge of a specialist in liturgiology, we may reinforce his testimony by that of the Assemani, in whom both these qualifications are recognised to be found in a conspicuous degree. Joseph Simon Assemani was a Syrian Maronite, who in the last century became Archbishop of Tyre, and was keeper of the Vatican Library until his death in 1768. His Biblio- theca Orientalis is a monumental work of research which has made his scholarship deservedly one of European reputa- tion. An entire tome of this work (III.) is devoted to a documentary study of the Nestorian Church and its doctrine and worship. Hardly less celebrated as an authority on Oriental Chris- tianity is Joseph Aloysius Assemani, of the same Syrian family, who was Professor of Syro-Chaldaic in the University of the Sapienza under Benedict XIV., and spent twelve years in travelling in Syria, in the study and collection of liturgical documents. In his Codex Liturgicus Ecclesiae Universalis he gives us the text of the Nestorian liturgy. Finally, to secure modernity, and bring our investigation duly up to date, we may avail ourselves of the testimony of the Very Rev. A. J. Maclean, the Anglican Dean of Argyll and the Isles, whose work on the " East Syrian Daily Offices " has been published by the Eastern Church Associa- tion only last month. With these four guides we enter a Nestorian Church to take note of what we shall see and hear in its services. It is Mr. Badger who points out the significant structure of the building. "The Stone Altar is fixed against the Wall" (p. 220), and " the Nestorians divide their Church into a hecla (temple) 448 or nave, a kJtoros, or choir or chancel, and a medhba (altar), into which no one but the clergy are allowed to enter." The indication may be but a small one, but it does not point in the direction of the changes made by the English Eeformation. We are present at the ordination of a priest. The Metropolitan stands in the midst of the chancel, hav- ing before him the candidate for ordination. He addresses him in these words : " O priest, how great is thy dignity ! For in the sight of Him to whom thou dost minister, the ministers of fire and spirit tremble for reverence. " Gabriel is glorious, and great is Michael, as their names portend, but compared with thy Priesthood they are exceed- ingly beneath thee ! " l This is Sacerdotalism with a very large S. It reminds us at once of the language of St. Chrysostom in the treatise de Sacerdotio, and of St. Alphonsus in the Selva, or of Pere Chaignon in his Meditations Sacerdotales, but it is " not," in the least, the language of Granmer and the authors of the English Eeformation. The Metropolitan, before the solemn words of Ordination, prays over them. " Strengthen them, O Lord of All, and giver of all Spiritual gifts, so that without stain, they may offer to Thee all day and night peaceful Sacrifices." 2 Here there is no evasion of the idea of sacrifice, but a clear allusion to the perpetual oblation foretold by Malachias, to be offered in every place ' ' from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof ". We now enter a church where one of the priests thus ordained is saying the Mass, or the Liturgy offering the " peaceful sacrifice " and exercising " the ministry of conse- cration " as the words of his ordination have described it. 1 Codex Liturgicus Ecc. Univers., J. A. Assemani, vol. xii., 30. 2 Ibid. ANGLICANISM AND THE NESTOKIANS 449 We listen to the words of this offertory : " We offer to Thee this lively, holy, acceptable, glorious and great and awful Sacrament for all men." x And in the prayer of the Commemoration : " The Body of Christ and His precious Blood are upon the Holy Altar. " On the Holy Altar let there be a remembrance of Mary the Mother of Christ." And before the Communion, the priest says : " Grant that when Thy holy Body and Blood shall mingle with the bodies and souls of thy servants, they may cleanse us from all the pollution of sin, and deliver us from all evil ". 2 The priest, making the sign of the Cross over the chalice with the Host, is saying : " The precious Blood is signed with the Holy Body of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Body is signed with the propitiatory Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ." 3 "Angels and men worship Thee, Thou High Priest who in the Sacrifice of the Altar hast established Thine Incarnation." 4 " And since He is One and Indivisible, above and in the Church, He is daily sacrificed for our sins, but without en- during pain. Come, then, and let us in all purity approach the Sacrifice of His All-Hallowing Body, and let us with one accord cry out and say, ' Glory be to Thee '." 5 As far as the idea of Propitiatory Sacrifice is concerned, we have here a strong and emphatic affirmation as contrasted with the liturgical denial and elimination of the Revisers of the English Prayer-book. Can these declarations of the Liturgy be accepted in a purely figurative sense? It is undoubtedly true that the Nestorians, like all other sects, have had their innovators, and that amongst them have been found certain bishops and writers who projected the Nestorian error into their conception of the Eucharist, 1 Nestorians and their Ritual, G. P. Badger, ii., 232. 2 Ibid., 218. 3 J. S. Assemani, Bibliotheca Oriental-is, tome iii., part ii., 293. 4 Service in the Khudhra for seven Sundays in Lent, given in Nes- torians and their Ritual, ii., 139. 5 Service in the Khudhra for Holy Thursday, ibid. 29 450 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM and held that Christ made the bread to be His Body, just as He made His Body to be His own, by a mere moral union and without changing its nature. Such an error, if it meant anything, would mean that the Eucharist was an extension of the Incarnation in the degrading sense of an Impanation. But Joseph Simon Assemani well points out that this opinion was far from being either the belief or the traditional teaching of the Nestorian bishops and theologians. On the contrary, the authoritative voice of their Patriarchs sets forth the doctrine of the Eucharist with startling clearness. Thus both Mr. Badger and J. S. Assemani cite the following testimony from Tlie Jewel, a standard treatise of Nestorian theology, dealing with the Seven Sacraments, and written by Mar-abd-Yeshaa, who was Nestorian Metro- politan of Nisibis and Armenia in A.D. 1298. " Through this Divine Institution the bread is changed into His holy Body and the wine into His precious Blood ; and they impart to all who receive them in faith and without doubting the forgiveness of sins, purification, enlightenment, pardon, the great hope of resurrection from the dead, the inheritance of heaven and the new life. Whenever we approach these Sacraments we meet with Christ Himself, and His Very Self we take into our hands." [Christ in the heart, and not in the hand of the believer, was a watchword of English Eeformed theology, as it is still amongst Evangelicals.] " And kiss, and thereby we are joined to and with Christ, His holy Body mixing with our bodies and His pure Blood mingling with our blood, and by faith we know Him that is in the Heaven, and Him that is in the Church to be one Body." ] The same Assemani and also Eenaudot quote the words of the Patriarch Elias III., who in his Exposition of the Faith says : " The substance of the bread and wine are changed into the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ." ; 1 J. S. Assemani, BibUofheca Orientalis, tome iii., part ii., 291 ; G. P. Badger, Nestorians and, their Ritiial, ii., 411. 2 Eenaudot, Liturgia Orient., ii., 577 and 615 ; J. S. Assemani, Bibliotheca Orientalis, tome iii., part ii., 29. ANGLICANISM AND THE NESTORIANS 451 Let us now suppose that the priest whom we have seen ordained, and ministering at the altar, has died. We enter the Nestorian Church to assist at his funeral. The Liturgy or Mass is being offered for his soul. The following are portions of the service which reach our ears : " Have mercy upon us, O Thou Who art glorified of all, through the intercession of the martyrs, Mar Gheorgees and Mar Serghees, and of St. Mary the Blessed, who put away all devouring insects, frost and death who destroy all, and who became a Mother and Parent to the Son of the Lord of all " On this day may the souls of thy servants mix in glory and blessedness with Elijah and Enoch. . . ." l In the service which follows there is a beautiful texture of processional chants and responses, and by a picturesque liturgical fiction, one of the parts in the chant is made to represent the dead priest, and another the mourning people. The voice of the deceased is thus heard, as it were, at his own funeral, reminding his bereaved flock how he has ministered to them in the House of God, and plaintively appealing to them, in words which have much of the thrilling pathos of the Miseremini Mci of our own Eequiem Mass, not to forget him, but to make " constant remembrance of him in their prayers" and "at the altar," so that he may speedily be admitted into " the bright light of the Nuptial Chamber of the Blessed ". 2 For instance, we hear the following in snatches, as they bear the body to the grave. " my brethren, companions, and dearly beloved, with those of my ministry, forget not to remember me in the Holy Church. . . ." " Depart in peace, thou pure priest, who didst minister well in the Church below, behold thou shalt put on glory in the Church that is above. . . ." " ye fathers and pastors, remember me what time the Sacrament of the Body and Blood is offered up. . . . Sup- 1 G. P. Badger, Nestorians and their Ritual, i., 232. " Ibid., vol. ii., Appendix. 29* 452 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM plicate for me in your prayers, ye that stand in the Holy Place, that the Body and Blood of the Lord may plead for me." " Give rest, O Lord, to the soul of Thy servant who has slept in Thy hope. For in the bridal-chamber of light thy crown shines, among the Saints, thou pure priest of the Lord and lover of Christ " (Service of the Kahneita, or Burial of Priests, given by Mr. Badger, op. cit., vol. ii., 307). Could anything be more unlike a Protestant funeral, or farther apart from the spirit and teaching and practice of the English reformers ? While we witness this service, which is in itself a splendid Liturgical proclamation of the belief in the efficacy of Mass and Prayer for the dead, let us seek to arrive at an exact appreciation of its doctrinal meaning as held and taught by the Nestorians. Assemani puts into our hand the treatise which the Nestorian Patriarch, Timothy II., has written on the Seven Sacraments, and in the sixth chapter of which (sec. 7) he answers the objections of those who ask " Why, if each one receives the fruit of his labour, should there be prayers and sacrifices for the dead ? " The Patriarch gives three reasons. Like a wise rhetorician, he puts the best one last, and clenches his proof in the great fact that Christ died for both the living and the dead. Whereupon he continues : " It is therefore obvious, that it is not without profit and use that there is the Sacrifice of the Lamb of the Living God, Who taketh away the sin of the world, when it is offered for the living and the dead. . . . Useful, there- fore, and profitable it is that for us should be constantly immolated the Lamb of God, both for those who are par- takers of the Sacrament of Immolation, and for him on whose account and for whom it is perfected and consum- mated." l The " Lamb of God, constantly immolated " in the Sacra- ment of the Eucharist, to take away the sins of " the living 1 J. S. Assemani, Biblijtheca Orientalis, tome iii., part ii., 344. ANGLICANISM AND THE NESTOKIANS 453 and the dead," seems to us to be a remarkably clear and full statement of that very idea of Propitiatory Sacrifice which the Eeformers so vehemently struck out of the English Prayer-book. The funeral is over, and we are back in the Nestorian Church to take part in another function. It is a festival of Our Lady, and service is being held in her honour. The priest is come to declare her praise to the people, and the Nestorian liturgy, to make sure of his doing it properly, carefully provides a special formulary and a prescribed eulogium for the purpose. The following is what we hear from the celebrant : " The mouths of men are insufficient to praise the Mother of the Lord of Angels and of men. Those in the body fall short nor can the spiritual ones attain unto it. If she be so great and exalted, how can vile lips declare her? . . . " Grant me, therefore, that I may magnify Thy Mother before Thy Church and before Thy people." Forthwith the words of the service proceed to apply to our Blessed Lady no less than twenty-two of the Psalms of David, which are interpreted as foretelling her sublime pre- rogatives. In doing so, it does not hesitate to describe her to the people as " the one who delivered our race ". It continues : " She whose Son is the Heaven of Heavens, who will say that any one can be compared to her ? "The morning stars worshipped her, and the Sun and Moon bowed their heads to her. The Heavens called her Blessed, and the Heaven of Heavens joined in her beati- tude. The Apostles bore her body ; the prophets and priests followed her bier, the Angels wore crowns for her, and the mouths of fire extolled her. The sick and afflicted called upon her name, and when she rested (died) her prayers were a tower of help to all the distressed." It then represents the Angels as saluting her in these words : " Blessed art thou, since through thee salvation from destruction has come to Adam and to his children ! " 454 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM It adds : " May the Virgin's prayers be a wall of defence to all the world which commemorates her festival with great re- joicing ! " The whole of this service which reminds one of the ora- tion of St. Cyril of Alexandria or the hymns of St. Ephrem, is given by Mr. Badger, at p. 52 of the second volume of his Nestorians and their Ritual. If any reader will consult the work in full, he will rise from its perusal feeling that in the veneration of her who is " Blessed amongst women " and in the chorus of love and praise by which all generations " call her Blessed," it is rather the East than the West that leads the way, and that this Nestorian service contains expressions of honour and homage, which are unheard in the land of the Madonna, and for which we should look in vain in Glories of Mary by St. Alphonsus. With these testimonies before us we think that we are safe in saying that noonday light is not further apart from midnight darkness, nor summer heat from winter frost, than religion such as we see it here presented from that which was introduced into this land by the English Reformation. At a lecture delivered at Glasgow in behalf of the Anglican mission to the Nestorian or Assyrian Christians, the Chair- man read the following letter from the Archbishop of Canter- bury : ADDINGTON PARK, CROYDON, 24/i November, 1893. MY DEAR PROFESSOR, I am very happy and grateful to hear, in answer to my request to you, of the preparations for such a meeting on behalf of the mission to the Assyrian Christians. We do not commonly call them the " Assyrian Church " because of their formal separation from the Church on account of their Nestorian heresy once held, but now there is no trace of it discernible in their teaching or views. Their three Liturgies are so ancient (and markedly older one than another) that the most modern of the three contains no trace of Nestorianism, and is therefore certainly older than the fourth century. At present they (e.g., the Metropolitan, a well-read man) are horrified at the imputation to them of those strange opinions which are attributed to Nestorius, although they still make his name their own. This is why we call them "Assyrian Christians" at present rather than "Church " " Assyrians" we call them from ANGLICANISM AND THE NESTORIANS 455 their locality as a well-known region, but they would more techni- cally he called East Syrians. They are to us wonderful evidences of the value and accuracy of the Reformation. They hold all our Christian doctrines and they know nothing of transubstantiation, of mariolatry, 1 or invocation of saints, or purgatory. " They know nothing of Invocation of the Saints " ! But the following is the prayer set forth in all plainness on the face of the Nestorian Liturgy. It occurs in the Burial Service for priests. Mr. Badger gives it in vol. ii., p. 309, in these terms : " O Mary, Sainted Virgin, Mother of Jesus, our Saviour, plead and supplicate for mercy for sinners who flee to thy prayers, that they may not be lost. Let thy prayers be to us a wall of defence in this world and in that which is to come." Again : " thou Holy Virgin, through whom our race, corrupted by the deceitfulness of sin, was sanctified, pray with us to thy Sanctifier to sanctify us, that through the shadow of thy prayers, He may preserve our life, and spread the wings of His pity over our frailty. Mother of Him who causes us to live, thou handmaid of our Creator, be to us a wall of defence at all times." From the Nestorian Khudhra (Mr. Badger, vol. ii., 139). But the most marvellous part of this matter remains to be seen. We turn to the testimony of the latest witness the Anglican Dean of Argyll and the Isles, who was himself a 1 Mr. Badger at times allows his zeal for Anglicanism somewhat to bias his judgment, so much so that even his Anglican editor takes him to task, and thinks that in discovering points of harmony between the Nestorian Church and his own, he displays " amazing ingenuity ". Yet not even Mr. Badger could bring himself to acquit his Nestorian friends of what he calls mariolatry. He says that by withholding the title Theotokos, " they do not intend to detract aught from the blessedness of the Virgin Mary," and, " if they have erred in this respect, the error lies in a tendency to mariolatry, of which they can hardly be pronounced innocent by the most lenient judgment " (vol. ii., p. 70). In measuring the limits of leniency in human judgment, Mr. Badger had not reckoned apparently on the Archbishop of Canterbury. 456 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM fellow-worker at Urmi with the very missioners sent to the Nestorians by the Archbishop of Canterbury. His work just published on the Nestorian daily offices receives a special authentication from the fact that it has been printed and issued under the auspices of the Anglican " Eastern Church Association ". Let us quote a few words from the Secretary's intro- duction (the italics are ours) : " The aim of the Association is to disseminate as accurate information as is possible about the Eastern Churches, whether concerning their history and formal teaching or their actual condition. The time has gone by when it is wise to be satisfied with half-truths or incorrect and one- sided information. There are no books which show more accurately the historical and doctrinal position of a Church than its Liturgies and other services." We turn to these services as given in this work, and on pp. 4, 24 and 28, we find the following prayer in the ferial evening services : "O Mary, who didst bear the medicine of life to the children of Adam. In thy petition we will take refuge." " O Mary, the Holy Virgin, Mother of Jesus, our Saviour. May thy prayer be a refuge." "0 Glorious and Holy Martyr, St. Cyriac, the illustrious, beg mercy for us from thy Lord. That we may be made worthy of the forgiveness of trespasses." If this be not Invocation of the Saints, what is ? Now this very translation professes to be based amongst others on the text of the Nestorian services, just published by the press which the Archbishop of Canterbury has estab- lished at Urmi. Here, then, we have a situation almost too ludicrous for belief. On the one hand, we have the Archbishop of Canterbury's press at Urmi, busily publishing for the Nestorians their own liturgical prayers in which they invoke Our Blessed Lady and the Saints. We have the Anglican Dean of Argyll, and the Anglican " Eastern Church Association," carefully translating these very prayers for the information of the British public. ANGLICANISM AND THE NESTORIANS 457 On the other hand, we have the Archbishop himself assur- ing the same British public that the Nestorians, for whom he asks their sympathies and support, " know nothing of the Invocation of the Saints " ! It is surely incredible that the Archbishop can stand, as it were, with one hand busily printing and distributing invoca- tory prayers to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints at Urmi in the Bast, while with the other he writes a letter to assure a Glasgow audience that the Nestorians know nothing of any such practice of invocation ! ! That there may or must be some explanation of the pheno- menon we cannot in courtesy doubt. We can only say that we do not possess it. In The Church Times of 2nd February (the day after the Secretary of the Eastern Church Association wrote his pre- face to the Dean of Argyll's work) the Archbishop of Canter- bury is reported as speaking of the Nestorian movement as follows : When it was said that we had forsaken ancient doctrines and usages, was it not a most glorious thing to be able not only to test by scholarly investigation, but actually to be able to say "on the other side of the world here is a Church which has existed from the beginning, and which has exactly the same usages as those which our reformers arrived at ". He did not think that in any age there had been produced a more complete and perfect test of the reality of the primitive character of the English Church. As regarded their superstitions, it could not be said that they were such as clogged the spirit of religion, and were not altogether dissimilar to those which existed in this country. We think that the Nestorian liturgy and service-books certainly convey a great and significant message to the Christians of the West. The Eeformers taught about as clearly and as emphatically as they taught anything, that the Eeal Presence, the Propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass, Prayers for the Dead and Invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints were mediaeval corruptions imposed upon Christianity by the Church of Eome. The fact that these doctrines are enshrined in the liturgy of a religious body which separated from us in the fifth 458 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM century, and has remained for 1,300 years outside the sphere of Papal jurisdiction, teaches us with telling clear- ness that their origin cannot be " mediaeval " nor of " Papal imposition ". That is the lesson of the Eastern Liturgies. But it happens to be just the opposite of the one which is taught by the Archbishop of Canterbury. CHAPTER LIX. An Anglican Conception of Church Unity. (HTH AUGUST, 1894.) THE Bishop of Salisbury, in a recent Visitation charge, has desired to prove that the Anglican Communion is really a part of the true Church of Christ. The mere mention of the thesis carries our minds back to our Catechism and to the later part of the Nicene Creed. " The Church has four marks by which we may know her : She is One she is Holy she is Catholic she is Apostolic." Thus, when the Bishop seeks to prove his point, we feel that he ought to do so by showing that these four marks Unity, Holiness, Catholicity and Apostolicity are the dis- tinguishing features of the Communion to which he belongs. He proposes to do so. He begins with Unity. Amongst those who have had the advantage of listening to his charge, it is by no means impossible that there may have been some who were present at the meetings of a recent Church Congress. They will have had still in their ears the impressive words of a distinguished Anglican au- thority who proved that reunion with the Dissenting bodies ought not to present any insuperable difficulty from the simple fact that the divisions which separate Anglicanism from Dissenters are not nearly so great as the divisions which exist between Anglicans themselves. They can hardly have been less interested now to hear from the lips of another authority equally Anglican and AN ANGLICAN CONCEPTION OF CHURCH UNITY 459 equally distinguished the explanation of the way in which such a condition of things is found to be consistent with the note of Unity as required by the Nicene Creed. Then, Anglican Unity is a matter upon which, even upon d priori grounds, Catholics are apt to be somewhat incredu- lous. They do not believe that Unity can emerge from a system founded on the exercise of private judgment, any more than they could believe in the squaring of the circle. They feel that Church Unity has for its parents the two principles, Authority and Infallibility, and that only a bastard unity can be born from any other. When, therefore, the Bishop of Salisbury undertakes to prove his case if we may be permitted the use of the figure by leaping the Nicene hurdles, we recognise that one of the highest and hardest is that which has been placed immediately in front of him. Catholics, as well as the public generally, may be pardoned if they look on with some degree of curiosity to see how he will clear it. But, first of all, let us guess. When a rider finds his progress barred by a hurdle which he cannot surmount, must he needs turn back ? Not necessarily. He may do one of three things. He may ask to have the hurdle lowered to the level of his jumping power. Thus the Bishop of Salisbury may simply require that the idea of Unity be brought down to meet the exigencies of the Anglican position. The framers of the Creed, we know, meant Unity honestly so called, namely, Unity in belief of all that Our Lord taught or as we express it, Unity in all things which are of faith. The Bishop is one who in the higher sense of the term takes up the " Eastward position ". We have an impression, therefore, that he would hardly like to affirm before his Greek or old Catholic friends that such doctrines as the objective presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Sacrificial and Propitiatory character of the Mass, the Divine institu- tion of Episcopacy, the Sacramental validity of priestly 460 ASPECTS OP ANGLICANISM absolution, the efficacy of prayers and Masses for the dead, are not integral parts of the Catholic faith. But to insist upon Unity in these is putting the hurdle at a height at which the Anglican Church could not climb could hardly see over it. A certain group in the English Church Union might do so, but the body of the Establishment would cer- tainly remain behind. Hence, the hurdle must be lowered. But how far ? Let us say having regard to all who are to pass over it to belief in the Divinity of Christ ; or, if that be too dogmatic, to Loyalty to the person of Christ. At that level, any one who even calls himself a Christian may just step across it. People who note its lowliness may well marvel why any one should have taken the trouble to put it there at all. (Even Mr. Gladstone, who brought the tact of a states- man to the work of a theologian, and kept one eye upon the consideration of principles and the other upon the con- sideration of men and actual facts, sought to bring both to a focus, would have taken it upon himself to fix the limit of orthodoxy not lower than the Trinity and the Incarnation.) But there is another way. The rider may ask that the hard and solid material of the hurdle be exchanged for one of tissue-paper or some other quasi-non-resisting medium, which a skilful horseman, with a taste for acrobatics, might leap through at pleasure. The Bishop may seek to change the Nicene Mark into a mere Paper Unity, viz., a gross or mechanical Unity which at- tempts to make men one by causing them to sign or use the same written formularies while each one is left free to accept them in his own meaning. Thus an Evangelical and a Eitualistic clergyman both use the same Prayer-book. One believes that the Mass is a "blasphemous fable," the other believes that he is saying it. One believes that in the Eucharist there is no Eeal Presence of Christ outside the mind of the communicant. The other believes that such a conception of the Eucharist is "damnable heresy ". It would be the merest evasion to speak of such an agree- ment as Unity. It is at most material not even mental conformity. The Unity is in the paper, and in the sounds AN ANGLICAN CONCEPTION OF CHURCH UNITY 461 and shapes of words and letters of dead formularies and liturgies. Catholic Unity is in the soul and in the belief. It would not be living, or real, or genuine, if it were not. It makes one in truth the minds of its believers. It is Soul Unity as distinguished from Paper Unity. We cannot believe in the innate honesty of the English mind much less in so much that is sincere and conscien- tious in the Anglican movement without believing that both are bound to recoil with contempt from so pitiful a subter- fuge as Paper Unity. To imagine that that was the Unity which Christ prayed for, would be to credit Our Divine Lord with a standard of sincerity immeasurably short of that which we could find in Strauss or Voltaire, and a large pro- portion of our anti-Christian contemporaries. But there is yet another way. The rider may plead that the hurdle be removed for the nonce. He may say : " Carry it to the other end of the field. Place it somewhere near the goal. If I cannot pass over it now, I can keep it in view, and at least, it will be something stimulating to look forward to. Who knows if, in the velocity acquired towards the end of the race, I may not be able to clear it." So the Bishop may argue that Unity is indeed a beautiful mark of the Church of Christ far too beautiful, in fact, for the present condition of mankind but that it is one which belongs to the Church of the future. It is the term of a gradual perfectionnement a feature of final consummation. It is a mistake to expect at the beginning, or more than in an inchoate measure during the course of the Church's life, a result which was to be fully achieved only towards the end. When Christ prayed that His Church might be one, He was thinking of some period more or less near to the Day of Judgment ! That removes the high hurdle on to a distance where neither the Bishop nor ourselves will be able to see the jumping of it. 462 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM The Lowering- Method ! The Paper-Method ! The Future-Method ! These are the three expedients which might be used by a perplexed rider to get rid of the Nicene hurdle. Which of these will commend itself to the Bishop of Salisbury ? It seems to us that, with a strange disregard of the in- compatible in strategy, he in a manner tries all three. The following is his proof that Anglicanism possesses the mark of Unity : I ventured further to assert that in this Church we had a type of Christianity worthy to take its place by the side of the Greek and Roman Churches, using those names also in a sense wider than the mere local meaning could convey. The "notes" of this great body I described in words, which I will paraphrase and enlarge rather than repeat, dividing them under the four usual heads Unity, Holiness, Catholicity and Apostolicity. The English Church then has the true Scriptural note of unity, because it aims at and (as far as human frailty permits) possesses the "unity of the spirit" (Eph. iv. 3), the unity of personal loyalty to our one Master and Saviour, that unity of which Our Blessed Lord speaks when He says, " Be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your Master even Christ, and all ye are brethren " (St. Matt, xxiii. 8, etc.). That is clearly a case of the Lowering-Method. It strikes at the very idea and purpose of Eevealed Chris- tianity, because it deliberately separates the Divine Teacher from His own Teaching, and seeks to establish Christian Unity in a relation to the former alone, and not to both. If we are to be Christ's disciples, assuredly we must be one in His Word, and in the truths taught, and thei*efore in the meaning in which Christ taught them, and not merely in personal loyalty to the Teacher Himself. Two minds made one by believing the same body of divinely revealed Truth have " Unity of the spirit ". If they do not believe what Christ taught and in the true meaning in which He taught it, it is a non-dogmatic Unity a " Unity of Spirit " without Unity of mind and conviction ; just the last thing in the world which Christ and the framers of the Creed could have intended. AN ANGLICAN CONCEPTION OF CHURCH UNITY 463 And here the Bishop is bound to take note of a difficulty. He cannot forget that close upon his heels ride the leaders of Dissent and the hosts of Polychurchism. The Bishop of Salisbury (although he is writing upon Church Unity) is not Dr. Perrowne, Bishop of Worcester, nor even Dr. Trench, Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. He very properly intends that his four marks shall not be common to himself and the Nonconformists. He knows that marks are meant to mark off the Church from bodies which are not the Church, and that marks would hardly be marks at all if they covered everybody not only inside the Church but outside of it. Wherefore, it behoves him, even from his own point of view, to see that the hurdle is not laid too low. To answer his pur- pose it must be kept at a height at which he and the Anglican Communion can get safely over, while Dr. Lunn, Dr. Parker, and Mr. Hugh Price Hughes may not be able to follow him. That, no doubt, would require just a miracle of adjustment. 1 But we submit that the Bishop has left the miracle utterly unattempted. If "Personal loyalty to Christ" be the bond of union, we fail to see why it should apply more palpably to the Anglican than to the Dissenter. It is a mark at the mention of which the Calvinist, the Methodist, the Lutheran all have the right to hold up their hands. All claim to be personally loyal to Christ as their Master. If this be Catholic Unity, the Society for promoting the Ee- union of Christendom may sing a Te Deum and dissolve, for Unity is already achieved, and better still no such thing as Christian disunion ever existed ! So far, therefore, we take it that the Bishop's proof would be absolutely inadequate even for his own purpose. 1 The " Lambeth Quadrilateral " ? There is only one side of the Quadrilateral which could in any sense shut out the Dissenter the "Historic Episcopate". But this, on Bishop Lightfoot's own showing, cannot be an Article of Faith at all, and is at most a mere matter of post-Revelation discipline. Where- fore, on Anglican grounds, it cannot be erected into an essential matter of Church unity. Nor can it avail as a test. Does the Historic Episco- pate mean Episcopacy as a Divine Institution ? If so, there are Anglican Bishops who deny it. If not, there are Dissenters and Presbyterians who affirm that they would find no difficulty in admit- ting it. 464 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM But the Bishop means more than this, and hastens to state it as follows : We aim, not only at organic and external unity, on which we set a high value, but also at a moral unity, a unity of conviction, a unity of belief, a unity of willing federation, representation and contract. We do not forget that persistent adherence to tradition, or loyalty to and dependence on a visible centre of authority, have had, and still have, a most important place in the Church. The Greek Church owes much to the first, the Roman to the second. " Moral Unity, a Unity of conviction, a Unity of belief." Here, then, at last we are face to face with genuine, honest Unity. Not Verbal or Paper Unity, but Catholic Unity, in which souls are made one by sharing the same truths, the same beliefs, the same convictions. And Anglicanism has it ? Alas ! the mirage floats before us. The Bishop is careful. Speaking of that low measure of Unity which, as we have seen, avails nothing as a mark, he spoke of " possessing". But now that he comes to the higher ground of real and distinctive Unity, he changes his verb. He lays down " to possess " and takes up " to aim at ". Anglicanism does not possess this Unity. Anglicanism " aims " at it. We do not aim at things which we have, but at things which, at present, we have not. When the Bishop says " We aim," he makes a confession. We cannot but suppose that he would gladly have used the stronger word if it had been given him to do so. Truth and evidence clear as noonday forbade that he should go beyond " We aim," and he has loyally refused to go farther, even though he must have known that, as a penalty, he leaves unsaid the only possible word which could prove his thesis. For even a child will understand that a religious body does not bear the marks of the true Church by merely " aiming " at them, but by having them. And, in point of fact, how could the Bishop speak of "Unity of belief" or "Unity of conviction" in the Angli- can body in any other terms ? We have already mentioned five doctrines : AN ANGLICAN CONCEPTION OF CHURCH UNITY 465 1. The Objective presence of Christ in the Eucharist. 2. The Sacrificial and Propitiatory Character of the Mass. 3. The Divine Institution of Episcopacy. 4. The Sacramental Validity of Priestly Absolution. 5. The efficacy of Prayers and Masses for the Dead. Both East and West proclaim these dogmas as main and essential features of the Christian faith. A Greek or Eussian bishop would raise his eyebrows just as promptly and just as highly as any Latin one in scandalised astonishment if assured that any man who denied these doctrines could claim to be called a Catholic. But upon them one section of the Anglican body believes emphatically yes, while the other section believes emphatic- ally no. And the cleft divides the whole body from the Bench of Bishops downwards bishop against bishop clergy against clergy laity against laity. They stand divided as to the very meaning of the Com- munion they celebrate, of the Sacraments they administer, and of the very Episcopacy and priesthood they claim to possess. In the teeth of this patent public and national fact (and with a Church Congress held annually to keep the public in mind of it), there can be no possible plea of Anglican " Unity of conviction ". We might go farther. Outsiders at least cannot discover that these two sections show any practical signs of aiming at unity or reunion. On the contrary, there was perhaps never a time when each section was more clear and resolute in holding its respective set of convictions, more articulate in expressing them, more strongly and actively organised in pressing them upon the acceptance of their adherents. Has the English Church Union, and the clergy and laity it represents, even the remotest intention of abjuring the five doctrines we have enumerated and going back to the Eeformation ? Has the Protestant Alliance, or the societies which continue their work, and the Protestant masses gener- ally, the remotest intention of accepting them and surrender- ing the Eeformation ? 30 466 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Which of the two may be expected to move towards the other, at a moment when both, by the very measure of their zeal and earnestness, are daily drifting farther apart ? Time will not narrow, but widen the breach between them. If this be a correct reading of facts, it is not easy to see how in any practical sense these two main sections of Angli- canism can be said, save in the merest platonic sense, to be even " aiming " at " Unity of conviction ". Aiming at unity would mean that their paths should point at closer convergence. As a matter of plain fact, they are pointed at wider divergence. But let us allow the Bishop to continue : We ourselves necessarily feel the value of these things, and cling tenaciously to the Creeds and Sacraments and to the historic Episcopate, and find the practical centre of our organisation in a federation round the Primacy of Canterbury. Here at once we are diverted from future "aims," and turned back to the pitiful Paper-Method. " Creeds, Sacraments, Historic Episcopate," the same upon paper, and expressed by the same sounds and letters, but accepted in senses as widely and diametrically different as yes and no in the mind of the individual ! Unity on the paper, and Unity on the lips, but no Unity in the souls of the believers ! No "Primacy of Canterbury" or elsewhere could ever be seriously mentioned as a centre or guarantee of Church Unity unless it were possessed of effective authority for maintaining it. The Archbishop of Canterbury possesses absolutely no power for the purpose. Were any of his suffragans to preach and inculcate every one of the doctrines we have mentioned, the Archbishop is absolutely powerless to restrain him. If another of his suffragans in the neigh- bouring diocese chose to ridicule and denounce every one of these doctrines, the Archbishop is equally powerless to inhibit him. No one knows better than Dr. Benson what would be the effect of his attempting to issue an injunction of any kind to any bishop of the Anglican Communion either in the United States or in the Colonies. AN ANGLICAN CONCEPTION OF CHURCH UNITY 467 A centre without control would be a lame and a ludicrous contrivance for holding a Church in Unity. The Bishop concludes : But we do not think such formal and organic ties, essential as they are, exhaust the Scriptural idea of Unity, or are, indeed, its most important parts. They are necessary means to an end, but it is a mistake to insist so much on what is merely useful and con- venient in them as to make it essential, as both these Churches in their different ways seem to do. We believe that our ideal of Unity represents the ideal of the future, if theirs, in some degree, repre- sents the discipline and experience of the past. And here, again, we are back at the Future-Method ! Apparently, when Our Lord prayed for Unity, He meant not one thing but two. First, an old-fashioned Unity which was to last only for a time, and which the Greek and the Eoman Churches were to use for the first nineteen centuries. But in the nineteenth century a new kind of Unity was to be discovered by the Catholic Church, and this was to be taken up, perpetuated and promoted by the Anglican Com- munion on to the end. We hold a Report of the English Church Union in one hand, and a Report of the English Church Association in the other, and it seems to us that the New Unity is not nearly so much like what ordinary people understand by Unity as the old one. Can the Bishop of Salisbury seriously mean that the Catholic Church waited for nineteen hundred years and then found out a new form of Church Unity one different, say, from that which animated the first Four General Councils when they taught the doctrines of the faith, with authority, and said anathema to all who would presume to teach them in any other sense than that in which they had defined them? The Future-Method refutes itself by its opposition to the very purpose of a Church-Mark. Our Divine Lord expressly says that the Unity which He prays for His Church is to be to her a distinguishing mark, so that "the world may know and may believe" that His Heavenly Father had sent Him. If Unity is the divinely 30* 468 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM set seal of the Church's mission, she is bound to wear it during the whole course of her history. Railway officials hang a sign-board upon a train, in order that passengers may know the right one, and avoid being carried in the wrong direction. The sign-board is put up at the beginning not at the end of the journey. Accord- ing to the Future-Method of conceiving Church Unity, the sign-board should be hung up just as the train is arriving at the terminus ! Truly, a little too late for those who looked for it to tell them whether the train was the right or the wrong one. Nor is the method historically true. If it were, we might look back along the ages to see Christendom proceeding from a looser into a more compact bond of unity, and gradually coalescing into one massive whole. But the evolution is exactly the opposite. Perfect unity, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, is found at the very beginning. Gradually, by schism and heresy, large masses of Christendom are periodically detached, and these, while leaving Unity still perfect in the parent mass, become more and more disintegrated into fragments. The facts are the refutation of the theory. Such then is the Bishop of Salisbury's treatment of the first Nicene Note of the Church as applied to Anglicanism. It was not his to be able to challenge the world's attention to the marvellous and majestic Unity of the Catholic Church, and to say, " Behold here a centre of Unity that dates from the Apostles Behold here a Hierarchy of more than 1,200 bishops Behold here more than a quarter of a million of clergy Behold here more than two hundred millions of people of ' all nations ' and yet all, Pope, Pastors, Priests and People, absolutely one in belief, one in worship, one in loving obedience to the same authority. All ye that pass by the way, look and see how the Church of Christ, like Truth, is beautiful in its oneness ! " The Bishop's task was a different one. To the Catholic reader his arguments may seem to contain little but the emptiness of phrases, and platitudes which sometimes read like actual evasions. ARCHBISHOP BENSON ON ST. GEEMAN 469 But let us realise for a moment his position. It was his to sit down at his desk and to write a paragraph stating and proving the " Unity of the Anglican Church/' and to do so, while, figuratively speaking, Bishop Eyle of Liverpool stood at his right, and Bishop King of Lincoln upon his left, and Canon Knox-Little in front of him, and Archdeacon Farrar behind him ! His problem was not only to prove the existence of Unity, but of a Unity which would cover his surroundings ! Placed in such a position and given such an impossible task, who is there amongst us who could have acquitted himself more successfully? Far be it from us to seek satisfaction in the sight of Anglican divisions. Our hopes and interests lie far more in their reunion than disunion. But even as we yearn and pray for the reunion of Christendom, so must we ever deprecate above all things, both for our own sake and for others, anything which would lower or impair the sacred and Catholic ideal of Christian Unity, and debase the purity of the gold upon the matchless vesture of the King's Daughter. CHAPTER LX. Archbishop Benson on St. German of Auxerre. (13TH OCTOBER, 1894.) ARCHBISHOP BENSON in October, 1894, was called upon to preach in the Church of St. German in Cornwall. He very properly yielded himself to the spirit of the place, and preached a historical sermon. His subject was the life of St. German of Auxerre. The situation at once becomes invested with a very peculiar interest. For, as soon as we learn that an Anglican Archbishop is going to deal with St. German of Auxerre, every educated Catholic naturally asks himself: "How will the Archbishop reckon with Prosper of Aquitaine?" If the preacher and St. German could only be left to themselves, all might go well, at least for the preacher, for while the 470 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Saint must be silent the preacher can say what he will. But it is just here that Prosper of Aquitaine insists upon making himself an awkward third. St. German historically holds his peace. But Prosper has written a contemporary chronicle, and therefore speaks to all students of history, and speaks with a voice which all the preachers in Christen- dom cannot drown. We have thus before us the three dramatis personce the Archbishop, the Saint, and the Chronicler. The Archbishop, preaching in Cornwall upon St. German of Auxerre, could not, even if he wished it, avoid alluding to the most salient event of the Saint's life, his mission to Britain. In 429 the Pelagian heresy was rife in many parts of this country. The British Bishops felt urgent need of preachers to help them in the arduous work of converting the heretics. They applied for aid to the neighbouring Catholic Church in Gaul. Help came not once but twice and on each occasion the great champion and foremost missionary in the restoration of the faith of the British Church was St. German of Auxerre. Thus the mission of St. German is one of the best and brightest chapters in British Church history. This is the event with which the Archbishop has to deal. His purpose is obviously to take possession, in the name of Anglicanism, of St. German and his mission. His task is to describe St. German's work, and at the same time cut it off as clearly as possible from any association with Eome. Now it is precisely here that Prosper, as a historical third, becomes unmanageable. The Archbishop begins by constructing an argument upon the fact that the British bishops applied for help not to Eome but to Gaul. The Church here sent to the Church in Gaul to send them a competent teacher. Why did they send to Gaul ? Because Gaul was their mother Church. They did not send to Rome though the Bishop of Rome was glad enough to approve of their going but they sent to their mother Church. It did not occur to them that it was necessary to send to Italy for teachers ; they sent home, jw it were. ARCHBISHOP BENSON ON ST. GERMAN 471 And proceeding from this to draw the desired conclusion, he says : It showed us how Rome was never recognised as the sole fountain of doctrine, or as the sole power which could correct error ; for that old Church in this land did not apply to Rome as mother and mistress ; they went to their own mother. And to this we had now to add the consideration that Rome in those days was so much purer than now ; there was no tale to tell everywhere of oppression ; she did not stand then as the great factory of new doctrine. The answer to this is so obvious that it hardly needs state- ment. The words just cited mean that the whole position in Britain has been misapprehended. There was no controversies fidei amongst the British bishops. They were Catholics, and had no doubt whatever as to what was the orthodox and Catholic teaching. They had no need of any decision as to what was the Catholic faith. But they had need of missionaries to help them to preach it, and thus to refute the Pelagian heretics. And, being in possession of their senses, they applied for such help to the nearest Catholic country. When a house is on fire, people seek water from the nearest hydrant. Apparently the Archbishop would have expected them to boycott the Catholic preachers in Gaul, and diligently to pass right through almost the entire length of that country ; to cross the Alps, and to make a journey of some thousand miles and of some months' duration, all for some unintel- ligible purpose of having no other helpers or preachers except priests taken from the Papal City ! Heresy is not wanting in Britain of to-day, and when our bishops are pressed to meet the needs of our missions, they seek aid by obtaining devoted missioners, who, with the sanction of their ecclesiastical authorities, come over and help us from Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. We wonder if some future Archbishop of Canterbury, hold- ing in his hand our clergy-lists of to-day, will draw from it an argument that the Archbishop of Westminster and his 472 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM suffragans could not have regarded Eome as their Mother Church else they would have gone there, and not else- where, for any missionary help they needed ! But the Archbishop has to confront a much more serious difficulty. The mission of St. German is related by Bede, who, no doubt, followed the account of it which was given by Con- stantius, who wrote the life of St. German. In this St. German is simply said to have been sent to Britain by the Bishops of Gaul. Now Constantius wrote his life about 470, viz., about some fifty years after the events which he is describing. We naturally look for some earlier testimony, and by the laws of historical evidence, we are bound to prefer contemporary to post-temporary evidence. We call for a witness, and we are answered at once by Prosper of Aquitaine. Who is he ? Prosper was born in Aquitaine (less than a hundred miles from Auxerre) about the year 403. He was fifteen years old when St. German was made Bishop of Auxerre. He became a monk, and about A.D. 430 went to Eome on a mission to Pope Celestine, and subsequently became secretary to Pope Leo I. Prosper was with Pope Celestine in 431, only two years after German's mission to Britain. He thus speaks to us as a contemporary witness at headquarters, and one who, by virtue of his position and office, commanded the most ac- curate and authentic sources of information. What does Prosper say ? He tells us it was the Pope who sent German into Britain and sent him as his own "vicar" (vice sud). It is in these words that Prosper records this fact in his Chronicle : " At the instance of the deacon Palladius, Pope Celestine sent German, Bishop of Auxerre, as his vicar (vice swa), and led back the British people to the Catholic faith, having driven out the heretics " (Opp. i., 401). Nor is this a mere incidental reference. In another part of his Chronicle, speaking of the conversion of Ireland he AECHBISHOP BENSON ON ST. GEEMAN 473 says that the Pope " appointed a Bishop for the Irish (Scotis), and thus made the barbarous island Christian, while he preserved the Eoman island (Britain) Catholic " (Opp. i., 197). Thus it is that as soon as the Archbishop begins to speak of St. German, Prosper cries out and cannot be silenced. The Archbishop asks his hearers to note that there was no recourse to Eome. Prosper intervenes and assures us the very reason why St. German came was that Pope Celestine sent him thither, and sent him as his own vicar ! Nor can the Archbishop attempt to ignore a witness of this kind. Prosper can very well say : " You are trying to make out that St. German's mission had nothing to do with Home. I, on the contrary, absolutely maintain that it was a Eoman mission, or what you would call an ' Italian Mission ' ; and that St. German came into Britain as the Vicar of the Pope. Now in speaking of this mission, how can you in the nine- teenth century really pretend to know better than I who lived at and wrote at the time ? better than I who stood at the side of the very Pope who sent him, and who as Papal Secretary had the documents of the time under my hands ? " And Anglican authorities of the highest order practically acknowledge the force of this plea. When dealing with the question of the date of the mission, Haddan and Stubbs (Eccles. Councils, vol. i., 17) admit that Prosper as Living in Eome in 431, and a professed chronicler, is the best evidence. They think that he may have had a tendency to exaggerate the Pope's " spiritual authority ". (Apparently the Gallican Church produced Ultramontanes in the fifth century !) But they do not call in question the fact of the Papal mission, and hold that Prosper described what took place in Eome, just as Con- stantius described what took place in Gaul, and that both are equally reliable for their own side of the subject. Then we are led to ask how, with this well-known historical testimony of Prosper before him, did the Arch- bishop attempt to meet it, or explain it away, when preach- ing to the people of St. German's ? No one will believe that the Archbishop was ignorant of 474 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM Prosper's testimony, and no one cares to believe that he lacks the courage of facing the whole of the facts when he professedly deals with a given historical subject, or that he is capable of evading what his fellow-bishop, Dr. Stubbs, and every ordinarily well-informed student knows to be an integral and important part of the historical evidence. The reporters may have mutilated his sermon, and thus have placed him in a false position. But if the reports in The Guardian and The Church Times be correct, then the Archbishop's action is inexplicable. It would mean this. He found on the subject he was treating a historical testimony which destroyed the main contention of his sermon. In fact, Prosper stood in his path and gave to it an unqualified contradiction. What does the Archbishop do with this hostile evidence ? He does not refute it. He does not examine it. He does not even allude to it. He simply says nothing about it. He leaves his hearers under the impression that he has told them all that is to be told until they find it out ! Ce nest pas magnifique, et ce nest pas la guerre ! It is truly good and right and fitting that the great lessons of Church history should be even from the pulpit taught to the people. Every service which Anglicans or others by speech or research may render to the cause of historical truth should be welcomed as a definite gain for all. But they or we may well pray to be preserved from preachers who venture to treat historical issues by distorting one-half of the truth and suppressing the other. CHAPTER LXI. The Characteristics of the God-Made Church and of the Man-Made Church. (1ST OCTOBER, 1898.) THERE can be no doubt that the controversies as to the Real Presence, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the Confessional, which are chronic sources of crisis in the Anglican Church, are, and must be, questions of grave and solemn import to the GOD-MADE AND MAN-MADE CHURCHES 475 conscience of the questioners. But there is one which under- lies them all, and which transcends in logical importance any demand which may be made to the Anglican Church, or any answer which she may find to give to it. This root- question is what we may call the " Church-question," and turns upon the capacity of the Anglican Church to teach as a Church at all, and it is upon this, the most fundamental of issues, that a lurid light has been shed by the facts of the present time. To Catholics, who already possess in their faith the solution of such difficulties, the answer will appear little more than a truism. They will say, or feel, if they say it not, when they gaze on the spectacle we have just described, that the Anglican Church is only revealing herself in her native and constitutional character. If she were indeed the Catholic Mother, how different it all would be. She would know how to put her house in order, and to " speak with authority ". She would give a plain decisive answer which would bring peace and light to the minds of her distracted children. Her word would be at once that of a Mother who soothes and a Mistress who decides. When she had spoken what seemed good to her and to the Holy Ghost, the multi- tude would " hold their peace " ; nor would she suffer her teaching because it is her Lord's teaching to be gainsaid within her household. She would make peace within her borders. Her voice would be just as clear-ringing to-day as when it stilled the controversial tempests at Nicaea, at Constantinople, at Ephesus or Chalcedon ; as full of blessing to the sons of obedience, but as sharp and firm even to anathema for the children of contradiction. This is the vision of the great Catholic Mother who, holding safely at her breast the revealed Word of God, has trod so majestically the path of the centuries from Pentecost to the present time. Et vera incessu patuit Dea. Her children look into her eyes and love her, and their obedience to her word is a joy as deep as the peace which the world cannot give. It is against this vision of authority and unity that the figure of the Anglican Church, with its helpless, halting hesitancy, its faltering speech, its pitiful recourse to human ambiguities and its divided and distracted household, stands out before 476 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM us in a contrast which speaks to the consciences of men far more eloquently than words. The rationale of the con- trast lies embedded in principles which bring us near to the foundations of all religious controversies. There is no mid-term between the Creator and that which is created. In like manner, when we come to that most interesting and most decisive turning-point in the path of religious inquiry, the formation of our notion of what is meant by the " Church," we are likely to find that in the last analysis there are but two possible concepts which can be brought under the term. Christ as the Divine Teacher can come here upon earth, and form a society or " kingdom " of men to whom He can commit a Divine message, with His authority to teach it, expound it, and defend it, and His Holy Spirit to preserve it from corruption. These men, thus commissioned, can go forth and disciple men in all nations, teaching them with authority what they have to believe, and the meaning in which they have to believe it, and preserv- ing throughout the purity and integrity of their message by eliminating from the fellowship of believers those who would gainsay or pervert their teaching. In other words, we have the familiar concept of an Infallible Teaching Church, fulfil- ling her mission by means of the Authoritative Magisterium and the Sacr amentum Unitatis. How such a Church will speak, act, judge, decide, and how, if need be, she will anathematise both the heresy and the heretic, need not be described. It is written large over the face of Church history. Another concept of a church is one which is essentially distinct. A number of men may combine to form for them- selves a church, or take possession of an existing church for their own purpose, assigning the standards of belief and worship. They may preserve the Scriptures and the Creeds, but interpreting them according to their own judgment. For the purposes of public worship and teaching, formularies may be agreed upon, inside of the lines of which the officers of the church shall preach and minister. We have here a sample of a Church self -constituted. It is the creation of its GOD-MADE AND MAN-MADE CHURCHES 477 members. These members are its constituency. It has, of course, a public authority, as all constituted societies must have, but the voice of that public authority is nothing more than the collectivity of the voices of the private judgment of its members. We know that Parliament governs this nation, but only because Parliament is itself the creature and servant of the nation, of whose will and pleasure it is duly informed. There is a supremacy behind its supremacy. The mandate comes up, although the law and the judgment go down, and as a matter of fact constituted authority never really talks back to its constituency. If a Church is self-constituted, it is inevitably held fast by the same natural laws, and bound by the same ontological conditions. It is a Resultant, and to the end of time it will be simply what its members make it. It will reflect their energy, their piety, their philanthropy, their zeal, but as to the Church's mind and magisterium, its teaching on doctrine and worship it will never do more than echo back to them some collective expression of the cries which have already emanated from their own individual judgments. And from this original dependence, from which, by the law of its being, it can never escape, certain consequences will follow, and make themselves palpably manifest on the face of its life and working. Because the constituent private judgments are many and various, they will naturally, by a law of affinity and sympathy, fall into main groups which become "parties" or "schools of thought". Because such groups by the law of their life tend to intensify and to diverge, dogmatic unity becomes more and more an impossibility, and as each, by virtue of its constituent character, has a right to hold to its place (a constituted authority rarely expels any notable section of its constituency), the general Church is forced into having contradictory doctrines preached at the same time within its household, and to console itself with the thought that it is "comprehensive". Ah yes! Comprehensive ! comprehensive of men, not of Catholic truth. As the development and divergence of the " parties " or private judgment groups proceed, the common bonds of the original standards of belief which had hitherto held the 478 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM general body together are sure to become strained, until nothing but forced unnatural interpretations will save them from snapping. As the constituent elements of private judg- ment change from century to century, the set of formularies which fitted at one period becomes unfitting in another ; and when it is retained in defiance of the natural law of adaptation of speech to mind, recourse has to be had to de- moralising methods of reading into such formularies mean- ings which they were never meant to contain, and of reading out of them the very meanings which they were called into existence to express. But above all, when the disruption from within reaches the stage of crisis, and when the intestine controversies have been carried to the point when an appeal must be made to some public authority, then more patently than ever the helplessness and the purely human weakness of the self-constituted Church reveals itself. How shall the echo sit on judgment on the voice that produced it ? What can the authorities of such a Church do but reproduce some general expression some " greatest common measure "- of the various currents of wills, judgments, opinions, views and sympathies which are surging beneath them. Them- selves the creation of such elements, how can they con- demn, much less exclude, any notable section of them? Section A must not be expelled because it teaches heresy, but Section A's teaching shall not be considered heresy, because Section A cannot be expelled. " Eoom for all schools of thought must be found within the National Church." Hence the Anglican can never get out of his Church in the form of a public decision anything but the reflex of what he and his fellow-Anglicans, past or present, in their respective private judgments, have already contri- buted to her. His own decision will be sent back to him in the shape of a general resultant or balance struck with the decision of his neighbours. Here we have the inevitable origin of another system of expedients hardly less pitiable or demoralising namely, the use of advisedly ambiguous formularies and of delphic judgments. We do not speak of the tissues of nebulous GOD-MADE AND MAN-MADE CHURCHES 479 platitudes and pietistic phrases in certain public utterances meant to veil or evade dogmatic issues a species of childish and nauseous legerdemain which is beneath contempt. We refer to official or judicial pronouncements in which the authorities of a self-constituted Church are called upon to give a decision upon grave questions of doctrine and wor- ship. How can such authorities decide, except by summing up into a general finding, or compromise, what the con- stituent masses of public religious opinion have already decided for themselves ? What can they do but endeavour as honestly as they can to strike a fair average of the views of the litigant parties and the schools of thought behind them? Hence the terror of definition, the unwillingness, the hesitancy to decide at all, and finally, when decision is inevitable, that halting, faltering voice, elaborating a judg- ment into the very warp and woof of which is interwoven yes and no, put forth with a pathetic anxiety to "be satis- factory to all parties," and, above all, with carefulness never to lose sight of its never-to-be-forgotten exigency, that no school of thought i.e., party with a sufficiently large follow- ing shall be " denied standing room within the National Church". In a word, all such judgments are determined from below by the existing conditions of thought and will amongst the people to be judged, and all such judgments are nothing more than the reflex and the equation of the ego sapio which the religious public has received from its constituent individuals. And because it is so, the microcosm of the judgment has represented in it the discordant elements of the macrocosm of the constituent opinion, and by the very necessity of its composition it clothes itself in terms which mean, and are meant to mean, compromise and ambiguity. Thus the essential marks of a self-constituted as dis- tinguished from a divinely constituted Church may be said to be especially three. First, Doctrinal dependence upon its members, viz., instead of teaching its people, as an Ecclesia docens, it is in reality taught by them, and instead of mould- ing its members according to its mind, its mind is, on the contrary, moulded by the views and sympathies of its 480 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM members, and is, in fact, nothing more than the reflex and resultant of the collective private judgment of the parties and individuals of which its membership is composed. Secondly, as a result, the helplessness of the Church to bind its members by authoritative judgments. Itself the creature of the col- lection of individual judgments, it cannot reverse the law of power, and turn its authority against its source. Hence its unwillingness to pronounce judgments, and when com- pelled by the exigencies of order to do so, its care to confine itself to mere reflex judgments, namely, judgments which reflect the average feeling and opinion, or the common or compromise agreement already existing amongst its mem- bers. Thirdly, as a result of this, ambiguity or contradictory interpretation of formularies and of judgment. For, where the constituency is itself divided and holding contradictory beliefs (and it cannot be otherwise when private judgment is the constituent element) no honestly worded, or at least honestly interpreted, formulary could cover both, and hence the contradiction of parties reproduces itself inevitably in either the wording or the interpretation of the formularies. These we take it are the conspicuous marks of the man- made Church marked off against the God-made Church which is founded upon the Eock. Gladly we welcome the teeming evidences of the growing zest of inquiry in the quest of religious truth, which on all sides has been brought to light by the events through which we are passing ; and gladly we recognise the zeal, the earnestness, the sincerity of numberless souls in the Anglican Communion who so generously are struggling to follow the leading of the light which is given them. Who amongst us can look unmoved at the approach of these brethren from afar, or without echoing from our hearts the cry of the Church : Salvos fac servos tuos, Deus meus, sperantes in Te ? But if we are asked, What is the main lesson which the present crisis in the Anglican Church seems to us to convey with such clearness and emphasis in the face of the nation ? we feel that it is to be found in the luminous revelation of all these marks by which Anglicanism writes its own genesis as a mere human and self -constituted Church, so CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANGLICAN CRISIS 481 widely different, and so far removed from, and so opposed to the divinely constituted Church of Christ, even as the feeble and changing work of man is and must be to the strong and imperishable work of God. CHAPTER LXII. Characteristics of the Anglican Crisis. (14TH JANUARY, 1899.) THE present Anglican crisis undoubtedly has arisen upon questions which, to the contending parties concerned, are in a high degree vexed and -controversial. From the dialectics of the controversy the masses and the millions, as we might expect, will gladly stand aloof. But the crisis itself, quite apart from any weighing of the pro and con, and considered simply as a public fact, presents certain features which are so plain and so public that they can hardly be called in question. These features suggest a few considerations which may be the more interesting as they lie above and beyond the actual controversy, and nearer to those first principles to which in the long run all religious controversies travel back, and in which sooner or later they must find their final solution. To begin with, the most salient feature of the crisis is that it is Eitualistic that is to say, that it turns upon matters of liturgy or ritual. The point of dispute is shall certain ceremonies be used or prohibited ? shall certain prayers be said or omitted ? From the beginning to the end, the Church of England seems oppressed by the weight of some inner exigency of which she is deeply but silently conscious, and by which she feels that all her controversies, whatever they may be, must at any cost be worded in terms of ritual, and must be fought out solely within the sphere of public worship. Now it is passing strange that it should be so. Thought- ful souls will ask themselves the reason why. Every one in England and out of it is perfectly well aware that the root of these Anglican disputes is essentially dogmatic. The real question is not whether incense shall be burned, the host 31 482 ASPECTS OP ANGLICANISM elevated, or certain prayers omitted but shall the doctrines which these things symbolise and express be believed or re- jected ? As Mr. Green Armytage has well pointed out, the ritual action or prayer is but the flag of a given Eucharistic doctrine hoisted in the sanctuary, and quite as much as at Fashoda, its being kept up or hauled down is really a matter of whether the doctrine is to be believed or to be denied by those who stand behind it. And if this, the question of belief, is the real question, surely it is matter of elementary doctrinal honesty that it should be dealt with as such. Is there not a certain hollowness, a certain lack of doctrinal straightforward- ness, a certain departure from the manliness of Christian candour in this persistent shutting up of the dispute within the domain of worship, and this eager peddling with details of ritual, when all Anglicans know and feel no one better than their bishops that the dogmatic issue on which all depends remains behind, shelved, evaded, and nervously kept in the background, and by tacit consent left untouched by authoritative decision. The dogmatic issue is the vital one, but there is no de- cisive authority in Anglicanism which dares to deal with it. The whole action of the Anglican bishops in the matter amounts to a pitiful confession. Put into words, it means : We cannot tell you what to believe. We cannot tell you whether Christ is present in the Sacrament before reception, or merely after you receive it. 1 When it lies on the table 1 The Archbishop of Canterbury in his Primary Visitation Charge at Canterbury (10th Oct., 1898) publicly stated the position of the Anglican Church as follows : " And this is the dispute which is commonly called the dispute concerning the Real Presence. The Church of England has given no answer to this question, and Hooker, undeniably a very high authority on Church of England doctrines, maintains that the Real Presence should not be looked for in the consecrated elements but in the receivers. They certainly receive a real gift, and, knowing this, why should we ask any further question ? Knowing the reality of the gift we get, we know all that is needed for our spiritual life. The Church certainly teaches Hooker's doctrine, but to this it must be added that the Church nowhere forbids the further doctrine that there is a Real Presence attached in some way to the elements at the time of consecration." This latter doctrine, which the Church does not teach, but does not forbid, the Archbishop affirms to be undistinguishablo from the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANGLICAN CRISIS 483 after consecration we cannot tell you whether you ought to adore it or not. It may be impiety if you don't, and it may be idolatry if you do we cannot decide for you. We cannot tell you whether the service itself is the Sacrifice of the Mass or not. Perhaps it is only a sacrifice of thanksgiving and mere commemoration of a sacrifice which is past and over forever but some say that is deadly heresy. Perhaps it is a Propitiatory Sacrifice in which Christ really offers His Body and Blood which He offered on Calvary but others say that is a blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit. We cannot decide. All that we can do is to regulate the outward action and speech of your clergyman in celebrating the service. We shall see that he limits himself to the Book of Common Prayer, and that he does not use extreme ritual accessories which would be interpreted as settling one side or other of the questions which we leave undecided. Here then we have the first and the most palpable and predominant feature of the present crisis the dogmatic helplessness of the Anglican Church to decide the sense and meaning of her own Sacraments. Observe that it cannot be pleaded that this is a matter which is not fundamental, for it touches vitally and decisively the very meaning of the Communion and the chief and central act of Christian worship. Also the question is a trenchant one. An Anglican sees on the Lord's Table the consecrated Sacrament which later on he is to receive. It is practically necessary for him to know if Christ is present there or not for if present, he certainly ought to adore Him there ; if not, he as certainly ought not. It is then a plain question of is or is not. It is either one or the other, and there is no thinkable mid-term between them consequently it is not in the least a case in which the usual euphemism about " two sides of the same truth," etc., can have any application. Out of this feature of dogmatic helplessness arises a question, and one which cannot but press crucially upon the conscience of earnest and truth-seeking Anglicans. Why should it be so ? Why should it be that Anglicanism has no doctrinal judgment-seat and possesses no authority capable of deciding such issues for its perplexed and dis- 31* 484 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM tracted members ? Is the Anglican Communion an integral part of the Catholic Church ? But the primary business of the Catholic Church is to teach and the very least that may be expected of a teaching Church is that it will teach the meaning of its own Sacraments and the sense of its own formularies. If it cannot do that, it can hardly have a claim to teach at all. And this incongruity becomes the more glaring if we bear in mind that Anglicanism in rejecting certain Catholic doc- trines as "mediaeval accretions," claims to take its stand upon the principles of Christian antiquity. For it would be hard to imagine anything more utterly unlike Christian anti- quity than this dogmatic helplessness, and this evasion of a dogmatic decision and this attempt to cover it by a pitiful recourse to mere regulation of ritual. Anglicans who are familiar with the history of the Church in the first five centuries, and with the treatment of the various religious controversies which arose in that period, will know exactly what we mean. Let us suppose that points of disputed belief analogous to those which now convulse the Anglican Communion had arisen, say in Italy, Africa, Gaul, Asia Minor or Greece, during the fifth century, what would have happened ? The bishop of the diocese, as Judge of Faith, would have given a decision, defining for his flock what they had to believe, and what they had to reject as false doctrine and poisonous pasture. Or, if the matter transcended his competence or affected a wider area than his diocese, it might have been referred to the provincial synod and the sentence of the Metropolitan. Or, if of still graver import, as a causa major, it might travel to the Apostolic See, or be made the chief business of an (Ecumenical Council But in all cases, the method and scope of decision would be clearly and unmis- takably the same. Whether the decision was given by the Bishop, the Metropolitan, the Holy See, or the General Council, it would be doctrinal. It would have gone straight to the root question of belief, and would have settled it by an authoritative decision. Catholics would be told what they had to believe, and what they must reject. And the decision CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANGLICAN CRISIS 485 would be " spoken with authority ". All who refused to ac- cept it would be promptly made to pass through the Church's door, and as preachers of another gospel struck with an anathema. The mere idea of these ancient bishops shirking the question of belief and betaking themselves to regulations of ritual prayers, incense, holy water! would be ludic- rously contrary to the whole habits of thought, action and conciliar process of the Church in the primitive period. To Catholics the explanation of this incongruity, as we have seen in the previous chapter, is not far to seek. The Anglican establishment is a human institution based upon the national compromise made at the Eeformation. Its primary and absolute condition is that it shall function as the Church of the bulk of the English nation. As a result, if in the course of time any section of the English people, in the exercise of their free individual or collective judg- ments, shall adopt various or hostile meanings of the accepted doctrines or formularies, it has a constitutional right to do so. (Why not as much as the people of the sixteenth century ?) And the Anglican Church, by the law of its own origin, must continue to give it standing room. The end of its being is to "comprehend" them. Hence, it must, as a general rule, carefully avoid an authoritative definition of one meaning rather than another, and most of all the pro- nouncement of any decision which would exclude or displace any notable section of its constituency. In fact definition can only be attempted when an overwhelming majority can be counted upon in its favour, and when the excluded are a quantite ndgligeable. Its primary fixed term is men. That is very much what we might expect in a church made by men. The Catholic Church works in a way just the reverse of this, and begins at the other end. Her primary and absolute and fixed term is Catholic truth the preservation of a certain body of revealed truth, and in the true sense and meaning in which Christ taught it. Her constituency, world- wide as it is, is at all times rigidly adapted to it. She will acknowledge none for her members who do not receive the truth which she teaches and in the Christ- meaning in which she teaches it. If any of her members 486 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM put varying senses upon her doctrines she is prompt, by the very instinct and law of her life, to sift and separate the true sense from the false one, to define with authority what must be held and what must be rejected, and she will fear- lessly enforce her decision by anathema, even if whole nations should go their way " and walk no longer with " her. In other words, she is comprehensive of the Deposit of Divine truth, and she knows well that this, the only true form of comprehensiveness, depends upon the elimination of every erroneous meaning, and of those who hold it. It is thus that the Catholic Church by her constitution is just as ready to define and to decide as the Anglican Church is to avoid and evade definition and decision. The contrast is clear to the point of antithesis. In one case we have the acceptance of doctrines in a fixed sense to begin with, and the inclusion of men dependent on it ; in the other, we have the inclusion of men the primary necessity, and the sense in which doctrines may be accepted regulated to suit it. In the one case we have the comprehensiveness of truth, in the other the comprehensiveness of people. In the one case definition must ever be watchfully at work so as to secure the purity and integrity of doctrine ; in the other definition must be more and more carefully avoided, so as to allow the maximum of standing room to the holders of various and varying doctrines. All this seems to us little more than a present-day paraphrase of the parable of the God-made House on the Eock and the man-made house on the shifting sands ; and it seems to us that the events of the time amid the wind and the floods of the present controversy are preaching it more loudly and clearly than any weak words of ours could avail to express it. Besides this dogmatic helplessness, another feature of the present Anglican crisis hardly less prominent is one which is inseparably the outcome of the same causes namely, dogmatic complicity. We are not referring in any way to the question of Keligious Toleration in its civil aspects, but to the tolerance and intercommunion within the pale of the same Church of members professing and teaching essentially hostile doctrines. Out of this arises CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANGLICAN CEISIS 487 a consideration which, it seems to us, concerns or ought to concern especially that section of the Church of Eng- land which claims for itself the name of Catholic. Just now this section, including a large number of pious, earnest and devoted men, is being fiercely attacked for its defence of such doctrines as the Eeal Objective Presence, the Sacri- fice of the Mass, and the Invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints. They meet the attack by vehemently maintaining that these doctrines are part of their " Catholic inheritance," and have the undisputed sanction of " Catholic consent " of both East and West. Little more than two years ago, when ultimate Corporate Eeunion and proximate recognition of Anglican Orders were being pushed at Kome, with a zeal which even over-reached itself, eminent au- thorities, in urbe, were assured that the Ritualists of England were ready to shed their blood for all these beliefs not less than we ourselves. If that is the case, there is a conclusion which they can hardly blame us for drawing from their action. They must regard the doctrines we have mentioned as integral parts of the Catholic faith and, as a rigorous consequence, they must regard the denial and rejection of these truths as treason to faith and as what the Church, with the emphasis of the anger that sins not, declares to be " damnable heresy ". But that being so, they ought to hold these truths not academically, but as Christians do, vitally, and with readiness and determination equal to our own, to lay down their lives, if need be, rather than inwardly or outwardly deny them, or be partakers or communicators with those who deny them. Now is this their attitude? A few weeks ago the Archbishop of Canterbury, the chief Bishop of their Church, delivers in the face of the nation a solemn pronouncement, in which he declares that the Church of England " certainly teaches " the receptionist theory of the Eucharist taught by Hooker, and he grants as an alternative to his flock a doctrine which he himself affirms to be " undistinguishable " from Lutheranism. To all High Churchmen who have been making overtures to East and West this Hooker-or-Luther exposition of Angli- can Eucharistic doctrine ought to have been nothing less 488 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM than a manifesto of detestable and destructive heresy against the Blessed Sacrament of the altar. In a chief teacher, it could not be other than a treason against the Faith of Christ. In such a case of public and manifest heretical teaching, according to elementary Catholic principles, it becomes a duty of conscience to separate from the Communion of the heretical teacher. Amongst the Eitualists who two years ago were so profuse in their assurances and protestation of Catholic belief at Eome, how many now dream of acting on this practical and logical consequence of their profes- sion? For aught we know, Lord Halifax and his friends, who speak not a little of " Catholic Faith," " Catholic Principles," "Catholic Inheritance," are as ready to-morrow as they have ever been, to receive the Communion from the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has uttered this profession of heresy, or, for that matter, from the hands of the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, whose whole life and teaching is one prolonged utterance of this heretical denial. It seems to us that the profession of "Catholicism" on these terms would be a marvellously cheap one, and would have saved a whole world of martyrdom in the days of the Arian persecution. But even if the conscience or courage of Eitualists in the face of such a trial has failed to rise to the level of Catholic principle, and the recognition of the duty of separation, we could have imagined that they would have suggested an attempt to free their souls from complicity by something in the shape of a public protest. Not that any such paper pro- cedure would have covered for a moment the complicity of intercommunion, but it would have represented the minimum to be expected of those whose eager protestations of Catholic Eucharistic belief are still fresh in the ears of the Eoman authorities. Even for this we look in vain. The section of the Anglican press which is held to represent the High Church and Eitualist party is in fact more ready to praise than to protest against the heretical declaration of the Archbishop. The Guardian could only extol it as the most remarkable utterance that had come "from an Archbishop of Canterbury for the last two hundred years ". The Church CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANGLICAN CRISIS 489 Times, with some feeble words of criticism, " received it with profound gratitude " ! In the face of these public facts of complaisant compliance, it is difficult to shut our minds to the reflection that if this be the fibre of the Eitualist section of the Church of England, they have still much to learn before they have realised even the elements of Catholic Faith or the means of keeping it even if they had. We are not of the number of those who would extinguish the smoking flax, nor yet of those who are unreasonable enough to expect the clearness of Catholic vision in souls who as yet can only see men " as trees walking ". But Catholic Faith, which is at least the avowed ideal and the goal of the Eitualist, is not a mere verbal profession or a cultus of dilettanti. It does not consist in affecting the dress and externals of Catholic worship, still less in abun- dant use of the word Catholic, or in spelling Catholicity with a large C. And certainly it does not consist in the pitiable claim expressed by The Guardian, of " liberty to teach the Catholic faith " (as if Catholicity in a church did not, by the very law of its being, mean the exclusion from its pale of all heretical teaching I). 1 It involves responsibilities and sacrifices, and if these are not faced the position becomes very much that of the man who becomes a soldier for the sake of a pretty uniform, but who leaves to others the dangers and hardships which belong to those who would wear it worthily. It is this failure to grasp the sterling responsibilities entailed by belief in Catholic doctrine, and this fatal complicity by communion in what must be felt to be heretical teaching that seems to us one of the plainest and one of the least encouraging characteristics of the Angli- can crisis, so far as it has been unrolled before us. 1 Nothing is more utterly false to the very concept of the Catholic Church, and of primitive practice, than the theory that a Church can be Catholic while permitting heresy to be taught and believed in her name by official teachers within her pale, or that a Church can be Catholic which openly allows her ministers to teach a heretical doctrine, as long as the belief of the orthodox doctrine is likewise permitted. Such a recognised lodgment of heresy within her pale and teaching ministry is fatal to the claim of being Catholic. 490 ASPECTS OF ANGLICANISM And here, again, the action and attitude of Anglicans on both sides stand out in sharp contrast to the canons of Chris- tian antiquity. On the pages of early history of the Church, no principle is written so clearly, or enforced so continually in its ordinary working, as that of the sacramentwm unitatis, the preserving of orthodoxy by intercommunion of the faith- ful and the elimination of heresy by excommunication. The chief work and care of the Church was to preserve intact the Deposit of Faith. If any bishop taught doctrine which was manifestly heretical, the other bishops closed in against him, and shut him out of the circle of Catholic communion. The ordinary mass of the laity and the simple faithful might not be able to enter into the merits of the controversy, or into the subtleties of the heretical teacher there was no reason why they should but there was that which they could see for themselves without possibility of mistake. They could see whether the bishops and clergy communicated with him or not. That was a plain and public fact, and it was to them and to the Church at large the indubitable Catholic test of Catholic orthodoxy which told them whether his teaching was to be received or avoided. Hence in Catholic antiquity, as now, to communicate in a heretical Eucharist is to communicate in heretical teaching. With- out this standard and this law of purity of communion, the Deposit of Faith could never have been preserved in its passage down the ages. If High Church Anglicans believe, as they assure us they do believe, that the doctrines of the Eeal Objective Presence, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the Invocation of the Saints are indeed integral parts of Catholic faith, and the denial of them heresy, they must judge for themselves how far the sacred rule of Catholic antiquity as to communion with heretical teachers is trodden under foot by them, and how far their whole position in England at the present moment is in absolute contradiction to it. Undoubtedly their situation is one beset with difficulties which command our sympathy. But Catholic Truth rests upon principles, and where those principles claim our action, who shall plead against them ? Who would not dread the responsibility of standing before the judgment-seat of Christ in the guilt of complicity with CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANGLICAN CRISIS 491 those who have mutilated His message and contradicted His teaching? If merely to say God-speed be a partakership with such evil deeds, what shall we say of the fellowship of kneeling at their side to receive holy communion ? If the Anglican crisis in its present and future develop- ment serves to make this duty of spiritual self-preservation more clear, and to press it home to the conscience of many of our sincere and truth-loving Anglican fellow-countrymen, the controversies of the moment will not have been in vain, and God's Providence disposing all things sweetly, and from end to end reaching mightily, will have wrested one more blessed victory for Truth out of the ways and works of human wilfulness. INDEX. ADAMNAN, his account of St. Columba, 137. Adaptation of men to doctrine, or of doctrine to men, 485. Alcuin's letter to Pope Leo III., 95. Aldred, 90. Alexander, Archbishop, on the Ancient Celtic and English Church, 135. Alford, Bishop, on the Lambeth Judgment, 324. Alien ? who is the, 241. Allen, Cardinal, on prohibition to go to Anglican Churches, 221. Altar against altar, 27. American Anglicanism, 123. Ancient Church of England, with whom is it ? 61. Anglican opinion on the Lambeth Judgment, 321. Anglican theory of Church constitution, 361. Anglicanism and the appeal to Scripture, 343. Anglo-Saxon Church and Catholic belief, Confession, the Mass, Invoca- tion of Saints, and Purgatory, 75. "Antichrist" in English Church history, 295. Apostolic See, appeal to, in Ancient Irish Church, 141. Apostolic succession and the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, 435-36. Appeal against, the, 352. Appeal to Scripture and the Church Congress, 429 ; Catholic appeal, 343, 348. Appeals, the three, and Bishop Gore, 354. Appropriation, why not appropriate the Pope ? 233. Archbishopric, the making and unmaking of, by Papal authority, 70. Arundel (Archbishop) and the Lollards, 44. Assemani, J. S. and J. A., on Nestorianism, 447. Athos, the monks at, 192. Authority in belief, 475. BADGER, Eev. G. P., on Nestorianism, 446. Baptism of Duchess of Sparta, 205. Barons of England in 1245, letter to Pope, 31. Barons of England and Martin V., 341. Benson, Archbishop, and double-dealing in worship, 49 ; on the " Italian Mission," 56 ; and Nestorian belief, 454-57. Bickersteth, Bishop, on the Catholic Church, 296. Bidding of the Bedes, 67. Birinus, St., Apostle of Wessex, 376. Bishops of England and Martin V., 339. 493 494 INDEX Bishops' position in Catholic Church, 367 ; early manner of appoint- ment, 370. Black, Rev. W., his stand against remarriage of the divorced, 285. Blackwood, Sir Arthur, on Catholicism, 248. Boniface, St., or Winfrid, 378 ; his oath of obedience to the Pope, 379. Bristol, the mitre at, 281. British Church, the, 256 ; and Pope Celestine, 472. Brooks, Dr. Phillips, 236. Bulls from Pope procured for Winchester School, 418. CANDLE-BURNING in Ancient English Church, 424 ; its meaning, 426 ; in the East, 427. Candlemas blessing in St. Ethelwold's Benedictional, 381. Capitular elections in Anglicanism, 115. Capitular independence in Catholic days, 116. Carlisle, Bishop of, on Royal Supremacy, 98. Catholic and Anglican, a test, 89. Catholic Church, a complete society, 100. Celibacy, clerical, 86, 118, 134 ; and St. Ethelwold, 382. Chalcedon, Council of, on Primacy, 60. Chalcuyth, Council of, on the Six General Councils, 13. Characteristics of the Anglican crisis, 481. Characteristics of the God-made Church and the man-made Church, 474. Charles Borromeo, St., 153. Chicheley, Archbishop, and Martin V., 326 ; his manner of addressing the Pope, 96. Christianity, Eastern, 192. Church Congress at Hull in 1890, 17. Church Congress and the appeal to Scripture, 429. Church Times and Irish Anglican bishops, 277. Churching, 210. Clergy Discipline Bill, 172. Coat, holy, 225. Columba, St., his life at lona, 137. Commons of England in 1245, letter to Pope, 32. Complicity, dogmatic, 486. Comprehensiveness, 485. Confession in Ancient Irish Church, 140, 160 ; repudiated by Anglican Synod, 161. Confessional, the, in Anglican Churches in America, 163. Congress, Anglican Church, Rhyl, 241. Constitution of the Catholic Church and Royal Supremacy, 98. Continuity, old and new, 81. Continuity, the nature of Catholic, 80. Continuity, Anglican, a popular statement of, 79. Continuity, Anglican, as shown in the Diocese of York, 88. Continuity at Peterborough, 307. Continuity at Winchester, Anglican points of, alleged, 421. Criteria, Bishop Gore's, 353. DEAD, prayers for, in Nestorian Liturgy, 451. Dedication of Winchester Cathedral in 1093, 387. INDEX 495 Dedication service at Peterborough, 381. Definition, doctrinal, 351. Development of doctrine, 13, 85, 197 ; in Eastern Church, 199. Development, doctrinal, the term and the principle at the Council of Florence, 349. Dissensions in Anglicanism stated by an Anglican bishop, 324. Dissenting ministers, proposed admission to Anglican ministry without reordination, 22. Divisions and eccentricities, 45. Divorce, Anglicanism and, 284. Dix, Dr. Morgan, on authority, 133. Doctrinal dependence on constituency, 479. Dogmatic complicity, 486. Dogmatic helplessness, 483. Double dealing in worship, 49. Dublin, Anglican Archbishop of, on non-necessity of reordaining dis- senting ministers, 22. EASTERNS, the, and Anglicanism, 182. Ecclesiastical power, its origin and direction, 167. Economia in the Eastern Church, 205. Edington, Bishop, his appointment, 395. Edward II. and the Apostolic See, 372. Edward the Confessor and Westminster Abbey, 74. Egbert, Pontifical of, on rite of reconciliation, 26. Eirenicon, the Lambeth Judgment as, 317. Election, Anglican Episcopal, 107. Encyclical, Papal, what is ex Cathedrd ? 178. English Church History at a Church Congress, 255. Enthronement, an Anglican, 135. Erastianism and Anglicanism, 171. Ethelwold, St., 380. Eucharist, testimony of Ancient Irish Church, 160. Eucharistic belief and Archbishop Temple, 482 n. Exeter, its Catholic past, 297. FACTS, ten, of Ancient Church of England, 62. Farrar (Archdeacon) on vows, 18. Florence, the Council of. and doctrinal development, 349. Foundation of English Church, 62. Frederick, Sb., 153. Free inquiry into Scripture, Bishop Gore, 433. Friction between Home and England in Pre-Beformation times, 329. Fulcrum outside the realm, need of, 177. GAINSBOROOGH, William, Bishop of Worcester, early instance of re- nunciation clause, 111. Gelasius, Pope, on the Two Powers, spiritual and temporal, 106. General Synod in Ireland, its constitution, 165-69. German of Auxerre, St., Archbishop Benson on, 469. Gloucester, Duke of, and Martin V., 336. Gore, Bishop, and appeal to Scripture, 343, 429 ; critique of his posi- tion on, 433 et seq. 496 INDEX Grandisaon, Bishop, his profession to the Apostolic See, 113. Gregory the Great on the Apostolic See, 60 n. Guinness, Dr. Grattan, on Catholicism, 250. HABVEY, Lord A. C., on the Protestant movement in Italy, 29. Hemenhale, Thomas, Bishop of Worcester, the renunciation clause, 112. Henry III. and the Winchester monks, 391. Henry VI. and the Pope on provisions, 332. Homilies on Purgatory, 263. IMAGES in Winchester School Chapel, 400. Immaculate Conception, the definition of, 9 ; the doctrine of the, 10. Individualism in religion, advocated as true Protestantism, 128. Infallibility, Papal, indication of belief in the Pre-Beformation Church, 71 n. Innocent party, remarriage of, 288. Invitation to go to Anglican Churches, 206. Ireland, Anglicanism in, plea for continuity, 156 ; its unity, 162 ; Cabrera ordination, 276. Irish Anglican Prayer-book, 272. " Italian Mission," are we an, 59. JERUSALEM Bishopric, Church Times upon, 46. Jurisdiction and the Pope, 366. KEMBLE on the authority of the Pallium, 63. Kenulph (King), letter to Pope Leo III. and profession of obedience, 72. LAMBETH Judgment and Anglican obedience, 1 ; eve of, 3 ; the lesson of, 37 ; reception of, 33 ; its evasion of question of belief, 37 ; and the Privy Council, 310; its import, 312 ; as an Eirenicon, 317. Lantern lecture, a, on Winchester, 384. Lay control of Anglican Synods in Canada, 16. Lay representation in Irish Synods, 163. Legatine Councils in Anglo-Saxon times, 68. Leo III. and Archbishop Ethelheard, 72. Leo IX. and Exeter, 297. Leo XIII. on ordinary power of bishops, 370. Leofric, Bishop of Exeter, and the Pope, 297. Liberty and discipleship, 355. Lichfield, the Archbishopric of, 70. Lichfield, Bishop of, on penitential works, 120. Lightfoot, Bishop, on the Christian ministry, 436. Lincoln, Bishop of, on Royal Supremacy, 99-102. Littledale, Dr., his monument, 149. Liturgy of Ancient English Church, its Roman origin and character, 66. Llewellyn and the Pope, 244. London, Bishop of, on continuity, 31. Low Church opinion, 247 ; Anglicanism, what it thinks of us, 292. INDEX 497 e, 123-34. Magee, Archbishop, on continuity, 88 ; his election, 108 ; his enthrone- ment, 135 ; on Clergy Discipline Bill and power of the Crown, 174 ; on Purgatory, 139. " Magna Charta of tyranny," 117. Marriage, Catholic doctrine of, 287. Mary, the Blessed Virgin, invocation of, in Nestorian Liturgy. 454. Mass abolished at Reformation, 21. Mass, doctrine of the, in Nestorian Liturgy, 449. Mass, reference by Adamnan, 138. Masses in Winchester School Chapel, 407. Messia, Alfonso, and the devotion of three hours, 145. Missions of Anglicanism to the Easterns, 182. Mitre at Bristol, the, 281. Monastic life at lona, the three vows, 137. Monasticism in the Anglican Church, 17. Monasticism and penitential works, 117. Monument, an Anglican, 149. NESTORIANS, Anglicanism and the, the Mass, Invocation of Saints, Prayers for the Dead, 182, 443. Norman Settlement, ten facts of the, 77. OATHS of Catholic and Anglican bishops contrasted, 97. Obedience, Anglican, 1. Opportunism and Anglicanism, 315. Order and jurisdiction, 363. Order, power of, immediately from Christ, 364. Ordinary jurisdiction, 368. Osmund, Anglican Guild of St., 422. Oxford and Pope Martin V., 334, 340. PALLIUM, the, 63. Papal exemptions, use of, 413. Participation in non-Catholic worship, 206. Passion services in Anglican Churches, 143. Patriarchate ? why not an Anglican, 13. Patrick, St., his Confessions on monastic life, 159. Paulinus, St., 90. Peckham, Archbishop, 242. Perpetuity of institutions secured by Papal Bulls, 413. Peter's Chair, St., prayer in St. Ethelwold's Benedictional, 381. Peter's Pence, 68. Peterborough, dedication service at, 301. Petrine prerogative, 371. Plunket, Archbishop, and his ordination of Cabrera, 271. Pope, English custom of praying for the, 67 ; his licence required for the resignation and translation of English bishops, 114. " Pope and King," ancient precedence in English custom, 408 n. Prayer-book, the Spanish Reformed Church, 278. Presidence of Councils, differences between Papal and Imperial, 105. Priors, the Winchester, 390. Private judgment, its use and abuse, 356. 32 498 INDEX Privileges of Winchester priors obtained from Pope, 391* Prosper of Aquitaine on St. German, 472. Provision, Bulls of, the renunciation clause in writs, 111. Provisors, Borne and the Statutes of, 326. Purgatory, Anglicanism and the doctrine of, 260 ; Catholic doctrine of, 268. QUARREL between Rome and England, 333. Quivil, Bishop of Exeter, on Roman authorisation of relics, 233 ; and the Apostolic See, 299. " RECENT DOCTRINES " and Bishop Gore, 432. Reconciliation of St. Paul's Cathedral, 23. Relics and relic worship, 225. Renunciation of clauses in Bulls of Provision, 111. Requiem services in Anglican Churches, 260. Revelation and free thought, 355. Richard, St., of Andria, of Chichester, 151. Ritual, the expression of belief, 55. Rome and the Statute of Provisors, 326. Royal Supremacy and the constitution of the Catholic Church, 98 ; un- scriptural, unhistorical, 103. Ryle (Bishop) on vows, 19. SACBAMENTUM UNITATIS, 490. Salisbury, Bishop of, on Church unity, 458 ; on Protestantism in Italy, 30. School Chapel at Winchester, 399. School, Winchester, 412. Scripture, Anglicanism and the appeal to, 343 ; Catholic appeal to, 348. Scripture, appeal to, and Church Congress, 429. Self-constituted church, 476. Seven words on Cross, 146. " Special Member" of the Holy Church of Rome, the English Church, 32. Statutes of William of Wykeham, 405-12. Stephen, King, his quarrel with the Chapter of York, 116. Stigand, deposition of, by Roman authority, 385-86. Stokes, Mr. Whitley, confession in Ancient Irish Church, 160. Symmachus, Pope, on the position of the Emperor, 105. TEMPLE, Archbishop, on eucharistic belief, 482. Temporalities, royal writ restoring, 113. Theodore, Archbishop, 64. Theory, Anglican, St. Peter and the Apostles and the Bishops, 361. Thomas Aquinas, St., on the Papacy, 154. Thomas of York, 91. Thorold, Bishop, his election, 108. " Three Hours' Agony," Roman and Jesuit origin, 144. Threefold line of Anglican defence, 236. Thurstan, 91. Trend of religious change, 147. Treves, holy coat of, 225. INDEX 499 UNCREATED light, question of, 200. Unity, Anglican conception of Church, 458 ; three methods of ex- plaining away disunity, 462. " Universal Bishop," St. Gregory's repudiation of the title, 83. VATICAN Council, was it forced ? 8. Vaux, Laurence, on prohibition to take part in Anglican worship, 220. Virgin, the Blessed Virgin, Eastern devotion to, 193. Votive candle-burning, 422. Vows, 19. WALES, the Church in, 241, 256. Walkelyn consecrated by Papal Legate, 387. Waynflete, Bishop, his provision by the Pope, 110. Westminster Abbey and Edward the Confessor, 74. Wilfrid and his appeals, 64. William, Archbishop of York, 92. Winchester as an object-lesson of continuity, 373 ; its Catholic history, 376. Winchester, its priors, 390 ; Cathedral dedication, 387 ; its School Chapel, 399, 404 et seq. ; School, 412. Winfrid, St., or Boniface, 378. Worship in Winchester School Chapel, 404. Wykeham, William of, 393 ; his consecration, 326. YORK, the Diocese of, an object-lesson of continuity, 88. THE ABEBDEEN UNIVERSITY PBESS LIMITED 32* BOOKS RECENTLY PUBLISHED. Addresses to Cardinal Newman, with his Replies, 1879-81. Edited by the Rev. W. P. NEVILLE (Cong. Oral.). With Portrait Group. Oblong Crown 8vo. 6s. net. The addresses given in this book were those presented to Cardinal Newman on the occasion of his acceptance of the Cardinalate conferred upon him by Pope Leo XIII. in 1878. The addresses are preceded and followed by an account, written by the late f-r. Neville, of some of the incidents attending the offer of the Cardinalate, and of Dr. Newman's subsequent journey and projected second journey to Rome, he being over seventy-eight years old at this time. Portions of the official correspond- ence with reference to the offer and Dr. Newman's acceptance of the same are also given. Gregory the Great: his Place in History and Thought. By F. HOMES DUDDEN, B.D., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. 2 vols. 8vo. 30J. net. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH. A SERIES OF HISTORIES OF THE FIRST CENTURY. By THE ABBE CONSTANT FOUARD, late Honorary Cathedral Canon, Professor of the Faculty of Theology at Rouen. The Christ, The Son of God. A Life of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. With an Introduction by CARDINAL MANNING. With 3 Maps. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 14^. Saint Peter and the First Years of Christianity. With 3 Maps. Crown 8vo. gs. St. Paul and His Missions. With 2 Maps. Crown 8vo. gs. The Last Years of St. Paul. With 5 Maps and Plans. Crown 8vo. 9.5. St. John and the End of the Apostolic Age. Crown 8vo. js. 6d. Aspects of Anglicanism ; or, a Comment on Certain Incidents in the 'Nineties. By the Right Rev. Mgr. Canon MOYES, D.D. 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This series of Handbooks is designed to meet a need, which, the Editors believe, has been widely felt, and which results in great measure from the pre- dominant importance attached to Dogmatic and Moral Theology in the studies preliminary to the Priesthood. That the first place must of necessity be given to these subjects will not be disputed. But there remains a large outlying field of professional knowledge which is always in danger of being crowded out in the years before ordination, and the practical utility of which may not be fully realised until some experience of the ministry has been gained. It will be the aim of the present series to offer the sort of help which is dictated by such experience, and its developments will be largely guided by the suggestions, past and future, of the clergy themselves. To provide Textbooks for Dogmatic Treatises is not con- templated at any rate not at the outset. On the other hand, the pastoral work of the missionary priest will be kept constantly in view, and the series will also deal with those historical and liturgical aspects of Catholic belief and practice wnich are every day being brought more into prominence. That the needs of English-speaking countries are, in these respects, exceptional, must be manifest to all. In point of treatment it seems desirable that the volumes should be popular rather than scholastic, but the Editors hope that by the selection of writers, fully competent in their special subjects, the information given may always be accurate and abreast of modern research. THE TRADITION OF SCRIPTURE: ITS ORIGIN, AUTHORITY, AND INTERPRETATION. By THE REV. WILLIAM BARRY, D.D., Sometime Scholar of the English College, Rome, formerly Professor of Theology in St. Mary's College, Oscott. Crown 8vo, 35. 6d. net. [Ready. The following: Volumes are in preparation : THE HOLY EUCHARIST. By the Right Rev. JOHN CUTH- BERT HEDLEY, O.S.B., Bishop of Newport. THE CATHOLIC CALENDAR. By the Rev. HERBERT THURS- TON, S.J. THE PRIEST'S STUDIES. By the Rev. T. B. SCANNELL, D.D. THE MASS. By the Rev. HERBERT LUCAS, S.J. OUR YOUNC PEOPLE : A Book for Priests and Parents. By the Very Rev. JAMES CANON KEATINGE. THE PRIEST AND HIS CHOIR. By the Right Rev. Monsignor JAMES CANON CONNELLY. THE STUDY OF THE FATHERS. By the Rev. JOHN CHAPMAN, O.S.B. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHURCH HISTORY. By WILFRID WARD. LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO., 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, NEW YORK AND BOMBAY A SELECT LIST OF THEOLOGICAL BOOKS (MAINLY ROMAN CATHOLIC) PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY. CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. Apologia pro Vita Sua. Crown 8vo. 33. 6d. POPULAR EDITION. 8vo. 6d. net. * + * The Popular Edition contains a letter, hitherto unpublished, by Cardinal Newman to Canon Flanagan in 1857, which may be said to contain in embryo the " Apologia " itself. Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman during his Life in the English Church. With a brief Autobiography. Edited, at Cardinal Newman's request, by ANNE MOZLEY. 2 vols. Cr. 8vo. js. Selection, Adapted to the Seasons of the Ecclesiastical Year, from the ' Parochial and Plain Sermons '. Edited by the Rev. W. J. COPELAND, B.D. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. CONTENTS: Advent: Self-Denial the Test of Religious Earnestness Divine Calls The Ventures of Faith Watching. Christmas Day : Religious Joy. New Year's Sunday : The Lapse of Time. Epiphany: Remembrance of Past Mercies Equanimity The Immortality of the Soul Christian Manhood Sincerity and Hypocrisy Christian Sympathy. Septuagesima : Present Blessings. Sexagesima: Endurance, the Christian's Portion. Quinquagesima : Love, the One Thing Needful. Lent: The Individuality of the Soul Life, the Season of Repentance Bodily Suffering Tears of Christ at the Grave of Lazarus Christ's Privations, a Meditation for Christians The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World. Good Friday : The Crucifixion. Easter Day : Keeping Fast and Festival. Easter Tide : Witnesses of the Resurrection A Particular Providence as revealed in the Gospel Christ Manifested in Remembrance The Invisible World Waiting for Christ. Ascension: Warfare the Condition of Victory. Sunday after Ascension: Rising with Christ. Whitsun Day : The Weapons of Saints. Trinity Sunday : The Mysteriousness of our Present Being. Sundays after Trinitv : Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness The Religious Use of Excited Feelings The Self- Wise Inquirer Scripture a Record of Human Sorrow The Danger of Riches Obedience without Love, as instanced in the Character of Balaam Moral Consequences of Single Sins The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life Moral Effects of Communion with God The Thought of God the Stay of the Soul The Power of the Will The Gospel Palaces Religion a Weariness to the Natural Man The World our Enemy The Praise of Men Religion Pleasant to the Religious Mental Prayer Curiosity a Temptation to Sin Miracles no Remedy for Un- beliefJeremiah, a Lesson for the Disappointed The Shepherd of our Souls Doing Glory to God in Pursuits of the World. A SELECT LIST OF WORKS CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. Parochial and Plain Sermons. Edited by Rev. w. J. COPELAND, B.D., late Rector of Farnham, Essex. 8 vols. Sold separately. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. each. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. : Holiness necessary for Future Blessedness -The Immortality of the Soul Knowledge of God's Will without Obedience Secret Faults Self-Denial the Test of Religious F.arnestness The Spiritual Mind Sins of Ignorance and Weakness God's Commandments not Grievous The Religious Use of Excited Feelings Profession without Practice Profession without Hypocrisy Profession without Ostentation- Promising without Doing Religious Emotion Religious Faith Rational The Christian Mysteries The Self-Wise Inquirer Obedience the Remedy for Religious Perplexity Times of Private Prayer Forms of Private Prayer The Resurrection of the Body Witnesses of the Resurrection Christian Reverence The Religion of the Day Scripture a Record of Human Sorrow Christian Manhood. CONTENTS OF VOL. II.: The World's Benefactors Faith without Sight The Incar- nation Martyrdom Love of Relations and Friends The Mind of Little Children- Ceremonies of the Church The Glory of the Christian Church St. Paul's Conversion viewed in Reference to his Office Secrecy and Suddenness of Divine Visitations Divine Decrees The Reverence Due to the Blessed Virgin Mary Christ, a Quickening Spirit Saving Knowledge Self-ContemplationReligious Cowardice The Gospel Witnesses- Mysteries in Religion The Indwelling Spirit The Kingdom of the Saints The Gospel, a Trust Committed to us Tolerance of Religious Error Rebuking Sin The Christian Ministry Human Responsibility Guilelessness The Danger of Riches The Powers of Nature The Danger of Accomplishments Christian Zeal Use of Saints' Days. CONTF.NTS OF VOL. III. : Abraham and Lot Wilfulness of Israel in Rejecting Samuel Saul Early Years of David Jeroboam Faith and Obedience Christian Repentance Contracted Views in Religion A Particular Providence as revealed in the Gospel Tears of Christ at the Grave of Lazarus Bodily Suffering The Humiliation of the Eternal Son Jewish Zeal a Pattern to Christians Submission to Church Authority Contest between Truth and Falsehood in the Church The Church Visible and Invisible The Visible Church an Encouragement to Faith The Gift of the Spirit Regenerating Baptism Infant Baptism The Daily Service The Good Part of Mary Religious Worship a Remedy for Excitements Intercession The Intermediate State. CONTENTS OF VOL IV. : The Strictness of the Law of Christ Obedience without Love, as instanced in the Character of Balaam Moral Consequences of Single Sins Acceptance of Religious Privileges Compulsory Reliance on Religious Observances The Individuality of the Soul Chastisement amid Mercy Peace and Joy amid Chastisement The State of Grace The Visible Church for the Sake of the Elect The Communion of Saints The Church a Home for the Lonely The Invisible World The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life Moral Effects of Communion with God Christ Hidden from the World- Christ Manifested in Remembrance The Gainsaying of Korah The Mysteriousness of our Present Being The Ventures of Faith Faith and Love Watching Keeping Fast and Festival. CONTENTS OF VOL, V. : Worship, a Preparation for Christ's Coming Reverence, a Belief in God's Presence Unreal Words Shrinking from Christ's Coming Equanimity Remembrance of Past Mercies The Mystery of Godliness The State of Innocence Christian Sympathy Righteousness not of us, but in us The Law of the Spirit The New Works of the Gospel The State of Salvation Transgressions and Infirmities Sins of Infirmity Sincerity and Hypocrisy The Testimony of Conscience Many called, Few chosen Present Blessings Endurance, the Christian's Portion Affliction, a School of Comfort The Thought of God, the Stay of the Soul Love, the One Thing Needful The Power of the Will. CONTENTS OF VOL. VI. : Fasting, a Sourcs of Trial Life, the Season of Repentance^- Apostolic Abstinence, a Pattern for Christians Christ's Privations, a Meditation for Chris- tians Christ the Son of God made Man The Incarnate Son, a Sufferer and Sacrifice The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World Difficulty of realising Sacred Priviteges The Gospel Sign Addressed to Faith The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church The Eucharistic Presence Faith the Title for JustificationJudaism of the Present Day The Fellowship of the Apostles Rising with Christ Warfare the Condition of Victory Waiting for Christ Subjection of the Reason and Feelings to the Revealed Word The Gospel Palaces The Visible Temple Offerings for the Sanctuary The Weapons of Saints Faith Without Demonstration The Mystery of the Holy Trinity Peace in Believing. PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, 6- CO. CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. Parochial and Plain Sermons. Continued. CONTENTS OP VOL. VIII. : Reverence in Worship Divine Calls The Trial of Saul The Call of David Curiosity, a Temptation to Sin Miracles no Remedy for Unbelief Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant Inward Witness to the Truth of the Gospel Jeremiah, a Lesson for the Disappointed Endurance of th^ World's Censure Doing Glory to God in Pursuits of the World Vanity of Human Glory Truth Hidden when not Sought after Obedience to God the Way to Faith in Christ Sudden Conversions The Shepherd of our Souls Religious Joy Ignorance of Evil. Sermons Preached on Various Occasions. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. CONTENTS: Intellect the Instrument of Religious Training The Religion of the Pharisee and the Religion of Mankind Waiting for Christ The Secret Power of Divine Grace Dispositions for Faith Omnipotence in Bonds St. Paul's Characteristic Gift St. Paul's Gift of Sympathy Christ upon the Waters The Second Spring Order, the Witness and Instrument of Unity The Mission of St. Philip Neri The Tree beside the Waters In the World but not of the World The Pope and the Revolution. Sermons Bearing upon Subjects of the Day. Edited by the Rev. W. J. COPELAND, B.D., late Rector of Farnham, Essex. Crown 8vo. 33. 6d. CONTENTS : The Work of the Christian Saintliness not Forfeited by the Penitent Our Lord's Last Supper and His First Dangers to the Penitent The Three Offices of Christ Faith and Experience Faith unto the World The Church and the World In- dulgence in Religious Privileges Connection between Personal and Public Improvement Christian Nobleness Joshua a Type of Christ and His Followers Elisha a Type of Christ and His Followers The Christian Church a Continuation of the Jewish The Principles of Continuity between the Jewish and Christian Churches The Christian Church an Imperial Power Sanctity the Token of the Christian Empire Condition of the Members of the Christian Empire The Apostolic Christian Wisdom and Innocence Invisible Presence of Christ Outward and Inward Notes of the Church Grounds for Steadfastness in our Religious Profession Elijah the Prophet of the Latter Days Feast- ing in Captivity The Parting of Friends. Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford. between A.D. 1826 and 1843. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. CONTENTS : The Philosophical Temper, first enjoined by the Gospel The Influence of Natural and Revealed Religion respectively Evangelical Sanctity the Perfection of Natural Virtue The Usurpations of Reason Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth On Justice as a Principle of Divine Governance Contest between Faith and Sight Human Responsibility, as independent of Circumstances Wilfulness, the Sin of Saul Faith and Reason, contrasted as Habits of Mind The Nature of Faith in Relation to Reason Love, the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition Implicit and Explicit Reason Wisdom, as contrasted with Faith and with Bigotry The Theory of Develop- ments in Religious Doctrine. A SELECT LIST OF WORKS CAEDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. Verses on Various Occasions. Crown 8vo. 33. 6d. Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. CONTENTS : The Salvation of the Hearer the Motive of the Preacher Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings Men not Angles The Priests of the Gospel Purity and Love Saintliness the Standard of Christian Principle God's Will the End of Life Perseverance in Grace Nature and Grace Illuminating Grace Faith and Private Judgment Faith and Doubt Prospects of the Catholic Missioner Mysteries of Nature and of Grace The Mystery of Divine Condescension The Infinitude of Divine Attributes Mental Sufferings of our Lord in His Passion The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary. Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. CONTENTS: Faith considered as the Instrumental Cause of Justification Love con- of Justification Primary Sense of the Secondary Senses of the term 'Justification' Misuse of the term 'Just ' or ' Righteous 1 sidered as the Formal Cause of Justification Primary Sense of tne term 'Justification' The Gift of Righteousness The Characteristics of the Gift of Righteousness Righteous- ness viewed as a Gift and as a Quality Righteousness the Fruit of our Lord's Resurrection The Office of Justifying Faith The Nature of Justifying Faith Faith viewed relatively to Rites and Works On Preaching the Gospel Appendix. On the Development of Christian Doctrine. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. The Idea of a University Denned and Illustrated. I. In Nine Dis- courses delivered to the Catholics of Dublin ; II. In Occasional Lectures and Essays addressed to the members of the Catholic University. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Crown 8vo. 33. 6d. Two Essays on Miracles. i. Of Scripture. 2. Of Ecclesiastical History. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. Discussions and Arguments. Crown 8vo. 33. 6d. i. How to accomplish it. 2. The Antichrist of the Fathers. 3. Scrip- ture and the Creed. 4. Tamworth Reading-room. 5. Who's to Blame ? 6. An Argument for Christianity. Essays, Critical and Historical. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 75. i. Poetry. 2. Rationalism. 3. Apostolic Tradition. 4. De la Men- nais. 5. Palmer on Faith and Unity. 6. St. Ignatius. 7. Prospects of the Anglican Church. 8. The Anglo-American Church. 9. Countess of Huntingdon. 10. Catholicity ot the Anglican Church. n. The Anti- christ of Protestants. 12. Milman's Christianity. 13. Reformation of the XI. Century. 14. Private Judgment. 15. Davison. 16. Keble. PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, &> CO. 5 CARDINAL NEWMAN'S WORKS. Historical Sketches. 3 vols. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. each. i. The Turks. 2. Cicero. 3. Apollonius. 4. Primitive Christianity. 5. Church of the Fathers. 6. St. Chrysostom. 7. Theodoret. 8. St. Benedict, g. 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Crown 8vo. 33. 6d. LOSS and Gain. The Story of a Convert. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. Callista. A Tale of the Third Century. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. The Dream of Gerontius. i6mo, sewed, 6d. ; cloth, is. net. Meditations and Devotions. Part I. Meditations for the Month of May. Novena of St. Philip. Part II. The Stations of the Cross. Meditations and Intercessions for Good Friday. Litanies, etc. Part III. Meditations on Christian Doctrine. Conclusion. Oblong Crown 8vo. 53. net. A SELECT LIST OF WORKS BOUGAUD. History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Con- gregation of the Mission (Vincentians), and of the Sisters of Charity. By Monseigneur BOUGAUD, Bishop of Laval. Translated from the Second French Edition by the Rev. JOSEPH BRADY, C.M. With an Introduction by His Eminence CARDINAL VAUGHAN, late Archbishop of Westminster. With 2 Portraits. 2 vols. 8vo. i6s. net. Catholic Church (The) from Within. With a Preface by His Eminence CARDINAL VAUGHAN, late Archbishop of Westminster. 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With a Translation of her Treatise on Consummate Perfection. By AUGUSTA THEODOSIA DRANE. W : ith 10 Illustrations. 2 vols. 8vo. 153. EMERY. The Inner Life of the Soul. Short Spiritual Messages for the Ecclesiastical Year. By S. L. EMERY. Crown 8vo. 45. 6d. net. FLETCHER. The School of the Heart. By MARGARET FLETCHER, Author of " Light for New Times ". Fcp. 8vo. 2S. 6d. net. CONTENTS: Falling in Love Married Life The Woman of Leisure. FOUARD.-THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH. A Series of Histories of the First Century. By the ABBE CONSTANT FOUARD, Honorary Cathedral Canon, Professor of the Faculty of Theology at Rouen, etc., etc. Translated by GEORGE F. X. GRIFFITH. The Christ, The Son of God. A Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. With an Introduction by CARDINAL MANNING. With 3 Maps. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 145. Saint Peter and the First Years of Christianity. With 3 Maps. Crown 8vo. gs. St. Paul and His Missions. With 2 Maps. Crown 8vo. gs. The Last Years Of St. Paul. With 5 Maps and Plans. Cr. Svo. gs. St. John and the End of the Apostolic Age. Crown 8vo. [In preparation. PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. GERARD. The Old Kiddle and the Newest Answer. By JOHN GERARD, S.J., F.L.S. Crown 8vo. 55. net. ** This is an inquiry as to how far modern science has altered the aspect of the problem of the Universe. Letters from the Beloved City. To S. B., from Philip. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. net. CONTENTS : Why Philip writes these letters to S. B. S. B.'s difficulties fully stated The Good Shepherd I come that they may have life Feed my Lambs Feed my Sheep One Fold and One Shepherd Christ's Mother and Christ's Church Unity Holiness Catholicity Apostolicity Our Lady's Dowry War Pacificatioa. McNABB. Infallibility. A Paper Read before the Society of St. Thomas of Canterbury. By the Rev. VINCENT McNABB, O.P., at the Holborn Town Hall, on Thursday, i6th May, 1905. With an Introduction by the Rev. 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Authority and Evolution, the Life of Catholic Dogma 8. " The Mind of the Church " g. The Use of Scholasticism 10. The Relation of Theology to Devotion n. What is Mysticism? 12. The True and the False Mysticism. SECOND SERIES: 13. Juliana of Norwich 14. Poet and Mystic 15. Two Estimates of Catholic Life 16. A Lite of De Lamennais 17. Lippo, the Man and the Artist 18. Through Art to Faith 19. Tracts for the Million 20. An Apostle of Naturalism 21. "The Making of Religion " 22. Adaptability as a Proof of Religion 23. Idealism in Straits. 8 A SELECT LIST OP WORKS. TYRRELL. Works by GEORGE TYRRELL, S.J. (continued). Nova et Vetera : Informal Meditations. Crown 8vo. 55. net. Hard Sayings : a Selection of Meditations and Studies. Cr. 8vo. 55. net. Lex Orandi ; or, Prayer and Creed. Crown 8vo. 55. net. WARD. One Poor Scruple: a Novel. By Mrs. WILFRID WARD. Crown 8vo. 6s. WARD. Works by WILFRID WARD. Problems and Persons. 8vo. 145. net. CONTENTS: The Time-Spirit of the Nineteenth Century The Rigidity of Rome Un- changing Dogma and Changeful Man Balfour's 'The Foundations of Belief 'Candour in Biography Tennyson Thomas Henry Huxley Two Mottoes of Cardinal Newman Newman and Renan Some Aspects of the Life-work of Cardinal Wiseman The Life of Mrs. Augustus Craven. Aubrey De Vere : a Memoir based on his unpublished Diaries and Correspondence. With 2 Portraits and 2 other Illustrations. 8vo. 143. net. * + * A mong other items of interest the volume contains contemporary records of Mr. De Vere's intercourse with Wordsworth, Tennyson, Carlyle, Browning and Cardinal Newman; considerable selections from his correspondence with Sarah Coleridge, Sir Henry Taylor and Mrs. Edward Villiers (mother of the Dowager Lady Lytton), and contemporary descriptions of incidents of the Irish Famine of 1846-7. Some hitherto unpublished letters from Cardinal Newman are also included in the volume. The Life and Times of Cardinal"Wiseman. 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