p. 9Non-Catholics and the Divine Plan

Certain ecclesiastical phraseology, at present popular and widely used in non-Catholic communions, seems to exclude belief in the fact of an eternal ideal.

To say that Christ, when founding His Church, had in His mind a definite design of her structure, may be regarded by some as equivalent to a truism. They may look upon reasoning in that direction as a work of supererogation.

They will tell us perhaps that all Christians, at all events all Anglicans, freely admit the existence of such a design. We reply that some do, and that apparently many do not, at least not explicitly. And as to those who do, while they may profess to believe it in theory, they virtually deny it in practice. For, as we shall show in the proper place, the religion they follow embodies a practical negation of it. Our chief scope, however, in the present chapter, is to point out that certain phrases, used loudly, frequently and approvingly during the recent and actual agitation in the Church of England, are entirely irreconcilable with belief in a Divine exemplar of a Church. And as these phrases or watchwords represent the views not only of the majority of Anglicans, but of all or nearly all the reformed churches with regard to the matter in question, we have deemed it useful, in the first part of this book, to emphasise by a variety of considerations, the fact that Christ, as God, had present to His eye from eternity a distinct ideal of the Church, which He had decreed was to be realised in the fulness of time.

Some of the phrases alluded to are the following:

“Two schools of thought”; “Diversity in unity”; “Comprehensiveness,” or “The comprehensive character of the Church of England.” All these expressions have pretty much the same meaning, “comprehensiveness” perhaps covering the largest space as including not merely two but several schools of thought. They seem to be only milder expressions employed for the purpose of softening the harsh and more disagreeable word, latitude. They have filled the air all around, and have been repeated in such a tone of high approval, that one wonders how those who speak them can believe that Christ planned originally one Church only, and not rather two or several.

Not merely the Anglican laity, but the largest portion of the clergy, and a goodly proportion of the bishops find complacency in, and even boast of, the wide comprehensiveness of the Church of England. In fact, they speak of it with as much exuberance, as if they considered it one of the external marks by which the true Church of Christ was to be distinguished from false ones. To reflecting minds this must be a matter of surprise. And it seems strange that it is not so to those who defend or try to defend the idea which the term expresses. It apparently does not occur to them that in advocating the lawfulness of such comprehension, they make it impossible for themselves to hold, that Christ had any definite design of His Church present to His mind when He established her. And yet, such impossibility is but the logical consequence of their theory. The idea of comprehension, in the sense in which they apply it, is irreconcilable with the idea of a definite Divine plan. In other words, if there existed in the mind of Christ a determinate exemplar of a Church, a comprehensive Church such as they uphold cannot be its realisation.

It is impossible He could contemplate a religious institution—destined for Divine worship—that would tolerate within its fold men who denied His Divinity. It would be acting against His essence to give to the world a Church which would recognise as its members, not only those who professed the partial revelation embodied in the formularies, but those as well who refused to believe even in the Trinity of Divine Persons. And that the Church of England extends her comprehension over this broad and almost boundless area, is made clear in an article by Mr. W. H. Mallock in the Nineteenth Century Review of December, 1898.¹1The Spectator is equally candid in its allusion to the fact. In the conclusion of an article on “The Future of the Church of England,” it says: “All then depends upon two things, each as important as the other. One is the preservation of the institution unimpaired as a great national and spiritual organisation. The other is the retention of a comprehension so liberal and so wide that it denies inclusion in the Church to none who sincerely and religiously claim to be included—a comprehension such as that to which Jeremy Taylor aspired when he recalled to men’s minds the parable of Abraham and the Fireworshipper.”—Spectator, 14th October, 1899. But to prove the matter, quotation is not needed. It is well known that many members of the Broad Church section do not believe that Christ is identical with the Creator of the universe; and that they have no firm faith in the vital mystery of the Trinity. To maintain then the doctrine of comprehension is undoubtedly to relegate the idea of a Divine pattern to the region of the indefinite, or to make the Divine mind in which it was conceived a labyrinth of confusion.

Let us look into some of the statements made by distinguished Anglican prelates at the Bradford Congress, September, 1898. The Bishop of Ripon who presided at that Congress said: “The existence of two schools of thought in the Church is itself a wholesome condition of her life”. And yet these two schools are as far apart as the poles with regard to doctrines even the most fundamental. Proceeding in the same tone, he added: “The religion of the future will neither be Protestant nor Catholic, but simply Christian. The dogmas which have separated communion from communion will fall off as autumn leaves before the fresh winds of God.”²2The Guardian (London), 28th September, 1898. Now, if this language is a sincere expression of the eloquent prelate who used it, it reveals the fact that he had no belief in a Divine ideal of a Church; or, that if he had, he held that Christ designed an institution in which the dogmas, which now separate the various Christian communions, were to have no permanent place.

The Archbishop of York at the same Congress, alluding to “diversity in unity,” spoke the following remarkable words: “It is easy for those who are not of us to point the finger of reproach at our discussions and our difficulties. But better the open sea with its waves and storms than the stagnant lake with its unruffled surface and sickly calm.”³3Ibid. To reach the full force of this pregnant utterance, we must take off the glossy cover with which ingenious rhetoric conceals the true state of the case, and reveal the bare fact to the naked eye. The drift of this waste of words is, that it is better to have “a bundle of sects” battling fiercely in the same comprehensive communion over sacraments, priesthood, worship, doctrine, than have that agreement and peace which spring from solid and uniform belief. It is surely not out of place here to ask, does the satisfaction, which the archbishop finds in this perpetual religious antagonism, give us any reason to think that he believed in an eternal ideal according to which the Church of Christ was to be realised in the nations?

It is hard indeed to understand, how men can regard emphatic affirmations and corresponding emphatic negations of the most vital doctrines of Christianity as the fulfilment of a design believed to be of heavenly origin.

The Anglican Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway, after mentioning a number of subjects appropriate to the Congress, added: “Or we might remind you of the inestimable benefits which we have derived from the truly Catholic comprehensiveness of the English Church”.⁴4The Guardian, ibid. The Bishop of Winchester, alluding to the facts which a man who reads the controversies of the day will come across, spoke quite as strongly as the prelates who preceded him. He said: “He,” (the reader), “will further find it clear that a considerable body of the controversialists are men who, consciously or not, do genuinely dislike at heart the comprehensiveness which has become, with quietly increasing purpose, satisfaction and gain, a distinctive characteristic of our National Church”.⁵5Ibid. His Lordship said also in his address to his diocesan conference: “We have no right to be depressed. … A thousand times rather would we have our present, varied, eager, buoyant life, with all its risks, than fall back upon the flat, monotonous orthodoxy—if orthodoxy indeed it was—to which our grandfathers were accustomed”.⁶6Ibid.

These episcopal utterances need no comment; they speak for themselves. The bishops, so far from considering this capacious comprehensiveness an inconvenience or a cause of reproach, seemingly take as much delight in it as if they could prove to demonstration that Christ designed and even desired the divisions, contradictions and confusion of which it is the index, to be the normal life of His Church.

We are not then to be blamed, if we fail to see how this theory of practical latitude can coexist with the conviction that their Church, as she now appears, is the visible reflex of an exemplar which stood out clear and distinct in the mind of God from eternity. When men glory in two schools of thought, and when these schools practically mean two opposite religions; when they find satisfaction in diversity in unity, and when the diversity extends to all or nearly all the doctrines, laws, worship of Christian revelation; when they boast of a comprehensiveness so wide that it reaches to Ritualists at one extreme and at the other to Broad Church men, who have no staunch belief in the fundamental mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation; when they predict the advent of a time in which separating dogma will be dead and gone, without expressing any regret, but rather implying their satisfaction that such a state of things should come, we may well ask, how can such men entertain the thought that there was ever in the mind of the Redeemer a determinate image of the form in which His Church was to be given to the world? By what process of reasoning can they reach the conclusion that the structure, to which these phrases apply, is the fulfilment of a pattern that had its seat in the Divine mind before the world began?

But perhaps it is the difficulty of identifying these “disunited” schools of opinion, or this exceptionally comprehensive institution with a heavenly original, that accounts for the apparent tendency in the Church of England to keep this very matter as much as possible out of view. Whether it is that the leaders of Anglican opinion do not advert to it, or that it attaches to their position as part of the original sin of their revolt, it is impossible to say; but the fact is, that it is hardly ever alluded to. If it be not kept in the background purposely, it is at least ignored or forgotten. Throughout the whole of the “lawlessness” which has raged and is still raging in their communion rarely a word has been said about it. There have been many discussions about the meaning of passages in the Prayer Book, about the way in which disputes over discipline, ritual and doctrine ought to be settled, about incense, candles, crucifixes, vestments, postures, and a number of other minor details, but not so often has there been any question of trying to find out what Christ Himself originally intended: in other words, of trying to attain a knowledge of the mould in which He meant His Church to be cast. In their circumstances, however, it is quite intelligible the point should not be brought under general notice; for the logic of the case is inexorably conclusive, namely, if there was a preconceived frame in which Christ designed His Church on earth to appear, their comprehensive Church cannot be compressed within limits sufficiently definite to fit in it. In plain language, if they allow that there was a definite plan in His mind, they are forced to grant that their Church is not its fulfilment. But since this matter is essentially connected with the foundations of faith, and since, at the same time, it is either deliberately set aside, or is passed over in silence, it is all the more necessary to bring it out into the light of day, and try to fix the eyes of the thinking public upon it.

Hence the need of dwelling at length on the existence of a pre-conceived design: hence, too, the scope of the first part of this book.