p. 118p. 117Normal Life and Attitude of the Church of England as a Teacher

“… BUT one word, one look, which goes to show that being in the Church and out of the Church are not as fearfully far asunder as light from darkness, as Christ from Belial, will rob God of more souls than a priest’s life of preaching or a saint’s life of prayer has won. … If charity then, both in heaven and on earth, both for time and for eternity, is the most excellent of gifts, how sad must be the desolation, how wide the ruin, how incurable the wound, of spurious charity, which satisfies its own worthless good-nature at the expense of God’s truth and its neighbour’s soul.”—Father Faber, The Creator and the Creature, Bk. I., chap. iii.

To show that the Church of England, or the Anglican Church, is not and cannot possibly be the realisation of a Divine plan, is an appeal to pre-Reformation history required? In other words, is it necessary to have recourse to the ecclesiastical records of British or Saxon times in order to refute the “Continuity Theory,” which is at present so popular with a certain party in the Anglican Establishment? We think not. Her very structure, quite independently of the adverse verdict of history, is a standing and irresistible refutation of her claim.

No amount of historical research could prove that the Bank of England in London is identically the same building as St. Peter’s in Rome; nor could any appeal to the past convince people that England is geographically the same country as France; or France the same country as the United States of America.

And volumes of historical records, although consisting of chronicles collected from every century since the days of the Apostles, and asserting a certain visible succession from the Apostolic College, would avail nothing towards establishing that the Church of England is the one true Church of Christ. We hope to be able to prove, from her existing framework, that the plan on which she was erected was not the work of a Divine architect, that that plan was entirely and absolutely human; in plain language, that it was Parliamentary, not Divine.

She may have an imposing façade, a façade rendered strikingly attractive by the large amount of silver and gold, and the immense wealth of worldly goods with which the State has endowed her; she may have constantly fixed upon her the friendly and favouring eye of the civil power, of which it may be said she is a part; but if we look behind the fascinating exterior and examine her internal structure, we shall find that there is something prominently present in her which could not possibly exist in the one true Church of Christ; and we shall find also that there is another “something” conspicuously absent, without the presence of which no religious institution can put forward any reasonable claim to be considered the authorised teacher of Divine Revelation.

Behind the long line of Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, Canons and a numerous rank and file of refined and highly educated clergy, behind Church Congresses, Convocations and Pan-Anglican Synods, behind the able and captivating writings and sermons of many deeply learned and truly eloquent divines, there is a dark labyrinth of contradiction to the end of which it is impossible to arrive, even with the aid of the most skilful guides and the most powerful lights. For if the end of those lengthy windings is apparently reached to-day, another search is required to-morrow, the progress of the contradiction being constant only in its inconstancy.

Now, we cannot be expected to limit our argument to a particular department (in the shape of a separate or distinct party) in the Church of England. We must take her as she stands, in her whole bulk, her length and breadth, her height and foundations.

It is idle for some of her clergy to say that they do not approve of that section of the Establishment which teaches Low or Broad Church doctrines. For since they continue year by year to eat her bread, to preach in her pulpits, to occupy her offices; and since they decline to sever their connection with her, they sanction by their action her mode of proceeding. An officer in the British army may say emphatically, that he does not sympathise with the British Government in its designs and aspirations with regard to some colonial war, which calls away his regiment to active and dangerous service. So long, however, as he wears the uniform and receives the pay, he is, in the eyes of the world, the servant of the State whose bounty he accepts and whose military livery he has put on.

Fortunately, not merely the advocates of the Continuity theory, but all the members of the Church of England, to whichever section of her they profess to belong, are in a position which necessarily gives us certain “data” to go upon. Since they maintain that that Church, as she now exists, is identically the same church (at least in substance) which Christ founded nearly nineteen hundred years ago, they believe and admit—even those of the broadest branch freely admit—that Christ did found a Church. And since the English Church, whose claim they urge, teaches certain doctrines and enforces certain laws, they must allow that some doctrines were taught by Christ and that some laws were imposed by His authority. On this ground we shall meet them.

In the early part of this century, that Church, still adhering to her traditional repudiation of Roman teaching, denied the doctrine of the Real Presence, of Auricular Confession and Sacramental Absolution, of the Sacrifice of the Mass, of the Invocation of Mary and of the Saints, and of Purgatory.¹1If the High Church Party hold that the Church of England did not at any time deny the Real or Objective (Eucharistic) presence, a sufficient answer is found in the letter of Professor Ince to The Times, 21st June, 1900, disproving certain statements made in the recent Declaration of the E.C. U. And she continued to deny all these doctrines throughout her length and breadth, with rare exceptions here and there, until John Henry Newman, who was one of her brightest stars, began to scrutinise her interior, to become conscious of the errors which were piled up within her, of the buttresses of misrepresentation by which she was supported, and of the sandy foundation on which she was standing.

This marvellous man read and read sedulously the writings of the Fathers; he fathomed them; he mastered them. And with the ideal in his mind of a Church which he thought he saw therein outlined, he examined the various departments and the internal framework of that religious institution, of which till then he had been a member, and of which he continued to be a member for a considerable time afterwards.

This reading disillusioned him, changed him. He became the central figure in that memorable movement with which his name is now and must ever remain associated—the movement which, under God, brought himself as well as so many of his disciples into the Catholic Fold.

A new era dawned with the beginning of that great upheaval. From that date the Church of England’s denial of Roman Catholic doctrine began to be less general, and, with many, less emphatic. The change lengthened, widened and deepened with years. And to such degree that at present a large number of her clergy, among them leading divines, profess and practise all the Roman Catholic doctrines enumerated above; and continue to profess and practise them without any authoritative or at least any effective prohibition on her part. For she continues to recognise as her mouthpiece, and to subsidise as her functionaries, those of her ministers who enunciate and preach all these Romanising dogmas, as willingly and as liberally, as she does those who deny them all with indignant protest. Her action then, when examined, comes clearly to this: She permits her people to be taught one set of doctrines by one section of her clergy, and she permits them to be taught contradictory doctrines by another; she leaves them free to follow the preacher who leads them to the very gates of Rome; she leaves them free to follow the preacher who keeps or strives to keep his hearers in that antiquated Elizabethan Protestantism which is deeply tinged with Zurich Calvinism; and she leaves them equally free to choose a via media, a middle path of their own which lies somewhere between these wide extremes.

And this latitude is allowed not merely for the space of some months, or for a period of some years, or during a time of intense controversial excitement, it has been one of her most striking characteristics,—we might say, has been part of her normal life for nearly half a century. Then she raises no controlling voice to tell her people which section is teaching right and which wrong. She has no such voice at her command. For her bishops as well as her clergy form a divided house, range themselves on opposite sides, each professing to be the true exponent of her creed; the right wing denying almost every item of important doctrine which the left affirms. No one can say that this is overstating the case. That she admits to important offices, and that she retains in those offices, ministers who view the Gospel from an entirely different standpoint; and that she approves the ministrations of those who teach the laity contradictory doctrines concerning the weightiest truths of religion,—her actual condition is the proof. The fact is visible and unanswerable. Look through the’ land, North, South, East, West, and you will find that contradiction is the keynote of her pulpits. In the same city, and sometimes even in the same small town, if its population is large enough to require two of her ecclesiastical buildings, the minister in one preaches all or nearly all the doctrines taught by the Roman Church (Papal supremacy always excepted), and the minister in the other repudiates all these or nearly all with the most emphatic denial.

She does not discourage this condition of things, at all events she makes no vigorous effort to change it. On the contrary she looks upon both preachers as having an equally legitimate claim to the emoluments that spring from their clerical profession; for as both are working in her vineyard, she regards each as equally worthy of his hire.

We are aware that some raise the objection that she only tolerates those who maintain a High Church or Ritualistic attitude. We answer: While she keeps them in office and pays them their usual stipend, her toleration is equivalent to actual and explicit sanction.

Hence, she is powerless to direct or to guide. She stands before her members in an attitude of impotent bewilderment or opportunism. She virtually acknowledges that she is unable to point out where the right path is to be found, which of her departments represents the Gospel of Christ as He revealed it to the world, and which does not. In fact she cannot tell them whether certain vital doctrines of Christianity are contained in the Scriptures at all or not, for the simple reason that she permits those doctrines to be freely controverted, and allows inquirers to exercise their private judgment on the inspired passages which have reference to them. She lets them look around, judge for themselves and take their choice.

This is not a calumny. Her children appeal to her for definite teaching, and she has none to give them.

They ask her to show them the way that leads to heaven, and she cannot point it out. She may tell them, in the words of the Apostle, that “without faith it is impossible to please God”. But in the same breath she announces two opposite objects of faith; and if the profession of one leads towards pleasing God, the profession of the other (so far as objective faith is concerned) must lead in the opposite direction. She may refer them to the formularies, but the formularies themselves contain the fruitful seed of contradiction, and their application can only lead (and as a matter of fact), does only lead to contradictory conclusions.

It is true all her clergy subscribe these Articles of religion; but one portion of them views them in one light, another in an opposite. To show that we are not indulging in the language of exaggeration, or going beyond the region of facts, let us look at the matter in the light of what may be called daily occurrences. Her children ask her: Is Christ truly and objectively present in the Eucharist? And by one portion of her clergy she answers, yes; by another, no. They ask: Is Auricular Confession or Sacramental Absolution a doctrine of the Church of Christ? By one portion of her clergy she answers yes; by another, no. They ask: Does Baptism take away the guilt of original sin and regenerate the soul? By one portion of her clergy she answers, yes; by another, no.

They ask again: Is the Eucharist an actual sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood as well as a Sacrament? Her answer once more is yes and no.

They ask further: Is Purgatory a doctrine binding on the Christian conscience? And the same contradictory yes and no is the reply.

Such are her answers to questions concerning doctrines which touch man’s highest spiritual interests, which affect most intimately the relations of the creature to the Creator, and are therefore necessarily wound up with the Creator’s electing or condemning the soul He has made in His own likeness. For surely, whether He, the Creator, is to be worshipped in the Eucharist as being there in the awful reality, the overwhelming majesty of His Real Incarnate Presence, with the very highest homage His creatures can pay; or whether that Sacrament is to be looked upon as the wafer of the Lord’s Supper, indicating a presence merely spiritual and therefore to be treated with limited or mitigated respect; whether there is or is not in religion a power adequate to pardon those post-baptismal sins, which deprive the soul of the life of grace and make it dead before the eye of heaven; whether there is or is not another power designed to dispel the cloud of Divine anger, which hangs over the soul on its entrance into the world, and which bars the way to the beatific vision; whether the Incarnate Son does or does not actually on the altar offer up His body and blood in sacrifice to His Eternal Father in pleading for His people; whether there is, or is not, an intermediate place or state between the end of life and the beginning of beatitude, between the gate of death and the gate of heaven, where sin is to be atoned for as to its punishment before the soul is fit to cross heaven’s threshold;—surely, it must be allowed, that these are questions which are not to be trifled with, questions of an importance so momentous that no Christian man can reasonably or safely afford to look upon them with the eye of apathy and indifference.

If the worship of God in spirit and truth, in the right way and not the wrong, in accordance with His revelation and not against; if the regular oblation of Christ’s blood in sacrifice; if the making the child of original wrath, on its ingress into life, a child of God with a claim to eternal inheritance; if the restoration of the life of grace to the soul that was dead through actual crime,—if these are matters which deserve and call loudly for man’s closest and most intense attention, then the Church which so unconcernedly answers “yes” and “no” in the same breath, when interrogated by her children in reference to them, has indeed a terrible responsibility before God.

It is impossible to see how an institution, teaching this mass of contradiction, could claim to be considered the Church of Continuity,—the Church which was designed in the light of the Divine foreknowledge, and which was built, when the fulness of time was come, on the rock that was to be immovable and unchangeable.

If such an organisation is proclaimed to the world to be the chartered fulfilment of an eternal plan, where are the proofs that the charter is genuine? Where find any evidence that it received such charter at the hands of Him who alone could give it? Christ did not contradict Himself. The Apostles did not contradict themselves in matters of faith. The Church of the first century did not contradict herself. The Church of the second, third, fourth, seventh, tenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did not contradict herself. The Church which alone is universal at present does not teach, or allow to be taught in her communion, contradiction about those doctrines of Christianity, which must be regarded as vital, if any in the world are to be considered such.

But the Church of England not only does contradict herself, but readily acknowledges the fact; and not only willingly admits the fact, but even glories that she comprehends within her fold two opposite schools of thought,—schools which are in direct antagonism to each other in regard to almost every doctrine supposed to be found in the Gospels and Epistles.

Does the framework of an establishment of this kind bear upon it the impress of a Divine plan; or does it not rather indicate a work that has been conceived by a human mind and executed by a human hand? Could such perpetually varying forms and such a mass of contradictory design be found in any religious edifice sketched by a Divine architect and sustained by His omniscient and approving supervision?

To make clear that this question does not embody any wanton attack on the origin, development, or present status of the Church of England, we shall look at her from another standpoint. We shall view her in a light in which both her exterior and interior appear in their most prominent distinctness.