p. 128Testing Her Claims by Examining the Chief Characteristics of Her Constitution

Section I

Certain “Notanda” Which the Present Agitation in the Church of England Has Brought Into Prominent View

This examination of her characteristics shall not be introduced abruptly. That we may be clear of the charge of placing her in a wrong light, and that our non-Catholic readers may be disposed to accept our treatment of the question as fair and in no sense overstated, we shall first point to certain “Notanda” which the present agitation in the Church of England has brought under public notice in a way that claims particular attention.

And then by way of further reassuring them, we shall adduce testimonies from non-Catholic sources which contain the substance of what we shall state in reference to her structure.

In other words, we shall not ascribe to her anything except what is historically and irrefutably true. The “Notanda” alluded to are the following:—

I. The great bulk of Anglicans do not appear to apprehend fully the extent to which their Church is dependent upon the State.

II. They do not appear to be intimately conscious, that Parliament with the sanction of the Sovereign has power either to keep the national symbol of faith as it is, or to change it.

III. They seem to be unaware, if not theoretically, at all events practically, of the real and wide distinction which exists between the phrases “Established Church” and “Established Religion”.

These are points of importance. A word upon them will help to bring out how far she can claim identity with, or how far she is removed from the Institution which Christ established to give testimony to His truth, and will help also to prepare the way for the investigation of the principal features of her framework.

I. As to her dependence upon the State. It is the conviction of many able men who were formerly members of the Church of England, that Anglicans do not adequately realise, at least are not keenly alive to, the consequences following from the compromise on which their Church is built. This too is our conviction. We mean the great bulk fail to advert to the almost unrestricted dominion, which the prerogative of royal supremacy gives the Crown and the Parliament over the Established Religion.

Let it not be thought, however, that in saying this, we are blaming those to whom no blame attaches. We willingly recognise that with many, probably with most, the want of advertence in this case is not their fault. They were born to that state of things. It was their inheritance, not their creation. And as it appeared to them to have the quiescent approval or implied consent of the great mass of the population behind it, it went on without challenge or inquiry on their part. From childhood, throne and Church have been so indissolubly associated in their ideas, that it would seem to them something like sacrilege to attempt to separate them. They have been taught to regard them as in a sense Divinely interwoven,—as essential parts of one great awe-inspiring whole.

But the agitation which is still in progress will surely be sufficient to break the spell, and to enable her members to realise the true state of the case.

The voluminous correspondence, which that agitation has called forth, has made evident that, in the compromise alluded to, the State is all round and in every sense the predominant partner; that the Church as a Church can have no will of her own, cannot make a move in any matter of moment without the State’s either explicit or implied permission, cannot make the laws by which she is to govern herself, cannot choose the form of worship she is to offer to the Godhead, since it is prescribed by secular authority, cannot even choose the formula of faith she is to teach the people, seeing that it too has been strictly determined by Crown and Parliament. All this has been revealed in a light in which it had never been revealed to the general public before, and stands forth a plain undeniable fact.

II. In the course of this noisy and prolonged controversy, it has been stated and repeated again and again by distinguished members of her own communion, that the laity, as represented by Crown and Parliament, have authority over the discipline, ritual and doctrine of the Church by law Established. That the statement is true it is idle to deny. Some may disclaim such authority, and others may attempt to explain it away. But it is not a question of what this or that individual, or this or that party within her, believes or is willing to admit; it is a question of the civil control which she is bound to acknowledge and submit to, in virtue of her obligation of obedience to the secular power. The compromise on which she was reared, and to which she gave her deliberate consent, made this comprehensive State dominion over her a law of her being.

And this is exactly the point which the great mass of her members do not seem to have taken in in its full significance.

Let us put aside the words ritual and discipline, and fix our attention for the moment exclusively on the word doctrine; for therein is a matter of paramount importance. In this connection it is surely not out of place to ask (we mean no offence in asking): Do Anglicans realise—in its complete comprehensiveness—the drift of the statement, that the Crown and the Parliament as representatives of the laity have authority over even the doctrines of their Church? We cannot help thinking that if they did, they would not be so satisfied, as they appear to be, with the position of impotence and absolute dependence in the line of religious teaching to which she has been reduced.

The assertion has a meaning far beyond any they have been accustomed to consider. It has more than one side to it. It not only means, that the Church cannot change the least tittle of the Established Religion without the explicit ratification of the Sovereign and the Parliament of the kingdom; it extends farther and has a meaning which is much more inconvenient. It means that the Crown and Parliament on their side, without the consent of the Church at all, nay, even against her will, can, if they like, on their own responsibility, independently of all ecclesiastical connection or interference, in virtue of the supreme power they claim and exercise over her, change that religion and change it even into its opposite—at least into something substantially different.

This, as we shall show, they have done before; and this they can do again if they feel inclined.

The Parliament of to-day has as much power to alter the present creed of the Established Church, as the Parliament of 1662 had to fix it. And the Parliament of to-day would be forced to alter that creed, if the majority of the voters of the nation went in for alteration in that direction. The Act of 1662, which made or tried to make the Prayer Book the permanent standard of belief and worship, was by no means irrevocable. What that Parliament had the power to do a subsequent had the power to undo; just as an anterior one had established a symbol of faith which was substantially different from that of the Prayer Book and which a succeeding Parliament had no scruple in doing away with.

III. It must be remembered that there is a wide distinction between the phrases “Established Church” and “Established Religion”. The Church, in so far as she is an institution organised, subsidised, and legally established to impart religious teaching to the people, remains identical; but the creed which she teaches may change and re-change. It may be quite different in this century from what it was in the preceding one, and from what it may be in the one which is coming. A picture-frame remains the same, while the portrait it contains to-day bears little or no resemblance to the one that appeared there some months ago, and may be entirely different from the one that will be set in it in six months to come. We can distinguish too between the musical instrument and the music it gives forth. The organ continues to be the same while it discourses airs of loyalty or airs of insurrection, airs sacred or airs less sacred, as the fingers of the performer pass over its keys.

The Church by law established, being incorporated under the Crown, is part of the civil constitution and naturally partakes of the nature of the constitution. The constitution stands the same, while the politics of the Government or Ministry, which represents or voices it, change according as this or that political party is in the ascendant. This is well put by Mr. Henry J. Pye in a pamphlet which he wrote some years ago. Having spoken at length of the various religious changes which took place in England from the reign of Henry the Eighth to that of Charles the Second, he adds: “What we see is this, that the Established Church remained the same while the Established Religion was altered. It may be perceived then what is meant by the Established Religion; it is the religion which is for the time being recognised by the nation as being that of the Established Church: that is to say, the Established Church being the National organisation for Christian Religion, the Established Religion is the religion which is then adapted to that national organisation—it may be Protestant, Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or what not, as the State passes through various phases of opinion.”¹1Disestablishment, pp. 38, 39.

Section II

Non-Catholic Testimonies, Containing the Substance of What Will Be Attributed to the Church of England in the Treatment of Her Characteristics

It may look like inverting the usual order to produce these testimonies before, instead of after, the treatment of the characteristics in question. Our object in following this course is to reassure beforehand non-Catholic readers, into whose hands these pages may fall, that eminent and devoted members of the Church of England attribute to her the substance of what will be said of her in that branch of the subject.

What is contained in the above “Notanda” is embodied, and it may be said, emphasised by the non-Catholic authorities we now bring forward.

The first adduced is Green. We quote from him at considerable length, first, because he is, as already intimated, a Protestant historian, and one who takes the facts which he records from Protestant sources. Secondly, because if we mistake not, he is looked upon by Protestant critics generally as trustworthy. Thirdly, because his narrative of facts reveals the plan according to which the New Church, or what he calls “The Church of the New Monarchy,” was to be built up, as well as the manner in which that plan was carried out; and reveals also the way in which the Old Church was, as he phrases it, “destroyed”. Fourthly, because the conviction forces itself upon many unprejudiced observers, that the majority of Protestants have never read, in any impartial history, an account of the reign of terror in which the Reformed Church of England had her origin, and of the abnormal degree to which she was made the slave of the State from the outset.

Green says: “The acknowledgment of Henry’s title as its (the Church’s) Protector and Head was soon found by the Clergy to have been more than a mere form of words. It was the first step in a policy by which it was to be prostrated at the foot of the throne. Convocation was forced to recognise the Royal permission and assent for the validity of its proceedings and decisions.

“A new Act turned the Bishops into mere nominees of the King. … Authority in matters ecclesiastical as well as civil was vested solely in the Crown. The Courts Spiritual became as thoroughly the King’s Courts as the temporal Courts of Westminster. Convocation could only deliberate by the Royal licence, and its decisions were of no validity without the Royal assent. It was the Crown alone which could legally repress error or redress spiritual abuses.”²2The italics throughout this quotation are the author’s.

“But the full meaning which Cromwell attached to the Supremacy was seen on his elevation to the new post of Vicar-General or Vicegerent of the King in all matters ecclesiastical. His first act was to seize into the hands of the Crown the one means of speaking to the people at large which existed at that time. With the instinct of genius he discerned the part which the pulpit was to play in the religious and political struggle which was at hand, and he resolved to turn it to the profit of the Monarchy.”

“The Clergy learned by injunction after injunction that they were regarded, and must learn to regard themselves, as mere mouthpieces of the Royal will. The restrictions of the right of preaching to priests who received licences from the Crown silenced every voice of opposition. Even to those who received licences theological controversy was forbidden. The process of tuning the pulpits made them at every crisis the means of diffusing the Royal will. … The very heads of the sermons were prescribed; and the Bishops were held responsible for the compliance of the Clergy with these orders, as the Sheriffs were held responsible for the compliance of the Bishops. It was only when all possibility of resistance was at an end, when the Church was gagged and its pulpits turned into mere echos of Henry’s will, that Cromwell (Vicar-General) ventured on his last and crowning change, that of claiming for the Crown the right of dictating at its pleasure the form of faith and doctrine to be held and taught throughout the land.… The dream of the new learning was to be wrought out, not by the progress of education and piety, but by the brute force of the New Monarchy. The articles of religion were drawn up by the hand of Henry himself. …”

“The old English liberties lay prostrate at the feet of the King. The Lords were powerless, the House of Commons filled with the creatures of the Court and degraded into the mere engines of tyranny.”

“Royal proclamations were taking the place of Parliamentary legislation. … Miles Coverdale, a friend of Cranmer, was employed to collect and revise the translations of Tyndale (i.e., translations of the Bible), and the Bible which he edited appeared under the patronage of Henry himself. The story of the Supremacy is graven on its very title-page. The new foundation of religious truth was to be regarded throughout England as a gift, not from the Church but from the King. It is Henry on his throne who gives the sacred volume to Cranmer ere Cranmer and Cromwell can distribute it to the throng of priests and laymen below. …”

“Henry was the Head of the Church. From the primate to the meanest deacon, every member of it derived from him his sole right to exercise spiritual powers. The voice of its preachers was the mere echo of his will. He alone could define orthodoxy or declare heresy. The forms of its worship and belief were changed and rechanged at the Royal caprice. Half its wealth went to swell the Royal treasury, the other half was at the King’s mercy. …”

“Under Cromwell (the Vicar-General) the coercion of juries and the management of judges rendered justice the mere mouthpiece of the Royal will, and where even this shadow of justice proved an obstacle to bloodshed, Parliament was brought into play to pass bill after bill of Attainder.”

“… The suppression of mitred Abbots, and a large creation of new peerages in favour of Court favourites and dependents, left the House of Lords yet more helpless against the Crown than of old. The House of Commons was crowded with members nominated by the Royal Council. With such Houses Cromwell had no difficulty in making the nation itself, whether it would or no, an accomplice in the work of absolutism.”

“It was by Parliamentary statutes that the Church was destroyed, and freedom gagged with new treasons and oaths and questionings. … But the success of such a system depended wholly on the absolute servility of Parliament to the will of the Crown. … While the great Revolution which struck the Church was in progress, England simply held her breath. It is only through the stray depositions of Royal spies that we catch a glimpse of the wrath and hate which lay seething under the terrible silence of a whole people. For the silence was the silence of terror. …”

“The years of Cromwell’s administration form the one period in our history which deserves the name given to the rule of Robespierre. It was the English terror.”

“Men felt, says Erasmus, as if a scorpion lay sleeping under every stone.”

“Spies. … The air was thick with tales of plots and conspiracies. The only chance of safety lay in silence. But even the refuge of silence was closed by a law more infamous than any that ever blotted the statute book of England. Not only was thought made treason, but men were forced to reveal their thoughts on pain of their very silence being punished with the penalties of treason. All trust in the older bulwarks of liberty was destroyed by a policy as daring as it was unscrupulous. The noblest institutions were degraded into instruments of terror. …”

“… The one great institution which could still offer resistance to the Royal will was struck down. The Church became a mere instrument of central despotism. The people learned their helplessness in rebellions easily repressed and avenged with ruthless severity. A reign of terror, organised with consummate and merciless skill, held England panic-stricken at Henry’s feet. The noblest heads rolled on the block. …”

“The execution of Queen after Queen taught England that nothing was too high for Henry’s courage, or too sacred for his appetite.”

“Parliament assembled only to sanction acts of unscrupulous tyranny, or to build up by its own statutes the great fabric of absolute rule.”³3Green’s Short History of the English People, chaps. vi. and vii.

It was during Cromwell’s administration that Henry’s Reformed Church took substance, form and colour. It is true, as Green states, it was by Parliamentary statutes the old one was “destroyed,” and it is equally true that by Parliamentary statutes the new one was built up. Green’s graphic narration of facts shows that the new one was born to be the slave of the Throne, and was meant to be the bond-maiden of the State from her birth.

And that she has been the slave of the Throne and the bond-maiden of the State throughout her course, is proved by the documents which we now add.

The same authority which Henry with his Parliament claimed and exercised over the discipline and doctrine of the Church by law Established, was claimed and exercised by Edward VI. and by Elizabeth with their respective Parliaments in the same sphere.

This is clear from the additions to and changes made in the Statutory Articles of religion during their periods of rule; clear from many other things as well.

And to show that, even after the Caroline Settlement of 1662, the prevailing opinion in the Anglican Communion was that the Sovereign and the National Parliament had power over the “Spiritual government and Spiritual beliefs” of the Church, we shall quote from the writings of eminent and influential men who have expressed the matter in language which cannot be mistaken.

One is Bishop Warburton who in the early part of the eighteenth century wrote a celebrated book entitled the Alliance of Church and State. The edition referred to here is that of 1741. In this book the Bishop puts forward a theory of religion in which an Erastian Church is entirely consistent.⁴4Although the work professed to disown Erastianism! It is the only one in which the claim of the civil power over the teaching of the Church can be justified or defended. It is, if we mistake not, the one on which was based the original Reformation Compromise. And if it could stand the test of the Gospel, civil control over ritual, discipline and symbol of faith, so far from being objectionable, would be both lawful and desirable. Let that system be granted, and there is no reason whatever why the State should not, but every reason why it should, dictate the creed which the Church is bound to teach.

That readers may see the lengths to which he, the Bishop, goes in maintaining the absolute dependence of the Church upon the secular power, some extracts from his book are reproduced here. They are given exactly as they are quoted by Cardinal Newman in his Lectures, with the Cardinal’s own incidental remarks as he proceeds through the quotation.⁵5Lectures on Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans, Lect. VI., p. 157 and following pp. Our space, however, does not allow us to give all the passages cited in the remarkable Lectures alluded to. The Cardinal, who himself was never consciously unfair to any religious body, says in introducing the passage: ‘I could not take,’ he observes, ‘a work fairer to the National Church than the Alliance of Church and State, by Bishop Warburton. In this treatise he tells us that the object of the State is not the propagation of the truth but the well-being of society.’ “The true end,” ‘he says,’ “for which religion is established by the State is not to provide for the true faith but for civil utility.”⁶6Bishop Warburton, Alliance of Church and State, p. 148, ed. 1741. ‘This is’ “the key,” ‘he observes,’ “to open the whole mystery of this controversy, and to lead a man safe through all the intricacies, windings and perplexities in which it has been involved.”⁷7The single comma marks the words of the Cardinal, the double those of the Bishop.

‘Next, religion is to be used in order to benefit that which it seems does not in any true sense provide for religion.’ “This use of religion to the State,” ‘he says,’ “was seen by the learned, and felt by all men of every age and nation.”

“The ancient world particularly was so firmly convinced of this truth, that the greatest secret of the sublime art of legislation consisted in this, how best religion might be applied to serve society.”

‘Well, so far we might tolerate him; such statements, if not true, are not absolutely unheard of or paradoxical, but next he makes a startling step in advance.’

“Public utility and truth coincide,” ‘he says; nay, further still, he distinctly calls public utility’ “a sure rule and measure of truth”; ‘so that, he continues, by means of it, the State’ “will be much better enabled to find out truth than any speculative inquirer, with all the aid of the philosophy of the schools”.

“From whence it appears,” ‘he continues,’ “that while a State, in union with the Church, hath so great an interest and concern with true religion, and so great a capacity for discovering what is true, religion is likely to thrive much better than when left to itself.” ‘The State then, it would appear, out of compassion to religion, takes it out of the schools, and adapts it to its own purposes to keep it pure and make it perfect.’

‘He does not scruple to bring out this very sentiment in the most explicit statement, that there may be no mistake about his meaning. He considers conformity to objects of State the simple test of truth, purity, exaggeration, excess, perversity or dangerousness in doctrinal teaching.’ “Of whatever use,” ‘he says,’ “an alliance may be thought for preserving the being of religion, the necessity of it for preserving its purity is most evident. … Let us consider the danger religion runs, when left in its natural state to itself, of deviating from truth.”… “On the other hand, when religion is in alliance with the State, as it then comes under the magistrate’s direction, … its purity must needs be reasonably well supported and preserved. For, truth and public utility coinciding, the civil magistrate, as such, will see it for his interest to seek after and promote the truth in religion; and by means of public utility, which his office enables him so well to understand, he will never be at a loss to know where such truth is to be found.”

‘He takes delight in this view of the subject, and enforces it as follows:’ “The means of attaining man’s happiness here,” ‘he says,’ “is civil society; the means of his happiness hereafter is contemplation. If then opinions, the result of contemplation, obstruct the effects of civil society, it follows that they must be restrained. Accordingly, the ancient masters of wisdom who, from these considerations taught that man was born for action, not for contemplation, universally concurred to establish it as a maxim, founded on the nature of things that opinions should always give way to civil peace.” ‘And he proceeds to defend it as follows:’ “God so disposed things, that the means of attaining the happiness of one state (of existence) should not cross or obstruct the means of attaining the happiness of the other. From whence we must conclude, that where the supposed means of each, viz., opinions and civil peace, do clash, there one of them is not the true means of happiness.

“But the means of attaining the happiness peculiar to that state in which a man at present exists, being perfectly and infallibly known by man, and the means of the happiness of his future existence, as far as relates to the discovery of truth, but very imperfectly known by him, it necessarily follows that, wherever opinions clash with civil peace, those opinions are no means of future happiness, or, in other words, are either no truths, or truths of no importance.” ‘Behold the principle of the reasonings of the Committee of Privy Council, and the philosophy of the Premier’s satisfaction thereupon!’

‘Baptismal regeneration is made true or not true, not by the text of Scripture, the testimony of the Fathers, the tradition of the Church, nay not by Prayer Book, Articles, Jewel, Usher, Carleton or Bullinger, but by its tendency to minister to the peace and repose of the community, to the convenience and comfort of Downing Street, Lambeth and Exeter Hall. …’

‘Accordingly he mentions some of the details in which ecclesiastical ceremonies are serviceable to the State. …’

“There are peculiar junctures,” ‘he says,’ “when the influence of religion is more than ordinary serviceable to the State, and these the civil magistrate only knows.”

“Now, while a Church is in its natural state of independency, it is not in his power to improve these conjunctures to the advantage of the State by a proper application of religion; but when the alliance is made, and consequently the Church under his direction, he has the authority to prescribe such public exercises of religion, as days of humiliation, fasts, festivals, exhortations and dehortations, thanksgivings and deprecations, and in such a manner as he finds the exigencies of State require.”

‘Warburton,’ remarks the Cardinal,⁸8Lectures on Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans, Lect. VII., p. 170. ‘maintains that each power, the Church and the State, does substantially just one and the same thing; the Church teaches truth, the State pursues expediency. But Christian truth is measured by political expediency. There is no possible thesis which a preacher can put forth or a Synod could define, but is infallibly determined (“infallible” is his word) by the political expedience and experience of the State.’

Now in this contention of the Bishop, which is remarkable in many ways throughout its whole length, there are several points to be specially noted: (1) He makes Christian truth a thing to be discovered by purely human methods, notably by “public utility,” and by public utility as understood by the civil magistrate. He does not appear to recognise it as a definite Divine revelation. (2) When he speaks of opinions clashing with civil utility, he plainly indicates that what are usually dignified by the name of doctrines, he regards as nothing higher than mere human and therefore fallible judgments. (3) He distinctly states that the Church is under the direction of the civil magistrate both for the finding out of truth and for the usefulness and opportuneness of ecclesiastical appointments and arrangements.

Here we have the secret why the Church regards herself, and allows the State to regard her, as a subordinate department of the national government. It is evident the Bishop did not dream of that recently introduced distinction between the State controlling the Church and controlling merely her modus vivendi, or the conditions of establishment. He upheld secular control in the most literal and comprehensive sense of the word; nay, not only upheld it, but supported it with an ingenuity of argument, copiousness of illustration and a wealth of rhetoric which it would be difficult to surpass. Then in writing as he did, he was but voicing the belief which pervaded the Established Church generally in his time. And that this belief continued to be the popular one, is clear from the writings of another celebrated churchman whom Cardinal Newman quotes in the same course of Lectures, and who wrote nearly a hundred years later. This author, says the Cardinal, who published his work anonymously, wrote partly in answer to Warburton and partly to exhibit a counter view of his own.⁹9In the earlier edition of these Lectures by Cardinal Newman, the name of the anonymous writer is not given. In the current edition it is given in a foot-reference as Dr. Whately, and in a further footnote it is added: “Dr. Whately never, I believe, owned to the authorship of this work”. But it is immaterial who was the author. It is plain the work indicated the extent to which the Church was fettered by the State at the time it was written. He wrote apparently in the character of a Scotch Episcopalian, and spoke in the severest terms of the extent to which the Church, in her teaching and worship, permitted herself to be ruled by secular authority. But what we want to emphasise in particular is that, unless the relations which he described as existing between Church and State were facts generally acknowledged by the great body of Anglicans, he could not have assailed them as he did. The nature of his attack pointed to the prevailing Anglican opinion which was the object of his censure. Here again the paragraph is reproduced as it is used by the Cardinal.

“The supreme head on earth” ‘he (this anonymous writer) says,’ “of each branch of Christ’s Church should evidently be some spiritual officer or body. Whether the governor of the English Church were the primate, or the convocation, or both conjointly, or any other man or body of men holding ecclesiastical authority, not attached to any civil office, nor in the gift of any civil governor, in either case the non-secular character of Christ’s kingdom would be preserved. The king in conjunction with the other branches of the legislature ought to have a distinctly defined temporal authority over every one of his subjects of whatever persuasion and, of consequence, over the ministers and all other members both of the Church of England and of every other religious community, Christian, Jewish or Pagan, within his dominions; but neither he nor any other civil power should interfere with articles of faith, liturgy, Church discipline, or any other spiritual matters. The kingdom of heaven has no king but Christ, and He delegated His authority to Apostles, and through them to Bishops and Presbyters, not to any secular magistrates. These therefore ought not by virtue of their civil offices to claim the appointment to any offices in the Church.”

‘In consequence he speaks of its “degrading” the sacred character of Articles and Liturgy,’ “that they should stand upon the foundation of Acts of Parliament, that the spiritual rulers cannot alter them when they may need it, and that the secular power can whether they need it or not. And accordingly,” ‘he continues,’ “it is almost a proverbial reproach, that yours is a ‘“Parliamentary religion”’; that you worship the Almighty as the Act directs; and that you are bound to seek for salvation according to the law, in that case made and provided by King, Lords, and Commons; under the directions of the ministers of State; of persons,” ‘he adds, with a prophetic eye towards 1850,’ “who may be eminently well fitted for their civil offices, and who may indeed chance to be not only exemplary Christians, but sound divines, but who certainly are not appointed to their respective offices with any sort of view to their spiritual functions, who cannot even pretend that any sort of qualification for the good regulation of the Church is implied by their holding such stations as they do. Can this possibly be agreeable to the designs and institutions of Christ and His Apostles? If any one will seriously answer in the affirmative, he is beyond my powers of argumentation.”¹⁰10Letters on the Church, pp. 119, 181.

It is plain this writer would not, any more than Warburton, agree with the modern view that the State did not claim the power to fix the doctrine, but only to lay down the conditions on which the Anglican Church could remain established by it. It is plain also, if we are to judge from their words, neither of the two entertained the idea that the Established Church was so minded that, in the case the State imposed a non-Catholic doctrine, she would separate rather than accept it. Neither is there any reason to think they looked at the meaning of the word jurisdiction from the standpoint of those who, in this generation, hold that what is derived from the sovereign is not the jurisdiction itself, but merely the civil or royal sanction for the exercise of it. No. As they viewed her in the light of a purely secular Church, all such distinctions would have seemed to them so many subterfuges—cases simply made up-to-date.

Now considering the tone of these important testimonies, it is hard to see how any section of the Anglican communion can blame Sir W. Harcourt and the late Duke of Argyll for having written with similar directness on the same matter during the prevailing agitation. These eminent men in saying what they said have been but echoing the opinion which has obtained in the Established Church since her origin. Although it is not likely that their words will sound acceptable in the ears of High Church men, yet we quote them at some length, first, because the writers do not make statements without sustaining them by facts, and secondly, because being non-Catholics, they cannot be suspected of bias in the direction of Romanism.

A letter of more than two columns appeared in The Times (22nd September, 1898) from Sir William Harcourt.¹¹11The first of a series of letters. And another letter of similar length and nearly same date appeared in the same newspaper from the Duke of Argyll. These two letters contain much that bears upon the subject which we are now treating.

When we have given some extracts from them we shall cite a brief passage from an article in The Times of 17th September, 1898, and another from the Guardian (London), which is, if we mistake not, the chief representative organ of the Established Church. Both passages indicate the degree to which lay authority, in the name of the Crown and of Parliament, controls the discipline, doctrine and ceremonial of that Church.

(1) Sir William Harcourt says: “In order to terminate the controversy respecting lawlessness in the Church, we are invited by the Dean of Windsor and Lord Cranborne to lay aside all disquietude and trust to the Bishops. Before we can accept that anodyne it is necessary to satisfy ourselves as to the true position and authority of the Episcopate in regard to the Established Church. It is truly said that the National Church of England in its foundation was a compromise between conflicting opinions. But in order that this compromise should be established on a firm and lasting basis, it was necessary that it should rest on some national sanction. It is of course a question whether there should be a National Church at all; but if there is to be such a Church it must be based on a national authority, and the only national authority which we recognise is that of the Crown and of Parliament.

“This principle was the bed-rock of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and the three great pillars on which the reformed Church of England was reared were the Act of the Submission of the Clergy (25 Henry VIII.), the Act of Supremacy of the Crown, and the successive Acts of Uniformity of Public Worship and Doctrine. The first removed the government of the Church from ecclesiastical authority except so far as it was permitted and defined by the Crown and Parliament.”

“The second established the rights of the laity as represented by the national authority to control the National Church. The third defined in the Liturgy and the Articles, the practice, the ritual, and the doctrines to which the Bishops and the Clergy of the Establishment were obliged by law to conform. No ecclesiastic, whether Bishop or Parson, has any authority to depart from the terms of this Charter. Convocation has no power, the Bishops have no power to alter in one tittle the conditions on which alone they hold their rights, their dignities and their preferments. It is fundamental that the constitution and practice of the National Church can only be dealt with by national authority, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy are not a national authority. So strictly have these principles been maintained by the laity in this country, that no change even of the smallest degree in the Established Church has ever been permitted, except by the authority of Parliament. When it was thought to alter the order of the Lessons and Psalter, this was done by an Act of Parliament in 1871. When it was desired to shorten services, the services were set out in a schedule of the Act of 1872. The conditions of additional and special services were strictly defined.”

“The statesmen of the Reformation, the first Cecil, Nicholas Bacon and the rest, had no object more firmly in view than to maintain the authority of laity over the doctrine, the ritual and the discipline of the Church.¹²12The italics are mine. The office assigned to the Bishops was to enforce the law, and they were expressly prohibited from altering or relaxing it of their own authority or judgment. Their rights are limited and their duties prescribed by Parliament.”

“It seems very necessary to recall these elementary and fundamental principles on which the Reformed Church of England has been established, and on which alone it rests in days when a claim is put forward by the Sacerdotal party to subvert the constitution of the Church.”

“The pretension on the part of Convocation, of Conclaves, of Prelates, of individual Bishops or Priests, to practise or to license departures from the formularies prescribed by law, is a usurpation which is in direct contravention of the whole aim and scope of the Reformation.”

The Duke of Argyll writes, as he says, as an outsider, but as a friend, and shows, too, both friendship and appreciative admiration by speaking of the brilliant stars the Church of England has produced, and the great works she has in various departments accomplished. But his chief scope is friendly warning to “the opposing parties in that Church against calamities which do not seem to be impossible”. He states that the bulk of Englishmen do not realise the degree to which the government of the Established Church is under the control of the Crown and of the Houses of Parliament, that large numbers of the laity do not grasp in the right sense the full drift of the meaning of the phrase “Royal Supremacy”. He too reminds his readers that that Church has been a “compromise” from the outset. He contrasts her with the Church of Scotland, of which he himself was a member. He shows that while she is under civil or secular control as to discipline and even doctrine, the Scottish Church is based on a principle which distinctly and emphatically excludes and repudiates all control of a civil or secular kind, and he concludes by pointing out that all power of independent action in her was stamped out under the feet of a royal ecclesiastical governorship.

His remarks speak for themselves.

We subjoin portions of his letter to show we have not overstated what they contain.

He says: “The Church of England from the beginning has been a compromise. The tendency of all recent decisions has been in the direction of wider and wider comprehension. …” “It has been the want of what is called discipline, and nothing else, that has made the Church of England what she is. It has been by this want that the parties composing her have been kept from fighting. By means of it, they have been kept in ignorance of the extent of their own differences.” … Then, speaking of the rights of the Church of Christ as a visible society on earth, he says: “I belong to a branch of it which has asserted its principles on this subject in a clear, definite and intelligible form. It (that form) was expressed in these words, and in Scotland is now the law of the land: ‘The Lord Jesus Christ, as King and Head of His Church,¹³13The italics in this letter are the author’s. hath therein appointed a government distinct from the civil magistrate’.

“I have never met with an Englishman,” he continues, “who understood these words. Anglicans always think that the words, ‘distinct from the civil magistrate,’ mean ‘distinct from the laity,’ and, under this delusion, they very naturally regard it as the assertion of an advanced sacerdotalism. But the sentence means nothing of the kind. It makes no allusion to any difference between the clergy and the laity. … But to one thing it was resolutely opposed, and that was, any assumption by the secular powers of authority over the spiritual government and spiritual beliefs of the Church of Christ. But this doctrine strikes the average Englishman as destructive of all to which he has been most accustomed. The supremacy of the Crown, which is the supremacy of Parliament, in all causes and measures ecclesiastical, lies at the very root of what he values most. The Crown and the Parliament are the only representatives of the laity in the English Church. … Englishmen generally fail to see what a change in this respect has come about. …”

“The executive and both Houses have been completely secularised. The House of Commons is full of men of all beliefs and of none; and even in the House of Lords I have noticed for many years past, that the Bishops themselves never employ theological argument on any subject without making some apology for so doing, as if they felt it to some extent out of place. It is impossible to imagine either House now even attempting to define a doctrine, or convict a heresy.”

“In the existing constitution of their Church, they (the laity) have absolutely no organ in spiritual things: and even in such secular things as concern the temporalities of the Church, they must share such power as they possess with those who are not Churchmen at all, and may not even be Christians.”

Then referring to the men and the circumstances that brought her to be thus the slave of the Throne and the State, he says:—

“The English Reformers, Kings and Bishops and Statesmen all alike, in doing their (otherwise) splendid work, totally forgot the one Divine fact that the Church of Christ has a government of her own, distinct from the civil magistrate.”

“They were led to this forgetfulness by mistaking the partial coincidence and overlapping of a very peculiar and accidental time, for a union which merged all differences and distinctions, however rooted in the nature of things, in one heterogeneous mixture. They crushed every faculty of independent work under the heels of a Royal prerogative which is now only capable of action through assemblies which have become purely secular, and as regards any spiritual authority practically dead.”

The Times, in a leading article of 17th September, 1898, uses language of similar significance, so far at least as the unlimited controlling authority of the State over the government and doctrine of the Established Church is concerned. Dealing with the charge of allowing “the most advanced section of the clergy” to go on “unchecked” in their career of further approach to Roman services and Roman belief, it says: “… A point has now been reached at which a stand must be made. If the Bishops cannot or will not make it, the people have Parliament to appeal to; and if once an appeal is made to Parliament, it must be answered by whatever Government is in power.”

What has been reproduced here from this leader in The Times and from the letters referred to above, is, it may be said, summarised in a citation which we now give from an article in the Guardian of 13th November, 1896. The writer was treating of the views and arguments of Dr. Ryle, then Bishop of Liverpool, who had been advocating the increase of the power of the laity in the Anglican Communion. It stated in the plainest terms that lay influence or authority, represented by the Crown and Parliament, still preponderated in the government, discipline and ceremonial of the Church by law established. Here is the portion of it to which we refer: “Church reformers are apt to forget that the appointments to all the highest offices in the Church are in the hands of the laity.

“A layman nominates the Bishops, the Deans, and a large proportion of the Incumbents under the name of the Crown. These appointments may be criticised by any one, but they can only be controlled, and that indirectly, by a Parliament from the most powerful House of which all Clergy are excluded. The same Parliament has, with the Crown, the sole power of making laws for the Church. The Clergy cannot alter one letter of the Prayer Book, or introduce a single ceremony, without the previous permission of a lay Sovereign, and the subsequent ratification of a lay Parliament. In the case of a dispute as to the meaning of the Church’s formularies, whether doctrinal or practical, the decision is entrusted to judges in the first instance, Solely Lay, and in no case exclusively, or even preponderatingly clerical.¹⁴14The italics are mine. In every direction lay influence is thus seen to be almost paramount in the general system and machinery of the Church. So long as this is so, we maintain that any further extension of that influence would be a source of the greatest danger, if not of actual disaster.”

Now do not the statements made by these high authorities, statements which are both deliberate and temperate, indicate that the prevailing conviction in the Church of England is, that the National Parliament has as much power to settle the doctrine and ritual of that Church, as it has to pass a Land Act, or to decree a line of railway through the North, South, East or West of the country? And this is the Parliament of which the Duke of Argyll says, and says truly, that it “is full of men of all beliefs and of none”.