p. 125Testing the Claims of the Church of England by the Nature and Extent of the Apostolic Commission

For proving the validity or the invalidity of claims which are called Apostolical, there are no words like the words of Him, who was and who is and who must ever be the Light of the world—at least to all who do not shut their eyes to the brightness of its rays. The weighty words to which we appeal are amongst those which He spoke (we have quoted them often already) during the forty days of His risen life. They expressed the solemn and memorable commission to which the world owes its conversion. They contained both a command and a promise; the command was peremptory and binding, the promise consoling and encouraging. They have resounded through the centuries that have rolled away since, and their continuous echo will be prolonged to the day of doom. His Apostles were present to hear them; to them personally they were addressed, but they were meant for the Church of all generations. To these first heralds and heroes of the faith gathered around Him on the mountain of Galilee He said: “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world”.

This great commission and the solemn circumstances in which it was given afford an easy way of testing the claims of the Church of England.

We shall examine her by the nature and extent of that commission and see if she has fulfilled it, or if, having in view the latitude she allows, there can be any possibility of her ever being able to fulfil it.

Standing on that privileged spot, and having before His Divine eye at a glance the whole career of His Church as a teaching institution through all the ages that were to come, He said to His Apostles: “… teach ye all nations … teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you”.

Now surely He meant they were to teach something. And surely He meant they were to teach something definite. Something with a settled meaning in it. To say that He had nothing definite in His mind when He uttered the words, “Teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you,” would be a blasphemy against His infinite wisdom and essential truthfulness. For if He commanded them to teach something indefinite and vague, He commanded them to teach nothing; and Christianity has been a collapse since the hour the Apostolic commission was issued. Will any professing Christian deny the statement, when we affirm that He meant that His Apostles were to teach the nations His, HIS Gospel, THE Gospel which at that moment had definite shape in His mind, and not some other Gospel which contradicted it or differed from it? And can any one reasonably contradict the further statement—that He meant they were to teach the whole of His Gospel, pure, integral, complete, not merely a part of it, not a diminution of it, neither an exaggeration, mutilation or corruption of it?

They were to announce it as it existed in its oneness in His thoughts, and as His Divine Spirit, whom He would send upon them at Pentecost, would direct and suggest. There was no verbal contradiction, nor was there any germ of contradiction in the doctrines which, in His Divine ideal, were to form the component parts of His symbol of faith, and which, in that solemn hour, He placed in their hands. And He did not signify in any way that they were free to allow an element of contradiction to be introduced into them in the process of communicating them to the kingdoms of the world; or that they had any licence from Him to squeeze His Divine message into a mould to suit the taste, the convenience or the political interests of the crowned heads or governments of the countries in which they preached. And as to the Paraclete whom He was to send, and who was to abide with His faithful for ever, He could not intend that that Divine Spirit was to authorise opposite doctrinal teaching, to permit the voice of discord to be introduced into the evangelical truths, or to sanction the action of those who would smooth down the Church’s precepts, so as to meet the approval of the proud, the haughty, conceited, fastidious and sensual; or to square with the corrupt fashions of the day, and the depraved customs of society.

The great commission in its fullest comprehensiveness was exclusively His own, and therefore it came in its entirety from a Divine source. It referred to Divine truths and Divine obligations. It did not include any code of civil law which a civil Legislature enacted, and could alter or abrogate at will. It extended to those things, and those things only, which the nations were bound to believe in point of faith, which they were bound to do in point of practice; and which they were bound to believe and to do under the tremendous sanction of eternal life or eternal death.

But now let us ask: Has the Church of England fulfilled this great commission? Has she taught one Gospel, or has she not rather taught several Gospels, all substantially different, and some directly contradictory one of the other? Has she respected it as a message of indivisible oneness? Has she kept it free from the alloy of State interference and national law; or has she not, on the contrary, treated it as if it were a thing that could be varied, added to, or diminished by Parliamentary enactment according to the exigencies of national expediency? Could she, by possibility, being built as she is, teach one undivided Gospel and teach it universally?

This question leads to another way of examining her claims. Recent events make it a question exceptionally opportune at present. To answer it adequately we must look into some of the leading features, or as we have named them, chief characteristics of her constitution. We shall see in examining them that, apart from the disqualification created by the permission of private judgment, she does not possess sufficient liberty to be able to teach that Gospel in its oneness; and that she has not the requisite freedom to teach it everywhere even granting she had the power to preserve it in its identity.