YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
HERVEY D. LELAND, YALE 1885
Gift of
JAMES R. JOY, YALE 1885

THE
CHUECH OF ENGLAND

By ihe same Author.

THE CHAEACTEE AND TIMES OP THOMAS
CEOMWELL. CoBNiSH ; Birmingham : 1887-
TWO ESSAYS ON MATTHEW -AENOLD, with
some of his Letters to the Author. Elkin
Mathews : 1897.

THE
MESSAGE AND POSITION
OF THE
CHUECH OF ENGLAND
BEING AN ENQUIRY INTO
THE CLAIMS OP THE MEDIEVAL CHUECH
WITH
^n gtppmtitx on tSe FaltUttg of aaoman (Bxtim
BY
AETHUE GALTON, B.A.
CUBATE OF -WINDEEMEBE

WITH A PEEPACE ON THE ROYAL SUPEEMACY
BY
J. HENEY SHOETHOUSE
AFTHOE OF ' JOHtf INGLESANT ' ETC.

LONDON
KEQAN PAUL, TEENCH, TEtJBNEE & CO. Ltd.
PATBRNOSTBB HOUSE, CHAEIN& CROSS ROAD
1899

Sl3
(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved)

TO THE
LOED BISHOP OP CAELISLE
(without HIS leave)
IN ACKNCWLEDGBMBN.T OP
GREAT KINDNESS

PEEFACE
I AM inclined to think that the greatest
service, among many great services, that
Bishop Christopher Wordsworth rendered
to the Church, is that part of his life and
work which relates to the existence of
National or State Churches, associated, as
it was, with his labour with, and for,
France and Italy. The known learning,
and what appeared to some, perhaps, the
exaggerated orthodoxy of the Bishop, dis
poses, at once, of the notion that there is
anything in the idea of a National or State
Church such as has always existed in the
Church of England, allied to the heresy
called Erastianlsm. The history of the
Gallican Church, destroyed by Eoman

VIII PEEFACE
Propagandism and intrigue, is of so pitiful
a character as almost to destroy sleep, and
what would have happened had Count
Cavour not died, and a genuine National
Church been established in Italy, according
to his and the English Bishop's effort and
desire, it is now, unfortunately, useless to
inquire. I have no intention to enter
upon a controversy as to the lawfulness of
Kingly supremacy in the Church, my point
is not what the Church of England ought
to have held, but what it always has held.
It was not without precedent and justifica
tion in history.
Wliatever may be said about the
conflict in the Jewish Polity between the
Kingly and the Sacerdotal Power, the fact
remains certain that the King was God's
anointed, and that to David and to the
Seed-Eoyal for ever, and not to any Priest
or Prophet, was promised the Eternal
Kingdom and the Eule of Eighteousness.
In the early days of the Kingdom of

PEEFACE IX
Heaven upon Earth our Blessed Lord
directed that the things belonging to
C^sar were to be rendered to Csesar, and
His Chief Apostle held that the Powers
that be. Heathen though they were, were
ordained of God, and did not himself dis
dain, on a purely ecclesiastical charge, to
appeal to Csesar. It was the ' counsel and
deed ' of Priests usurping the Civil Power,
at the moment in feebler hands than those
of Gallio, that crucified the Lord, it has
been, often, the counsel of Priests that has
crucified Him since.
Hooker says (book 8, p. 469, ed. 1666) :
' no general Synod was ever called until
the Empire became Christian, and Jerome,
to disprove the authority of a Synod, uses
these words as a forcible argument : Die quis
Imperator hanc s'ynodum jusserit eonvocari.'
The German Emperors exercised the
right, in the time of Luther, to summon
the contending parties before their judg
ment seat. The Germanic tribes saved the

X PEEFACE
world once, when, wandering after a
legendary Asgard, they came across the
Idea of Christ, and the German Protestant
Princes saved the world again, when, at
the head of their Lances, they protected
Luther, and stayed the greed and tyranny
of Eome. What is the sense and what the fabric
of the English Church? His Sacred
Majesty, the anointed of God, the Lords
temporal and spiritual, the King's Com
mons in Parliament assembled — that is, the
entire Church. There is no antithesis here.
of secular or spiritual, the entire State is
the^ Church. That the Sacrament of
Priesthood, which renders possible the ad
ministration of Sacraments, was delegated
to an ordained class no more militated
against this sovereignty of the entire
Church, than did the fact that our Blessed
Lord, when he came upon Earth, came
not of the Tribe of Aaron, but of the
Kingly Tribe of Judah, 'of which Tribe

PEEFACE XI
Moses spake nothing concerning the Priest
hood.' I suppose that no one will dispute the
assertion that Queen Elizabeth was the
Head of the Church in her day. I cannot
exaggerate my admiration of her work, her
reign, her influence. She formed the
Church of England, as it has existed since.
James I. was the Head of his Church-:
Charles the First renounced his kingly birth-
right, and bowed too much to the power of
the Bishops. He lost himself and destroyed
the Church. Charles the Second was the
Head of the Church in his day. He took a
personal interest in it. He said that it was
the religion of a gentleman. The Bishops
of his appointment are among the best
^er made, their writings are the salt
of the Church to this day. During the
whole of the last century, a century much
maligned, the theory of State Christianity —
the rule of the entire State — King, Lords and
Commons, was exhibited to the full. The

xu PEEFACE
dissenters of the Century to a large extent
accepted it.
This unbroken system produced in
England a race of Clergy such as no
other system and no other country has
ever produced ; men who did not cease to
be Laymen when ordained to the Sacra
ment of the Ministry ; men who, while in
perfect sympathy and accord Avith their
fellow Laymen, were at the same time
smitten through with a Divine Consecration
and Pureness — a strain of love and hope —
by the will and power of God and of Christ.
Those of us who have attained to advanced
life remember with emotion many such
men, and ' our Fathers have told us ' of
more. It is difficult to avoid a sad fore
boding, that the succeeding generations
may be less happy.
My friend and distant cousin, Mr.
Arthur Galton, with a very exaggerated
estimate, as it seems to me, of the value
of words of mine, has asked me to write

PEEFACE XIII
something in the fore-front of his volume.
His exceptional experience of life and of
religion, his studies and his knowledge ;
not only of books and languages and
history, but also of human life ; fit him for
the task he has undertaken, and I gladly
leave it in his hands. I commend his book to
the serious attention of all thoughtful men,
in view of this great battle of Armageddon,
not only of this age, but of all time.
Viewed in the light of history, of the
too obvious state of personal religion in
Italy and France and Spain, that proud
boast of Eome ' everywhere and by all
people and through all time ' would seem
to be more truly expressed by ' believed
nowhere, is believed by none, never was
believed.' Springing from the worst tra
ditions of decadent Pagan Eome, the Papal
system never was a Church. It never was
anything but a propagandist machine for
extracting forced obedience and alms from
an ignorant, a deceived, and a terrified

XIV PEEFACE
' world. The Papal Curia is founded upon
falsehood, and falsehood enters, consciously
or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly,
into the soul of every human creature that
comes under its influence. It has poisoned
the wells of religious life. Its story is one
of horror, and of crime, and of cruelty.
As I have said elsewhere, it always has
been, and is now, the enemy of the Human
Eace. J. HENEY SHORTHOUSE.
Lansdowne, Edgbaston :
Saimt Mark's Day, 1899.

CONTENTS

PAGE
PEEPACE . '  . . vii

INTRODUCTION  xv
THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF THE
CHURCH OP ENGLAND  1
EOMAN OEDEES: A SUGGESTION . . .219
NOTES  233

INTRODUCTION

The Appendix on Eoman Orders, added
now to my Essay on the Church of
England, expresses opinions which I have
held for many years ; and upon which I
acted, in 1885, when I retired from the
Ministry of the Eoman Church. My
opinions were cleared and strengthened by
the Pope's Letter of 1896, As soon as I
read it, I saw he had committed a grave
error in tactics ; and that he must in the
end either retire from his position, or perish
in it. To borrow a military phrase, the
Pope's Letter enables us to take the offen
sive, wdth regard to the controversy on
Orders, instead of acting as heretofore on

XVI INTEODUCTION
the defensive. The Appendix, as it is
printed in this volume, was written for
the Bishop of Carlisle, at the end of last
year, when I found myself confronted by
the awkward problem of being admitted
to the Anglican Ministry on a Eoman
Ordination, in which I did not, and do
not, believe. Personally, I cannot believe,
at one and the same time, in the validity
of Eoman Orders, and in the assertions of
Article XXVIII. ; because those assertions
appear, to me, to lead necessarily to the
conclusions which I have drawn from them.
I stated my difficulty, therefore, to the
Bishop, and left the responsibility with
him, submitting my owii opinion without
any scruple or hesitation to the present
belief and practice of the English Church.
In dealing with the question of Anglican
and Eoman Orders, I have used those
arguments, and assumed those positions,
which are common to the advocates on
either side. My own views about Orders

INTEODUCTION Xvii
are expressed more fully and accurately in
my Essay, than in the Appendix. Saint
Paul compares the Church to a body, of
which, I suppose, ordained persons are the
organs, or among the organs. Following
out this analogy, I hold, that Orders
depend on the Church ; not the Church, on
Orders. If this view were accepted and
acted on, I believe it would do more than
any thing else to heal the divisions and
wounds of Christendom.
I am sorry I did not meet with Mr.
Trevelyan's ' England in the Age of
Wycliffe' until I had finished my own
Essay. I shall not soon forget the delight,
with which I read it, in the first days of
freedom from my labours. His History
would not only have been invaluable to me,
but I should have liked to express my
thanks and admiration in the body of my
work, by making much use of his. He
has given us the soundest and most
interesting piece of English History, which

XVIU INTEODUCTION
we have received for many years ; and,
unlike too many recent Histories, it is
good, sound literature. It cannot be
recommended too earnestly to those, who
are interested or disturbed by the
mediasval Church, and who wash to under
stand the causes of our Eeformation.
There are those, on the one hand, who can
find no causes for the English Eeformation,
earlier than the first divorce of Henry
VIII. ; and there are others, who fail to
distinguish between the Church of England,
and her various Calvinistic foes. As an
active movement, our Eeformation began
in 1529, and lasted until 1662. Within a
few years from the beginning, an Arch
bishop of Canterbury was murdered by the
Papists. A few years before the end,
another Archbishop was murdered by the
Puritans. These two tragedies mark the
middle and mediating position of the
English Church, as well as the reality of
her opposition to both extremes. If she

INTEODUCTION xix
hold faithfully to that mediating and
moderate position, rejecting both Secta
rian and Sacerdotal innovations, the blood
of those tw^o martyrs of her Eeforma
tion may be the seed for the future
re-union of Christendom.
My warmest thanks are due to Mr.
Shorthouse, for his kindness in giving me
a Preface. I could wish for no better
introduction to my readers. There is not
a truer nor a finer Church History than
' John Inglesant ' ; and any words of
guidance by the author of ' John Inglesant '
will be more than ever welcome to his
admirers at the present time. His Preface
and my Essay were not only written quite
separately, but without any consultation
between the writers at any stage or period
of their work. Mr. Shorthouse, therefore,
is not responsible for anything I have said.
He will find little, I hope, with which he is
not able to agree. If he can like my di.s-
sertation al^out our English Church, I shall

XX INTEODUCTION
please an Anglican, whose good opinion I
value more than any other, and one who
has rendered a splendid service to the
Church of England in this age of ours. A. G.
Cleabarrow ; Windermere : June 20, 1899.
The Anniversary of Her Majesfy^s Accession.

THE
MESSAGE AND POSITION
OP
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

All Christian men and women should be
able to justify their creed. They should
be able to explain, why they are Christians
at all ; and why they belong to one form
of Christianity, rather than to another.
Putting aside those, who are Christians
only from habit, or by inheritance, all
serious believers, I imagine, would say
they are Christians, in the first place, and
in the original meaning of the word,
because they have been constrained or won

^

2 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
over to be followers of Christ, to accept
him for their master and their model.
They would go on to say, probably, that
they had entered into this relationship
because they accept the Bible, which had
possessed them with the life and character
of Jesus. Upon the Bible, then, all questions
of historical and exterior evidence must
ultimately rest. For our immediate pur
pose, the New Testament is that only
portion of the Bible, which we need con
sider. Every one, who examines the New
Testament, with a sufficient knowledge of
its original language, and of the period
with which it professes to deal, treating
it as he would treat any other Grecian
philosophy and history, must come to the
conclusion, that a large part of it was
written very near to those times and events,
which it professes to describe ; and that it
was written by some of the actors, or eye
witnesses, of that history, which it presents.
In other words, the recorded history is
genuine, and not mythical ; for those dates.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 3
which we must give to the several docu
ments, allow no interval, between the
events described and the recording of
them, for the genesis of myths. This line
of argument, for which most of the pre
misses are now accepted on all hands,
excludes such hypotheses as those of
Eenan, or of ' Literature and Dogma,' as
well as a great part of the reasoning in
' Supernatural Eeligion.' That is to say,
arguments which are nothing, if they be
not critically true, are beaten on their own
ground ; and are vitiated by their authors'
misunderstanding of the questions in dis
pute, or by their misuse of their own
weapons. When certain results are known,
from other sources, to have followed from
the history of the New Testament, and to
be StiU of great influence in the world,
having been continued through an un
broken succession of believers, the pre
sumption becomes all the more strong,
that the history of the New Testament is
true. It is by some such argument, that

4 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
the truth of these Books may be estab
lished, apart from the witness to them of
any organized Society, or Church. The
documents can be accepted now on their
own merits, as historical evidence, like all
the other Greek and Eoman classics ; and
this gives them an independent force,
much greater than when they rested only
upon tradition and authority. They bear
witness to Christianity itself more decisively
than any Church ; but, merely as docu
ments, they do not speak as decisively as
we could wish about the controversies be
tween one form of Christianity and another.
Some people meet this difficulty, which
is the origin of all ecclesiastical disputes,
by saying that no form, no organization, is
required ; that Christianity is nothing but
a personal matter between each individual
and God. To such reasoners, it may be
answered, first, that this was not the view
of the Founder of Christianity. In his
discourses, especially in his parables, he
speaks of a definite and a lasting Society

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 5
in which his teaching is to be continued,
and by which it is to be spread. A great
part of his life was devoted to the educa
tion of its first members. In the writings
of these disciples, in the Acts and the
Epistles, w^e find such a Society existing ;
and a great deal more is told us about it,
than is usually remembered. It would be
difficult to find an ' higher ' or a more
mystical affirmation of the Church and its
prerogatives, than may be gathered out of
Saint Paul. The standard of church organ
ization recorded in the New Testament is
quite sufficient to rebuke sacerdotal ex
cesses, on the one hand, and to refute
sectarian defects on the other. More than
this, the opinion, that Christianity is no
thing but an individual concern, is not borne
out by the practice and belief of Christians,
from the first ages onward. In such an
essential matter, the opinion of the majority
counts for something. Moreover, the whole
teaching of history and experience is
against such a view. If Christianity be

6 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
not organized, it is utterly vain and in
effectual. As the purpose of its Founder
was to teach us the right service of man,
as well as the right service of God,
this is precisely what we should expect.
The experience of history confirms the
teaching of the New Testament. We must
remember, at the same time, that the
Founder of Christianity and his personal
followers confined themselves to broad
statements of principle. They seem to
have left an almost boundless freedom of
application and of detail.
These details have too often been raised
into questions of principle ; and have been
used as a pretext for divisions. The
unhappy question has, therefore, been
forced upon many people, ' What form of
Christianity shall I profess ? ' Or, ' If I
belong already to one form, why should I
remain in it, and not join another ? ' It
may be said at once, that differences
between Christians, when pushed to these
extremes, are utterly wrong. They are

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 7
entirely against the mind and wishes of the
Founder. They are by no means indiffer
ent. We all have our responsibility with
regard to them. Sooner or later, we may
all have to face it. No amount of use or
custom should make us indifferent to so
shameful and sorrowful a crime against our
Master, and our Brethren.
This question, about the form of Christi
anity, would not only be difficult for some
people to answer ; but their answer itself
would be more difficult, for some of them,
to justify. The question may be answered
best, perhaps, if we consider briefly, not
merely how the Bible has come down to us,
but how Christianity itself has come down to
us through the ages ; and how it has been
organized, or presented to mankind, in
various times and places. If we can grasp
that history, we shall have gone a long way
towards understanding the original ques
tion, if not of solving it. I must, however,
keep to the main lines or divisions of Christi
anity, and avoid all reference to side issues.

8 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Our religion began in Jerusalem, as a
Jewish sect ; and spread by degrees over
the towns of Syria. The chief agents in
spreading it were those men, whom we call
Apostles. Of these, we need only consider
one. Saint Paul. He carried Christianity
beyond the frontiers of Jud^a, and preached
it in the chief cities of the Empire : in
Antioch, the metropolis of Syria; in Cor
inth and Thessalonica, the two capitals of
Eoman Greece ; and finally in Eome herself,
the mistress of the European world. All
this was done within thirty-five years of the
Crucifixion. After about three centuries of
conflict with heathen Eome, Christianity
emerged as the dominant religion of the
Empire. It was then torn to pieces by
internal quarrels, about its own philo
sophy. During the next hundred and fifty
years. Christians were busy discussing the
natures of Christ, and the nature of God.
Their discussions were settled by Councils
of the whole united Church, and were
embodied in those two ancient Creeds,

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 9
which are still used by the Church of Eng
land, with one verbal change, and by the
Orthodox Greek Churches without any
change at all. At the period of the great
Councils and the Creeds, the supreme eccle
siastical government of the Church was
vested in four or five Patriarchs : of Jeru
salem, of Antioch, of Eome, of Alexandria,
of Constantinople. These Patriarchs were
all equal in rank, and they had co
ordinate powers. Each of them was inde
pendent of all the others, in his own district.
As Eome had been the cradle and capital of
the whole Empire, the Patriarch of Eome
naturally took precedence of the other Patri
archs ; but he had no authority over any of
them, nor over any of their people and
affairs. The Patriarch of Constantinople,
the modern capital, and the seat of govern
ment, was placed gradually and naturally
after the Patriarch of Eome, and before the
Patriarchs of older cities. He made some
efforts, indeed, to gain precedence ¦ over the
Patriarch of the ancient capital. The quar-

10 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
rels between these two Patriarchates led to
the gravest and saddest consequences for
the whole Church. All persons, clerical and
secular, owned the Supreme Headship of
the Eoman Emperors, both in civil and
ecclesiastical affairs. The civil power was
held, in the full Apostolic sense, to be ' or
dained of God.' The terms ' ecclesiastical '
and ' spiritual ' had not then been confused,
or merged, to the un-doing of the Church.
Neither in the ecclesiastical nor the civil
sphere was there any place for those claims,
which were made afterwards, and are made
still, by the Eoman bishops. They were as
foreign to the Patriarchal Church of the
first ages, as they are to the Apostolic
Churches of the New Testament. Dubious
as the New Testament may be, as to many
details of church polity, there can be no
doubt whatever that it excludes the very
notion of a Papacy ; unless, indeed, as some
think, the Papacy be aimed at in one dark
passage of Saint Paul, and in some lurid
chapters of the Eevelation. With these

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND U
possible exceptions, the Church in heaven,
as shown to us by Saint John, seems to have
known as little of the Papacy as was known
by the Apostolic Church on earth.
The next stage in church history was
brought about by the decay of the Eoman
power in the West, through the invasion of
the Barbarians ; and by the Mahometan
conquests in the East. By the latter.
Eastern Christendom was almost blotted
out. It persisted only in a diminishing area
round Constantinople, under the Greek
Emperors, until that place was taken by
the Turks in 1453. It is too generally
forgotten how much Europe and Chris
tianity owe to the long, heroic struggle of
the Byzantine Empire against the advance
of tyranny. Since the fall of Constanti
nople, until the growth of Eussia, the
Orthodox Greek Church has existed only
among small, scattered, semi-barbarous,
and enslaved communities ; and it has been
vitiated necessarily by their misfortunes
and defects : under the Eussian Empire, it

12 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
has become once more the national religion
of a vigorous and growing Power. It
probably has a great and beneficent future
in store for it. Sooner or later, it must be
enthroned again at Constantinople ; and,
from that old seat of authority and learn
ing, it may exercise a preponderating
influence over the whole of Christendom.
This Greek or Eastern Christianity was, to
our irreparable loss, cut off entirely from
Europe, at the beginning of the Middle
Ages, at the critical moment when the
modern nations were being formed. The
ambition and ignorance of the Western
Patriarchs were among the chief causes
of that miserable schism. The Orthodox
Greek Church has always used the writings,
or theology, of the great preachers and
teachers of the earlj^ centuries. It has
always used the original language in which
the New Testament was written, and the
Apostles preached. Its ritual has remained
unaltered for sixteen or seventeen hundred
years. In spite of its corruptions, it is

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 13
an invaluable witness to the organization
of Christianity, when it first entered into
official relations with the State. It bears
an equal witness against the four great
errors, or dangers, of the Church : against
Popish developments and aggressions ;
against sectarian innovations, and narrow
ness ; against clerical ignorance, and popu
lar superstition. Its virtues and its defects
are thus equally useful to the historian of
Christianity. In the Western half of the old Eoman
Empire, the Barbarian Franks and Germans
carried everything before them, during the
fifth century. The Eoman Emperor was
deposed, and his place was taken by a
Gothic Sovereign. Italy and aU the Western
provinces fell into disorder. The only
representative of the old order, who was
left, was the Eoman bishop ; and he soon
began to undertake civil responsibilities,
though always in dependence on the
Emperor, or his nominal representatives.
By degrees, Christianity won over the

14 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Barbarians, as it had won the Eomans.
In many places ; in Ireland, in Scot
land, in at least half of England ; it
had never been destroyed. The Celtic
Christians held fast to that Christianity,
which had been brought to them at some
immemorial time, in some unrecorded way ;
perhaps, by some of the personal followers
of Christ, or even by the greatest of the
Apostles. There are traditions and vague
records, which may indicate a journey by
Saint Paul into Spain, and perhaps even to
the shores of Britain. The break up of the
Celtic civilizations and commonwealths has
been almost as great a loss to European
Christianity, as the destruction and isola
tion of the Greeks. The tribal or clannish
organization of the Celtic Churches would
have been a perpetual corrective and pro
test against the aggressions of the mediseval
and feudalizing Papacy. From the old
Celtic sources, however, Christianity was
spread again over Holland, and Scandinavia,
and Switzerland, and Germany. Irish and

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 15
English missionaries were zealous and
successful in these labours. The Eoman-
ized Celts of Gaul kept their religion, and
soon managed to convert their conquerors.
Our own Anglo-Saxon ancestors, in the
South of England, were won over by
missionaries from Gaul and Eome. The
Scandinavians of the North-east, and the
English of Mercia, were converted from
Scotland. The West, or Wales and Corn
wall, had always remained Christian.
These three elements, or sources, of
Christianity ; the old British, or Welsh ;
the Irish, or Scotch ; the French and
Italian ; were a long while settling down
into one organized and united Church. It
is going much too far, to say that England
owes its Christianity to Eome. It is defy
ing history and law, to say that the English
Church is, or ever was, a dependency of
Eome. The Patriarch of the West, who
sent over a band of missionaries to Kent, in
597, where an opening had been prepared
for them by French influences, would not

16 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
hear of the title ' Universal Bishop,' which
was being aimed at by his brother of Con
stantinople. It is clear, from the strong
language he used, that he would never
have usurped it for himself, or for his
successors. The Itahan missionaries were,
indeed, as such, envoys of the Latin Pa
triarch ; but, as soon as Augustine had been
made a bishop in Gaul, he and his suffra
gans became the heads of free and indepen
dent Churches, subject only to the prevailing
laws of Christendom. Those laws, in the
seventh century, knew nothing of Papal
authority, as it was destined to grow in the
Middle Ages. They knew still less of modern
Papal attributes and claims. Even judged
by the laws and customs of the seventh cen
tury, the Church of the English People was
not subjected in any special way to the
Western Patriarch, merely because some of
their Sees were founded or restored by mis
sionaries who had been sent from Eome. In
our own days, many missionaries are sent
out from England; As long as they are

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 17
pioneers, they depend on the mother
country. As soon as they are successful and
strong enough to be organized into dioceses,
they gain all the rights and freedom of their
position. So it was, too, thirteen centuries
ago, when some of our ancestors were
newly won to Christ. Ever since then, the
Church of the English People has had an
unbroken corporate existence. The See of
Canterbury goes back more than two thirds
of the way towards the beginnings of Chris
tianity. We have now traced the progress of
Christianity from Jerusalem to Canterbury ;
through Greece and Eome ; through the
dim Celtic polities and peoples, who must
not be forgotten. We may see from what
sources, and through what organizations,
it came to be established among the Eng-
lish People ; who, to all these elements,
added a large infusion of their own sobriety,
stolidity, and sense. At the period w^e
have reached, the once undivided Church
of the whole Eoman Empire, acknowledging c

18 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
the Supreme Headship of the Emperor,
who summoned and presided over its general
Councils, making their decrees valid by his
approval, had separated into two hostile
branches. Their estrangement grew, as
the controlling and uniting power of the
Sovereign was weakened, and was finally
abolished in the West. We must now,
unfortunately, put aside the Greek Church
from our consideration. As a Church, it
had no influence on the formation of
Western Christianity ; though individual
Greeks did good service, here and there.
One of the most important of our own
Archbishops was a Greek from Tarsus.
The Greek language, the original New
Testament, the great masters in theology,
and above all the flexibility and fruitfulness
of the Greek spirit, were banished out of
Western Europe for more than a thousand
years. All true knowledge of Christian
antiquity was blurred. The remembrance
of the old Patriarchal constitution of the
Church was forgotten. The cruel and

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 19
crafty legal spirit of Pagan Eome was left
face to face with the ignorance and ferocity
of the Barbarian invaders. Out of these ele
ments, mediseval Christianity was evolved.
On these foundations, the mediaeval Papacy
was built. We may note in passing,
that, inJJie only centuries when the whole
Church was united, its ecclesiastical govern
ment may be described as a confederation
of independent Patriarchates. The centre
and bond of unity was the throne of Csesar,
who was the only Supreme Head on earth of
a Church containing many nations, using
many languages, and worshipping through
many diverse liturgies.
When the last Western Emperor was
removed, in 476, the Imperial Power was
exercised nominally from Constantinople,
through various legal or illegal representa
tives. Under Justinian, there was a glorious
revival; and then the West entered literally
upon the dark ages. They were ages of
disorder, of ignorance, of violence, of utter
misery. They cannot be painted too dark ;
C 2

20 THE M:E)SSAGE AND POSITION OF
and, except for about twenty years, under
the controlling hand of Charlemagne, they
lasted at their worst until the rise of Otho
the Great, or even till the civilization and
conquests of the Normans in the eleventh
century. In these dreadful times, our
modern nations were moulded, and Latin
Christianity was being organized. The
memory of Eome, as a source of authority
and law,, was not wholly lost. Men turned
to it in their weakness and despair. The
bishops of Eome were soon immersed in
temporal concerns, and soiled by the am
bitions and cares of government ; though
thejf still only exercised such duties as
representatives of the civil authority.
That, which began as a duty, soon became a
pleasure and a source of profit, then an object
of ambition and intrigue, and at last a right.
Much good, however, was done hj those
early bishops, especially by Gregory the
First, the best and greatest of the whole
succession. In him, the bishop was not
forgotten in the magistrate. He Avas a

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 21
theologian, and not a diplomatist. His
desire was not for temporal power, but for
souls and missions. The modern world
owes much to him. To no single body of
men does it owe so much, as to his mis
sioners, the Benedictines. They were the
great civilizers and teachers of those dark
ages. Through their good work, and also
through the prevailing darkness, the Latin
Patriarch, by causes which were not solely
ecclesiastical, obtained a growing influence
over the young nations of the West. It
was that influence, which even a low civili
zation obtains over barbarians, the rudest
law over an absence of any law, a Mother
Church over her missionary conquests. In
the centuries when Franks and Teutons
were being slowly gained to order and
religion, the Latin Patriarchs were laying
the foundations of the Papacy. If all the
Eoman bishops had been like Gregory the
First, their influence and position would
not have been misused. He protested
against the title of Universal Bishop. He

22 THE JIESSAGE AND POSITION OF
would have recoiled with horror from
the claims of Gregory the Seventh, and
still more from the attributes of Pius the
Ninth. In the East, during these centuries,
the victories of Islam were destroying the
old Patriarchal con-federation ofthe Church.
Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem were
lost to Christianity. Ephesus and aU the
flourishing Churches of Asia Minor were
ruined. The Patriarch of Constantinople
ministered to an ever decreasing area.
The Greeks came to be regarded as hardly
Christian. Through all these changes, the
old constitution of the Church was forgot
ten in the West. The Germanic nations
forgot, also, that the Latin Patriarch had
once had his peers. If he had not been
isolated, he never could have developed
the mediseval Papacy. Besides this, during
the eighth century, the Western Peoples
were preparing to re-establish the Imperial
polity and theory among themselves. They
had come to believe, that in the rule and
authority of Csesar, they might find a bul-

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 23
wark against oppression and disorder.
The Imperial theory did much to develop
the Papacy, because it increased the im
portance of Eome herself, and of her
bishops. At first, they were not the
masters, they were hardly the equals, of
Charlemagne, of Otho the Great, of the few
vigorous mediasval Emperors. In time, all
this was changed. The Popes of the
eleventh century, led by Gregory the
Seventh, challenged the Imperial Supre
macy. Their mischievous assumptions
date from the time when they began to
look upon their temporal possessions as
independent principalities, and upon them
selves as the superiors of all other Sove
reigns. Moreover, in the times preceding
Charlemagne, the ecclesiastical powers of
the Eoman bishops were developed ; and,
to support them, the claims of Saint Peter
began to be urged more tangibly and
systematically. The ecclesiastical cour
tesies of those ages became the customs of
the next ; and these, in their turn, grew

24 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
into necessary laws, and then into preroga
tives of the Holj'- See.
The spiritual power of the Eoman
bishops is based, ultimately, and solely,
upon that text of Saint Matthew, which
says, ' Thou art Peter, and on this rock I
will build my Church.' It is difficult,
indeed, to see, at first sight, what this
text has to do with Popes. A Protestant
might read it all his life, and never suspect
the least connexion. A Eomanist has the
connexion so ingrained into his thought,
that he cannot separate the words of the
gospel from his own preconceived opinion.
The connexion between Saint Peter and the
Popes is worked out thus. There is a
tradition, -for which there is not much
historical foundation, that Saint Pejter, was
crucified in Eome, about the year sixty-_
eight. This tradition grew into the story,
, that he was bishop of Eome for twenty-five
years, and that he handed on the prero
gatives, supposed to have been granted to
him by this text, and ])y other passages in

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 25
the Gospels, to his successors in the
bishoprick. For this part of the story,
there is no historical foundation at all.
It may be said at once, that the whole
theory, so far as dates are concerned,
breaks down hopelessly if we try to fit
it in with the only reliable dates, which
we have, in the Acts and the Epistles.
Whether Saint Peter was ever in Eome,
is a dubious question. There is not
evidence enough to prove, or to dis-prove,
it. The facts would seem to be against
his being bishop. As to the text of Saint
Matthew, not one of those early and great
authorities, whom we caU the Fathers,
interpreted this text in the modern Papal
sense ; and they are the only reliable
witnesses, whom we have, to the belief of
their own times. Not only with regard to
this text, but in treating the whole range
of Scripture and theology, they are
ignorant of the Eoman claims, and of the
prerogatives of Peter. The only one of
them who seems to look in that direction

26 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
is Irena3us ; and he can only be made a Papal
advocate by mis-translating an important
word ; by rendering eonvenire as ' must
be in concord with,' instead of ' must resort
to.' This is not only the common meaning
of convenire ; but it is borne out, in this
passage of Irenasus, by the context. What
he says is, that ' to this Church, (the
Eoman) because of its more influential or
stronger principality, {i.e. because of its
dignity and influence as the Capital) every
Church, that is to say, the faithful from all
parts, must resort ; and in it always, by
those who come to it from all quarters,
that tradition (or faith) which is from the
Apostles, is preserved ' ; and, therefore,
may be tested. In other words, the
common universal faith, qii,od uhique,
quod ah omnihus, may be tested in Eome ;
because all the Churches corresponded
with, or resorted to, the Capital. Eome
was not to teach them, as in. the Papal
theory. They were to keep Eome from
everything contradictory and strange. By

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 27
reversing this theory, the Papal doctrines
have become what they are ; and Eome,
instead of being corrected by the Churches,
has corrupted every Church in her com
munion. We may note in passing, that
Leo XHI., in a recent encyclical about
the Unity of the Church, mis-translates
the critical word in Irenasus ; and then
stops short in the middle of the sentence,
leaving out the explanation of Irenseus,
that the faith of Eome is to be kept pure
by the continual resort of the whole
Christian world to its then capital. This
omission is an infallible tribute to the
proper sense of convenire, and to the
real meaning of Irenseus ; because, without
that suppression, the mis-translation would
stultify itself. Saint Augustine, indeed,
confesses, that when he was young and
heedless, he applied the term ' this rock,'
in Matthew, to Saint Peter ; but, after
wards, he came to the settled conviction,
that the rock was Christ. Such an
indirect testimony proves that the Papal

28 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
theory was quite unknown to Augustine,
and to his age. The theory is contra
dicted, or rather excluded, by all that we
know of church history and government
during the early centuries. So convenient
a way of settling controversies would not
have been over -looked, had it been known,
in the stormy period of the early Councils.
It is difficult to believe, that the centre
and key-stone of the w^hole Christian
faith, according to the modern theory,
should be omitted from the New Testa
ment, and should even be excluded by so
much of it. Scripture, the Fathers, church
history, church organization, are all silent,
and are all decisive against the whole
Papal scheme, as well as against the Papal
interpretation of this text. To all these
witnesses, we may add the independent
wdtness of language and of grammar.
But what, then, it may be fairly urged,
is its meaning ? Has it any definite mean
ing, or no meaning at all? People often
say, in despair, if it does not mean that

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 29
Peter is the foundation of the Church, what
else can it mean ? The Fathers, our only
authority for the first ages, give many in
terpretations. Some, with Augustine, hold
that the ' rock ' is Christ. Others, with
better reason, as I think, understand the
' rock ' to be Christ's divinity, which Saint
Peter had been the first to own. More
important, perhaps, for us, in these days,
when we want to settle the meaning of
any passage, is an appeal to the indi
vidual words, taken in their philological
sense, and as used by writers of authority.
To this meaning, we should add the sense
of the words, taken in their context and
sentences, according to the strict rules of
grammar ; and the sentences must be read
as a lawyer would read them, excluding
every preconceived opinion, not going out
side the words, and reading nothing into
them. The words in question run thus in
Greek 2'v ei Trerpos, koI iirl ravTrj rfj ireTpa
OLKoBop.rjcrco /xou ttjv iKKkrj<Tiav. The test
words are irerpos and Trerpa. Uerpa means a

30 TIIE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
large and living rock, a great mass : Trerpos
means a small fragment of rock ; a frag
ment, it may be, detached from the larger
mass. neVpa and not Trerpos is obviously
the leading word. To proceed farther, the
pronoun Tavry inight conceivably be re
flexive in its meaning. It must, in any
case, refer to the ' nearer ' of two words ;
besides, the grammatical necessity, in this
case, obliges us to confine it to Trerpa. The
whole force of TavTy, then, falls on Trerpa.
If we translate the Greek words literally,
we may get in English, ' Thou art a frag
ment of rock ; and on this large [or living]
rock, I will build my Church ' : or, para
phrasing a little, we might say ' Thou art a
piece of the rock ; and on this living rock,
I will build my Church.' Speaking collo
quially, the force of i-rrl TavTy ttj Trerpa
might even be rendered as ' on this here
rock.' ndrpa cannot be made subordinate
to Trerpos, without violating the Greek.
The pronoun shows that Trerpa must be
referred to the person speaking, not to the

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 31
person spoken of, or spoken to. Even the
Latin hanc petram, not illam or istam,
forces us to the same conclusion. The
Trerpa, or living rock, must be Christ, the
person speaking ; and, from the context,
we may presume, that the term 'rock'
signifies here Christ's divinity, which must,
indeed, be the sole foundation of the Church
and its only barrier against the evil powers.
The word Trerpog, in Greek, is a common
noun ; and our Lord applied it to his disciple
Simon. As a proper name, it carried its
common meaning, and fixed that meaning
on Simon Peter. The general application
of the name is brought out by Peter's
history, and by the development of his
character. The particular application, in
this passage, may be referred to his con
fession of our Lord's divinity. The plain
accurate meaning of the Greek words bears
out thoroughly the best interpretation of
the Greek Fathers. If Greek had not been
lost to the Westerns, before the Papal inter
pretation became current, that interpreta-

32 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
tion could never have been read into this
very simple passage. As the Papal mean
ing was unknown to the Fathers, it is, and
always has been, repudiated by the whole
Greek Church. It could only have been
foisted, in the darkest ages, upon the un
learned Westerns, who did not even know
their Latin accurately. We must remem
ber, that, as, in Greek, Trerpos is a common
as well as a proper noun, the meaning of
the proper name Avas always clear. The
due relation between Trerpa and Trerpos
could not be obscured, even when Trerpos
was personified. In Latin, this distinction
is lost at once ; because there is no
common noun Petrus. There is only the
proper name. The Latins, therefore, in
their ignorance of Greek, were not able to
see the due proportion between Petrus and
petram. All their attention was directed to
the subordinate word Pe^rMs, instead of to the
leading word petram. They read the words,
indeed, as they are given by Saint Jerome :
Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 33
ecclesiam meam ; but they understood them,
as though they were : Tu es Petrus, et super
te Petrum aediftcaho ecclesiam mea,m. No
thing short of this manipulation of the
words will force the Petrine meaning into
them. Saint Matthew must be edited in
this way, if the Petrine application is to
hold good, even in the Latin. ' Thou art
Peter, and on thee, Peter, I will build my
Church ' : this is what the Papal rendering
comes to ; but it cannot be accepted as a
fair translation of the Latin, and still less of
the Greek original. The full Papal mean
ing requires a larger effort ; because,
though we force the Petrine application into
the words of the text, we are as far as ever
from hearing anything about the successors
of Peter. Indeed, taking the Greek words simply
as they stand, construing them grammati
cally, reading them with no bias, nor with
any preconceived opinion, reading nothing
into them, the natural conclusion would be,
surely, that, if Peter is to have, strictly

34 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
speaking, any successors, then every man,
who follows Peter, by making that same
confession, which Peter made, of Christ's
divinity ; and founds his life upon it, accord
ing to the Lord's conditions of membership in
liis Church ; is a successor of Peter, and is a
fragment of the rock. To every such man,
too, our Lord has given the keys of the
kingdom ; so far as his place in that
kingdom depends on his owm ruling of
himself, and his use of the divine privileges.
To narrow the application of the text, and
to confine it arbitrarily to a succession of
bishops, and to exalt them, solely on the
supposed meaning of these words, is in
truth a violent handling of documents,
for which the only justification would be
the most unmistakable warrant from the
beginning, certified by some exterior
CAadence. We not only have no such
warrant or witness, but all the evidence
looks the other way. The whole Papal
construction and exegesis of this text is only
to be equalled by some of the wild stories

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 35
in the ' Gesta Eomanorum.' It is based
on a tradition, which is as un-historical as
the donation of Constantine, or the stories
of the Three Kings and the Seven Champions.
It has no more weight in theology, than
any other wild mediseval legend has in
sober history. It is, however, the sole
foundation of the Papal system. All the
arguments for and against the Popes'
authority, and other Eoman developments,
come back at last to this one text, which
was mis-understood by the mediseval
theologians, and has to be mis-translated
or manipulated by the Ultramontanes.
In English, the text is meaningless, or
mis-leading. In French, it is nothing but
a trap for the unwary. In Latin, it is little
more than a jingle of words, to which the
clue was lost in the middle ages. The only
clue to it is the Greek, in which alone the
due relation between Trerpa and Trerpos can
be distinguished. The history of this text
is the earliest, as it is the most flagrant,
illustration of what happened to the
d 2

36 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF

Western Church A\iien all knowledge of the
Greek language and of Christian literature
had been withdrawn. Eenan speaks some
where of ' la divine ironie de Jesus.'
With all reverence, I can accept the phrase ;
as the truth of it is borne in upon me
w^henever I read some of the discourses to
the Pharisees. That irony alone would
make me disbelieve the Pope, when he
asserts, as he does by manipulating this
text in Latin, that the Church is founded on
a bad pun. That is, really, what is pro
claimed to the world from Saint Peter's
dome. The Greeks were preserved from
this enormity by their real knowledge of
the words, which do not lend themselves
in the original to any such mis-use. The
Papal Church is, indeed, founded on a mis
use of Scripture. The Church of Christ
must have a more sure foundation. If it
be not founded on his divinity, and on
nothing less, it could not have survived the
dark ages, and the ages of Papal tyranny ;

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 37
nor would it have any valid claim upon our
aUegiance. The Temporal Power of the Pope, and
his invasions of the Imperial Supremacy,
are based upon another fiction, which could
only have been made current in a time of
gross ignorance and credulity. By the
' Donation of Constantine,' as the legend
runs, that Emperor, when he was baptized
in Eome, left his Capital to the Popes, and
founded another at Constantinople. He
also granted various territories to the Popes,
including ' all the islands of the sea.'
Constantine did, of course, found a new
Capital ; but he was only baptized on his
death-bed, and not in Eome. The strangest
part of this legend is, that, apparently, the
Popes knew nothing of it until the days
of Pepin. This fiction, however, enforced
by innumerable wars, by a great deal of
most un-Christian diplomacy, and fortified
by some legacies, which were probably all
void in feudal law, is the sole foundation

38 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
for the Temporal Power, and the Sovereignty
of the Papal States. We must remember,
that many bishops, in the middle ages, were
Princes, with palatine authority and juris
diction ; as, for instance, the Prince
Bishops along the Ehine ; but all of them
acknowledged a feudal superior. The
bishop of Eome was enabled, through the
Papal fictions, to rebel against his Sovereign
the Emperor, to annex parts of his territory,
and finally to usurp the Imperial Supre
macy itself. Fortified by this new temporal
position, and still manipulating his Papal
claims, he went on to annex the old pre
rogatives of other bishops, and to invade
the freedom of all the national Churches, in
what had once been the Latin Patriarchate.
Although the Patriarch no longer had any
peers, to check his innovations, there was
some remembrance of earlier freedom, and
of ancient law, among the various national
Churches, rude and ignorant as they had
become. To bear down this opposition,
other fictions were devised ; and a series of

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 39
gross forgeries, though manufactured for a
very different purpose, was adopted and
used for the advantage of the Popes.
Archives, also, were discovered in Eome,
as they were needed, asserting the Papal
authority, against all the former laws and
customs of the Church. Canons and Acts
of early Councils were forged for the same
purpose, and in the same clumsy way.
Letters of early Popes were manufactured,
to bear out these fictitious laws and canons.
Passages of the Fathers were invented, and
interpolated into their text. In other cases,
by manipulation, or by still bolder omissions,
passages, which were really dead against
the Papal claims and innovations, were
made to witness in their favour. These
various documents, which were known
finaUy as the ' Forged Decretals,' began to
be circulated about the middle of the ninth
century. They had become authoritative
before the middle of the tenth. An
hundred years later, they were introduced
into the Canon Law, and were accepted as

40 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
the fundamental constitution of the Western
Church. Thomas Aquinas, in holiest
ignorance, though with some suspicion
about details, admitted them into/ his
theology. These forgeries were so clumsy,
that, when learning revived, their origin
was betrayed : they defeated their own
purpose, and are a clear witness to the
aggressions by Eome upon the old rights
and freedom of the national churches. The
only apology for them is, that, if the
Papal claims had not some real foundation,
these forgeries could never have been made
current. This apology does not really
meet the facts. Every one of the Papal
claims appears to have been resisted at
some time, or in some place. The whole
body of them is contrary to the old canons
of the Church. But the conservative
churchmen were never united against the
innovator. The civil and ecclesiastical
authorities never made a common league
against the usurper. The lower clergy
were made use of to curtail the ancient

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 41
powers of the bishop. Bishops' grievances
or appeals were used to humble the
metropolitans. The Eegular Clergy were
made use of to weaken the bishops, and to
damage the old parochial and diocesan
machinery. Kings and churchmen were
played one against the other, to the
lowering of both. Nations and Sovereigns
were set by the ears, for the advantage of
the Papacy. In all this, there was of
course some deliberate mis-doing ; but it
was, on the whole, only the natural
development of a centralizing Power.
The error is in supposing it was based on
supernatural or divine authority. Putting
the forgeries on one side, the Papacy
developed at the expense of the national
Churches, just as the Parisian monarchy
developed at the expense of the local
Parliaments in France, and of aU the other
old authorities in that kingdom. It is true,
no doubt, that the bishop of Eome would
have enlarged his authority, to some extent,
without the help of the False Decretals.

42 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
It is equaUy true, I think, that the career
of Gregory VII., and the Papacy • of
Innocent IIL, were only made possible by
these outrageous frauds. It was the system
of those Popes, and the theology evolved
from it, which enabled their successors to
put off the Eeformation until the Church
was forced into a revolution. And, worse
than all, the Jesuit theologians of the
counter-Eeformation accepted these for
geries, knowing them to be false, as the
basis of the Tridentine Papacy. The great
mediseval theologians had, at any rate, so
far as we can tell, accepted most of them in
ignorance and good faith.
Their good faith, however, did not save
their ignorance from serious blunders in
theology. Doctrine was corrupted, as well
as discipline, in the middle ages. In the
ninth century, there began to be disputes
about the nature of the Eucharist, and the
prevailing opinion became more and more
material. The early Church believed the
real presence of Christ in the Sacrament.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 43
His presence was all the more real, because
it was held to be spiritual, not carnal and
material. The belief of the early Church
rested on the word^ of institution, on the
words of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, and
on the discourses of Christ given in the
sixth chapter of Saint John. The primitive
belief is held still in all the Eastern Churches,
and it is laid down by the English formu
laries. The Eoman authorities of the
thirteenth century, being equally ignorant
of Greek, of Christian antiquity, of natural
science, and of metaphysics, took upon
themselves to explain, or define, the mode of
Christ's presence in the Sacrament. Their
definition is ktiown as Trans-substantia
tion. It formulates a carnal and material
view of the Sacrament, which seems to be
incompatible with primitive belief. The
Anglican article obliges us to hold, that it
' overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament.'
It also teUs us, that it ' cannot be proved
by holy writ,' and 'is repugnant to the
plain words of Scripturd.' More than this,

44 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
it ' hath given occasion to many supersti
tions.' This doctrine, long before it was
defined by the Lateran Council, had led
to an increase of what we should now
describe as clericalism. It was connected
Avith those notions, which caused the great
battle for clerical celibacy ; and led to those
vast pretensions, adopted and fostered by
Gregory VIL, which made the clergy into
a caste altogether separate from the laity,
and were the pretexts for abominable wars
between the ecclesiastical and civil Powers.
It may be said, on the whole, that this
doctrine lay at the root of all those cor
ruptions, abuses, and usurpations which
finaUy brought on the Eeformation. Nor
did its evil effects end there. Opposition
to it, or to popular abuses of it, drove
some of the Eeformers into denying every
kind of real presence, spiritual as well as
carnal. Trans-substantiation and the real
presence are by no means the same. To
deny Trans-substantiation need not imply
any denial of the real presence, as the

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 45
Eomanists assert : nor does the disproof of
Trans-substantiation establish that real
absence, which other controversialists seem
to long for. Such advocates seem to be
ignorant of what Luther, and even Calvin,
said about the Eucharist.
We may now sum up shortly a few
Eoman developments, which were made
possible only through the ignorance of the
middle ages ; by that rudeness and disorder
which prevailed in the w^hole West, except
among the happy Arabians of Spain, when
the Papacy came into being. In 680, in
spite of the w^arnings of Gregory the Great
and Good, Pope Agatho usurped the title
of ' Universal Patriarch.' In 752, Pope
Zachary began to send out Legates. In 840,
the False Decretals were published. Twenty
years later, they were used by Nicholas I.
to lessen the power of Archbishops. In
1050, celibacy was imposed upon all persons
in holy Orders. In the same year. Inter
dicts began : a new encroachment on the
laity. In 1061, Alexander II. claimed the

46 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
right of confirming the appointment of all
bishops : that is, he claimed a veto on all
elections. In 1066, monasteries were ex
empted from episcopal visitation and con
trol. In 1059, the election of Popes, which
had been the right of the whole Eoman
People, was usurped by the Cardinals ;
and in 1100, the laity were excluded from
electing any bishop. In 1073, Gregory VII.
began to reign. He had long ruled ;
and his public life was an unceasing battle
with the civil Power. His pretext was the
investiture of the clergy with the tempor
alities of their office. In reality, he was
fighting for the supreme Power, as against
the Emperor, and for the Sovereignty of
the Papal States. In 1076, he A'^entured
to depose the Emperor. It was he, who
made the clergy into a sacred caste ; and
who said that the ' secular power was from
the Devil ' : thus differing from Saint Paul,
who said it was ' of God.' In effect, he
turned what had been the old Latin
Patriarchate into a rigid feudal organiza-

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 47
tion, of which the Pope was not only the
ecclesiastical head, but was to be the
temporal lord, so far as church property
and clerical persons were concerned. The
result of all this- was, that lay tribunals
were forbidden at last to deal with clergy
men. In 1200, Innocent III. went on to
attack the Sovereigns of Europe, by assert
ing that several of them were his vassals in
reality, and all of them in theory. In his
age. Crusades were ordered against Chris
tian people ; and the Inquisition was
established. As the exemption of monas
teries had broken into the old rights and
discipline of bishoprics, so the institution of
the Friars, amenable only to the Pope, and
with their Generals resident in Eome,
broke into the old parochial organization,
to the grievous damage of the people, of
the clergy, and CA^en tually of morals. The
Popes claimed, finally, to over-ride all
clerical elections, and all rights of patron
age ; to tax at their will the clergy and
church property of all nations, and to

48 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
summon all business, that was important or
profitable, to Eome. To the Church itself,
the theologians attributed the most out
rageous prerogatives and powers. It was
literally, in their treatises, ' fuU of names
of blasphemy.' All these attributes and
powers were given to, or came from, the
Pope, who was the Church personified.
His was, indeed, ' a mouth speaking great
things.' He was the sole dispenser of
salvation, and the source of law : In his
breast, were the oracles of God. Without
his approval, the Scriptures themselves were
of no authority, and all the commandments
of God were void. This is what the
mediseval Papacy had come to, when it
culminated under Boniface VIIL, at the
Jubilee of 1300. It rested upon nothing
more solid than a mis-reading or manipu
lation of the eighteenth verse of the six
teenth chapter of Saint Matthew. The
mis-reading was only possible because all
true knowledge and use of Greek had been
lost The vast structure built on that mis-

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 49
reading was only possible because the Greek
Fathers and theology had been forgotten,
and the old organization of the Church had
been obliterated, in memory as Avell as
fact. This Papal system was produced by
the cruel and crafty spirit of Pagan Eome,
taking advantage of disorder, professing
Christian formulse, and deluding the ignor
ance of our barbarian fathers.
Eome herself, the supposed centre of
light and order, was a scene of ignorance
and crime, almost incredible. For nine
hundred years, a great historian tells us,
' not a single work of any importance ' was
composed there ; that is, from the time of
Gregory the Great, onwards. Twenty-four
Papal wars may be enumerated in the
middle ages ; and the Papacy was bought
oftener than it was battled for. The old
severity of penance was commuted into
money payments ; and, by the ninth
century, the whole system of religion had
assumed a financial character. The Eoman
clergy expected a payment for every

60 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
service, and an elaborate system of per
quisites and fees grew up. The laity were
forbidden to speak on matters of faith, even
in private, and among their families ; and
inquisitorial delators were as busy as
they used to be under the worst Emperors.
The old common church property was
annexed by the clergy, and distributed into
benefices. The rights of the laity were
ignored, and the clergy monopolised aU.
Side by side with these clerical abuses
were the wars and violences of the great
Eoman families. The Popes themselves
were, too many of them, such men as
John XIL, and his bewildering family ; who,
in the tenth century, anticipated their
greater successors of the Eenaissance.
From Gregory the First in 590 to Sylvester
the Second in 999, few indeed of the Popes
were both good and famous. Of such
Popes as Gregory VIL, and Innocent IIL,
we must own, with Gibbon, that their
virtues, rather than their vices, were
dangerous to mankind.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 51
The histories of Germany, of North
Italy, and of France, with all their crusades,
interdicts, and breaches of civil order, are
almost more wretched than the history of
Eome herself. The clerical immunities
led to the worst results. Monastic disci
pline became more and more relaxed. The
higher clergy gave themselves almost
wholly to political affairs, as some of the
Eeligious Orders did to business. Almost
every law could be dispensed from, at a
fixed rate. Divorce, though not allowed
in theory, was easy and was frequent.
With licences for clerical concubinage, it
produced a comfortable revenue. Worse
than aU, the assumption of the Popes, to
dispense from oaths and treaties, relaxed
the foundations of political morality and
public faith. This w^as not a form of
arbitration, of release from obsolete or im
possible conditions. It was the relieving
of one party to an agreement, without the
consent or knowledge of the other.
The mediseval Papacy fell to ruin with
E 2

52 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Boniface VIIL For some years, a succes
sion of nominal Popes was a tool in the
hands of the French monarchy. Then
there followed a period of disorder when
two, and at last three, claimants professed
at once to be true bishops of Eome. ' The
councils of Basle and Constance vindicated
the old and constitutional supremacy of
the assembled Church ; but they tried in
vain to deal with the question of reform.
In this, Eome always blocked the way.
When the Popes were restored to their
own bishopric, they soon forgot they were
bishops, and devoted all their resources to
enlarging the Papal States by diplomacy
and conquest, or to diminishing them for
the establishment of their sons and nephews.
By the end of the fifteenth century, the
Popes were regarded as little more than
Italian princes, struggling with their rivals,
in that unhappy country, for territories
and influence : but, as an advantage in the
struggle, drawing enormous revenues from
ecclesiastical property all over Europe, and

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 63
from their legal machinery in Eome. Their
old spiritual weapons were Uttle thought of,
anywhere. In Italy, they were of no ac
count at all. The successors of Peter had
not only snatched the forbidden sword,, but
the purse of Judas. The sword and purse,
and not the mysterious keys, had become
the real supporters of the triple crown.
And so we come to the century of the
Eeformation. We have now surveyed the thousand
and odd years of Popery, from the break
up of the old united Church and Empire,
to the beginning of the sixteenth century.
We may see, first, the damage caused to
Europe by the loss of the Greek language,
and the Greek Church. We may see, next,
the damage caused both to States and
Churches by the abolition of the old
Supreme Head, the Emperor ; and the
usurpation of his office and authority by
an ecclesiastical PoAver. That this eccle
siastical Power was more ' spiritual ' and
Christian than the civil power ' ordained

54 TIIE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
of God,' I fail to see. Such a notion seems
to me incompatible with the Christianity
of the Apostles, as recorded by the whole
New Testament ; and the logical conclusion
of its principle is nothing less than the
dictum of Hildebrand, that ' the civil
power is of the devil.' That doctrine,
sometimes expressed, , and always under
stood, gives us a clue to the history of the
mediseval Church. Most of its miseries ,-
and wars were caused by men who tried
to enforce that doctrine : most of its
corruptions were caused because it was
enforced successfully. Except in a few
flagrant instances, I refrain altogether from
imputing bad motives to the agents in this
clerical usurpation. Deliberate frauds, no
doubt, were committed at Eome, by some
of the Popes, or by their officials. Inno
cent IIL, and even Gregory VIL, were
not bad men. They were grievously
mistaken, and are examples of high gifts
and powers misapplied. But, while not
thinking harshly of their characters and

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 65
motives, I feel constrained to hold, with
Gibbon, that they, and not such Popes as
John XII. and XXIII., or as Alexander VI.
and the more abominable Sixtus LV.,
were the most dangerous enemies of
mankind. If the principles of mediseval
Catholicism had been sound, such Popes as
Alexander would be no more an argument
against it, than bad Kings and corrupt
Parliaments would be an argument against
our Constitution. As that Catholicism is
unsound, this line of argument is in
applicable. The ' genius ' of Eome herself,
if we may so describe it, was bad. It was
cruel, crafty. Pagan, legal, not reaUy
Christian at all ; and these qualities were
leavened by that stiU more anti-Christian
element, which we may describe too
loosely, but understand very well, as
' Clericalism.' It was this, which took
advantage of the prevailing ignorance,
' to deceive the nations ' ; and we cannot
separate mediseval Catholicism from its evil
and inspiring ' genius.' On the one

66 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
hand, it set up a tyranny, as against the
laity and the civil Power : on the other
hand, fortunately, it fell a victim to its
own avarice : it set up everything to sale ;
and so damaged its credit, and the value
of its commodities. By these proceedings,
however, it caused irreparable damage to
religion, as well as to private and political
morality. The truth and justice of the
Latin races still suffer from that long
corruption. To form an equitable notion
about the mediseval Church is neither an
easy nor a simple matter. We have been
presented with too many extreme notions,
from both sides. It would be difficult to
say which extreme has done more harm.
A fair notion can only be gained by a vast
number of independent and scattered facts,
gathered from many sources, some direct,
some indirect, varying much in kind and
value, but all converging in the same
direction, and all uniting at last into a
great and solid mass of evidence, which
must be accepted, if we are to accept

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 57
anything in history. Sift it, minimise it,
make every allowance for error and ex
aggeration, every aUowance for prejudice
or half-knowledge in our own times, and
for credulity or malice in the past, enough
remains to form a case, which cannot be
substantially altered by ourselves. That
was the case with which the Eeformers
had to deal. It formed then, and. it
forms now, a terrible indictment against
the Eoman Church, against its origin, its
development, its institutions, its principles,
and its effects. These broad and fair
conclusions of history may not be accept
able to modern Eomanists, or to their
sympathizers ; but, if they be not accepted,
then the best theologians of the fifteenth
century, and the ecclesiastical authorities
of the sixteenth, by their actions, by their
own language about the nature and
necessity of a reform in discipline, were
themselves the authors of a deliberate and
monstrous libel against the whole body
of the clergy, a,nd especially against the

58 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Court of Eome. I leave their successors
and apologists to take whichever alter
native they choose.
But, putting morality and church
government on one side, the most serious
charge against the whole mediseval Church,
so far as we in this nineteenth century are
concerned, may be brought to a much
simpler test, and one not open to dispute.
The mediseval Church did not know either
Testamentin the original. It knew nothing
of the times and circumstances in which
either Testament came into being, or to
which it referred. It was equally igno
rant of the letter and the spirit. It knew
just as little of the sub-apostolic age,
and of Christian antiquity. Its only
knowledge of the Fathers was through
translations ; and they, to a large extent,
were spurious or tampered with. It only
knew some of the chief Acts and Canons of
the more important Councils in mis-trans
lations, or through forgeries. It had
forgotten many of the laws and the whole

THE CHUECH OF .ENGLAND 59
organization of the ancient, united Church ;
and it outraged most of those laAVS, which it
had not forgotten. Its own system was
built up on forgery, and tyranny, and
fraud ; and it culminated, quite logically
from such premisses, in the Papacy of
Boniface VIIL, with all his monstrous
claims and attributes. Would any man,
or any body of men, with such credentials,
be accepted as of the least authority, in this
age of ours, for any science, or any branch
of learning ? Yet this is, precisely, the
case of the mediseval Church. It is out of
court, as an authority, solely on the plea
of ignorance. This ignorance was not the fault of
individuals ; nor, altogether, of institutions :
it was a misfortune inherent in those
conditions, through which the mediseval
Western Church and nations were passing,
after the break up of the Empire, and their
separation from the East. Not only were
the language, literature, and polity of the
Greek Churches lost, but the freshness.

60 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
freedom and flexibility of the Greek spirit
were lost as well. This loss was almost
equally fatal, both to the mediseval Papacy,
and to those Eeformers, who left Eome in the
sixteenth century, without having felt the
Greek revival. Western Europe, composed
of young and barbarous Peoples, was shut
up within itself, for nearly a thousand
years, with only a debased form of Latin,
and a few scattered shreds of knowledge,
as its only inheritance from the great past.
Naturally, in this ignorant isolation, its
point of view was narrowed and distorted.
All sense of proportion and connexion was
destroyed. Every true standard of judgment
and comparison was removed. Those ages
could only look at the past through them
selves, and their own experiences. They
applied this curious and wrong perspective
to every species of knowledge : to their
theology, no less than to their science
and their history. Hence that strange
mingling of Christianity and the classics,
which we find in Dante ; and still more.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 61
in some of Dante's predecessors, who
combined with it the wilder mythology of
Scandinavians and Celts. It was through
this wrong perspective, that Virgil came to
be held for a magician ; and that no
difference was perceived between history
and legend. It was the same in all the
arts ; and we can still realize it in early
paintings. Most outrageous of all was it
in philology, and most fatal in its results.
The heroes of Greece and Eome, the
characters of the Old and New Testaments,
wore the clothes and spoke the language
of the middle ages. They were made to use
mediseval terms ; and mediseval meanings
were attached to their genuine words and
thoughts. History, philosophy, theology,
the Holy Scriptures themselves, all wore a
mediseval dress, and were regarded from
the mediseval point of view. The earth and
the whole material universe were limited in
the same way. The mediseval point of
view is full of interest, and is perpetually
charming ; but, we must allow for it, when

62 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
we pass on to serious criticism. We must
not let it bias or dominate our own know
ledge of the past. We all have allowed
for it, and escaped from it, in classical
history and literature. We have by no
means all escaped from it in theology, or in
church government. Nor shall we escape,
until we realize that the Papal claims, the
donation of Constantine, and aU that
depends on them, are precisely on the same
level, and of as much or as little value,
as any other mediseval interpretations of
history and the classics.
It is to this bounded mediseval view,
however, that some of us, even in these
days, venture to appeal against the formu
laries and laws of our own Church. Such
reasoners set up the childish, and immoral,
and bounded medieval Church as the mea
sure, or the sole standard, of their Catho
licity : whereas, it is, in truth, a barrier, still
interposed, in spite of the Eeformation,
between ourselves and the true Church.
As a true knowledge of antiquity has been

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 63
recovered from its writings and remains, so
a knowledge of the true Christianity is to
be recovered ; and in the same way, by
leaving spurious documents, legends, prac
tices, and institutions, and going straight to
genuine writings and remains. Until the
true nature and development of the medi
seval Church and theology be understood,
we shall never cease to be disturbed by those
who are frightened or deceived through its
fictitious and phantom claims. The medi
aeval Church had not, in truth, the least
authority to speak on any of those subjects,
which it decided with so much arrogance
and certainty. Its claim to speak through
the Pope is only founded on a mis-reading
of Saint Matthew. As it outraged or
ignored the old constitution of the Church,
it could have no legal authority in discipline
or government. As it had no first-hand
knowledge of Scripture, of antiquity, ofthe
Fathers, it could not possibly decide ques
tions of theology. Its decisions about the
Eucharist are of themselves enough to

64 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
expose its incompetence : to them, we may
add all the popular errors and corruptions
which it circulated or winked at. Being
mis-led itself, it mis-led Newman and his
followers. They accepted the mediseval
Church a great deal too easily, and at its
own valuation. Since their time, we have
learnt to apply a very different standard of
knowledge to constitutional history, and to
philosophy. Standards at least as high and
accurate should be applied to the theology
and church history of the middle ages. If
the Church and theology of the middle ages
will not meet those tests, they must be repu
diated : not for the sake of theories, or nega
tive conclusions ; but in the interests of
older and purer forms of Christianity ; and
of Scripture itself, w^hich has borne, and wiU
bear, the most exacting tests. The Church
of England is in some danger from an out
break of mediseval ignorance and supersti
tion ; but the danger ofthe English -speaking
Churches is nothing, compared to the dark
ness and dangers that encompass Christian-

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 65
ity itself, in all those Latin countries, whicli
suffer from a developed and an aggravated
form of these mediseval fictions. It is still
their hour, and the power of darkness.
But we may now leave these unpleasing
and melancholy subjects for a while, and
turn away from them to the history of our
own Church, until we have brought it
down to the century of the Eeformation.
In the year 597, Augustine, and a small
band of missionaries, sent by Gregory I.,
arrived in Kent, and persuaded Ethelbert,
the king, to adopt and tolerate Chris
tianity. Their success had been prepared
by Ethelbert's French and Christian wife.
Augustine returned to France, and was
there made into a bishop. Soon after, the
diocese of Canterbury was founded ; and,
from that foundation, the Church among
the English people has had a corporate and
constitutional existence, which has never
ceased, in spite of many dangers and
vicissitudes. After long struggles and
many reactions, Christianity made its way

66 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
into all the English kingdoms. The Eng
lish Christians had a conflict as well with
those large bodies of Celtic Christians,
who remained in Cornwall, in Wales and
Cumbria, and along the Scottish border.
The whole conflict w^as ended practically in
664, at the conference of Whitby ; and, a
few years later, under the good guidance
of Archbishop Theodore, the various ele
ments of Scottish, British, and English
Christianity were organized into a single
Church. This was nearly an hundred and
fifty years before the different Saxon and
Celtic monarchies were formed into an
united kingdom of South Britain, or Eng
land. The unity of the British peoples, as
a Church, helped to bring about their unity
as a nation. The English Church, in its
national capacity, is older than the Crown of
England, and is nearly six hundred years
older than the English Parliament.
Between the year 668, and the Norman
Conquest in 1066, the English Church went
on its way quietly, and on the whole use-

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 67
fully. It reared some good administrators,
and some scholars of European fame. The
Venerable Bede should never be forgotten,
as an honour to Enghsh learning in the
darkest of the middle ages. The next
century produced Alfred, one of the best
and greatest of all Kings. There was much
personal devotion to the relics and shrines
of Eome ; and this devotion was made use
of to extend the Pope's authority. Pious
frauds, as well as legal frauds, were pressed
into the service of the Papacy. The devo
tion of the English took the form of pil
grimages to Eome, and of offerings to the
Eoman shrines. An hostel was built in
Eome for English pilgrims ; and was en
dowed, first by alms, and then by a small
tax. Oblations of wax were also made, for
lighting the churches of the martyrs.
These contributions were annexed by the
Pope, and finally exacted as a tribute,
under the name of Peter's pence. The
official and ecclesiastical connexion with
Eome w^as much less than modern Eoman- !• 2

68 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
ists care to realize, and much more than
some Anglicans like to admit. The bishop
of Eome exercised the constitutional powers
of a Patriarch. In the seventh century, he
had not transformed those powers out oi
recognition. Papal powers, in the modern,
and even in the later medieval sense, were
as yet unknown. Thanks to our distance
from Eome, and our estranging sea. Papal
encroachments, both against the Crown
and the Church, were fully developed in
France and Germany before they obtained
a footing here. The English Kings exer
cised the Eoyal Supremacy. Even so late
and scrupulous a king as Edward the
Confessor used the title 'Vicar of Christ.'
Bishops might be appointed without any
reference to the Pope. The Councils of the
English Church had the utmost freedom of
action and discussion, saving always the
Supremacy of the Crowm. The English
clergy were national and free. In spite oi
periodical agitation by innovators, and so-
called reformers, it w^ould seem that most

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 69
of the parochial clergy were married ; as,
too, in many cases, were some of the canons
and members of coUegiate bodies. We
find the King, the nobles, and the bishops
discussing both discipline and doctrine.
There were no separate church courts.
The bishop sat in the ordinary courts,
by the earl. The clergy were subject
to the laAvs and customs of the realm. The
old Church of England was thoroughly
national, and wonderfully free from cleri
calism. It was the Church of the People,
and was not dominated by the clergy. It
went through many trials in the long
Danish wars, and it emerged from them, as
the nation did, more braced than hurt.
Both in Church and State, the English
People went on steadily in their own way,
until the eleventh century, being affected
very little by those clerical changes or
developments, which were bearing fruit in
other countries, and especially in France.
The independence and isolation of the
English Church were looked upoii with

70 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
disfavour by the advancing Papacy ; and
the Pope did not fail to utilize the Norman
expedition for his own advantage. The
Conqueror received the Papal blessing, and
a sacred banner. If the term had been
invented then, as it was a few years later,
the assault on England would have been
known as a crusade. This is what it was,
in effect, so far as ' the Eoman authorities
were concerned ; and the proof of it is, that
Gregory VII. asked the Conqueror for
homage and tribute, both as his feudal
superior, and in repayment for his support.
William refused the homage ; because,
as he said, ' neither have I promised it, nor
do I find that m}^ predecessors did it to
yours.' One result of the Conquest was to
make the English Church less national, and
more clerical. It was modelled after the
prevailing continental fashion. The eccle
siastical courts were separated from the
civil ; but the ordinance, which separated
them, and established the church courts,
runs solely in the King's name, and rests

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 71
only on his authority. Neither in theory,
nor in practice, did WiUiam aUow the
Eoyal Supremacy to be invaded. Never
theless, the Conquest marks a new stage in
the connexion of England with the Papacy.
It was made the basis for new encroach
ments. Through the weakness of some
Kings, the necessities of others, and the
quarrels between Kings and clergymen, the
Papal Supremacy invaded the Eoyal Supre
macy, and the ancient liberties of the
English Church, between the Conquest and
the Eeformation. In the thirteenth cen
tury, it made very serious, and almost
successful, efforts to abolish the liberties of
the whole nation.
The separation of laity and clergy, and
the exemption of the clergy from Eoyal
Authority, led to serious abuses. Henry II.
tried to make all men equal before the Law,
and amenable to justice. He was opposed
by one class of his subjects. Through the
accident of Becket's death, the resistance
of the clergy was successful. That one

72 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
class, which should be punished more
severely than any other for serious offences,
secured their privilege of being criminals
not amenable tp ordinary Law. They pre
ferred to live under a system, in which
dispensations were the rule, and by which
fees were exacted instead of punishments.
Such immunities, as Becket claimed, were
unknown in England before the Conquest.
The abuses caused by this supposed victory
of the clergy led, more perhaps than any
other single cause, to the greater conflict
of the Eeformation. The principles of
Becket were the source of intolerable abuses,
and all his arguments have been falsified
by long experience. The principles of
Henry II. are approved and practised in
every civilized country now, without any
danger to religion, or any injustice to the
clergy. The final victory is with Henry II. ,
and the Laws of England. The immediate
victory of Becket only proved, that nothing
is more disastrous for a State, and still
more for a Church, than a clergy which

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 73
considers itself above or outside the Com
mon Law.
One Pope had licensed the Norman
conquest. Another gave Ireland to
Henry II. The necessities of Eichard I.,
and the mis-rule of John, both added to
the Papal influence in England. John,
while trying to enslave his People, made
himself a vassal of the Pope, and England
a fief of the Holy See. He had no consti
tutional right to do either. Innocent IIL,
instead of rebuking John for violating his
coronation oath, accepted the illegal dona
tion, and sent over a Legate to receive it in
due form. He always took the part of
John, against the English People and their
liberties. He condemned Magna Charta,
as wrong in itself, and as rebeUion against
his own illegal rights. John was released
from all the engagements he had entered
into with his People. In all the puzzling
changes of those years, the only constant
element of Papal policy seems to be a dis
regard of all principle. The rights of the

74 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
English People were ignored ; and the
so-called spiritual arbiter judged the whole
case solely from the standpoint of his own
temporal advantage. By the irony of fate,
it is only in countries, which have been
formed by this offending Charter, that the
adherents of the Pope are now free from
undue State control, or from violent poli
tical hostility.
During the minority of Henry IIL, im
mense efforts were made to extend the
Papal tyranny, not only over ecclesiastical,
but over temporal, affairs. It was through
no negligence of the Popes, that England
did not sink into a vassal dependency of
Eome. We were saved by the vigour of
the Barons, and the patriotism of a few
bishops. Among these, Langton the
Primate, Cantilupe of Worcester, and
Grosseteste of Lincoln, should always be
remembered ; as well as Hubert de Burgh,
and Simon Earl of Leicester. All these men,
and their supporters, at various periods of
Henry's long reign, defended the liberties

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 75
of England, against the Crown and the
Papacy. In the reign of Henry, a tribute
was demanded from the whole kingdom,
by the Pope, as feudal superior. As Head
of the Church, he claimed the power of
taxing ecclesiastical persons and property.
The power of appointing to benefices was
claimed also by the Pope, and he gave
or sold them continually to foreigners.
Benefices were also taxed heavily at every
change of occupant. Friars, with special
licences and powers. Were allowed to carry
on their trade in every parish, in spite of
the bishops and the parochial clergy. The
Monasteries were not only withdrawn from
episcopal control, but they were allowed
to appropriate livings ; and they provided
inefficiently, if they provided at all, for the
cure of souls. Pardons for almost any
crime, and exemptions from every obliga
tion, were to be obtained for money.
Papal collectors were over here continually,
arranging these financial matters, and ex
porting their profits to the Eoman Court.

76 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
To that Court, also, went innumerable
appeals ; as all serious and paying business
was gradually withdrawn to the Papal
Curia. This state of things began, for
England, with the reign of Innocent IIL,
and it lasted at its height until Boniface VIII.
By that time, the Papacy had made itself
intolerable. The French King ruined
Boniface ; and the Popes were then fully
occupied with rival claimants for their See.
In England, a strong anti-papal opposition
was roused and organized, and it never
died away. It is recorded in the Statutes
of the Eealm, and on the EoUs of Parlia
ment. Meanwhile, the discipline and
morals of the mediseval Church in England
were destroyed, by that period of Papal
usurpation ; and the Eeformation was only
a work of time. It was deferred by the
hundred years war with France, and then
by our dynastic wars. But for these, the
Papacy and the Eeligious Orders would
probably have been dealt with before the
sixteenth century.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 77
In 1273, the Statute of Mortmain was
passed, to check the accumulation of mon
astic property in land. In 1351 and 1353,
Statutes were passed to restrain the worst
abuses of Papal patronage, and to check
Eoman advances on the jurisdiction of
the English courts. The speculations of
Wyclif, the numbers and activity of his
disciples, the revolt of the labourers, the
petitions in Parliament, all point to the dis
content of the country, to its supposed
causes, and to the nature of the remedy.
From the time of Wyclif, Eeformation was
in the air ; not only in England, but in
many parts of Europe, in those especially
where the Hussites carried Wyclif's teach
ing into practice. The satire of Piers
Plowman is a witness to the feeling of
England at the close of the fourteenth
century. The general Councils, which met
in that age, spoke of nothing but Eeform,
and they tried in vain to begin with the
Court of Eome. The mediseval clergy were
dying of their own corruption, but, from the

78 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
head downwards, they had no healing
power in themselves. The course of en
dowments shows.a change in public opinion.
If we look at the statistics of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, we find, that, from
the reign of Edward IIL, schools, colleges,
alms houses and hospitals, began to be
founded in larger numbers, instead of
monasteries and convents. Above all,
chantries were founded, in ever growing
numbers, and with very evil consequences.
Under Henry V., a number of monasteries
were dissolved, and given to the Crown.
The weakness of the Lancastrian title, the
wars and the early death of Henry V., the
anarch)^ and civil wars under Henry VI. ,
the selfishness and sheer wickedness of the
Yorkist Princes, all contributed to put off
Eeform. As a compensation, the Church
added to its unpopularity by murders and
persecutions, hitherto not knoAvn in England,
while the clergy were more and more
alienated from the life and sympathy of
the People. In place of the popular

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 79
bishops, who had opposed the Crown and
the Pope in the thirteenth century, the
bishops of the next age were courtiers,
creatures of the Administration ; and the
English Sees became more and more an
appanage of the great families. The feudal
churchmen now, like the feudal baronage,
had had their day. They had done good
work in it, but they were now cumbering
the ground. Everything proves, that the
English Eeformation was no sudden storm,
and no mere theological episode. Its
causes went deep into every sphere of
national and social life. It was a de
liberate return to that sounder and more
national condition, w-hich had prevailed in
Church and State before new, foreign cus
toms were brought in by the Norman and
Papal conquest. Before that conquest, the
English Church was a member ofthe Latin
Patriarchate. Its relation to Eome hardly
changed between the days of Gregory I.
and the days of Hildebrand : but, in those
five hundred years, the Latin Patriarch

80 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
had developed into the mediseval Pope.
When the Papal jurisdiction, through the
activity and zeal of the Normans, was
carried over Europe, England was soon
brought into collision with the Eoman
Church. Its old condition was declared
wrong, and even a falling away from
ancient purity : whereas it was Eome,
and not England, which had innovated or
developed. Between the eleventh and the
sixteenth centuries, and then only, the
English Church was under the dominion and
influence of the feudalizing Popes. At the
beginning of that epoch, through the mouth
of William I., the nation protested against
the claims and developments of the feudal
Papacy. Communion with the Eoman
See, and constitutional relations with the
Latin Patriarch, are by no means to be con
fused wdth servitude to the Eoman Curia,
or subjection to a feudal Pope.
It is difficult indeed to get below the
hierarchy and the outward organization of
the Church, and to form any clear notion

THE CHQECH OF ENGLAND 81
of parochial country life, in the middle
ages. So far as we can make out, the
parishes were, in the truest sense, popular
guilds or corporations ; owning and admin
istering their own property, through their
own elected lay officers. They were
neither over-awed by the Patron, nor the
Parson. They used their churches and
church yards for many corporate and social
^rp6ses7*which were not strictly ecclesias
tical. The sense of corporate ownership
and control extended to the vestry and the
treasury. Their wealth of art work, in stone,
metal, wood, glass, embroidery, and even
jewellery, was, we may think, to a large
extent, produced by local talent. _ If so,
our own country parishes are far below the
level of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. The parish was led sometimes,
we may be sure, by such a clergyman as
Chaucer's Persoun. It was mis-led, no
doubt, more often, by the Somnour, the
Pardoner, and the Freer. It contained
some or all of the sorts and conditions of
G

82 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
men, who made up the remainder of that
good company. Between the reign of
Alfred and the exhaustion of the fifteenth
century, the life of the working people was
probably one of substantial comfort, and
of much more relaxation, freedom, and
variety, than has generally been supposed.
To the other troubles of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, must be added a decline
of trade, and a change in economical con
ditions. But, when we think of the Black
Death, and the Peasants' Eising, and
Wyclif, and Langland, we must not forget
that the same age produced Wykeham,
with all his munificent expenditure ; and
he was followed, to take only one diocese,
by Waynflete, Beaufort, Fox and Wolsey.
Up to the year ofthe Eeformation, churches,
cathedrals, religious houses, and colleges,
were being built or enlarged with more
than the old profusion. This may seem
curious, at first sight, and even pathetic.
It is often asked, why, with such a popula
tion, as we suppose mediasval England to

THE CHUEOH OF ENGLAND 83
have held, were the country churches
so numerous and large ? Their size and
splendour, I believe, are not to be ex
plained, either by the numbers, or the
devotion, of the people ; but by the swoUen
revenues of the clergy, and latterly by the
popular discontent both at the clergy and
their wealth. Besides, the country churches
were all enlarged after the Black Death,
when the population had been reduced by,
perhaps, an half It is not unknown, in
our own times, that dynasties, on the brink
of revolution, have tried to conciliate the
labouring class by wages, and the trading
classes by reckless and profuse expenditure.
The last move, in such a game, is war. It
was made by the English Prelates against
the Lollards, then against the early
Lutherans, and at the end against the new
learning. When the English hierarchy was
beaten and disarmed, and the Papal army of
Monks and Friars was annihilated, the war
was organized from Eome, and waged
G 2

84 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
against the free and progressive part of the
English nation.
With Henry VIIL, we seem to enter a
new and a larger world. Indeed, a new
world was opening in every sense, at the
dawn of the sixteenth century. Columbus
had found another continent, although the
Theologians had proA^ed it could not exist.
Copernicus had enlarged men's notions of
the material universe. Constantinople had
fallen in 1453, and its Greek treasures were
scattered over Europe. Printing enabled
all this fresh knowledge to be circulated
wholesale. The recovery of Greek re
opened the old world of human experience
and thought. It not only restored old
knowledge, and larger ways of conceiving
life ; but it recovered that free, flexible,
reasonable tone of mind, which was the
strength and glory of the ancient world.
There was nothing, which it seemed impos
sible to think ahd do. The nations of the
West were able at last to escape out of
their mediaaval prison ; to judge the world

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 85
and the past by a standard larger and truer
than their own. Their perspective was
put nearly right, and weapons almost of
precision were put into their hands. The
original New Testament was restored to
them, as well as a knowledge of Christian
antiquity, and of the great Fathers. They 1
were able to breathe the free air of primi- '
tive Christianity. When the mediseval '
Church was dead, and putrefying, when
clerical abuses had become intolerable, the
remedy was found. It is an idle contro
versy, as to whether the people of the
middle ages had, or had not, the Bible.
Supposing they had it, and used it freely,
as some Eoman controversialists try to
prove, it was of little use to them so long
as they could only read it through medieval
glasses. The clergy were in the same case,
in spite of their close knowledge and
frequent use of .Bible texts. They had no
clue to Scripture or church history, untU
Greek learning and methods were restored.
It was by that learning, and through those

86 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
methods, that the English Eeformers were
directed. The Eeformation of the English
Church, on its positive side, was above all
things, an appeal to sound learning, against
mediseval corruption and ignorance. On
its negative side, it was a repudiation of
corrupt practices, and of corrupt doctrine,
based on ignorance, on the most childish
and ludicrous want of scholarship and
morals. There are three or four stages and
elements in the English Eeformation, which
must not be confused. First there was the
King's divorce, which added a strong per
sonal element to the ecclesiastical difference
with the Pope. Following this, and em
bittered by it, was the repudiation of the
Papal claims, and the re-establishment ofthe
Eoyal Supremacy. Next, there was the
Eeformation proper of the English Church,
in doctrine, discipline, and constitution.
Depending from this, was the dissolution of
the Eeligious Orders, and the resumption of
their property. First, as to the Divorce : I

THE CHUEOH OF ENGLAND 87
must leave every partizan to settle for him
self how far the first divorce of Henry VIII.
was, or was not, the sole cause of the
English Eeformation. It seems to me an
idle question. Those, who discuss it,
merely prove that they can't, or won't,
understand what the English Eeformation
was : but there are one or two fallacies,
which usually are latent in all such dis
cussions, and which we may as well expose.
It is argued, too often, by Eoman advocates,
that England was lost because the then
Pope would not, or could not, dissolve the
Sacrament of matrimony. They forget,
that the whole dispute turned on the
previous question, whether this marriage
were indeed valid and sacramental. It is
an unfortunate thing, no doubt, but just at
the time when the Pope's jurisdiction and
powers came to be challenged by all men
openly, the King of England had a personal
cause, which depended on the vaUdity and
extent of both. First, the Pope's powers :
Had the Pope really power to allow Henry

88 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
to marry his brother's widow ? On this
question, in the abstract, the Theologians
were by no means agreed. Further, were
the dispensing documents themselves legal
and in order? This question was by no
means cleared up. And, more important,
was the sole condition, on which Pope
Julius had based his dispensation, broken
or not broken ? If Katharine's marriage
with Prince Arthur had been consum
mated, even Julius owned he would not
and could not dispense. The evidence, I
think, is against Katharine, and in favour
of the Prince ; and so are all the customs
of the age. Against these, is only
Katharine's oath, and that is not worth
considering. The adherents of a Dis
pensing Power have no right to be
dispensed, and to be believed. Secondly, it
is often urged, ' The Pope would never
have lost England, if he could have kept
it lawfully by so simple a process as
divorcing one woman. You see, therefore,
how inflexible the Eoman Church is in up-

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 89
holding matrimony . ' It is always forgotten,
that Katharine was the Emperor's Aunt,
as well as Henry's Sister-in-law : that
the Emperor was pledged to support
his Aunt, and that he also held the Pope
himself, and the Papal States, absolutely at
his disposal. For the Pope, it was not a
question between losing England and
divorcing a King's wife. It was not even a
question of risking England or risking the
whole dominions of Charles V. It was a
question of obeying Charles, or of remaining
a prisoner, ruining the prospects of the
Medici in Italy, and of losing the Papal States
and Capital. The Pope decided precisely as
we should expect, knowing him, his advisers,
and his circumstances. Moreover, Henry
knew very well how easy and how frequent
divorces were, even in his own family.
His sister, Margaret, the widow of James IV.,
made a second marriage, and soon desired
a third. She obtained a divorce from her
second husband solely on the pretence, that
the death of James IV. was not proved.

90 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
If it had not been for the Emperor, there
can be no doubt that Henry would have
obtained a divorce without the least
difficulty, even though his wife had not
also been his brother's widow. On Henry's
side, there was, I believe, a genuine scruple
about his relation to Katharine, aggravated
by the deaths of many children. There
was also the very grave problem of the
succession, in view of his only heir being
an unhealthy girl. From the death of
Eichard II. , to the accession of James I.,
the succession to the Crown was always a
menace to the country. This alone, had
the Pope been a free agent, would probably
have been thought a sufficient reason for
invalidating any Eoyal marriage. Further
more, there was the unprecedented course,
insisted on by the Emperor, that Henry's
trial should be in Eome, and that he should
be summoned there personally. That
forced upon Henry and his advisers the
question w-hether the sovereign rights of
the Crown, were compatible with Papal

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 91
claims. When the King saw that the Pope
was an unjust judge, and not a free agent,
he was not slow to question the validity of
his claim to be a judge at all. Henry had,
I believe, a good, and, at first, an honest
case. He spoiled it by bringing Anne
Boleyn into it, and by his own ungenerous
behaviour ; but these faults, deplorable as
they were, do not affect those broad
principles, which were brought to an issue
by the question of Henry's divorce, and by
the way in which it was dealt with.
Unhappy as the divorce was in itself, and
in the way it was handled here, the
handling of it by Eome was far more
disgraceful ; and its existence at all was
due to that Pope, who first allowed so
scandalous a marriage. This divorce is
damaging to two Popes, and to the pro
cedure of the Eoman courts. It also shows
that the Temporal Power is the greatest
obstacle to a Pope's freedom. The divorce
did not cause, though undoubtedly it
precipitated, the English Eeformation, and

92 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
especially the relations of the Crown and
Church to the bishops of Eome. In 1531,
Convocation addressed Henry as Head
of the Church and clergy. Next year, the
spiritual courts were purged. They had
been oppressive to religious inquirers, and
lax to moral delinquents. In 1533, appeals
to Eome were forbidden, all fines and taxes
were soon abolished, and the appointment
of bishops provided for by the King's
authority. The independent legislative
power of Convocation was abolished. This
legislation was accepted by the whole body
of English bishops, including Fisher. A
great many superstitions and corruptions
were suppressed, and the whole order of
public worship was reformed. This was
done with a scrupulous regard for ancient
usage ; and every thing, whether in belief
or practice, was referred to antiquity, or
to Scripture as the final test. Every thing,
which could not meet that test, was
judged to be merely human. It might be
advisable, as a matter of sentiment and

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 93
order. It could not be binding as a matter
of conscience or beUef. If this distinction
had been remembered, most of the separa
tions and persecutions of the next hundred
years might have been avoided. If it were
acted on at present, the w^hole of our
troubles and quarrels would vanish of them
selves. It must not be supposed, that these
changes happened without much alarm,
and some opposition. Timid people did not
know where change would end ; as though
change were not inherent in all human
things, and most of all in the Papal Church.
Many could not see where an apparent
change was a return to something old and
better, or where it was the introduction of
something unsound and new. The partizans,
who clung to Eome, could not foresee how
Eome was going to develop, at the Council
of Trent, nor how the mediseval develop
ments of Eome were going to be exposed.
There were three men living under
Henry VIH., who are typical of the whole
English Eeformation. Erasmus gave us

94 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
the Greek Testament, with an admirable
commentary. He also gave us editions of
the great Fathers ; and, in his Colloquies, he
lashed the abuses of his age, especially the
clerical abuses. He was a happy mixture
of wit and piety. Sir Thomas More drew
the picture of an ideal State. ' In so doing,
he lashed his age even more severely than
Erasmus had. He also pointed to a great
many social reforms : some of them have
been realized : others are still only
socialistic dreams ; though perhaps realiz
able through Christian methods, and in a
Christian temper. More represents the
social and practical influence of the English
Church. The teacher of both Erasmus and
More was Colet, Dean of St. Paul's. He
founded St. Paul's School for the en
couragement of Greek and science. He
founded Lectures on the Epistles of St.
Paul. Scripture had been regarded by the
mediseval teachers either as an armoury
for theological missiles, or as a collection
of mystical devotions. Colet saw that

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 95
Scripture was something more than a
collection of texts. He saw that it had an
historical as well as a devotional sense.
He is the founder of modern scriptural
interpretation, in which the English Church
has been so fruitful of good work. The
three latest and greatest representatives of
it, Bishops Lightfoot and Westcott, and Dr.
Hort, are curiously similar to their three
great predecessors. We find in them the
same rigorous examination of the text,
the same historical and firm presentation,
the same social effort. In Dr. Hort, we
find the same keen wit and intellect,
which are conspicuous in More. In all six
men, we find that same dislike of narrow
partizanship, which has always been a note
of the EngUsh Church. The Church of
England was reformed in the interests, and
by means, of sound learning. She was to
be a co-partner with the nation in spread
ing, instead of opposing, the new growth
and freedom of our human rights and
powers. More, Colet, and Erasmus are

96 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
particularly interesting, over and above
their personal gifts and graces, because
they reveal to us what the new learning
might have done, had it been able to influ
ence enlightened men, formed by all that
was best in the mediseval traditions, and not
tainted or soured by those narrow and re
actionary elements, which spoilt so much
of the Eeformation, and so many of the
Eeformers. Colet died before the repudia
tion of the Papacy ; but we know how he
desired to see the things which were
coming, and how his own works agree
with them.
It will, probably, be asked, ' How can
the Church of England claim Sir Thomas
More, since he died for the Pope ? ' Well,
the Pope shall have aU the credit of his
death ; but, I think we may in this case
appeal to More's judgment, even against
himself We know, that he was much
troubled by the Papal claims. He is said
to have given many years to the study of
them. He was a lawyer, very legal in his

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 97
mind and methods. It is certain he must
have studied those claims in the current
law books of the mediaeval Church. They
all derived the Papal claims from the False
Decretals. From the lawyers, they passed
into Aquinas, and other theologians. It is
doubtful whether More's reading took him
outside those text books ; and if so, his
authorities and precedents were also
tampered with. The case would come to
him as above all things a legal case ; and
he had no suspicion, that his authorities
were vitiated at their source ; or that the
title deeds were altogether fraudulent.
Had he suspected, we can hardly doubt
the conclusion to which his honest and
clear mind would have brought him.
The final exposure of the Decretals was not
published until early in Elizabeth's reign,
by the Centuriators. It is marvellous how
sound were the instincts of the first genera
tion of Anglican Eeformers ; and how their
deductions, based often on hints and half-
knowledge, were confirmed by a truer
H

98 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
knowledge of the documents and facts. It
was not until after the labours of Scaliger
and Casaubon, that the full measure of
mediseval imposture and forgery was
known.
' Step after step,
Through many voices crying right and left,
Have I climh'd back into the primal church,
And stand within the porch, and Christ Avith me.'
That was the end set before themselves by
Cranmer and his feUow workers. They
strove to attain it with utter honesty,
carrying their lives in their hands. Much
as we may admire their honesty and
courage ; and I can admire both, in
Cranmer, in spite of aU that may be said ;
we owe even more admiration, I think,
to their learning, obtained through so
many difficulties, used with so much
sobriety, and guided often by an instinct
or insight, which amounts to genius.
Latimer, I admire in another way ; as I
admire Knox and Wyclif. They are burn
ing and shining lights : testifying, like the

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 99
Prophets, against wickedness and injustice
in holy places. I should honour such
masters of great English, in spite of all
they said and did, if I could not honour
them still more because of it.
The question of the Eeligious Orders is
really a question of finance and of the
Sovereign Powers of the nation. The
whole revenue of the English Church, from
endowments, at the time of the Eeformation,
amounted to 320,280/. a year. This ac
counts only for the endowments and fixed
revenues of the clergy. We must add to it
the earnings and extortions of the Friars,
the voluntary offerings at Easter and other
festivals, the stole fees for administering
the Sacraments, the mortuary dues, the
death bed bequests, the payments for
masses, and all the numerous methods of
revenue, which the Catholic system invari
ably favours, and which are especially
profitable to the Eeligious Orders. To
these again, we must add all the fines and
fees exacted in the Spiritual Courts. These
H 2

100 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
unfixed revenues might, possibly, almost
equal the revenue from endowments. We
shall be quite safe if we estimate them at
one-half of the fixed revenue, and thus bring
up the whole annual income of the clergy
to 480,420/. ; or, say, half a million a year.
The whole revenue of the Government has
been estimated at 125,000/. a year. The
revenue of the Crown, from domains and
taxes, must not be confused with the
national income. Allowing for exaggera
tion on one side, and minimising on the
other, it is clear that the revenues of the
clergy were out of all proportion to the
needs and resources of the country. They
were, too, a source of weakness. The
clergy were so heavily taxed by Eome, that
they could not pay their due share of taxes
to the Crown, which was thus far impo
verished and weakened. The Friars, with
their vast property and earnings, were not
taxed at all. The whole amount paid to the
absentee Sovereign in Eome was a dead
loss to the kingdom. Half, at least, of the

ThE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 101
endowed property of the clergy belonged
to the Eeligious Orders ; and probably
much more than half of the unfixed revenue
found its way to them. We might say
they possessed 350,000/. a year. We can
multiply the money of Henry VIII. by ten
or twelve, to represent its spending power,
and bring it to something like our current
values. I will multiply by ten. The
income of the Monks, Friars, and Nuns,
then, amounted to 3,500,000/. annual^,
of our money, in spending power. The
revenues of the Crown were only 1,250,000/.
I have noticed already how the taste for
religious houses and the monastic life
declined after the fourteenth century.
Some houses, too, had been suppressed.
Some were bankrupt. Very few were being
founded. But, if we look into the numbers
of Monks in existing houses, we find a still
graver and more significant falling off. At
Saint Albans, only thirty-seven Benedictines
enjoyed a revenue of 20,000/. a year : at
Bury, forty-five managed to live on the

102 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
same amount. The income of Glastonbury
was more than 30,000/. a year. I take
these three as the most powerful monasteries,
and the most revered monastic shrines, in
the whole country. If they could scarcely
keep their communities going, in spite of
an easy rule and all the advantages they
had to offer, we can imagine the state of
the poorer and inferior foundations. It is
difficult to say. why two dozen clergymen
should require 20,000/. a year to practise
poverty. Putting all questions of immor
ality and abuses on one side, it is clear
that the monastic system in England was
dead ; or, at any rate, that the system was
endowed far beyond its requirements, or
its' health. Neither was it serving those
useful purposes, which had endeared it to
an earlier time. After aU, the reports of
Cromwell's visitors are not more damaging
to the Orders, than the report of Cardinal
Morton's visitation under Henry VII. The
verdict of the English Government is borne
out by the public opinion of aU men on

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 103
the Continent, even of the ecclesiastical
authorities. No report, no rumour, is
reaUy so damaging to the English convents
as the fact that the Black Book of Crom
well's Visitors was destroyed, and not
exposed, by the advisers of Queen Mary.
The monastic revenues, then, were taken
by the Government : the houses were sup
pressed : the inhabitants were pensioned.
It was fortunate, indeed, that Henry did
not annex these revenues to the Crown.
Some of them were used in forts and
arsenals. The bulk of them were granted
to private owners ; and the families thus
founded became leaders of the country,
against Charles I. and James II. Had the
monasteries been suppressed before the
Wars of the Eoses, they would prob
ably have enriched the great families, to
the danger of the whole country. In our
own days, the revenues and fabrics would
have been devoted to education, churches,
hospitals, or charity. In the sixteenth
century, a little was done in some of those

104 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
directions, but all such wants were ade
quately provided for in other ways. With a
population of between three and four milhons
only, to provide for, it is difficult to see
how the monastic revenues could have been
devoted to charity, without doing more
harm than good. Those who received
them did immense service to the country :
a service only possible, in those days, by
strengthening the particular class which
did it. We owe much to the Tudor Sove
reigns for giving us a strong central govern
ment, under which the power of the
Commons could rise once more, as against
the lawless and disruptive powers of the
old nobility. The new families, established
by Henry VIII. out ofthe monastic property,
were the backbone of the Commons in the
revolutions of the seventeenth century.
They were also a firm barrier against
reaction in the first age of the Eeformation.
Henry VLIL gave us the supporters of
Elizabeth, and the opponents of the Stuarts.
It would not be questioned, I suppose, by

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 105
any one, that the nation had the fullest
right to deal with the persons and property
ofthe Eeligious Orders, unless their thought
were confused or frightened by the term
' Eeligious.' It is open to discussion, I
think, how far those Orders were, properly
speaking, clerical bodies, or how far they
were in reality great lay corporations, some
of whose members were in Holy Orders.
But, granting that the Eeligious Orders had
become, in the fullest sense, clerical, the
policy of dealing with them brings the
dispute between the Civil and the Ecclesias
tical Power to the plainest issue. Had the
Crown power lawfully, or had it not, to
deal with those persons in their corporate
capacity, and with that property : the
said property being, to a large extent,
at the disposal of a foreign and hostile
Power, and the persons being his blind
or willing agents? In other words, was
the Government of England to be in
reality a Sovereign Power, or was it to be
dependent on the Pope ? To manage such

106 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
affairs through Eome, or with the approval
of Eome, is really to be dependent on it.
It is an enormous assumption, to argue,
that an Ecclesiastical Power, whether inside
or outside a country, is necessarily or
exclusively ' spiritual,' and that the Civil
Power can not be ' spiritual.' Surely every
Governing Authority, which makes for
righteousness, directly or indirectly, which
guards truth and justice, which secures
order and education, which cares for the
public health, is a ' Spiritual ' Power, and is
' ordained of God.' No Ecclesiastical Power
can do more, or advance any higher title.
When Saint Paul spoke thus of Csesar's
Government, I imagine he was contrasting
the Pax Romana with the mis-rule of Jewish
fanatics, Cilician pirates, Phrygian robbers,
Macedonian bandits ; and that he wished
to demonstrate how such an authority was
more an instrument of God, than even the
ecclesiastical or ' spiritual ' Council at
Jerusalem. Will any one pretend, that
a Government, which secures the Pax

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 107
Britannica is not more ' spiritual ' and
godly, than the old Administration of the
Papal States ? Is it possible to describe
our own Government, either with regard
to its aims and functions, or to the cha
racter of those who administer it, as less
' spiritual ' than the barbarous ecclesiastical
Governments of the middle ages ? To act
as though no civil and lay authority could
be ' spiritual,' to argue as though every
clerical and ecclesiastical authority must
be ' spiritual,' is to go back to the crudest
stage of mediseval ignorance. To confuse
the terms ' spiritual ' and ' ecclesiastical,'
which have too often been exclusive of one
another, is to misunderstand the first prin
ciples of Christianity.
But, with regard to the English
Eeligious Orders, besides the economical
and financial problems connected with
their existence, there are other questions
of principle, which account for, and justify,
their abolition. First, the Monks and their
monasteries had long survived their use.

108 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
They were out of touch with the national
life, and they had retarded its progress.
They were a burden on the land, and they
were the last owners to free their serfs.
In many cases, the Abbeys stood in the
way of all progress and freedom, in the
towns which had grown up beneath them.
In the risings under Eichard IL, the feeling
of monastic serfs and tenants was shown
plainly ; and the want of feeling in the
Monks is shown by the fearful retaliations
which were made in their interests, and
commended in their Chronicles. The
remembrance of those things had not died
away. It was kept active by the preach
ing, and the persecution, of the Lollards.
In many cases, the destruction of monastic
property was a popular vengeance, long
delayed, but done thoroughly and heartily
at last. Besides the populace, the bishops
and Parish clergy were no friends to the
Monks or Friars. The exemption of the
monasteries had been a serious aggression,
by the Pope, on the old authority of

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 109
bishops. The acquisition of patronage
and livings by the Monks was a grievous
wrong to the parish clergy, and to their
parishioners. The Friars, with their roving
licences, and their questionable devotions,
defied episcopal authority, and hterally
starved the parochial clergy. The bishops,
naturally, left the Eeligious Orders to their
fate. Neither they nor the lower clergy
were sorry to see the end of them. More
over, besides the injuries to the diocesan
and parochial systems, besides all the
money the Orders exported to, Eome, the
Monks and Friars themselves were a Papal
army of occupation ; supported by the
Pope, and supporting him in turn ; opposed,
therefore, to all reform, especially of the
Pope's authority ; and willing, in defence
of it, to set the kingdom in a blaze, by
allying themselves either with rebels or in
vaders. They were reaUy schismatics or
dissenters, not from the creed, but from the
organization, of the English Church. To
show how the Papal system worked in

110 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
detail, with regard to finance and loyalty:
under Edward IH. we were at war with
France, and the Pope was an instrument of
the French King ; yet he not only drained
enormous revenues from England, which
found their Avay, some of them, into our
enemies' exchequer ; but he appointed
foreigners, resident or non-resident, to
innumerable benefices ; he had a practical
veto on the appointment of bishops, upon
whom our defence and administration
depended largely ; and he drew more
treasure out of the country to his Curia, by
law suits, besides receiving all his annates,
tenths, first-fruits, and other dues gathered
by his collectors. The Eehgious, in
addition, who were subject to alien, that is
to French, Superiors, exported large sums
annually into that country, with which
we were at war. These things were com
plained of grievously under Edward IIL,
and Eichard II. The alien monasteries
were suppressed under Henry V. Taking
evety thing into account, the wonder is

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 111
that the Eeligious Orders, with all their
abuses and anomalies, were endured so
long. It is often asserted, that the Parish
livings were plundered by lay Patrons, at
the Eeformation. The truth is, the lay
Patrons merely stepped into the place of
the deposed Abbot or Prior. The
Eeligious Orders, and not the Crown or
the Eeformers, were the robbers of
parochial endowments.. It is often said,
again, that the bishops were enslaved at
the Eeformation. On the other hand,
since the Conquest, the English bishops, as
far as their spiritual functions are con
cerned, had never been so much masters
of their own dioceses and courts as they
became under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth.
It was the Pope, and not the Crown, which
diminished the Episcopal office and
authority. Such parts of it, as the Crown
retained, had been annexed long before
by the mediseval Popes. The legislative
power of Convocation was reduced. In
this, I see nothing more than a security

112 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
for the lay members of the Churchy the
majority ; and for the Sovereign rights of
the nation, which includes, and does not
exclude, the clergy. Besides, will any one
contend, that Convocation, before 1530,
was independent from all control, that it
could make what laws it chose? The
Pope would soon have shown how little
freedom it possessed, either in opinions
or practice, in any thing beyond the
emptiest routine. The Eoyal Supremacy
protected the clergy from Papal inter
ference ; and, as long as the clergy were
in sympathy with the nation, the Eoyal
Supremacy was a guarantee for the perfect
freedom of the Church. If the clergy be
in opposition to the laity, and yet wish to
legislate irresponsibly, as they choose,
there is no escape from two obvious con
clusions ; first, the Church, in the majority
of its members, is not free ; secondly,
a rival and an independent sovereignty is
established against the Crown.
The English Eeformation was a long

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 113
process, going through many experiments,
advancing and receding, influenced from
without and from within. It began in 1529.
It was not finished until 1662. So far as
we have gone, the Crown had vindicated its
old supremacy, over all persons and causes
within its own dominions. Henry VIII.
exercised no powers, which had not been
exercised hj the early Kings, or by the
early Emperors, before the Papacy. The
English Church asserted and re-gained those
old liberties, which all Churches had by
right, and used by law, at the time when
Christianity became a State religion. There
were few points, perhaps, in which the laws
and liberties of the English Church, after
1529, differed from those of the Church be
fore the Conquest. In doctrine and ritual,
the Eeformers went back, as far as possible,
to the standard of the primitive Church,
rejecting mediseval innovations. There are
four stages in the Eoman development, •
which must be separated in thought, if we
would understand the Anglican position. I

114 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
There is, first of all, the Bishoprick of Eome,
betw^een 323 and the close of Justinian's
reign. In that period, the Bishop of Eome
was one among four or five Patriarchs, with
co-ordinate and equal powers, and all
recognizing the Imperial Supremacy, which
was the bond of unity, and the source of
jurisdiction and of order. In those days,
the civil authority was recognized by all
men as spiritual, and ' of God.' There was,
secondly, the period between 565 and 1061.
In this period, the Latin Patriarch stood
alone, cut off from the Greeks, the chief
authority left among the Barbarians. He ex
tended his patriarchal powers, and deve
loped the media3val Papacy. In the early
part of this period, the EnglishChurch was
organized, and entered into those legal
relations with the Patriarch, which prevailed
under Gregory I. This was the utmost
extent of Eoman jurisdiction, which the
English nation or Church ever accepted
willingly, and perhaps legally. Between
1061 and 1300, the mediasval Papacy

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 115
developed into the feudal Papacy of
Hildebrand, Innocent IH., Boniface VIII.
This feudal Papacy encroached on the
English Church, as on all other European
Churches. In this period, new doctrines
were defined, new discipline was imposed,
and the whole constitution and conception
of the Church were transformed almost out
of recognition. The developments of the Pa
pacy were serious enough, as againstnational
Churches, and the clergy. They were still
more serious and unlaw^ful, as against the
civil power. England met the whole course
of this development with constitutional
protests. She did what she could to resist
it. The resistance was not of much
practical use at the time, though it was not
altogether void. It was, however, of the
greatest use to the Church of the Sixteenth
Century. It served to define the old powers
of the Crown, and the old relations of the
Church to the Latin Patriarch. It enabled
the Eeformers to appeal behind the feudal
Papacy, to an older, freer, and purer state.

116 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
They could point to Eome as the innovator,
the aggressor, and take their stand upon the
early constitution of the Church. It was the
feudal Papacy, in its decrepitude and
putrefaction, that the English nation and
Church renounced. They w^ent back, very
nearly, to the state of things which prevailed
in the second period of the Latin Patri
archate, when Gregory I. was reigning.
This, a,t least, was the desire of Henry and
his advisers. That the position was not
accepted by Eome, that no other European
Church has yet followed our example, is no
argument at all against the lawfulness of
the Anglican position, or against the
soundness of our principle. Every thing,
which has happened since, justifies our
position and our principle. The Church of
England stands where it did, though with
many descendants and aUies ; aU witnessing
against the later stages of Eoman develop
ment, just as the Eastern Churches witness
against the earlier. Eome passed on from its
feudal stage, to the period of Trent, which.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 117
again, was nothing less than a transformation.
Since then, it has gone on to the Vatican
Decrees. We are too near them, to decide
whether they complete the Tridentine period,
or begin another. At any rate, they show
that the same authority, which in 1415
defined Councils to be above Popes, could
in 1870 define Popes to be above Councils ;
and yet be infallible in both centuries.
From any share in these contradictions, in
these further developments from the text of
Saint Matthew, the English Church and
People were saved by Henry VLIL He has
been the victim of endless controversy,
and he has been particularly unfortunate
in his advocates. Distorted as many of
Mr. Froude's details and deductions are, I
think his general position and conclusions
are unassailable. Henry was a strong man,
who guided us through a terrible crisis
without disaster, and did a rough and
necessary piece of work with as little
suffering as was possible, in that age, and
with those agents. He saved us from civil

118 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
war, and from invasion. The executions
in his reign must never be judged without
a minute knowledge of the plots and parties
within the realm, and of the designs of our
various foreign enemies. Gray's estimate,
made long before we were troubled with
conflicting evidence and contemporary
documents, is perhaps not far from the
truth in which historians will rest. He
numbers Henry, among the royal benefac
tors to Cambridge, as The majestic Lord,
That broke the bonds of Eome.
We have no right to accept that freedom,
and to make no allowance for the dangers
and difficulties of those who gained it.
After aU, nothing greater has been done in
the history of England : nothing which has
contributed so largely to make us and the
peoples descended from us, what we are.
The present state of the Latin Church, and
some of the Latin peoples, should not
diminish our gratitude to Henry VIII.

THE CHUEOH OF ENGLAND 119
Under Edward VI. , the nation fell into
the hands of men, who used religion as a
pretext for their own advancement. The
extreme Protestant faction made a bad
and greedy use of their opportunities. We
need only remark, that the extreme
Eeformers were never able to insert their
private opinions into the official declara
tions of the Church. When Mary suc
ceeded, the Eomanizing party had their
fling. The Church was packed with its
adherents and supporters. There had
been no national feeling for the Pope in
1529. There was, no doubt, a faction
which desired his authority in 1553. All
the statutes passed against him were
repealed next year, and the statutes for per
secuting heretics were revived. Between
1555 and 1558, about three hundred
persons were burnt in England. Our ex
perience of the counter-Eeformation was
slight and short. As many victims, almost,
have been displayed on a single Spanish
holiday. Mary was Spanish, and not

120 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
English. She made England a satellite of
Spain, and reduced us to the lowest and
weakest state we ever reached. She did
her country the service of showing it what
the new Eoman Catholicism of Trent and
the Jesuits was, and what its methods
were. The country has never un-learned
her lesson.
When Elizabeth succeeded, she re
solved to be Queen of the whole nation,
and not a leader of any faction. In a few
years she restored finance, order, and
prosperity. The debased coinage was
recalled. The public credit was revived.
The forts and arsenals were repaired and
stocked. With great skiU, she steered
through many difficulties, and avoided war
with any of her numerous enemies. She
used the time thus gained, to heal the
wounds and factions of the country, as far
as possible. The Act of Supremacy was
restored, giving the nation sovereign
power over its own goods and subjects.
The Act of Uniformity in worship was

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 121
passed, establishing the reformed Prayer
Book. This policy was accepted by a
large majority of the nation. Out of 9,000
clergy, only 200 resigned, or were expelled.
The vast majority of people were content
to worship in their Parish churches. The
few, who held aloof, were not disturbed
as long as they were peaceful subjects.
If Elizabeth's policy could have been
maintained for one whole generation, we
should probably have been afflicted by no
English Eoman Catholic sect or body, but
only hj insignificant and isolated indi
viduals. Her success was displeasing and
alarming to Pius V., who issued a Bull, in
1570, deposing the Queen, and releasing
her subjects from their allegiance. From
that time onwards, the Pope was allied
with, or instigated, all our foreign enemies ;
the King of Spain, the House of Guise in
France, and their poor tool in Scotland,
Mary Stuart. A small number of English
Eomanists accepted the Bull, and left the
national Church. Of these new Eomanists,

122 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
or Papists, there were two factions. One
of them wished only to go on their own
way quietly, following their un-instructed
conscience in religion, and in other matters
being loyal to their country. They had no
sympathy with the violent, or political,
Eomanists, who were led by the Jesuits,
allied with all our foreign enemies, and
supporters of any claimant to the throne.
All Eoman Catholics loyal to the Govern
ment were teased, and sometimes betrayed,
by that school of traitors. One of them.
Father Tichborne, a Jesuit, wrote of a
loyal Eomanist, ' Sir Thomas Tresham as a
friend of the state is holden among us for
an atheist, and all others of his humour
either so or worse.' This was their temper
towards those of their own religion, who
would not participate in crime. They,
themselves, stuck at nothing. Between
1570 and 1603, Ehzabeth's life was at
tempted eight times. Within a few years,
two Kings of France, and the heroic Prince
of Orange were assassinated, besides other

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 123
such noble victims as Coligny ,and the
Eegent Moray. The massacre of Saint
Bartholomew^ was conceived, and carried
out. Our own Gunpowder Plot was con
ceived. In face of these violent and un
scrupulous attacks, Elizabeth's advisers
were exceedingly mild and patient. The
penal code was more rigorous in theor}'
than in practice. From the publication of
the BuU in 1570, to the year 1581, only
three Eomanists were executed under the
Penal Laws. From 1581, to the destruc
tion of the Armada, Elizabeth was fighting
for life with the Pope and Philip. Her
enemies were more active, and more
treacherous. Severe measures were more
frequent. But, considering the greatness
of the struggle, and the vile means to
which the enemy condescended, Elizabeth
executed very few Eomanists. Those few
were not executed for religion, but for
active treason, or for being allied with
enemies of the State in time of rebellion
and war. The Pope's Bull and the Jesuit

124 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
methods are responsible for the death of
every Eomanist, who suffered under
Elizabeth. Many of the loyal Eomanists
were great personal friends and favourites
of the Queen. One of them, Lord Howard
of Effingham, led her ships against the
Armada. The King of Spain, the Pope,
and his Jesuit agents, fought their hardest
to put down the English Eeformation. In
striking at Elizabeth, they struck through
her at civil, intellectual, and religious
liberty all over Europe. Elizabeth was in
the forefront of the battle. She rendered
loyal service to others, who were in the
fight ; to the Dutch EepubUc, and the
great Prince of Orange ; to the French
Huguenots, and Henry of Navarre. She
supported the hero Knox, and his brethren
in Scotland ; though perhaps she received
more help^ than she gave, from that
indomitable man. Her enemies fought
foully, like the liars and criminals they
were, both with plots and libels. Elizabeth
struck her enemies, and ours, very hard.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 125
but she never condescended to their
methods of poison and cold steel.
She had also to oppose an enemy upon
the other wing. If the Papists fought
foully, the extreme Puritans opposed her
with a folly that was much the same as
crime. No modern Eitualist was ever
more childish in craving for ceremonies,
than some of the Elizabethan Protestants
were in rejecting them. Elizabeth dreaded
the factions and wars that had been caused
in other countries by similar trifles. She
saw that they were made a pretext for
endless battles and divisions, and she re
solved at aU costs that outward uniformity
should be maintained in the national
Church. She knew that a nation of
warring sects would soon be devoured
piecemeal by Eome, the common enemy ;
and she was right, both in her judgment,
and her procedure, according to the
standard of those days. No inquisition
was made into opinions ; but organization,
noise, and aggressive acts were punished

126 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
rigorously. The policy and the precedent
are not inapplicable now, to either wing.
No doubt the Puritan quarrels, over
matters that were not essential, would have
imperilled our liberties and our national
existence, if they had not been checked.
To have humoured the Puritans, would
have been to alienate a much larger
section, and have strengthened the party
of Mary Stuart. The great body of the
Puritans, as well as the great majority of
Anglican Catholics, recognized the danger,
and had the wisdom to accept Elizabeth's
healing measures.
The Church of England is often called
a compromise, and nothing is more untrue.
The meaning of the term ' Comprehension '
is seldom comprehended. The Church
compromises with nothing that is contrary
to 'her principles and spirit, with nothing
that is destructive to her existence. Since
1530, she has made no terms with the
Eoman Bishops and their claims. Nothing
can be more uncompromising than her

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 127
resistance. She has made no terms with
Calvin's doctrines of Predestination. The
great work of Hooker remains as the
monument of her resistance to the doctrines
and discipline of Geneva. She can make
no terms with Unitarians ; because she
says that Christ's Divinity, the confession
of Saint Peter, is the very foundation of
his Church ; but with differences of detail
or of minor opinions, she has been very
tolerant. If people have gone out on
these, it has usually been their own doing.
She has, very rightly, been even more
tolerant still of individual opinion. Nor
has she ever set up herself for being in
faUible. She has always professed to go
back to Scripture, interpreting Scripture
by early practice and belief, to the best
of her knowledge. And she has not
aUowed her knowledge to stagnate, and
grow obsolete. She has always been
ready, and is ready stiU, to submit her
decisions to a full and free council of
the whole Church, assembled in all its

128 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
branches. This is the logical corollary to
that reverence for sound learning, with
which she started as the basis and the
explanation of her Eeform.
Such is the learned, wise, and really
national Church, that we owe to Queen
Elizabeth. She secured it for us against
a zealous, but narrow faction, supported
by many bishops, and by some of her
chief advisers ; and also against the
reactionary wishes of the uneducated
majority. To these, she gave time to think
and learn, to realize that the changes they
feared were not so alarming and revolu
tionary after all. The creeds remained
to them, and the sacraments, and the out
ward order of the Church. They pos
sessed the English Bible, and they came to
love their services in English. In the end,
before Elizabeth died, after nearly half a
century of experience, the majority ac
quiesced with ferA^our in her wise and
sound arrangement, which was so thoroughly
English, in the best meaning of the word.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 129
We owe to Elizabeth, the Act of
Uniformity, behind which there should be
no appeal, either to the Prayer Books it
superseded, or still less to any medieval
precedents in belief and ritual. What
would be thought of an Army, in which
any officer gave himself a licence to ignore
the standing orders, to defy all the existing
regulations, and to drill or clothe himself,
at his individual fancy, according to fashions
and ways long obsolete ; on the pretence,
that such old uniforms and postures had
not -been expressly and singly repealed?
This absurdity is precisely similar, so far
as I can see, to the position of those
Victorian clergy, who appeal behind the
Act of Uniformity, as amended in 1Q62, to
the obsolete practices and ritual of the
mediseval Church. Their appeal rests, as I
understand, on some doubtful rubrics, and
upon one canon passed under Henry VIII.
All access to these, one should have thought,
was blocked by the two subsequent Acts of
Uniformity.^
' See note on p. 238.

130 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Under EUzabeth, the Eoyal Supremacy
was defined in terms, which have not since
been changed. ' The King's Majesty hath
the chief power in this Eeahn of England,
and other his dominions, unto whom the
chief government of all estates of this
Eealm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or
Civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is
not, nor ought not, to be subject to any
foreign jurisdiction.' So runs the opening
clause of Article XXXVII. It may be
remarked, first, that in this Article there is
no mis-use of terms. The Estates of the
Eealm are contrasted as Ecclesiastical and
Civil. It is not said, and is not I think
implied, that the Civil Estates are not also
Spiritual, because they do not include
ecclesiastical persons ; though, as a matter
of fact, one of them does include the
bishops. It might as reasonably be argued,
that the Civil Estates are not Christian, as
that they are not Spiritual. In the next
place, the Sovereign authority is asserted and
maintained as against ' any foreign jurisdic
tion.' It is not maintained against the Laws

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 131
of England, as they may be interpreted from
time to time. The Eoyal Supremacy does
not, as such, depend on the Establishment or
non-Establishment of any religious body. It
is just as valid in such ' other of the King's
dominions ' as those Colopies, in which
there is no Established Church, as in the
island of Great Britain, in which are
two Churches by Law Established. The
Eoyal Supremacy is just as valid over the
persons and properties of all Dissenters
from those two Established Churches, as it
is over any of their members. Establish
ment, here or elsewhere, means that a
certain Church or religious body enters into
a contract with the State, and engages to
express its beliefs in certain forms, accepted
by both sides ; and to perform its worship
in a certain recognized and legal way. The
officers of the Established body undertake
certain legal duties, and receive a legal
position in virtue of performing them legally.
It may, or may not, be a position of advantage.
It must be a position of responsibility ; and
K 2

132 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
the responsibility is shared by both parties to
the contract. It is equally binding on them
both. Within the limits of belief and
worship, as prescribed by Law, the officers
and members of an Established Church are
amenable to Law. But all officials and
members of un-Established Churches are
amenable to Law, in all questions relating to
persons and property ; and questions of
property and persons, in the case of religious
bodies, often turn on questions of belief. The
Eoyal Supremacy, therefore, has often, in
directly, to decide what is, or is not, the belief
of a non-Established religious body. As an
instance, some few years ago, a minister of
the Dutch Eeformed Church at the Cape
was deposed for denying the person of
the Evil Spirit. He fought the case,
against his Presbytery, his ecclesiastical
authority, before the Queen's Judges at the
Cape ; and then he brought it into England.
Lord Westbury decided it finally, on appeal,
in the Privy Council. Now what Lord
Westbury decided cannot affect, one way
or the other, the person of the Devil. That

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 133
must remain unaltered, in itself, by any
human decision. What he decided, as a
Lawyer, was the interpretation to be put
on the formularies of the Eeformed Dutch
Church, about this particular question ;
and whether the opinions of the deposed
Minister agreed or did not agree with those
formularies, which he had undertaken to
observe. Lord Westbury may have been
right or wrong in his decision ; but his
decision cannot alter those facts, which were
behind the question in dispute. An un-
Established Church does not, therefore,
escape such questions, and it has often to
bring them before the Civil Courts. I would
go on to argue, that, with regard to our own
Established Church, the Courts have never
gone further than Lord Westbury went in
this case. So far as I can see, they have
never defined nor altered any article of the
Christian faith. They have only decided
the legal meaning of the Anglican formu
laries ; and the further question, whether
the utterances or practices of this or that
accused person are, or are not, in agree-

134 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
ment with those formularies. Their de
cision may be right or wrong. It cannot
affect the truths, which our formularies
are taken to express. It can only affect
the incriminated person. I cannot see,
that it matters who try such questions,
so long as they be competent ; and the
presumption is that Lawyers, guided by
trained theologians, are likely to be the
most competent. The Law Courts do not
make the faith of the English Church.
They only interpret those articles of faith,
which have been accepted, both by Church
and State, as the legal expression of it.
So far as I can understand, the Eeformers
were commissioned to draAV up articles of
belief and discipline : those articles, having
the approval of the Church, expressed
through its lawful representatives, were
accepted by the Crown as the official
statement of the Anglican creed and
practice. That statement was made the
working basis of the contract between the
Church and State. I cannot see, that

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 135
the Law Courts have ever tried to go
behind, or outside, that basis of agreement.
The position of the Scotch Kirk is, I
believe, analogous. The Eeformers drew up
their articles, and they were accepted by
the Estates. The General Assembly now
cannot, on its own authority, go behind
those Acts of Parliament by which the
Confession of Faith was made legal. It
cannot, without the Eoyal assent, alter the
Westminster Confession. It cannot go
behind those Acts, by which the Books of
Discipline and Order were approved. It
could not, I believe, on its own authority,
make the least alteration in the manner of
administering the Lord's Supper. It is
impossible to see, how there can be any
Establishment of religion on any other
terms, except those of a legal contract,
equaUy binding on both sides. Over and
above the question of Establishment, is the
question of Eoyal Supremacy. There
cannot be two Sovereign Powers in one
State ; and only the Sovereign Power can

136 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
have the last word, the final settlement of
all causes and appeals ; as it has in Scot
land, in spite of Lord Halifax. If the
Sovereign Power be Ecclesiastical, you
have a Papacy, in some form or othei:.
It does not matter whether it reside in one
person at Eome, or in a Bench at Lambeth,
orin an Assembly at Edinburgh, the principle
is the same. The difference in result is only
a matter of degree, not of kind. If the
CiAdl Power is to be Sovereign within its
own dominions, you must have, in some
form or other, the Eoyal Supremacy.
There can be no divided Sovereignty in a
single State. There is no escape from one
alternative, or the other ; and no com
promise is possible between them. The
fallacy lies, I think, in asserting that an
Ecclesiastical Power is necessarily Spiritual;
and in assuming that the Civil Power, as
exercised through the Eoyal Supremacy,
is exclusive, and not inclusive, of the
Church. Surely, the Eoyal Supremacy,
the legal and personified Sovereignty of

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 137
the nation, includes the Church, both laity
and clergy, in the highest and fullest mean
ing of the word. If not, the Church must
be so alienated from the nation, or so
inconsiderable a part of it, that it has no
right to be Established. We have not, I
think, come to that, as yet : indeed, we are
probably farther from it, than we were
half a century ago.
Another fallacy, as I think, is to argue
from the necessary conditions of an Estab
lished Church, to an abstract condition of
Christianity itself, which ignores human
obligations and engagements. It is urged
sometimes, for instance, ' how can you
defend the removal of a clergyman, ap
pointed by his bishop, at the orders of a
lay court ? ' ' Does not this subject the
gospel and commission of Christ to lay
control?' The use of the term 'lay,' I
think, begs the real question; but it is
forgotten by such reasoners, that the
clergyman only came into his position by
accepting the Law that created it, and'

138 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
which he thereby pledged himself to obey.
The living itself, that is his exercise of his
ministry in that place, exists and is en
dowed by Law. The Patron who presented,
the bishop who instituted him, only have
those powers of disposal by Law. He
himself only received his spiritual com
mission on the understanding that he
should exercise it in that place, and in
the manner prescribed by Law. A man
cannot have the advantages and responsi
bilities of such a position, and also act as
though he had a roving commission to
preach the gospel to every creature, ac
cording to his own fancy and interpre
tation. He mugt choose between the two
states ; and those, who argue thus, must
also choose which sort of Christianity and
Church they mean to defend. To argue
from one to the other is clearly inadmissible
in logic. The moment any question of belief
passes out of the region of thought, and
takes effect in words or actions, it is
' cognizable by Law ; if they be only the

THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 139
words or actions of a single person.
Much more is this true if the words and
actions be those of several persons, or of an
organized body, a corporation. If such a
corporation accept a legal state with its
advantages and responsibilities, it must
fulfil the terms of its agreement, or ter
minate the contract. Lord Halifax quotes
with approval a wrong and foohsh saying
of Keble, that Churchmen, who are dis
satisfied, should treat decisions they don't
like ' as Dissenters treated certain Acts of
Parliament, i.e. to disregard them, and
to take the consequences.' It is open, of
course, to any of us, to behave thus to the
Laws ; but, the Dissenters in question had
not accepted legal positions and emolu
ments, on condition that they obeyed the
Law. Keble's analogy, therefore, does not
hold good, unless a dissatisfied English
clergyman put himself precisely in the posi
tion of a Dissenter ; and then he w^ould find,
that the Law is not so much concerned with
his proceedings. This only proves again.

140 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
thatthe Law, the Eoyal Supremacy, does not
interfere with the Christian religion, in the
abstract. It must interfere with any
organization or expression of it, which
enters into legal engagements. The
difficulty is not created by the Eoyal
Supremacy. It is not removed, it is not
really altered, by an Ecclesiastical Supre
macy. It is inherent in our semi-spiritual
and semi-material nature. The difficulty
is in the nature of things ; and we cannot
escape from it. The utmost we can do is,
to avoid fallacies, and to refrain from that
most un-Christian and most un-English
habit of applying logic to practical affairs ;
and forcing logical, or illogical, premisses to
extreme conclusions. Only the Church
invisible can be free from State control, and
human limitations. In no other Church
can there be a purely Spiritual Supremacy.
The false analogy of Keble is based on
a much more serious error, which Lord
Halifax adopts. Keble argues, that the
Eoyal Supremacy was at one time a

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 141
personal prerogative ; but that now it is
' in commission,' and is exercised by a
majority of the House of Commons ; and
that therefore the clergy are not pledged
to obedience. The first premiss is
decidedly open to debate ; and the facts,
as I think, are altogether against Keble's
assumption. But, granting the statement
were true, could it be argued seriously,
that a ' godly prince,' such as James IL, a
Papist ; or William IIL, a Calvlnist ; or
George I., a Lutheran ; or a person like
George IV. ; is more anomalous as
exercising a Supremacy over the English
Church, than a Cabinet is, which represents
the majority of a mixed House of Commons ?
Surely, there are more checks and se
curities for the proper exercise of those
functions in the latter case, than in the
former. But Keble's reasoning here is
only one, of a long series of faUacies, which
Lord Halifax has put forward in his Letter
to the Bishop of Winchester. They cul
minate in his verdict, that the Sovereign

142 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
should only be Head of the Church when
his power is personal and arbitrary, not
when it is constitutional and popular. In
other words, such a Church, as Lord Halifax
desires, is incompatible with Parliamentary
Government. Or, putting it in another
way, to be a churchman according to the
model of Lord Halifax, you must repudiate
the whole course of English history since
1688, or 1642. It was in this temper that
Innocent III. condemned Magna Charta,
and Pius IX. wrote the Syllabus. As men
of this temper are not at home under the
English Constitution, so they are not
properly at home in the English Church.
The whole evidence of history shows, that a
clergy imbued with such notions is not fit
to be trusted with independent power.
They had independent power in England,
between Henry H. and Henry VIIL, when,
fortunately, they were superseded. Their
' Catholicism,' whether in its Eoman or in
its mediaeval sense, is always destructive
to nations, to Churches, and in the end

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 143
to individuals. It is the worst enemy to
true religion ; and, I believe, it is contra
dictory to, and exclusive of. New Testa
ment Christianity. I have tried to show
how worthless the mediseval and Eoman
foundations of this spurious ' Catholicism '
are. I hope to show that true Catholicism,
as we receive and understand it from the
Creeds, is something very different. The
history of the middle ages iUustrates the
mischiefs of this false ' Catholicism.' The
English history of the same period shows
our revolt against that spurious Catholicity ;
and our wisdom in hating it, both in the
interests of Christianity and of the State.
In all times, as Lord Halifax reminds us,
it has been the ally of arbitrary and lawless
methods. From the days of Magna Charta,
through the troubles of Henry III. and
Charles I., to the apostasy of James IL, it
has been opposed to the development of
our Constitution in Church and State.
Lord Halifax' position, as stated by him
self, in his extraordinary Letter to the

144 TPIE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Bishop of Winchester, is based on a mis
reading, as I think, of the Statute of Appeals.
On page 5, section 2, he quotes that
Statute. The phrase in it, ' That part of
the body politick called the Spiritualty '
means clearly, I think, the English clergy
considered (1) as an Estate of the Eealm ;
and (2) in their mediasval aspect, not as
the clergy of a free Church, but as a recog
nized branch of the Latin Patriarchate,
subject to the Patriarch. The remarkable
phrase, which follows, ' now usuaUy caUed
the English Church,' draws attention, I
think, to their new position. It means
that the English clergy certainly, but per
haps the whole body of English Churchmen,
have become once more a free, self-govern
ing, and Sovereign corporation : i.e. with
regard to the Eoman Church, and all other
Churches. The assertion that the English
Church is ' sufficient, and meet of itself,
without the intermeddling of any exterior
person or persons,' must refer exclusively
to the Pope and his officials. The Statute

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 145
clearly does not intend by the term ' exterior'
to distinguish between the English clergy,
and the English laity ; between the ecclesi
astical and Eoyal jurisdictions. If it
did, the Statute would be contradictory ;
and its maker. Parliament, would be
stultified by its owm words and acts. It
would be setting up an authority against
itself; and, while risking the national
existence, by vindicating the Eoyal Supre
macy, as against the Pope, it would be
abrogating that Supremacy before the
English episcopate. The supposition is
ludicrous. It is also contradicted by all
the Acts and procedure of the Eeformation
settlement. On the other hand. Article XXXVII. is
very clear about what it does not under
stand by the Eoyal Supremacy. 'We
give not to our Princes the ministering
either of God's word, or of the Sacra
ments ; but that only prerogative which
we see to have been given always to all
godly Princes in holy Scriptures by God
L

146 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Himself; that is, that they should rule all
estates and degrees committed to their
charge by God, whether they be ecclesias
tical or Temporal.' We find again the
careful avoidance of the word Spiritual ;
which, I notice, is used invariably, instead
of ecclesiastical, by the so-called ' Catholic '
partizans, who thus beg the whole question
in dispute, and then argue from their
usurped position. The ' Godly Princes in
Holy Scriptures ' must connote Manasseh
and Zedekiah, as well as Hezekiah. In
later times, I suppose, it applies to Herod,
advised by the Sanhedrin. These, too, as
we know, sat in the seat of Moses, exercis
ing the Supremacy by ' commission,' and
yet they were to be obeyed.
Such, then, was the Eoyal Supremacy
as defined and exercised under Queen
Elizabeth, to whom our Church and State
can not ever be too grateful. She guided us
through the most serious of all our
dangers. The mediseval Papacy was a
cruel and cunning enemy; but the new

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 147
Eomanism, devised by the Jesuits, at
Trent, and propagated by their peculiar
methods afterwards, was more cruel, more
crafty, far more active, and if possible
more unscrupulous and criminal. Its
methods, as against its enemies, may be
seen in the histories of England, Germany,
and Holland. Its more fatal effects, on its
friends, are displayed in the martyrdom of
Italy, and the murdering of Spain. The
attacks of the Jesuits on learning may be
studied in the lives of Scaliger and
Casaubon. Their dealings with truth are
equally exposed in their own writings, and
in Pascal's ' Letters.' The effects of their
moral and political guidance are shown
first in the Court and Society of Louis XV.,
and then in the Ee volution.
It is often asserted, and is believed too
easily, that the sixteenth century in
England was a time of much distress, and
that religion was almost destroyed out of
the Kingdom. The vigour and earnestness
of all parties, Puritan, Episcopalian, Pres-
L 3

148 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
byterian, in the seventeenth century,
prove that religion could not have been
dead in the England of Elizabeth. No
one, who knows anything of the facts,
would venture to compare the state of
religion in England in the sixteenth
century, with the state of the two centuries
before. It would be impossible to write a
decent and a true account of church life,
from Edward III. to Eichard IIL, without
disguising the narrative in Latin notes,
after Gibbon's manner, when he discusses
the bad Emperors. The sixteenth century
was a time of social and economic change,
besides all the restorations in our creed
and Church. No country could go
through the dangers and revolutions of
King Henry's reign, the anarchy of
Edward VL, and the pandemonium of
Mary, without much distress. In the
latter part of Elizabeth, England was more
prosperous than it had ever been since the
Black Death. It is often said, too ;
Cardinal Manning was fond of saying it ;

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 149
that England was robbed of its faith by an
unscrupulous minority. We may say at
once, that its faith was never the new
Eomanism of Trent, and still less was it that
Vaticanism, which the Cardinal did so
much to inaugurate. Henry VIIL had no
revenue, and no army, by which he could
over-awe his people, or be independent of
them. Without popular support, he could
not have tamed the clergy, expelled the
Pope, and suppressed his Monks. I have
shown how and why the Secular clergy
would not raise a finger to help the
Eegulars ; but, in deposing them, Henry
had with him the whole South of England.
The North, or parts of it, two centuries
behind the South, was not injured nor
depressed by the great wool growers of
Eievaulx and Fountains, or by the mitred
lords of Furness ; as the Southern farmers
and burghers were by the Monks of Glas
tonbury or St. Albans. It was entirely a
matter of interest, not of sentiment, in
either case. When the North rose to

160 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
defend their monasteries, the South
enabled the King to put down the rising.
London and the South-eastern counties
were always for Eeform. As before,' under
Henry IIL, and later, under Charles I., so
under the Tudors the same parts of
England were progressive and reactionary.
The intelligent South-east was for liberty
and progress. The ruder North and the
wilder West were for prerogative in Church
and State. If it be true, that London and
the Eastern counties robbed England of its
Civil Liberties in the seventeenth century,
then it is equally true to say that they
robbed England of its Eeligious Liberties in
the sixteenth.
The intelligent and large minority
secured the Civil and Eeligious Liberties of
the whole nation. The great service of
Elizabeth was, that she insisted on healing
measures ; and on giving a fair chance to
the greatest of all healers, Time, while her
People were learning, through their OAvn
experience, and by the horrid spectacle of

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 161
their neighbours, to judge between the
Eeformation and the Eeaction. She had
ruled by trusting her People, and by
proving that she deserved their trust.
Before she died, her statesmanship was
understood, justified, and accepted by an
overwhelming majority ; and we, looking
back, and making due allowance for
Elizabeth's time and circumstances, must
join them in praising the greatest of all
our Eulers. It was not she, nor her father,
who robbed England of its faith ; but that
insidious Power, which corrupted the
mediseval Church, and attacked every
mediseval State.
When Elizabeth went to her reward,
there followed an alternating policy of
panic and repression. The Civil Power
tried to crush its enemies by ecclesiastical
weapons ; and Laud made himself a tool
of the King and Strafford for that purpose.
He also tried to revive many of the bad
mediseval practices, both in worship and in
the procedure of the church Courts. It

152 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
would be difficult to say whether his follies
in England or in Scotland were greater.
At any rate, he managed to alienate both
kingdoms from the throne, and to unite all
the Presbyterian zeal in both Churches.
When the retribution came, the bishops
were swept away, before the Monarchy
itself was seriously attacked. The English
Presbyterians, most of whom were Eoyal-
ists, carried everything before them, and
took possession of the Church. They
allied themselves with the Scotch, took the
Covenant, and tried to impose it, with the
Geneva discipline, on the whole country.
The discipline they would have set up was
far more inquisitorial and arbitrary than
the rule of the bishops and the Star
Chamber. As Milton says : ' New Pres
byter is but old Priest writ large.' Milton's
plea for unlicensed printing was urged
against the Presbyterian authorities.
Fortunately, Milton's friends prevailed.
The Independents broke the Presbyterians,
and applied their own remedies in Church

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 163
and State. In politics, the victory of
CromweU gave us for the only time in our
history an undisguised personal despotism,
resting on the sword. Parliaments were
packed, or abolished, at the Protector's will.
His basis of government was the military
district. His instrument was the Major-
General commanding it. Taxation was
arbitrary. Cromwell protected the liber
ties of England by shutting them into a
military chest, and pocketing the key.
Everything, that had been complained of
in King Charles, was committed in a more
aggravated way by Cromwell, and on a
larger scale. The Eevolution, which had
begun with the Petition of Eight and the
Grand Eemonstrance, had ended in a dead
failure, or in a deadlock. In the Crom
wellian Church there was the same strange
mixture of tyranny and anarchy. Crom
weU was a very great and typical English
man, who meant honestly, but had got
into an impossible position. He dared not
assume the name of king, because of his

154 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
own army. Without that name, the whole
machinery of government and Law had lost
its motive powder and cohesion. Neither
in the Church nor in the State could
CromweU rule constitutionaUy, or come to
any settlement. He was willing to estab
lish any, and almost every, form of non-
prelatical religion. He re-established a
House of Lords. He conquered Scotland,
and dealt even more severely with the
Irish. His foreign policy was vigorous ;
though the effect of it was to extend
France both on the north and east. He
was used by Mazarin; and, but for that
Cardinal, he must have threatened the
Duke of Savoy with empty words about
the Vaudois persecutions. He was fortu
nate in his death ; because not only was
his own position untenable, but his finances
were not equal to his vigour in diplomacy.
In not a single political or ecclesiastical
question would he have been in sympathy
with those politicians and parties who have
lately claimed him for their Patron ; and

TPIE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 165
he would have had more contempt for
their methods, than even for their prin
ciples. The dead failure of the Puritans in
politics and religion led to that re-action
which is known as the Eestor ation.
Charles II. was far more powerful than
Charles I. had CA^er been, and when he
died after a reign of twenty-five years he
was much more arbitrary. The crimes
and blunders of his successor brought
things to a head, and the Eevolution had
to be done again. The men who secured
our Civil and Eeligious Liberties were, not
the Presbyterians, nor the Independents,
but the great Whig statesmen of 1688 ;
though, in the long battle for religious
toleration, the chief honours of the victory
are due to the passive and Christian resist
ance made by the Society of Friends.
The first stand against the tyranny of
James II. was made by an Oxford CoUege ;
and the whole country raUied round the
Church, in the persons of those seven
bishops who were imprisoned for refusing

156 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
to break the Law. The Eevolution of
1688 was the complement of the Eeforma
tion ; and, we must remember, it was
opposed by the same enemies. Louis XIV.
attacked our Eevolution, as Philip II. had
attacked the Eeformation. In both cases,
the attack was directed by the same in
fluences, and a defeat would have led to
the same results. As we owe the first
victory to Queen Elizabeth, so we owe the
second to the policy of William IIL, and
the sword of Marlborough.
In that long warfare, caused chiefly by
the crimes or blunders of the Stuart kings,
much was done, on every side, that is to
be regretted ; much, that can only be for
gotten by putting our common Christianity
above party and sectarian bitterness. In
spite of warfare, good work was done, and
good lives were led. Hooker remains the
ideal of what a controversialist should be.
He cannot be appreciated without some
knowledge of the scurrility and ignorance
of his opponents. Bishop Andrewes is the

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 157
type of a perfect Anglican. Herbert is a
model Parish Priest. Both of them were
learned, accomplished, and pious, in the
best meaning of the words. Among Dis
senters we have Bunyan and Baxter, to
take no other names. From 1660 to 1714
is perhaps the golden age of the English
Church, as it was the Augustan age of Eng
lish Letters. The detractors of Charles II.
may explain it how they choose ; but the
one department of State, which King Charles
managed for himself, was the Church. In
the others, as he pointed out, his words
may have been his own, but his acts were
his Ministers'. As Johnson observed,
' Charles the Second always had a rever
ence for what was good. He knew his
people, and rewarded merit.' His bishops
were the protectors of the nation against
James II. , and are the glory of the Church.
In the Divines and Preachers of that age,
we can see what the tradition of sound
learning meant. In such men as Walton,
and those whom he describes, we can see

168 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
the tradition and practice of sound living.
Before any one forms a judgment about
the close of the seventeenth century and
the opening of the eighteenth, I would
urge him to put all our popular historians
on one side, and make a study for himself,
in contemporary authors, of men and
movements in the English Church from
the Eestoration to the death of Anne.
Through all these changes, the outward
continuity, the corporate existence, of the
English Church had remained unbroken,
from the days of Archbishop Theodore, in
the seventh century. It is as idle to
dispute the continuity of the English
Church, as of an Oxford College, or of the
Corporation of London. I should maintain
for it, too, a continuity of essential doctrine.
It has the same Scriptures, and uses the
same creeds, which it received at the
beginning. Its people receive the same
Sacraments, through the same Ministry.
In outward form, and in unessential beliefs,
it has gone through many changes, some

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 159
willingly, some unwillingly; but so has
every other national Church in the West of
Europe, and most of all the Eoman. The
Vaticanism of to-day was not the faith of
Constance. The feudal Papacy of Boni
face VHL was not the Patriarchate of
Gregory I., and even less of Damasus or
Liberius. The creed of Pius IV. is not the
creed of Nice. The Trans-substantiation
of Innocent III. was not the faith of
Chrysostom and Basil. Beside such
changes of front, as some of these, the
changes of the Eeformation are trifling ;
but it would be absurd to argue, that such
changes must destroy the continuity of a
Church. That depends on corporate life,
and essential beliefs. In spite of mediseval
ignorance and corruption, the essential
beliefs of the Western Church were pre
served through the middle ages. It is in
these, and not in corrupt excrescences,
that continuity is to be found. In any
thing, outside the barest elements of Chris
tian life and belief, the mediseval Church

160 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
cannot be of the least authority. But,
putting the mediseval Church on one side.
Lord Halifax, in another reckless Letter,
denies any continuous tradition in the
English Church since the Eeformation.
In the reign of Elizabeth, he says, its
doctrine ' was almost entirely obscured by
Calvinism.' Again, of the eighteenth
century, he says, ' Deism seemed well-nigh
to have supplanted Christianity.' If Lord
Halifax really thinks like this, he cannot
know his history. He seems to forget, that,
if his theory were true, it would mean the
destruction of his own party and their
position ; while it could make no difference
at aU to those who take a broader view of
the Church and of Christianity. I should
have thought a study of Elizabeth's reign
would prove how zealously and success
fully the Church fought then, both against
Popish and Sectarian innovations, and most
of all against those of Calvin. Surely
there is a consistent Anglican ' tradition,'
not only to be found unmistakably in the

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 161
formularies of the Church ; but to be seen
in a certain mo'de of worship, in a certain
stamp of man produced by it. We have
departed too commonly, no doubt, of late
years, from that fine standard of men and
manners ; but I think it may be traced,
continuously enough, from Hooker to Dr.
Eouth of Magdalen. It has been imperilled
bythe excitement and excesses of the Oxford
Movement. It is one of Newman's worst
fallacies, to appeal from the English Church
of the eighteenth century, or of the early
nineteenth, to the Latin Church of the
eleventh or twelfth, with its ' sweep and
swing,' as he phrases it. There is, of
course, no useful or fair comparison to be
made. The true appeal would be from the
English Church of George the Second and
Third, to the French Church of Louis XV.,
and the Italian Churchmen of the same
period. I don't think, that, either in zeal
or morals, whether clerical or lay, the
English Church would come off worst.
After the accession of George I. the
M

162 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Church was undisturbed by any political
affairs. In theology, it had entered upon
a long warfare with the Deists, who were
driven out of all their positions by Bishop
Butler. The Anglican tradition of sound
learning was maintained. Among many
names, we can only mention Louth, Berke
ley, Waterland, and Bentley ; though no
one who cares for pure English, pure
reason, and pure living, can ever omit the
name of William Law. It is to the loss of
such men as Law from the active ministry
of the Church, through their scruples about
excluding the Stuart family, that some
writers attribute the deadness or lethargy
of the Church in the eighteenth century.
But a similar deadness, or something worse,
overtook every national Church in Europe
during the same period ; so that the ex
planation is not adequate. The only
activity shown was by a few Pietists in
Germany and France, and by Wesley and
his foUowers in England. Their efforts led
to what is called the Evangelical Movement

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 163
or revival ; and that was followed by the
Tractarlan or Oxford Movement of our own
times. These two movements or parties suggest
the two hideous party cries of ' Low ' and
'High' Church, which are probably used
more often than they are understood ; and
which never should be used at aU by any
one who wishes to respect himself, the
Church, or the Christian name. Low
Church or Evangelical opinions, as I
understand the terms, mean a dweUing
almost exclusively upon the relation of
the individual Christian to Christ. They
imply strong, though sometimes indefinite,
notions of redemption and of grace. So
strongly are these held, that belief in the
Sacraments is weakened, and sometimes
destroyed. Christianity is considered al
most solely as a matter of personal religion.
These opinions tend necessarily to impair
the value and the activity of the Church,
as an organization. They also tend, to a
very large extent, to impair or warp the
M 2

164 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OP
historical sense of Christianity ; and they
too often imply a narrow and unscholarly
interpretation or use of Scripture. They
seem to fill their adherents with an in
curable jealousy of other views, and to
agitate thera with perpetual fears. They
are derived usually, and for the most part,
from certain words or passages in Saint
Paul, to the exclusion of all other passages.
Every author has the right to be con
sidered as a whole, and a balance must be
struck between all the parts or statements
in his work. No doubt Saint Paul says
everything, which the Evangelicals attri
bute to him, though they do not always
grasp his meaning, or his context ; and he
also says a great deal, which they usually
omit. Moreover, they often, as I think,
apply, to individuals, words and passages
which Saint Paul applies clearly to whole
bodies of men looked at collectively, and
to states or conditions of collective men,
rather than to individual opinions. In
addition. Evangelical theologians often

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 165
think they are reading Saint Paul for them
selves, when they are only reading him
through the spectacles of Luther or of
Calvin. They read into him the pernicious
controversies of the Sixteenth and Seven
teenth Centuries on Grace, and attribute
to his words meanings of which he was
innocent, and which the original Greek
will not bear. The other side are just as
uncritical in attributing late meanings to
words which refer to the Church and her
Ministers, or to the Sacraments. The High
Church party think very much 'of these.
Their tendency is to make too little of
personal religion, to make the Church of
primary instead of secondary importance,
by interposing the Church between the
individual and Christ ; though of course
the Church, the whole mystical body, is in
some senses of more importance than any
single member of it. High Church views,
too, in their excess, tend to a Sacerdotal
ism, which above all other things is anti-
Christian, and destructive to true religion.

166 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Unless High Church beliefs are kept alive
by a fervent personal religion, they tend
as weU to formalism, and Pharisaism.
What they led to in their defects, when
combined with Sacerdotalism, we can see
in the condition of Europe before the
Eeformation, and we can see it still in
several European countries. Not that
Pharisaism is a monopoly of High Church
beliefs. If Sacraments can be misused, so
can the Bible. Texts, and ' experiences,'
and cant phrases, can be, and haA^'e been,
used just as Pharisaically and falsely as
rites and ordinances have been used. If
the Church of Eome have erred by ventur
ing to explain the mode of Christ's pre
sence and operations in the Eucharist, some
of the Eeformed Churches have erred no
less grievously in trying to explain the
application of Christ's merits, and the
operations of Divine Grace. Both sides
have forgotten that ' the Spirit bloweth
w-here it listeth,' and we are warned
expressly that we ' cannot tell ' whence nor

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 167
how. Forgetting these words, men have
taken upon themselves to tell us, with
disastrous results. Few things, except
certain accounts of our redemption, are
so repulsive as most treatises on Grace.
In describing these matters, extreme
Evangehcal theologians have gone just
as far beyond the words of Scripture, and
have done as much violence to them, as
the inost extreme Sacerdotalists have done
in discoursing of the Sacraments. The
only difference that I can see between the
schoolmen and some of the Eeformed theo
logians is, that the former knew more
logic. Both are equally far from Christi
anity and Scripture, and equally ignorant
of the words and things they venture to
discuss. We shall have neither unity nor
truth until most of the Eeformed Theology
has been swept away into the same Limbo
as the disputes of the schoolmen. What
Erasmus thought of them can be seen in
his ' Praise of Folly.' He would have held
much the same opinions about some Ee-

168 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
formed Theologians, and about most of
our present quarrels. ' Such studies,' as
Wesley's mother said to him, ' tend more
to confound than to inform the under
standing.' Such opinions, too, as those of
Calvin, lead only too often to Fatalism or
to Antinomianism, two errors which are
both latent in ' Evangelical ' Theology.
It is here that we see at once how far
Saint Paul himself was removed from the
excesses of his pretended followers. No
one is stronger against Antinomianism, nor
is it possible for any one to give a ' higher '
view of the Church than he gives in two of
his Epistles. Saint Paul neA^er forgot that,
in one sense, Christianity was a personal
relation between Christ and each Christian.
Christ was to him an ever-present Saviour
and Master. Indeed, He is more : He is
an inward living principle of thought and
action. This great truth of the Christ
abiding in each believer is taught by no
modern so finely as by William Law ; and
it is one of the surest solvents for crude

THE CHUECH OP ENGLAND 169
' Evangelical ' views of the redemption, and
of Grace, as well as for material notions of
the Sacraments.
Views about the Sacraments, or about
Grace, have been the most frequent causes
of dispute in the Church, and of separation
from it. Such disputes have been aggra
vated because the modes or operations of
divine Grace have not been revealed to us
by Scripture, and therefore cannot possiblj^
be explained by theology. Theologians
have neither known what they Avere talking
about, nor have understood the terms they
used. It is only natural that they should
have misunderstood one another, and that
their followers should have added to the
confusion. The Church of England, at her Ee
formation, retained the two Sacraments
instituted by Christ, ' as generally neces
sary.' She also remembered the ' high '
mystical views of the Church that are given
by Saint Paul, and aU those descriptions of
the ' Kingdom ' which Christ himself has

170 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
made. Guided by these, and by what she
found in the Apostolic writings, she
prescribed the offices and duties of her
Ministers. She condemned and abhorred
Sacerdotalism, but she did not therefore
go on to deny that there was a true
Christian Priesthood, to administer God,'s
Word and Sacraments. By thus coupling
the two duties together, she showed that
she meant a Ministerial Priesthood, such as
is described in all the ancient liturgies, and
not such a Priesthood as had led, and leads
still, to the abuses of Clericalism. The
Church saw that some of Saint Paul's teaching
had been overlaid by the corruptions of the
Middle Ages, and she pointed out that
there were means of Grace outside the
Sacraments, that there was access to God
without ministerial assistance, and that
religion was a personal, not a ritual, affair.
But, in so doing, she never denied the
reality and necessity of the Sacraments, nor
the prophetical office of the Church. Like
Saint Paul, she held the whole body of truth

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 171
in perfect balance, observing the proportion
of faith. Our High Church Party for a long while
observed the distinction between what was
Catholic, and what was Eoman, repudiating
the latter. Of late years, some of them have
adopted quite modern Eoman practices,
and by so doing have stultified their own
position, as well as the historical attitude
taken by their Church in the Sixteenth
Century. More than this, other High
Churchmen have apparently gone on to
argue, that everything ' Catholic ' is right,
and therefore lawful. There is no more fatal
error. So-called ' Catholic ' beliefs and
practices, like everything else, must be
referred to Scripture. If they cannot meet
that test they are not binding, or may even
be wrong. This school of Churchmen
often forget, that our Creed speaks not
merely of the Catholic, but of the Apostolic,
Church. The only Apostolic Church, of
which we are certain, is to be found in the
Epistles and the Acts. The final appeal is

172 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
not, as some persons are asserting now, to
the Sixteenth Century, with aU its prejudice
and passion ; nor, as the other side retort,
is it to the Middle Ages, with all their
insolence and ignorance. The only valid
appeal, in the last resort, is to the Primi
tive Church of the Apostolic writings,
interpreting them by the most precise
contemporary and exterior knowledge we
can attain, construing them by the strictest
rules of grammar, and testing our con
clusions by all that we can find applicable
in the writings or practice of the united
Church. By such an appeal the Church of
England must stand or fall. I believe she
will answer to it more truly and fully than
any other Church, or than any sect.
Both High Church and Low Church
views are to be found in Saint Paul ; but in
that perfect balance, which is what we
mean by good, or sound, or reasonable
Churchmanshlp. We can imagine what
Saint Paul would have said to those, who
extracted pieces out of his letters, and used

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 173
them for party cries and factions. This is
precisely what has been done since the
Eeformation, and what causes our present
troubles. Both sides are partly right and
partly wrong, because the whole truth is
with neither of them. They differ, as a
rule, only about words, or modes of ex
pression, not about the truths whicli under
lie them ; and they make much of these
differences of detail, instead of making
much more of realities, in which I know
they are far more agreed than they
imagine. Within the limits of the Prayer
Book, according to the letter of the Law,
the widest differences of detail should be
allowed. But, everything contradictory to
the Law, and to the first principles of the
English Church, as, for instance, Eomaniz
ing by teaching Trans-substantiation, by
making rules about fasting before Com
munion, by forcing or influencing children
to confess, should be dealt with as sternly
as Queen Elizabeth dealt with her Puritans ;
and by the same precedent, by punishing

174 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
organized and aggressive action with
unflinching rigour.
At the end of our long investigation, it
may, perhaps, be useful to recapitulate
some of the positions we have secured.
We have traced the outward forms and
fortunes of Christianity, from its earliest
organizations in Syria and Greece. We
are not told how or when Christianity was
brought into Eome ; but we are told, that
the Christian Church already there was
visited and strengthened by Saint Paul.
When the Capital was gained, Christianity
soon went into all the Provinces. We
have, again, no certain knowledge of how
or when Christianity was brought into
Celtic Britain ; but we know there was an
early British Church, embracing the whole
island. This was destroyed, or driven out
of the South-eastern parts, by our heathen
English forefathers ; and they, in turn,
were made Christians by the labours of
Celtic, French, and Italian missionaries.
The various elements of Christianity in

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 176
South Britain, or England, Avere united and
organized into one Church by the year 668.
Since then there has been a National
Church of the whole English People. It
has gone through many vicissitudes. It
has been corrupted and reformed. It has
suffered, and inflicted, . many wrongs; but
there are two things it has never done. It
has never failed in its visible and corporate
existence ; and, in spite of errors and re
forms, of worldliness and torpor, in spite
of mistakes in judgment and even in
temper, it has never changed its essential
beliefs. It holds the faith once for all
delivered to the Saints, and expresses it in
those ancient Creeds, which it received
from the beginning. It has always dis
pensed the Word and the Sacraments by
Ministers duly authorized in the ancient
way, using the titles and offices found in
Scripture. These are matters of historical
fact, and not merely of theological dispute
or speculation. The English Church is as
evident and unmistakable in history as

176 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF ¦
the English People. I have now, on the
one hand, shown its historical connexion
with those countries and Churches from
which it received its Christianity ; and, on
the other hand, I have tried to show some
thing of its internal history. Whether we
believe or not in that which is known
technicaUy as the Apostolical Succession,
we must hold that between the Apostolic
Churches of the New Testament, and the
present Church of England, there has
been an unbroken succession of beUevers,
holding essentially the same belief, and
organized in essentially the same visible
and external way. If there be a divinely
organized and visible Church of Christ, to
which allegiance is due, the Church of
England is the representative of it among
the English People. This is what I mean
by her ' Position,' historically ; and this
once estabUshed, her theological ' Message '
follows as a necessary consequence.
How to interpret that Message is
another question, and is the cause of all

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 177
our present disputes in belief and worship ;
but to abandon large truths, or to despair
of them, because their details, or the modes
of expressing them, are in dispute, seems
to me no less criminal than foolish. Nearly
all disputes are caused by a mis-use of
terms. They are usually verbal, not real.
I have touched on the wicked party cries
of ' Low ' and ' High ' Church, and their
mis-use. The terms ' Catholic ' and
'Protestant' are just as often mis-used, or
not understood. ' Protestant ' is usually
made to cover every sort of non-Conformist
or Evangelical opinion, and is usually
confined to those opinions. In its first and
proper meaning, the term ' Protestant '
was applied to those who protested for the
supreme and final authority of the Bible,
and against the usurped authority of Eome.
It is, therefore, a positive and not a
negative appellation. In its proper mean
ing, it belongs to the ' highest ' Anglican,
if he be loyal, as weU as to all the Orthodox
Eastern Churches. The term ' Catholic '

178 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
in its proper sense, means nothing but
' universal,' though always with an impli
cation that what is uniA-ersal must likewise
be old, or it cannot be of grave authority.
It means really something Primitive and
Apostolic, something Scriptural. In this
sense, every so-called ' Protestant ' or
' Low Church ' doctrine, which can be
extracted out of Saint Paul, is necessarily
' Catholic' This sense is usuaUy forgotten
by those who arrogate the name to them
selves, and use it with a wholly perverted
meaning. Such persons are very loud and
troublesome at present. They confuse the
term ' Catholic ' with the term ' medi
seval ' ; forgetting, apparently, that all
the Western Churches of the middle ages
must be ruled out of court, simply on the
score of ignorance. They had neither the
learning, nor the capacity, nor we may add
the temper, to decide any question of belief
or practice. Their decisions cannot be of
the least weight, theologically speaking.
Yet the English Church Union, for instance.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 179
confines the term ' Catholic,' apparently,
to those mediseval practices and notions,
and in the name of a phantom ' Catholic
Church ' is prepared to challenge the Acts
of Uniformity, the Eoj^al Supremacy, and
to violate the Law. The faith once for all
delivered is clearly not derived from any
Court of Law. So far as I can see, no
Court has ever even discussed it, and much
less tried to alter it. The utmost the
Courts have done is to decide whether the
thoughts or fancies of individuals, about
the faith, are legal ; and whether certain
practices are forbidden or allowed. As to
the first, it cannot matter, except to the
individuals accused, what the Courts may
hold. As to the second, the Courts for the
sake of order should certainly be obeyed.
If our ' Catholics ' would look behind the
middle ages, and take the trouble to learn
something about antiquity, they would find
that incense, lights, and vestments, for ex
ample, though anci ent, are not Primitive, and
are certainly not Apostolic nor Scriptural.

180 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
They are not, therefore, essential to the
beliefs which they are supposed to
symbolize ; and the same thing may be said
of private confession, of fasting communion,
and of every single Eomanizing and Eitual-
istic practice, for which these men are now
disturbing the peace of the Church, and
threatening to defy the Laws of the Church
and Eealm. It is not left us to imagine
what the Apostles would have said to them
on both accounts. I fail utterly to see
that certain important beliefs, such as the
real presence in the Eucharist, can depend
now, as they did not depend at the first,
upon the use of lights and incense, or the
wearing of certain clothes. But I do feel
very strongly, that a person going into an
English Church ought to be sure beforehand
that he wiU not be present at a foreign or
an obsolete ritual, or at a meeting of Bible
Christians. He should find something
between the two. There is a certain right
and reasonable standard of Anglican
worship, to be found in its perfection at

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 181
our Cathedrals and in some of our CoUege
Chapels at Cambridge and Oxford. That
standard should not be exceeded, and
should as far as possible be reached, or
aimed at. From the restoration of the
Church in 1660, until a few years ago, that
decent and comely service might be found
in every church and chapel where the
niceties of worship were cared for, with
hardly the smallest variation in details.
Variations depended more on the resources
of any given church than upon doctrinal
reasons. The large body of the laity, and
I hope a larger majority among the clergy,
have a just grievance because they are
failing more and more to find it. It is
such a standard as should satisfy rituaUstic
and sesthetic taste, and yet should not
offend or distract the austerest Puritan.
That is precisely the broad and reasonable
moderation of belief and practice at which
our Eeformers aimed. It is entirely in the
spirit of the English Church, and it is what
the majority of the English People have

182 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
always desired. They read history in
vain, who think the EngUsh People admire
Puritan defects in worship, or desire a
return to medieval practices. Certainly
they have studied theology in vain, who
think that mediseval practices and beliefs
are ' Catholic'
Behind ritual, however, both Eitualists
and Puritans would say, are certain
questions affecting the organization and
Ministry of the Church, about which
opinions are so divided as to be irrecon
cileable. Such, for instance, are the
questions of Orders and the Apostolical
Succession. But how little, after all, we,
any of us, know about the real meaning of
the terms we use so easily, or even about
the meanings we attach to them. The
Church of Eome herself, which has ventured
to explain most things, has never, I think,
settled the precise difference between a
bishop and a priest. She has never said
whether it is a difference in kind, or only
in degree. Even the Pope himself, in his

TILE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 183
recent letter about English Orders, con
fesses it is dubious. Does the episcopal
power belong to bishops personally ; is it
an ' Order ' ? Or did it come to them at
first as the representatives of their presby
ters, acting as their head, and with their
assent ? This question is insoluble. Again,
do ' Orders ' themselves pertain solely to
ordained persons, coming down to them
through a succession of Ministers ; or do
they come to them as representing the
whole congregation, and acting for them, as
a matter of decency and convenience, but
still possessing real powers, bequeathed by
Christ ? These questions again are almost
insoluble. There is evidence in the
Scriptures, which seems to look both ways.
Again, were the promises made to the
Apostles, about binding and loosing, about
celebrating the Lord's Supper, made to
them personally, to be handed on through
an ordained Ministry ; or were they made
through the Apostles, to the whole body of
Christians, the ' royal priesthood,' as Saint

184 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Peter calls them ; and does the Church
virtually convey them to her representa
tives, through a succession of lawfully
appointed Ministers ? Again we must say,
these questions are insoluble, through long
mis-use. What is clear is, that certain
promises were made by Christ to his
Church, and certain real powers conferred.
We seem to see those powers handed on by
the Apostles, usually, though not always, to
persons chosen by the congregations. We
know the names of their offices. We cannot
very clearly define or separate their duties,
in the narrative of Scripture. But, almost
before scripture history ends, and certainly
before any definite church history begins,
we find certain Ministers, with duties well
defined, in the exercise of their functions ;
and there is no evidence to show that this
was an innovation. It would, therefore, be
very rash, to say the least of it, in the face
of history, in the face of apparently
Apostolic practice, and above all, in the
face of Christ's mysterious and serious

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 185
commission, to abolish such a Ministry.
The Church of England accepts it, and
continues it, as Primitive ; but she makes
no assertions about its nature, nor does
she assert anything about those, outside
herself, who have not taken precisely her
own views. She has protested against
sacerdotal assumptions and practices. In
her own practice, she has been most
rigorous about the observance of her
forms, and has left us in no doubt as to her
own mind and preferences. Nevertheless,
it would I think be very difficult, on the
evidence of Scripture and Primitive his
tory, to disprove, in a full Catholic sense,
the validity of Orders in the Presbyterian
Church of Scotland. To deny them is
quite another thing from disproving them.
They are denied easily enough, without
any attempt at proof It is just as easy to
deny or to assert about the whole question
of ' Orders ' and the Ministry. The
evidence and our real knowledge being
what they are, wise men should be content

186 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
to believe the fulness and reality of Christ's
promises to his Church, without disputing
about the nature of his Sacraments, or the
way in which his divine commission is
conveyed. Except for the pleasure of
wrangling over words, there is very little to
dispute about in the ' Apostolical Succes
sion,' unless those who claim it go on to
make themselves into a sacerdotal caste.
The dangers, and the undeniable abuses
of ' sacerdotalism,' no doubt, with many
people, stand in the way of their accepting
the literal words and promises of Christ.
They read his words at the institution of
the Lord's Supper, and his long discourse
in the sixth chapter of Saint John ; or they
read his mysterious words about loosing
and binding sin ; and they are perplexed
by them. They would like to accept them,
but they end by explaining them away.
To accept them, as they are generally
understood, seems to establish at once a
sacerdotal caste, and they find so much in
the New Testament, in every part of it, and

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 187
by every writer, which is not reconcileable
with castes and narrow priesthoods. Such
persons, too, in the whole course of church
history find only too much evidence, that
adds to their misgivings. And so Christ
ians are divided by opinions, or principles,
which seem to be irreconcileable ; and
which are not reconcileable, as ' Orders ' are
generaUy explained and understood. The
question, therefore, arises, have ' Orders '
been rightly understood ? Is it necessary,
that Christians should be thus divided ?
As we have attained to broader and more
scientific views about the term ' Faith,' as
used by Saint. Paul, and the terms ' Grace,'
' Original Sin,' ' Law,' the ' Vocation ' of
Jews and Gentiles, so we may come to
hold broader and truer views about the
endowments of Christ's body mystical, and
the functions of its Ministers. It may be,
that the Apostles have been regarded too
much as standing above the Church, and
apart from it; and that promises made,
or endowments given, to the whole

188 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
mystical body of Christ, have been
regarded as made and given solely to the
Apostles, and through them to their ' suc
cessors,' considered separately and ex
clusively. . It may be, too, that promises
made to the Apostles, merely because they
were the first disciples, or the only
disciples present, have been interpreted,
wrongly, as applying to them exclusively,
and not inclusively as representing the
larger and future Church. Certainly in
Saint Paul, the Apostles, when they are
mentioned among Christian officers, are
always subordinate to the whole body of
Christ : they do not stand separate from
it, or above it. All functions appear to
flow from the body to all its officers and
members, not from any officers or
Ministers to the body. If we pursue the
enquiry into church history, we certainly
find in the Liturgies, that the clergy were
regarded as a ministerial priesthood, re
presenting the congregation, speaking in
their name, speaking in the plural number.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 189
They never seem to be regarded as a caste,
possessing separate powers or endowments
of their own, and using them for the
benpfit of the congregation : yet this is what
the modern sacerdotal theory comes to,
both among the Eomans and the Eitualists.
The solution seems to lie in a larger and
truer interpretation of Saint Paul, where
he treats of the Church and its Ministry.
We know, in the political sphere, how
many crude theories, all now untenable,
incredible, have been held about the origin
of society itself, and of government. The
theory of the Social Contract was one of
those rude attempts. The Divine Eight
of Kino's was another. The attributes of
the Eoman Emperors, as explained by
Lawyers, was a third. All these, we now
perceive to be crude and false ; and we
account for the origin of society, and the
authority of governments in another way.
It may be, that our way of explaining the
origin and authority of Christian Ministers
has been just as crude and blundering. In

190 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
attributing the promises made by Christ,
and the powers conferred by him, to his
whole body, the Church, it does not follow
that any member of that body, at his own
wiU, can lawfully exercise those functions.
Because we deny the Divine Eight of Kings,
it does not follow that every Englishman
may exercise sovereign or official powers,
nor that lawful authorities may be deposed
and changed capriciously. The more
firmly we believe in the prerogatives of
the State, the more firm is the position of
its Ministers, and the more certain is their
succession and right appointment. So it is
also, as I believe, in the Church. It must
clearly be untrue that any set of Christian
men have special powers, as apart from
the whole body mystical of Christ, and
coming down to them in a special way
through a separate caste. It is neverthe
less true, as I think, that certain powers
have been handed down from the begin
ning. They have, no doubt, been
grievously mis-used ; because, perhaps.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 191
their origin, as Avell as their nature, has
been mis-understood.
The power of absolution, of remitting
sin, as understood at present, seems to
have departed still further from early
usages. In the first place, the conferring
of that power, as one of the priestly
functions, is comparatively of late origin,
if we may judge by the Liturgies. This,
of itself, discredits the necessity of private
confession and absolution, as practised in
the later middle ages. Confession seems at
first to have been a public act, made to the
congregation. What we now call ' absolu
tion ' seems to have been the re-admission
of an erring member to the Christian body.
It was pronounced by the Minister, speak
ing in the name of the congregation. It
was not spoken in his own name, or by
any personal or special power of his own.
Out of this, the modern theory and prac •
tice has been developed, chiefly through
that mediaaval ignorance, which has
been so mischievous to the whole Western

192 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
Church, and by which we are still too
commonly dominated and infected. The
power of binding and loosing, therefore,
the ' power of the keys,' seems to have
been an endowment of the Christian
Society, to be exercised through its lawful
Ministers, acting in its name ; but not to
be exercised by them, in a private
capacity, as a special endowment of them
selves, considered as a caste. ^
Questions about Orders, Sacraments,
and Church Discipline have, in the past,
been prolific of disputes and separations.
In the future, I believe a reconciUation
will be found, through some such explana
tion as I have suggested, between views and
claims which have been held too long to be
irreconcileable. It will be possible, I think,
to accept the words of Christ literally and
fully, and to believe in the largest endow
ments for his Church without incurring
the dangers and abuses of sacerdotalism ;
and without falling into the equally crude
errors and defects of those who make the
1 See note, p. 235.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 193
Ministry nothing but the creatures of their
congregations. Because the theory of
Divine Eight in politics is untrue, it does
not follow that anarchy or communism is
true. There is a constitutional theory,
which attributes the fullest powers and
Sovereignty to the State, and conveys the
fullest powers to the officers of State ; and
yet secures the rights, both of such officers,
and of those for whom they act. So, I
think, mutatis mutandis, it will be, some
time or other, in the Church ; and then,
perhaps, high church and low church ex
planations, so far as both are true, will
be reconciled, as they may and should be.
There are those who deny all Sacra
ments, all Orders, all theology, who ignore
church history. One would have thought
there was nothing left to quarrel over.
Yet a sect of this kind, founded only in
1830, nas now fallen into at least six
pieces. To go to the New Testament,
knowing little or nothing perhaps of its
original language, knowing even less of
0

194 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
the times and people described in it ; for
getting how very much we really know of
the officers and worship of the Synagogues,
out of which the first Churches were
formed, and of the Greek Clubs or Asso
ciations, by which undoubtedly the early
converts were much influenced ; to mis
read, or to read only partiaUy, the New
Testament itself; and to compose all this
mass of ignorance and prejudice into that
which is called ' Bible Christianity ' ; is one
of the most unhistorical and irreUgious of
all possible occupations. I need scarcely
point out how popular it has been, and
how utterly ineffectual.
Inadequate is, perhaps, the word to
use for those who take the separate Con
gregation as the basis and fullest expres
sion of church life. Their notion, too,
was obtained by mis-reading the New
Testament, and omitting from it all we
are told about Apostolic action, and the
authority of the Apostles over whole
groups of Churches, linking them together.

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 195
Moreover, the Congregational theory seems
incompatible with a great deal of Saint Paul,
especially with his ' high ' and comprehen
sive notions of the Church in Colossians
and Ephesians, as well as with his battle
for Christian unity. It is inconceivable
that he wrote so definitely, or suffered so
much, for an ideal or spiritual Church,
which, if it existed in reality at all, existed
only in separate and scattered members ;
or that words of his, for which the whole
earth is scarcely big enough, should be
applicable only to small and isolated
groups of men. The Congregationahsts,
moreover, by their existing organization
stultify either their present position, or
their old principles.
Against the notion of the Church being
invisible or merely spiritual, for the sake
of which so many have left the unity of
the Church Visible, we must consider our
Lord's parables of ' The Kingdom,' which
seem to dispose of all such theories. Be
sides, such theories, if applied to any real
0 2

196 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
body of Christians, lead invariably to an
inner sect within the sect, which becomes
virtually an autocratic and exclusive body,
and which after all has no protection
against schemers and hypocrites ; so that
the ideally pure Church is never secured
in practice. By such inner or select repre
sentatives, the so-called Free Churches are
perhaps dominated too much. Neither for
laymen, nor for ministers, is there any
real freedom in some of these societies.
The smaller a church organization is, the
narrower, as a rule, are its opinions, and
the more autocratic is its temper. One
tyrannizing element seems, however, to be
now removed. The so-called Free Churches
not long ago, issued a Catechism, in the
name, I think, of eight different bodies,
once separated, but now seeking for a
common basis. This desire for unity is
one of the most promising and exceUent of
all movements. These eight bodies, how
ever, seem able to have united only by
eliminatiiig Cahdn and his theology from

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 197
their common manifesto ; and, for some of
those bodies, Calvin's theology was at one
time not only the dominating element, but
their very foundation and first principle.
The God of Calvin, as Catholic theologians
have always said, is not the God of the
Bible ; and most of Calvin's followers now
seem to have reached the same conclusion.
Even in the Kirk of Scotland, I believe,
Calvin's doctrines of Predestination are no
more a living force ; and the Kirk, no
doubt, if it had all that freedom, which
Lord Halifax imagines for it, would gladly
follow the Free Churches, and eliminate
Calvin from its Confession ; or, at any rate,
would modify those terms of subscription,
which are imposed at ordination. By these,
as I am told, the Kirk is deprived of many
earnest and promising candidates for the
Ministry. In arguing from the Kirk to the Church
of England, Lord Halifax does not seem to
consider an obvious, though perhaps a
subtil, difference between them. The Kirk

198 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
has a rigid and written constitution, some
thing like that of the United States, which
extends to the minutest details of doctrine,
of discipline, and of worship. Within these
rigid limits, it may, without any danger,
haA^e a free exercise of its discretion. Our
constitution in the Church is analogous to
our constitution in the State. It is flexible,
adaptable, and not rigorously defined. It
depends on rulings, and usage, and inter
pretations, more than upon documents.
The Sovereign Power has not, therefore,
the same security against innovation and
aggression by Anglican clergy, which ex
perience proves it has in the case of the
Scotch Establishment. Moreover, there is
a vast difference of temper or ¦^^os between
the High Church Anglicans, and the
Ministers of the Kirk. Lord Halifax
argues, too, that the Elders and other lay
officers of the Kirk are made ' spiritual '
persons, by the imposition of hands. Does
he, then, believe in Presbyterian Orders :
or does he maintain that all confirmed

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 199
persons with us are also ' spiritual ' ?
Will he likewise, when speaking of the
early sixteenth century, extend the term
' spiritualty ' to every clergyman, to every
tonsured person ? That extension would, I
think, be true. It seems to me fallacious
to argue from our narrow connotation of
the term ' clergy,' to the enormous mediaeval
connotation. If the mediseval, or ' catholic,'
fashion were reviA^ed, of tonsuring the
Lawyers, and extending to them the ' benefit
of clergy,' would this very simple expe
dient satisfy Lord Halifax and his friends
with regard to the ecclesiastical courts ?
On their own principles, and according to
their own arguments, it should remove all
their difficulties and scruples ; and I feel
sure the other side would have no objec
tion, nor probably would the Lawyers.
The large historical Churches, with all
their faults, have more Christian liberty,
than the smaller societies, and certainly
more breadth of thought. For our own
Church, the Establishment is very whole-

200 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
some, because it secures a certain amount
of lay interest and control, and restrains
the worst excesses of clericalism. It
would be still better for us if lay interest
and control were largely - increased, and
made a real influence in church govern
ment and work. If that could be brought
about, and secured, I believe we should see
a large increase of numbers, and an even
greater increase of life. For every sacer-
dotalist, who might be alienated or expelled,
I believe we should gain ten more valuable
Christians, from among those whose objec
tions to us are no longer doctrinal or
constitutional. The one obstacle for such
persons is the present Eomanizing and
sacerdotal tendency. Those, outside the
Church, who complain of its Eomanizing,
should consider very seriously how far
they themselves are answ^erable for it. The
exodus of the Wesleyans, against the wishes
and orders of their Founder, no doubt
removed from the Church a large and
zealous body, which would have acted as a

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 201
counterpoise to the haste and crudeness of
the Tractarlan Party. Such a counterpoise
would have been equaUy wholesome for
both extremes, and of double value to the
whole Church. Those, again, who wish to
cure Eomanizing by Disestablishment will by
that means only give a free hand to persons
whom they wish to restrain. Establishment
or Disestablishment seems to me secondary
and accidental, so far as the Church her
self is concerned. It is not secondary
with regard to the State. This is the day
of big things, especially in politics. Now
the Empire is expanding and consolidating,
I, for one, do not wish to see the Church
contracting or dissolving. I should hke to
see a national English Church representing
the English Peoples as fully as the Empire
represents them, and as visibly before the
world. It is only so, perhaps, that the Church
of Eome can be held in her true place.
What her future is to be, it is difficult
to say. Since the Eeformation, she has re
affirmed her worst errors and frauds more

202 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
positively than ever. At the Council of
Trent, she handed her fortunes over to the
Jesuits, and they have ruled her ever since.
They have led her to the dogma of Papal
Infallibility, and may lead her, probably,
to define the Temporal Power as an Article
of Faith. When Faith once passes from
divine persons and things to human persons
and politics, it is not easy to say where it
will stop. Meanwhile, in all the Latin
countries she loses ground, and is an
element of danger and disorder in them aU,
by fishing in troubled waters. In Italy,
she has done her utmost to make it
impossible for any one to be a good Italian
and a good churchman. She has intrigued
with any and every form of anarchy, in
order if possible to upset, or to impede, a
constitutional government. It cannot be
pretended, that all this is done for the sake
of Christianity ; as not a single Christian
doctrine is threatened in Italy, except by
the continuation of this reckless policy,
which must end in bringing forth a popula-

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 203
tion alienated not so much from the only
form of Christianity known to them, as
from Christianity itself All these dangers
are incurred solely for the Temporal
Power. How can it be argued seriously,
that Leo XIII. is less free under King
Humbert's government, than Pius IX. was
under Napoleon's bayonets, or Gregory XVI.
under the hand of Austria ? The Popes
never have been free ; because they have
always had to be defended from their
own subjects, or from a rival power in
Italy. Before Clement VIL, they were
never settled nor secure in Eome. After
Clement, they were protected by Austria
or France ; and, under such protection, the
Popes were never free agents, nor impartial
judges. The Pope is, indeed, a prisoner in
the Vatican, but not the prisoner of King
Humbert. His gaolers are the Jesuits. It
is they, who order and control this reckless
policy. Their methods of conducting it
are to be detected in their Press. Its effects
are to be seen in France and Austria, as

204 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
weU as in Italy. It is only by studying
the clerical Press of Italy and France, that
the temper, the methods, and the designs
of the Vatican are to be understood.
People are deceived by the pious phrases
of the Pope, forgetting that they are the
conventional and diplomatic outfit of the
Holy See ; and that, of old time, the most
ferocious edicts were garnished, for the
sake of appearances, with these traditional
phrases. The harmless White Pope may
reign over the Vatican, but the Black Pope
rules there ; and it is with him, that the
Eoman Congregations, the Bishops, and the
diplomatic world, have ultimately to reckon.
So disturbing is this power to the Episcopal
office, that Cardinal Manning used to
describe the Jesuit system as Presbyterian
ism ; and, indeed, the Jesuits, like the
mediseval Friars, are a disturbing, almost
a dissenting, power intruded into every
diocese where they gain a footing.
It would be interesting to know the real
numbers of effective Eoman Catholics, not

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 206
the fictitious numbers, as given by clerical
statistics. They reckon all Belgium, when
they should reckon half of it; and all
France, when they should perhaps reckon
about a third ; and so on. In the diocese of
Southwark, as the Bishop himself confesses,
they have decreased since 1895, not relat
ively to the population, but absolutely, by
some thousands ; and Dr. Bourne hints that
it is the same in Westminster. At any
rate, in the Latin countries, Eome is the
Church of faihng and declining nations, not
only in numbers, but in mind. This is the
most serious problem she has to face.
How far that decline is due to her, should be
a profitable subject for her own theologians
to discuss. We decided it nearly four cen
turies ago. The three growing Powers of
the world, which seem to have all the future
with them, are the British Empire, Eussia,
and the United States ; and in none of them,
except perhaps in the last, is the Eoman
Church worth considering. I doubt, whether,
as ruled from Eome at present, or by Italian

206 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
men and methods, the Eoman Church will
continue to hold her own in Australia or
the United States. In Australia certainly,
as I know by experience, the men educated
in Eome, and the methods of Eome, are de
tested and despised by the great body of the
Irish Clergy. The Irish, from the sixteenth
century onwards, found in Eome a support
against the English Government, of which
they naturally made the most. As their own
life grows fuUer and freer, their poetical and
Celtic nature will draw them away from
Eome. This, I think, is inevitable, judging
both by the past and by the present. In
America, it is almost pitiable to see the
Pope trying to hold the new wine of
democracy and socialism in his old bottles.
There have been burstings, and there will
be many more. The effervescing submis
sion of the American Bishops is the most evi
dent sign of aU, that the process is neither
real nor lasting. The English nature
and the Eoman system are, I believe, irre
concileable, and have always been. The

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 207
SyUabus of Pius IX. is a logical process from
the condemnation of the Great Charter by
Innocent III. The enmity between England
and Eome is not merely religious. Eeligion
is only one pretext for enforcing it. It is
a repugnance of race and nature, which
cannot be got over. As long ago as 1382,
in the flood of re-action after the Peasants'
War, the Commons, against the King, the
Lords, and the Prelates, said ' it was not
their wiU to be tried for heresy ; nor to
bind themselves and their posterity to the
bishops more than their forefathers had in
old time ' ; and they insisted that Crown
officers should not work for the bishops.
The same temper goes through our history
and People, from the Conquest until the
Eevolution was made secure in 1745. It
is now as strong as ever, in a latent way.
Given fuel, it will flame out at any time.
Unless there is to be a thorough change of
nature, on one side or the other, there can
be no union with Eome ; and no re-union of
Christendom for us, on that basis, putting

208 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
doctrinal questions altogether on one
side. If the Vatican like to retrace its steps
in the direction of Christianity, we might
begin to consider the question. If the
then Pope have reached the position once
held by Gregory I., we might welcome a true
Eoman Patriarch. We can make no terms,
ever, with an Infallible and Sovereign
Pontiff. Moreover, to those who know
Eome from the inside, her peace and unity
are more superficial than real. The old
quarrels between Seculars and Eegulars still
proceed. There is the same old jealousy
between the Orders. Clergy and Monks of
different nations get on very ill together.
There is a perpetual Irish and English
feud, especiaUy in the new countries. The
general submission of the laity is more
from apathy, than from intelligent obedi
ence. They have no interest in theology,
and very little in church life. Besides, as
we saw lately, over Palestine, the various
nations in the Eoman Church do not on

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 209
that account love one another as they
should. The French and German clerical
Press, last autumn, could not, or should
not, have been more virulent if they had
been the organs of rival and hostile sects.
The Eoman way is to conceal differences,
and to avoid friction. Our English way is
to talk out our differences. In the seven
teenth century, when Party Government
took its present form, foreigners were
always saying that the English State must
faU to pieces ; but yet we are, at any rate,
as firm now as the most autocratic of our
neighbours. So it is, to some degree, in the
Church. Our differences are mostly noise ;
and those critics make a serious mistake,
who judge of us without allowing for the
differences of nature and principle between
themselves and us. At the same time, Ave
might learn from the Eomans not to push
differences of detail to the same length as
differences of principle. We need not, there
fore, imitate them by swallowing our prin
ciples. In Parliament, men will stick out
P

210 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
for details, to a certain point, and then
agree on broad principles. In Convocation,
clergymen will fight on details for years,
till not only principles but all principle has
been forgotten. If the State were man
aged so, it could not hold together. The
danger is not less for the Church.
By the terms ' Eome ' and ' Eoman
Church,' I mean exclusively the local
Church or Court of Eome, the Curia. I
do not mean the various national Churches
in communion with Eome. They are the
dupes, not the accomplices, of the Papacy,
and of its modern agents, the Jesuits. I
do not wish to reflect upon individuals,
who, for the most part, are not responsible
for the Eoman system, and few of whom
even understand it ; nor do I mean to speak
harshly of the charming semi-paganism of
Eoman Catholic populations in country
places. The misfortune is, that their
innocence and their genuine piety are
always being exploited by the dominant
faction, for its own purposes. I do not

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 211
see how ' Eome,' understood in that sense,
can be considered a Church at all, properly
speaking. The Papacy, the Eoman Curia,
is nothing but a political organization,
which disguises its real purposes under
theological and devotional expressions.
The Eoman apologists, too, though they
may not know it, are stiU affected by the
mediaeval forgeries. The position gained
by these was taken, at the Council of Trent,
as the basis of the reconstructed Papacy ;
although their origin had been exposed,
and was admitted. Since then, the Papal
attributes and theory have been developed
further, by various ' triumphs over history.'
So impossible is the case to defend, without
manipulation, that no Ultramontane can
afford to approach the facts impartially, in
a scientific way. He never can be a judge,
allowing the facts to speak freely, and
merely summing up. He must be an
advocate, presenting a case, and arguing
a brief. His methods must be deductive.
They cannot be inductive. He cannot start
p 2

212 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
with an open mind, following truth and facts,
wherever they may lead. He must start with
a preconceived theory, and bend his facts
into conformity with it. The result is, that
he must contend for victory, not for truth,
like the French General Staff at present ;
and the methods in both cases are not dis
similar. Nor are the intellectual and moral
effects dissimilar, on those who stoop to
such methods of advocacy.
The Eoman Clergy, as a whole, are
almost as ignorant of Greek now, as they
were before Erasmus ; and ¦ their Vati
canism has made them even more bitterly
opposed, than they were at the Eenais
sance, both to the methods of Greek
thought, and to the masters of Greek theo
logy. The Jesuits, no doubt, are supple
enough ; but theirs is not the intellectual
suppleness exhibited by Plato, it is the
immoral suppleness exposed by Pascal.
Leaving them, we may return once more
to the Greek Church. If Eussia become
civilized and hold together, her Church

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 213
must become civilized with her. We may
see a large, learned, and zealous Greek
Church again after five centuries of
oppression. If so, Eome wiU find on one
flank of herself such a rival as for size,
unity, and unanswerable arguments
against the Papacy, she has never known.
On the other flank, I hope she may find a
strong united Church of all the English
speaking Peoples, worthy to represent the
British Empire and the United States
on their spiritual side. This I conceive
to be the true Message and Position of
the EngUsh Church, and her Mission to
the world. It can only fail if she be
untrue to her Master, or if her children be
untrue to their English common sense.
Many of our friends outside have thought
the Enghsh Church had a great mission in
the future, as the restorer of Christian unity.
She alone, of the historical Churches, seems
to unite the early Church with the
Churches of the Sixteenth Century. I
appeal, therefore, to those within her, who

214 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OP
call themselves ' Catholics,' not to spoil
and hinder that gracious Mission by
turning away from true Catholicity, and
narrowing the term to the thoughts and
customs of the ignorant Western Middle
Ages. These, as I have tried to show,
cannot be of the least authority. The
Papal claims are only founded on violated
grammar, and wrong philology. In them
selves, they are little better than a fairy
tale ; and the whole mediseval Church,
which partly rose out of them, and was
partly corrupted by them, is hardly of any
more weight and authority than they are
themselves. To others, I would say, use
patience ; give the Church time. She
purged herself from the real disease of
Popery in the Sixteenth Century. Be sure
that she will purge herself from an absurd
imitation of it in the Nineteenth. To both
Parties, I would say, go back ; one of you,
behind the Sixteenth Century, the other,
behind the Middle Ages. Neither your
' Catholicism ' nor your Pauline Calvinism

THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 215
is to be found in any of the earlier
centuries. When you have both found
what you seek, in the right way and place,
you wiU see there are no differences between
you. If there be, the phrase 'I believe
in one Catholic and Apostolic Church ' is a
faUacy, or a falsehood.
FinaUy, Christ, our Divine Master, is
not a bundle of opinions, nor a set of rites ;
but a living and ever present human
Person. We believe that his Church in
the end will triumph. In the past, its
inteUectual triumph over internal enemies
has perhaps been made too much of. In
the future, we should work more for its
practical and moral triumph. Let us not
forget the Apostolic doctrines and church
order of the Epistles and the Acts, but let
us add to them a great deal more Apos
tolic practice, as recommended by Saint
James, and enacted by Saint Paul. His
writings will show us how to avoid
factions, by embracing the whole truth,
and holding the proportion of faith. His

216 THE MESSAGE AND POSITION OF
practice will show us that Christ himself,
and not certain propositions about him, is
the end of our Christian service. The
means of attaining to Christ, or of serving
him, have too often been mistaken for an
end in themselves ; and, if we look back
into history, it is usuaUy about the means,
and seldom about the end itself, that
human beings have disputed. Christians
will only cease to differ when they go back
to the breadth, freedom and simplicity of
the New Testament, putting wholly on one
side the Protestant quarrels of the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, and
the ' Catholic ' errors and ignorance of
the Middle Ages. It would be difficult to
say whether Sacerdotalists, Papists, or raw
Puritans have done most harm to the
Church of Christ. As we profess to stand
between them, holding the Creeds, possess
ing the Sacraments, belonging, as I think,
to that Church, which comes nearest to the
Apostolic and Scriptural pattern, it should
be our privilege, instead of adding to the

THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 217
disputes of Christendom, to lead the way
in healing them. This has long been
held, by moderate men outside us, to be
the function of the Enghsh Church. If we
fail in it, our responsibiUty must be very
grave : and failure wiU depend less upon
our holding this or that opinion, than upon
the temper in which we hold it ; or upon
the measure in which we practise the
FoUowing of Christ, and realize the Letters
of Saint Paul.

219

EOMAN ORDERS: A SUGGESTION
The Church of England, holding faithfully
to tradition, both against certain early
heretics and certain modern sects, doth not
aUow the iteration of those Sacraments
which are said to confer a ' Character ' ;
though this term is only of modern, or
mediaeval, usage. These Sacraments, if we
may so describe them all, are Baptism,
Confirmation, and Holy Orders. The last,
only, is the subject of this consideration.
The rite or Sacrament of Holy Orders
may not be repeated ; and, acting on this
principle, through accepting the validity of
Eoman ' Orders,' the Church of England
does not re-ordain those who come into
her Ministry after being ordained by the
present Eoman formularies, and according

220 EOMAN OEDEES :
to the present intention, both practical and
theoretical, of the modern Papal church,
i.e. since the decrees of Trent.
The question at issue is, whether
modern Eoman Orders should be con
sidered valid, in the light of Catholic and
primitive tradition.
The question of Orders, according to
the Eoman view, depends on two things :
(1) the Form, (2) the Intention. As the
latter is even more damaging than the
former to the Eoman assumptions, I shall
deal with it presently ; especially as it is
too generally held to be our weakest point,
and their strongest.
I. As to Form. — So far as I understand
the controversy about Orders, the Pope is
perfectly right when he asserts, that the
Anglican formularies do not satisfy that
standard or view of Orders, which is ex
pressed in the modern Eoman formularies.
Judged by that standard, Anglican Orders
are certainly invalid. They fail not only
in the wording of their Form, but in what

A SUGGESTION 221
we must suppose was the intention of those
who devised that Form in the XVIth
century, and of those others who revised it
in the XVIIth.
But, if we take a more Catholic and
broader view of the whole question, than
Leo XIII. evidently took ; that is, a view
more scientific and historical ; we shall
be forced to conclude (a) that the Anglican
formulary, in either state, whether of
Elizabeth or of Charles II. , fully satisfies
that view of Holy Orders which is ex
pressed in all the ancient formularies of
the East and West, including the Eoman ;
(/8) we must conclude, also, that none of
the ancient formularies, including the old
formularies of the Eoman Church, satisfy,
any more than the Anglican Form does,
that standard of Orders which is main
tained by the Papal and Tridentine Church.
The conclusion is obvious. The Pope is,
if we may say so, held in check by the
necessities of his own position. He can
not destroy our Orders after the XVIth

222 EOMAN OEDEES :
century, without destroying his own
Orders before the Xlllth (IVth Lateran
Council) century, or at any rate before the
Xlth (Hildebrand). Moreover, as, through
neglecting this broad view, Eugenius IV.
went wrong in his Letter to the Armenians,
and the Eoman theologians had to retreat
from their position, so, it may be, Leo XIII.,
or his Successors, will have to draw
back from their present stultifying and
suicidal attitude. This, however, is not our
affair. Neither the Pope's own position,
nor his view about Anglican Orders, is a
matter of the smallest anxiety to us, any
more than his mistakes are. About them,
we made up our mind long ago, and acted
on it. II. But, having noted the different
standards or view^s held about Orders by
the Primitive Churches, and by the Triden
tine Church, I wish to draw certain con
clusions, which seem to me deducible from
these premisses.
It may be asked (1) whether a Form of

A SUGGESTION 223
Orders may not fail by excess, as weU as
by defect ; especially if that excess be so
great as to introduce something new, and
perhaps contradictory, into the old belief,
and into the Form which at one time
expressed it ?
Such an addition or contradiction seems
to be introduced by the present Eoman
formularies, especiaUy if they be studied
by the intention of those who confer and
receive these Orders, as well as by the
defined theology on which these theories,
practices, and so-called Sacraments are
based. a. Can it be said that the anti-
Scriptural and anti-Patristic sacrificial
powers conferred by EomanBishops, (as they
assert) and accepted by Eoman Clerics, are
compatible with orthodox and ancient
notions of the Eucharistic sacrifice ? Are
not such notions mutually destructive ?
/8. Similarly, is not Trans-substantiation
destructive of the old orthodox teaching
about the Eucharist itself : and is not the

224 EOMAN OEDEES :
old Orthodox teaching absolutely destruc
tive to Trans-substantiation ?
Moreover, we are forced by Article
XXVIII. to hold, not only that Trans-sub
stantiation is ' repugnant ' to Holy Scrip
ture, but that it ' overthroweth the nature
of a Sacrament.'
Can, therefore, those, whose chief
intention in giving and receiving modern
Eoman ' Orders ' is to offer private Masses
and to Trans-substantiate, be held to have
any thing in common with the intention
expressed in all the ancient formularies
about administering 'God's Holy Sacra
ments,' and especially the Eucharist, as
congregational and public acts ?
On the other hand, can the purpose or
intention of the ancient formularies, i.e. of
all the Primitive Churches, be fulfilled in
those whose belief about the Eucharist
' overthroweth ' the very ' nature ' of a
Sacrament, and which thus destroys one of
the chief ends for which Holy Orders were
bequeathed ?

A SUGGESTION 226
Does not the teaching of Article
XXVIII. not only condemn Trans-substanti
ation, but strike implicitly at the whole
foundation of Eoman ' Orders ' themselves ?
In other words, does not the intention
and belief of those who give and receive
Tridentine ' Orders ' necessarily exclude,
and even destroy, the intention to receive
Orders according to the mind of primitive
Christianity ? However it may be with the
' Intention,' our Article seems to hold that
the two beliefs are destructive, and there
fore exclusive, of one another.
Our treatises on Orders are, I believe,
so entirely defensive and apologetic, that
perhaps this line of reasoning has not been
sufficiently dwelt on, or even considered.
III. Holy Orders are concerned with
two duties: (1) Administration of the Sacra
ments, (2) Administration ofthe Word.
For the average Eoman Ordinatus, the
' Sacraments ' mean (a) the Eucharist, and
(/8) Penance.
We have considered (a).

226 EOMAN OEDEES:
As to ' Penance,' in the modern Eoman
theory and practice of it, can it be said to
have any thing in common with what was
understood by Penance and Absolution in
the Early Church ? I observe here the same
fundamental difference in theory and prac
tice, between the Tridentine Church and the
Primitive Churches, as I have remarked in
the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
It should be considered how far this may
affect the " Power of the Keys,' the Power
of Absolution, as understood formerly, and
now. It is nothing less than the difference
between publicly excluding from, or re
admitting to, the Christian society ; and tbe
pardon, or refusal to pardon, of sins, with
regard to the next world, by an individual
acting in private, and in his personal capa
city. IV. Holy Scripture. — Can the policy of
the Eoman Church for, say, the last six
hundred years, with regard to the teaching
and use of Holy Scripture, be held com
patible with the intention, expressed by all

A SUGGESTION 227
the old formularies of Ordination, about
the ' Ministry of the Word ' ? Still more,
if the theory of Trans-substantiation strike
not only at the Eucharist, but at the very
nature of Holy Orders, do not the asser
tions and pretensions of the Popes, with
regard to Holy Scripture (such as that it
depends on themselves not only for inter
pretation, but for authorization and ex
istence) strike even more fatally at all
that was intended by the ' Ministry of the
Word ' in the old ordination services ?
Are not the decrees of Trent about the
' Apocrypha ' contradictory to the true mind
of the Church about what Scripture is ? and
therefore to the ' Ministry of the Word ' ?
Do not these contradictions destroy or
vitiate Tridentine ' Orders ' in another most
important aspect of the ministerial Office ?
I will not dwell upon the question of
Eoman ' Orders ' as they are affected by
Simony, Interdicts, Illegitimacy, Papal and
anti-Papal warfare, and aU the other
dubious and intricate matters of question- Q 2

228 EOMAN OEDEES :
able successions. These w'ere so outside
our history, that they do not concern the
English Church. In view of Papal declar
ations, they do, however, concern all
Eomanists, and those especially of the
' Italian Mission ' here in England, whose
orders and successicn depend solely upon
modern and exclusively Eoman sources.
For these reasons, and those I have
dwelt on more at length, it may be that
modern Anglo-Eoman ' Orders ' are, in more
senses than one, an ' imposition of hands.'
It may be objected, that, by parity of
reasoning, to doubt the validity of Eoman
Orders would be to destroy the validity of
ours, which depend on them. To this I
should answer ; No. Those errors about
the Eucharist, which led to Trans-substan
tiation, and so to extravagant notions
about the Mass, go back dimly to the 9th
century. Up to the time of Hildebrand,
1073-80, opinion about the Sacrament was
fluid, as may be seen in his own letters.
The first attempt at a definition, as to

A SUGGESTION 229
the mode of the Eeal Presence, was
made under his auspices. This definition
was extended and strengthened by Inno
cent IIL, 1198-1216, at the IVth Lateran
Council ; but it was not until Trent, that
the Papal Church was committed finally
to its present vieAV. A similar line of
history and reasoning applies to Holy
Scripture. It was forbidden and repressed,
no doubt, by the Dominican Inquisitors,
in the thirteenth century ; but it was not
until Trent that the Inquisition and Index
were made over to the Jesuits, that the
' Apocrypha ' were canonized, and the re
pression of Holy Scripture was made a
principle, a test of orthodoxy.
The great apostasy dates from Trent ;
and from Trent, our Lord in his mercy set
apart his English Church ; leading her to
reform herself according to Scripture and
Antiquity, instead of 'developing' all the ig
norance and corruptions of the Middle Ages.
How far this Apostasy may extend
towards invalidating Eoman ' Orders '

230 EOMAN OEDEES :
should, I think, be considered very
seriously. The Church of England, in her
scrupulosity and charity, has given Eome
hitherto the benefit of a doubt. So honest,
so moderate, so zealous and single minded
has our Church always been, in her desire
for truth, that she may rely confidently
upon her Divine Head to supply any
technical deficiency, should there be any
such. In this belief, I rest with entire
confidence upon the present discipline of
the Church of England in acknowledging
the validity of Eoman Orders.
I may, however, assert as forcibly as I
can, and as a matter of personal experience,
that the intention of a Eoman Ordinandus
in the reception of Orders, and of a Eoman
Ordinatus in the exercise of them, is
opposed diametrical^ to the intention, as I
understand it, of the English Church ; and
therefore, by implication, to that of the
primitive and universal Church.
It is in the Intention, even more than
in the Form, that I hold the Tridentine

A SUGGESTION 231
Church to have gone astray from the
ancient models.
The clear Intention of the English
Church, as may be seen in the Preface to
her Ordination services, is to confer the
three Orders named in Holy Scripture, and
to continue those offices and officers in her
Ministry, according to the primitive and
Scriptural meaning of the terms. Gravely
as the Latin mediseval Churches may have
erred, even here in England, their errors
were not made irrevocable until the
decrees of Trent. That Council, in spite
of the new learning, with all the know
ledge it brought of Christian antiquity, in
spite of the exposure of many forgeries,
deliberately accepted, in the sole interests
of the Papacy, many things which the
mediseval Churches had only accepted in
good faith and ignorance. These medi
seval errors, therefore, do not concern us or
our Orders vitaUy. We purged ourselves
of them, as soon as we knew them to be
wrong. The Papal Church re-affirmed

232 EOMAN OEDEES
them, knowing many of them to be based
on forgeries. She has made them a vital ,
part of her system and her teaching. Some
of them she developed into the Vatican
decrees. She stands, or faUs, on the weakest
point in her whole position, viz. the Papal
Infallibility. Her next vulnerable point is
the validity of her Orders, both in Form
and Intention ; if the whole question of
Orders be viewed in the light of Scripture
and antiquity. So arrogant is the Eoman
Church in her assertions, so reckless of
sobriety and truth, that she has no right
to count upon any indulgence for supplying
her deficiencies.
The statements of Article XXVIH. seem
to me incompatible with a belief in the
validity of Eoman Orders. Wyclif, in the
9th of his twelve Theses against Trans-
substantiation goes even farther. He says,
' That an accident can exist without a sub
ject can not be proved ; but, if this were so,
God himself would be annihilated, and
every article of the Christian faith would
be destroyed.'

NOTES

Note A ^
The Acts of Uniformity, it may be, are not
precise enough, either in what they allow, or in
what they intended to forbid. It should not,
however, be beyond our present political capacity
to make them definite and clear. We have as
full an authority, in this Nineteenth Century, to
arrange such matters, as our fathers had in the
Seventeenth and Sixteenth Centuries, or as our
predecessors had before the Conquest. The
rubrics, I believe, were left intentionally vague
by Queen Elizabeth, in order that the largest
section of her People might be conciliated,
without an open violation of the Law, by allow
ances of ' Catholic ' ritual and practice. How far
that allowance was made use of, it is not easy to
decide. Lord Halifax adopts the two incompati
ble views, that Elizabethan doctrine, and practice,
' was almost entirely obscured by Calvinism,' and
1 See p. 129.

234 APPENDIX
that the rubrics were vague because every one
understood them in the full ' Catholic ' sense. He
may hold one view, or the other. He cannot be
allowed the use of both. It was equally
dangerous, in the time of Elizabeth, to be too
precise and narrow in matters of ritual, either in
a ' Catholic ' or in a Puritan direction. The
great Queen herself had strong personal tastes,
but she regarded all such matters as un-essential.
She thought it equally wrong and foolish to raise
them into questions of principle and controversy.
Hence, I believe the vagueness of the rubrics.
That vagueness enabled us to escape from a great
difficulty and danger, without lowering or violat
ing the Law. Since then, time and custom have
interpreted the Law, with unequivocal authority.
If the strict and narrow letter be on the side of the
Ritualists, as I must own it to be in some points,
yet I think time and custom are of superior
weight. The Privy Council has, no doubt, com
plicated the matter by contradictory rulings and
interpretations ; but this is no argument against
the jurisdiction of the Privy Council. It is only
an argument against the sense, the learning, or
the courage, of certain members of it. On the
other hand, lists of vestments and church
furniture in some few scattered parishes, or
accounts of eccentric and uncommon practices, to

NOTE A 235
which we have not the clue, even when strength
ened by a forced interpretation of rubrics left
intentionally vague, cannot, and should not,
prevail against the ordinary and almost universal
practice of the English Church from Elizabeth's
day to ours. That, after all, is the most authori
tative interpreter of Law. The proceedings now
going on at Lambeth seem to me as absurd as if
men were to fly in the face of custom and
Common Law, and to justify their eccentricity by
the Forest Laws, or any other obsolete mediEsval
Statutes.

Note B ^
The view of Confession and Absolution given
on page 192 was formulated long ago by
Wyclif. The Commandments of the Church, to
hear Mass on all Sundays and Holidays of Obli
gation, under pain of mortal sin, and to confess
and communicate at least once a year, are not
older than Innocent III. It must never be
forgotten, that the ' Absolving Power ' was a very
late addition to the Ordination Services. Private
Confession and Priestly Absolution were unknown
to the early Church. Primitive discipline bears
witness to the exclusion of oifenders from the
1 See p. 192.

236 APPENDIX
Christian Fellowship, and to their re-admission.
The Christian Ministry was the mouthpiece,
conveying the sentence of the congregation.
More than this cannot be inferred from what
we know of early beliefs and practices. These
practices and beliefs are borne out thoroughly by
the words of Saint James about Confession, as
well as by the words and action of Saint Paul in
the Corinthian Church. It is by the light of these
words and practices only, that our Lord's com
mission or promise must be understood. The
practice of Private Confession, the making it
obligatory under pain of mortal sin, attributing
powers of Absolution to the Ministry, apart from
the Congregation, the whole theory of Indul
gences, Excommunications, Interdicts' and
Pardons, are all sacerdotal developments, which
have no justification in history or fact.
As with the ' Power of the Keys,' so it is also
with the Power of Consecration. The Christian
Priesthood is a Ministerial Office, if we may judge
by the earliest Liturgies, and the earliest Ordina
tion services. The Minister acts and speaks only
in the name of the Congregation, as their mouth
piece and representative. As long ago as the
Fourteenth Century, Occam, protesting against
Papal absolutism, and the whole theory and
practice of the feudalized mediseval hierarchy,

NOTE B 237
showed the danger to the Church of having one
Sovereign PontiS". He then went on to argue,
that Councils, representing the whole Church,
must be able to judge or depose the Pontiff.
' Every man,' he said, ' is competent to be his
judge, but his ordinary judge is the Emperor.'
This assertion of the old Imperial Supremacy,
so thoroughly historical and orthodox, bears
witness to the soundness and sagacity of Occam.
He goes on to argue, further, that a true Council
must necessarily be a representative body. ' Every
society and corporation,' he asserts, ' can make
laws for itself, and choose persons to act for the
whole body. As all believers form one Society,
they may choose their representatives. When
thus elected, they form a General Council.' He
contrasts a Council, thus chosen and assembled,
with the Papal Councils of his own and the
preceding age. We may contrast it still more
sharply with the Council of Trent, packed with
Italian bishops ; or with the Vatican Council,
swamped by Bishops in Partibus, representing
nobody, merely registering the opinions and policy
of the Curia. The whole theory of General
Councils, as a means for ascertaining universal
and primitive belief, rested on the assumption
that the bishops represented their Churches, and
bore witness to local opinions or traditions. That

.238 APPENDIX
theory of Orders, which I indicated above, seems
to me a logical and a necessary deduction from
Occam's theory of Councils. It is also, as I
think, entirely in agreement with Primitive
beliefs and practices, and with the Apostolical
Christianity of the New Testament. It seems to
be the only means of reconciling the present
differences between Christians about Orders and
Sacraments. Occam turns away, finally, from the
Church of his own age, which was destined to
become more arbitrary, and less constitutional.
He makes a touching appeal to ' men of future
times, who are zealous for truth, righteousness,
and the common good. They may have their
attention directed to many truths about these
things, which at present remain hidden, to the
great loss of the community.' Such truths, as I
think, have been illustrated by many develop
ments and discoveries in science ahd philosophy.
It still remains for us to apply our higher
knowledge of politics and society to the polity
and the Ministry of the Church. Such an
application does not mean the destruction of old
truths, but only the truer understanding of them,
and their disengagement from the barbarous inter
pretations of the Papal and mediseval innovators.

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