About Our Church in 1896 (part 2 of 2)

But I ask you again to mark the words of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. He says: ‘Non-communicating attendance brings us back to the great abuse of coming to the Sacrament to non-partake instead of partaking: and so we have the condition of things arising in our Communion which already prevails in the Church of Rome. ‘That this custom is creeping into our Church is not an accident; neither is it brought in for the purpose of making children better acquainted with our service. It is, remember, under quite a different impression. It is with the idea that prayer is more acceptable at this time of the sacrifice; that you can get benefit from being within sight of the Sacrament when it is being administered. It is the substitution of a semi-materialistic presence for the actual presence of Christ in the soul of the faithful communicant. It is an abomination, this teaching of non-communicating attendance as a common habit.’ (Burgon, ibid, vol. 2, p. 57.)

To this testimony I will only add the words of a greater bishop still, I mean Bishop Jewel. He says in the Apology: ‘If anyone, before the private Mass was introduced, would only be a spectator, and would abstain from the Holy Communion, the Bishop of Rome in the primitive times, or the ancient Fathers, would have excommunicated him as a wicked man and a pagan; nor was there any Christian man in these times who communicated alone in the presence of spectators.’ (John Jewel: Apology, chapter 2.)

(3) I hear again, continually, and I hear it with deep regret, that many hold and teach that it is wrong, improper, and undesirable to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in the evening. This is a point, you all know, about which there is an amazing difference of opinion. Some men almost lose their tempers about it, use violent language, and denounce evening Communions as wicked, irreverent, profane, and of evil tendency! Yet, after all, what saith the Scripture? I declare I see no disputed point in connection with the Lord’s Supper on which the arguments and evidence are so entirely on one side.

It cannot possibly be sinful to follow the example of Christ and His apostles. Every reader of the New Testament must know that the institution of the Lord’s Supper took place in the evening. It is certain that no special hour is recommended to us in the Acts or Epistles. The Lord’s Supper at Troas must have been in the evening. This even Mr. Sadler admits, in his book on the Acts. It is equally certain that the Prayer-book leaves the matter to the discretion of every clergyman, and allows him to do what is best for his congregation, and wisely lays down no hard-and-fast rule about the time. To forbid evening Communions would completely shut out many persons in large town parishes from the Lord’s table. The mothers of many families among the working classes cannot possibly leave home in the morning. The very name ‘Supper,’ which our Church Catechism especially uses, seems to point to the evening of a day rather than the morning. In the face of these facts, to denounce evening Communions as irreverent, wicked, and profane, is neither reasonable nor wise. I cannot advise any of my brethren who find them useful to give way to pressure from any quarter, and give up the practice.

(4) I hear again with great pain, as well as regret, that many clergymen all over England are continually teaching that it is necessary, and desirable, and useful for communicants to confess their sins privately to a clergyman, to receive absolution before they come to the Lord’s table, and afterwards to keep up the habit of confession. That this practice has crept into our Church in these latter days, and is spreading extensively, there is too much reason to believe. I regard it as so deeply objectionable that I cannot altogether pass it by.

I maintain there is not a single verse in the New Testament to show that the apostles recommended private confession, or that the first Christians practised it. Desirable or useful it certainly is not. The habit of private or auricular confession to a minister, under any circumstances, is one of the most mischievous and dangerous inventions of the corrupt Church of Rome, and has been the cause of enormous immorality and wickedness. Moreover, it is expressly condemned in the ‘Homily of Repentance.’

Of course, I am aware that habitual confession is thought by some to be sanctioned by the exhortation in our Communion Service, in which the minister says: ‘If any of you cannot quiet his own conscience, but requireth further comfort or counsel, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned minister of God’s Word, and open his grief, that by the ministry of God’s holy Word he may receive the benefit of absolution.’ I reply to all who use this argument, that it is impossible with any fairness to extract auricular confession and sacramental absolution out of this passage. The simple meaning is, that people who are troubled in mind with some special difficulties of conscience are advised to go to some minister and talk privately with him about them, and to get them cleared up and resolved by texts of Scripture, that is, ‘by the ministry of God’s Word.’ This is what many clergymen, conducting mission services in the present day, do with those who wait for an ‘after-meeting’ at the end of the sermon. But this is as utterly unlike the mischievous practice of habitual confession and constant confession before communion, as wholesome medicine is unlike opium-eating and water is unlike poison. As to the well-known words used in the Prayer-book at the ordination of a priest, they are simply an authoritative commission to declare publicly, as the apostles did, whose sins are forgiven and whose are not. This is exactly what St. Paul did in the Acts.

I must be allowed once more to support what I have just said on this point by the words of Bishop Wilberforce. I take them from the last address which he ever delivered, only a few days before his sudden death. Bishop Wilberforce says: ‘This system of confession is one of the worst developments of Popery. In the first place, as regards the penitent, it is a system of unnatural excitement, a sort of spiritual dram-drinking, fraught with evil to the whole spiritual constitution. It is nothing short of the renunciation of the great charge of a conscience which God has committed to every man, the substitution of confession to man for the opening of the heart to God, the adopting in every case of a remedy only adapted to extreme cases which can find relief in no other way.

‘In families it introduces untold mischief. It supersedes God’s appointment of intimacy between husband and wife, father and children; substituting another influence for that which ought to be the nearest and closest, and producing reserve and estrangement where there ought to be perfect freedom and openness. Lastly, as regards the priest to whom confession is made, it brings in a wretched system of casuistry. But far worse than this, it necessitates the terrible evil of familiar dealing with sin, and especially the sin of uncleanness.’ (Burgon, ibid, vol. 2, p. 55.)

I can add nothing to that. I only express my unmixed astonishment that English husbands and parents can allow wives and daughters to go to private confession, and I publicly declare my entire disapproval of the whole practice. (See APPENDIX, CHAPTER 14, note 2.)

I pause here, and will go no further. I might easily name other things which I regret, and regard as dangerous innovations in this day. Such things are lighted candles on the holy table at communion by daylight, incense, the mixed chalice, ceremonial ablution, and the use of mischievous catechisms for children, teaching Mariolatry, and seven sacraments instead of two. I pass them all by, because in the present state of ecclesiastical discipline, where absolute liberty seems the only rubric, it is waste of time to do more than express regrets. Some people, I know, regard these things as trifles. I cannot see with their eyes. They are very mischievous trifles. They are just the kind of things which in the present day are gradually sapping the foundations of the Church of England. They irritate and annoy the middle and lower classes, who cannot find them in the very Prayerbook which from childhood they have been urged to value and treat with veneration. They are regarded as an attempt to unprotestantize the Establishment. If they continue to increase, and are not checked, the end will be disestablishment, disendowment, and disruption. This, at any rate, is my deliberate opinion.

3. I conclude by saying a few words about what I believe was intended to be the real and true comprehensiveness of the Church of England. If anyone supposes, from what I have just said, that I am a narrow-minded Churchman, and that I can see only one school of thought within our pale, he is totally mistaken. I hold strongly, and always have held from the time of my ordination, that there are three different schools in our Church--the High, the Low, and the Broad. The ‘no-party’ men, who have no distinct opinions about anything, I pass by altogether. These three schools have existed for three centuries, and may possibly exist till the end of this dispensation. The Church has always found room for all honest and reasonable members of these schools, though they may occasionally squabble and grumble, and snarl, and growl at one another. Each probably thinks it could improve and amend the Church a little. Each school has its own special nostrums and medicines, which it believes would improve the Church’s health, if taken. But by letting them all work in their own way, the Church has managed to get on hitherto for two hundred and fifty years. This is what I mean by comprehensiveness.

But are there no limits to the comprehensiveness of the Church of England? This is a very delicate question; but I am prepared to look it fully in the face. It is one of such vast importance, in a day of abounding liberalism, that it seems very desirable to lay down one or two leading principles on the subject.

There ought to be some limits to the comprehensiveness of every Church, for the sake of order. Reason and common sense point to this conclusion. Order is heaven’s first law. There was order in Eden before the Fall. There will be perfect order on earth at the restitution of all things. A Christian Church utterly destitute of order does not deserve to be called a Church at all. A Church, like every other corporation on earth, must have definite terms of membership. It must have a creed, and certain fixed principles of doctrine and worship. Its members have a right to know what its ministers are set to teach. A Church which is a mere boneless body, like a jelly-fish, a colourless, bloodless, creedless pantheon, in which every one is right and nobody is wrong who is in earnest, and in which it does not matter a jot what is preached and taught, so long as the preachers are sincere--such a Church is an unpractical absurdity, and the baseless fabric of a dream. The Church which abandons all ‘limits,’ and will not proclaim to mankind what it believes, or would have its members believe, may do very well for Cloudland or Utopia; but it will never do for a world where there are tears and crosses, troubles and sorrows, sickness and death. The member of the Established Church of England has a just right to expect one general type of teaching and worship, whether he goes into a parish church in Truro or Lincoln, in Canterbury or Carlisle. Different shades of statement in the pulpit he may find himself obliged to tolerate. But he may justly complain if the doctrine of one diocese is as utterly unlike that of another as light and darkness, black and white, acids and alkalies, oil and water. ‘Liberty of prophesying’ and free thought, in the abstract, are excellent things. But they must have some bounds. Just as in States the extreme of liberty becomes licentiousness and tyranny, so in Churches it becomes disorder and confusion. The Church which regards Deism, Socinianism, Romanism, and Protestantism with equal favour or equal indifference, is a mere Babel, a ‘city of confusion,’ and not the city of God.

Now, I contend that the National Church of England has set up wisely-devised ‘limits’ to its comprehensiveness. Those limits, I believe, are to be found in the Articles, the Creeds, and the Book of Common Prayer, which you cannot get rid of without a revolution. These well-known documents, I maintain, provide limits wide enough for all reasonable men who do not object in toto to liturgies and Episcopacy. They are documents, no doubt, which all do not interpret alike. As long as the world stands, and as long as language is what it is, you will never get men to place precisely the same meaning on theological phrases and words. But however variously we may interpret the Articles, Creeds, and Prayer-book, they are unmistakable limits, fences, and bounds within which the National Church requires its ministers to walk, and I am bold to say that he who flatly rejects them, denies them, contradicts them, and transgresses them, is in his wrong place inside the Church of England.

(1) If, for example, on the one hand, a man calling himself a Churchman deliberately denies the doctrine of the Trinity, or the proper deity of Christ, or the personality and work of the Holy Ghost, or the atonement and mediation of Christ, or the inspiration and divine authority of Scripture, or justification by faith, or the inseparable connection of saving faith and holiness, or the obligation of the two sacraments, I cannot understand what he is doing in our ranks. Of course, as an Englishman, he may come into our places of worship. But common sense seems to me to point out that he cannot conscientiously use our Prayer-book, and that he has certainly no right to occupy our pulpits and reading-desks.

(2) If, on the other hand, a minister of the National Church maintains and teaches those distinctive doctrines of the Church of Rome which are plainly named, defined, and repudiated nine times over in the Thirty-nine Articles, and, ignoring the public declaration which he made on taking a living, deliberately teaches transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, purgatory, the necessity of auricular confession, and the invocation of saints, I contend that he is transgressing the liberty allowed by the Church of England. He may be zealous, sincere, earnest, and devout, but he is in the wrong place in a Protestant communion. He has stepped over the just limits of the Church’s comprehensiveness, and is occupying an untenable and unwarrantable position.

Of course, the things I have just said appear very narrow and illiberal to some minds. There are many nowadays who are so enamoured of liberty that they would throw down all theological ‘limits,’ fences, and restrictions, and leave the platform of our Church as bare as a common. They tell us the only way to save the Church from shipwreck is to pitch overboard all Articles and Creeds as useless lumber, and to assign no bounds to her ‘comprehensiveness’ so long as her ministers are earnest and sincere. I am utterly unable to see with the eyes of these people. I believe that it is miserable policy to try to purchase unity and peace and charity at the expense of faith and hope and truth. I contend that a rejection of Deism and Socinianism on one side, and a rejection of Romanism and superstition on the other, form ‘just and reasonable and fair limits to comprehensiveness,’ and that our Church does well and wisely in requiring her ministers to walk within them. But I go further than this. I contend that the maintenance of certain well-defined ‘limits to comprehensiveness’ is absolutely essential to the welfare of a Church, and that without such limits it is vain to expect any blessing from God. I think I could name some Churches yet in existence which have fallen into decay, and become lightless lighthouses, in consequence of giving up Creeds and Confessions of Faith. In the vain pursuit of liberty they have sacrificed vitality, and casting overboard distinctive doctrine have committed suicide. They continue to this day, and have a name and place in the earth, but, like extinct volcanoes, they have neither heat, light, nor fire. Nor yet is this all. I fail to see in ecclesiastical history a single instance of good being done to souls except by the agency of men who adhered strictly to positive doctrinal ‘limits,’ and preached and taught positive distinctive truths. Weigh and analyse the teaching of any English divine who has shaken the earth from the time of the Reformation down to the present day. Tell me, if you can, of any clergyman of any school, who ever roused consciences, awoke the sleeping and revived the dead, who did not hold and proclaim a well-defined and limited theology. Show me, if you can, a single ‘master of assemblies,’ from Latimer down to the most popular mission-preacher of this day, from Liddon to Spurgeon, who ever wrought deliverance on earth, and turned the world upside down by a mere colourless gospel--a gospel without the Trinity, without the Atonement, without the blood of Christ, without the Holy Spirit, without justification, without regeneration. No! you will never find one--never, never! Grapes will not grow on thorns, nor figs on thistles. The Church which allows its ministers to teach a vague gospel of earnestness and sincerity, instead of distinctive Christian doctrine, may get the reputation of being very liberal and tolerant in these latter days, but it will never convert and satisfy souls. A Church must have some ‘limits’ and bounds to its ‘comprehensiveness,’ if it desires to do good.

And now let me conclude with an earnest appeal to my brother Churchmen, by way of application. For the sake of peace, for the sake of truth, for the sake of the Church of England, for the sake of Christ, let us strive and pray that we may hold fast both the principles referred to in the subject of this part of my address, the principle of ‘comprehensiveness’ and the principle of ‘limitation.’ (1) Let us endeavour to be of a comprehensive spirit. Let us not exclude from the Church those whom the Church has not excluded, nor boycott and ostracize and excommunicate everyone who cannot pronounce our Shibboleths, or work exactly on our lines. I am a thorough-going Evangelical Churchman, and I am not a bit ashamed of it. I will never give place by subjection, and admit that anyone is a better Churchman than myself. But I have no sympathy with those who advocate a rigid, unbending, cast-iron uniformity within our pale, and want all Churchmen to be, like the rails round Hyde Park in London, of one unvarying mental colour, height, shape, and thickness. If any man asks me to cast out of the Church of this day men of the type of Andrews and Sanderson and George Herbert; or of Burnet and Tillotson and Whichcote; or of Bishops Blomfield or Thirlwall; or of Bishops Wilberforce or Selwyn; I tell him plainly that I will not do it. No doubt I could not preach very comfortably in the pulpits of such men, nor they in mine. I could not take them as curates, nor could they take me. I prefer to support my own favourite religious Societies, and they prefer theirs. But if any Evangelical Churchman wants to thrust these men out of the Church of England, because, like Apollos, they do not seem to him to know the ‘way of God perfectly,’ I will not lift a finger to help him. I will tolerate them, on my principle of ‘Church comprehensiveness,’ and in return I expect them to tolerate me.

(2) On the other hand, let us neither be ashamed nor afraid of having limits to our comprehensiveness, even the limits of our mother, the Church of England. Let us not overstrain the quality of liberalism so far as to sanction theological licentiousness. Let us be as broad as the Articles and Creeds, but not one inch broader. If any one tries to persuade me that I ought to smile and look on complacently, with folded arms, while beneficed or licensed clergymen teach Deism, Socinianism, or Romanism, I must tell him plainly that I cannot and will not do it. He may tell me that I am a ‘troubler of Israel,’ and a bitter controversialist; but I repeat that, when truth is in danger, I cannot and will not sit still. At this rate the apostles ought to have left the world alone eighteen centuries ago. They ought to have been satisfied with the teaching of Socrates and Plato, and were fools to attack heathenism, and live and die preaching Christ crucified. At this rate the English Reformation was a huge schism and mistake, and Ridley and Latimer ought never to have resisted Rome and gone to the stake. No, indeed! I love my own Church too well to tolerate either scepticism on the one hand or Romanism on the other, and I think I am only doing my duty to my ordination vows in trying to ‘drive both away.’

But, after all, it matters little what bishops and clergymen may think or do. The question before us is rapidly getting out of clerical hands. There are handwritings on the wall, which it needs no Daniel to interpret. I know something of the laity, and especially in the middle classes, in this country, and I am certain they will never tolerate and support a National Church which desires to return to Rome, or has no theological ‘limits,’ and holds no distinctive doctrines. They do not want the Established Church of England to be narrow, illiberal, party-spirited, and exclusive. But in a weary, working, sorrowful world, the laity will not put up with a religion either of negations or superstitions. They want bread, and they will not be content with stones. Once let the English laity see that a reign of complete latitudinarianism has begun, that the old landmarks are thrown down and that the National Church does not care a jot whether her ministers preach Deism or Bible Christianity, Protestantism or Popery, but gives equal favour to all--once, I say, let the laity see this, and they will desert the National Church and leave it to perish. Give the laity the old paths of the Bible, and the well-defined limits of the Articles and Creeds and Prayer-book, and they will stand by the Church to the last. Destroy those limits, or refuse to enforce and maintain them, and they will soon cry, ‘Let us depart hence’; our candlestick will be removed, and the Church will die for want of Churchmen. In short, there is no alternative. The question is one of life or death. The English Church must either have doctrinal ‘limits,’ or cease to exist.

APPENDIX: CHAPTER 14

1. What says the Nineteenth Article? ‘The Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.’

What says the Twenty-second Article? ‘The Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.’

What says the Twenty-fourth Article? It forbids the Romish custom of having public prayers and ministering the sacraments in Latin, as ‘repugnant to the Word of God.’

What says the Twenty-fifth Article? It declares that the five Romish sacraments of Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction, are not to be accounted sacraments of the Gospel. What says the Twenty-eighth Article? It declares that ‘Transsubstantiation (or the change of the substance of bread and wine) in the Lord’s Supper, cannot be proved by Holy Writ, but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.’ It also declares that ‘the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.’ What says the Thirtieth Article? ‘The cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay-people.’

What says the Thirty-first Article? ‘The sacrifices of masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.’

What says the Thirty-second Article? ‘Bishops, priests, and deacons are not commanded by God’s law either to vow the estate of single life, or to abstain from marriage.’

What says the Thirty-seventh Article? ‘The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.’

2. The following report of the Committee of the Upper House of Convocation of the province of Canterbury, being a Committee of the whole House, appointed on the 9th of May last, to consider and report on the teaching of the Church of England on the subject of Confession was laid on the table by his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury on July 23, 1873:

‘In the matter of Confession, the Church of England holds fast those principles which are set forth in Holy Scripture, which were professed by the Primitive Church, and which were re-affirmed at the English Reformation. The Church of England, in the Twenty-fifth Article, affirms that penance is not to be counted for a Sacrament of the Gospel; and, as judged by her formularies, knows no such words as “sacramental confession.” Grounding her doctrines on Holy Scripture, she distinctly declares the full and entire forgiveness of sins, through the blood of Jesus Christ, to those who bewail their own sinfulness, confess themselves to Almighty God, with full purpose of amendment of life, and turn with true faith unto Him. It is the desire of the Church that by this way and means all her children should find peace. In this spirit the forms of Confession and Absolution are set forth in her public services. Yet for the relief of the troubled consciences, she has made special provision in two exceptional cases.

‘(1) In the case of those who cannot quiet their own consciences previous to receiving the Holy Communion, but require further comfort or counsel, the minister is directed to say, “Let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned minister of God’s Word, and open his grief, that by the ministry of God’s Holy Word he may receive the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice.” Nevertheless, it is to be noted that for such a case no form of absolution has been prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer; and further, the Rubric in the first Prayer-book of 1549, which sanctions a particular form of Absolution, has been withdrawn from all subsequent editions of the said Book.

‘(2) In the order of the Visitation of the Sick, it is directed that the sick man may be moved to make a special confession of his sins if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter, but in such case absolution is to be given when the sick man shall humbly and heartily desire it. The special provision, however, does not authorise the ministers of the Church to require from any who may repair to them to open their grief in a particular or detailed examination of all their sins, or to require private confession as a condition previous to receiving the Holy Communion, or to enjoin or even encourage any practice of habitual confession to a priest, or to teach that such practice of habitual confession, or the being subject to what has been termed the direction of a priest, is a condition of attaining to the highest spiritual life.’

--Times, July 24, 1873.