1850.

General Advantages of Comprehension.

273

not been (as they might have been) so narrowed as to stifle that hope for ever, is a matter of deep thankfulness. Yet, happy as such a prospect may be, and delightful as it is to contemplate its possible accomplishment, not by the crude attempts of hasty speculators not by the premature application of uncertain theories-not by the external pressure of liberal governments, but by the slow march of ages, by the uncertain conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries, by grave judicial decisions, and by the wise moderation of dignified ecclesiastics, there is a nearer and more urgent service which the Church of England may render, unless its first principles are trampled under foot by the violence or the misunderstanding of its own professed supporters. It has been stated by the author of a pamphlet on the present controversy, that the recent judgment is a triumph, not (as he calls them) of the Puritan, but only of the Philosophical or Latitudi'narian school,' within the Church. If the able writer of that letter had consulted his own vigorous common sense, instead of a fanciful division of the Church into schools, which, for the purpose in question, have no existence at all, he would, we are sure, have arrived at a very different conclusion, and have seen that there were interests to be secured by the judgment of the Privy Council as far removed from Puritan and Latitudinarian theories as either of those theories are from each other,—interests never to be slighted by a Christian minister, least of all to be slighted in times like our own. Every one acknowledges the fact that we are thrown upon an age of unusual fermentation in thought and speculation. That vast convulsion, of which our fathers saw the first beginnings, still continues: the great thaw which broke up the long frost of the 18th century is still in every quarter dissolving the existing fabric of opinion; principles long dormant are springing into life; forms long unmeaning are either perishing or acquiring new animation; the ancient Giants Pope and Pagan, whom Bunyan saw crippled and shackled in their caves, are beginning once again to rattle their chains and exhibit unwonted signs of activity.

'Apparent diræ facies, inimicaque Troja
Numina

Now, who are they that most suffer, and most require the aid of external institutions, at such a period as this? Not surely those

The Bearings of the Gorham Case.' A Letter to a Friend. By James Craigie Robertson, M. A., Vicar of Bekesbourne; the author of an excellent work on the Rubrical controversy, under the title How shall we conform to the Liturgy?'

VOL. XCII. NO. CLXXXV.

T

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who, taking a prominent part in such discussions, have the support of their own convictions, and the sympathy of their own partizans,not the Puritan, or the Romanising, or the philosophical schools, if such schools can be fairly eliminated from each other's ranks, but those whose natural disposition withdraws them from the strife of tongues, into which they are cast by the lot of their age, and who shrink from taking an active part in a contest in which they feel they have little or no concern, and long to repose in truths which they hold as certain and essential, instead of dwelling on those which their natural character leads them to regard as doubtful and comparatively indifferent. These are precisely the bruised reeds which a National Church-institution is bound to abstain from crushing, the smoking flax which it should be most careful not to quench; and these are precisely the characters which the actual state of the Church of England, as handed down from the Reformation, as confirmed by the Judgment of the Privy Council, is, above every other similar institution in the world, calculated to protect and console. The class which Isaac Walton describes as his own still occupies the chief place in the community, namely, those whom, by way of distinction from the active Romanists,' and the restless nonconformists,' he calls the passive peaceable Protestants.' These last,' adds the gentle angler, pleaded and defended their cause by established laws both ecclesiastical and civil, and, if they were active, it was to prevent the other two from destroying what was by those known laws happily established to them and their posterity.' To this class belonged, in his rustic retirement, the great Hooker; -to this class, in a later age, Isaac Walton himself to this class, in our own time, the great mass of the nation, rich and poor, male and female, who are members of the Church of England, because they wish to be religious without being members of a party or a sect. More speculative minds may long for the professorial chairs of Germany, or the elaborate systems of Aquinas or Bellarmine; more resolute minds may long for greater simplicity of principle, for greater vigour in the enforcement of ecclesiastical discipline. But those of whom we just now spoke the little ones, whom to offend is to incur a greater guilt than to be drowned in the depths of the sea,-who in Protestant Germany might have been driven to distraction by the unbounded liberty of speculation, or, in Roman Catholic Italy, have been driven to infidelity by the iron yoke of authority, these are the very persons who seek and find in the bosom of the Church of England the very refuge they want.

* Walton's Lives,' i. 354.

*

1850.

True Object of a Church Establishment.

275

Let any one look at a rustic congregation, and ask what it is which is expected from the Church of England by the rude farmer, the simple labourer, the hard shopkeeper, the timid woman, the ignorant child, that come to worship under that sacred roof? Do they wish to know whether their pastor has authority to teach them dogmatically the doctrines of Absolution and the Real Presence? Do they wish to be told whether Regeneration takes place in, before, or after Baptism?-whether their children have been regenerated by prevenient grace or by the sprinkling of water?-whether the Decades of Bullinger' or the Savoy Conference' contain the truest exposition of Christian doctrine? Every one knows that they want no such thing. Every one knows that a clergyman who was constantly insisting on such matters in his pulpit would be regarded as hardly in his right mind. Every one knows that what they desire, and what from any good pastor they will receive, is the permission and the help to worship God as their fathers worshipped Him, -to serve Him truly in those various stations in which He has placed them, to be strengthened and built up in that holy faith which is indeed, in every sense, beyond and without contro'versy.'

Such is the true end of a Church Establishment,—such is the end which, even after the disastrous secession of many of its most distinguished members, is still to a great extent answered by the Established Church of Scotland, such is the end which, up to this time, has been, with more or less effect, answered by the Church of England, and which might be answered with still greater effect if it would, in the solemn language of its Ordination Service, wholly apply itself to this one thing, and draw 'all its cares and studies this way;' but such is not the end which is either pursued or attained by convocations and synods, by dogmatic statements and stringent subscriptions, by furious letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury, or by a hundred and forty questions to aged Calvinists. We know how the Hampden controversy, even at the very height of its terrors, withered and died in a moment before the blaze of the Revolution of February. We know how the Gorham controversy would be extinguished, in like manner, by any similar catastrophe, whether at home or abroad. Would that the greatness of our daily duties, of our ordinary dangers and privileges, could reveal to our clergy what the sudden convulsions of public life always do reveal,the nothingness of these verbal disputes, when compared with the living and stirring interests of national and individual welfare. It may be the sign of a healthy political state that our only revolution, as a French traveller is said facetiously

to have expressed it, is the revolution of le père Gorham.' It is not the mark of a healthy moral state that 'le père Gorham' should concenter upon himself and his doctrine that energy of hatred which we have been taught by our baptismal vows to reserve for the various forms of moral evil, or that we should labour to turn our artizans into dogmatic theologians more than to make them good citizens and good Christians.

We have dwelt on the historical certainty of the fact that the Church of England was meant to include, and that it has always included, opposite and contradictory opinions, not only on the point now in dispute, but on other points, as important or more important than this. We have dwelt also on the inestimable advantage, if not absolute necessity, of maintaining this position, as the best means of dealing with the peculiar mission of a National Church, especially of a National Church in England, ahove all, of the Church of England in these times. But we feel that there is a yet higher ground to be taken-that there is a sanction and an example for our position almost too solemn to be insisted upon in these pages, were it not for the greatness of the interests at stake, and for the sincerity, in many instances, of the scruples which such a position excites in those who have not considered it in its true point of view. In the second of those vigorous, though mistaken letters, which have drawn down upon Mr. Maskell the anger of hundreds less plain-spoken 'or less clear-sighted than himself, after an examination of the various points on which he truly conceives the Chuch of England to have expressed no dogmatic opinion, there occurs this (in his view) final and fatal question,—' Has the 6 world ever before seen, does there now exist any where another example of a religious sect or community which does not take one side or the other clearly and distinctly, upon at least a very large proportion of the doctrines of which we have 'been speaking?'

Yes: the world has seen one example, at least, of a religious community, whose highest authorities did refuse to take one side or the other clearly and distinctly on the questions which were brought for their decision. There was once a council, in which, after much disputing,' it was determined not to put a 'yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither their fathers nor they were able to bear;' and to whom it seemed good to lay upon the Church no greater burden than these necessary things, from which if the brethren kept themselves they should

* A Second Letter on the present position of the High Church Party in the Church of England, p. 40., by the Rev. W. Maskell.

6

1850.

Uncertainty of the Controversy.

277

'do well.'* There was once a conference of those who seemed 'to be the pillars of the Church' to decide the claims between the two rival sections of the Christian community, of whom we are told, that when they perceived that He who wrought effectually' on one side, the same was mighty,' also on the other side, they gave' to both the right hand of fellowship,' that each should go unto' his own peculiar sphere.† There was once a controversy which distracted the Church with doubtful dis'putations,' and the answer which came from an authority, now revered by the whole Christian world, was a decision which decided nothing, except that each party might be left to its own convictions, however opposite and contradictory they might be. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day regardeth it unto the Lord, and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it; he 'that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and 'he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.' It is to the principle, not the subject-matter, of such decisions, that our attention is directed. The controversy to which they related, different as it was from those of modern times, agitated the Apostolical Church no less fiercely, and was invested by the contending parties with no less importance. It is enough for our purpose to learn that the Church of the first century gloried in the freedom which is now regarded as a disgrace, and directed its earliest and its most energetic efforts, not to the enforcement of a rigid uniformity, but to the toleration of wide diversities. It was, indeed, no empty figure of speech which in that early age of Christianity recalled the image of the ark prepared against the flood. It is not an empty boast, that we have now within our reach,-and it will be no imaginary guilt if we, of our own accord, refuse to maintain—a system which shares, in however imperfect a measure, one characteristic attribute of that perfect Church which was to float visibly upon the stormy waters, and gather within itself the characters of various conditions, opinions, and tempers, who fled to it for shelter from the waves of this troublesome world. The Church of England, however, in this respect, unlike the Churches of Rome or of Geneva, may console itself with the reflection that it presents a likeness, however faint, of the Church of the Apostolic

age.

It is with reluctance that we descend from that sacred atmosphere to the earth-born mists of modern controversy. We Rom. xiv. 1. 5, 6.

*Acts, xv. 7. 10. 28. † Gal. ii. 8, 9.