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3 3433 07998296 7

Church (\m

Lectures

CHRISTIAN UNITY

AND THE

BISHOPS' DECLARATION

ZK

^

7-< The Church Club Lectures.

Uni/urtn red cloth. Free, fier volume, 50c. net; by post ^ 60c.

1888.— THE HISTORY AND TEACHING OF THE EARLV church, ^s a Bisis i >r the Re-Union of Christendom B\r Bishops Coxe and Seymour, and the Rev. Drs. Richey, Garrison, and Egar.

1889. -the church IN THK BRITISH ISLES. Sketches of its Continuous History from the Earliest Times to the Restoration. By Bi.hops Doane and KiNGDON, and the Rev. Drs. Hart, Allen, and Gailok.

1890.— THE POST-RESTORATION PERIOD OF THE CHURCH IN THE BRITISH ISLES. In continuHtion ef the v ,lume tor 1889. By Bishops Perky and McLaren, Yen. Dr. Davenport, and the Rev. Dis. Mortimer and Richey

1891.-CATHOLn DOGMA. The Fundamental Truths of Revealed Religion. By Bishops Littlejohn and Sessums, the Rev Drs. Huntington, Mortimer, and Elliott, and the Rev Pruf. Walpole.

1892.— THE CHURCH'S MINISTRY OF GRACE. By Bishops Garrett and Grafton, the Very Rev. Dr. RoBBiNS. and thi Rev. Dr». Clark and Fiskk.

1893.-THR SIX CECUMENICAL COUNCILS OF THE UNDIVIDED CA.THOLIC CHURCH. By Bishop Leonard, iho Rev. Drs Dix, Elmendorf and RiLKY, and the Revs. R. M. Benson and W. McGarvey.

1894.-THE RIGHTS AND PRETENSIONS OF THE ROMAN SEE. By Bishops Paret and Hall, the Rev. Dr. Waterman, and the Revs. Greenough White, Robert Ritchie, and Algernon Sidney Crapsey,

E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. Cooper Union, Fourth Ave., New York.

Christian Unity

AND THE

Bishops' Declaration

Xecturcs

DELIVERED IN 1 895 UNDER THE AUSPICES OP THE CHURCH CLUB OF NEW YOFK

NEW YORK

E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO.

COOPER UNION, FOURTH AVENUE 1895

THE N CW YOB.

PUBLlCiLHiBiME^

141149

ASTOR. LENOX a^H TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

1S99.

Copyright, 1895. Bt E. & J. B. YOUNG a CO.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.

CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S WORD AND THE

church's act I

By the Rt, Rev. Thomas F. Gailor, D. D. , Assistant Bishop of Tennessee.

LECTURE IL

the holy scriptures as the rule and ulti- mate STANDARD OF FAITH . . . 41

By the Rev. Charles E. W, Body, D.D.^ D C.L., Professor

of Old Testament Literature and Interpretation^ in

the General Theological Seminary.

LECTURE in.

THE TWO CREEDS 79

By Ven. Charles S. Olmsted, of Cooperstown, N. V., Archdeacon of the Susquehanna.

LECTURE IV.

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS . . . . II9

By Ven. A. St. J. Chambrd, D.D., of Lowell, Mass., Arch- deacon of Lowell and Dean of Convocation.

iv CONTENTS.

LECTURE, V.

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE ' 147

By the Rev. Francis J. Hall, M.A., Instructor of Theology in the Western Theological Seminary, Chicago, III.

INTRODUCTION,

THIS volume of Lectures on Christian Unity follows in natural order the volume of 1893, on the Councils of the Un^ divided Church, and the volume of 189-^, on the Papal Schism. But it has happened fur- ther that the Lectures of 1S95 have proved to be most fortunate in point of timeliness. While they were in course of delivery a re- markable revival of interest In the subject occurred, manifest on every hand In secular as well as in religious newspapers, and scarce were they concluded when the pulpits dealt with the topic on Whitsun-Day. Now, as they are going through the press, the League of Catholic Unity, composed of representatives from seven of the principal

V i INTR OD UC TION.

religious bodies, has put forth its circular, beginning in the following terms:

In view of the growing desire for Church unit)', we, whose names are subscribed, devoutly seek- ing the Divine guidance and blessing, hereby as- sociate ojrselves as a league for the promotion of Catholic unity.

Without detaching ourselves from the Christian bodies to which we severally belong, or intending to compromise our relations thereto, or seeking to interfere with ether efforts for Christian unity, we accept, as worthy of the most thoughtful consid- eration, the four principles of Church unity pro- posed by the Bishops of the Protestant Episco- pal Church, at Chicago, in 1886, and amended by the Lambeth Conference of 1S88.

We believe that upon the basis of these four principles as articles of agreement the unification of the Christian denominations of this country may proceed, cautiously and steadily, without any alteration of their existing standards of doctrine, polity, and worship which might not reasonably be made in a spirit of brotherly love and harmony, for the sake of unity and for the furtherance of all the great ends 01 the Church of Christ on earth.

In order to promote Catholic unity we recom- mend, as proposed by the Lambeth Conference, that these articles be carefully studied in con-

IN TRODUC TION. vi 1

nection with '' the authoritative standards of doc- trine, worship and government adopted by the different bodies of Christians into which the Eng- h'sh-speaking races are divided"; and to this end we reverently and lovingly invoke the counte- nance and aid of the Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church and of all other Catholic Bish- ops and Christian ministers of every order and name.

May our united prayers be so blended with the prevalent intercession of our ascended Lord that we shall all become one in Him, for the glory of His Eternal Father, for the good of His Church, and for the redemption of the world !

It is therefore with great confidence that the Church Club of New York presents the volume of 1895 to th'e judgment of all Christian men, being assured not only of the importance of the subject which it treats, but also that the public mind is now direct- ed to that subject with peculiar attention. The learned Lecturers appeal alike to the intellect and the affections of their separated brethren in Christ, and it may not be too much to hope at this time that both mird

VIU INTRODUCTION.

and heart shall be engaged by their words ; a man need not be a Churchman to be touched by the pathetic giving up of things human in the Bishops' offer of 1886: " That in all things of human ordering or human choice, relating to modes of worship and discipline, or to traditional customs, this Church is ready in the spirit of love and humility to forego all preferences of her own,"

Bishop Gailor's remark is that: ^' To de- nounce this Declaration of the Bishops as a sectarian effort of the Protestant Episcopal Church to absorb other Christian denomi- nations, or to look upon the movement as anything else than unselfish, generous, and full of the spirit of Christ, is to confess to blind prejudice and real indifference to the reunion of the Christian world." And it is simply and literally true, as he says, that a single proposition of it "exacts of Church- men more ol generous sacrifice bothofpref-

INTRODUCTION, ix

erence and conviction than the agreement to the whole Declaration would require from any other body of Christian people." These utterances are the key-note of the present volume.

It remains for the Church Club to fix here a record of its deep obligation to the accomplished Lecturers of 1895 ^Bishop Gailor, Archdeacons Chambre and Olmsted, the Rev. Dr. Body, and the Rev. Francis J. Hall — for their generous labors.

New York, July 21, 1895.

Cbrietian lainiti?— ^be flDaater'a Movo an£) tbc Cburcb'6 Hct

LECTURE I.

THE RT. REV. THOMAS F. GAILOR, D.D

Assistant Bishop of Tennessee.

CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S WORD AND THE CHURCH'S ACT,

It is a depressing experience to visit a town of 1, 800 inhabitants, where perhaps 500 people at- tend church on Sunday, and to find that there are ten or twelve rival churches in the place, bidding for the patronage of these five hundred people; and that the expense of maintaining this multi- tude of sects is so great that no denomination can afford to have a resident minister. Yet this is getting to be a not uncommon ecclesiastical condition in many Eastern and Southern towns. It is not to be wondered at, under the circum- stances, that a large proportion of the community are non-church-goers, that the great majority are indifferent, and that there is no religious provis- ion for works of practical charity. There are large districts in this country where religion flour- ishes after a certain fashion, and where yet a free

4 CHRIS riA y UNI r f— the m i s ter s

hospital, or a free home, well-conducted and un- der Christian influences, for the poor, the aged, the infirm, is almost unknown.

The United States Census Report for 1890 gives a list of 128 Christian denominations, with fif- teen non-Christian and 156 unattached congrega- tions. These denominations represent differences of doctrinal belief and practice on almost every arti- cle of the Christian faith. The Divinity of J ESUS Christ, the Atonement, the value and meaning of the Sacraments, the nature and destiny of man, the nature of God, the inspiration and design and contents of the Bible, the form and purpose of public worship; each and all of these great themes are subjects of serious, and, in some instances, of fierce and intolerant, dissension. Even the sub- tlest metaphysical speculations, and the simplest variations in taste and temperament, are the bases on which, for reasons of conscience. Christian men and women separate themselves for their habitual worship.

There are those who use musical instruments and those who do not. There are those whosing hymns and those who sing psalms. There are ** The old Two-Seed in the Spirit Predcstinarian "; and there are the ''Defenceless"; "The Free Will"; the "United"; "The Separatists"; the " Reformed "; " The Associate Reformed "; " The

WORD AND THE CHURCH'S ACT. 5

Primitive"; '^ The Independent" and '^ The Re- organized."

Although there are Christian houses of worship in the United States with a seating capacity of 44,003,000, valued at $680,000,000, there are only 20,000,000 members reported, and of these, 1,000,- 000 are divided into 103 denominations, varying in size from 100 to 100,000 members each, holding more than $66,000,000 worth of property, the an- nual interest on which would support more than 4,000 missionaries in the foreign or domestic field.

Meanwhile, sixty-eight per cent, of the popula- tion of the United States, or more than 44,000,000 of people, are reported as without any religious affiliation whatever. And infidelity — the infidel- ity that represents intellectual scepticism and the infidelity that represents spiritual indifference or despair, and the infidelity that represents moral failure — infidelity continues to be aggressive and widespread. Crime is increasing more rapid- ly than the population. Our improved educa- tional facilities, of which we are justly proud, have enabled criminals to become intellectually sharper, more enterprising, and more successful. The amount of money publicly known to have been lost by embezzlements and robberies for 1894 was §25,234,1 12, as compared with $19,929,692 for 1893. Official corruption and commercial dishonesties and social falsehoods have become so common

6 CflRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

that confidence, that surest foundation of the prosperity of States, is rare ' between man and man, and the business of the country feels the creeping palsy of that anti-Christ that maketh and worketh a lie. The chill of uncertainty affects our missionary work at home and abroad. The Chi- nese write articles in our own reviews demanding to know why we ask the Chinese tobecome Chris- tians, when we ourselves seem to be unable to de- termine what Christianity is.

But worse than this: Our seemingly utter in- ability to agree together on any rational state- ment of the Christian religion has led many men and women to the conclusion that after all the Christian Gospel is not a definite message of help and blessing to mankind, but that it is a force or influence — vague and indefinable — representing the highest spiritual aspiration of the race and in- cluding in its cloudy and indistinct and diffusive atmosphere everything that man thinks or im- agines to be good and true. Therefore, whatever fancy or theory or interpretation seems to any man or woman to be the sufficient explanation of life's problems, this is straightway labelled Chris- tianity and supported by appeal to the Christian Scriptures. We have lived to see Buddhism, Gnosticism, Sabcllianism, Docetism, Occultism, each claiming to be the true Christian Gospel, and many simple Christians utterly unable to refute the claim.

WORD AND THE CHURCirs ACT. 7

In the fear and love then of JESUS Christ Our Lord Who died and rose again for us and Who shall come to judge ; in distress before the in- creasing boldness of confident unbelief and osten- tatious sin ; in shame over the pitiful contentions of the sects of Christendom — every earnest be- liever must ask himself: (i) Whether it was the purpose of Christ that these divisions should exist;

(2) How these divisions were brought about; and

(3) What, in faith and love and reason, can be done to end the strife.

Our Lord's recorded words in His prayer for His people are the standing challenge to those who confound unity with uniformity, and under- take to justify the present divisions as not incon- sistent with the progress of the Gospel. ** That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me" (St. John xvii. 21). It is a constantly re- curring thought in St. Paul's epistles. The mis- sionary enthusiasm of the first Christians, their patience in suffering, their hopeful endurance of persecution, their generous philanthropy and active charity, their very moral earnestness, — was influenced and strengthened by the conviction that there was "One Lord, one faith, one bap- tism. One God and Father of all " (Eph. iv. 5, 6); that they, "being many, were one body in Christ,

8 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

and every one members one of another" (Rom. xii. 5). It was the farewell message of St. John. Ignatius in Syria appeals to it, and Ircnceus in Gaul assumes it as the characteristic of the Chris- tian system. And as a matter of fact it was real- ized in the early Church. The unity existing in the middle of the third century was a visible and potent and intelligible unity, quite compatible with individual development and free institutions. It was not based upon rigid and mechanical and technical statements of doctrine, for the Creed professed was the simplest expression of the great facts of the Gospel, viz.: Belief in God the Father and His forgiveness; in God the Son and our res- urrection through Him, and in God the Holy Ghost and His everlasting life ; and making these saving truths real, actual, practical, in human ex- perience here and now: Belief in the Kingdom of Christ, the Holy Catholic Church. This unity admitted of wide diversity in the ritual and modes of worship of the various Dioceses. It was not incompatible with great variety of speculative belief and of practical administration. But it was a unity with tremendous power for good, because it rested on the fact of the Incarnation, and the soul's contact with the Incarnate One, through the means of grace and help conveyed in the One Body.

It was during the reign of this unity that

JVO/^D AND THE CHURCH'S ACT. 9

Cyprian was able to say of the whole Church that " th-i Church, flooded with the light of the Lord, puts forth her rays through the whole world, with yet one light, which is spread upon all places, while its unity of body is not infringed. She stretches forth her branches over the earth in the riches of plenty, and pours abroad her bountiful and onward streams, yet is there one Head, one Source, one Mother, abundant in the results of her fruitfulness" {^De imitat. Eccl. 4). It was in the vigor of this corporate unity that the Church survived all persecutions, and conquered the Ro- man Empire and set the cross of Christ on the palaces of kings. It was this that met the shock of barbarian invasions, converted the conquerors, and saved the civilization of Europe from com- plete destruction. It was before this unity was entirely subverted by Papal imperialism that the great missionary conquests of the Church were achieved and the nations of Europe became Chris- tian nations; and it is a significant fact that no great people has been converted to Christianity since that original unity of the Church was lost.

The story of that loss is the saddest chapter in Ecclesiastical History. I shall not elaborate it, because it was told with wealth of learning and research to the Church Club last year. Of course it was not a swift and sudden revolution, but a gradual assumption and concentration of author-

lo CHRISTIAN U.VITY—THE MASTER'S

ity in the Roman See. The men who, one after another, brought it about, were not intentionally disloyal to the past. On the contrary, they acted, as a rule, according to their conscientious convic- tions. History was not an open book to them. Grave and serious evils threatened to rob the Church of her spiritual character and authority; and they felt the necessity of opposing a spiritual absolutism to the secular absolutism that menaced the Church's life. I say this much for Hilde- brand and his predecessors. And yet under Hil- debrand's influence in 1054 the unity was broken by the schism between the East and West; and under Hildebrand's dominion, as Gregory VII., in 1080, the old idea of unity was abandoned in the organization of the new Papal Empire. The revolution under Hildebrand, for it was a revolu- tion, is the greatest epoch in Church History be- fore the Reformation. By him and his immediate successors between 1074 and 1300 a new Secular Power, fenced about and guarded with spiritual sanctions, lifted its head above all dominions of the world. It claimed authority over all earthly kingdoms and *' exacted an allegiance on oath," as Phillimore says {Interyiitional Lazv, p. 203), '* far above that which the municipal law of any coun- try could impose or any temporal sovereign could enforce." It collected feudal revenues and created and carried on its own Department of State. It

JVORD AND THE C/IURC/PS ACT. ii

claimed for its official representatives in various countries a peculiar status and separate rights. Under this new regime the Roman Pontiff claimed the title Pope to the exclusion of all other Bish- ops. The enforced celibacy of the clergy created a disciplined army of officers loyal to the one ruler and detached from ordinary human inter- ests. The Popes ceased to date their acts from the years of the reign of the Emperor, or to stamp their coins with his impress. The power of excommunication was no longer limited to spiritual offences, but was extended to secular affairs. And the glory of the new Empire reached its zenith in Boniface VIII., whose bull, " Unam Sanctavi'' declares that all temporal as well as all spiritual power is in the Church, and excommuni- cates any secular judge who presumes to inter- fere in criminal cases against ecclesiastical per- sons.

We are not discussing here the truth or falsity, the strength or weakness, of the Mediaeval system, as an interpretation of the Christian Gospel. It was part of God's providential order in history, and the poor and oppressed found in it often a merci- ful relief from feudal tyranny. But two results, or at least two coincident tendencies, are very evident. During the period after Hildebrand, the tendency to define doctrine in scholastic fashion ran unchecked. The dogma of transubstantiation

12 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

and the rule of compulsory confession were de- clared in 121 5. The new doctrine of Purgatory took definite shape and the practice of pardons and indulgences became common. And the genius of the time was for organization, for the ob- jective and the external. The power of the Pope and the sanctity of his office became so overshad- owing, so compelling and immediate, that men forcfot that there ever had been an ante-Hilde- brandine constitution. The doctrine of the Apos- tolical Succession in its real constitutional sense, i.e.y that each Bishop by virtue of his consecration receives his authority from God to minister and rule, was practically denied. Augustine Trium- phus in 1350, in his book on the Papal power, asserts that the Pope alone is the recipient of authority from God and that the Pope is entitled to the honor due to God, but only ministerially. John Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, 1409, plaintively declares that " we have only painted images of Bishops" {Gtesler^ iv. 131). And as late as the Council of Trent, the Spanish Bishops strove in vain for a recognition of the delegated apostolic authority in the Episcopate independent of the Pope.

Thus, when the tide of the Reformation came, the Reformers began the movement with a faulty and inadequate conception of the constitution of the Church; with an inherited prejudice in favor

IV07W AND THE CHURCH'S ACT. 13

of a legal, theological system, and a fierce dislike of the whole institutional idea of Christianit\\ The creed-makers of the Reformation, cither from necessity or indifference, did not attempt to go back of the Mediaeval system and revive a consti- tution that obtained in earlier ages. They simply swept away the authority of the Church alto- gether and replaced it with the absolute and un- related authority of the Bible. As Beard says, ** Christianity had always been presented to them by the Mediaeval Church as a system of reasoned religious truth, complete in all its parts, and they could not conceive of it in any other way" (^Hib. Lect., 266). They were as exact and as technical in their system of logical and minute detail as the schoolmen were; and they substituted for a vast and symmetrical and minute system of dogma, based on the Bible and the witness of an- tiquity and tradition, another system, quite as minute if not so symmetrical, based on their interpretation of the Bible without regard to antiquity. It is safe to say that the constitution of the Church and the authority of the Church as taught and held in the age of the first Council of Nicaea had no fair and full consideration from the men who made the creeds and inaugurated the ecclesiastical systems of the sixteenth century. In their minds apparently the Mediaeval Church with its manifest defects and offences was the

14 CITRTSTIAM UNITY— THE MASTER'S

only historical ecclesiastical system possible. It seemed to them that the only possible Bishops were the secularized ecclesiastical barons — too often self-indulgent and unspiritual — who held the rule over them in the Holy Roman Empire; and they had been taught by the extreme Papalists to regard these ecclesiastics as a degree and not an order in the ministry and little more than appen- dages to the Pope. Bishop Burnet, 200 years ago, said that the theory of parity of orders was the very dregs of Popery. To the Protestant the only ecclesiastical unity was a hard, monarchical abso- lutism, fenced about with the mazes of the Canon Law and innumerable decisions; and to this very day it is not uncommon to hear the challenge, even from prominent religious teachers, that a be- lief in the historical succession of authority in the Episcopate, in any sense, means nothing less than Popery. Yet the Augsburg Confession more than once declares that if Bishops were only chief ministers of the Word and Sacraments (perhaps an impossible thing in their opinion!) "the Churches ought" not only *'to render obedience to them," but " by divine right." But as practi- cally infallible potentates, with power of the sword, lording it over God's heritage, the con- science of men could not tolerate them.

What the Swiss and German Reformers rejected then was not visible unity, or Catholic unity, but

IVOND A ND THE CH UR CH' S A CT, 1 5

the Mediaeval uniformity — not Bishops, but secu- larized Bishops — not the ancient Constitution of the Church, but the Mediaeval Constitution.

The result, however, was that they broke com- pletely with the Mediaeval Church, and in so do- ing- cut themselves off purposely, advisedly, from external continuity with the past. The Bible was the sole appeal for doctrine, and reverence for it was the only connecting link with primitive Christianity. In theory eacli man was privileged to get his theology by his own reading of Scrip- ture, and in theory the Bible was so plain that all men who would read it aright v/ould find the same teaching as to the fundamental truths of the Gos- pel. In practice, however, this was found to be delusive, for Socinus, who denied the Divinity of Christ, read the Bible as carefully as Luther and Calvin, who asserted it. There is some truth in the Unitarian contention that the Continental Reformers arbitrarily refused to carry out their principles to their logical conclusion, and stopped short from timidity or from inherited scrupulosity from entirely abandoning the ancient definitions of the faith. Little by little, as was natural, doc- trine, orthodox doctrine, which meant the accepted confessions of the two great schools, became the basis of whatever unity survived. Doctrine be- came the test of the Church's continuity. The historic Church was no longer a succession of liu-

1 6 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

man beings in an organized society persisting from age to age, but it was a succession often interrupted by breaks of many years — a succes- sion of beliefs and opinions; and the people who at any period in the past were thought to have held views similar to those of the Reformers were regarded as members of the true Church, and all others were excluded. In other words, Chris- tianity became a system of doctrines instead of an institution. This led to the theory of an in- visible Church. When Cyprian spoke of the Church he meant the outward, visible, organized Church, consisting of all the baptized, the net that held fish both good and bad. When the later Reformers spoke of the Church they meant the invisible and unknown number of the elect who are saved and known only to God, or, as the Scotch Confession puts it, " the one company and multitude of men chosen of God, who rightly worship and embrace Him by true faith in JESUS Christ . . . the communion not of profane per- sons, but of saints . . . invisible, known only to God." In their view all visible Christian socie- ties are only imperfect associations for the spread of the true faith, and are not churches, except in a secondary sense.

All these features, though in a different form, appear in the system of John Calvin at Geneva, which was destined to become the dominant influ-

WORD AND THE CHURCH'S ACT. ij

ence in the Protestant world. Calvin, a layman himself, broke consciously and utterly with the Mediaeval and ancient Church, and the external form and visible continuity of the Church were nothing to him as principles. When we read of the enthusiastic and intolerant devotion of his followers to the Genevan discipline this seems to be a contradiction. But really it was not. The root-principle of Calvin's position was that the existing Church was thoroughly corrupt and that he himself was directly and immediately called of God. And this conviction in his own mind and in the minds of his disciples was reinforced by his truly remarkable and scholastic system of doc- trines, which was given to the world in his *' In- stitutes " when he was only twenty-seven years of age, and which never underwent any serious change. Thus, in his Reply to Sadolet (p. 39), he admitted without hesitation that he did not have the ancient discipline of the Church, but maintained that as Jeremiah and Ezekiel and other prophets were raised up by God without the customary regular appointment, so was he called to preach the truth to an abandoned age. The doc- trine was everything ; the form of government was an accident. This accounts for the fact that he was quite willing to recognize, and indeed en- dorsed, the Episcopal government in England, and in his commentary on Titus {Ar^.) declared

1 8 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

that the Apostles had delegated their Apostolic authority to other men. It was not a question with him of order, but of doctrine. He made up bis own mind that the original scriptural organi- zation of the congregation was Presbyterian, and this system, he established at Geneva — not be- cause he wished to impose it upon all people and all churches, but because his own clear intelli- gence made him avoid the uncertainty of Luther- anism by providing for the permanence and au- thority of definite organization. It was Calvin's successors who claimed for the system an exclu- sive divine right, and they did so because, first of all, Calvin, who was an inspired man, had de- signed it, and secondly, because it was found in practice to be the only system in which the doc- trine could be maintained. It should never be forgotten that the all-important question was a question of doctrine, and not of organization. As Prof. Fisher says, " Against the theory of the min- istry, which separates the clergy as a distinct self- perpetuating body in the Church — as a close cor- poration— from the laity, the Reformers in all Protestant lands uttered an emphatic protest." "The purpose of the ministry was to perform acts which the flock was empowered to perform, but which from the nature of the case it must per- form through agents and instruments." Had this principle been conceded by the leading Reform-

WORD AND THE CHURCW S ACT, 19

ers in England, there never would have been any history of Puritanism. It took men many years to realize that the true question was deeper and more radical than any discussion on Church gov- ernment. It was a difference of conviction as to what Christianity was. And while they were seemingly fighting about prelacy and vestments, they were really opposed to each other on the fundamental conception of religion.

A glance at the English Reformation will show what I mean. Making every allowance for the arbitrary power of masterful sovereigns and sub- servient parliaments and over-loyal subjects, it must be admitted that there was something be- sides— some spirit, some tendency, in the English Reformation that differentiated it from the move- ment in any Continental country. As Beard says, '* The English Reformation, both in its method and result, is a thing by itself." " There was a native clement stronger than any Lutheran, Calvinistic or Zwinglian influence." *'It followed no prece- dents and was obedient only to its own law of de- velopment." And again, " One fact more than any other differentiates the English Reformation — I mean the continuity of the Anglican Church. There is no point at which it can be said, here the old Church ends, here the new begins."

That is the gist of the whole matter. The preservation of the personal, tactual connection

20 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

with the Mediaeval Church, and through that with the ancient Church, distinguishes the English movement. There was no popular upheaval. There was no widespread, deep disgust with the past to hurl the nation into revolution. There was no desire or attempt to substitute a doc- trinal system for the ancient Constitution. On the contrary, throughout the earlier stages of the movement, doctrine was left alone and every care taken to preserve the continuity of the institution as of more importance than the doctrine. From first to last the external, visible organization of the Church Avas tenaciously maintained. Without any sort of hesitation, provision was made for a common prayer and ritual worship. Without the least discussion the Episcopal government was continued. There was no thought of breaking utterly with the past, and there was no man in England so forceful and dominant as either Luther in Germany or Calvin in Geneva. Instead of cut- ting loose from the old Church, the historical character of the Christian religion, as built up on and handed on by human lives, i.e., the Catholicity of the Church in time as well as in place, was un- falteringly recognized. When the doctrinal re- vision came to be made, the principle of appeal to the ancient Church was unhesitatingly adopted. As Prof. Rawson Gardiner says ( His to ?y, ii., 516), "The teaching of Laud was the teaching of

WORD AND THE CHURCH'S ACT. 21

Cranmer and Hooker, viz.: that the basis of belief was the Bible, but that the Bible was to be in- terpreted by the tradition of the early Church." The invisible Church is not so much as mentioned in the XXXIX. Articles, and all baptized persons are declared to be members of Christ's Church. The statement in Article XX., that " the Church hath authority in matters of faith," refers undoubt- edly to the whole Church and not to any portion of it, and is after all only a corollary of the funda- mental principle. Beyond the historic creeds and the definitions of the four General Councils there was no disposition to define doctrine. The Arti- cles of Religion on controverted questions are only negatively definitive. The continuity of the Church and the life of the Church were deemed of far greater importance than the elaboration of any system of theology.

Now, whether this were a right principle or not, it was the direct contradiction of the Calvinistic or Puritan theory. It was a counsel to modera- tion at a time when men wanted extremes, and both Puritans and Roman Catholics regarded it as treason.

English Puritanism dates from Feb. 10, 1556 {Nta/e,i., 68), with a letter written by the exiles at Geneva, in which they say, in speaking of the English Prayer Book and its provisions for wor- ship, " We have thought fit to lay aside these

2 2 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER S

human inventions and have contented ourselves with that wisdom which is found in God's Book." "We have set up such an order as in the judg- ment of Mr. Calvin and others is most agreeable to Scripture."

The Westminster Confession indeed uses strong language about the value and importance of the visible Church, language which Dr. Briggs has quoted with force and sympathy. But the West- minster Confession represents that later stage of Puritan conviction to which I have already re- ferred, and cannot be taken as the expression of the original views of the Swiss Reformers. As it stands, it is careful to insist upon the true Church as being invisible, and limits the Catholicity of the visible Church as being a Catholicity of race (" not to the Jews only") and not a Catholicity in time, or historical succession. The American edition of this Confession consistently modifies the phraseology of the seventeentli century and thus more nearly approximates the Scotch platform.

The Puritans simply could not get themselves to admit that the continuation of anything in the way of discipline and worship that had obtained in the old Church would be consistent with their new-found freedom. It required great resolution and faith, no doubt, but with determined earnest- ness they took their stand on the text of the Bible and their own conscientious interpretation

WORD AND THE CHURCWS ACT. 23

of it. And this radical difference of view crops out in every conference that was ever held in England for the sake of unity. The most super- ficial examination of the records of the Savoy Con- ference will show that compromise was simply im- possible. There was no concession as to ritual or government — no concession that meant less than complete revolution of their conception of Chris- tianity— that the Churchmen could have made, that would have been satisfactory. Baxter de- clared (Cardwell Conf., 383) afterwards that if every concession asked for had been made, and yet if the single rubric remained asserting the sal- vation of infants who died immediately after Bap- tism, they could not conform.

I have dwelt at length upon these old disputes, because the denial of the necessity of the organic continuity of the Church — the avowed principle of Puritanism — has been the support and justifica- tion of every new Christian organization ; and because I believe that if ever our unhappy divisions are to be healed we must find out the root and origin of them, and frankly and honestly express our views. For, as Carlyle says, " Only in a world of sincere men is unity possible. And there, in the long run, it is as good as certain."

I have not denounced nor condemned the Puri- tan position, nor have I used harsh language about the Roman position. We are all Christian men,

24 CHRIS TIA N UNITY— THE MA S TER' S

and working for the spread of the Gospel of Christ. I have said that the Mediaeval Church after Greg- ory VII. was a system of absolute government that emphasized the objective and external side of religion at the expense of that which was sub- jective and internal, encouraging the elaborate and minute definition of dogma without regard to the thought or traditions of other historical branches of the Christian Church. I have said that the principle of Continental Protestantism was, on the other hand, extremely subjective — practically a denial of the necessity of the exter- nal, organic continuity of the Christian Church, and a substitution for it of a system of doctrine based on an independent interpretation of the Bible without any necessary reference to an- tiquity.

I claim that neither one of these extreme positions is a complete or adequate or neces- sary interpretation of the spirit and purpose of the Christian Church ; that each in its turn has been the occasion of lamentable divisions ; and as long as they are uncompromisingly maintained there is no reasonable hope of visible unity among Christian people.

Great ideas germinate slowly at first and take root in the minds of individuals before they are accepted by the masses; and it may be so with the idea of Christian unity. It is not to be ex-

WORD AND THE CHURCH'S ACT. 25

pected that religious bodies will take action until their members desire it. And again, while no scheme of unity should be considered for a moment that does not include the great historic Churches of Christendom, yet unquestionably our affinities of race and language and religion com- pel us to make our first appeal, not to the Greek or Roman Churches, but to that English-speak- ing Protestant world made up of many men of many creeds, whose forefathers were our fore- fathers in the English Church. And, as a mat- ter of fact, there is an increasing number of able and earnest Christians who, though loyal Protestants, are not wedded for weal or woe to that extreme Puritan principle — nay, who are willing to modify and restate it for the sake of unity; men who believe that the conditions that evoked the heated partisanship and inordinate sus- picion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries do not exist to-day; and who feel that in the pres- ence of the accumulated evils of the time, no prejudice, no bitter memory of their forefathers* quarrels should stand in the way of mutual con- cession and fraternal sympathy. There are indeed few thoughtful men who do not regard that extreme subjective theory of religion as delusive; and no orthodox Protestant can fail to deplore the application of it which has led Dr. Martineau {Seat uf Author. y etc., p.650) and others to the con-

2 6 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

elusion that, as the private interpretation of the Bible is the principle of Protestantism, so the au- thority of the Bible itself is inferior to the inter- nal illumination, and only those Scriptures are to be retained which come up to the spiritual stand- ard of the individual mind. As Hegel says {Philos, of Hist. y p. 344), "Whether a Christian doctrine stands thus and thus in the Bible is not the only question. The profoundest thought is connected with the Personality of Christ — with the historical and external." And Dr. Philip Schaff, after con- trasting the outward legalism of the Mediaeval Roman system with the evangelical freedom of Protestantism, says {Apost. Ch , p. 678):

** Who that considers the Holy Scriptures and the idea of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church will further venture to justify the extreme individualism, the numberless divisions and con- flicting party interests into which the best posi- tively Christian powers of Protestantism seem to be almost hopelessly rent } Who will deny that the Protestantism of this day is as much in. need of reformation as was the Catholicism of the six- teenth century? This reformation we look for in the final reconciliation of Catholicism and Prot- estantism— in the ideal Church of the future — not a new Church, but the final, perfect product of that of the present and the past."

Thus in one form or another the old question

WORD A ND THE CFIUR CH' S ACT. 27

as to the relation between reason and authority continually recurs : whether we owe anything- to the past; whether our judgments should be in- fluenced and restrained by the definitive action of the Universal Church, or whether the interior illumination of the individual should supersede all other criteria of revealed truth. In times of revo- lution men may be induced in passion to denounce the imposition of any restriction upon private rights, but the permanent stability of religion, of government and of society demands the recogni- tion of another principle. To quote Mr. Balfour: " It is true, no doubt, that we can, without any great expenditure of research, accumulate in- stances in which Authority has perpetuated error and retarded progress, for, unluckily, none of the i nfluences, Reason least of all, by which the history of the race has been moulded have been produc- tive of unmixed good. . . . Yet . . . we must not forget that it is Authority rather than Reason to which, in the main, we owe not religion only, but ethics and politics; that it is Authority which supplies us with essential elements in the premises of science; that it is Authority rather than Reason which lays deep the foundations of social life ; that it is Authority rather than Reason which cements its superstructure. And though it may seem to savor of paradox, it is yet no exaggeration to say, that if we would find the quality in which we most

28 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

notably excel the brute creation, we should look for it, not so much in our faculty of convincing and being convinced by the exercise of reasoning, as in our capacity for influencing and being influenced through the action of Authority " {Foundations of Belief ^^. 237,238).

When, in this free Republic, the dangers that threaten our social and political fabric are felt to be the outcome in large measure of widespread irrever- ence for historical institutions, impatience of intel- lectual or moral restraint, disregard or contempt for the hopes and ideals of our forefathers, denial of the Nation as an organism with Divine sanctions, and self-assertive exploitations of visionary the- ories of government; surely the fashionable dec- lamation against creeds on the part of some Christian ministers, i.e.y against the idea of the fix- edness of any revealed truth from God, and the indiscriminate appeals to popular prejudice against reverence for the thought and practice of the Universal Church, are not calculated to restore confidence or to educate the popular mind to more sober judgment, either in politics or morals.

Dr. Schaff's candid words above quoted are a fair challenge to earnest men. Is there any ad- justment possible } Is there any rational syn- thesis possible of private judgment and traditional authority ^ Are there any lines upon which we can go to work to bring about that "final, perfect

WORD AND THE CHURCirs ACT. 29

product," of which he speaks, *' of the Church of the present and the past " ? — any middle way be- tween tyranny and license ; any fixed historic principles of the ancient Church to be maintained which shall restrain while they protect and defend the true liberty of Christian men ?

This was the problem presented to the minds of the Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church, which they answered in the following- declara- tion, set forth by authority of the Upper House, in the General Convention of 1886 :

Whereas, In the year 1853, in response to a Memorial signed by many Presbyters of this Church, praying that steps might be taken to heal the unhappy divisions of Christen- dom, and more fully to develop the Catholic idea of the Church of Christ, the Bishops of this Church in Council assembled did appoint a Commission of Bishops empowered to confer with the several Christian Bodies in our land who were desirous of promoting godly union and concord among all who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth;

And Whereas, This Commission, in conformity with the terms of its appointment, did formally set forth and advocate sundry suggestions and recommendations intended to accom- plish the great end in view;

And Whereas, In the year 18S0, the Bishops of the Ameri- can Church, assembled in Council, moved by the appeals from Christians in foreign countries who were struggling to free themselves from the usurpations of the Bishop of Rome, set forth a declaration to the effect that, in virtue of the solidarity of the Catholic Episcopate, in which we have part, it was the right and duty of the Episcopates of all National Churches holding the primitive Faith and Order, and of the several Bishops of the same, to protect in the holding of that

30 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

Faith, and the recovering of that Order, those who have been wrongfully deprived of both ; and this without demanding a rigid uniformity, or the sacrifice of tl.e national traditions of worship and discipline, or of their rightful autonomy;

And Whereas, Many of the faithful in Christ Jesus among us are praying with renewed and increasing earnestness that some measures may be adopted at this time for the reunion of the sundered parts of Christendom :

Now, Therefore, In pursuance of the action taken in 1853 for the healing of the divisions among Christians in our own land ; and in 18S0 for the protection and encouragement of those who had withdrawn from the Roman Obedience, we. Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in Council assembled as Bishops in the Church of God, do hereby solemnly declare to all whom it may concern, and especially to our fellow-Christians of the different Communions in this land, who, in their several spheres, have contended for the religion of Christ :

1. Our earnest desire that the Saviour's prayer, " That we all may be one," may, in its deepest and truest sense, be speedily fulfilled ;

2. That we believe that all who have been duly baptized with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, are members of the Holy Catholic Church;

3. That in all things of human ordering or human choice, relating to modes of worship and discipline, or to traditional customs, this Church is ready in the spirit of love and humility to forego all preferences of her own ;

4. That this Church does not seek to absorb other Com- munions, but rather, cooperating with them on the basis of a common Faith and Order, to discountenance schism, to heal the wounds of the Body of Christ, and to promote the charity which is the chief of Christian graces and the visible manifestation of Christ to the world ;

But, furthermore, we do hereby affirm that the Christian unity now so earnestly desired by the memorialists can be

WORD AND THE CHURCH'S ACT. 31

restored only by the return of all Christian communions to the principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence ; which princi- ples we believe to be the substantial deposit of Christian Faith and Order committed by Christ and His Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world, and therefore incapable of compromise or surrender by those who have been ordained to be its stewards and trustees for the common and equal benefit of all men.

As inherent parts of this sacred deposit, and therefore as essential to the restoration of unity among the divided branches of Christendom, we account the following, to wit:

1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as the revealed word of God.

2. The Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith.

3. The two Sacraments, — Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, — ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him.

4. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church.

Furthermore, Deeply grieved by the sad divisions which affect the Christian Church in our own land, we hereby de- clare our desire and readiness, so soon as there shall be any authorized response to this Declaration, to enter into brotherly conference with all or any Christian Bodies seeking the res- toration of the organic unity of the Church, with a view to the earnest study of the conditions under which so priceless a blessing might happily be brought to pass.

I. This means, first of all, that the restored unity- must rest upon an institution, as Prof. Shields says, and not upon a doctrine. There must be an honest regard for the past of the Church and an

32 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

historical connection with that past Unless we are ready to assert that the Roman and Eastern Churches are entirely outside the pale of Christen- dom and not included in any dream or hope of Christian unity, we are compelled to hold to this historical and objective continuity. In fact the extreme subjective view of Christianity is a denial of the idea of visible unity.

II. The Declaration means secondly that if Protestant Christians are willing to modify the extreme view of the Continental Reformers and agree to a reasonable recognition of the desira- bility of some organic connection with the ancient and the Mediaeval Church, then the adoption of the Episcopate, in some form or another, is both the simplest and most defensible method of doing it. Without questioning the authority, or valid- ity, or fitness of otherforms of Church government, it will at least be admitted that that institution bears a different relation to the present and past of the whole of Christendom from any other eccle- siastical polity. It is simply incredible that where there is any genuine enthusiasm for Christian unity, there could be any proposition seriously entertained looking to the abandonment of the only form of organization now almost universally agreed upon in the Christian world. As there were many features in the Episcopal government of the Middle A^res that seemed to the Reformers

WORD AND THE CHURCH S ACT. 33

to be incompatible with its true spiritual charac- ter; so, doubtless, to-day there are customs and precedents in the administration of the Episcopal office that we inherited from England and that are not essential to it. And so the Bishops speak of ''the Episcopate locally adapted in the meth- ods of its administration to the varying needs of nations and peoples." Doubtless, the Episcopate, in the days of Cyprian, when the average jurisdic- tion of a Bishop was smaller than one of our coun- ties, was a different office in some of its external aspects from what it is to-day.

III. The regulation of the manner and matter of Pubhc Worship is not mentioned, and no doc- trinal definition of the meaning and value of the Sacraments is given, or any form, beyond the words of institution prescribed for their adminis- tration. Of course this means absolutely noth- ing except as an hypothesis for the sake of unity. It justifies no private experiments on the part of individual Bishops or clergy, and it involves no diminution of reverence for the teaching and Offices of the Book of Common Prayer. But even as a tentative proposition it exacts of Churchmen more of generous sacrifice both of preference and conviction than the agreement to the whole Declaration would require from any other body of Christian people.

To denounce this Declaration of the Bishops

34 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

as a sectarian effort of the Protestant Episcopal Church to absorb other Christian denominations, or to look upon the movement as anything else than unselfish, generous, and full of the spirit of Christ, is to confess to blind prejudice and real indifference to the reunion of the Christian world.

Speaking for myself, I do not look for any great and immediate results from the movement. The official responses that have been made to the Declaration so far are not specially encouraging. The largest Protestant body, numerically, in the United States, has declared that the movement for unity is both impossible and undesirable — un- desirable because a variety of sects will best en- courage that spirit of competition which will lead to the development of the best ideal of a Chris- tian Church. Some of the most prominent min- isters {Question, of Unity, Bradford) in various denominations have published statements declar- ing that the adoption of the episcopate in any form means simply popery. One eminent divine maintains that there are no existing creeds or dogmas upon which Christians can unite, because they do not even agree in their ideas of God, and that our only hope is a communion of spiritual experience. This would satisfy Dr. Martineau.

One very able Protestant writer, while boldly contending for the recognition of the authority and the historical continuity of the visible Catho-

WORD AND THE CHURCIVS ACT. 35

lie Church, and striving' vainly to reconcile it with the principles of Puritanism, dismisses Gore's statement of the Anglican position as little better than Romanism and as leaving no room for the development of the apprehension of revealed truth. It would have been fairer to take no sin- gle theologian, however high his reputation, and to judge the Anglican Church by her official ut- terances, which make the Catholic Creeds, the acts of the four Councils and the Book of Com- mon Prayer her only tests of orthodoxy.

And, finally, the Declaration has been before the world for nine years and no Christian denom- ination has yet signified its willingness to make any concession whatever to meet the overtures of the Episcopal Church.

Is then the hope of the reunion of Christendom a mere "iridescent" or "spangled" dream? I cannot believe that. The words of our Lord and the faith of the Apostles are a standing rebuke to such scepticism. The triumphs of the early Church are a warning- and a prophecy. And He who taught us to pray " Thy kingdom come " will fulfil Himself, though men doubt and fail.

It's wiser being good than bad;

It's safer being meek than fierc ; ; It's fitter being sane than mad;

My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;

S6 CHRISTIAN UNITY— THE MASTER'S

That after last returns the first, Though a wide compass round be fetched; That what began best can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.

Already good has been accomplished by the action of this Church. The attention of many men has been drawn to the evil of our divisions, and Christians have been forced to declare them- selves on those points which they regard as of sufficient importance to be made a bar to unity. We cannot but believe that the fair and candid examination of such grounds of difference will lead at least to an increase of brotherly charity and intelligent appreciation of one another's motives and convictions.

For us Churchmen there is every reason to thank God that one more manifest token has been given of the unique and significant place that our own Church occupies in the Christian world ; and that the best spirit of the past still survives among us. Of that past we need not be ashamed. It is a story of struggle from the first for that which is wise and moderate and Catholic ; for authority without tyranny ; for lib- erty without license. Misconception and dis- trust have ever been the penalty that moderation pays in ages of fanaticism, and yet in the long run it is the best spirit with which to influence the world.

WORD AND THE CHURCH'S ACT. 37

When the East was Arian, and when the Bishop of Rome had compromised the Faith, it was the Church in Britain to which Athanasius gave his public eulogium for its constancy to the Catholic creed. When the Roman Church was swamped with barbarian invasion and enfeebled by hope- lessness and internal strife, it was Britain that fur- nished men — men of brain, and men of faith — to convert the Northern nations and to endure mar- tyrdom for the cause of Christ. When Karl Mag- nus would found his schools and lay the basis of the University system of Europe, it was the Saxon Church of England that gave him the men of character and learning fitted for so great an en- terprise. When the ancient constitutional system of tlie Church had been absorbed into the Eccle- siastical Monocracy of Hildebrand and Innocent, it was the English Church that fought for and won the recognition of civil and religious liberty in Magna Charta. It was an English Churchman, William of Occam, the Master of Wiclif, who taught Luther to question the validity of the Papal claims, and it was not strange that that Church which had done so much and suffered so much for the cause of constitutional free- dom should become the bulwark of the Reformation. As Stubbs says {Constitut. Hist.y i. 267), ''The English clergy in the early Norman days trained the English people for the

3 8 CHRIS TIA N UNI T 7— THE MA S TER' S

time when the kings should court their support, and purchase their adherence by the restoration of Hbertiesthat would otherwise have been forgot- ten. The unity of the Church was, in the early period, the only working unity, and its liberty in the evil days that followed, the only form in which the traditions of the ancient freedom lingered. It was again to be the tie between the conquered and the conquerors, to give to the oppressed a hold on the conscience of the despot, to win new liberties and revive the old ; to unite Norman and Englishman in the resistance to tyrants, and edu- cate the growing nation for its distant destiny as the teacher and herald of freedom to all the world."

The Puritans owed to their forefathers in the Church of England whatever was right and true in their movement as an effort for freedom, just as really as did Bancroft and Laud inherit from the same mother their regard for authority and law. Whether the two theories of religion, nursed by the prejudices of ten generations, shall ever be reconciled by any corporate concession it is impossible to say. To some, perhaps to many, the unrestricted right of private judgment and in- dividual illumination, as irreconcilable with any organic, historical continuity, or deference to the decisions and traditions of the past, will outweigh any considerations of increased power and effi-

WORD AND THE CHURCH'S ACT. 39

ciency in the work of converting the world to Christ. Yet it is an honorable distinction to this old Church of the English-speaking people ; an event worthy to be reckoned with the noblest in her history^ — and one that her children will rejoice to remember — that, in an age of many-sided unbelief and scepticism, she was brave to forget the gloomy controversies and the bitter detrac- tions of the past three hundred years and to send forth a message of peace and good-will to all men and women in all the world who love the Lord JESUS Christ in sincerity and keep His word.

^be Ibol? Scriptures as tbe IRuIe anJ> "aitimate StanbarJt of f aitb.

LECTURE II.

THE REV. CHARLES W. E. BODY, D D., D.C.L.,

Professor of Old Testament Literature and Interpretation in the General Theological Seminary.

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES AS THE RULE AND ULTIMA TE STANDARD OF FAITH.

Sanctify {or consecrate) them in the truth; thy word is truth. — St. John xvii. 7.

First amongst the articles put forth on the sub- ject of corporate unity by the American House of Bishops at Chicago in 1886, as revised and adopted by the whole Anglo-Catholic Episcopate at Lam- beth ini 888, stands the following on the Holy Scrip- tures: '* The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as containing all things necessary to salvation, and as being the rule and ultimate stand- ard of faith."

This article, with the three others which fol- low, according to the careful language of the collective Episcopate, '' supply a basis on which approach may be by God's blessing made towards Home Reunion." A basis upon which approach to

44 THE 110 L^ SCRIPTURES AS THt. RULE

reunion may be made ; that is to say, these articles represent the fundamental elements of the Church's organic life. They contain the Catholic minima, without any one of which the full conception of the organic life of the Catholic Church can, under no circumstances, be adequately realized. They embody the germinal positions from which the other parts of Catholic faith, discipline, and prac- tice have in all ages been nurtured and developed ; and from which, therefore, when loyally and intel- ligently apprehended in this fundamental relation- ship, the numerous other important matters which corporate reunion would necessarily involve may, by God's blessing, be hopefully approached and considered. If, in the case of any religious body, the full, intelligent acceptance of any one of these positions be lacking, that religious body is not yet, in our judgment, prepared hopefully to " ap- proach the subject of Corporate Unity" from the standpoint of historic Christianity. Hence such a body necessarily lacks the intellectual and spir- itual environment required for the consideration of the further questions involved, with any hope of a successful result. In other words, the Angli- can Bishops have striven to act as skilful physic cians of souls in this matter. In all loving and single-hearted directness they have endeavored to concentrate the devout consideration of Chris- tians of every name upon those fundamental posi-

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 45

tions in a defective apprehension of which the root and source of our present evils is ultimately to be found. Passing- by for the time the multi- form symptoms of the disease which in their ex- ternal and shifting characteristics are obvious to every careful observer, they have concentrated at- tention upon the vital organs of the organic body of the Church's lif j, hidden in some one or more of which the central seat of so grave a disease must necessarily be sought. We shall do well, therefore, beloved, in this course of Lectures, to consider attentively these several fundamental articles, and, so far as we may, lovingly to in- vite all other Christian people to do the same, in the devout and reasonable expectation that we may all thus obtain a fuller and more living- con- ception of the fundamental position of each in the development of the Church's corporate life; and so may, by God's blessing, perceive and correct the diseased conditions which our partial and misdi- rected apprehension of such fundamental matters must inevitably cause. For beyond all doubt the present divided state of our English-speaking Christianity (to go no further afield in our enquiry) does represent a diseased condition of things, and one entirely inconsistent with the ideally healthy life of the Christian Church. It is therefore the plain duty of all to track up and investigate the cause of such an unhealthy condition, so far as it

46 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES AS THE RULE

exists within their own bounds. Thus used, the Chicago-Lambeth Articles may indeed prepare the way for the great blessing of visible unity which we are seeking from the hand of the Lord, from Whose hand alone it can finally come. Viewed in any other light ; not as initially fruitful and fun- damental positions, from which when attained we and our brethren may together seek the guid- ance of the Blessed Spirit in the further considera- tion of whatever matters may yet remain, but as hard, mechanical conditions of reunion, which when once accepted would leave nothing further to be considered; these Articles, so far from help- ing on unity, may indeed be turned into a fresh barrier in the way of its speedy accomplishment.

Again and again, in conferences which have been held on this matter, it has been quite rightly urged, and that not chiefly by representatives of our own Communion, that the Church can never afford to overlook the teachings of the past Chris- tian centuries. Certainly, no large body of Catho- lic Bishops, hke that assembled at Lambeth in 1888, could for one moment have entertained the idea of neglecting the lessons of the well-nigh sixteen Christian centuries which intervene be- tween us and the first promulgation of the Nicene Creed. The Chicago-Lambeth Declaration cer- tainly means nothing of the kind. Not even from the Nicene standpoint could the Declaration be

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 47

considered approximately complete, nor was it in- tended so to be. To say nothing of the other Sacramental Rites of the Church, which are com- plementary to and issue from the two great central Sacraments of the Gospel, we need recall only the great outlines which underlie all Eucharistic Of- fices wheresoever found — East and West and North and South — under every possible outward diver- gency of form and ritual, to see how momentous are the matters which lie outside the terms of the Bish- ops' Declaration. Looked at from the position which they theniselves avow, that they are now put- ting forth only such matters as ''supply a basis upon which approach may be, by God's blessing, hope- fully made " towards full corporate unity, all is clear and plain. Complete unification presupposes a process of organic growth like that which Dr. Shields has so well portrayed in his recent most timely and valuable contribution to the subject, entitled 7he United Church of the United States. Viewed from any other standpoint than that which the Bishops themselves avow, it is hard to conceive how such a declaration could have been issued by any body of Catholic Bishops. To sum up then concisely the position for which I am contending. The loving counsel of the Bishops to all who seek for the full accomplishment of our dear Lord's purpose in the visible reunion of Chris- tians (whether belonging to their own Commun-

48 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES AS THE RULE

ion or not) is this : In order hopefully to approach the subject, we must each and all be content to let our present positions pass, for the time being, out of sight. We must look back down the stream of Christian history till at last we find ourselves in the actual presence of the Church's still undi- vided organic life. Thus only can we impartially learn and consider the Divine provision by which in a sinful separatist world that unity was so long conserved and protected. This Divine provision will be found to centre in four fundamental and germinal factors. To these factors, we should give, in the first place, our fullest and un- divided attention. As soon as by God's mercy we have reached a vital unity of apprehension in regard to these four fundamental factors, we may then each and all press forward with a good hope to examine from the position thus gained whatever matters may still remain — the further questions as to which there are difficulties to be solved, differences to be harmonized, de- ficiencies to be made good, or still richer spiritual possessions to be acquired for the doing of Christ's work in the world.

It is then from the position thus outlined that the lecturer invites your attention to-day to his allot- ted subject — the relation of the Holy Scriptures to the restoration of visible Church unity. We are to consider how we can best use the great fact that,

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 49

thank God, the voices of Prophets and Apostles and of the Lord Himself do still sound forth in every part of our divided Christendom to enable us most efficiently to combat the evils we still de- plore. Thus regarded, the subject will, I trust, approve itself as alike inviting and suggestive. A cursory examination of the literature which has from time to time appeared upon the subject of Reunion will reveal the fact that this Arti- cle of the Lambeth Declaration has, perhaps not unnaturally, at first been approached in a some- what limited and external way. We shall find in almost every case that it has received a very inadequate treatment. Evidently to the minds of many who have written and thought upon the sub- ject, as there was likely to be no great obstacle to the general acceptance of this Article, nothing more need be said on the matter. Clearly, how- ever, a truer position may be found. Starting to- gether from the momentous fact of the common general acceptance of the Holy Scriptures, how may we best use that great spiritual weapon for overthrowing the barriers which still remain in our path } Unquestionably the Divine Library of Holy Scripture was not entrusted to our care sim- ply to be labelled ''accepted" on the outside cover, but must be actively used for the healing of moral evils, whether in the individual sphere, or, as in the case before us, in the corporate life of

50 THE HOL V SCRIPTURES AS THE RULE

the Church. The inquiry which is thus opened before us is of great practical moment. It will reveal a sphere for immediate and fruitful effort. It may disclose new possibilities of hope for even the smallest and most insignificant fragment of the wounded body of Christ.

A glance at the text, a id at the High-Priestly prayer of our Lord for the Church from which it is taken, will sufficiently show that the view of the relation of the Holy Scriptures to organic unity above enunciated lies firmly imbedded in the fundamental teachings of Holy Writ itself. We notice that our Lord here prays, first, for the Apostles and original disciples who were the fruit of His own earthly ministry, and secondly (the transition being clearly marked at v. 20), for all the subsequent generations of Christians who shall believe on Him through the Apostolic message handed down in the Church. We note also that in each case we have a two-fold petition. Primarily, that within the sphere of the Revela- tion which the Lord has made, the disciples may be kept by the Father in an evil world true and faithful to their high mission, even as the Lord Himself had kept them in the days of His flesh — and then, flowing out of this primary petition, we have the prayer that, so kept, they may exhibit in the world a supernatural unity like unto the unity of the Blessed Trinity itself, to be

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 5 1

an abiding and convincing proof of the reality of our Lord's Divine mission. Men, as they be- hold that unity, will instinctively recognize that a phenomenon so marvellous, a victory over the separating tendencies of the world so lasting and complete, can have its source in no mere effort of our poor sinful humanity, but is conclusive evi- dence of the presence in the life of regenerate men of a new and potent Divine factor, the abiding re- sult of our Lord's mission to the world. We no- tice also that the connection between the primary and the resultant petition is strongly emphasized. The first is stated as the necessary foundation for the second. Only by a Divine protection, by keeping men within the fertilizing power cf the Revelation already fully made, can believers go on to reahze in the world the unity for which our Lord thus prays. «

Hence we understand the emphatic insistence with which our Lord affirms the absolute finality of the Revelation of the Divine Nature and char- acter which He had now, In His own Person, fully made. '' 1 glorified thee on the earth, having ac- complished the work which thou hast given me to do. . . . Thisislifeeternal,that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." Proceeding yet one step further in our Lord's thought, we see how this Revelation made in human flesh by the Eternal

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Son, adequate as it is for the spiritual needs of all peoples for all time, yet becomes the actual possession of the race only through the ministry of the Apostles themselves, who are the subject of an eternal Divine election and choice. '' I mani- fested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me. ... I have given them thy word." Further, this Divine selection of the Apostolate has already begun to fulfil its destined end. " They have kept thy word." Hence for these elect ones, the chosen repositories of this selfsame message of the Father, the Lord prays that in nothing the Revelation entrusted to their care may sustain harm or hindrance. " I pray for them, ... for those whom thou gavest me. . . . Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me. . . . While I was with them, I kept them in thy name which thou hast given me. . . . But now I come to thee. ... I pray not that thou shouldest take them from the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil one." Thus divinely guarded from hurtful and an- tagonistic influences, the Divine message which the Apostles have themselves received in all its un- dimmed purity directly from the Son of God will enable them for their world-wide mission. In its power they will advance to an adequate sense and apprehension of the full meaning of their Di-

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 53

vine vocation for the uplifting- of the race. Nay, they will become partakers of the eternal mission of the Son of God Himself. Their work, like His, will be lifted far above the mere temporal circum- stances of the age and environments in which it was in time accomplished. Like the great acts of the Son Himself, the Apostolic embodiment of the Divine Portraiture in the actual tongues of men becomes an eternal and undying power; a thing- done in time, yet abiding unchanged for all time; a message in its essence supramundane, the true and faithful portraiture of the living message of the Father, the very Word of God, who hath Him- self tabernacled amongst men. Hence we hear those wondrous words fall from the sacred lips : " They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Consecrate them in the truth : thy word is truth. As thou didst send me into the world, even so sent I them Into the world. . . . For their sakes I consecrate myself, that they themselves also may be consecrated in truth." Further, the Di- vine message thus embodied in the Apostolic teach- ing is itself the truth — a revelation of the reality which underlies all being and all life — something entirely independent of the knowledge that man may painfully acquire for himself, either by the ob- servance of physical sequence, or of the little world of human nature, or of the laws of human society as seen in the gradual evolution of the race. All

54 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES AS THE RULE

these things may and do lead men towards the truth ; they may and do illustrate it, when it has been first received by them; they may and do modify the method of its application to their various and changing needs; but in its essence the Divine message remains always and unchangeably the same, having its foundations forever laid not in the shifting and changeful vortex ofhuman thought and speculation, but in the eternal and changeless realities of the unveiled world of God.

Thus we come to see the full intention and pur- pose of this Divine treasure in the ultimate prayer which our Lord offers for its Apostolic reposi- tories. It was to become in the Apostles them- selves an effectual centre of unity, subjecting and making subservient to its fuller manifestation whatever differing types of moral character, of intellectual development, of hereditary bent or re- sulting environment were to be found amongst the members of the Apostolic band; uniting into one free Divine harmony the various key-notes in which were pitched the utterances of a St. Peter or a St. John, of a St. Paul or a St. James. Thus in the vital unbroken unity of the Apostolic band was laid a firm foundation for the subsequent corpor- ate unity of the Church of all time. " Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are." No words could more emphatically reveal the heaven-

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH, 55

ly, supramundane source of the unity of the origin- al Apostolate. It was the reflection of a heavenly pattern eternally existing in the Being of God — ** one as we are." It was the result of a Divine protection, in the sphere of the Revelation which the Lord had Himself brought from heaven to earth. The unity of the Church is thus a Divine and heavenly thing — a result of the ultimate mani- festation of God in human flesh — " something let down into this lesser world from a higher plane of existence. Up above in the upper air is its spring and its source." The mysteries of God had been actually manifested in the facts of hu- man life; and the result of this manifestation, as apprehended under the illumination of the Eternal Spirit, was to lift above the selfishness, mists and limitations of earth into the realization of asupreme and heavenly unity of Truth, a unity in which each several endowment and faculty of man would find at once its harmonious and its fruitful devel- opment. In the vital unity of the Apostolate, growing out of the uniqueness of the Revelation made in the Person of the Lord, built up under the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, the Eternal Vicar of Christ on earth, was given at onci the pledge and the foundation of the subsequent unity of the Catholic Church. No trace is to be found, in this fundamental teaching of our Lord Him- self upon the express subject of the Church's

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unity, of any exclusive function of St. Peter in the matter, or of the continuance of any such function in the succession of the Bishops of Rome as the necessary guardians of the Church's unity. Here, if anywhere, in this locus classicus of all Scripture on the subject of unity, we should expect some declaration from our Lord on a mat- ter so vitally momentous to all subsequent ages. Yet not only do we find no hint of such a dogma, but we have the express implication of the con- trary. The message which the Eternal Son had brought to earth had become for all subsequent time the message of the whole Apostolic band. All future believers must accept it as " their mes- sage," and for all such our Lord prays that, as the natural and normal result of this acceptance, they too may be one, after the same Divine and heav- enly pattern as was seen in the primal unity of the Apostles themselves. The Roman theory of mechanical unity, through tlie unquestioning ac- ceptance of the decrees of an infallible successor of St. Peter, rests upon conceptions absolutely for- eign to the mind of our Blessed Lord, as that mind is in this Gospel laid open before us. Of one thing we may be well assured. Whensoever in God's good time the wounds of His Church shall be healed and her corporate unity restored, thatgreat blessing will be vouchsafed to men upon the principles here enunciated by the Supreme Bishop and Pastor

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 57

of Souls. It will never be realized upon the basis of mechanical submission to a power which in its tyrannous and unlawful usurpation of functions entrusted by our Lord to the whole Apostolic college, and (so far as they could in the nature of the case be transmitted) to their successors in the collective Episcopate throughout the world, has ever been the fruitful source of discord and schisms. God hasten the day when the great Latin Patriarchate shall no longer cling to claims built up on unstable foundations of fraudulent history and wrested Scripture ; but, discarding these legacies of the past which hide from the world her true glory, may stand forth, as in ancient times, the most powerful upholder of the authority of the teaching of the collective Apostolate, the centre of world-wide Christian intercourse and fellowship, in which the Apostolic tradition is most surely and fully conserved. The Lord in His good time hasten that glorious day. The Lord bless abundantly all who in that great Communion are praying and working for that magnificent ideal. Meanwhile our own path of duty is plain and clear. In the midst of a divided Chris- tianity, confronted still by the same yoke of Papal absolutism against which our fathers strug-orled, but which, alas, in these latter days wears an ac- centuated and emphatic form unknown in their time, it is our high vocation and privilege to pro-

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claim as the true source of unity in the Church that message of the collective Apostolate to which our Lord here appeals. Those living- authori- tative voices sound forth unceasingly in the Cath- olic Church under the teaching of the ever- present Spirit, in the Apostolic writings of the New Testament. To the later Church, too, has been given the glory of a Divine indwelling to apply rightly the Divine fountain of Apostolic truth to the various needs of the Church's life. "The glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them " (the reference is to subsequent genera- tions of believers) to the end that " they may be one, even as we are one ; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one ; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me."

The conception that the corporate unity of the Church was thus really established in the days of the Apostles themselves, and that subsequent di- visions are consequently primarily due to the dis- regard of Apostolic authority and to declension from Apostolic teaching and example, derives much greater power and force from the results of recent historical investigation in regard to the actual character of the Apostolic age. We had been accustomed for the most part to apply to the whole period of Apostolic ministry the same picture of unbroken peace and unity which

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 59

is given in the book of the Acts, of the early days of the Church of Jerusalem, when the glory of the first manifestation of the Spirit tabernacling- in the Body of the Lord was yet undimmed. But the critical investigatioi of the last half-cen- tury (much of it at the time hostile, exaggerated, and distorted) has in its final outcome given us a vivid portraiture of the Apostolic founders of the Church far m.ore Scriptural, far more true to fact and to history, than this idyllic dream of our earlier fancy. To quote from one of the greatest living teachers of our Communion : "As we now study the Apostolic records afresh," he says, " we see those master-builders at their work. No easy, heaven-born task this of theirs. Things do not slide into their places, nor come together at a rapid word. No, we see these men toiling as we might toil, doubting as we doubt, jarring as we jar ; stumbling, hesitating, disheartened, distressed, beaten, baffled, yet still laboring, still carried through, still moving towards the goal. . . . The Church of Christ ... did not start up as in a night like some magical palace,without the sound of saw or axe or hammer. Nay, indeed, the noise of the stone-yard is busy about us as this temple of God is raised course by course. With effort, with struggle, under pressure, in hot argument, in anxious uncertainty, in dreary disappointment, in weary delays, in crucial agonies, stone is laid to

Co THE II OL V SCRIPTUI^ES A S THE RUIE

stone, and beam to beam. The victory of the Spirit proves its mastery, not by selecting its own conditions, but by achieving its aims through the conditions made for it in human history." Read your Acts and Epistles again in the light of such a book as Dr. Hort's Jiidaistic Christianity, the work of perhaps the greatest authority on this spe- cial subject in Christendom — one but the other day removed from us by death — and you will see that this picture is in no way overdrawn.

The history of the Apostolic age depicts the ac- complishment of the unification of the Church in spite of obstacles far greater than any which can ever again confront her, and in the face of barriers which stretched back into an immemorial past, and clah-ned with real though partial truth the sanc- tion of an actual Divine institution. The problem before the Apostolic age was not, as now, to re- Unite Christians severed by differences compara- tively recent and secondary in their nature, de- riving all their unhappy force from mere human insistence and the prescription of, at the most, a few centuries. The task before the Apostles was a far different one. Theirs it was to create a united Christendom out of elements the most discordant, severed by barriers and animosities of age-long duration. They struggled to unite in a vital har- mony of polity, thought, and action, the Jewish Christians who continued to enforce the painful

A ND UL TIM A TE STANDARD OF FA I TH. 6 1

physical rite of circumcision upon their own race (a large section of whom desired to make this compul- sory upon all Christians, whether of Jewish descent or not), and the converts from the heathen peoples with their various and differing racial characteris- tics, diversities of thoug-ht, language, and cus- toms, all alike fundamentally severed from the Jews by an age-long preparation for the Gos- pel peculiar to themselves, of a kind absolutely alien, foreign and incomprehensible to God's ancient people. The task, moreover, was almost indefinitely complicated by the existence of a world-wide Jewish dispersion, which brought the two conflicting elements into close juxtaposition in whatever place a church was founded, and gave scope for abundant dissension and misrepresenta- tion in every Christian centre. How great was the agony of the tension that St. Paul endured in his life-long conflict for the unity of the Church on the one side, and for the Catholicity which in- sured to the heathen Christians an equal posi- tion with the Jews in the Church of God on the other, we can read between the hnes of his Epistles. The point I wish now to emphasize is, that this creation of a united Catholic Church in spite of such stupendous obstacles was the common work of all the Apostles, energized by the power of a common faith, inspired by one and the same Eternal Spirit. It was not brought

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about by conciliar decrees merely, for nothing is more clear than that the Apostolic decision at Jerusalem wa's relative strictly to but one special crisis of the history, and, save in the spirit it ex- pressed, had but little directly to do with the subsequent course of events. The conciliatory spirit of a St. James; the spiritual discernment of a St. Teter, quickened as it had been at the out- set by special supernatural enlightenment in the matter of the Gentile Cornehus ; the deep grasp of the meaning of our Lord's Work and Person in its relation to this special matter possessed by St. Paul, coupled as it was in his case with an al- most boundless affection for his countrymen after the flesh ; these and such as these were the factors which preserved the vital unity of the Apostolate itself under the terrible strain to which that unity was then exposed, and so made this very unity efficacious throughout the length and breadth of the Roman world for building up a homogeneous and harmonious Christendom. In that first ^ unique period of little more than a quarter of a century which witnessed the crea- tion and consolidation of a Catholic Church, vic- torious over all barriers of privilege, race, heredity, wealth, power, custom, and environment, the great High-Priestly prayer of the Son of God received its unique fulfilment, a fulfilment the significance of which can never be exhausted.

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 6^

The vital unity of the Apostolate, which had its root in the power of the common faith, approved itself as superior to every opposing- influence which could be massed against it. The unity of the Apostolate became the source and the strength of the corresponding supernatural unity of the Catholic Church.

The more vividly then that we realize the real splendor of that first typical victory of the unity of the kingdom of God over all separating barriers, the better shall we understand the power of the authoritative message of the united Apostolate to conserve the unity thus initially won. Now as ever the Church is built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets. The voices of the Prophets heralding the coming kingdom, interpret- ing for us the lessons of the ancient preparatory dispensation, were ratified and gathered up into a living unity in the Person and Work of the Lord. The voice of the Lord sounds forth in the Church in the message of the united Apostolate. Age by age the Church sits as a learner at the feet of this band of authoritative teachers, whose living ora- cles are still efficient for the dissolving of each separating tendency which threatens to mar the Di- vine unity of the Body of Christ. The authority of the Apostolate, ministered through their living words and deeds, yet growing ever stronger and more dear through the adhesion of each succes-

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sive Christian age, should have been adequate to conserve the Church's unity. Now that, owing to a partial disregard of that authority, this unity has been so grievously marred in its outward and corporate manifestation, to no other source can we go that is competent to restore the ancient desola- tions of the supernatural structure. The words of the great African Father, St. Augustine of Hippo, uttered fourteen centuries ago in reference to the powerful Puritan separatists of his own day, are equally true and equally suggestive in our present difficulties. In this conflict " nothing conquers but the truth ; the victory of truth is love." Or again, " Why, brethren, is it that we find it so dif- ficult to be at one? Because men contend from the earthly standpoint, because they will to be but earth, earthy." For this the great teacher can see but one remedy : ''Let us, therefore, lift up our eyes to Him who cannot err. Let Him teach us what the Church is." Contrast with this the por- traiture of the great leader of the Donatists or Separatist party, as it is summed up by a German scholar in a monograph of recognized authority on the subject : " Parmenian," says Ribbeck," like all Separatists, lays stress on the letter rather than the spirit of Holy Scripture. Hence he attached greater importance to external than to internal marks of separation between the Church and the world." In a word, the conception of the living

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 65

authority of the Apostolic message as such had been lost. It had been replaced by that of the mere mechanical authority of isolated expres- sions of an inspired document. To the testimony of St. Aug-ustine, already cited, we may add that of another Latin Father, one of the greatest Bishops who ever sat \n the chair of St. Peter. Leo L, Bishop of Rome, writing to Flavian, Pa- triarch of Constantinople, on an ever memorable occasion, says : '' The source of error is, that, when men are hindered by some obscurity, they run not to Prophets, or Apostles, or Evangelists [mark the phraseology], but to themselves. Hence they continue to be teachers of error because they have not been disciples of the truth."

The time has now come, thank God, when at least we Anglican Christians can look back at the history of the past alike with adequate his- torical knowledge and sufficient impartiality to en- able us to trace at least the outlines of the process by which the Church's hold upon the living Apostolic message became sufidciently slack to give to the forces of disunion their oppor- tunity of partial triumph. Read any of the great Fathers of the early centuries. Take, for example, St. Irenaeus in the second century, St. Athanasius in the fourth century, St. Leo of Rome in the fifth, men who were the most conspicuous examples of defenders of the faith and unity of the Church,

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and you will be struck by the constantly recurring evidence of the extent to which the authority of the Apostolate, as shown in their words and their work, was to them an abiding, present force. Gradually as the centuries rolled by and the age of the Apostles receded into the dim past of his- tory, whilst great teachers had been raised up in brilliant succession to defend the Faith against the perils of those later times, the authority of these teachers began to dim in some measure that of the Apostles of the Lord.

The evil was much aggravated by the grow- ing habit of pressing to an altogether ex- orbitant extent the dominant allegorical method of interpretation of Holy Scripture. This method, rooted as it is in the true principle that every passage of Holy Scripture receives its most fruitful interpretation when viewed in the light of the deepest teachings of the whole Revela- tion, yet by its illegitimate exaggeration went far to altogether hide the message of the separate parts of Scripture under a luxuriant growth of the pious meditations of devout minds. One can readily see how under this treatment indiviaual souls might gain much spiritual profit, whilst the wider lessons oi Holy Writ which deal with the perils of the Church's corporate life would be large- ly obscured. In this way it became possible that in a rude age, when the very foundations of West-

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 67

ern civilization were being slowly and painfully relaid amongst the dominant Teutonic peoples, the false witness of the Decretals was able to gain acceptance and give the li- to the plainest teachings of the Apostolic history. Thus was the Papacy impelled forwards on that path of ecclesiastical despotism which was mainly respon- sible for the first great schism between East and West.

A little later, as the West pursues its now isolated course, we find a growing tendency to discourage amongst the lay-people the reading of the Holy Scriptures, whilst the vast multiplicity of the Patristic writings necessitated an attempt to correlate and harmonize them in some more com- pendious form. This natural tendency synchro- nized with the period of rising influence of the Aristotelian philosophy, introduced into Western Europe through the Arab conquests. The combined result was seen in the position gained by the Sentences of Peter Lombard and the Suimna of St. Thomas, with the mass of scho- lastic literature to which these great works gave birth. The work of the great scholastic Doctors was undoubtedly from many points of view of great and abiding value. Their desire on the one side to harmonize and make effectual the spiritual inheritance of the past contained in the writings of the Fathers, and on the other to interpret the un-

6S THE HOLY SCRIPTURES AS THE RULE

changing Faith afresh to a new age so as to meet the needs of men trained by new in- struments of human thought, was lofty and true. But it must still be confessed that the indirect in- fluence of the diversion of the thought and spiritual- ity of centuries so exclusively into these channels was most mischievous, and accentuated the grow- ing disregard of the Apostolic message itself. The Suinma and the Sentences practically re- placed the "Apostles and Prophets" as the living fountains (&{ the Church's thought and guidance. Not all the influence of a Nicholas de Lyra or a Wyclif could greatly avail to stem the rising tide. For another century the decay of Scriptural study and influence continued unchecked. Hence, when the invention of printing struck off the shackles from literature, and the diffusion of Greek learning consequent upon the fall of the Eastern Empire rendered possible the study of the Apos- tolic writings and of the great Greek theologians in their original tongue, the rebound was startling in its intensity, and almost necessarily one-sided and disproportioned in its results. Men had lost the knowledge of the right use of the great spiritual weapon thus suddenly placed in their hands. They had to recover slowly through the discipline of stormy centuries that full conception of the office of Holy Scripture which had been in- stinctive in the Apostolic churches of earlier days.

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 69

The evil was aggravated by many concurrent mischiefs. The abuses and corruptions of the Church discredited its ancient polity and organi- zation. The recognized Papal pretensions fatally confounded the authority of the Divinely con- stituted body of the Episcopate with the radically antagonistic claim of the Papacy to sum up all eccle- siastical authority in itself. It must be confessed that the attitudeof a large part of the Episcopate was strangely unsympathetic in this supreme crisis, and rather aggravated tJian diminished the strain. Moreover, the religious leaders of the New Learning themselves, so far, at least, as they were represented by men like John Calvin or Martin Chemnitz, brought to the study of Holy Scripture minds fashioned in the current scholastic dialectics, the influence of which they were unable to shake off. The Holy Scrip- tures were thus too exclusively regarded as a foun- tain of doctrine. The intellectual and philosophical aspects of the Divine message obtained undue predominance over its moral and institutional sides. The balanced language of the English Bishops in their authoritative declaration of 1543, entitled A Necessary Doctrine^ etc., soon ceased to reflect the dominant temper of the Con- tinental Reformers. These words of our spiritual fathers, thank God, are far more likely to be heeded now, and I therefore give a short extract

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from them : " The unity of the Catholic Church [say they], which all Christian men (in the Apostles' Creed) do profess, is conserved and kept by the help and assistance of the Holy Spirit ot God in retaining and maintaining of such doc- trine and profession of Christian faith and true observance of the same as is taught by the Scripture and doctrine Apostolic, and particular churches [the context shows that the reference is to the existing historic churches of Europe] ought not, in the said doctrine so accepted and allowed, to vary, one from another, for any mere arrogance or any other worldly affection, but in- violably to observe the same, so that by reason of that doctrine each church that teacheth the same may be worthily called (as it is indeed) an Apos- tolic church, that is to say, following such teaching as the Apostles preached, with ministration of such sacraments as be approved by the same." These men, it is clear, regarded the Apostolic Scriptures as a living rule and standard by which the deposit of faith handed down in the organic Church was in every age to be tried, conserved and enriched. On the Continent this view was alm^ost every- where being replaced by a conception of the office of Holy Scripture which divorced it entirely from the historic Church, making it a storehouse of doctrinal propositions, from which the true faith was to be afresh selected and gathered. The

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 71

Holy Scriptures ceased to be the living continuous representatives of Apostolic authority, witnessing- to the Divine and bindingcharacter of Apostolical institutions and actions as well as of Apostolical teachings and words. They were interpreted, not in the light of the actual faith of the Apostolic churches, as the same had been continuously handed down through the long ages of the Church's warfare, but with a growing disregard of historical continuity, according to the bent and fancy of great individual teachers. Those were times in which, owing to the lack of our modern facilities for historical research, and the discredit into which the appeal to history had been thrown by the forged Decretals and the abuse of Patristic authority, men were far less able than now to trust the historical continuity of Christian doctrine as a witness to the right use of the Apostolic Scrip- tures. Hence it is no wonder that Confessions of differing types grew and multiplied. The divisions of Protestantism became a by-word and a scandal, which largely gave strength to the counter-revo- lution of the Roman Church, and discredited its cause in the minds of thinking, devout men. The battles of the Confessions created as much bitterness and monopolized as much attention as any scho- lastic controversies of mediaeval times. Meanwhile the Roman Church looked on with contempt at the rapid evolution of dissensions, disintegration, and

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division, and was strengthened the more in its own exclusive claims. Nor should an Anglican Priest be slow to confess how the English Church, torn and vexed by doctrinal controversies imported from abroad, vainly sought relief by undue de- pendence upon the civil power; how in conse- quence the germs of fresh dissensions were quick- ened into active life ; how a largely dominant but thoroughly unscriptural Erastianism, particularly under the early Hanoverian monarchs, with their unconstitutional despotism in matters affecting the Church, weakened her spiritual power and thus distorted and disguised her real beauty in the eyes of Christian people. Such causes largely accelerated (though they certainly did not justify) the greatest secession we have ever suf- fered, in the separation of the Methodist body, nurtured, be it remembered, from infancy to far- developed youth within the Communion of the Mother Church.

So far, then, we have passed in rapid review the sad record of causes which lie at the back of the present deplorably divided state of Ameri- can Christianity. For be it remembered that almost the only purely American contribution to the cause of sectarianism has been merely to subdivide in comparatively unimportant and unessential particulars the systems inherited from the Old World. Only one really large or

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 73

important religious body amongst us claims an exclusively American origin. It is noticeable that that body, ''The Disciples of Christ," itself exists as a protest against division. It aims, al- beit in a quite mistaken way, to bring about the union of Christians by forming one more denomi- nation for the purpose, and by discarding not only all Confessions but all Creeds. The obstacles to corporate unity are thus much less than they m.ight have been had the separating spirit received some powerful native and American embodiment. The foregoing historical retrospect will have been faulty indeed if it has not shown how largely the loss of corporate unity has sprung from the neglect or misapprehension of the office of the Apostolic Scriptures. Yet all the while those precious Apostolic fountains of the Church's life were lying ready to hand, able when rightly used to minister that spirit of unity which would have vanquished every Separatist tendency. In the em- phasis which they lay upon the true source of au- thority in the Church, through the living perma- nence of the whole Apostolic foundation, whether institutional or doctrinal; in their historical breadth and sweep, carrying men's minds away from local or racial or mere passing questions which at any particular age may acquire undue pre- dominance, to those Divine pictures of long ago, in which amidst all their differing forms the un-

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changing perils of the Church and of humanity- are typically portrayed and met; in the lessons of patience we learn as we watch the foundations of the Kingdom of God slowly and gradually prepared and laid through the long centuries of time covered by the Biblical narrative; in the vital reciprocal connection which they reveal between Christian doctrine and Christian life in all its forms, whether individual or corporate ; above all, in the vision which they give of the one Person of the Incarnate Lord as the root and centre of both the Church's life and the Church's faith ; the Apos- tolic writings contain within themselves the neces- sary spiritual bond of unity alike forthe institutional and the dogmatic life of the Church. Nor are there wanting many signs that the reverent devotion with which Christians everywhere in our days are turning from their own preconceived ways to sit humbly and intelligently at the feet of the great Apostolic teachers is already playing a most im- portant part in preparing the way for corporate reunion. In whatever measure it be true, as a distinguished American thinker has said, that " the centrifugal period of Protestantism is over, the centripetal period has begun," the moving cause is in the main a deeper appreciation and more intel- ligent apprehension of the fulness of the Apos- tolic message. Men have begun to catch sight of a more glorious vision than they knew before.

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 75

They have recognized the possibility of repro- ducing in the world Apostolic unity as the Apostles themselves portrayed and fashioned it. We have seen in our day the upgrowth of a school of Biblical interpretation at once historical, scholarly, and reverent, which has quickened in every part the spiritual force of the Anglican Communion, by teaching us to see in the historic personality and work of the Apostles themselves an integral part of the whole Revelation. We have watched the rise of theologians outside our own Communion, of men like Dr. Milligan in Scotland and Dr Dale of Birmingham, whose writings on leading doctrines of the Faith have been welcomed everywhere amongst English-speaking Christians as thoroughly Catholic and Scriptural, pov/erful to the breaking down of doctrinal differences and to their solution in a deeper and truer unity. In the great Roman Communion we have seen the Supreme Pontiff reversing the dominant practice if not the theoretical rule of his Communion for centuries past, and enforcing the duty of the deeper study of Holy Scripture as the real remedy for the evils of our time. That Allocution has already borne manifest and widespread results. Within the last few weeks the following advice was formally given by Cardinal Gibbons to candi- dates for Confirmation in the capital city of America as reprinted in the Washington Post: "My children,

7 6 THE HOL Y SCRIP TURES A S THE R ULE

I want to impress upon you one thing which I have no doubt will be a surprise to some. I want each and every one of you to procure a Bible. I exhort you to read the Word of God with reverence and devotion. Read the Holy Scriptures dili- gently. This is an admonition to you of the Church of God, delivered by the prelate of God in the Church." No wonder that with such forces at work we have the following testimony from a leading English Nonconformist minister : " The increas- ing gravitation of Christian churches towards each other is indisputable. We cannot help it. The psychological climate created by the ministry of the Spirit of God in these later years renders it impossible for us to be content with our traditional separations, and satisfied with our human and mis- chievous sectarianisms."

True, as of old, when the Apostle discerned a great door and effectual opened before him, there are many adversaries. None, perhaps, amongst the discouraging signs is more terribly alarming than the growing famine of an intelligent knowl- edge of the Word of God which our sad divisions have directly produced, by practically banishing from our entire educational curriculum the real study of that Divine Library and of that body of Divine Truth, which is above all other things most efficacious alike for expanding the human mind or moulding the character

AND ULTIMATE STANDARD OF FAITH. 77

of our youth. I would that the day may soon come which may find the Protestant Episco- pal Church furnished with a great central Univer- sity, adequately equipped and endowed to exert its full influence upon the education and thought of our country; where, as in the Universities of the Old Land, the ideals of our fathers of the English Ref- ormation may be realized, and the place of Biblical and Sacred study in the plan of a Christian Uni- versity more effectually vindicated before the in- telligent people of this great country than has yet been the case.

Beyond all doubt, and the thought is gladly emphasized by many outside the pale of our Com- munion, the American Church has an unique and glorious office to perform in the building up of a united American Christianity. It behooves us, then, clergy, and especially laymen, to see to it that the means are forthcoming, and that speedily, which will give to this Church of the Reconcilia- tion the same measure of influence in the smaller towns and amongst the more scattered popula- tions of this country that she already possesses in the larger centres of population. When thought- ful and devout minds are looking with hope and affection to this Church as especially entrusted with the cause of corporate unity; when God by Plis providence is summoning us to gird ourselves for so mighty a vocation, how inexpres-

78 THE HOL Y SCRIP TURKS.

sibly culpable will be our sluggishness or apathy in claiming for our Church that measure of influ- ence throughout the length and breadth of the land to which she is clearly and indisputably en- titled.

Let us, then, beloved, do our part hopefully and lovingly in this, as yet, day of small things, beheving that beneath all the turmoil and the discord of our divided Christianity are being laid slowly and firmly, by a Divine Hand, the founda- tions of what has been so well termed a ''United Church of the United States," which shall yet ex- ercise a healing and benign influence throughout our land ; a Church holding firmly amid all sec- ondary differences to the fulness of the Apostolic message, and solidly compacted together by the conserving bond of Apostohc organization and worship.

God's Spirit in the Church

Still lives unspent, untired, Inspiring hearts that fain would search

The truths Himself inspired. Move, Holy Ghost, with might

Amongst us as of old, Dispel the falsehood and unite

In true faith the true fold. Amen! Amen!

^be ^wo CrecO0*

LECTURE III.

VEN. CHARLES S. OLMSTED,

OF COOPERSTOWN, N. Y.

Archdeacon of the Susquehanna. THE TWO CREEDS.

The best method by which to arrive at a defi- nition of the Creeds, and at the same time to dis- cover what they involve, and what relation they bear to other doctrinal standards and to the reunion of Christendom, is to trace their origin and history.

L

It will not be denied that the entire idea, fact and doctrine of Christianity maybe reduced in the last analysis to a single concept, viz., that God is become Man in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Tertullian said, "The consciousness of God is the original dowry of the soul." This conscious- ness is the most patent and pervasive fact in hu- man history. It enters into the very fibre of all human life. To it the Ethnic religions owe their being and vitality. The world has always desired

82 THE TWO CREEDS.

God as an object of Avorship and as an object of knowledge. Even more, it has ever desired to be united to God. However distorted the notion of how such an union may be effected, in the fugitive incarnations of Indian culture, or in the apotheoses of Hellenic thought, it proclaims the dim but persistent hope which is native to the human heart.

In the great mystery of our Christian faith we find how man can be united to the Absolute and Abiding Reality which underlies the universe. God answers man's hope by taking manhood into God. In a manner undreamed ofby human re- ligions the desire of those religions is accom- plished. In a manner due to Divine wisdom alone the union is effected. The Son of God assumes our nature into His Divine Person. It is not by changing Himself into man, nor by uniting entirely to Himself a human person, nor by exalting a single man on account of his goodness to become God, nor by uniting all men in their persons to the nature of God that the Son of God unites God and man.

The Incarnation takes place in a Divine man- ner, undreamed of by the world, and is proved not only by its fitness to the desire and need of man, but by its Divine method of becoming. The na- ture of man is united to the nature of God in the Person of the Eternal Son.

THE TWO CREEDS. %i

The true knowledge of the Incarnate Son of God is the peculiar possession of Christians. He Himself revealed it to certain men whom He named Apostles. He lived with them, and per- mitted them to see and hear the word of Hfe. They paid to Him Divine worship. They acknowl- edged Him to be the Lord. They knew Whom they believed, for they had an unction from the Holy One. They spent their lives in His service. They poured out their blood in witness to the truth of His Divinity.

In subsequent ages the Apostolic witness was felt to be true by vast multitudes of people, who gave themselves to the Lord. They lived the life of Christ. They entered here on an heavenly state of being. They fed on immortal food. They contemplated in simple faith the condescen- sion of their Master, Who, that He might '* better the quality and advance the condition " of their nature had come down from Heaven and was made flesh and had humbled Himself yet more, even to the death of the Cross. They knew the witness of the Holy Spirit with their spirit. They knew the Father, knowing the Son. They had entered the Kingdom of Christ through the door of grace and pardon. They looked for the likeness of their Risen Lord not only in the spiritual part of their nature, but also \\\ their bodies, and they rejoiced in the hope that was laid up for them in Heaven.

84 THE TWO CREEDS.

From the day of Pentecost Christians were familiar with certain facts of revelation which Christ had come into the world to bring-. They had a body of doctrine, which they had received, not having chosen it, or any portion of it, for them, selves. The Lord had said to the Apostles, " Ye believe in God, believe also in me." He had spo- ken to them of the Comforter and of the things pertaining to His Kingdom. He had directed them to make disciples ofall nations by baptizing them into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. He had thus outlined those summaries of belief which afterward were used in the Church on the admission of new mem- bers to the Baptismal privilege, all substantially alike, all containing some mention of the chief facts in Christ's redemptive work, and of the inef- fable mystery of the Trinity. The chief creed of the West, called the Apostles', which it is believed can be traced, very nearly as we have it, to the middle of the second century, embodies them all, and in fact embodies that which they stood for — the universal tradition of the Church of the Apostles.

But into the ever-widening circle of the Cath- olic Church great nations came, and under the shadow of its precious tree sat down to rest. Sages from the East and from the South were attracted by its marvellous light. It could not be long ere

THE TWO CREEDS. 85

the simplicity of the faith would be exposed to the influence of strange and intricate philosophies. Here and there the effete ineptitudes of an earlier time engrafted themselves upon the pure root of truth and flourished with renewed vigor. *' While there were no heretics, there was no need to guard against heresy,""^ but now it was no longer pos- sible for the Church simply to live her belief. She must learn to discover its significance. That which she had so deeply felt must be intellectu- ally more and more interrogated and explained.

Converted philosophers were forward to con- strue the person of Jesus Christ according to the formulas of Chaldaic Judaism or of heathen schools, and we are sufficiently familiar with Ebionism and Docetism, and the host of errors that followed for centuries in the wake first of the one and then of the other.

The question, humanly speaking, was, could the Church keep her peculiar treasure, which she had contemplated in her simple and believing heart far more than she had meditated with her reason ? If so, she must not forbear to treat it as an object of intellectual inquiry, much as she would shrink from subjecting the nature of her adorable Head to human questions and reason- ings. She had a true and unchangeable belief in

* Burton's Ecclesiastical History^ p. 404,

86 THE TWO CREEDS.

the Son of God and the Father Whom He came to reveal, but under the repeated attacks of ra- tionalistic denial not all her teachers at all times » could give adequate statements in scientific lan- guage concerning it. She had a delicate spiritual tact, which always prompted her to perceive the incipiency of error, but she could not always meet it at once in words of unquestioned clearness and with concurrent authority. She was like a child who is told that its God is the rocks and woods and waters. It knows what it worships, and that its God is not the rocks and woods and waters, but it is at a loss to describe this article of its be- lief in impregnable terms.

Melancholy as the primitive heresies were, they compelled the Church to direct her reason upon the all-absorbing theme; they compelled believers to become theologians; they compelled the Church in its collective capacity to formulate definitions of faith.

In the face of those Christological heresies, the Church for five whole ages had to gather what had been handed down from the first by her uni- versal tradition concerning the Only-Begotten; she had to translate the language of the spiritual world into that of the intellectual; she had to ex- hibit Divine realities as best she might in the for- eign medium of human speech; she had to reduce the varieties of theolocfical terms and statements

THE TWO CREEDS. 87

to technicality, and purge them of any supposed perverse connotations, lifting the term homoou- sion, for instance, out of all Gnostic, Manichean and Sabellian senses, to which it had been appro- priated, and so authoritatively to establish an ex- act scientific terminology, by which the relations of the Three Subsistences eternally interior to the Substance of the Godhead might be for ever guarded from misapprehension.

As the Apostles' Creed had embodied the tra- dition of the Church, the Creed called the Nicene scientifically stated that tradition. Ante-Nicene theology did not differ in essence at all from the theology of Athanasius and Nice, of Cyril and Ephesus, of Leo and Chalcedon, of Sophronius and that Council of Constantinople in which the influence of his unforgotten faith determined mat- ters. It had simply used terms in an unscientific manner, terms often good enough in themselves, but not always taken to mean the same thing by different minds.

That Creed which is called the Nicene, which is really no doubt an old Palestinian Creed adopt- ed with variations at Nice and afterward at Con- stantinople, with additions, and expressly con- firmed by the authority of the Ephesine and Chal- cedonian Councils and now used by us with cer- tain differences, contains the substance of all earlier summaries of the faith very much as the

88 THE TWO CREEDS.

Epistles of the New Testament contain the sub- stance of the Gospels. It is dogmatic truth, ^>., revealed beliefs subjected to processes of thought, analyzed, harmoniously viewed, consolidated, measured in the light of concurrent and traditional conviction, authorized by the Church representa- tively, accepted without qualification by the Church universally, of perpetual obligation even in its minutest points upon all portions of the Christian world. It crystallized Apostolic and uni- versal tradition. It set forth in as few words as possible the great body of Divine faith which Our Blessed Lord gave into His Church's hands at the beginning, and which had been proved all along by the Scriptures. It juridically expressed the Church's ecumenical mind. It stated systemati- cally what had been unsystematically diffused through the v/ritings of an innumerable throng of witnesses. It embalmed the spirit of essential truth. It was the chorus of fathers, Hturgies, those '' acted creeds," as they have been finely called, councils, summaries of belief. It was hke the cloud which gathering and deepening mists from every quarter of the summer sky have form- ed, which sustains the light of the sunrising, and glows in the splendors of the passing day. Looked at in their bare outline the Creeds may seem like Grecian temples, severe and straight on every side; but surrounded by the piety and virtue

THE TWO CREEDS. 89

of the lives that have lived them, and illumined by the One Supreme and spotless life to which they testify, they soar like Gothic minsters, with lines lost in lines till the whole is softened into a vision of imperishable beauty.

As the Church is not an organ of continuous revelations, but the repository of the faith once delivered to the saints, so she is not the Author but only the Editor of her Creeds. He who gave her the deposit of the faith, gave her ability to define and defend it. She cannot make that to be truth which was not truth from the beginning. She cannot make discoveries of things to be believed in order to salvation in the fourth or in the nine- teenth century, which were not proposed to the faith of Christians in the first or in the second. Speaking as a whole, she is no more liable to error in one age than in another. She is not a school of development in which philosophical fancies, called pious opinions, though often im- pious, may be exalted to the rank of dogma. Could she assemble her sons from every quarter to-day in a lawful General Council, they could in no wise change or rescind the Creeds of the Ecumenical Councils. They could only declare their unfeigned assent and continued allegiance to every article contained in them.

Mr. Illingworth in his Bampton Lectures says, ** The various heresies which attempted to make

90 THE TWO CREEDS.

the Incarnation more intelligible, in reality ex- plained it away : while council after council, though freely adopting new phraseology and new conceptions, never claimed to do more than give expHcit expression to what the Church from the beginning had implicitly believed, . . . Christian theology arose like all other human thought, in meditation upon a fact of experience — the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, and having arisen, reacted, also like other human thought, upon the fact which it explained, illuminating, intensifying, realizing the significance of the fact."*

We find then that the Creed, called the Nicene, embodies the intellectual result of a long and continuous profession of the great facts of Divine revelation. It stands to the Apostles' Creed in the relation in which St. Augustine said the New Testament stands to the Old. The Nicene Creed is latent in the Apostles', and the Apostles' Creed is patent in the N icene. The Nicene Creed reflects the intellect, while the Apostles' Creed reflects the heart of the primitive Church. The Nicene Creed contains the matured reflection of theolo- gians, the Apostles' Creed contains the simple facts on which believers fed.

When questioned as to their faith, Catholics could say the Apostles', and when cross-ques-

"^ Pcrso)ialii)\ Human and Divine^ p. li.

THE TWO CREEDS. 9 1

tloned they could say the Nicene. 1 he one is not diverse from the other. In its substance it contains nothing- in excess of the other. The Nicene Creed is simply the amplified statement of the articles of faith handed down from the days of the Apostles. It is the Apostles' Creed sub- jectively viewed, not altered. It is not that or any other old formula made over to suit a phi- losophy of foreign imposition. It is simply the subject enlarged in itself. "These Catholic dec- larations of our belief," says Hooker, " delivered by them which were so much nearer than we are unto the first publication thereof, and continually needful for all men at all times to know, these confessions as testimonies of our continuance in the same faith to the present day, we rather use than any other gloss or paraphrase devised by ourselves, which, though it were to the same ef- fect, notwithstanding could not be of the like au- thority and credit." ^

II. The Creeds involve the existence and use of Apostolic tradition, through the whole body of which its vital diffusion can be traced by the dog- matic historian. The Anglican Church teaches that " Holy Scripture containeth all things neces- sary to salvation : so that whatever is not read

* Works, Church's Keble Ed., vol. ii., p. 182.

92 THE TWO CREEDS.

therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."^

The candid and learned Du Pin agreed to this very principle, and said in his Co mmojtitorium, now lost: "This we (/.^., Galileans) will gladly admit, provided that tradition be not excluded, which does not exhibit new articles of faith, but confirms and explains those things which are con- tained in Holy Scripture, and fences them by new safeguards against those who are otherwise mind- ed, so that nothing new is said, but only the old in a new way." t Would that all Roman theo- logians were as wise and moderate in their esti* mate of the right office and nature of tradition ! The Creeds and that tradition which they repre- sent add nothing to Holy Scripture any more than an image reflected in a mirror adds to the weight of the mirror. They were never felt by the whole Church to be fountains of the faith. They were always felt to be symbols of it, outHnes of it, plain guides'to it, which the faithful were to fill out and follow when Scripturally informed and sacramentally animated. As the Holy Eucharist sets forth, exhibits, pleads, applies, the Sacrifice of our Lord on Calvary, but adds nothing to its

* Art. VI. of Religion.

f See Pusey's Eirenicon, p. 213.

THE TWO CREEDS. 93

merit, so the Creeds add nothing- to the substance of Holy Scripture. They keep us from misunder- standing its general drift ; they apply to it a con- sistent interpretation. The Eucharist does not add to the efficacy of the Cross, but gives its efficiency, and the Creeds, in like manner, though revealing nothing new, give clearness to that which is revealed once for all. They do not enter into the interpretation of particular texts of Holy Scripture, but they form the result of what might be termed a higher criticism of all. Scripture. They are the classics of doctrinal lit- erature, Homeric in their dignity, not because we cannot in any degree read between their lines the history of their scientific expression, nor weigh some of their statements in the scales of contem- poraneity, but because they are, through their universal acceptance, lifted above the merely his- toric atmosphere. They are touched with a heav- enly light. They have rather the unwrinkled grandeur of statues than the charactered coloring of pictures. We value them as being not only primitive, but universal ; the Church, having spoken once on the subjects contained in them, having, in the nature of things, spoken for all time. They are removed above the; stress of any individualis- tic or provincial thought. They have attained, not to old age but to agelessness. They have in them that immortal quality which invests the

94 THE TWO CREEDS.

whole machinery and operation of God's work in the world. In a word, and in every sense of the word, they are Catholic.

The Creeds are the most clearly ascertained tradition of the primitive ages; and it is a happy circumstance that this is so, because on the field of doctrine they subtend a larger angle of in- terpretation than any other document of ancient or of modern times. In the matters of chief con- cern to us as Christians, the Trinity, the Incarna- tion, the Atoning work of Christ, the agency of the Holy Spirit in the means of grace and the life to come — they set forth the very spirit of Divine truth, and 'Mt is not likely," as has been well said by Waterland, '' that any whole Church of those times should vary from Apostolic doctrine in things of moment, but it is, morally speaking, ab- surd to imagine that all the churches should com- bine in the same error and conspire to corrupt the doctrine of Christ."*

"No man," said Bishop Bull, ** can oppose Catholic consent, but he will at last be found to oppose both the Divine oracles and sound reason." Bishop Ridley, in the Necessary Doctrine of a Christian Man, said that ''AH those things which were taught by the Apostles, and have been by the whole universal consent of the Church of Christ

* Waterland's Works, vol. iii., p. 6ii,

THE TWO CREEDS. 95

ever since that time taught continually and taken always for true, ought to be received, accepted and kept as a perfect doctrine Apostolic."

Keble, in speaking of St. Athanasius as the one preeminent among divines, ancient or modern, who had committed his cause to the witness of Scripture, says, *' But the more unfeignedly he revered the Bible, the more thankfully did he avail himself of the greatest of providential helps to the right understanding of the Bible " in the '' irrefragable testimony of the Church." ^

Tradition, not as supplementing, but as con- firming Holy Scripture, is the uniform and con- sistent testimony of the undivided Church. It is not the authority of individual writers, who are often corrected by the general voice. It is not the teaching of isolated synods or particular por- tions of the Church. It is not a witness confined to one age alone, to the exclusion of other ages. If it is found to be unspeakably valuable and nec- essary, into what distinguished a place and office must we not set the Creeds, when we realize their character as the authorized embodiment of that universal testimony !

In the face of the Creeds the Church cannot introduce new doctrines, which were unknown from the beginning.. They overthrow equally

* In Appendix to Sermon on Primitive Tradition.

96 THE TWO CREEDS.

the theory of objective development of doctrine and the theory of papal infalHbility. Even if this latter did not swallow up the former, the true principle of tradition and a traditional Creed must nullify either. It stands in the way of any dogmatic decision in modern times by any portion of Christendom which makes revision of Creeds a possibility, which in fact already adds to their substantial teaching, which would cut away the present from the past and make our century a foreigner to the fourth. It is a rebuke to the doctrine which enthrones absolute irresponsible- ness in the Church of God, and invests a single prelate of our day with a privilege of which the Apostles themselves knew nothing.

Catholic consent is our only hope of security in the matter of consistent Scriptural interpretation, and in that of doctrinal purity, and for that con- sent the Catholic Creeds stand. Across the waters of this dim and stormy world the articles of our belief are the trusted and unfading stars to light our way.

III.

The Creeds involve a complete and harmonious body of truth. To those who study them their various articles are seen to imply one another, to lead into one another, to complete and illustrate one another. If we trace their implications to

THE TWO CREEDS. 97

their singular consequences, and then, as a cor- rective, to their ming-led consequences; if we seek to discover their affinities and adjust their aUi- ances; if we balance their inferences with all their constitutive elements; if we try to reach the inter- dependence of all their parts, we shall perceive how they shine with interior light. They are rightly open to speculation if we are already be- lievers. As the Church first received the faith and then reasoned upon it, so must we. We must remember that they rest on the authority of God, and that they do not contradict, however much they may transcend, our reason. The duty of learning in order to believe is secondary only to that of believing in order to learn. St. Anseim said, " When we have arrived at faith, it is a piece of negligence to stop short of convincing our- selves, by the aid of thought, of that to which we have given credence." Within the circle of Cath- olic influence we do not need to dread specula- tion. The essence of rationalism consists, not in making reason a judge of evidence and a student of revealed truth, but in making it independent of authority. If a man judges concerning the Incar- nation that it is impossible, he is a Rationalist; but if he tries to satisfy his reason so far as he may, why God became man, accepting- the fact because it is revealed to the Church, he is no Rationalist. He believes that whatever is revealed

THE TWO CREEDS.

must be true, like its Divine Revealer, and he may go on reverently to seek out its meaning, glad when he is permitted to wade somewhat further into the doings of the Most High, yet content when the guide Revelation will conduct the pupil Reason no further. The theologian speculates, but he remembers that the Church alone may dogmatize.

IV.

The Creeds are the inheritance of all portions alike of the Apostolic Church. It is therefore a matter for deep regret that the East and the West should declare the Nicene faith with even a single variation. The phrase " and the Son " added in the Article concerning the Holy Ghost and descriptive of His Eternal Procession, Span- ish in its origin, accepted only in the West and never used by the East, has always been a grave scandal to the Oriental mind. It is no doubt a difference of language only, since all Christians ac- knowledge the Deity of the Holy Ghost, and it is not supposed by the Western Church to imply that He proceeds from the Son as from a Fountain in the same manner in which He proceeds from the Father. We cannot attain to reunion apart from the ancient Churches of the East, but so long as those Churches suppose the West to mean that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son as from

THE TWO CREEDS. 99

the Original Source in the Godhead they will never come to terms. Either the West must be willing to give up the phrase as not being of uni- versal reception, or the East must accept it on condition of the maintenance throughout the world of its true theological interpretation as meaning that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son. Except for that single discord there is a perfect harmony of faith, so far as the Nicene symbol can express it, in all parts of the CathoHc world. One voice there is heard daily proclaiming from tens of thousands of altars the unchangeable convictions of Christ's visible body on earth. How is that voice affected by the existence in particular portions of the Church of doctrinal standards such as the Athanasian Hymn, which, though almost universal in the West, has never prevailed to any general extent in the East, and as the Trent decrees and the XXXIX Articles ? We know how conscientious men feel bound in their several Communions by such expressions of the more restricted and subjective doctrinal life in those Communions, if not in the same degree as they feel bound by the ancient Creeds, yet still in a sense more or less defined to themselves.

When we enter a beautiful church we are at once struck by the general harmony of tone pre- vailing within it. There is a light there unlike the light we see anywhere else. It is not the light

loo THE TWO CREEDS.

of the open sky, nor that of any houses we are ac- customed to enter. It is a light peculiar to that particular building. It is caused by the harmoni- zation of what streams through the windows with what dwells in the stone and wood and painted wall. When we stand before a single window and study its colors, its haloed forms, its mystic symbols, and the meaning that underlies it all, we see how different it is from the window we have just passed and from the window we just casually glance at beyond, in fact from any other window in the church. Yet its character and tone go to the making up of the peculiar quality of artistic and satisfying beauty we drink in with pensive eyes. But a study of effects will enable the artist to determine whether a lighter tint here would help the general harmony, or a darker there. The entire character of the interior may be modi- fied by simple but subtle changes. In like man- ner we enter the great Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ. One great window there is, more dazzling and glorious than the others, like that east window in Gloucester Cathedral, in which the glass is " not only translucent, but is itself actually luminous with innumerable minute centres of radiation," because the "body of the glass is full of minute air bubbles, each of which holds the light and then reflects it out from the interior of the glass." That is the Creed window which gathers and sheds

THE TWO CREEDS. lOl

the Scripture glory that falls from the sun in the firmament above. The other windows are the de- crees and catechisms and office-books of the vari- ous portions of the Church. That Creed window was framed and fashioned by the universal wis- dom oi the Christian mind; these others by iso- lated and estranged parts of it. There is a certain harmony withal, but all these side-lights must be brought entirely into tone with the great light and with one another. All interpretations of the past must be assimilated to the old expression of the Cathohc mind. Each portion of the Church must submit to the united skill of all. Modifications must take place, but no true work of spiritual truth needs to be sacrificed. The work has to be done not by particular churches either for them- selves or for others; but by all the elect, keeping in view the fact that each may learn from all in perfect submission to the guiding Spirit of truth and love.

It may be the notion of many who dream of re- union that it will bring with it the excision from the realm of doctrine of all liturgies, confessions, articles of doctrine, decrees of councils, writings of " Catholic fathers and ancient bishops "; but is it not much more reasonable to suppose that with the quickened intellect and fervent affection of a reunited Church, men's hold of the principles of trutli would be so intensified that they would

I02 THE TWO CREEDS.

gather new light from every quarter, while purg- ing from error their then common possession of a whole world of doctrinal literature ? The Creeds must always remain what they are, but can never be restrained from bearing fruit in ever new and glorious forms of prayer and worship and saintly teaching.

The Church will not have a new faith, but she will always be apprehending more profoundly the old faith. She will be always applying her faith in the production of richer and riper thoughts to the exigencies of human life and the growing hopes of celestial pilgrims. Reunion cannot bring about a logical and practical divorce between what is fundamental and essential, and what is not. Experience proves that positive principles, on which alone reunion can be cemented, carry with them the seeds of very far-reaching effects. Even granting that in order to arrive at some pos- sible basis of human device for reunion we could make the hypothetical distinction real and work- able, it would vanish and be forgotten when the reunion had taken place. It is one thing to think we see clearly the distinction, and it is quite an- other to test the folly and peril of actually making the separation between the essential and that which grows out of it and is rooted in its very Hfe and worthily shadows it forth. Some of the most unessential parts of a system perform a delicate

THE TWO CREEDS. 103

office in making known the inward truth and re- ality of the essential. The Christian Year, for in- stance, would not be considered by anybody, I suppose, essential to the Church's existence, but what, among all the contrivances of men, could take its place as an instructor in the great princi- ples of the Creeds ?

If reunion ever comes within the limits of reasonable expectation, we cannot be blind to the lessons we have learned from our own past. We must conserve many things which have grown up with us and which once our Fathers f^ir away got on without, but which, now that they have natu- rally sprouted from our Creeds, cannot be shorn away without doing an injury even to the Creeds themselves. Whence comes this prevalent fear of doctrinal statement ? Definition is an evil only when carried on apart from the traditional life of the whole past, and under the spell of individual- istic fancy. '' Where matters have not been de- fined," says Bishop Forbes of Brechin, '' men have generally contented themselves with the lower view ; ... we have seen how the faith of our own Church on the subjects that were left an open question has shrivelled and withered away." "^ Definition of like scope and dignity with that of the early Councils will hardly be again, but defi-

^ Explanation of the NUene Creed, Preface, p. vi.

I04 THE TWO CREEDS,

nition on a great scale, comparable to the best doctrinal labors of the sixteenth, century, will sure- ly follow reunion, and the Church will choose as her authoritative language in the realms of an- thropology and soteriology adequate expressions, already doubtless in being, to be raked out of the embers of forgotten learning, or discovered in the writings of our great divines.

The doctrinal standards pecuKar to different portions of the Church of Christ have all had their share in producing the types of holy living to be found in those portions. Holy men of different communions do not indeed differ from one an- other in their characteristics so much as the doc- trinal teachings of their communions differ, but still there is to be observed a tone, a fragrance, a beauty peculiar to some which cannot be found in others. The page which records the triumphs of Anglican sainthood is the fairest in Catholic an- nals. We do not need to apologize to any others. We have nothing to fear in contrast with any others. We have had our dark times, but what Church or body of Christians in the world have not had theirs ? and I believe ours have been not a little overdrawn. Where shall we find, in days ancient or modern, in climes Northern or South- ern, so glorious a type of piety as that moulded in the Anglican system — strong, yet tender, manly, yet full of sympathy, judicious, honest, whole-

THE TWO CREEDS. 105

some, gracious, endued with sober and practical wisdom, full of a great dignity and a great sim- plicity, restrained, conservative, truthful in the depths of its spirit, contrasting to its own infinite advantage with almost any other types in Chris- tian history. If it is insular, would that the whole world were an island !

The lamp of God never went out in our temple. What meek and lowly men have tended its pure flame ! It would enchant your ears were I to read the precious diptychs. Where can the world equal that company which is represented by such names, to mention no others, as Hooker and An- drewes and Herbert and Hall and Hammond and Pearson and Sanderson, Taylor and Bramhall, Ken and Cosin and Granville and Gilpin and Bancroft and Wilson, Bull and Beveridge, Barrow and Butler, Jones and Cecil and Routh and Jolly and Pusey and Keble and Liddon ?

Our Anglican mother has attributed to none of these maudlin miracles or exaggerated and impos- sible virtues, but she has formed them by her Prayer Book, her vernacular Scriptures, her paro- chial system, her learned priesthood, her unmuti- lated Eucharist, her incomparable Catechism, her family life — in a word, her system. Must we then give up a system, or see it greatly marred and broken, for the sake of obtaining what is, after all, not sure to come — the union of separated Chris-

io6 THE TWO CREEDS.

tians ? Is it not rather our duty to preserve our heritage for the sake not of our children only, but of our brethren also, who, like us, are of Anglo-Saxon blood and should have the blessings of the old Anglo-Saxon religion ? We must learn ourselves from others what has seemed good and holy in their eyes and be ready to recognize any- where the varied manifestations of God's grace, but when we read our own history and see what the system we have inherited has wrought, we must hesitate and think long before we begin to break up the timbers in our walls, if not some of the pavement beneath our feet. We all agree with Barrow that there are ''points of less mo- ment, more obscurely deHvered, in which Chris- tians may dissent, about wliich they may dispute, in which they may err, without breach of unity or prejudice to charity." * But let us ask, What has any portion of the Christian world to-day to give us in place of our minor beliefs and inferior rites that can compare with them in real practical efficiency toward producing the best type of holi- ness in our members ? In the event of reunion we could not expect to have our S3^stem as a whole bound upon other portions of Christendom, nor to escape certain modifications ourselves by in- fluences to which we could then oppose no barrier;

* Barrow on Unity of the Church. Works, vol. i., p. 763, Ed. of 1716.

THE TWO CREEDS. 107

but we need not be over-fearful that in such an event our experience of the very positive and superior advantages of our system would not be widely felt and recognized, and that it would not more than neutrahze any counter influences. Rome and Constantinople must gain from Can- terbury far more than they can ever give her; not that the whole Church will take on the Anglican complexion, but because the sturdy and vigorous character of the Anglican type must have a far- reaching permeation when once allowed equal limits of influence with other and less noble and more feeble types.

With reference to our Christian brethren, whose fathers went out from us in the past, we owe a great and imperative duty. We are bound to cherish our system, not out of a selfish pride in it, but because we truly believe it is fitted as no other system is to promote a calm and deeply religious character; but we must make the way for them to join with us as easy as we can. They have, we think, demonstrated their need of just what might be called our peculiar ways, and have themselves answered many of their former objections to our rites and ceremonies. The time seems ripe, not for giving up on every hand what has made us what we are, but for keeping our birthright. The tendency to the separatist idea and the separatist system has another tendency to Catholic ideas

io8 THE TWO CREEDS.

and usages more vital and enduring than itself to take account of. Our wisdom is to abide in our lot; to shun the unhealthy and belittling in- fluences of party feeling; to look for, and haste, not unto earthly glories and religious ostracisms and degrees of arbitrary holiness graduated to de- grees of ecclesiastical rank, but unto the coming of the day of God.

We must hold fast what we have, but we must also keep in men's minds that the Apostles' Creed is the Baptismal Creed, and that already all the baptized we call our own. We must lead them on, not by controversy, but by the example of humility and love. We cannot prefer unity to truth, nor compromise to the culture of a holy life. Intensive growth is the Church's first duty, afterward that which is extensive. But we can forget past differences, and look forward to hap- pier and brighter days. This, which may seem to many a narrow and painfully inadequate, but I trust not a selfish or bigoted, view, will in due time prove to be the wisest and the best.

Even for the sake of unity we cannot listen on the one hand to proved imbecilities, nor on the other to certain degradation. We cannot abide those claims, which, even after the false decretals on which they were built up have been discredited in their native fields, are still gravely put forth with unbashful forehead before an astonished

THE TWO CREEDS. 109

world; neither can we listen to possibilities which must leave us a sapless and inconsequent simulacre of Catholicity. Our plain duty is to forego mystic dreams of a golden age, and to keep on the noise- less tenor of our way. If superstitions, inanities, extravagances, have mingled with Christian teach- ing from the days of Hermas to those of Irving, and from the Araxes to the Rhine, we must be prepared still to behold many defects in the vision of a militant Church.

The Faith has survived the frantic and frigid philosophies with which Christians have played, and, untouched in its pure substance by optimism and pessimism, still holds forth the immaculate hope of life eternal through the love of God and the merits of our Blessed Redeemer; and we may be sure it will burn as a lamp until the end. There never was a time since St. Paul wrote to the Galatians when there were not sects and parties to trouble the peace of Christians, and I do not know why it should ever be otherwise so long as this mortal sphere of being rolls on its restless way. We are to labor for peace, and give our- selves unto prayer. We are to prove our religion by our lives, and then God, Who doeth all things well, will bring to pass His strange and wondrous act, whatever it may be. Sir Thomas Browne could never see a man pray, and not straightway fall to praying for him. So when we see men

no THE TWO CREEDS,

pray and lavish their gifts on missionary fields, and illustrate Christ's precepts in their daily walk, we may pray and give thanks likewise that God, Who is the Father of us all, will find a way to glorify His Son in us and in them together before the eyes both of angels and of men.

V.

When we turn the facts of our Christian faith into principles of our Christian life we see their deeper value and necessity. For what do they imply? Not Monism, with its condonation of human infirmity ; not a code of Ethics grounded in the will and nature of no Eternal and Personal Being ; not Positivism, that decayed folly, which told us that, while individual men perish at death, the race will go on for ever; not Materialism, that spent, insensate dream, which cared not even for the race, but whose one obstinate message was that physical death is the annihilation of thought ; not Agnosticism, which now seems to have got so far as to admit a kind of intelligence in the Noumenon beyond phenomena, but cannot free itself from the old dictum by which it is fascinated, that there can be no communication from God to the world.

The Creeds have the majestic character of Him who said *' I am the Truth,'' '' I am from above." They carry with them the atmosphere of an etcr.

THE TWO CREEDS. in

nal world. '* God's word endureth for ever in heaven," and when we are shewn that surface and fringe of it which, in our finite limitation and present mortality we are capable of seeing, our nature revives and expands under the benignant influence. These mighty truths which the Church teaches abide in the realm of the unrevealed even while they are made to inhabit the realm of the revealed. They are mysteries, things, that is, which dwell at once in two spheres, a heavenly and an earthly. They are like the Person of Him Who came into the world to shew us the Father. They are Divine in their origin, and only earthly in their manifestation. What sublimity invests the mind which adoringly accepts them ! They are not from beneath. They are not spun out of the brains of those who have divested themselves so far as they were able of all faith in the revealed religion. They are coals from the heavenly altar, whose intrinsic flame glows and waxes in our sight when the Spirit of illumination breathes o.n them as we pray. They are validities, not de- pending on time for their existence any more than the distinctions in the Godhead depend on Creation or Incarnation or the Church for theirs, but yet, like those distinctions, which exhibit them- selves in Nature and Grace and the Means of Grace, clothe themselves in human speech, and make even the stones of the mountains and instru-

112 THE TWO CREEDS.

meats of music to give them a kind of utterance. Such truths lift man's thoughts above that which is merely temporal. They tell him that he is a part of an enduring system, and that this is but '' the bud of being." They set before him his whole life, and not a part of it, and that the least worthy part of it. In truth they set forth God as the life of men, and reveal His Being as eternal and His Nature as love. They shew the conde- scension of God in the Person of the Son, Who came to unite heaven and earth and God and man, and to make our mortal years a fair image of His unspotted eternity. They bring the message of a real forgiveness and a real hope to all who will repent and believe. They open the gate of heav- en's kingdom even here and now. They do not tell man merely of a life to come, but mingle that life with his earthly life. They do not tell him of promises merely, but of present privileges. They tell him not only of the first Adam created in sin- less liberty, but also of the Second Adam bring- ing perfect attainment into view. They shew him the symmetry and ripeness of his being — man brought from capacity to capability, from liberty to freedom, from hope to fulfilment, from possi-^ bility to attainment — they exhibit holiness as the matured fruit of a long process of sanctifica- tion, as arrival at that ultimate stage of spiritual life where there are no salient virtues and graces,

THE TWO CREEDS. 113

because all virtues and graces complete one an- other; as the diffusion of spiritual tone through the entire life, as will and affections and intellect all wrought to one stedfast strength and lustre, till it is impossible to connect more or less of blessedness with one than with another part of his nature; as Nature's discovered equilibrium and point of rest, as unity of life in itself and in its Divine original, as satisfaction with Christ's glori- fied likeness, as fulness of joy and pleasure for evermore.

These mysteries of our faith teach that holiness is the direct effect in man's nature of the Holy Spirit's working. Who dwells in Christ's members, that it is a condition which implies, supplements and hallows earthly schemes of morality, that it is a supernatural cause affecting the entire nature of a man, that it is man dedicated to God and then consecrated by God, and using his natural faculties in a supernatural strength, that it is man living under the monition of the Holy Ghost, and through the continuous impartation of vitality from that gracious Guest, that it is, in fine, the effect of the constant ministration of Christ to man by the Spirit which dwelt in and glorified the humanity of Christ.

Is not such a revealed faith fitted to lift man up for ever, especially when it is received and made his own by means of the ministries of grace? As

114 THE TWO CREEDS.

Keble said at Winchester in 1830, *' We cannot separate the means of grace from the doctrines of grace." Is not this the Faith by believing which men wrought righteousness, obtained promises, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong ? Is not this the Faith needed in the world to-day, when there is certainly a recrudescence of Pagan ideals and sentiments, when there are multitudes in Christian lands who hear no longer the doc- trines of the Catholic faith, but are entertained by incoherent magnificences and undigested hypothe- ses, and with heresies taken bodily out of Valen- tinian workshops, or imbibed in " the tents of Pelagius "?

Christ incarnate, crucified, glorified; Christ in us the hope of glory; Christ, revealing the Father and ministered by His Holy Spirit; Christ, uniting the whole family in heaven and earth in Himself, is the only hope of man. Him the Church adores, Him the Creeds confess, Him the Scrip- tures delineate. Him the Sacraments convey, Him the Apostolic priesthood represents, Him the world desires, Him the sinful need. Him the saints follow, Him the Father loves.

The Creeds that guard and set forth the ineffa- ble truth concerning Him are of priceless value, both in themselves and in their history. The Catholic Church can never part with these. It is

THE TWO CREEDS. 115

inconceivable that the least word in them will ever be exscinded. They are sacred symbols, because they are the Church's deliberate witness to the truth of Christ's Person and grace.

VI.

The Church of which we are members is a part of the visible Catholic Church throughout all the world. It believes that the Church is a Divine structure, built on Jesus Christ our only Saviour, and animated by His Spirit of truth and holiness. It does not imagine that the Church's truest and deepest unity has ever been broken, but only that its perfect outward form has been impaired in the course of the Christian centuries. It does not at- tempt to affirm that external unity is any longer a fact. It believes that such unity should, by God's help, be restored. But it cannot exhibit or invent any hypothetical or tentative basis for Christians to stand on together. It can only point to the foundations laid long ago. The Anglican Com- munion cannot depart from the principles of the Catholic Church, of which she is a sound and liv- ing part. She is subject to the Church in its un- divided capacity, so that whatever it has at any time professed, she must profess ; and whatever it has at any time rejected, she must reject. She cannot have anything to do v/ith laying a foundation for reunion, or for Christian unity, if

Ii6 THE TWO CREEDS.

by that is meant a federation of Christian organ- izations. For the foundation standeth sure. Un- less the behevers everywhere will look on Catholic principles not as separable bases, any number of which may be taken to build upon, but as essen- tial one to another, and as all standing or falling together, and as carrying with them the interpre- tation which their whole history affords of them, we must be content to wait. Our Church has the future in her hands if only she can be patient and be true to herself. She must sacrifice present palpability to future reality. She must be par- doned for looking at this matter from within and not from without. She is eighteen hundred years of age, and her memory teems with her history in all its parts and periods. Side-lights from forgot- ten ages teach her a theory of conservatism scarcely to be appreciated by those whose roots do not run through all the past. We may be sure that when the Protestant bodies are ready to receive the Historic Episcopate, they will be ready also to accept in the main what in the course of time has grown up with and out of that Episcopate. We cannot afford to risk internal schism for the sake of obtaining what at best might be a temporary union of some Christian societies. We cannot give up certainties for uncertainties.

" The dog that snapt the shadow dropt tlic bone." The four pro[)03itions of the Anglican

THE TWO CREEDS. 117

Bishops, if read in their bare outline, are untena- ble and must remain unfruitful. If looked at with an eye to their history, they will be found to carry a necessarily Catholic and historic interpre- tation. The Bishops meant, no doubt, to hint at concessions and accommodations ; they never could have meant that there is no universal and well-known doctrine of a visible Kingdom of our Redeemer among men, having authority in mat- ters of faith; and that there is no universal and well-known doctrine of sacramental grace and Apostolic orders and Scriptural interpretation. Men in general must have a more profound knowl- edge of the Christian past, until they can breathe its atmosphere and see with its eyes, before they can safely approach this question of unity. Walter Savage Landor told us that we must see through former ages before we can see through our own. We do not want the accidental past, but the essen- tial. We do not wish to restore Mediaevalism, norByzantinism; but we want to live our modern American life with the wisdom which eighteen centuries of Christian thought and culture have accumulated. Our work is in the present, but our experience is in the past. We do not wish to forget either our duty or our education. The present age differs from past ages only in the acci- dental shows of things. The heart of the world is the same it always was. The w^^ii of the world

iiS THE TWO CREEDS.

is the same it always was. We may profit by the failures as well as by the successes of our fathers. Let us not be led away in so great a matter by emotion. Let us not anticipate the order of Divine Providence. Let us not build a tower until we know whether we can finish it. Let us not mistake our hopes for realities. You will re- member that when Israel, Judah and Edom together opposed the Moabites, they filled some trenches with water, which, reddened by the morning sun, seemed in the eyes of the latter from the heights above like pools of blood. Sup- posing their foes to have quarrelled with and slain one another, they sallied down to plunder the camp and were defeated. We want hope and zeal, but we want also a sober judgment. We want unity, but we want to be sure no rotten beams or crum- bling stones get into the foundation. We want, before all, humility and patience; humility, that we may not trust ourselves too far where vast issues are at stake, and patience, that we may bear with the ignorant and self-willed. In a word, we want by God's unspeakable mercy the gift of a sound and loving mind to seek and set forward His Kingdom among men in the fulness of its privileges, in the greatness of its design, in the untold might of all its healing and renewing power.

Zhc Z\)0o (Breat Sacramento

LECTURE IV.

VEN, A. ST. JOHN CHAMBRE, D.D.,

ARCHDEACON OF LOWELL, AND DEAN OF CONVOCATION.

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

Our Lord Jesus Christ founded the Christian Church. It was potential in Him in all its fulness, and in all its divine prerogatives, powers and in- fluences, for all the world and for all the ages. He called, taught, trained, disciplined, a college of Apostles, to promulgate what He delivered unto them, to do what He commanded should be done, to evangelize the nations, to build up the Church, His Church. The Church was complete in the essentials of its organization, while our Lord lived on earth. He completed His teach- ing, and perfected the organization, it may be af- firmed, during those memorable days between the Resurrection and the Ascension. On the Day of Pentecost, in accordance with His promise and prophecy, the Holy Ghost descended upon the Church, to abide with it for ever, and to lead it

122 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

into all truth. Beginning at Jerusalem, then, thousands were converted, and there were added to the Church daily those who were in the proc- ess of being saved, and these all "continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellow- ship, and in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers." Thence the Gospel of the kingdom spread, throughout Judea, in Samaria, across the mountains into Asia Minor, beyond the Euphrates eastward, across the ^gean Sea into Greece, thence into Italy, even into great Rome itself , and westward into Spain and beyond. Within thirty years, substantially, all this was accomplished, and before a line of the New Testament was written. It was the New Jerusalem let down from God out of Heaven. It soon changed the face of the world. In the world, it was not of the world — it was everywhere a divine kingdom within every earthly kingdom.

Thus, the Christian Church is a divine, not a human, institution. It is not a voluntary associa- tion or guild, such as men may make or unmake, with which they may or may not connect them- selves with no vital consequences in either case, or which they may erect or strike down at pleasure. It is the Church of the living God, built upon foun- dations of prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ Him- self being the chief Corner-Stone, and the promise and assurance is, that the gates of hell shall not pre-

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS. T23

vail against it. This divinely constituted Church, this kingdom of God in the world, is called, his- torically, Holy, Apostolic and Catholic.

Holy — as set apart, separate from the world, from the world-spirit, and all that dominates the world, and sanctified to God, and to all pure and blessed usages and purposes. It trains immortal souls spiritually. It conserves the knowledge, and worship, and service of God.

Apostolic — because built upon the Apostles as upon foundation-stones. The Apostles carried everywhere the Gospel, and planted everywhere the Church, organized into congregations of the faithful. They transmitted the orders, teachings, mission and jurisdiction committed to them, in a line that has not been broken for a moment from the beginning. Apostolic government, discipline, doctrine, fellowship, sacramental rites and meth- ods, make the Church apostoHc, to all of which witness the New Testament, the oecumenical councils, the great bishops and doctors, east and west, and all sacred history from the days when the Church began.

Catholic. The blessed Lord gave a religion for the world. It is a religioH greater and better than the world possessed before, or has possessed since apart from it. Judaism was racial, national, nec- essarily and inevitably. The chosen people were called out of the world to be in covenant relations

124 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

with God, thus witnesses to Him as the one true God, and a preparation for the day of the Lord. Judaism gave way, as it was not and could not be Catholic. No Pagan system ever was or could be Catholic — it could be but tribal, or, at the most, national. But the kingdom of God, the Church, is to compass all nations and kindreds and tribes and peoples, that every knee may bow to God, and every tongue confess to Him. Jesus Christ is the Light to lighten the Gentiles, as well as the glory of His people Israel. His commission is: — ** Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." " The Church," St. Cyril tells us, *' is called Catholic, because it extends through all the world, from one end of the earth to the other." But this is not all that is involved in the word Catholic. The word Church defines the word Catholic as really as the word Catholic de- scribes the Church. The Church is a divine and ^visible organization, not an idea, or condition, in- tangible, invisible, inorganic. It has its divinely called and consecrated Ministry, instituted by Jesus Christ. This Ministry is self-perpetuating, three-fold in character, bishops (as successors of the Apostles), priests and deacons. It has a specific doctrine or system of doctrines, called the Gospel, which, as communicated explicitly or im- plicitly by the blessed Lord, is His, and like Him- self is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever. It

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS, 125

cannot be changed, but in its essential features and statements of facts remains unalterable from generation to generation, unto the end of time. This Gospel may be called old. It is old — old as the purpose of God to save a fallen, sinful race — old as the time when His eternal and only Son took upon Him our nature, and was born of a pure Virgin, that He might unite humanity with Himself, and offer propitiation and atonement for the sins of the whole race. But the Gospel re- mains for ever new, for it applies to each genera- tion as it comes and goes, for its spiritual life and salvation. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it. There can be nothing read into it that does not, by the consentient voice of the Church, belong to it, and nothing can be read out of it that from the beginning was put there by the Holy Ghost. There is no new Gospel, and there can- not be. What is true in Christianity is true from the beginning, and is not new. What is new, in the sense of being otherwise than Christianity has ever been, is not true. The Catholic Church holds the Faith and Order and Polity which were in the beginning, the same everywhere, and always, and continually. Where this Faith, Order and Polity obtain, there is the CathoHc Church. " Catholic " means not only universality, and thus comprehen- siveness, but apostolic doctrine and fellowship and discipline. It is, therefore, exclusive as well as

126 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

inclusive. It excludes those who reject the faith — rather they exclude themselves. The Holy, Apos- tolic, Catholic Church does not include heresy, and cannot comprehend it within its system.

Again, Catholicity stands for unity. The Church is One, naturally and inevitably. For a thousand years this oneness prevailed. Then, owing to geographical and political conditions mainly, and in a measure to differences which gradually developed, this oneness, outwardly, ceased to exist, and the Church was known as Eastern or Western, Greek or Latin. Then the Western or Latin Church was riven, and, outwardly, communion ceased between the Roman and An- glican expressions of the Church. But whatever the conditions, and however apart these Com- munions may appear to be, they each and all pre- serve those essential features stamped upon the Church in the beginning by Our Blessed Lord and His Apostles. With whatever variations, they continue in the Apostolic Doctrine and Fel- lowship, and in the breaking of the Bread, and in the prayers. They constitute the outward, visi- ble, organic, historic Church of the Living God — and practically dominate the Christian world. Our own Anglican Branch, having its roots in England since the second century after Christ, long before there was an organized and consolidated English nation, may well be taken— is taken by ourselves —

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS. 127

as the purest and nearest akin to the primitive times. To its standard, the other great Branches will, in God's time and way, undoubtedly draw niofh. There will be no Christian unity otherwise. It occupies a vantage ground to this end, which Greek and Latin are more and more, however sometimes ungraciously and however slowly, con- fessing in explicit or in implicit terms.

Thus far, we have the Church set before us as a divinely instituted, visible, organic Body, with a divinely instituted Ministry, and a divinely enunciated doctrine or teaching. Through this organism, this Church, God is acting upon the world to save the world and to bring it to Him- self, redeemed in Jesus Christ. For definite pur- poses which will unfold themselves, the Church has possessed, from the first, certain characteristic, outward, visible, in essential features unvarying, actions. They are vital, integral factors in the very being of the Church, conserving its life and teaching, and enabling it to be effective in the spiritual uplifting of human souls. We call these " Sacraments." I am to speak of " The Tv/o Great Sacraments." These Sacraments have been ordained by Jesus Christ, the Great Head of the Church, and by Him it is commanded that they shall be continually administered by the Church to the end of the ages. As these were not originated by men, but by Our Blessed Lord,

128 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

they are not subject to the will of men. They are also unchangeable, in any way that may affect their essential nature or purpose, by any man, or any body of men, or even by the Church itself. They are to be retained, observed, administered, as the Lord directed, in the form and with the matter (elements) ordained by Him. They enter thus into the very constitution of the Church. The Bishops of the Anglican Communion specifi- cally recognize this. These Sacraments are part of the Deposit entrusted to the Episcopate, ''to be ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of institution, and of the elements ordained by Him." They are thus made an essential article to be accepted as a basis upon which there can be any hope of ever effecting Christian unity, or of conserving the integrity of the One, Holy, Cath- olic, Apostolic Church.

WHAT IS A SACRAMENT?

The Latin Sacramentum refers to a military oath of obedience and allegiance. The taking of this oath was often attended with much of re- ligious ceremony, to make it the more impressive and awe-inspiring. To violate that oath would be treason, the greatest crime of which a soldier could be guilty. As binding obligations are taken by Christians to their Lord, both in Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, there is seen at once the

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS, 129

force and the propriety of this word as used by the Church. The word Sacramentum^ moreover, is the equivalent of the Greek jxvarr^piov or " mys- tery." This word the Church used from the begin- ning. The language of the Church, at the first, crystallized in the Greek. The New Testament was written in Greek ; the early Liturgies were Greek; it was the language of the intercourse of the Eastern world. As Christianity passed to the West, and took root among Latin-speaking peoples, a change took place. The Bible was ren- dered into Latin. The great Western Fathers began to write in that tongue — it became the Church language of the West, and so continues in the Roman obedience unto this day. The Greek still continues the Church language of the East. The Anglican Church, as a part of the Western Church, has rendered its services into English, but borrows naturally many of its terms from the Latin. By the Greek, pivdrrjpioy was applied to any service to which only the initiated, or those properly prepared, were admitted. The idea of a great, spiritual meaning, not known to nor dis- cernible by everybody, was at the root of this usage. Holy Baptism was a mystery, for the re- ception and understanding of which, on the part of adults, preparation was essential — and only the baptized could be, or ever were, admitted to the Holy Eucharist. Precisely this was the idea

130 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

in the West, and in this way the West used the word SacramenUim.

The Greek Church recognizes seven sacraments: so does the Western Church. These are Holy Baptism, Confirmation, the Holy Eucharist, Holy Orders, Matrimony, Penance, and Extreme Unc- tion. Neither in the Greek Church, however, nor in the Roman, is the same emphasis laid upon each of these: there are the greater and the lesser. There are two that rise above all the rest— Holy Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. We are concerned in this lecture with these only. Now the general Christian definition of a Sacrament in its highest phase is, that it is '' an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," or, as it is called by St. Augustine, *' the sign of a sacred thing." These two Sacraments are declared as *' generally necessary to salvation "—in the explanation of which it may be sufficient to say, that they are necessary to salvation, if they can be obtained. These two were assuredly and specifically insti- tuted by the Blessed Saviour Himself, and were commanded by Him to be used in His Church for ever. *' He that is baptized," He declares, " shall be saved." His command to His Apostles was *' Go ye into all the world . . . baptizing . in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." '' This do," or *' offer," He directed the Apostles, when He instituted the

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS. 131

Holy Eucharist, by taking bread and breaking it — "this do, in remembrance of me." '^ Drink all ye of this," He said, when He took the cup and blessed it. " This is my Body," He said of the bread. " This is my Blood," He said of the wine. His words also are, *' Except ye eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, ye have no life in you" — the life of God is not in us.

In the sixteenth century, when the Church of England asserted its independence of Rome, it restored the cup to the laity. It then gradually eliminated accretions which had gathered from the conditions and circumstances through which the Church had passed, in what are called the *' Dark Ages." Some of these accretions had in a measure obscured the full significance of these two great Sacraments, which the Church of England now emphasized in the strongest language. It did not, however, deny the sacramental character of the other '' five commonly called Sacraments," but of these two the Church is explicit in its teachings. They are " ordained of Christ." They are not "badges or tokens" merely of our "Christian profession." They are " certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace and God's good will towards us," and by them He "quickens" and also " strengthens and confirms our faith in Him." The Catechism expressly declares the meaning of a sacrament to be an "outward and visible sign

132 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us : ordained by Christ Himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof." This definition is most carefully word- ed. There is an outward and visible sign to a Sacrament — the sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us; that grace answers to that sign : the sign must suggest it, the grace must be conformed to it. The outward and visible sign and the inward and spiritual grace are constituent elements of the Sacrament, mutually dependent and interdependent.

I. Lustration by water was not used for the first time by our Lord. What He did was to adopt the Rite and adapt it to His purpose, and ordain and constitute it a Christian Sacrament. The Baptism of John was with water, but it was not Christian Baptism. His was merely a symbolic Rite, signi- fying adherence to a new teaching and a life in accordance therewith. In the Baptist's view it was also, no doubt, a preparation for the incoming Kingdom of God, and so for the remission of sins. The Blessed Lord was baptized of John to empha- size John's relation to Him as His forerunner. He needed not that Baptism otherwise. He was without sin, and required no cleansing therefrom. The fact remains, therefore, that Baptism is a Sacrament of the Church, ordained as s.uch by Jesus Christ. From His time to ours it has been

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS. 133

in the Church, the door of entrance to the Church, for men, women and children. Unfailingly, water has been used, and the baptismal Formula. Valid Baptism is found in the use of water, whether by immersion, pouring or sprinkling, " in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." To what end } Thereby is the Church enlarged and perpetuated. It brings into new re- lations and new conditions in a new kingdom. Jesus Christ has established a kingdom, His Church. Everyone brought into it must be consecrated, set apart for it and in it. Being born naturally into the world, we are born by Baptism supernaturally into the kingdom of God's Son, and have the washing of regeneration. This is the *' New Birth," which, of course, is not to be confounded with the doctrine of conversion or the doctrine of sanctifi- cation, i.e., growth in grace. Holy Baptism brings out of the birth-estate of sin in the world into a state of grace in Christ's kingdom, and we are thereby made *' members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of Heaven." We are thus *' grafted" into the body of Christ, who is the " Head of the body, the Church " — grafted into Christ Himself. These new relations and conditions are correctly expressed by the word ** regenerate " — re- generate — re-made — no longer a child of the world, but a child of the Church and of God. Jesus Christ is the Eternal

134 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

Son of God, God's only Son. By Baptism we are made one with Christ, are adopted into the family of God, and become heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ of all that God can give or do in Him. We become one compact body with Him and with each other and with God. *' Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God"; is not a member of the Holy, Catholic and ApostoHc Church. Observe still, and carefully, that Holy Baptism as a Sacra- ment, administered as Christ ordained, is the '* out- ward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us,'^ It is given to us in and through that Baptism. The inward and spiritual grace is a divine power of the Holy Ghost, whereby we die unto sin and live unto Christ. The old man is put off and the new man is put on. Birth sin is washed away, and the soul starts anew, with the power of an endless Hfe infused, a spiritual grace implanted, which, if used, brings the soul under subjection to God, and enables it to grow up into Christ in all things. We may not know how this change is effected or how this power operates, but the fact remains. '' The wind blow- eth where it listeth and we hear the sound there- of, but cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit." We have the assurance of Jesus Christ Himself as to all this. We are baptized into Him; His life

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS,

135

takes possession of our life, unless we reject Him or are unfaithful to Him. The Church is a body of baptized persons, baptized after the manner, and with the matter ordained by the Lord. These con- stitute the Church, the Body of the Faithful — the Church that is Holy, Apostolic, Cathohc, the Church on earth and in Heaven, the Church of all the ages. This Sacrament of Holy Baptism, there- fore, cannot be yielded, cannot be abrogated. It is a deposit which the Church holds, which the Church must administer, and which by and through the Church only can be validly bestowed. It is a very different thing, as may be at once discerned, from that which is sometimes called Baptism, but which is either otherwise administered than as Christ ordained, or is robbed of all the meaning and efficacy which are attached to it by the teach- ing of Revelation or by the consciousness of the Church. In the mind of the Church it is not the sign declarative of a pre-existing fact, nor even a symbolic setting forth of what is ideally desirable. It takes man out from the world and from the state of sin in which he is born into the world, and makes him a citizen of the kingdom of God, with the old life blotted out, and a new life begun. It is God's provision, in His infinite mercy, by which there is now union with Him in Christ, and with the saints of all ages, past and present and to come. It is the sprinkling of the blood of the New Covenant,

136 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS,

by which the soul is made white in the light of the glorified Lord.

2. The great Sacrament of Holy Baptism, how- ever, but introduces into the kingdom of God, in a regenerate state and under new conditions and in new relations, and is thus but a preparation for the life of that kingdom, which is a continuous kingdom. In that kingdom there must needs be the perpetual reaching out and on, until there shall be attained the stature of perfection in Christ Jesus the Lord. To this end there must be the perpetual nourishing and strengthening of the new and Divine life, that it fail not, but that it may increase more and more unto the perfect day, from glory unto glory. For this, provision is made in that other great Sacrament, also or- dained by Christ. This Sacrament stands for much besides this — stands for the conservation and the presentation of the Incarnation, and the Sacrifice, and the Atonement, and for the wonder and power and glory of them — but it stands also for this. It has various designations.

It is called (^) "The Eucharist," as signifying the giving or returning thanks, thus a Thanksgiv- ing, or Thank-Offering. This term is used alike in the Eastern and Western Church.

It is called {b) **A memorial," because the essen- tial meaning of the words *' This do in remem- brance of me" is, "This offer as a Memorial of

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS. 137

me,*' — of course, a Memorial before God. The word *' do " is properly " offer," and as such is used repeatedly in the Greek version of the Old Testament. To *' offer" is a term of sacrifice, the '' Sacrifice of the Altar." A sacrifice is any- thing, living or otherwise, submitted to God in whatever way, as a religious offering. For what- ever else this Sacrament exists, it exists to '' show the Lord's death "; but His death was a sacrificial offering to God " for us men and for our salvation." He was the '^Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," and now, in His glory, is represented as a " Lamb as if slain " in the presence of God for us, and pleading His sacrifice of Himself. This idea of sacrifice inheres in the very constitution of this Sacrament. '' This is my Body," broken for you. ''This is my Blood," shed for you. His Body was offered on the Cross, and there His Blood flowed for humanity. It is therefore rightly called a Sacrifice, a Memorial Sacrifice because it brings before us His Sacrifice; it represents (re-presents) that Sacrifice, not only before us but before God, as Christ Himself, our Great High Priest, for ever pleads before the Throne the offering of Himself upon the Altar of Calvary. This is not, however, and must not be assumed as, a repetition o{'&\q Sacrifice of the Cross, or any the least renewal of Christ's sufferings or of His death. His sacrificial death was once for all, not only for all men, but

1 3 8 THE T WO GREA T SA CRA MEN TS.

for all time, and can never be repeated. He made, once for all, a *' full, perfect, and sufficient sacri- fice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world."

It is called {c) "a Communion." The Faithful partake of it, as did the Apostles when it was first instituted. Together we partake — partake of one Bread, or Loaf, broken, and of one Cup — thus declaring that we are one with Christ, one redeemed family in Him, feeding on the Bread of Heaven and the Wine of God, which is One Christ. It is a feast upon a sacrifice — and thus, a Communion. The Paschal Supper was eaten and ended; and the type, finding its fulfil- ment in Christ, ceased, and the new Rite was or- dained to take its place, and to show forth the One Lamb of God who was slain for us.

By whatever name called, however, each desig- nation bringing out some special feature and em- phasizing it, the essential nature and meaning of this Sacrament remain. As a Sacrament, there is the outward and visible sign, and the inward and spiritual grace. It is a " mystery "; but a mystery is always something that is known in part, but of which something remains unknown until revealed. As the outward and visible sign we have the Bread and Wine. The inward and spiritual grace, given to us in and through the sign, consists in the Body and Blood of Christ, '* spiritually taken

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS. 139

and received by the Faithful," so that there is the "strengthening- and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ, as our bodies are by the bread and wine." There is here no definition of how the Lord is present in the Sacrament, or how He is received by us, or how we are strength- ened and refreshed, but the fact is clearly stated. We receive the Body and Blood sacramentally, and are sacramentally built up in Christ. The Sacrament is not, therefore, and cannot be, merely a memorial — something which simply reminds of Christ. In that view, there is no sacramental character or efficacy, no spiritual vitality, or grace, or virtue. On the other hand, as already stated, there is no renewal here of Christ's per- sonal sacrifice. To sustain that view, Transub- stantiation would be in complete harmony, and must needs be accepted. But Transubstantiation, in any real sense, there is not in this Sacrament. That would involve not only the constant and multitudinous repetition of the death of Our Blessed Lord, but a constantly recurring miracle for which there is no precedent, no occasion, and no authority. On the theory of Transubstantia- tion, so awful, so appalling are the possible dangers involved in the administration of the Cup, that the withdrawal of the Cup from the laity is justified, — even in view of the fearful consequences involved in what may then.be a mutilated Sacrament.

I40 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

" The Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the cup of blessing" is a partaking of the Blood of Christ." But " the Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual man- ner." There is a '* Real Presence " of Our Blessed Lord in this Sacrament, not a real absence. We partake of Him. We commemorate His sacri- ficial death for us. We plead before the Throne of God His propitiatory offering, for ourselves, for the whole Church, and for the whole world. It is the One Bread broken, and the One Cup of the New Covenant in His Blood, witnessing our unity each with the other, with our Saviour, and with our God.

Clearly, any essential change in this Sacrament as to the "sign" (the elements used, the method of using them, and the words of consecration) would endanger the character of the Sacrament, and thus invalidate its efficacy. It would cease to be what was instituted by Christ, and could no longer be held as a witness or a channel of any inward and spiritual grace given unto us. This is true, also, of course, of the other great Sacra- ment, Holy Baptism. These Sacraments, as di- vinely instituted, as ordained by Christ Himself, have supernatural virtues, whether we will have it so or not. The Christian religion is a supernatu- ral religion. It has no meaning otherwise that

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS. 141

we are under obligation to recognize. It must be supernatural, as dealing with God and His rela- tions with men, with the soul and its relations to God, with spiritual verities, and spiritual life, and an immortal destiny. The alternative is logical and necessary — either the Christian religion is a supernatural religion, or there is no such thing as a Christian religion. Whatever pertains essen- tially, therefore, to this rehgion, may well be, and must be, taken as channels or instruments of con- veying supernatural efficacies. The conscious- ness of the Greek Church was not astray when it called, as it still calls, the sacraments by the word *' "Mystery." Nor was the consciousness of the Latin Church astray when it called, as it still calls, these mysteries *' Sacraments," and defined a Sacrament as the ''sign of a sacred thing," or the '' external sign of an inward grace." Moreover, as by the great mysteries of Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper, our souls are bound to Christ, to live to Him and for Him in loving obedience to His holy will, as the great Captain of our salva- tion, the ancient meaning of the word Sacramen- tiim stands out boldly. The Sacraments are to us, in very truth, the oaths of our allegiance to God in Christ Jesus our Lord, as soldiers of the Cross, to fight the good fight until the world shall be subject to Him by the witness we give, or until we shall die in the battle for victory over all that

142 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

opposes itself against Him as rightfully the Lord of lords, and the King of kings.

As with the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, so with the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. It is a deposit received by the Church, to be conserved by the Church, and transmitted unimpaired by the Church through the ages. It is for the sus- tenance of human souls brought into union with Jesus Christ by Baptism. It is the impartation of Christ Himself to the souls of the faithful; by vir- tue of which we become bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh, blood of His blood, until those who are in Him, individually and collectively, shall be changed into His glorious image, as one body, transfigured and resplendent. The Catholic, Apostolic Church cannot yield this Sacrament, or vary or alter it in any essential feature, or make it, in any way or sense, other than it is, and as it has received it. To do so would involve the spiritual impoverishment and gradual decline and death of the Church itself. As the Church is able to give, in the Sacrament of Baptism, union with Christ, and so with God, and with all saints Hving here or beyond the stars, so it gives, in the Sacra- ment of the Body and Blood of Christ, the very life of Christ Himself, which thus flows through all lives of all saints, everywhere and forever, holding their lives as one life, an eternal life, ever enlarging as it rolls on, and ever gathering to

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS, 143

itself the fulness of the blessedness and purity, the joy and peace of Heaven. Upon these two great Sacraments the Episcopate rightly insists. These the Church only can bestow in all their ful- ness; these it is willing and anxious, as trustee for God, to bestow upon all those who will accept. These Sacraments are now, as they have ever been, the bunds of the Catholic Church, holding it fast to the faith of Christ. When they shall be rightly understood, appreciated and accepted, when all who profess and call themselves Christians, but who are now away from or outside of the historic Church of the Living God, shall become obedient to them, they will be found the uniting powers that will bring again the scattered remnants of the spiritual Israel, the broken fragments of Christen- dom, and there will be once more one Fold and one Shepherd, one Faith and one Church.

Obviously, this view of these two Sacraments, being essentially the view held by the historic Church, East and West, by the Greek Church and its dependencies, the Latin Church and its con- stituencies, and the Anglican Church wherever scattered abroad, must be preserved intact by us. Certainly this must be, if we would aid in further- ing the cause of a universal and abiding Christian unity, so devoutly to be desired, or if there shall be any hope of securing that unity. To yield these Sacraments, by the toning down of their

144 THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS.

meaning or power, or by admitting In association with them views quite commonly held, would be the emphasizing of lines divergent from the great Catholic bodies of the world, and would make the consummation of their reunion impossible. We should lose then the vantage-ground which it is believed that we now possess in furthering the accomplishment of the unity of Catholic Christen- dom. A unity of Protestant Christendom would be but partial unity after all. The bishops of this Church of ours never meant, and could not mean, to sever themselves from the Catholic heri- tage which is theirs, and so make more formida- ble and more hopeless the divergencies which now exist. The fulness of the sacramental Idea, as held in the Church from the beginning, is ours, and the blessings inherent therein. These Sacra- ments we offer in all loving sincerity and earnest- ness to our non-Episcopal brethren of whatever name, assured that the acceptance of the Sacra- mental idea will serve to unify them, and the sooner and more surely lead to a possible unity in the faith and Person of our Lord Jesus Christ in the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one nourish- ment of the soul by the Body and Blood of Christ, one God and Father of us all — this is the goal to which we may and ought to press. This is the divine ideal of the Church on earth. This

THE TWO GREAT SACRAMENTS. 145

will be the realization of the Church in Heaven. We have a Baptism which makes members of Christ and of His Church. We have an altar, and the priests of God everywhere offer the Sacrifice as the great and central act of the worship of the Church — which it has been from the beginning-. It is everywhere, as it has ever been — the plead- ing of His atoning sacrifice upon the cross, Who prayed that all who named His Name might be one with each other, and one with Him, and one with God.

Zbc 1bi6toric lEplecopate*

LECTURE V.

THE REV. FRANCIS J. HALL, M.A.,

Instructor of Theology in the Western Theological Seminary, Chicago, 111.

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE,

It is my privilege to address you concerning the Historic Episcopate.

I need not labor to convince you of the impor- tance of the subject. The air is full of it. Chris^ tians of every name are wrestling with the problem of Church Unity ; and the sectarian world about us considers our insistence upon the Historic Epis- copate to be the chief barrier to unity, while our own Bishops have asserted that Ministry to be "in- capable of compromise or surrender." It is clear that no unity is possible between parties thus op- posed to each other, until the claims of the His- toric Episcopate have been duly examined and an agreement has been reached as to their validity.

Other issues are involved in this controversy, and of vital nature. It is a fact that the rejection of the Episcopate has been followed sooner or

150 THE HISTORIC EP I SCO PA TE.

later by heresy, decay of faith in the doctrine of supernatural grace, disintegration and unbelief. To one who believes in the doctrine of Apostolic Succession this seems perfectly natural ; for what is more logical and inevitable than that such re- sults should follov/ upon a loss of the Ministry — and the only Ministry — which God has ordained and empowered to guard the Faith, dispense the means of grace, and hold the faithful together in unity until the end of days?*

The subject of the Historic Episcopate neces- sarily has peculiar interest for us. The Protestant world invites us to justify the attitude assumed by our Bishops in their Declaration of Unity, wherein they insist upon the Episcopate as upon an tilti- viatiim, refusing to compromise or surrender it even when called upon to do so for the sake of unity and charity. This invitation is a natural one ; and, if we would avoid appearance of evil, we must give a sufficient reason for our position, and one equivalent to religious necessity. Noth- ing short of this will justify the setting forth of an iiltimatiim as to the course to be pursued in restor- ing visible unity to the Church of God.

In order to exhibit such a reason we may be obliged to display truths and convictions which

* Haddan's Apostolical Succession i?i the Church of England^ 1883, pp. vi., ig-22.

THE HISTORIC EP I SCOP A TE, 151

are not acceptable to those who question us. But in such case, the interests of honor as well as of charity will require that we should lay bare the true nature of the hindrances in this direction which must be removed before unity can be secured.

It is my purpose to exhibit as well as I can {a) the meaning of our fourth term of unity ; {U) an outline of the historical argument which justifies that term ; {c) its practical bearing on the prob- lem of Church Unity.

I.

The fourth term of unity, set forth in 1 886, reads : The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its adminiUratiuJi to the varying needs of the stations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church!^

(a) This language is not fairly charged with am- biguity, especially if the nature of the Declaration in which it occurs is considered. t Its leading phrase, '' the Historic Episcopate," was surely in- tended, and has been taken by many, to be simply '' the polite equivalent of a controversial term [Apostolic Succession] which had long been in use," as one of our Bishops '\. expresses it.

* Journal Gen. Conv. 1SS6, p. 80,

f The whole difficulty of interpretation has arisen from isolating the terms of unity from their context.

X Bishop McLaren, in the New York Independent, Mcli. 8, 1894.

1 5 2 THE HIS TORIC E PISC OP A TE.

But this, the natural interpretation, has been explained away by certain eminent Churchmen, and their explanations have misled certain Prot- estants and have disturbed many among ourselves who look to the chief Pastors of the Church to give forth no uncertain sound.

Our Bishops are said to have " fastened on cer- tain words, the characteristic of which is, that they express a fact without at all insisting upon any theory of the fact. . . . That government by oversight, v/hich is what * episcopacy,' when trans- lated, means, has been historically the prevailing method of polity in Christendom, certainly from the second century onwards, is beyond dispute. . . . That if we are to have organic unity at all, it is more reasonable to expect that it should be brought about under this method of pilotage than any other." In short we are told that *' it is a simple falling back on fact. Think as you please, the Bishops seem to say, about the nature and sanction of the Christian Ministry." ^

We have no quarrel with the amiable spirit which lies behind such an interpretation ; but we cannot accept its reasonableness, nor can we dis- cover how the Episcopate will be made more ac-

* Dr. Huntington's Peace of the Church, pp.' 204, 205. Cf. -vlso Dr. Shields's United Church of the United States, pp. 5 = ,

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPA TE, 153

ceptable to Protestant denominations by our re- fusing to give any more adequate reason for in- sisting- upon it than the fact that it has existed for a long time. Does mere antiquity make a thing necessary ? Can the phrase " incapable of compromise or surrender," employed by our Bish- ops, be rightly applied to anything which is not necessary in itself? Does an opinion on our part that " it is more reasonable to expect that " unity '' should be brought about under this method of pilotage than any other" make the Episcopate in- capable of compromise or surrender ? It is thought, I know, that, if we claim Divine sanction for the Episcopate, we shall be considered pre- sumptuous. But shall we be thought less so in requiring the religious world to yield to us with reference to what we refuse to say is of more than human sanction ? Is not humility with those who magnify their office on the ground that it is of Divine institution and held in trust, rather than with those who do the same thing on grounds purely human ? Are our Protestant brethren in- capable of answering such questions with common sense ?

It is indeed true, as even so staunch a Church- man as the late Canon Liddon could say, that, in asserting Apostolic Succession, *' we are not for- mulating a theory, but stating a fact of history."*

* Clerical Life and Work, op. 2qi. 2q2.

1 5 4 THE HIS TORIC EPISCOPA TE.

But, as that saintly Priest would readily have agreed, there are facts, of which Apostolic Succession is one, which cannot be stated without immediate impli- cations of doctrinal nature, which we cannot es- cape without evasion of the facts themselves. Thus, the doubting Thomas found himselt obliged, the instant in which he realized the fact that his Master had risen in very flesh and bones from the dead, to acknowledge His Godhead and adore Him; and those who lose their hold upon the reality of the physical resurrection of our Lord come ulti- mately, if they live long enough, to a denial of His Person. The phrase *' Historic Episcopate" stands for a fact of such nature ; and the fact signified is that the Episcopate was instituted by Christ to be the earthly source of spiritual juris- diction and the bond of visible unity in the Church to the end of days.

We cannot accept such a fact without treating the Episcopate as of Divine requirement, and be- lieving that its maintenance is inseparably bound up with the maintenance of true religion. • It is as absurd to speak of believing in the Historic Epis- copate as a fact merely, as it is to speak of be- lieving in God as a fact merely. God is a Being Whose very Nature requires our loyalty, so that the fact of His existence cannot be duly stated without doctrines and consequences appearing which should modify our lives. In like manner, the

THE HIS TORIC EPISCOPA TE. 155

Historic Episcopate is by nature or, if you prefer to put it so, historically, a fact with implications as to authority which we cannot evade without ignoring the contents of the fact itself. The fact includes Christ's mission, and a Divinely sanc- tioned government in the Church, from which there can be no earthly appeal, as well as a perma- nent stewardship of grace and truth.

In view of such considerations, we hold that our Bishops were not likely to have submitted the Historic Episcopate '' simply as a question of pol- ity," as a brilliant and amiable Presbyterian pro- fessor expresses it.* Nor can we assent to his assertion that " it is of prime importance that such dogmas [as Apostolic Succession] . . . should sink out of view while we are considering its claims and merits as a Christian institution." t To require '' the Historic Episcopate, as neither enjoining nor forbidding any doctrine of Apostolic Succession":}: would be mere trifling, whatever our convictions might be. If we look upon the Episcopate as essential to the maintenance of true religion, what right have we to enter into an arrangement which will sooner or later place it in the power of those who regard it as of human origin and subject to human modification ? If, on

* Prof. Shields's United Church of the United States, p. 157. t Ibid, ilbid. p. 182.

1 5 6 THE HIS TORIC EP I SCO PA TE.

the Other hand, we believe, as we do not, that the Episcopate is merely desirable and not essential, how can we answer satisfactorily the question of the Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, who asks, " Why make that essential to the organiza- tion of all Churches into one, which is conceded to be unessential to the legitimate organization of any ? " * Truly '' such a position cannot be suc- cessfully defended as a sine qua non to Church union." t And the light in which thoughtful sec- tarians usually regard it is truly expressed by a well- known editor, when he says, it '* is arrogance, and arrogance is not the road to Christian union." %

It is, in fact, just such interpretations as I have been reviewing which occasion and justify the charge so frequently made that our insistence upon the Episcopate is the chief barrier to unity. § We cannot refute such a charge on any other than the highest doctrinal ground, viz., that the Epis- copate is of Divine institution and requirement, and for that reason '' incapable of compromise or surrender " by its stewards and trustees.

i^b) To proceed : if our fourth term cannot be cleared from the charge of absurdity except on

* Dr Josiah Strong, in The Question of U)iity^ edited by Dr. Bradford, p. 25. flbid. p. 26, ilbid. p. 38. § Ibid. p. 26.

THE HIS TORTC EP I SCO PA TE. 1 5 7

high doctrinal grounds, neither should it be re- garded as committing this Church in the slightest degree, unless it is consistent with her formularies. Our Bishops, as they themselves have said re- cently, speak " not as truth-seekers, but as truth receivers, ' ambassadors in bonds,* " and their **sole inquiry is : What does this Church teach? What is the declaration of God's Holy Word?"* Their elevation to the Episcopate did not nullify their priestly obligation and vow '' always so to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church hath received the same." They may indeed say and do much in their episcopal capacity simply, making use of methods not pro- vided for in the Constitution and Canons of our General Convention. They have often done so — *'in Council" and in the Lambeth Conferences. But they cannot alter the Constitution and Can- ons, nor can they lawfully commit the General Convention to the necessity of such alterations, except by methods constitutionally provided.

In view of these elementary principles, we are unwilHng to read into the Declaration touching the Historic Episcopate any meaning which would require an alteration in the doctrines of this Church or a change in its polity. No doubt our Bishops will always be ready to do what in them lies to-

* Pastoral Letter of 1894, p. 9.

1 5 8 THE HISTORIC EP I SCOP A TE.

ward locally adapting our episcopal polity to the peoples with whom they have to do; but we have too much confidence in them to beheve that they will attempt this by unconstitutional methods, in- consistent with the terms on which they have re- ceived their Office.* It is hardly necessary to add, that to interpret any part of their Declaration on Unity, issued as it was without legislative action, as intended to commit this Church, under con- ditions of their own naming, to doctrinal and ecclesiastical changes of radical nature, is to deal somewhat severely with their reputations for loy- alty. Surely we are warranted in denying that their language pointed to any ** structural sur- render " ;t and in treating their fourth term as in- tended to be in harmony with the existing for- mularies and principles of this Church.

Her principles are clear enough in this matter. She has not, indeed, treated her doctrine of the Ministry, or any other portion of her Faith, as re- quiring legislative enactment, or as affected in the slightest degree as to its binding force by its being inscribed in the Constitution of her General

* When they were consecrated they vowed to "exercise such discipline as by the authority of God's Word, and by the order of this Church, is committed unto" them. See Or- dinal.

f Bishop McLaren, in New York Independent, March 8, i8qj.

THE HISTORIC E PI SCO PA TE. 159

Convention."^ It is also true that she has no- where set forth her doctrine of the Ministry in connected order and detail in her formularies. But we can discover sufficient indications of her mind none the less.

She has said in the Preface of her Ordinal that " from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests and Deacons. Which Offices were ever- more had in such reverend estimation, that no man might presume to execute any of them, except he were first called, . . . and also by public Prayer, with Imposition of Hands, were approved and admitted thereunto by lawful Authority. And therefore to the intent that these Orders may be continued, and reverently used and esteemed in this Church, no man shall be accounted or taken to be a lawful Bishop, Priest or Deacon, in this Church, or suffered to execute any of the said functions, except he be called, tried, examined and admitted thereunto, according- to the Form here- after following, or hath had Episcopal Consecra-

* The General Convention is not " this Church," but a legal corporation employed by and subject to this Church. Its Constitution is mutable and deals with changeable things. The Church's own Constitution, including her Faith and polity, is divine and immutable. The General Convention legislates for its maintenance, not for its enactment, definition, or revision.

1 60 THE HISTORIC EP I SCOP A TE.

tion or Ordination." In her prayers the Church assumes that God has appointed " divers Orders " in His Church, by His " Divine Providence," * and by His "" Holy Spirit ";t and that the Apos- tohc Commission is a proper reason for conse- crating Bishops to be the ** Pastors " of Christ s Church and to ''administer the godly discipline thereof." % She interprets the Scriptural injunc- tion " to lay hands suddenly on no man " as prop- erly applicable to the Consecration of Bishops; § and connects those gifts of the Holy Ghost where- by He makes "some Apostles, some Prophets," etc., with the same action.il She professes *'by the imposition of the hands " of her Bishops to confer the Holy Ghost *' for the Office and work of a Bishop in the Church of God."

In her Office of Institution she testifies that Christ hath " promised to be with the Ministers of Apostolic Succession to the end of the world." ^f She receives into her Ministry those who have re- ceived Episcopal ordination in other Commun-

* Collect in the Ordinal of Deacons.

f Collect in the Ordinal of Priests. Also the prayer before the examiaation of Bishops-elect.

\ Collect in the Ordinal of Bishops.

§ Address to the Bishop-elect before his examination.

II Prayer before the laying-on of hands. Cf. Ephes. iv. 11; I. Cor. xii 28.

T[ Second prayer before the benediction.

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPA TE. 1 6 1

ions,* and treats all other so-called ordinations as null and void, in the Constitution and Canons of her General Convention. t In brief, if she has not defined the doctrine of Apostolic Succession in set terms, she has at least tied herself to modes of address to God and man, and to rules of action, which are inscrutable on the supposition that that doctrine does not express her mind.

There, has been no reason for formal definitions. This Church is a daughter of the Church of England, being under the Episcopal oversight of the Bishop of London before the Revolution, and asserting her origin and structure by the name Episcop.il when the division of national jurisdiction took place. She declares in the Preface of her Pra}er Book that she "is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline or worship " In acting and praying on the basis of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, therefore, she but retains her ancient constitution and Faith; for, in spite of the vaga- ries of individual writers and schools and in spite of laxity of individual ecclesiastics in the exercise of discipline, the corporate positio7i of the English Church, as embodied in her formularies and dis- played in her elaborate care for the preservation of the Historic Episcopate and succession, has

* Title I., Canon 15, Digest of 1S92. f Title I., Canon 3 § vi. ; r/. Canon 17.

1 6 2 THE Ills TORIC EP I SCOP A TE.

been unmistakable, and in agreement with Catho- lic doctrine. ^^

{c) Having shown to the best of my ability that our fourth term is absurd, presumptuous and dis- loyal, unless submitted from a high doctrinal point of view, I only need to give explicit proof, by quotations from their own language, that our Bishops were neither unreasonable nor disloyal, but assumed in their fourth term a defensible and Catholic position.

The Declaration consists, as you are aware, of preamble and body. The body of the Declaration includes not only the so-called '' terms " of unity (an inaccurate phrase), but also some explanatory matter and an express statement of the doctrinal reason for insisting upon the Episcopate and other "■ terms " of unity. Permit me to quote from it.

We do hereby affirm, our Bishops say, that the Christian unity nozv so earnestly desired . . . can be restored only by the return of all Christian Commu7iions to the principles of nnity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence; which principles we believe to be tJu substantial deposit of Faith and Order com- ml t ted by Christ and His Apostles to the Church unto the end of the wjrld, and therefore incapable of cjrnpromise or surrender by those zvho have been

*Haddan's Apostolical Succession, ch. vi., especially pp. 158-177.

THE HIS TORIC EP I SCO PA TE. 163

ordained to he its stezuards and trustees for the com- mon and equal benefit of all men.

As inherent parts of this sacred deposit, and therefore as essential to the restoration of imity ammg the divided branches of Christendom, zve ac- count the following, t) zvit:

4. The Historic Episcopate,'^ etc. I have spoken at considerable length on the in- terpretation of our fourth term of unity, because I am convinced that the novelties which have been imputed to our Bishops will do more harm to the cause of genuine Church Unity, if allowed to pass, than can be repaired for a long time to come. I think, however, that I need not say more in connection v/ith this, except to give a brief outline of the sense in which our fourth term appears to be submitted,

1. That term, so far as it may be called a term, is an 2iltimatum, for our Bishops declare that the Episcopate is '' incapable of compromise or sur- render."

2. The reason advanced for thus insisting upon the Episcopate is that it is an " inherent part " of a " sacred deposit," '' the substantial deposit of Faith and Order committed by Christ and His Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world."

3. The Catholic doctrine of the Episcopate is not

* Gen. Conv. Journal, 1S86, p. 80.

1 64 THE HIS TORIC E PI SCO PA TE .

expressly mentioned among our terms of unity;* but the reason given for offering the terms which are mentioned, and, therefore, the sense in which the Historic Episcopate is insisted upon, make it im- possible to accept the fourth term in good faith without accepting that doctrine.

4. No action has been contemplated by this Church which would be likely, at any future time, to render the maintenance of the traditional posi- tion and doctrine of the Episcopate an open ques- tion.

Let us pass on.

II.

The second part of my task is to give an out- line of the historical argument by which our fourth term of unity may be defended.

We need not concern ourselves with the ab- stract question as to whether it is the beirg or the well-being of the Church that makes the Epis- copate essential; for, if it is essential to either, it must be " incapable of compromise or surrender." Our position is not based upon abstract distinc- tions, but is historical, and consists in the belief that the Historic Episcopate was ordained by Christ and His Apostles, and given the exclusive jurisdiction and power of self-perpetuation by im-

So Prof. Shields urges in his United Church, p. 184.

THE HISTORIC E PI SCO PA TE. 165

position of hands, which is still conceded to it by three-fourths of the Christian world.

{a) The time at my disposal will not admit of my attempting more than to give an outline of our historical argument, and to point out the sig- nificance of its various parts.

At the outset, permit m.e to call your attention to the limits of what should be expected of us in defending our position. The burden of proof does 7iot rest upon 07ir shoulders. Our position is his- torically far more ancient than any which opposes it, and has been maintained by the Catholic Church without interruption from the earliest age to which it is possible to retrace the continuity of Christian thought and practice. From that age until the Protestant revolution of modern days no departure from this position occurred worth men- tioning. Moreover, the original Protestant bodies did not break away from the Episcopate Inten- tionally or on principle in the first instance, but invented the presbyterial and congregational the- ories of ecclesiastical polity, ex post facto, in order to justify their continuance in the state of schism into which their unregulated zeal for reform had brought them."^ In common with a vast majority of living Christians, we have inherited the mind of the saints through many unbroken ages; and until positive evidence is forthcoming, sufficient to show

* Haddan's Apostolical Succession, pp. loi, 131-137.

1 6 6 THE HIS TORIC EPISCOPA TE.

that this mind was not the pentecostal mind of the Church; nor that of sub-apostolic Christianity, the paths of safety for us will be what we have known to be the ancient paths.

Various attempts have been made to prove that Episcopacy was not established by Christ and His Apostles, but was of subsequent and purely human development. They all fall into two classes.

I. The first class of arguments makes much of names, and treats the terms Bishop, Presbyter and Deacon as if they possessed from the outset a fixed and technical meaning such as they ac- quired at a later period. On this assumption it is argued that when St. Paul speaks of Timothy's ordination '* with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery," ''^ he means that Timothy was ordained by those whom we in our day would call Presbyters. Again, it is alleged, on slender grounds, that in sub-apostolic days the Bishop of Alexandria v/as appointed and ordained by Pres- byters.f

Without entering into details, it is a sufficient

" I. Tim. iv, 14.

f Lightfoot, Dissertations on Apostolic Age, p. 194, in his anx- iety to avoid claiming too much, appears to concede this. But Gore, On the Ministry^ pp. 134-144, and Note B, dis- cusses Lightfoot's reasons and shows that his concession was uncalled foi.

THE HIS TORIC EP I SCO PA TE. 1 6 7

answer to both Instances alleged to say that the use of ministerial titles was too fluctuating in primitive days to be made the basis of argument, unless circumstances can be shown to indicate the particular application of the title which is em- ployed in the instances cited. As Bishop An- drewes has shown, *' in the beginning regard was not had to distinction of names; the authority and power was ever distinct, the name not restrained, either in this, or other." ^ The Apostles them- selves were called Bishops, f Presbyters if and Deacons. § Thesuccessorsof the Apostles, whom we call Bishops, were also called in the New Tes- tament Apostles,! Presbyters T[ and Deacons.-^ Those who belonged apparently to the Order be- low the Bishops were called Bishops also. ft Our Lord Himself was called Apostle^t Bishop, §§ Priest IJil and Deacon. 1"! Surely an argument which depends for its force upon the use of a min- isterial title in the New Testament must be val- ueless, unless supported by conclusive evidence

* A Summary View of the Government, Both of the Old and

New Testament. Ang. Cath, Ly., pp. 359, 360.

f Acts i. 20. ft Phil. i. i; Tit. i. 7.

X I. Pet. V. I. XX Heb. iii. i.

§ I. Cor. iii. 5. g§ I. Pet. ii. 25.

II Phil. ii. 25. ill Heb. v. 6.

^ I. Tim. V. 17. W Rom. xv. 8. ** I. Tim. iv. 6.

1 6S THE HIS TORIC EP I SCOP A TE.

as to the application of the title in the case referred to. This lack of fixed and technical use of names continued for some time after the death of the Apostles in certain portions of the Church, and may be held to account sufficiently for the apparent anomalies in Alexandria and elsewhere.

The Church did not hold the doctrine of i^e Trinity with less faithfulness in ante-Nicene days, because she had not yet learned to express its contents with the theolog-ical accuracy which she acquired by conflict with heretical subtleties.* In like manner, we may not argue that the Church failed to distinguish the Episcopate from the Pres- byterate, or that she did not recognize its ex- clusive authority and Divine sanction, merely be- cause she had not yet acquired that caution and crystallized accuracy in the use of titles which is the result of experience alone.

2. The other line of argument is one which was used with great skill by the late Dr. Hatch. f It was not original with him, although by no one more plausibly presented, but has been frequently urged by Protestant writers. Dr. Hatch argued as follows: The phenomena of Christian history

* Bishop Bull and Newman have shown this, f The Organization of the Early Christian Churches : being the Bampton Lectures of 1880.

THE HISTORIC EP I SCO PA TE. 169

are undoubtedly unique in their transcendent in- terest and importance: "but if they or any part of them {e.g., those connected with Episcopacy] can be accounted for by causes which are known to have operated in the production of similar phe- nomena, under similar conditions of society, the presumption, in the absence of positive evidence to the contrary, will be in favour of those who infer an identity of cause," ^ and claim that the episcopal polity of the Church is of natural origin and accounted for by that " economy of causes'' by which the whole universe is governed. He urges that it is not legitimate to allow an a priori theory of what God was likely to do to override the conclusions which follow from an examination of what He has actually done.f Yet his own argument is made illegitimateby the very mistake which he criticises. He honestly acknowledges "the disadvantage under which any one labours who declines the short and easy road" which an acceptance of the traditional hypothesis "seems to offer"; and admits that " a hypothesis has long been current which does not admit of direct refu- tation, and which assigns the origin of this quasi- monarchical government to an institution of our Lord or the Apostles acting under His express

* Bampton Lectures, pp. xix,, 17-19. f Ibid. pp. 213-216.

1 7 O THE HIS TORIC E PI SCO PA TE.

directions." He prefers, however, to " wind his way through a dense undergrowth of facts," as he calls them, saying- that ''it is impossible" — I quote his words — "to accept the belief that the Episcopate forms an exception to the general course of the divine government of the world, and to refrain from proceeding to the inquiry whether any causes were in operation which are adequate to account for its supremacy, without resorting to the hypothesis of a special and extraordinary in- stitution."'^^

The argument is, as I have said, skilfully worked out. Each phenomenon is treated as if belonging entirely to the natural order, and made to bear a different meaning from that which it admits of when regarded from the traditional point of view. Conjecture is made to do the work of ascertained fact, and an hypothesis is built up which may ap- pear plausible to those who accept the author's a priori assumption, in favor of which he cannot himself claim anything stronger than presumption. The validity of the argument depends entirely upon the validity of its assumption that Episco- pacy cannot have been of supernatural origin and Divine institution. This assumption begs the question, and is the same in kind with that of Hume in his argument against miracles — the im-

* Bampton Lectures, p. 84.

THE HIS TORIC EP I SCO PA TE. 171

possibility of supernatural interventions in his- tory. The method is that of Gibbon,"''' who thought he had accounted for the origin of Chris- tianity on natural grounds when he had marshalled an array of facts, partly real and partly conjectural, which might under conceivable conditions have led to the rise of something like Christianity with- out miraculous aid. No one but a rationalist could adopt such a method of argument after dis- cerning its real nature. f

It remains true, therefore, that, until rationalism

* Decline and Fall, ch . xv.

f Two remarks may well be added:

{a) Dr. Hatch bases his argument somewhat on analogy. He argues that the term episcopos, for example, was applied to certain executive officials among the heathen, who had to do with the finances of the bodies which appointed them (PP- 37. 3S). Corresponding officials in the Christian Churches, he urges would naturally receive the same title. This might be so. But, waiving the question as to whether it was so, the Christian episcopos would not for that reason be merely a financial executive. It is to be remembered that we are not concerned with the origin of the name " Episco- pos," but with the origin, nature and sanction of the Chris- tian Office which came to be called by that name.

{h) Dr. Hatch altogether ignores the historical indications contained in the New Testament, urging the uncertainty of its interpretation and insinuating the doubtfulness of the date of the Pastoral Epistles (pp. 20-23). Such a defect must of course distort his premises and make his conclusions worthless.

1 7 2 THE HIS TORIC EP I SCO PA TE.

becomes preferable to a belief in the possibility of miracles, the traditional hypothesis that Episco- pacy was instituted by "our Lord or the Apostles acting under His express directions " is not capa- ble of refutation. The burden of proof remains zvith our opponents.

{b) If we were concerned with self-defence merely we might rest content. But it is our duty to persuade men of the truth, and, if possible, to bring back those who have wandered away, so that they may share with us in the inestimable blessings which are dispensed by the true Ministry of Christ. I shall endeavor, therefore, to give an outline of our argument on its positive side. The materials for this argument are becoming richer as the darkness which has hitherto veiled the period following the death of St. Paul is being partially dissipated. They consist of ascertained facts ; and each new fact, so far as it bears on the question, fits in with and therefore strength- ens the traditional and accepted belief of the Church.

Our argument consists, in the main, of four par- ticulars:

I. In the first place, we learn from the New Testament that our Lord did, as a matter of fact, institute a Ministry, to which He ordained His Apostles, and endowed it with the powers which belonged by the Father's appointment to His own

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE. 173

Ministry."^ We also find permanent duties and promises attached to the Ministry thus instituted, such as could not be fulfilled except on the sup- position that there Avas to be an Apostolic Suc- cession of the Ministry until the end of days.f

2. In the next place, it is clear that, before pass- ing- away, the Apostles imparted to others their ordinary ministerial powers, as distinguished from extraordinary and miraculous ones, by laying on of hands — not with the same completeness in every instance, but in such wise that, before the death of St. Paul, three Orders of the Ministry had been instituted, similar to those which we now call the Episcopate, the Presbyterate and the Diaconate.:|: The names of these Orders were, of course, un- fixed at first ; but the realities corresponding to the names Bishop, Priest, and Deacon appear so unmistakably in the Pastoral Epistles that some critics have made use of the fact to throw doubt upon the Pauline authorship of these Epis- tles.§

In this Ministry we find the power of ordaining-,

* St. Mark iii. 14 ; St. John xv. 16 ; St. MatL xxviii. 18 ; St. John XX. 21.

f St. Mark xvi. 15 ; St, Matt. x. 23 ; xxviii. 20.

% This is well shown in Eagar's little book, The Christian Ministry in the New Testament^ S. P. C. K.

§ Cf. Liddon's Clerical life and Work, pp. 2g6. 297 For an unanswerable defence of these Epistles see HorVsJudaisiic Christianity, ch. vii.

174 THE HISTORIC EP I SCOP A TE.

which distinguishes our Bishops from inferior Min- isters, lodged in the hands of successors of the Apostles,^ which successors have rule over the Presbyters and are the guardians of the Faith and Order of the Church. t There is not the slightest evidence of any upward development of the Min- istry in New Testament days. The highest Order — the Apostolate — appears first, and the Apostles ruled the Church by reason of a commission and ordination from above simply. The Church con- tinued to be governed either by the Apostles or by those whom the Apostles ordained for the oversight. It is true, as Lightfoot says, that Timothy's relation to the Church of Ephesus ap- pears to have been temporary ; % yet, as he also shows, the nature and functions of his ministry were episcopal, and such that the clergy of Ephe- sus were placed under him, although some of them appear to have been his seniors in age.§ The position of St. James in Jerusalem was also that of a Bishop, ruling over the Presbyters and inferior clergy. || The localization of the Episco- pate and the development of sees and provinces

*Liddon, pp. 29S, 299. f Eagar, pp. 28 ei seq.

X Dissertations on the Apostolic Age, p. 157. §Ibid., p. 158.

|Ibid.,pp. 155, 156. Cf. Acts xii. 17; xv. 13 et seq.\y.Ti^\, 18 ; Gal. i. 19 ; ii. 9, 12.

THE HISTORIC EP I SCO PA TE. 175

was gradual ; and, however important for the preservation of ecclesiastical order, was clearly- left to be determined and, when necessary, modi- fied to suit the conditions and circumstances of " the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church."

3. The third particular of our argument is that, so soon as the Church of sub-Apostolic days emerges into historical view, so that its universal Order can be discerned with certainty — a period not later than the third decade of the second cen- tury^— it appears as possessing a threefold Min- istry like that which is seen in the Pastoral Epis- tles, and which is held to be of Divine institution and requirement. This Ministry and this doctrine of it has continued without interruption to the present day t; andis what our Bishops have named as essential to the restoration of unity.

4. Finally, we argue that such facts and indica- tions as are available in studying the period con- cerning which our present information is less ade- quate— say from 68 to 130 A.D. — all fit in with and

* Lightfoot, pp. 143, 160 ; Schaff's Reunion of Christendom (Evang. Alliance Doc. xxxiii.), p. 23.

f Dr. Davenport has shown, in a lecture before this Club (Series of 1890, Lee. v., pp. 193 et seq)y how absolutely free from question and from need of support by canon law the position of the Episcopate was during the period of the Ecu- menical Councils.

176 THE HISTORIC EP I SCOP A TE.

some directly confirm the hypothesis that the Ministry which emerges to our view early in the second century not only agrees with that which St. Paul recognized and which the Apostles es- tablished in Jerusalem, but is a continuance of it in accordance with Apostolic provision. This ground has often been travelled over. St. Clem- ent of Rome, writing to the Corinthians not later than 95 A.D., distinctly alleges that the Apostles had made provision for a continuance of the Epis- copal Office.* The evidence that St. John be- came Bishop of Ephesus and Metropolitan of the first ecclesiastical province before his death, which occurred about lOO A.D., is fairly conclusive; and it is in keeping with this that, in the Apocalypse, he is charged by Christ with messages to the Angels of the Seven Churches in the province of Asia.f These Angels are most easily interpreted to be Bishops of the Churches named.:}: About ten years after the death of St. J Dhn § occurs the emphatic testimony of St. Ignatius of Antioch as to the necessity of Bishops, Presbyters and Dea- cons to the organization of any true Church, || and

* St. Clem, ad Cor., ch. xliv.

I Chapters i.-iii.

X Trench, On t/w Epistles to the Seven Churches, pp. 55-61, 4th edit.

gLightfoot's Apostolic Fathers, edit. 1889; P. II., Vol. II., pp. 435-472.

II Ad Mag, ijy ad Tral.j, J; ad Phil. ^ , ad Siiiyr, 8.

THE HISTORIC EP I SCOP A TE. 1 7 7

his assertion that this Ministry fills the place oc- cupied by Christ and His Apostles during our Lord's earthly Ministry."^ The genuineness of the letters in which this testimony occurs has been completely established by the late Bishop Lightfoot.f Perfect lists of the successors of the Apostles in various cities are preserved in the writings of Eusebius and others.:]: Not one un- doubted fact can be alleged against this evidence; and we might as well believe that the river which emerges from the mists beneath the Niagara Falls is a different stream from that which flows over them, as to suppose that the Ministry which has come down to us from the second century is other than that which the Apostles received from Christ and transmitted to their immediate suc- cessors. Not one trace remains of that mighty revolution which is said to have imposed a new Ministry of non-apostolic and purely human ori- gin upon the entire Church, and to have convinced those who had been taught at the feet of the Apos- tles themselves that this novelty was of Divine and Apostolic institution. §

The evidence for the genuineness of the New

^' Ad Ephes. 6; ad Mag. 6; ad Tral. 2.

I Apostolic Fathe7's, edit. 1889 ; P. II., Vol. I., pp. 32S-430. X Gore, On the Ministry, pp. 123-134. 161-163; edit. 18S9; Lightfoot, On the Ministry {Diss. Ap. Age), pp. i63 et seq. § Cf. Ha.dda.n's Ap.'stoiicai Succession, pp. 104-124.

lyS THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE,

Testament Scriptures is not so complete* as is the proof that " from the Apostles' time there liave been these Orders in Christ's Church — Bishops, Priests and Deacons," of Divine sanction and re- quirement, and perpetuated by means of the lay- ing on of hands of the Historic Episcopate, f

(<:) Before passing on, it will be well to review very briefly some of the objections which have been made in order to break the force of such his- torical evidence.

I. It is said, for example, that Apostolic Suc- cession necessarily requires elaborate proof, so elaborate, in fact, that comparatively few Chris- tians are in a position to master its details. It is unlikely, our separated brethren urge, that God has imposed upon men the duty of obedience to a Ministry the authority of which is so difficult to establish. This objection ignores the circum- stance that the burden of proof rests upon those who reject the Episcopate, and not upon those who obey it. The authority of the Episcopate did not require elaborate proof in primitive days,

* Cf. Haddan's Apostolical Siucession, pp. 125-128.

\ At the conclusion of his argument on the Christian Min- istry, Dissertation on Apostolic Age^ pp. 235, 236, Bishop Light- foot says: " If the preceding investigation be substantially correct, the three-fold Ministry can be traced to Apostolic direction; and short of an express statement we can possess no better assurance of a divine appointment, or at least a divine sanction."

THE HIS TORIC E PISCO PATE. 179

and it has ever since enjoyed that kind of posses- sion which constitutes "nine points of the law," aad which still secures the obedience of three- fourths of Christendom. The difficulties which are said to surround a proof of its claims are felt only by sectarians, and are due, not to any in- trinsic doubtfulness attendant upon them, but to the disorders caused by the rise ,and continuance of sectarianism. It is this sectarianism which re- quires elaborate proof for its justification, not the claims of the Church's historic Ministry."^

2. Again, the phrase '^tactual succession" is seized upon, and we are charged with setting store by mere externals instead of rejoicing in that spiritual succession which is independent of externals. t But the force of such an objection depends upon two misapprehensions — viz., that tactual succession, as it is called, is a device of ours; and that we prize it as a substitute for the invisible work of the Spirit. We hold that it is Christ Who has willed to authenticate His Minis- try in this manner from age to age, in order to prevent spiritual anarchy and to provide visible tokens of the validity of the Ministry appointed to represent Him until the end of days. Further- more, we value this succession, not in isolation

* Cf. Haddan's Apostolical Sticcession, pp. 6i-6g. f The late Bishop Brooks raised this objection at one of cur Church Congresses.

l8o THE HISTORIC EP I SCOP A TE,

from, nor as a substitute for, the work of God's Holy Spirit, but as an appointed means whereby the Spirit achieves His work in the Church. If many who yield external conformity to the Min- istry are unspiritual, it is because they misuse the Ministry. Those, on the other hand, who strain after spiritual results apart from it, end in devising substitutes for it which are equally ex- ternal, but lack Divine sanction and promise. The objection to tactual succession is in reality a branch of the objection against the sacramental idea; and, if valid, would militate against all of the dispensation of grace wrapped up in the tak- ing of flesh by Him Who came to save our flesh.* 3. We are told, however, that what is objected to is not so much the Episcopate itself as the superadded notion of exclusive privilege, f the putting of an Order of men between the soul and God, and the unchurching of those denominations which do not possess the Historic Episcopate. It is sufficient to reply that what is termed ex- clusive privilege is simply stezvardship^ instituted by God. No doubt the stewards are quite un- worthy, but certainly, as the Bishop of Ohio says, it is not the fault of the Episcopal Church '' that

* Cf. Bishop Seymour's ///j-/t?rzV Episcopate, Vol. I., No. i of Church Unity Quarterly, pp. 19-22; also Haddan's Apostolical Succession, pp. 32, 33,49-51-

f Geo. A. Gates, D.D,, in Bradford's Qucstionof Unity, p. 47.

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE. i8i

this Ministry is her inheritance. The burden was imposed too long ago, and has been borne for too many generations to be objected to now at this end of the nineteenth century." "^ We are indeed convinced that no denominations can lawfully claim the name Church without the Apostolic Ministry, but to say that we have done the un- churching is not in harmony with the facts of his- tory.f The Church's Ministry does not put itself between the soul and God, but is Christ's instru- ment for bringing souls to Himself.;]: It is hardly necessary to add that we do not judge Protestants. Unavoidable ignorance and unfortunate conditions account for many things; and God is manifestly blessing many in spite of sad mistakes. He is not limited by His instruments in every case, h\x\.men are, when they are able to discover them.

4. Another objection is drawn from the fact that the Church is an organism and grows. Why, it is urged, should not such a thing conform to the law of growing things and change, as it ma- tures ? § The answer is simple. The changes

* Bishop Leonard in the New York Independent, March 8, 1894.

f Bishop Seymour's Historic Episcopate, p, 13; Haddan's Apostolical Succession, pp. 58-61; Gore, The Ministry, pp. 109-111, 344-348.

X Haddan's Apostolical Succession, pp. 41-49.

§ Wm. Cooley, in Ilie Question of Unity, pp. 41, 42.

1 8 2 THE HIS l VRIC EPISCOPA TE.

which the higher organisms undergo in their growth do not affect the structural type when that is once developed. The Church's Ministry- pertains to her structural type. Once developed, it never can change in constitution, whatever may be the growth and superficial developments in the Church. Structural change would originate a new organism. It could not perpetuate the old.

Neither these nor any other difficulties will trouble men after they realize that Christianity is something more than a philosophy or set of opinions. There are principles, indeed, and a "Faith once for all delivered " which we must preserve; but the Church is a dispenser of sacra- mental'grace as well as of doctrine, and the main- tenance of the Faith itself depends upon the con- tinuance of that Ministry which was ordained by Christ to bear witness in His Name.*

III.

We have now to consider the bearing of our Bishops* position on the Church Unity problem.

ici) You will, of course, agree with me when I say that it is our duty to promote a restoration of the visible unity of the Church. Such unity would make it possible to do much which has hitherto been impracticable, in overcoming religious indif-

* Haddan's Apostolical Succession, pp. 55-58.

THE HIS TORIC E PI SCO PA TE. 183

ference at home and in converting the heathen abroad. And such unity is to be sought, not merely as a means, but as ait e?id in itself, since visible unity signifies visible charity, the very chief of Christian graces, and our Lord Himself prayed for its maintenance in the solemn night of His betrayal.^

The Protestants of our day did not originate sectarianism, although they have, none the less, inherited a schismatic position. We need not be blaming them, therefore, when we say that the nature and genesis of their position hinders them from appreciating as Churchmen do the sinful na- ture of schism t and the necessity of adopting the right course, however difficult, for its removal. There is considerable talk of unity \n the air, and many noble utterances have been made; but we err greatly if we think that our separated brethren understand what true Church Unity is and in- volves, or that any widespread yearning exists among them for the restoration of unity.

We ought not to blame them for this limitation of vision, caused as it is by remote circumstances. Yet, while bound to be courteous and kind, we are bound to be true and candid. We may not help to perpetuate or acquiesce in the existing ig-

*St. John xvii. 21. Cf. Dr. Shields's United Church, p. 117. f Dr. Schaff, Reunion of Christendom, pp. 8-14, is a good ex- ample of this failure. Cf. 'Q'Cdid.ioxdi's Questio/i of Unity, -^ 7.

1 84 THE HIS TORIC EPISCOPA TE.

norance of separatists as to the real meaning- of their position, the sinfulness of schism, and the course necessary to be pursued in order to restore visible unity and charity."

ib) it is from such a point of view that our B. shops have declared the Historic Episcopate to be " essential to the restoration of unity among the divided branches of Christendom." Their pur- pose, if I mistake not, was didactic. They were not making demands. Strictly speaking, they were not offering terms, so much as exercising the prophetic Office which Christ gave to His Apostolic Ministry and which they may not neglect to exercise when proper occasions arrive. Certain memorials addressed to them concerning the necessity of facing the problem of Church Unity moved them to declare by way of instruction to all who would listen, not what they chose to demand, but some of the things which, under any circumstances, are essential \o the restoration of unity. Among these things they named the His- toric Episcopate. They expressed or implied three reasons for its necessity, but neither stated nor implied their own choice as having anything to do with the matter.

I. The first of these reasons f is that the Epis-

* Bradford's Question of Unity ^ pp. 20, 2r.

f I have d scussed these reasons elsewhere in my pann- phlet, The Historic Position of the Episcpal Church, Young Churchman Co , Milwaukee, pp. 56-61.

THE HIS TORIC EP I SCOP A TE. i S 5

copate is an inherent part of " the substantial de- posit of Faith and Order committed by Christ and His Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world." The question at issue here is not one of mere human polity, subject to possible modifica- tion, but one which relates to the permanent struc- ture and organic continuity of the Church of God, and to the preservation of the Faith and of the covenanted means of grace.* To surrender the Episcopate would not church the sects, but would unchurch ourselves and originate one more sect to gladden the arch-enemy of Christ's Kingdom, f And even should such surrender end in the unifica- tion of non-episcopal bodies, it would not secure Church Unity, but would bring to birth a new thing • — a huge kingdom of men, differing in kind from the Church for whose unity Christ prayed. The Church is a living and unchangeable organism^ founded and inhabited by the Holy Ghost, and no combination of human organizxtions can ever take its place or perform its functions. J

2. Two other reasons for the necessity of the Historic Episcopate are implied when our Bishops say that unity '' can be restored only by the return

* Cf. Bp. Jackson, New York Independent, Mch. 8, 1S94.

f Cf. Bp. Tuttle, New York Independent, Mch. 8, 1894.

:|: This mode of statement comes to me from one of our missionaries abroad, whose sense of its truth is intensified by his missionary experience.

1 86 THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE.

of all Christian Communions to the principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during- the first ages of its existence."

The first of these is that the Historic Episco- pate is the only Ministry which has ever held the Church together in visible unity. This is too plain to need special argument. The ancient Church was visibly one, and was governed by the Episco- pate, each Bishop representing the whole Episco- pal College in his own jurisdiction.^ The en- croachments of the papal system, by which the Episcopate was displaced in effect, if not in the- ory,t cut Christendom in twain ; % and the devel- opment of presbyterial and congregational polities originated the countless divisions which confront us in this land. §

* St. Cyprian, in his treatise On the Unity of the Churchy says: *'The Episcopate is one; it is a whole, in which each enjoys full possession " (ch. 4). Library of the Fathers, Ox- ford,

f Dr. Bright, Waymarks of History, p, 207, reminds us that even the Vatican decree bears witness to " that ordinary power of episcopal jurisdiction whereby Bishops, who, being placed by the Holy Spirit, have succeeded in the room of the Apostles, act as true pastors," etc.

:}; The Pope excommunicated the East in 1054, and the Ecclesia AngUcana in the time of Elizabeth. To the last- named act no retort in kind has ever been made.

§ Cf. Bps. Boyd Vincent and Graves, in New York Inde- pendent,M.zh.. 8, 1894. Prof. Shields, United Church, pp. 89- 93, exhibits the unifying power of the Episcopate.

THE HISTORIC E PISCO PA TE. 187

3. Finally, our Bishops imply that to ask us to surrender the Episcopate is to ask what would be altogether ineffectual unless we could draw after us those bodies which, like this body, have inherited the Ministry of the ancient and undivided Church and regard it as "incapable of compro- mise or surrender." If two-thirds of professing Christians still continue to maintain Episco- pacy, a surrender on our part will accomplish nothing for unity ; * but will simply put us into the sectarian camp, and deprive us forever of our mission of reclaiming those who have wandered away from the covenanted ministry of grace and truth.f We may not, even for the sake of reclaim- ing others, reduce ourselves to the necessity of be- ing reclaimed. Those who ask us to surrender the Episcopate do not perceive the world-wide scope of the problem of unity,:]: and the impossibility that measures which violate the rehgious convic- tions of the bulk of the Christian world should be otherwise than a hindrance to ultimate unity.

{c) At this point it may be well to notice certain schemes for the unification of denominations in this land ; schemes which recognize that a place

* Bp. Doane, New York Independent, Mch. 8, 1894, shows that we cannot act apart from the English Church.

f Cf. Bp. Niles, New York Independent, Mch. 8, 1894 ; Bradford's Question of Unity, p. 8

X I believe Bp, Coxe has pointed this out.

1 88 THE HISTORIC E PISCO PA TE.

must be allowed for episcopal polity, considered simply as polity, but which have the common fault, as I shall try to show, of involving" compromise of principle on our part."^

1. First in order is the Confederation scheme, which would not involve the destruction of existing denominations, but merely their federation under a General Conference on the basis of the four terms of unity, but without any alteration in denomina- tional standards or polities, beyond what would be necessary for conformity to the four terms, apart from any doctrinal interpretation of them. This scheme assumes that nothing more is needed to put a sectarian body in a position to be treated with and united with on equal terms t than a readiness on its part to adopt the '' Quadrilateral" in the lowest and most external sense which can be read into it. In short, it means that the Church of the future shall make an open question of every Catholic dogma and principle which is not ex- pressly guarded in the Quadrilateral when isolated from the rest of the Declaration on Unity.

2. Next is the Consolidation or Constitutional Amendment scheme, which means that the Quad- rilateral, without interpretative matter of any kind, shall be put into the preamble or main body of

*I borrow my data in this discussion chiefly from Prof. Shields's United Church, pp. 93 et seq,

\ Cf. Bradford s Question of Unity, pp. 14, 16.

THE HISTORIC EP I SCOP A TE. 189

the Constitution of our General Convention, and that such legislation shall be gradually accom- pHshed as will reduce the obligatory principles of doctrine, discipline, worship and polity in the Church to the level of the Quadrilateral as thus limited.^ This assumes that our Bishops set forth their four terms as a complete list of the things which are " incapable of compromise or surrender," so that Confirmation, for example, may be treated as non-essential, t If they meant this, they meant something subversive of Christianity. I, for one, do not believe it %

3. Finally, there is the organic growth scheme, as it is called, which does not look to any present disturbance of denominational lines, but to a series of concurrent ordinations, in which no doctrinal issues are to be raised, but a ministry is to be created in the denominations, the validity of which all will recognize ; this to be followed by a regulated reciprocity of pulpits and increasing mutual ap- proximation until all grounds of separation disap- pear.! Apart from its visionary character, the

*HunUngton's Peace of the Church, pp. 231 et seq.

f Cf. Heb. vi, 2.

X It is often objected that we should not allow non-essen- tials to keep us apart. But the very question at issue is, "What is essential and what non-essential ?"

§Dr. Shields's plan. United Church, pp. 99 et seq., 204 et seq.

I 90 THE HISTORIC E PI SCO PA TE.

plan assumes that doctrinal questions can be waived lawfully by the Church, and that our Bishops can consecrate to an Office instituted by Christ for the maintenance of the Faith those who are expressly permitted to substitute modern sys- tems for the original " Faith once for all delivered to the saints."

An important distinction needs to be mentioned in connection with this. I mean that between toleration and perviission. The Church is required to maintain the true Faith against every form of ** erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God's Word." Therefore she cannot permit, or in any manner connive at, heretical teaching on the part of those whom she ordains with the laying on of hands.* She may indeed tolerate xxwxoXv imperfect faith and error, not as making such error lazvful, but as refraining for the moment from disciplining what is unlawfuly when the general maintenance of truth is not imperiled thereby and when imme- diate discipline would quench a smoking flax and produce greater evils than it would cure. No doubt many Bishops have been too lax in the ex- ercise of discipline, and have shown more regard for the feelings of heretics than for those of the faithful. May God forgive them ! But such abuses

* There are some excellent observations on this subject in Bp. Creighton's recent book on Persecution and Tolerance, the last lecture.

THE HISTORIC EP I SCOP A TE. 191

pj.le into insig^nificance beside the proposal to ad- vance throngs of preachers to the Priesthood with the distinct understanding that they may continue to preach the anti-sacerdotal and anti-Catholic systems of doctrine which they have hitherto adopted. This would be more than toleration of error. It would be giving a recognized place to heresy in that Ministry which was ordained for its overthrow. It would be treason against Him Who is the Author and Finisher of our Faith. "^

My task is nearly finished, and I have nothing to add except by way of concluding this series of lectures on Church Unity.

(^) The Declaration on Unity has been taken to signify a change of ecclesiastical position, and to contain proposals looking towards a possible course of action hitherto unthought of by this Church. In reality it was put forth, not to adver- tise or propose a new departure, but in order to exhibit certain ancient principles for which this Church has always stood. Our Bishops said noth- ing inconsistent with their traditional position when they summed up the things essential in the phrase, "the principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during the first ages

* Heb. xii. 2. Bp. Whipple shows that we may not sub- stitute courtesy for principle ; and Bp. Whitehead is unable to discern any good results likely to follow upon a yielding contrary to conviction. New York /«£/c'/t'/?^if«/, Mch. 8, 1894.

192 THE HIS TORIC EPl SCO PA TE.

of its existence." Furthermore, the four terms, so-called, were not named as the sum total of these essential principles,"^ but as parts simply; parts, it is true, which, if accepted in the sense which the body of the Declaration requires, in- volve and lead on to all the rest. This Church does not propose to achieve unity either by level- ling down, or by any novel platform or procedure; but by levelling up, and by a return to the an- cient paths. And the principles which she insists upon are not pecuHar to what is called the Prot- estant Episcopal denomination, but have been maintained by the Catholic Church of every age and race. They are maintained by this Church because she is a true Communion of the Catholic Church.

{b) This attitude represents principles and con- victions which are bound up with the very being of the Church, and derives its outspoken character from the belief that the structural principles of a Church which God thought worthy of purchasing with His own Blood are worth proclaiming, and that truth and candor make for unity and charity. f Our Bishops meant to express themselves clearly,

* Prof. Shields appears to think that they were United Church, pp. 130, 188.

f Open assertion can never be " infelicitous " when silence would be misleading, unless the manner is infelicitous. Cf. Prof. Shields, United Church, pp. 150-153.

THE HIS TORIC EP I SCO PA TE. 193

and did so exp ess themselves. It is not their fault that their words have been misunderstood.

{c) My brethren, the visible unity of the Church will come indue time. God speed the day ! And we can hasten the time, provided we are faithful to "■ the principles of unity exempHfied by the un- divided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence*'; not otherwise. Novel schemes and forced measures will not secure or hasten the result. A contradiction of principles exists which can be remedied only by a change of convictions on the part of those who have forsaken the an- cient paths.^ Disguise it though we may, there must be surrender — not by compulsion, nor to men, but by conversion, and to God and His an- cient Church.

I do not look for any such surrender on the part of sectarian bodies, although God may bring even this to pass. It is more likely that individual wanderers will discover the true way, provided those who are under obligation to proclaim it have the courage of their convictions and the charity which is true, and return to that centre of unity — the Historic Episcopate — from which their fathers departed. If I am right. Church Unity

* Protestants naturally fail to realize this. See Prof. Shields, pp. 81-83. 7-3i> 121; Shaff on Reunion^ pp. 2-4. But cf. Bradford's Question of Unity ^ p. 25.

194 THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE.

will result from a survival of the fittest — i.e.^ the Divine — and from purer and richer catholicity in what survives, such as will prove beyond doubt that there is a common Faith and Order in the Catholic ChurcJi. Then will the different branches of Christendom recognize that they belong to one family, and should endeavor '' to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace"; for '* there is one Body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, Who is above all, and through all, and in you all."

It seems s:arcely necessary to say that the Church Club is not responsible for any individual opinions on points not ruled by the Church, which the learned theologians who have been good enough to lecture under its auspices may have expressed.

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