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MHCROCOPV mOUITION TKT CMAKT
(ANSI and SO mr CHART No. a)

/THE GHXIR.GH

IN THE

co^fMO^^WEim:H

THE

iV^w Qommon'v^ealtb

"Books

THE CHURCH IN THE
COMMONWEALTH

THe so/tAie s€Ries

C THE WORLD OF STATES: By

C. DELISLE BURNS, M.A.
C THE CHURCH IN THE COM.

MONWEALTH: B, RICHARD

ROBERTS
ePRBEDOM: Bv GILBERT

CANNAN

Tie foUowrngvobmeswiU be mufy to

C. THE STATE AND INDUSTRY:

By G. D. H. COLE, M.A.
C THE STATE AND WOMAN:

By A. MAUDE ROYDEN
C THE STATE AND EDUCATION:

By T. PERCY NUNN, MA, D^.
C THE STATE AND THE CHILD :

By W.CLARKE HALL

Priot 21. each volume.

Hwatr tuHt. fMUkmn, K«m»f Houw. W.C

ommmmMMm

THE CHURCH

IN THE
COMMONWEALTH

RICHARD ROBERTS

1917
LONDON

HEADLEY BROTHERS

IXtK3SW AY HOUSE . •
KINGSWAY
W.C

GENERAL PREFACE

THE events of the present time have started much
serious enquiry inn the vaRdity of our accepted
ituHtutiMS and our traditional habits of thought.
Our conceptions of the State ^of the Church, of the organi-
sation of Industry, of the Status of fVcman in the com-
monwealth, and of many . 'her things tie bent direetfy
Mlenged ; and it is emmouly ackr ledged that a
frank and thorough-going eximinatlmofour current pos-
tulates,politicaI, reliFious,econc<rfr and social,is urgently
called for. This set. :. 's intend. J to be a tentative cott-
t. . utioH to the Sseusiton of the problems thus rmsid.

Vu writers of these volumes do not profess to have
a complete philosophy of reconstruction ; nor hd)fe they
endeavoured to co-ordinate their thoughts into a coherent
polity. They treat of matters upon which they are n»t
all agreed; but they agree that Society should be organised
•»ithayiew to the free de'))elopment of all the finer interests
and activities of men, and that such organisation must take
account of local and spiritual diferences. /ipartfrom this
general agreement, Ouy hofoc worked out their several
theses independently and are severally alone responsible
for the opinions expressed in the volumes published under

their names. .

The volumes in the series will coyer the matn subjects
relative to the function of the State. Those already
planned svill treat of the State in its relation to other
states, to religion, to industry, to society, to woman, to
the individual, to art, eduecihn and crime.

CDEUSLE 'BURNS
KJCHaRD ROBERTS

CONTENTS

I._THfc PROBLEM >

II.— THE INCONGRUOUS MATING - - i6
III.— THE STRUGGLE OF THE CORPORA-
TIONS 37

IV ^THE NATIONAL CHURCH - - 49

V THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS

LIBERTY ------ 65

VI.-THE STATE CHURCH - - - 93

VII ^THE ESSENTIAL CHURCH - - 106

VIII.— THE CHRISTIAN STATE - - - 118

CHAPTER I: THE PROBLEM

IT is reported that a leading layman of the
Methodist Church, in a discussion upon the
proposals for a "United Free Church of
England," urged the view that such a Church
would become a danger to the^ State. This is
symptomatic of the confusion which surrounds the
whole question of the relations of Church and
State. Lord Acton somewhere speaks of " the
undiscovered country where Church and State are
parted and it is probable that neither this gener-
ation nor the next, nor the next after will reach a
satisfactory solution of the problem. In any case
it is quite certain that the solution will not come
by way of a readjustment of frontiers or a process
of mutual accommodation. It will be achieved
only as the result of a profound change of thought
and temper throughout Society, which will mate-
rially modify the accepted doctrines both of the
Church and of the State.

That such a change is coming is dear. Withm
the last fifteen years, several circumstances have
combined to stimulate thought upon the question.
The disestablishment of the Roman Church in
France (with the emphatic declarations of French
statesmen in favour of State absolutism), the Scot-
tish Churches' case, the passing of the Deceased
Wife's Sister Act, the Welsh disestablishment con-
troversy, and other incidents have led to a re-
examinfttion of the position of the Church within
the community, and already some results are appa-
rent. The Scottish National Church hrs, without

a THl CmmCM IN THE COMMONWEALTK

relinquishing some sort of official connection with
the State, successfully asserted its independence,
thus fitdlitating the movement towards further
Church Union m Scotland. In England, the Arch -
bishops' Committee on Church and State has issiied
an imp<»tant report embodying a scheme for attain-
ing spiritual independence without ncrtficing the
principle of Establishment.

Nor is it Established Churches only that are
aifected by the unrest. The case of the United
Free Church of Scotland showed the insecurity
of all Free Churches under the existing arrange-
ments whereby they hold their property. *he
Presbyterian Church of England for instance, in
1908, found it necessary to affirm its spiritual
independence, claiming for itself " the sole and
exclusive right from time to time to interpret,
alter, add to, or modify its constitution, law,
subordinate standards, and formulas, as duty may
require; to determine and declare what these are;
and for the better furtherance of the Kingdom of
God to unite with other branches of the Church of
Christ; always in conformity with those safeguards
against hasty action or legislation which are pro-
vided by the Church itself,— of which conformity
the Church acting through its legitimate courts
shall be the sole judge, and under a sense of
direct responsibility to the everliving Head of the
Chufch, and of duty towards all the Church's
members." This declaration was a counterblast
to the scandal of the Halsbury judgment, but what

THK mtOBUlM

legal validity it possesses it is impossible to say.
Its interest lies in the evidence it affords of the
Church's jealousy of its autonomy and liberty and
its implicit repudiation of the right of the State to
interfere in its domestic life.

But the question is wider than one of the ex-
ternal relations of States and Churches. It involves
the standing of other voluntary associations within
the community, such as, for instance, Trade Unions.
Here we enter into a region fiiU of prickly
legal problems— the fictitious or " legal " person,
the theory of concession, the law of corporations
and the like. The TaflF Vale judgment raised the
question in its broader aspects, and in view of the
enormous multiplication of associations of all kinds
during the last half-centurv, the discussion of the
points involved is gradually working a change in
the doctrine of the State itself. The tendency of
political philosophers has been to reduce political
obligation to simple terms of the State and the
individual; but this view docs not and cannot
square with the facts of life. Between the State and
the individual there are countless associations pos-
sessing an independent life of their own, claiming
from their constituents loyalties which may not be
always compatible with the demands of the State.
"A doctrine," says F. W. Maitland, "which makes
some way in England ascribes to the State or more
vagicly the community not only a real will but

THB CHURCH m TRB COMMONWEALTH

even the real will; and it must occur to us to ask
whether what is thus affirmed in the case of the
State can be denkd in the case of other organised
groups : for example, that considerable group, the
Roman Catholic Church."* Obviously the theory
which ascribes a genuine organic life to one
association~the State— cannot deny it to others;
and there can be no question that the progress
of thought in England in recent years has been
away from the unreal doctrine by which an in-
dependent and autonomous existence was to be
regarded as a grant or a concession of the State
to a particular group of men. So great a lawyer
as Professor Dicey has said that " when a body
of twenty, or two thousand, or two hundred
thousand, bind themselves together to act in a
particular way for some common purpose, they
create a body which by no fiction of law, but by
the very nature of things differs from the in-
dividuals of whom it is constituted." f The
logical issue of this position is surely that " the
State, even if it includes everybody, is still only
an association among others, because it cannot
include the whole of everybody.";!:

This contrasts sharply with what Maitland calls
" the motto of the absolute State," the French
Declaration of August i8, 1792, which held that

• Introduction to O. Gierke, «' Political Theories of the Middle Age»,"
p. xi.

f Quoted in « The Collected Papers of F. W. Maitland," p. 306.
to. D. H. Cole. •* Cimflicti^Sedd(M|ation.**~Pra«et4iiv^dic
Ariitotriim Society, iyi4tg. IS4»

THS nOBLBM

the truly free State cannot suffer in its bosom any
corporation, not even those which have deservca
well of the country by reason of their devotion to
public instruction. The modern tendency — as the
result of actual happenings in the normal course of
social development — ^is ever further away from the
doctrine of the absolute State.

We may take a broader sweep than the ecognised
and formal associations which arc contemplated in
the previous paragraph. The appearance of the
"conscientious objector" raises the issue within
another sphere. A good deal of learned contempt
has been directed towards the " lone conscience,"
and even doctors of the Church have told us that
the caprice of individual consciences has no stand-
ing against the common judgment of the mass. It
is not within our immediate purpose to discuss the
case of the individual conscience, but rather to
point out that the conscientious objector does not
five alone. He is simply a constituent and sign
of a social group which, though unorganised, is
nevertheless quite real. To take the actual facts of
the present case, there are probably twenty thousand
men in England who decline, on grounds of
conscientious scruple, to take part in war. Thev
range from the uncompromising person who will
not at this particular moment undertake any
service on compulsion to the man who is willing
to take service in the "non-combatant corps."

« THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

But beyond these is the vast number of men who
joined the Medical Service long before the Military
Service Act whose objection to active warfare is
deep and invincible; there are multitudes besides
who have become engaged in lenitive and humani-
tarian tasks connected with the war. And for
every man of military age thus afibcted, we may
count at least five other persons who share their
v?*w; and, again, beyond this limit, there is a
large, undefinable body of people who are sorely
troubled in mind about the whole business. It
is true that this group is amorphous and un-
organised; it is nevertheless quite real. Behind
the " conscientious objector " is a social mass as
definite and authentic, if not as extensive, as the
State. The case of the conscientious objector
need not fiarther detain us at this point. It gives
us an instance to hand of a permanent phenomenon
in a wholesome social life, the existence of unor-
ganised and unincorporated movements of thought
and monl aspiration, the genuineness of which
Rousseau quite frankly recognised, and for which
a stable doctrine of the State must make room.
Movements of this kind have historically been
for the most part within the religious sphere, and
the normal method of dealing with them has been
the futile attempt at suppression. They have
naturally been as disturbing to the Church as to
the State; and one of the commonest "boome-
rang " errors of the Church has been its readiness
to avail itself of the civil arm for purposes of

THB PMOLBM

persecution and extermination. But this was due

but it is nevir dangerous to leave the door open
to the religious and moral pioneer, /f
charlatan, he will come to nothm^; but if have
the Word of God for his generation, soon or late
Le will force the door open, whether he -^^^^ or not^
The one thing wot to do with him is to try to
supfffess him.

In the haze incidentalto a state of war we seem
in every land to be sliding back to the r^ctionary
absolutist view of the State. , 0«« 4^^^^^^
a profound or coherent poliUcal tAilosophy in the
Bntish House of Commons-let anyone peruse
Hansard for a period of six months, and he will
understand why Engird must ^^^^ys muddle
through. Muddled affiurs come fi-om muddled
minds^ It is not, therefore, surprising that in recent
months claims as extravagant have been made tor
the State in England as any political doctrinaire m
Prussia has ever made-for there is no opportunity
just now (even if there were the inclination) for
kstorical retrospect and political reflection One
wonders what the shade of Burke is thmking m
these days. But the real danger is not m tl^Ho««
of Commons, but in the country. Mr. Cole ha*

THI CHURCH IN THB COMMONWBALTH

observed that " men have fallen into the idea of
State-sovereignty because it has seemed the

easiest, if not the only, way out of the sloueh
of individualism."* And when men see the
conscientious objector standing stiffly by what
appears to them to be only his personal caprice,
tn^ tend to react to a conception of the will of
the community as absolutely authoritative for all
its members since it seems to be the only alternative
to thi? misconceived and impossible individualism.
The demftiul arises for a political uniformity which,
in this case, is also a religious uniformity; and we
have theologians and preachers urging on us a
view of the divinity of the State which gives
its demands a sacrosanct characto:, in the presence
of which the vagaries of the individual conscience
must disappear. But this is surely to misconceive
both the structure of society and the psychology of
rdigion. The former is not to be understood as a
single undifferentiated mass demanding a single
line of conduct that its individual constituents
must toe. Maitland, in an interesting passagef
reviewing" the structure of the groups in wmch
men of English race have stood from the days
when the revengeful kindred was pursuing the
bloodfeud to the days when the one-man company
is issuing debentures, when Parliamentary assem-
blies stand three deep upon Canadian and Aus-

* G. D. H. Cole. Op. Git, p. 153.

t IntroducUoa to O. <UtAut, oPoUtical TtMoria of tin liG441e Afs^"
ff, ssir. f.

THE PROBLIM

tralian soil," speaks of «« Churches and even the
McdMCval Church, one and catholic, religious
houses and mendicant orders, nonconforming
bodies, a presbyterian system, universities, old
and new, the village community, which Germanists
have revealed to us, the manor in its growth and
decay, the township, the new England town, the
counties and hundreds, the chartered boroughs,
the guild in all its manifold varieties, the Inns ot
Court, the merchant adventurers, the militant
« Companies » of English condottieri who, return-
ing home, help to make the word 'Company*
popular among us, the trading companies, the
companies that become colonies, the companies
that make war, the friendly societies, the Trade
Unions, the clubs, the group that meets at Lloyd s
Coffee House, the group that becomes the Stock
Exchange, and so on, even to the one-man com-
pany, the Standard OU Trust, and the South
Australian statutes for communistic villages." Ot
such complex and many-coloured stuff is our soci^
life woven, and it must be '«ry unsophisticated
doctrinaire indeed who ca erate this wonder-
ful exuberance of social fo. ., and shape the terms
of political obligation to the non-existent situation
of an abstract individual in an abstract State. It
may do very well for a cloister; but it dotb not
answer in the actual business of living. The
problems of political and social obligation are not
to be solved in this airy way. The task of poli-
tical philosophy is to discover the ways and means.

lo THI CHUKCM IW TOT CWtMOWWlALTM

not merely of riehtly relating the individual and
the commimity, but also of relating rightlv to one
another these various form of Uviag loctal Ofj^i-
Mtion in which the life of the community resides.

Further, the supposition that the demands of
the State, both general and particiilar, (since the
State itself is held to be a divine institute), define
the moral obligation of the individual involves at
last a denial of the freedom of jhe Spirit. " The
wind bloweth where it listeth," and the Spirit ma^
express Himself through the State. But it is
mrdy a very wbitrary assumption that He al^ys
does so. It is very hard to reconcile this view
with many passages in history. On this showing
the State can never do wrong. When Church and
State have been in conflict, are we to assume that
the Spirit is speaking with two contradictory
voices .? The truth is simply that, like every other
natural institution, the State is intrinsically neutral
from the moral point of view. It has just as much
mon\ authcHrity as its own practical and active
righteousness entitles it to have. In a democratic
State, moreover, it is questionable whether the
State ever embodies anything higher than the
average moral levd of the commumty; and if the
frontiers of State requirement are to represent the
precise boundaries of the moral practice of in-
dividuals, then there is an end for good and all
to the independent mind and to origiiud and
creative goodness. We are condemned in per-
petuity to a dull moral mediocrity. Adventurous

TUB FMILBM

virtue becomes a nutAmmiow wd
tionality the hrfl-imurk of holinefc. Ifitbeui|;«i
thtt tl4 State rcquirrmcnt represents the mini-
mum rather than the m«imum mo^^^^demand
upon the individual, and that he w free to cxpr<»«
his moral aspiratioM beyond that fhmtier, tbMi the
only answer we can ^Ve is that the practice of
States which make claSns of this natu: is to sho^
or hang the moral explorer. Historically, morri
progre^ has been chiefly made, not through, but
m spite oi States.

It is the more surprising that this view of the
State as a divine ordinance demanding the
obedience of the individwa should "^J^^c theo-
logical endorsement at a time when the Church
was rightly moving towards a real spiritual in-
depenlencc. For alivincr Church must be a g;row-
inrChurch; and while it must safeguard itself
aglinst hasty innovation, it must nevertheless have
Sow-room for expansion. Life within the Church,
as everywnere

Church which never changes is a Churdi whicn
has ceased to live. It must, moreover claim not
only this liberty for itself as a whole, but the
liberty of its individual members to express in
their own personal life the feith and the spint of
which the Church is the trustee and organ in the
world. The call of the Gospel surely presupposes
liberty to accept the Cross of Jesus Christ m al
its consequences, in its gifts as in its moral

THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

demands. If the Christian ethic is henceforth to
be regarded as normally coincident with State
requirement (and that is what Dr. Forsyth's and
Canon Rashdall's criticism of the conscientious
objector comes to), then we have been mistaken in
supposing the Christian ethic to be the adven
turous and creative thing that we said it was.
Does this new doctrine mean that the Christian
obedience (which is no slavish legalism, but a
living, creative thing) is really a permissive affair
which may be whittled down to sxiit an emergency
of State? Are we in future to preach a Gospel
clipped and crippled, so that it may be accom-
modated to State necessities? Is the preacher
henceforth never to tell men that they must, if
they would follow Christ, go forth not knowing
whither they go? Must we say that the call of
the Gospel and the call of the State are one and the
same call ? And will that be true whether Radicals
or Tories are in power? This is surely a quite
impossible situation. The Church which preaches
at the same time the Gospel of Jesus Christ and
a doctrine of accommodation is no longer the Body
of Christ, but an accessory of the State.

It is true that this view of the State as a divine
institute may find Scriptural warrant. St. Paul is
quoted : "Every subject must obey the govern -
ment authorities, for no authority exists apart from
God; the existing authorities have been constituted
by God. Hence, anyone who resists authority is
opposing the divine order, and the opposition will

THE PROBLEM '3

bring iudgment upon themselves. Magistrates
are no terror to an honest man, though they are
to a bad man. If you want to avoid being alarmed
at the government authorities, lead an honest lite,
and you will be commended for it : the magistrate
is God's servant for your benefit."* This seems
categorical enough until we remember Paul's own
conduct. The charge laid against Paul and Silas
in the colony of Philippi was that of militant non-
conformity and dangerous innovation. "These
men" ran the charge sheet, "do exceedingly
trouble our city and teach customs which are not
lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being
Romans." The modern theory (both of politicians
and theologians) is that Paul and Silas had no right
to publish their personal convictions, still less to
act upon them, it the authorities considered them
to be dangerous to the State. That, too, was the
way the Romans of Philippi looked at it> so they
clapped Paul and Silas into prison. In Phihppi
you must obey the code; toe the line, and no
nonsense. It is unethical to be a Christian in
Philippi ; it is a crime to be a nonconformist. One
wonders whether Paul regarded the magistrate
who committed him as God's servant for his
benefit. It is at least perfectly clear that the divine
quality of the " government authorities " was m
St. Paul»s mind inferior to that of the authority
of his own Spirit-led judgment; and it is not with-
out significance that the State which receives so

• fum. Xm, 1-4 (MoAtt).

»4

THB CHUI^ IN THB COMMfHIWlALTH

generous an interpretation fi-om St. Paul in the
|»re-per8ecution days is described in much less com-
plimentary language by the writer of the Apoca-
lypse, who had seen the Flavian Persecution.
" The dragon of Rev. xii. i, the supreme power
of Evil, acts through the (cxot of the Empire
when he waited to devour the child of the woman
and persecuted the woman and proceeded to make
war on the rest of her seed; and his heads and
his horns are the imperial instruments by whom he
carries on war ana persecution. The Beast of
xiii. I, with his ten-diademed horns and the
blasphemous names on its seven heads, is the Im-
perial Government with its diademed Emperors
and its temples dedicated to human beings blas-
phemously styled by divine names."* " The
State," says Dr. Forsyth, " is an ethical institute
of God as much as the family is; and it is, in its
way, equally, though perhaps less dbvioudy,
poworfui for our moral growth." It is the logical
mference, then, that the Roman Empire of the
Flavian period was an ethical institute of God and
powerful for the moral growth of its Christian
citizens. It was so, as a matter of fact; but not in
the way that Dr. Forsyth's statement suggests.

It is high time to throw overboard this false
and befogging mystical view of the State. It is in
its largest aspect simply the community organised
for particular purposes; in its narrowest, the
machinery of govonment; it possesses simply the

* sir W. M. tiMtouf. "Tin Lctttn to tlw Scren ChurchM," f. 94.

THE PROBLEM

divinity which derives from the divine will that
nude man a social animal. The precise degree of
its moral authority will depend upon its power to
commend itself to the moral judgment, not merely
of its individual constituents, but also of all the
groups and associations in which those constituents
are freely gathered. Unless it is going to make
claims for itself similar to those of the Roman
Emperors, and to constitute itself an object for
worship so that the religious aspirations of its con-
stituents shall be directed to itself, then it must
so shape itself that there shall be room in it for
the free growth and development of religious
associations. The claim we make is that zo far
from the Church accommodating itself to the State,
the State shall accommodate itself to the Church,
even though it turns itself upside down in the
pi'ocess.

And not only to the Church, but also to every
other living body within the commonwealth,
whether religious or cultural, educational or
economic, in which the varied interests and aspira-
tions of the people express and embody themselves.

CHAPTER n: THE INCONGRUOUS
MATING

When Coleridge set himself to examine the
relations of Church and State, he found it neces-
sary to draw a distinction between a national
Church and a Christian Church. " It is the func-
tion of the National Church to diffuse through the
people legality, that is, the obligation of a well-
c Iculated self-interest under the conditions of a
common interest, determined by common laws."*
The State requires an accessory body which shall
provide and teach religious sanctions for loyalty
and law-abidingness. It does not, of course,
follow tliat such a body must be Christian. Indeed,
"the phrase Church and State has a sense and
propriety in reference to the National Church
alone. The Church of Christ cannot be put in this
conjunction and antithesis without forfeiting the
very name of Christian."! Yet in his own country
Coleridge found a Church which professed to be
both national and Christian. Like the true con-
servative that he was, he accepted the fact, and then
essayed to explain it. His explanation is singu-
lar and noteworthy. This coincidence, he says,
is " a blessed accident, a providential boon, a grace
of God.":j: Coleridge is not very successful in
showing how the admitted incongruity of the two
elements in a national Christian Church is over-
come; but his analysis at least makes it quite clear

• 1. T. Coleridge. • Ott the Coiutitution of Church and Sute."
t tMt p. 144^

THE INCONORtNHTS MATING

that the necessities of a State religion are not in-
trinsi^ly md inevitably compatible with the
witness of the Christian Church. They may indeed
be wholly opposed to one another; and where the
Christian Church has consistently conformed to the
public necessities of the State, it has hist<^cally
been at the cost of grave compromise, and not
seldom of a deadly evisceration of its own
appointed message. That a State might exist
alliance with which would still enable the Church
to remain wholly Christian may not be quite in-
conceivable. But hitherto sudi a State has not
existed.

That the original attitude of the Christian
Church to the State was one of aloofness and
isolation is a common-place. ** The Early Chris-
tians," says Lord Acton, " avoided contact with
the State, abstained from the responsibilities of
office, and were even reluctant to serve in the
Army. Cherishing their citizenship of a kingdom
"»f this wcnrld, they despaired of an Empire
1 seemed ^oo powerful to be resisted and too
Cwiiupt to be converted . . . which plunged its
hands from age to age in the blood of the mwtyrs,
and was beyond the hope of regeneration aiid
foredoomed to perish."* Nor did the Empire make
any endeavour to conciliate its Christian popula-
tion. The Christian Society was born at a time

i8 THE CHURCH IW THl COMMONWBALTH

when the Empire was iuspidous of any new social
organisation and its officers were constantly alert
to suppress any unauthorised religious movements.
All religious associations, with the exception of the
Jewish Synagogue, were under strict Imperial con-
trol, and while Christianity was still supposed to be
a phase of Judaism, it possessed a certain immunity
f.om official interference. But this state of things
could not last. When the Jews began to denounce
the Christians, the difference between the two
bodies became apparent. The only cover which
the Christian societies retained was a somewhat
slender external similarity of observance with the
pagan confraternities of the time. This, however,
afforded but a precarious and short-lived protec-
tion, and Sir William Ramsay has shown that in
the persecutions of Flavius, Diocletian, and
Decius, it was an accepted principle that "a
Christian was necessarily disloyal and outlawed by
virtue of the tuune and wnfcssion."*

Notwithstanding persecution, the Christian
community thrived. In number it was at the
beginning of the fourth century, hardly more than
one-twentieth of the population of the Empure, but
"what the Christians lacked in numbers they
more than made up by their organisation, unity,
wealth, and driving power." f Historians appear
to be agreed that it was the impression which the
power and unity of the Christian Church made

• SirW. M. R«m«qr,«Th«I.*ttmtoth«S€TenChntdia,"p. IJ». .

THB INCOMORVOUS MATING

upon Constantine that first led that Emperor to
consider whether it was not necessary to the pre-
servation of the Empire. « He found the Empire
distracted," says Newman, "with civil and
religious dissension which tended to the dissolu-
tion of society; at a time, too, when the barbarians
without were pressing upon it with a vigour for-
midable in itself, but far more menacing in con-
sequence of the decay of the ancient spirit of
Rome. He perceived the power of its own poly-
theism, from whatever cause, exhausted; and the
newly-risen philosophy vainly endeavouring to
resuscitate a mythology which had done its work,
and now, like all things of earth, was fast return-
ing to the dust from which it was taken. He
heard the same philosophy inculcating the prin-
ciples of that more exacting and refined rdiffion
which a civilised age will always require; and he
witnessed the same substantial teaching, as he
would consider it, embodied in the precepts and
enforced by the energetic discipline, the union and
example of the Christian Church. Here his
thoughts would rest as in a natural solution of the
investigation to which the state of his Empire
gave rise, and without knowing enough of the
internal characters of Christianity to care to in-
struct himself in them, he would discern on th'^
fkce of it a doctrine more real than that of philo-
sophy, and a rule of life more severe and energetic
than that of the old republic.*** The first prac-

• l.H. Newm»n,«TheAri«iu©fthe4th Century," (Ed. i883),pp.a4a-»43'
' b8

so THl CHimCH W THl COMMOItWlALTH

tical consequence of these reflections was the Edict
of Milan (a.d. 313), by which Constantine and
Licinius agreed to grant absolute toleration to the
Christian and all otner persuasions to follow their
own adopted form of worship. This was followed
by the "conversion" of Consttntine and the
adoption of Christianity as the public religion of
the Empire, which latter circumstance was authen-
ticated by certain modifications of the existing laws
in directions agreeable to the new faith. It is no
part of our business to raise the question of the
genuinen^ of Constantine's conversion; but
genuine or not, it was no part of his programme
to modify in any way his conception of his own
authority. " Diocletian's attempt to tran^rm the
Empire into a despotism of the Eastern type had
brought on the last and the most serious persecu-
tion of the Christians; and Constantine, in adopt-
ing their faith, intended neither to abandon his
predecessors' scheme of policy nor to renounce the
fascination of arbitrary authority, but to strengthen
his throne with the support of a religion which had
astonished the world by its powers of resistance,
and to obtain that support absolutely and without
a drawback, he fixed tne seat of Government in the
East with a patriarch of his own creation."* The
Church was to be ancillary, not so much to the
State as to the Emptor. In its new rdlc, it
occupied precisely the position of the paganism
which it displaced. It was a department of the

• AciM, "Tlu ifiitorjr of Fkc^oib," p. je.

THE INCONGRUOUS MATING

civil service. The Church Councils had f uU liberty
of discussion, but their decisions had to be ratified
by the Emperor, who even declared his own will
equivalent to a canon of the Church. The Edict
o? Milan was obsolete before it was a year old, for
the new situation made dissent and heresy political
offences; and the Emperor proved his xeal for
pure Christianity by setting out to suppress the
Doiiadsts. That was a bad day for Christianity.

That the Christian Church could accept this
position indicates a certain transformation in its
temper and its thought of itself. It is plain that
the Empire had not materially changed. In policy
and spirit it was still pagan. The change must
therefore be sought within the Church itself, and
it is necessary and impcnrtant to inquire into this
point.

How did the Apostolic Church conceive of it-
self? The word iKKkryrla seems to be used by
St. Paul in two different but related senses. He
applies it first of all to separate companies of
believers; the second use is wider. It would be
wrong to say that in this wider sense the word
denotes the aggregate of the local communities,
or that it represents an ideal society not yet realised
on earth. It is neither so concrete as the one nor so
abstract as the other. What the word in this large
sense is intended to cover it is difficult to define
precisely. It was something more than an abstrac-
tion by its apfHfOximation to which the local eccUsia

THB CHURCH IN THl COMMONWEALTH

justified its title. Rather it was something which
existed in and subsumed each separate comnriunity,
the underlying continuum of which the individual
society wm toe local manifestation and embodi-
ment. The Church in the whole truth of its being
was present in each ecclesia. It was many and yet
essentially one-— one by virtue of an ever present
and expanding life which took on a living form
wheresoever it foaad foothold.

The constituents of the Church were variously
described : " brethren," " saints," " sanctified in
Christ Jesus." These terms described the same
fundamental standing. The Church is the society
of the redeemed, of those who are in Christ. "All
who have been brought into this relation of trust
and freedom with the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ are saints. They may not be
persons morally perfect or morally advan^d* but
they are spiritual, related to God and open to the
influence of His Spirit. Paul's doctrine, and with
it the whole apostolic doctrine, is that the Church
consists of saints so understood. The Church is
not a visible corporation, kept together by outward
bonds of office and ecclesiastical order. It is a unity
of spirit through the one Spirit of God working in
individual members, who having been individiuiUy
reconciled to God are the tqpiritual who can judge
all things yet themselves are subject to no human

i'udgment (I Cor., ii, 15). Because in this way
*ai3 can say that Christ is the head of every man
(I Cot., ii, 3), he can say that we who are many

are one body in Christ and scvcraUv mcmbert of
one tnother.*** At this stage the Church was still
what its Lord and Founder designed, « a society
organised on the sole basis of love and equality and
mutual service." It had not become a corporation
with its recogniscQ seat of authority, its rules and
conventions; it was simply a conjnfiunity estab-
lished and organised upon a basis of love, within-
definite frontiers, without a formal bond. Outward
community was estoblished in the fece of the world
by the acceptance of a common type of conduct,
and by the common practice of the ministry of the
word, of baptism and of the eucharist. But, as Ur.
Oman says, « all this unity was of the tpint and
not of official regulation."

Yet even within the New Testament we find
evidence of another tendency. It may indeed be
argued, with some plausibility, that it is present
in the later phases of St. Paul's thought. In
Ephesians, for instance, the conception of the
Church as the " Body of Christ » presumes a
more definite institutional form. It is, however,
dangerous to press a figure of speech too tar.
Evidence of a more direct kind is forthcoming in
t:^^ Pastoral Epistles, where we find a greater
emphasis upon the external and formal elements
of the life of the Church.t For the moment we

• John Oman, "The Church and the Divine Order," p. 59-
+ « In the Pa.toral Epi.tle. ... the ChuKli it the piUar and jtajr of the
truth. Tfuth i. not a'renewing tn..t in God ^^^^'SS,^^
acceptance of right Church doctrine (T.m. i., lo). P«d hfaMdf

H THI CmmCH IW THl COMMONWEALTH

are not concerned with tlie que^on whether tfait

tendency was healthy or not. We now obterve
it as a happening — as the beginning of the process
by which the Church passes away from its first
•tsge of free fellowship to a more formal and
regulated institutional life. We may trace this
process farther afield.

The autonomy of the local group in the early
Church is beyond question. St. Paul everywhere
appointed elders in every Church and then left
the new community to develop its own life, only
exercising a fatherly pastoral oversight as oppor-
tur.Itjr offered. When with the passage of time,
the Churches grew out of apostolic tutelage, they
chose their own officers. The Didtehe enjoins the
early Christian committees to elect their own
bishops and deacons.* The apostolical Consti-
tutions reflect a later and more elaborate process of
appointment, but the evidence is decisive. In
Book VIII., iv., of the Coptic version we have,
" In the first place I, Peter, say, that a Bishop to be
ordained is to be a person chosen by the whole
people, whom, being named and approved, let the
people assemble with the Presbytery and the
bishops that are present on the Lofd*s Day and let

Mthoritjr from having the knowledge of the truth which appnn to be sooad
doctnne. (Titu. i, 1-4). The Chriitian ethic is bated on how mn oucht
to behave themielvet in the House of God. (Tim.i- i-tV* Onaa. "The
Church and the Divine Order," pp. 6a f. Obterre ^% i«o«3,ea
the Pastoral Epistlet to the quettion of choo^ bidiopi ud tmma.
••Didaehe," Chapter 15.

THB

MATIWO

them eive their consent." This is explicit evidence
enough of tl»e tutiMMMiif and freedmn d the local
congregation, but the changing character of the

sanctions and bonds of the Christian society may
very well be seen in this particular matter of the
appointment of its ministers. Quite apart from
the ^t that the ministry had come to be a matter
of appointment rather than of gift, we see the
gradual concentration of the authority of appoint-
ment outside the local Church. The earlier steps
in the process are difficidt to trace; but it had gone
so far that in 350 a.d., or thereabout, the Synod of
Laodicea laid it down in its twelfth canon that
bishops must be appointed by the decision of
metrc^Utans and comprovincials; and in the
thirteenth that the choice of those to be appointed
to the priesthood shall not rest with the mmtitude.
The change did not take place with uniform
rapidity throughout the Chwch. Hefele quotes
van Espen in a statement that after the Synod of
Laodicea the people still took part in the selection
of their clergy; and vestiges of the early usages
continue in conciliar decisions to a much later time.
In the Synod of Aries (a.d. 443 or 452) it was
decreed (Canon 54) that if a Bishop was to be
elected, three candidates should be named by the
comprovincial bishops, and of these three the
clergy and the citizens of the city may cho(»e one.
The usage was not uniform for a long time, and in
the West the change was not finally registered in
Canon law until the eleventh century. But the

26 THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

general tendency is obvious. It was the gradual
passage of the prerogative of ministerial appoint-
ment from the congregation by way of the
presbyterate into the nands of the bishops.

This is symptomatic of a profound change in the
character of the life of the Church. The inner
spiritual bond of the first Christian societies is
gradually supplanted by external authority, more
and more centralised. That the exigencies of the
Church's growth should seem to demand some
means of regulating and unifying the local societies
was natural; and it is not improbable that the
centralising tendencies of the surrounding im-
perialism invaded the Church. But the change is
most of all due to the common human inability to
believe in the adequacy of spiritual sanctions and
the insistent craving for the apparently greater
security of external rule and constraint. It is
easier to trust to authority and compulsion because
these seem more obvious and immediate; and their
ascendency in the Church largely suppressed its
own original genius and made it rank with the
worldly corporations that lived by these means.
*• When authority and compulsion seemed a true
and quick road to truth and unity, it was difficult
to regard the Chiirch as other than a worldly
corporation and to remember that she stood for
God's rule in however few and by God's way of the
patient endurance of love, however long."*

• Omaii, **Tbt Chnrdi aa4 tht Divia* (Mtr/* ^ 17.

THE INCONGRUOUS MATING

»7

George Tyrrell speaking of the Catholic Church
says that "it requires two principles for its
development; one a principle of wild luanmance,
of spontaneous expansion and variation in every
direction, the other a principle of order, restraint,
unification, in conflict with the former, often
overwhelmed by its task, always more or less in
arrears.* This is indeed not peculiar to the
Church. It is characteristic of all living human
societies. But a point comes in their history when
the principle of order gains in men's minds signi-
ficance and worth superior to the principle of
freedom; and while there is a temporary strengthen-
ing of the society by the sense of increased
solidarity and unity, it is gained at the expense of
the very life itself of the society. That there must
be wineskins is dear; but when the wineskins
assume a greater importance than the wine, not
only have we reached a point of peril but we have
already very materially modified our concepticm
of our vocation as a society. We have becoiae
curators of wineskins rather than vendors of wine.
And the change has taken place from the highest
possible motive. We only intended to secure the
wine; but that has shifted the emphasis to the
wineskins. Our business was to pass the wine
round; we have come to occupying ourselves with
keeping it safe, arguing that it is too precious a
commodity to be spoilt or wasted, forgetting that

• ••Tyrrell," "Through ScylU and Ch«ryb<ii»," p. 15.

IN THE GOMMONWBALTH

this particular wine is only kept wholesome by
being circulated and distributed.

It was with the simple purpose of securing and
conserving the life of the Church that the new
bonds of authority and obedience were developed
m the early Church. The bishop is vested with a
sort of local sovereignty in order that the local com-
munity might be kept solidary; and so the process
went on until the Church developed into a
corporation so compact that Constantine could as
It were grasp it in his hand and transfer it bodily
into the place from which heathenism had been
removed. But all this involved a real change in
the Church's conception of its own function and
character. The free brotherly fellowship of the
first communities has become the closely integrated
institution with highly centralised authority, its
hierarchy, its formuk and regulations. The
principle of order, the proper place of which, as
Tyrrell says, is « in arrears," assumed precedence
over the principle of free life- and men became
increasingly preoccupied with the creation and
definition of external sanctions. The institution
must be safeguarded for its own sake; and the
purpose of its foundation feU into a more or less
subordinate position.

The fellowship of the first Christians was not a
fellowship for its own sake. It was a fellowship of
service, not only mutual, but to the world; and this
service to the world consisted mainly in the
preaching of the Gospel. The Apostolic Church

THE INCONGRUOUS MATING

was essentially missionary; and its missionary
impulse arose from " the glad sense of possessing
in a special degree a salvation which made it a joy
to bring men into the fellowship of the Christian
society."* The first Christians looked out upon a
world involved in an alienation from God, which
in their case by the grace of God had been over-
come; h was the passionate desire that the
whole V should partake in the peace and love
of God \ : . ^aused the small Antiochene Churcb
to send out Paul and Barnabas to preach the gospel
to it. It is still only with reference to the
actual moral condition of the world that the
meaning of the Church can be understood. " To
consider the world in its length and breadth (says
Newman), its various history, the many races of
man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual
alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways of
government, fcstms of worship, their enterprises,
their aimless courses, their random achievements,
and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-
standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of
a supermtending design, the blind evolution of
what turn out to be gresLt powers or truths, the
progress of things as from unreasoning elements,
not towards final causes, the greatness and littleness
of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration,
the curtain hung ovar his futurity, the disappoint-
ments of life, the defeat of good, the success of
evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence

• Omm, « Th» Church aatf dw DiTtm Orto," fTyt.

30 THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the
corruption, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that
condition of the whole race ... so exactly
described in the Apostle's words, * having no hope
and without God in the world,' all this is a
vision to dizzy and appal."* And Newman finds
himself unable to explain "this heart-piercin?,
reason-bcwildering fact » save by assuming that
the human race is implicated in some terrible
aboriginal calamity. This was also the Apostolic
view. Whether one accepts it or not, one cannot
deny the moral confusion and disorder of the
world; but the early Christians believed that they
were entrusted with the word and the power which
could redeem the world from this chaos, and trans-
form the welter into a real universe. With joy and
eagerness, they went out to offer their gospel to
the world. ^ ^

, But gradually the principle of order asserted
itself and the process of formal definition of the
message began. Creed-making was set afoot.
Ihere is no harm in creeds so long as they are
regarded not as authoritative statements of truth
tor all time, but as definitions of so much of the
truth as men had at the time apprehended. The
confessional formula is not a terminus ad quern
but z terminus a quo. And even then it must be
regarded as an instrument fashioned and shaped in
the fires of controversy and therefore inevitably
partial and biassed. But here again men have

• J. H. Ntwman, « ApoI<^a fn Vht p. 14a. —

THE INCONGRUOUS MATING

tended to care more for the wineskin than for the
wine, and have been more jealous of the formula
than of the living experience which it endeavoured
to capture and define. The faith became of more
moment than the gospel; and admission into the
Church was henceforth conditional upon the
acceptance of a body of truth rather than upon the
possession of the new life. Indeed it was even les-;
exacting than that; and it is a very curious and
luminous commentary upon the change which had
taken place in the life of the Church that while the
apostles conceived of the Church as a community
of souls in a " relationship of trust and freedom
with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ "
and consequently gathered in their converts one
by one, in 324 a.d. twelve thousand men, with
women and children in proportion, were baptised
in Rome, and the Emperor promised to every
convert a white garment and twenty pieces of
gold.*

It is, however, an interesting circumstance that,
notwithstanding the effort to reach final definitions
of Christian truth, the formulae proved successively
inadequate to contain the growing riches of
spiritual experience which the preaching and
practice of spiritual Christianity created and
revealed. The creeds were continually being
patched up and extended; and it is worth noting
that before it reached its present form in 740 a.d.,
between 150 a.d. and that year, the Apostles*

* p. Schair. ** Niccnc and Poit-Nicene Chriitianity," pp. )i f.

32 THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

Creed had passed through at least twenty phases.*
Tyrrell's "principle of wUd luxuriance" as a
matter of fact, is never wholly suppressed; and,
despite all the endeavour to crystallise faith in
formal statements, there is always a strain of life
which IS continually outstripping the definitions.
It has been the salvation of the Christian Church
that It has in it a core of life which declines to
submit to the restraints of definition and tradition
and IS, therefore, for ever breaking out in new
directions and in fi-esh places. It has a seemingly
mexhaustible capacity for self-renewal, and one
never knows at what point it will next overflow
«ie neat and trim banks which schoolmen and
doctrinaires have so sedulously built up for it The
living Church will always be a Church with ragged
edges. It IS at last wholly unamenable to %sc
regimentation.

This, then, was the tendency which was crow-
ingly operative in the life of the Church, the
tendency to centralisation and incorporation. It
developed at the expense of the original prophetic
and apocalyptic elements— the elements which
require the environment of freedom— in the

f 1' 'I '""^^^^^ ''^ organisation and
Its faith. It had by the time of Constantine become
very much of a close corporation. It had, in feet,
become ready for Constantine's great experiment.
Christianity, which possessed no geniurfer the

u u-^'* '"^'l »howiiig the eyolution of the Apotdct' Cmd 7n Cr,:.'
« HwtoTT of Crwd. ConfcMion. of F«tJ>." W^Jto ft

THE INCONGRUOUS MATING

part (if we are to accept the New Testament as
regulative), was proclaimed the public religion of
the Empire. What actually happened was that two
corporations entowd into a concordat by which the
one party attained a certain recognised prestige and
power as the price of subordinating itself to the
ultimate piuposes of the other. The Empire did
not become Christian in any real sense; and hence-
forth the Church became less than Christian. Con-
stantine, it has been said, rendered lip-service to
the Church; and the Church promised life-service
to the Emperor. It was henceforth delivered
from persecution; but it had surrendered its in-
dependence. For men to whom this tendency
towards centralisation and incorporation had
seemed important, in whose minds the idea of
authority had gained an ascendency which is
never contemplated in the New Testament, it
seemed a great opportunity for the Church that it
should become the authorised religious cultus of
the Empire. It meant political and social pres-
tige, effective discipline, immediate safeguards for
orthodoxy, and much more; and it is not strange
that they accepted the new situation.

"Constantine is our benefactor," is the judg-
ment of Newman upon this trannction, "inso-
much as we, who now live, may be considered fo

Church.*** It depends, however, upon what

* **Tiw AriaM of ^ Vsitfth Ceatatf," p. 94*.

34 THE CHX7RCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

one means by Christianity. If Christianity is
to be conceived in the light of its origins in
the New Testament, it is difficult to appreciate
in what way it was assisted by Constantine. It
is, indeed, not to be denied that the adoption
of Christianity as the religion of the Empire did
to some extent work out for the moral advant-
age of the world; but it is highly que^ionable
whether the retention of its independence by
the Church would not, in the long run, have
proved more effectual for the moral regeneration
of the race. « The Roman State, with its laws,
institutions, and usages, was still deeply rooted in
heathenism, and could not be transformed by a
magical stroke. The Christianising of the State
amounted, thereifore, in a great measure to a
paganising and secularising <rf the Church. The
world overcame the Church as much as the Church
overcame the world, and the temporal gain of
Christianity was in many respects cancelled by
spiritual loss.* . . . " By taking in the whole
population of the Roman Empire, the Church
became indeed a Church of the masses, a Church
of the people, but at the same time more or less a
Church of the world. Christianity became a
matter of fashion. The number of hypocrites
and formal professors rapidly increased; strict dis-
cipline, zeal, self-sacrifice, and brotherly love
proportionately ebbed away, and many heathen
customs and usages, under altered names, crept

• SdiaC «• Hkese asd Pott-Kkeac Cfarittleiitn'* I, p. ^j.

THE INCONGRUOUS MATING

into the worship of God and the life of the
Christian people."* That the Church of Constan-
tine was historically in the succession of the
Church of the New Testament cannot be denied;
but, like many another pedigree, this told a story of
degeneracy and even of radical departure fiwn the
Church's original thought of itself.

The acceptance of the compact with Constantine
is perhaps the outstanding nistorical instance of
the bad bargain of " drawing the circle premature,
heedless of f r gain." Yet it is true that the bad
bargain was forced upon those who made it.
Rather perhaps we should say that it was madb
long before by those who elected to trust to cen-
tralised authority and external organisation rather
than to the original spiritual and ethical nisus of
the Church. The growth and ascendency of the
institutional spirit in the Church had paved the
way so effectually that it was bound at last to meet
with a Constantine. And it did — to its own and
the world*s abiding detriment. Having become a
close corporation, the only safeguard of its purity
and health was persecution; and when die possi-
bility of persecution passed away, it was set defi-
nitely on a path of inevitable degeneracy. Tha*. it
survived this disaster is dear demonstration of
its intrinsic and imperishable vitality. But we are
to look for the line of its continuous life not in
its external history, but along obscure side-roads,
largely unwritten and unrecorded, the succession

•Schaff. **Nic«DC ud Pott-Niccm Chrittianity,*' 1., p. 93. c 2

}( THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWIALTH

of unknown faithful souls, men and women who
have tended the flame upon the altar of their own
spirits and have passed it on from generation to
r ' eration in lowly piety and saintfincss of life.
A lie true Church has always been the faithful rem-
nant which has never perished from the land. Dr.
Lindsay has shown us how widely diffused
throughout Germany before the Refcnrmation
was a very genuine and simple evangelical piety,
both individual and domestic, owing compara-
tively little to prevailing ecclesiastical mfluences,*
and it is in such bye-ways of humble social reli-
gious life that we are to discover the secret of the
Church's survival. It has lived chiefly not through
but in spite of its organisation and authority and
hierarchical machinery. The living Church of
history approximates throughout to tlui Ktaple
elementary social form whicn we discovor in the
New Testament.

* "All these things combine to show us how there was a simple evan-
gelical faith among pious mediaeval Christians ; and that their lives were
M upon the same divine truths which lie at the basis of Reformation
tlieology. The truths were all there, as poetic thoughts, as earnest suppli-
cation and confession, in fervent preaching, or in fireside teaching . . .
Quotations might be multiplied, alt proving the existence of a simple evan-
gelical piety, and showing that the home experience of Friedrich Mecum
(Myconius) was shared in by thousands, and that there was a simple evan-
gelical family religion in numberless German homes in the end of the
fifteenth ceatuij." — T. M. Lindaay, " Histoiy of the Reformation," L pp.

CHAPTER in. THE STRUGGLE OF
THE CORPORATIONS

THE establishment of Christianity as the
public religion of the Empire, while it
involved a radical departure from the
original view of its relation to the world around
it, was in line with the whole tradition of pagan
antiquity. In the ancient world, religion was sub-
servient to the purposes of the State and existed
under State supervision. It was just that " Na-
ti(Hial Church *' of Coleridge's distinction, which
the State requires in order to provide religious
sanctions for its demands upon the people and for
their obedience. For such a role as this, Chris-
tianity was not cast. It declared an authority
highor than the State, in obedience to which there
were occasions when the State had to be resisted.
And while there had never been a formal abandon-
ment of that position, and frequent assertions of
it had been made in the face of the State, in
general practice it inevitably came to pass that
State requirement came to be regarded as defining
the extent of Christian obligation. To this we
shall have to attend at a later point; meantime we
observe that as a consequence of the new position
certain alien elements entered into the life of the
Church.

The one outstanding fact is, of course, that the
Church had surrendered its freedom. Constantine
declared himself to be a divinely appointed bishop,
with jiuisdiction over the external affairs of the

}l TMB CNimCH m THE COMMONWBALTH

Church, while the bishops proper had oversight
of its intemtl affairs. But internal and external

are here so closely related that this distinction was
not of much value in practice. In point of fact,
the Emperors after Constantine summoned the
Church Councils, the supreme domestic authority
of the Church, bore the expenses, ami presided at
the meetings through commissioners, gave to the
conciliar decisions tne force of law for the whole
Empire, and maintained them by their authority.
But the Emperors acted in ecclesiastical affairs
even without reference to the Councils. Basilicus,
Zeno, Justinian I., Heraclius, Constans II., and
other Emperors issued edicts on Church matters
without consulting the Councils, and in some cases
virtually compelled the Councils to accept and to
pass them. There were, it is true, never lacking
fearless defenders of the rights of the Church
against the civil power; but the liberty and inde-
pendence of the Church with all that this implies
of the power of self-determination and self-devel-
opment was to all intents and purposes lost. Its
life was definitely circumscribed by its connection
with the State.

Moreover, the life of the Church was poisoned
by the introduction of intrigue into its councils.
It is probable that there was some intrigue always
present even before the time of Constantine; but
when the Church became a political factor, the
traditional methods of politicians invaded it. The
history of the Councils is on this account often not

very agree.i « reading, and there is much m the
recorder the Church that is cntttdy disajditablc.
A depressing chapter might be written of the in-
terference of the Empresses in the life of the
Church, and of much evil beside to which the
Church kid itself open when it permitted the State
to embrace it. The wonder is that the Church
survived the tnmsaction at all.

But as a matter of fact, the .einp .ral power had
embraced more than it could i • -.il) assimilate. It
was not in the nature of things that the Church
should remain the pliant handmaid of the Empire,
and from the position of subordination it so far
succeeded in disentangling itself that we presently
come upon a current conception of a great unity
in which the civil and ecclesiastical powers were
separate yet co-ordinate departments, neither
having priority over the other. This was largely
due to the growing power of the Bishop of Rome,
who had, by reason of his distance from Byzan-
tium, been enabled to establish himself in a
position of great authority in the West; and the
division of the Empire in 395 provided that co-
ordination of the area of civil and ecclesiastical
jurisdiction which led at last to the conception of
the Holy Roman Empire. « The dream was a
noble one, of a perfect State, with two elected
heads, one temporal and one spiritual, working in
harmony for the maintenance of peace and for the
ordered conduct of life among Chrirtians in a

40 THE CHUKCH IN THE COMMONWIALTH

polity that should continue all that was of lasting

value in the system of the Roman Empire and all
that was essential to the Kingdom of God."*

But this was to put too heavy a strain on human
nature, and Pope and Emperor entered upon a
long continued stru^le fcwr supremacy. During
this phase the honours were, on the whole, with
the spirituality. The Bishop of Rome not only
achieved the ecclesiastical primacy of the West but
claimed temporal dominion over large tracts of
Central Italy. In fact, the Papal ascendency at
times became so general that it was the Pope
who bestowed the crown of the Empire upon
Charles the Great in 800 A.D. and upon Otto
the Great in 962 A.D. Though it was not con-
sistently acknowledged, the Pope claimed a pleni-
tudo potestatis over Emperors and Princes, and
the doctrine of Papal Supremacy was argued on
Scriptural grounds. " It is only by the mediation
of the Church that the temporal authority pos-
sesses a divine sanction and mandate. The State
in its concrete form is of earthly, and not like the
Church of heavenly, origin. In so far as the State
existed before the Church and exists outside the
Church, it is the outcome of a human nature that
was impaired by the fall of man. It was formed
by some act of violence or was extracted from God
for some sinful purpose. Of itself it has no power
to raise itself above the insufficiency of a piece of
human handiwork. In order, therefore, to purge

• J. Neville Figgit, "The Divine Right ofKingt," p. ji.

THE STRUGGLE OF THE CORPORATIONS 4>

away the stain of its origin and to acquire the
divine sanction as a legitimate part of that human
society which God has willed, the State needs to
be hallowed by the authority of the Church *

The theory was complete, and Boniface VIII. t
embodied it in his bull Unam Sanctum. This in-
strument, after premising the unity of the Church
and of all authority, asserts, under the figure of
the unrent coat ot Christ, that "a body politic
with two heads was a monstrosity." It adduces
the " two swords " passage from the Gospels in
order to prove that the material sword is to be
used for the Church, though not bv it. The
tempOTal power is a(x»untable to the spiritual,
while the supreme spiritual power answers only to
God. The millennium since Constantine had
turned the tables strangely.

This view did not, however, pass without chal-
lenge. Dante, who was contemporary with Boni-
face, wrote his treatise De Monarchia in order
to rebut the papal claims, and, indeed, to make a
direct counterclaim on behalf of the Empire. He
showed that " a universal monarchy is ordained
of God, that the Roman Empire won its position
through God's grant, and that the Emperor derives
his authority not from the Church, but im-
mediately from God. Since all power is of God,
if the Emperor*s power is lawful at all, the only

* O. Gierke,** Political Theorict of the MiMt A^" p. i j. Cf. Augut-
tine De Civ. Dei. XV. J. Primta fiit ttrms Mmih tudim fratri-
eidia. The Tint founder of M eattldf St«te WM a frstrici^e.

f A.D. 1294 — I J03.

THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

auestion is whether it comes from God directly or
tnrough the medium of the Church. Dante
occupies himself with a carefial demolition of the
papalist argument which was to remain for cen-
turies t; 3 one effectual answer to all claims of the
right of papal at dorical intorfcrence with the
freedom of secular government."* To Dante
this was no academic controversy. The papal
Metensions seemed to him to be deadly to all
human improvement, as well as disastrous to both
Church and State.

"Rome that made the good world wa* wont to have two auns,

Which made plain to out road and the other i diat ot the

World and God ;

One haa quenched the other ; and the aword i« joined to the crook ;
And the one together with the other must perforce go ill."t

The papal ascendency was, however, only locally
and intermittently succenful; and Church and
State, Pope and Emperor were continually at grips.
But it was not before the political strength of the
Emperors that the papal claims collapsed. Other
influences were at work. William of Ockham and
Marsilius of Padua (both in the fourteenth cen-
tury) were laying down new political principles
which were destined to have large historical con-
sequences. They were both on Dante's side in
the controversy; but they did not accent Dante's
version of the Empire. They were advocates of
a theory of representative government. Marsilius
held that " laws derive their authority from the
nation and are invalid without its assent. . . .

• J. N. nggit, *'The Divine Right of Kings," pp. 1$, 90.
t " Pttifrtoriot" XVI, 106, 1 1 1.

THt StKBOOLB OF THB CORPORATIONS 43

and the monarch is responsible to the nation and
subject to the law; and the nation which appoints
him and assigns him his duties has t». see that he
obeys the constitution and has to dismiss him if
he breaks it."* But Marsilius and Ockham were
signs of the times rather Aan initiators. They
were giving expression to ideas which were already
astir; and the movement of 'Sought and sentiment
of which they are the exponents was destined in
time to change the whole complexion of the
problem of Church and State. « The idea of a
Church universal in its organisation," says Bishop
Creighton, " has been tried and, as a matter of fact,
has failed because it could not make room for tmo
forces which have been most powcrfid in shaping
the modern world, the forces of nationality and
liberty."! ^^^^e forces before thev proved

fetal to ecclesiastical unity were first of rfl to brc^
up that political fiibric which had continued a moBe
or less shadowy existence as the Holy Roman
Empire. The growth of coherent and mighty
nations in France, Spain, and England reduced the
Empire to a fiction outside Germany and Italy.
When once the political framework began to break
up, it was in the nature of things that the spiritual
authority which was (as it were) stretched over it

♦Acton. MHUtory of Freedom," p. 57. How much Marsilius Mi
William of Ockham owed to Thomai Aquinu it is difficult to say ; but
according to Lord Acton (op. cit., p. 36) he held that the whole naUmt
should have a share in governing itself, and that all politicri author!^ to
derived from popular sufTrage.

t M. Creijhton. «• The Church and the Nation," p. 21*.

44 THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

should be rent. It only required the appearance of
some disintegrating element within the Church to
bring about this disruption. That came with the
Reformation; and the mediasval dream of external
unity passed away for ever.

3- . ,

The spectacle which this period presents us with
is the varying tortunes of the struggle of two great
corporations for supremacy. In the weapons they
used, there is no perceptible difference between
them; in the spirit which they showed, they display
an almost complete identity. The controversies
and conflicts betray an entire absence on the part of
the Church of clear sense of its own differentia.
Its life was largely external; the conception of
its well-being was determined by the ordinary
standards of the world. It is not strange therefore
that it should be invaded and disfigured by cor-
ruption, and that serious men seeking a spiritual
salvation should turn from it rather than to it.
Donatism and Montanism were to a great extent
protests against its corruption; and the great
development of monasticism is not unconnected
with the wordliness of the Church. Schaff, speak-
ing of the post-Nicene age, says that monasticism
was "a reaction against the secularising State-
Church and the decay of discipline, and an earnest,
well-meant, though mistaken effort to save the
virginul purity of the Christian Church by trans-
planting it to the wilderness. The moral corruption
of the Roman Empire, which had the appearance

of Christianity but was essentially heathen in the
framework of society, the oppressiveness of taxes,
the extremes of despotism and slavery, of extravag-
ant luxury and of hopeless poverty, the repletion
of all classes, the decay of all productive energy in
science and art, and the threatening incursions of
barbarians on the frontiers, all favoured the incli-
nation toward solitude in just the most earnest
minds."* But whatever contributory causes there
may have been, the central impxilse was the im-
possibility of sustaining a spiritual life within
the Church as it had come to be; and a very
considerable movement assuming the forms of
anchoretism, eremitism, and cenobitism was set
up. It is only necessary to recall some of the
names associated with the monastic movement to
realise how much the survival of the Church wes
to it. In the desert, in caves of the rocn^s, in
remote cloisters, the flame was kept alive bv the
devotion and austerity of men like Anthony,
Athanasius, Ambrc^';, Augustine, Martin of
Tours, Jerome, and Bti.edict of Nursa, the founder
of the Benedictine Order. That the monastic
movement was full of danger hardly needs point-
ing out; and it did in many instances succumb to
the intrinsic perils of its position. Nevertheless it
remains as a sincere, if oae-sided and partial,
endeavour to preserve the spiritual note of the
Church in an age when the leaders of the Church
itself had lost or forsaken it. The Church, with

•Schi^ ••Niceaeand^PMt-Nicene Christianity." I, iSS-

the astuteness which has characterised its statesmen
throughout its history, succeeded in diverting he
monaftic movement to its own purposes at the
time Like the Franciscan revival at a later stage,
it contained possibilities of disruption; but that
danger was averted by the insight which recogmsed
in ft a power which might be advantageously
harnessed ^o the official cliariots of the Church
Here once more we sec one of the main streams ot
the Church's real life away from the centre. In the
form it took, monasticism ignored the realities or
life and foiled in the understandmg of the Christian
obUeation; but in its impulse, and therefore for a
considerable period of its actual life, it stood out
as an attempt to realise a measure and quality ot
personal Christianity which a too close contact
with the official Church made impossible.

In the medieval Church, as we see it in historic^
records, hardly ' note of the Apostohc Church
remains. The universal outlook of primitive
Christianity is replaced by the " catholic » dreani
of a single visible external unity. The bond ot
love is supplanted by the bond of authority. The
Gospel is buried beneath the Faith; and the Sacra-
ment is elevated at the expense of the Word. All
this was the natural and logical result of the process
o; incorporation and centralisation which exalted
the Christian institution above the Christian
fellowship which created it. The outward gained
a deadening priority over the inward; and, what-

THE STRVOOLB OF THE CORPORATIONS 47

ever external causes may have contributed to the
ultimate disrupticm of the mediaeval Church, the
chief of all was its own inner disintegration by
reason of its secularisation. It had become a
worldly corpora^ijn. Instead of being a unity of
faith and love over against a corrupt world, created
in order to save it, the Church had made terms
with the world and copied its methods. Nothing
could save it from the consequences of this selr-
perversion; and when the new wine began to stir
m Germany, the wineskin went to pieces.

Nor is it possible to discern any countervailing
moral advantage to the State or to mankind which
can be set off against the calamitous secularisation
of the Church. Constantine's compact had not long
run before the Church had largely sunk to the
level of the surrounding world, and had little to
say or to give to it. Here and there we may trace
the introduction of elements of Christian morality
into civilisation; but once more it must be affinned
that the main contribution which Christianity
made to the world during this period was only in
a very minor degree through the official channels;
for the rest, it came along those hidden and un-
recorded streams of humble godliness which, as
we have already seen, had prepared the soil of
Germany for the Reformation, and had over a
much wider area made for the purification and the
elevation of the common life or man. The Church
as a hierarchy and a corporation has given com-
paratively little to mankind; but where it lived on

4S THE CHURCH IN THl COMMONWBALTH

as a real fellowship of love and service, often in
regions unmarked in historical records, it has

enriched the life of man beyond any reckoning.
Its historical continuity is not a thin and precarious
trickle through a line of popes and bishops, but the
broad stream of lowly piety and faithfulness among
common folk, who have come to God through
Christ and who through ages of darkness and cor-
ruption have kept the faith. Here, as elsewhere,
« Not by might or by power, but by my spirit,
saith the Lord."

CHAPTER VI: THE NATIONAL
CHURCH

WILLIAM JAMES qseaks somewhere of
" our emotional response to the idea
of one-ness "; and Gierke has shown
how the instinctive human feeling after unity
affected the mediaeval polity. The cravine {or
unity did not, however, disappear either with the
dissolution of the Empire or the dism 'mberment
of the Church at the Reformation. vVhat hap-
pened was that instead of a single great unity with
Its centre at Rome, there appeared a number of
new foci for lesser unities. The epoch of im-
perialism was followed by an epoch of nationalism,
and the problem of Church and State changed its
setdne, but not its substance. Despite Aquinas,
MarsOius, and Ockham, the time for popular
government had not yet come; and the influence of
Roman Law in the West caused, at the dissolution
of the Empire, the ascription to territorial rulers
of those prerogatives which had hitherto belonged
to the Emperor alone. The Reformation led to
the claim by princes to spiritual supremacy within
their own borders; and of the power which the
medisval Church had claimed and had sometimes
exercised over the civil authority, hardly a vestige
was left in the Reformed countries. National
Churches came into bemg of which the titular head
was the secular ruler of the nation.

Luther, in emancipating himself from mediaeval
Christianity, did not succeed in freeing himself
from the political ideas of the Middle Ages. It is

THB CHURCH IN THB COMMONWEALTH

true that he insisted upon spiritual liberty; and,
in his Babylonish Captivity, went so far as to say
that no Christian man should be ruled except by
his own consent. So far as the Reformation
principle had a political implication, it was in the
direction of the assertion of democratic rights.
But so true is it that we never succeed in disentang-
ling ourselves wholly from the traditions of the
past, however radically we may profev to break
with them, that along with this gcrmi* ;i' notion of
liberty Luther held the view that th- territorial
prince, now assuming sovereign authority, was
vested with all the prerogatives of the Emperor
within his own frontiers. This carried with it the
conviction that it was the business of the sovereign
to carry through the reform of the Church and that
the religion of the sovereign was to be the public
religi vt of his country. The German reformers
as a whole preferred a Church in which the
sovereign, and not the congregation or the
hierarchy, was summus episcopus. This was, how-
ever, not the universal view, Fran9ois Lambert
had carried the synod with him at Hamburg
in 1526 in a scheme fa* a democratic form of
Church government; but this idea had to look
elsewhere than Germany for a suitable soil. It
was more suited to a Calvinistic than a Lutheran
setting. Calvin's view of the relation of Church
and State differed from Luther's and approximated
curiously to that of Boniface VIIL The end and
business of the State, in Calvin's mind, was the

THE NATIONAL CHVRCH ji

support and defence of religious truth; it was in
consequence txxind to obejr the Church and

possessed no control over it. This led to the idea
of a pure theocracy; and both in Geneva and
Scotland the experiment was made. In the Second
Book of Discipline^ Knox claimed for the spiritual
power some kind of direct temporal ascendency.
The Kirk is the nation in its spiritual aspect; but
not only is the civil power to have no authority
over it, it is there simply to execute the will of the
office bearers of the Chu th. The prince is to be
deposed if he refuses to obey the Kirk's officers ot
declines to carry out their findings. But this asser-
tion of ecclesiastical primacy was from the nature
of the case bound to collapse.

It is difficult to resist the feeling that the
Reformers, both Lutheran and Swiss, were
dominated in their religious thinking by the
political conceptions of the Middle Ages. It was
Francis Thompson who said that we modems have
made the Almighty "a constitutional deity with
certain state grants of worship, but no influence
over public affairs," and it is beyond question
that mediaeval notions of sovereignty governed
Calvin's theological thought. The conception of
divine sovereignty is central to Calvinism, and
ideas of sovereignty and authority coloured his
speculation and practice respecting the Church.
This is true, however, not ox Calvin only, but of
the whole period. Whether the authority was
vested in the prince on behalf of the Church or

it THE CHt'ROH THE COMMONWEALTH

in the Church itself, a Church without authority
and the power to enf rce its mind was inconceiv-
able to most of the Reformers. The Reformation
brought no relief from the " corporation " idea;
it simply multiplied the corporations. The
national Church was obsessed by the thought
of power as the medieval Church had been; wid
the liberty which the Reformation seemed at first
to promise had yet to be striven for over a loi^
penod.

Porhaps we can best examine the i^ a
"national" Church in England. The struugle
between the Empire and the Papacy u der
Hildebrand, Innocent III., and Innocent IV , and
the conflict of claims between Chiirch Mid Strte
which accompanied them, do not appear to have
greatly affected England. The English cl'-r£ry
had on the whole played an honourable aaa
fruitful part in the common life; and the Chxirth
was ahre«!y national in a ree in which it was
(ffobably national nowhere !se. There were, of
course, many struggles berw the sovert j^i. id
the reprcbCiitatives of paj al auchority; b t t e
were also frequent occa^m wh^ united ^ ^
sovereign and clergy ir a common resistai,
the Papacy The power f th*^ e over
nation and the Church haa een 1 itet by a sei
of statutes (e.g., the Statutes P «nunire,
1 3 53- 1 393) and by enactir ents rdkiv i papal
exactions and the like. " Tte ^iiame of 1399

THE NATIO: CI' If

lit'clarc th Crov and r'-alm to be . free that
t Pope coaJd not .iterft, e with it."* The time
was ripe for chai^; and it was unfortunate that
Uiien at ist che change came to be made, it had to
be effected unaer circumstances wholly incon-
aistent with its importance, and discredit ble to
all the parties to it, save one, the unfonuna
Queen Katharine.

It is quite clear from the instruments by jvhkh
the separat m from ' ome was brought aboi <-hat
the repudiation of atside interference iu
domestic affairs of tht realm played an impor ^»t
part in the transaction, and this is to be ; bed
'ess I' the Kef )rmation than to the now ■■ ature
Dc-nse of con pact national existen ui "he

King's ' -each with Rome was suppe by vhe
Conv ar-on ^hich in 1534 declarer iiiat the
Pope hu more jurisdiction in England than
any foreii , ishop. As far as specific declarations
could make it so, the severance was "omplete.
"This reahn of England" was said be "an
Empire governed by one sufveme K tg to whom
a body politic divided by the names of spirituality
and temporality ought to bear, next to God, a
humble obedience; he being furnished with power
and jurisdiction to render justice to all subjects
within his realm in all causes oc irring therein
without restraint or provocatio from any foreign
prince." The spirituality now bein j usually called
" the English Chmch " was ^Jared to have power

• The ArchUdiop*' CoaoBintt on Charch uul State Report, p. it.

when any cause of the law divine or of spiritual
learning happened to come in question, "to
deckrc, interpret, and show it," for which task the
spirituality was said to have been always reputed
sufficient without the intermeddling of any exterior
person.*

Henry VIII. had called himself « protector and
only supreme head of the Church and Clergy of
England," and exercised an authority over the
Church hitherto unpossessed by anv English
monarch. The position was (after the Marian
reaction) reaffirmed under Elizabeth. She dis-
avowed the title of supreme heady choosing rather
to be called supreme governor; nevertheless, the
effect of the Act of Supremacy of 1559 was to
establish her in the position of her rather in
rektion to the Church. In the same year was
passed the first of a series of Acts of Uniformity,
« the effect of which," as Dr. Selbie says, " has
been to produce strife and division in English
Christendom from those days until now." It also
marks the end of the hope of a really national
Church. This Act made the Prayer Book of 1552
(with slight alterations) compulsory for use in
churches in order to secure some uniformity in
worship and in the administration of the Sacra-
ments. Any other form of worship was declared
to be a penal offence; and every man was required
to be present every Sunday at the legal services
instituted under the Act. As a matter of fitct, the

• The ArcUifhi^C^iBittet on Oniid) mi Sttt^ p. 19.

THE NATIONAL CHURCH

Church and its representatives were no parties to
this enactment. It was strongly resisted by a
considerable body of churchmen; and some of the
Bishops anO two hundred of the clergy were
deprived of their offices and livings tor their
refusal to take the oath. The Acts ol Supremacy
and Uniformity were not generally enforced at the
time; and in consequence, the disintegrating effects
of the latter were not then fully felt.

Hitherto the influence of the religious aspect
of the Continental Reformation had not greatly
affected England; and the resistance to the Acts
of Supremacy and Uniformity came in the first
instance from clergy whose sympathies were with
the Catholic Church. Protestant doctrine and

tion. They were, however, destined to enter the
situation and to introduce great and insoluble
complications. Indeed, it was the influence of
Protestant ideas which stimulated the struggles
for religious liberty in the years immediately
following and which eventually destroyed the
idea and fact of a " national Church." Meantime,
the supremacy of the civil authority over the
Church was reinforced by a theoretic justification
of it wrongly associated with the name of Erastus,
the Dutch Court physician (i 524-1 583). In vulgar
use Erastianism connotes a view of the relation
of the secular power to the Church which Erastus

worshi

therefore immediately in ques

56 THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

himself did not hold. He seems to have sou^t
for some method by which the Church's disciplme
could be secured without the use of coercion by
the Church itself. " The real object of Erastus
was to give clear expression to the denial of any
right or coercive authOTity in the religious society
apart from the State, . . . He was opposed not
to the free profession of truth but to the political
conception of the Church."* He appears to have
been concerned for the purity of the Church and
would have deprived it of power which he con-
sidered alien to it and which had been undoubtedly
the cause of much injury to it. His view was that
in a Christian State the ma^ rate is the right
po^n to punish offences, and since excommuni-
cation is of the nature of punishment, it should not
be imposed without the magistrate's sanction. But
this was the thin end of the wedge, and the name
of Erastus is now connected with a theory of the
complete subordination of the Church to the
secular authority. That he made the church " the
plaything of Kings " is a judgment unfeir to him,
but it is not an unfair verdict upon some who took
up the discussion after him.

The inferences which were drawn from Erastus
were in complete accord with the mind of those
who desired to establish a national Church by
coercion; and had there b^n no other reason mr
the breakdown of that idea, the attempt to realise
it by force would have itself sufficoi to pmve

« M Cambridfc Modern HUtory," III, p. 743.

THE NATIONAL CHURCH

deadly to it. Experience skmM h$(¥e shovw tint
in the religious sphefe the attempt to compd Ml

generally to toe a common line — in doctrine or in
worship — had soon or late met with effectual
resistance. But there were, moreover, inkerrair
weaknesses in the idea of a national Church which
were bound in the end to defeat it. The mediaeval
Church had largely ignored the factor of nationality
and aimed at a general uniformity irrespective of
the peculiar traditions and outlook of national and
racial groups. This led to disaster. But the new
phase was an extreme reaction from this position;
it made too much of nationality and introduced
territorial divisions into the Christian society
which were inimical to its intrinsic catholicity. It
does not meet the case to claim a catholic character
for a Church on the ground of historical con-
tinuity. The Church must possess catholicity as
well ?s Catholicism; and its historical continuity
n t )e supplemented by an international con-
tii uir/, if it is to be catholic in a full sense.

The word " national " has a very elusive con-
notation. We speak of " British " nationality, a
term which covers English and Scots folk, yet
there is a " national '* Chiirch in England and
another — of a vary different character — in Scot-
land; there is no "national" Church at all in
Ireland. " The English Church," said the late
Archbishop Benson, " must be the religious organ

THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

of the English people." What then is the religious

org^n of the people who claim British nationality ?
What, indeed, is a nation to begin with ? A nation
is a very fluid and indeterminate thing; and while
the fact of nationality is of first-class importance
to the historian and the politician, it is neverthe-
less of so unstable a character that it can never
be anything more than a provisional and temporary
setting for a religious society which claims to be
abiding and supNer-histcMric. When Dr. Fwsjrth
speaks of a nation as "a collective personality,
a historical conscience, a continuity of glory,
which fills it with hope and dignity, and of
responsibility which connects crime and conse-
quence, error and expiation across centuries,"*
his eloquence is not sustained by the facts.
Nations are in the first instance the products of
geographical and historical accidents. Their
nt>ntiers are continually shifting, expanding, and
contracting; their characteristics ever in a state of
flux. The factors of race, language, even of
location, are onl^ secondary in the national con-
sciousness. Nationality is primarily a political
fact, and national characters are in no sense fixed
and immutable. To speak of nations as having
historically continuous identity is fallacious; and
** all the most important agents producing the
divergent modification of the nations are human
products and can be altered. f There is nothing

• p. T. Forsyth. "Theolog)- in Church and Statf," p, 190.
t P. Chalmen Mitchell, ** Evolution and the War," p. 91.

THE NATIONAL CHVRCH

in what Dr. Forsyth says of a nation which is not
in its measure true of any other association of men

living and working together and possessing any
history. The nation must be regarded as a natural
community and not as a sacrosanct and mystical
society, rooted eternally in the divine decrees.
The elevation of nationality into a fact of religious
significance has been the. spring of untold trouble
through the ages.

This is not to say that the principle of nationality
is evil or purposeless. On the contrary, it has
been of enormous value in the discipline of the
race. C. H. Pearson held that the nation is the
largest conception of mankind that the ordinary
man can handle with any intelligence; but it may
be observed that the extent covered by a particular
national name is continually expanding in the
processes of modern history (without, it should be
observed, very materially anecting differences of
racial origin) and consequently men are learning to
embrace ever lareer conceptions of humanity.
The process of history which has developed the
collective consciousness of a Welsh tribe or a
Highland clan into the collective consciousness of
what we call the British Empire may without
extravagance be regarded as part of a providential
discipline by which men are to become at last
authentic citizens of the world. The nation is no
fixed hct for histiuy; it is simply a stage in the
training of the race.

On the other hand, it has to be recognised that

«o THE CHUKCH IN THB COMMONWSALTH

the idea of nationality has operated chiefly in the
world as a principle of excWveness and strife. It

has been said with much good sense that nationality
IS a good thing so Jong as it is an end to be
struggled for, but once the end is reached it
becomes a dangerous thing. The struggle for
national independence is essentially self-regarding,
and when the goal is attained the seff-regard
persists and is apt to lead to greedy adventure, as
for instance, it led Italy into its Tripolitan brigand -
age. The first business of a nation, it is held, is to
amass power and wealth, to make itself stronger and
larger than other nations, at any rate as strong and
as large as it possibly can. It will occupy itself
primarily in safeguarding its material interests,
defending its frontiers, increasing its prestige and
enlarging its territory. That has been in the main
the history of nations. On this basis a nation can
only pursue its own interests at the expense of
other nations. It comes to regard its neighbours
as commercial and political rivals, and ultimately
as possible predatory enemies. Here is the ultimate
source of international conflicts and the prolific
source of war. It sets up a scries of wrong values.
Identifying national honour with national amour
propre, exalting a narrow patriotism above
hui.ianity and relegating other national names
(when tiiey are not allies m war time) to a category
of moie or less co^mptiye inferiority.

It is not surprising that Coleridge found him-

THB NATIONAL CHURCH

self constrained to ti'stinguish between a national
Church, and a Christian Church, even though he
had to acknowledge their conjunction in the
English Church. There is nothing in the principle
of nationality that makes it intrinsically and
permanently divisive and exclusive. There is no
reason why it should not even become a {^nciple
of co-operation and catholicity. But as a matter
of historical fact, it has hitherto made almost
entirely for separation and division; and the
identification the Church with the nation has
obscured the note of catholicity. If indeed " the
root idea of the national Church in England is
simply that England can manage its ecclesiastical
affairs without interference from without, because
experimce had shown that their interference was a
hindrance and not a help,"* and if that root idea
had continued to be the controlling principle of
the life of the English Church, then the conception
of a national Church would have been less opoi to
objection. But the national Church, both in
England and elsewhere, has come in the course of
time to identify itself with the political interests
of the nation so completely that it has ceased to be
in any real sense catholic in spirit and outlook.
Domiciled within a nation, it should nevertheless
be supranational; and it should judge the party-
interests of the nation in the light of that universal
ethic of which it is the trustee and mouthpiece in
the wwld. But in times of crisis, it almost always

* MtaMI Oet^tM, ^'l^e Ckardi and the Nation,** p. Sts.

<a THl CHURCH IN THE COMliOWWlALTH

suspends its function of moral criticism; and almost
without exception in times of war, the national
Church has foIJowed the national drum. It
invariably finds means of justifyinc the wars in
which the nation engages, and helps'^ to perpetuate
the unspeakable tragedy of human antagonism. If
the testimony of the Church is to be regulated
the palpable sense of the New Testament, it ought
even in the midst of war to bear witness to those
principles of goodwill and human solidarity which
are central to its practical Gospel and to stimulate
the influences which go to the healing of the
nations. It is always easy to find plausible vindi-
cations of the course which national Churches take
in international quarrels. There is always the same
ponderous argument about justice and righteous-
ness; and though the idiom may vary, the substance
of the argument never changes. The nat - al
Church does not escape the psychological stampc !e
which f : lows a declaration of war."" There is an
immediate loss of historical perspective and an
eclipse of the faculty of radical moral criticism; and
the Church has nothing to say which is in essence
different from the most bellicose politician or
journalist. It always happens so; and it is the
consequence of the Church's alliance with an
interest which because it is national is also sec-
tional and partisan, and a practical negation of the
Church's ratholicity.

" The idea of a national Church is in no way
repugnant," says Bishop Creighton, " to the con

THB NATIONAL CHURCH Cj

ception of one Holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church. The local name signifies that it consists
of members of that Church living in a particular
country. All members of the Church are one
through faith in God as revealed in the Scriptures,
and that faith is expressed in the creeds of Christen-
dom. These local bodies have no power to change
the creeds of the universal Church or its early
organisation. But they have the right to determine
the best method of setting forth to the people the
contents of the Christian raith. They may regulate
rites, ceremonies, images, observances, and disci-
ph'ne for that purpose according to their wisdom
and experience and need of the people."* If we
are to conceive of catholicity as an amiir of history
and ancestry, then Bishop Creighton may be right.
We must seek the ground of catholicity in the past;
and we shall find it there, no matter how present
circumstances give the lie to the assertion of unity
which is involved in the claim to catholicity. But
if the conception of catholicity possesses any moral
reality at all, we must ask that it should be, if not
realised, at least realisable in the mutual relations
of Christian men. Now, histtM-ically, national
Churches, whatever their claim to be catholic, have
failed to give the idea of catholicity a real moral
content. They have accepted the implications of
political nationality as fixed principles, and have
even stimulated national tempers and ideals which
are destructive of catholicity. The national Church

• M«ttteU Crei^ston. "The Church ^nd the Nation," p. at2.

<4 THB CmntCH IN THE COMMONWIALTH

has cared comparatively little for the moral fact of
catholicity; and not the clearest cadioltc an^str)-

can countervail that failure. How fkt a national
Church which had remained separate from the civil
power might have succeeded where actual national
Churches have failed, it is difficult to determine.
But it is not inconceivable that such a Church
might have discovered and taught a conception of
nationality which did not conflict with its own
catholicity. Meantime, the failure to be really
catholic is a failure to be fiilly Christian; and that
is the pit into which the national Church, especially
a national Church buttressed by the civil authority,
was predestined to ^11. The present condition of
Europe is the terrible evidence of this failure.

But the living element of Christianity are too
powerful and expansive to be long contained
within the limitations of a national Church; and
the very influences which were inimical to
catholicity struck so directly at the roots of the
vital content of Christianity that the national
Church was doomed to disruption. The failure in
catholicity is a symptom of a radical failure to make
room for dK dcr(reK>pment of tne distinctive fotcts
of Christianity; and the wine once more made
havoc of the wineskins. The truth is that the
national Church as it emerged in England had all
the disabilities of the mediaeval Church as an organ
of the Kingdom of God, with one more added
to them. It was a national corporation; and it
broke up under the pressure of the free expanding
religious life of the people.

CHAPTER V: THE STRUGGLE
FOR REUGIOIIS LIBERTY

THE Reformation shattered the mediaeval
dream of a universal ecclesiastical unity.
The Separatist movement in England no
less shattered the idea of a national Church. The
nominal character of the English Church (as
national) became more and more apparent with the
increase of dissent; and it became the State-
Church, that is to say, the Church which possesses
the official recognition of the S^e as the express-
ion of public religion and as its organ for such
religious offices as it may require of it. No
sophistry can do away with the fact that a Church
cannot claim to be national which does not
command the adhesion of the nation. State
recognition cannot make it in any real and effective
sense national; nor does its ability to command the
majority of the people of a nation entitie it to be
so described. So long as there are coherent
religious bodies within the nation other than the
national Church the term " national " is fictitious.

A passage topical of the hijghly generalised
language in which this question is commonly dis-
cussed is to be found in Bishop Creighton's essay
on the subject in the Oxford House Papers : •
" Church and State are abstractions; but in actual
fact they consist largely of the same persons and
only exfnxss diffiarent sides of their activity.
When men act ti^ther as citizens, they are the

* Serin III, f . 4a. ■

M THI CHURCH III THI COMMOMWBALTH

State; when they act as Christians, they are the
CkiBch. Behind both Church and State ttaadt

the nation; and Church and State are dike the
organs of the nation, the one for the arrangement
or common life, the other for maintaining the
prindpies on which that life is founded." This has
a sound of logical completeness until it is put to
the test. In point of feet, it has hardly any mean -
ing at all, unless Bishop Creighton included in the
Church all the extensive and highly diversified
bodies of professing Christians which exist ta
England, and, indeed, religious bodws which do
not call themselves Christians but yet profess to
teach " the fundamental truths upon which man's
life is bated.*** All these persons acting together
are, ex hypothest, the Church; but when do tb^
ever act together? When, indeed, do even the
persons constituting the Anglican Church act
together? It is quite hopeless to expect ^uitfiil
discussion of this question until Anglican writers
get rid of the blind spot which disables them from
seeing that what they call the Church, so far from
being inclusive of the nation, is exclusive of many
large and active religious communities iHiich have
contributed, and still do contribute, ma^ially to
the life of the nation, and whose membership
represents a not inconsiderable part of the nation.
What exists in England is a State Church (in the
sense indicated above); and in any community
which permits freedom of opinion it is inconcetv-

* Oxford HouK Papery S«ri« III., p. }i.

THE STRUOOLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY Sf

able, men being what they arc, that there should be
a national Church in any real sense. " The English
Cliurch," again to quote Archbishop Benson,
"must be the religious organ ai Che English
people."* But what if only a section of the
English people are prenar-d to accept it as their
organ? Wtat Archb' hop Benson says "mutt
be " is not and, from the nnurc of the case, caimet
be. The Anglican Chun . s h ii.e present time
the oldest and largest div; - r> I nglish Christen-
dom, and nothing can alter that tact, it may urge
that it may ckum to be national because it is vm&v
obligation to provide religious services in every
parish and district in the land; but unless it is
sensible of that constraint independently of its
« national »» character, then it may be «* national,"
but it is not a Church, for the missionary spirit is
one of the authentic and indispensable notes of the
Church. It is, moreover, from the very nature of
its constitution required to impose terms of com-
munion on Englishmen which have nothing to do
directly with the obligations involved in English
nationality.

The existence of a single national Church is only
possible when by Acts of Uniformity and the like
all men can be constrained to acknowledge a con-
nection with it. It was Thirlwall (I think) who
said that the difference between compulsory
rel%ion and no religic^ at all was too subtle for his
^^hension. Coercion may provide uniformity,

•Qi»i«4l»H.Itail«f |^«M«^«Th«N•^ioMlClw«h,"^lIf.

tt THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

hut it is deadly to vitality; and the problem which
began to confront the national Church early in its
history was whether it would cease to be national
or to be a Church. It did not present the dilemma
to itself in this form — was not, indeed, aware of
the dilemma— -and struggled hard to preserve both
characters. But, fortunately for it, events proved
stronger than it and delivered it from a position
which must have ended disastrously for it. It
remained a Church, but it ceased to be national.

It was not to be expected that the Protestant
Reformation would leave England untouched, and
in the English Church it emerged in the form of
Puritanism. The Puritan spirit appears first in the
attempt, in 1552, to secure some mitigation of the
Act of Uniformity, especially with reference to
vestments. No relaxation of the Act was, how-
ever, secured. The Act was, indeed, more
rigorously enforced, the process reaching a climax
in 1556, when a number of London clergy,
declining to subscribe to the requirements of the
Act, were suspended. The immediate point of the
dispute had nothing to do directly with the rela-
tions of Church and State; it was formally a conflict
respecting forms and ceremonies, though in
substance it touched the core of the religious con-
troversy of the Reformation. But the sequel
raised the question of Church and State in a
definite way.

THB STRVOOLE FOR RBLIOIOUS LIBERTY 69

The deprived ministers and other Puritans held
a conference in London to discuss the question of
separation from the national Church. Their find-
ing was that " since they could not have the Word
ofGod preached and the Sacraments administered
without idolatrous gear, and since there had been
a separate congregation in London and another in
Geneva in Mary's time using a book and order of
service approved bv Calvin, which was free from
the superstitions or the English service; therefore
it was their duty to break off from the public
churches and to assemble as they had opportunity
in private houses or elsewhere to worship God in
a manner that might not offend against the light
of their consciences." This was a momentous
declaration, and may be regarded as the opening
phase of the struggle for religious liborty in
England.

But there were those within the Church who
were not prepared to accept the drastic remedy of
separation. Thomas Cartwright, the leader of the
Puritans (153 5- 1603), was no separatist in prin-
ciple. He hoped for a reformation of the English
Church which would bring it into line with th^
Reformed Churches on the Continent. He
pddressed two " admonitions " to Parliament, in
which he set out his plea for a truly reformed
Church, purged of P<^ish survivals, and more
closely conformed to what he conceived the New
Testament model to be. In discipline, he claimed
that the Church was self-sufficient and should

THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

therefore be autonomous. *« The discipline of

Christ's Church that is necessary for all times is
delivered by Christ and set down in the Holy
Scriptures. Therefore the true and lawful disci-
pline is to be fetched from thence. And that which
resteth on any other foundation ought to be
esteemed unlawful and counterfeit." He outlines
in some detail the machinery of ecclesiastical disci-
pline ts he conceived it should be, and claims that
m the hat resort the civil magistrate should
" provide some sharp punishment for those that
contemn this censure and discipline of the
Oiurch." In his view the Sovereign, if not head
c» the Chwch, was in p^lkm of scmiic authority
over it. « We hearti^ pkialy, and fkithf^y
profess that the chief governors in civil matters
have chief autliority over all persons in their
<»nanioii8 and countries and are the foster-fathers
and nurses of Christ's Church. Aai«8 Jdioiophat
having chief authority did by his authority defend
notonly the civil government but also the true
wfenwrioa of the Oiurch at that time, in his
dominion, aad Cfrus ia im, so we refer the same
aiithonty to our Sovereign, beseeching H«-
Majesty and the whole State to proceed in it/'
Cartwright, though he reflects a sharper differentia-
tion of Chwch tmd Sme thm was current in his
time (as appears from Whiteift's answer to him),
was not primarily concerned with this problem.
His chief interest lav in the reform of the Church,
iwiich to hm duefly naeant the substitution of

THB STRUOGLB fOR RBUGIOVS LIBERTY 7*

presbytery for episcopacy. But Cartwri^t was
leading a forlorn hope. The civil magistrate
showea no haste to reform the Church; and the
logic of the Puritan position under the circum-
stances led to Robert Browne's Treatise of Re-
formation without tarying for anie, which
appeared in 1582. This marks a new stage in the
discussion of the problem of Church and State.
Browne's vehement tract is chiefly directed against
those who, desiring a reformation of tl» Church,
were waiting for the civil authority to do it.
Browne asserted the independence of Church and
State in round terms : " Thev put the magistrate
first, which in a commonwealth arc indeed rarst; yet
iKive they no ecclesiastical authority at all but on^r
as other Christians, if so be they are Christians.
Because the Church is in a commonwealth, it is
their charge, that is, coacammg the outward pio-
visicm and outward justice they are to look to it;
but to compel religion, to plant churches by power,
to force a submission to ecclesiastical governmcftt
by laws and penalties belonged not unto Aem,
neither yet unto the Church. The outwari fmem
and civil forcings let us leave to the magistrates, to
rule the commonwealth in all outward justice
beiongcth unto them; but let the Church rule in
spirmHil wise and not in a worldly manner, by a
lively law preached and not by a civil law written,
by holiness in inward and outward obedience, and
oi&t m straightness of the outward only." Thi*
litt #e J^^oriion S^?an^«^or 1 556 ani

TWE CHURCH IN TW COM

the charter of the Separatist movemcae W^n—

a day Brownc^s notion of Church povemment

and t^S^— independency ;

"tmia wpHHMfr lilt «Biphasis be

lajrsupon the dtamcsaric chuncter of \\ \mmii\
opder. His rreatwc was the most Christian utter-
W^ing^ the gowrnment of the Church
iteai^« lite {wmiiiivL Qnirch. Nor did

fefteach to unready hoows. flMai' fkam ymu

^ rtK publication of Browne's treatise Sir Wahw^
Kaleigh told the Hfluse of Commons that there

result In particular. -ne exeoBatffl of cSStS
T^"^ ^" 1593- and of Jxxim Penn- a littit
i^BV •■gelfaer with taie ConveaBEaic .4^- of i r az,
wWe ttev seeaeed a tgrnprnrnf tmmmm £br S

nntioriaj Ciiircf!, c^.^^-^j^|-^^r-IZ~ +||

the cause ot ^paration in such numbers and in
ggl^^^^jtiatjio aitHequent measuns of

ijBBd -iilJ-.*8 jii^jiiuji upon this period is
worth recording:. " Many years before the names
ofMiiton and Taylor, of Baxter and Locke were
rnaOe Illustrious by their partial condemnation of
intolerance, there were men among the indepen-
dent congregations who grasped with vigour and
sincenty the principle that it is only by abridginc
the authority of the State that the liberty of
churches can be assured. That great political idea,
«anctitymg freedom ami consecrating it to God

THS STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

teaching men to treasure the liberties of others as
their own and to defend them for the love of

justice and charity more than as a claim of right,
has been the soul of what has been great and good
in the progress of the last two hundred years. The
cause of religion, even under the unregenerate
influence of worldly passion, had as much to do as
any clear notions of policy in making this country
tl.c foremost of the free.***

The next stage in the story is occupied with the
stru^^[te of the Separatist bodies to secure their
'nght to exist within the commonwealth. The

riv»by of independe^ and Piesby terian, show that
there is no virtue in mere forms of Church govern-
ment to secure or to establish religious liberty. On
the ^ce of it, we should expect that democratic
forms of Church government weuld natundly
make for the freedom of religious practice, espe-
cnily when those forms had had themselve<^ to
struggle for the right to live. But a democracy,
mhsthet m Qmrch cm- Sme, csm quite cMily pass
ovor into a tyrmmf.f MWliiiii howtwi-, his

• Lord Acton. "The Hiftory of Freedom," p. ^i.

f There is :i very relevant pafaffraph in I.ori Acton's " Hi^tot v I.ibern ,"
which is worth q t'iting in this connection . ' Democr.jcv, n . Ic-i^ tn io
monarchy or jutocr.uy, ii,tificei of i v thin? to mainf iin it?'-l!, ind stri\es
with an energy and a plausibility th it kings and nobles cannot attain t • to
override represent ition, t < innul all the forces of resistance .md deviat '>n,
and to secure by plebiscite, referendum, or census free play to- the wi! of
the majorit) . Th'! true demo ratic principle that none shaliuave pnve'
Pier the people is taken to mc.ui that none shill be able to restrain oi to
e»»de the power oi tlie people. The true democratic principle that the-

74 THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

vivid insight into the conditions of liberty, saw the
moral of the proceedings and controversies of the
comiMwealth and stated it in his letter to Crom-
well : « If you leave the Churdi to the Church and
discreetly rid yourself and the magistracy of ^hat
burden, actually half of the whole, and at the . me
time the most incompatible with the rest, not
allowing two powers of utterly diverse natures, the
civil and the ecclesiastical, to commit fornication
together, and by their promiscuous and delusive
helps apparently to strengthen, but in reality to
weaken and finally subvert each other; if also you
take away all persecuting power from the Church,
tor persecuting power will never be absent so long
as money, the poisoner of the Church, the strangler
of the truth, shall be extorted by force from the
unwilling as a pay for preaching the Gospel, then
you will have -ast out of the Church those money-
changers that truckle not with doves, but with the
Dove kself, tliiejioly Ghost." The times, how-

fhril'nol't" wfcfitdocnot like i5 taken ,o mean that it

.hall not be r^puni t« tolerate what it doe. not like. The true democra, ie
pnnc.ple th« wen^mw,'. free will .hall be a, unfettered a, po«ibleT. t"kcn
E'J^dt:! S *^"»«"- P-P'' -hall be fett'er:d in ;oth'"
^st,^nS^^"^ 'niepwdence, dre.d ot centralisation, jealousy

Um^rS-^imT! t ? '''y °f the people.

?• ! ' •"P"'"' *i<hout authority ,W but

!£'"'V"'*'P'"''"^,' below, to be its own rna.ter and no, i

^»t^.Xlt T"^ " " ■''"P'>^«ibl«^ to corrupt or to

mirt, and to whom mu„ be rendered the thing, that arc Cie«ar'i. jad rii.
Ju thm,,U,«rare Gody' This w., written Ion, before thTj^^ftj

THB SmVGCLE FOR RBUOIOVS UBBRTY 7S

ever, were not ripe for so drastic a solution. The
Presbyterians and Indepmdents, despite their own
experience of persecution, both alike joined in
persecuting the Quakers. But the religious
troubles of the Commonwealth taught some
wisdom. In 1653 the Council of State declared
that " such as professed faith in God by Jesus
Christ, though differing in judgment from the
doctrine, worship, or discipline publicly held forth
shall not be restrained from but shall be {»rotected
in the profession of their &ith and exercise of their
religion, so as they abuse not this liberty to the civil
injury of others or to the actual disturbance of the
peace on their part " ; and it was provided that
" none be compelled to conform to the public
religion by penalties or otherwise." To this con-
cession there were certain exceptions; it did not
cover " Popery or Prelacy or such as under a pro-
fession of Chrittianity hold forth and {xuctiae
licentiousness." This toleration probably went a
good deal farther than the public opinion of the
time warranted; but it remains as one of the out-
i^ding landwMrirs in the progre« of religious

ttl', . Ill I M

Hseny.

The Restoration brought a reaction, broken only
by a few flickering moments of toleration, mainly
eagtfieered by C^oitt tt. in the intere^ of
Roman Catholics, but providing Nonconform'!r?>5
also with a little breathing space. The chief episode
of this pcnod was the Act of Uniformity of 1662,

THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWBALTH

followed by the ejection of those ministers who
ciecl.ned to subscribe to the formula of assent to the
t^^\u ^^'r"^^" P'-^yer. It is said that some
two thousand clergy, mainly Independents and
Presbyterians, who had been appointed to parochfal
UMugs dunng the CommonwSth, went out bto

sil t" r- '^'^ A" ^^'^h. « Dr.

^elb e has said, set up the cleavaccs that exist in
English socety to this day. FoX ne!!t Tw^ty"
IrLlT' ^r^''\\'' iWcgaUty, Nonconformist
oTt f T'^'P '"'^'■"^^^d ^^P^dly through!
out. the land; and neither the Con^ntkde Act of
1664, nor the l ive Mile Act of r66c, nor the T<S

by the short-hved Declaration of indulgences
provided any material arrest to the growth of

ir \' Wverfrrei^n
Of Charles II marked a distinct advance in th^
achievement of liberty. The later years t
re.gn gave us the libeas Corpus Act and he
doctrine of personal monarchy and the (K^'ne right
of Kin^s received a severe shaking a^the hafds
of Parliament. Even though the King's Dedara
tion of Indu gence brough? some relief to Non-"
conform.r.ts ,t was all in the right dk*c^„ th«
Parliament shou d renudiate if .u. "1
" oennl cfaf„f«e • ^P"°^^^^ on the ground tl»f
•uSii L f ecclesiastical cannot be

tuspcnded but by Act of Parliament." This must
not be taken to mean more than that they could no

THB STRVGOLE FOR REUOIOUS LIBERTY 77

be suspended by the caprice of the monarch; tor it
Joes contain an assertion of the supremac) of the
Tarliament over the Church. The repudiation of
the King's action reflects the tendency which was
presently to lead to the Revolution, when with the
coming of William of Orange and Mary, personal
monarchy disappeared from these islands and con-
stitutional monarchy took its place. So long had
it taken the doctrines of William of Ockham and
Marsilius of Padua to be translated into terms of
political fact.

The passing of power from the Sovereign to
Parliament involved changes in the conception of
the State " hich were not then fully realised. The
scat of afitthority was transferred from the King to
the p«>pk; and the gradual development of this
conception and practice has been the main and is
still the uncompleted task of statesmanship. In
the religious sphere the most significant sequel of
the Revolution was the Toleration Act of 1689,
a; inadequate measure which, however, secured
liberty of worship to Nonconformists, but only on
condition that they subscribed to the Thirty-nine
Articles. They were still compelled to pay Tithes
nnd Church Rates; but once more these disabilities
proved no iterial hindrance. The main battle
ifor religio.... liberty was won, and subsequent
controvarsies have been in the main skirmishes for
the outposts. One by one, Nonconformist dis
abilities have disappeared, and few now remain.
The Test and Corporation Acts were repealed in

7i THl CHURCH IN TH» COMIiOifWlALTir

1826 and the Church Rate was abolished in 1868.

nrSt^ K "iu^ Protestant dissenter who has

wJtJ KL'^"'"^'??^?^^*^^- The place of the
Jew had been one of difficulty and hardship, but he

received the suffrage in i8,2^and the right to St b

TheBanonRomaliCathoiS
WM removed in 1 829. But the reign of toleration

But even if the problem has not been whoUv

However, been a purely domestic alSir The
had cleared the field for a strusele uongta^Z

Chm^ h 5 P°»»«»"0». «»d the relations of

thurch and State were mixed up with aue»rio».

thmch. The problem which had been summarily

rrance for many generations and involved that
country m many unhappy episodes.
TTie authority of the Pope in France w»
by what were called the'^dlicifSr™
--•Mbody of unwritten laws which seem to have
gwmii into .uthority in the course of evented ]£t

THB fTHVOOLI lOlt MUOIOVS UmtTY 7f

they are indicative of the general tendency of the
French attitude to the Papacy. Papal bulla, for
instance, did not run in France without the consent
of the King; decisions of the Roman Congregation
had no leeal weight in France; French subjects
could not De cited before a Ronum tribunal; and
French civil courts had power to act in ecclesiastical
affairs where the law or the land was in question.
The conflict of Chm-ch and State in France has
been between the French assertion and expansion
of these " liberties " and the ultramontane claims
for the authority of the Pope. Bellarmin and the
Roman ultramontanes, restmg upon the claim of
Papal infallibilitv, asserted what they conceived to
be the political implications of the doctrine.
Ecclesiastical affairs were declared to have priority
over all others, and of these the Pope was the only
judge. He had a right to impose his WiU upon
temporal sovereigns and to mobilise Catholic
powers in order to depose recalcitrant kii^. It is
not to be supposed that this set the clergy on the
one side of the conflict and the laity on the other.
The clergy were divided; and on the whole it
would appear that the Gallician clergy were tht
more influential. In the reign of Louis XIV. the
outstanding figure among them was Bossuet, who
held the doctrine of the divine right of Kings,
though not in the English Jacobean sense.
Bossuet's position may perhaps be described more
accurately as a belief in the divine right of
constituted authority, whether monarchical or

MldOCOTY RfSOUniON TEST CHART

(ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2)

THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

republican, and what he meant by this was that the
right was intrinsic and not mediated through the
Pope. The State, however, hardly needed clerical
reinforcement of its claims; and Louis, in spite of
his religious professions and observances, was not
the person to permit any interference with his pre-
rogatives. On the contrary, in 1673, he determined
that all the exceptions to his own rights, for
instance, to the appointment of bishops and other
ecclesiastics, and to the regale, the custom by
which the stipends of vacant benefices reverted to
the King, should be cancelled, and a perfectly
uniform practice established. A dispute concerning
a Royal nomination which a bishop repudiated, but
which his metropolitan confirmed, led to the inter-
vention of the Pope on behalf of the bishop. This
papal interference was much resented by French-
men, and naturally it strengthened the hands of the
Kmg. A protracted dispute followed, which led to
a special assembly of the clergy in 1 68 1 at which a
compromise was effected by Bossuet. The Pope'
was declared to have no jurisdiction over temporal
affairs and his authority to be inferior to that of
a General Council. The sanctity of the Gallician
liberties was reaffirmed, and the right of judging
m doctrinal matters was asserted to belong to the
Pope and the bishops jointly. The concession
which was made to the Pope was the admission
that the chief share in judgments upon doctrine
belonged to him, and that the Papacy, while it couW
err on particular occasions, could not be per-

THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 8i

manently wrong. This was, however, not enough
for the Pope, and nine years of unhappy con-
troversy followed. The end of this episode came
along a channel not immediately connected with
the points at issue. As Louis XIV. grew older, he
became more superstitious; and desiring to set
himself right with the Church he determined iipon
the extirpation of Jansenism. In 1713 the oull
Unigenitus had a>ndemned Jansenism root and
branch; seventeen years later it was made the law
of the land, and all the clergy were ordered to
accept it on pain of deprivation. It was a triumph
peculiarly tor the Jesuists, though Jansenism
survived in more or less furtive ways for a con-
siderable period. Meantime the Church had scored
a point in securing the exercise of the civil arm for
the stamping out of heresy.

The struggle in this particular case was to secure
the authority of the State from any encroachments
on the part of the Church. The claims of the
Papacy made it necessary for the civil power
to assert itself and to set limits to the jurisdiction
and power of the Church within the Common-
wealth. It was really a defence of the State against
the Church; and though the Assembly of 1661 had
defined the limits ot the Papal autnority with a
good deal of severity, the subsequent proceedings
against Jansenism, carrying with them the employ-
ment of the civil magistrate in the interests of the
Church, constituted a very substantial m. ligation
of the conditions. But the Church was yet to suffer

I nr. UHUKCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

for its unfortunate traditional readiness to accept
tne help of the civil arm to enforce conformity.

It 18 a cunous circumstance that the Church has
genially on the morrow of a triumph declined into
indifference and arrogance. Secure in its position.
It becomes somnolent. This happened ^^hen the

l^T^i^^'T^J'^'^^^y in Scotland;

and the French Church of the eighteenth centur^
became similarly torpid. Its oosftion was secure;
t was the State Church; it enjoyed a measure of
self-government. A National Assembly met every
five years, though it could publish none of its

in.n°"f T'^u'^'u ^^"g'^ knowledge and
approval. But by the end of the eighteenth intu^
new forces were astir in the air ofFrance. There
was a pohtical ferment, set afoot by the writings
of Rousseau and this carried in it dims on behalf

standiL nf K ru J^'^ the
siding of the Church very materially. The back-

t^t.^^ t beginning. Hitherto,

the State was m a position of self-defence agains

^T^T^'^'^'^^Y'^- NowthcStat^™
earning the war into the other camp and the

F^t°dnh°/ 5ir^^^^ assail d

confiscation of Church lands, and the suppression
bLn jtSr '^''Sy had hitherto

I'^^^o f « .°V^' '""^"^i '^'y^''^ sub-
jected to a "civil constitution" which virtuallv

reduced them to a civil service. The promoS
these change, maintained that they id Tot to!,^

THl STMJOOLB FOR RXUOIOVS UBEKTY 8j

W(M«hip and doctrine, that they only affected disci-
pline and order; in point of fact they completely
altered the status of the Church. All ecclesiastical
offices were made elective; and French citizens
were forbidden to recognise the authority of any
bishop whose diocese lay without the realm, though
it was later conceded to a newly-appointed bishop
that he might write a letter to Rome declaring unity
of faith and communion with tltt Head of the
Church.

These episodes are characteristic of the entire
course of the struggle between Church and State,
where the claims of the one are supposed to come
in conflict with those of the other. There is
a curious family likeness between these struggles
in whatever land the struggle is pitched. When
the £li3nbethan Act of Sumemacy was passed,
certain bishops and clergy dedined to take the oath
and were in consequence removed from their
offices. In the same way, when the French
Assembly in 1791 decided to demand from all
beneficed ecclesiastics that they should swear in all
events to maintain the constitution decreed by the
Assembly and accepted by the King, the clerical
members declined to take the oath; and eventually
twenty-eight prelates and a large number of parish
priests were deprived of their benefices kt their
refusal. And not only in such incidents as this
but in all the main lines of the struggle there is a
seemingly perpetual identity. In dermar.y, the

THE CHVRCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

greatly extended claims of the State after 1 871 led
Bismarck into the ill-starred Kulturkampf. It is
not necessary to follow the course of that struggle.
As usual the assaulted party carried the honours.
Bismarck was determined to destroy all Roman
influence in Germany. The religious orders were
expelled in 1872, the "Old Catholics" were
constituted (and unfortunately agreed so to be
regarded) as the Catholic Church of the country;
m 1878 the property of the Catholic Church was
sequestrated. The clergy refused to accept the
position imposed upon them by the restrictive Falk
laws, and were fined and imprisoned in large
numbers. Their goods were distrained, but no
penalty moved them. But Bismarck, astute
statemian as he was, came to recognise that he had
started upon a longer road than he had reckoned
upon, and in 1880 he began to reverse his policy.
The property of the Roman Catholic Church was
returned to It; and the Pope secured the control of
ecclesiastical discipline, and of ecdedastical educa-
tion, his control over his clergy, the restoration of
public worship which had been suspended for some
yws, and some conditional understanding that the
religious orders might return.' The spoils of the
Kulturkampf were considerably less than the
losses; and probably the position of the Roman
Catholic Church in Germany was ultimately very
"^s^ronger than it was before the struggle.

What we have in this story, u in the French
episodes, is the continued struggles of the corpon*

THE STRUGGLE FOR REUGIOUS LIBERTY 1]

tions. It is a reduced version of the great conflicts
of the Middle Ages — the old fight fought on a
national scale. And which side so-ever triumphs,
the struggle is always disastrous to religion. For
the Chwch, whpther on the defenuve or die 00^-
sive, when it meets the State, uses weapons proper
only to the State and alien to its own mission
and genius; and the consequences are invariably
calamitous to both. One corporation may gain an
advantage as a corporation over the other, but in
the last analysis the advantage is a catastrophe to
the real cause which the victor exists to serve.

The story of the conflicts of Church and State,
and of the struggle for religious liberty is not
edifying; and in many of its passages it is credit-
able to neither. It is illumined here and there
hy the great sacrifices and the personal courage of
individuals; and these are almost invariably those
who have, like the English Separatists, struggled
a^inst the evils of a religious monopoly— or, like
the Covenanters, against a dvil attempt to diange
by force the character of a popular Church; or
like the Catholic clergy in England, France, and
Germany, who at various times resisted the
encroachments of the State upon their allegiance to
the Head of their Communion; or like the various
companies in the Church of Scotland down to the
Disruption of 1843, who chose to suffer the loss
of their livings rather than surrender the freedom
of the Churdi in things spiritml to the will of

" THl CHURCH IN THB COMMONWEALTH

the State. The heroic figures of the struggle—
in whatever Church or land— are those who uphold
rehgious liberty. The struggle has not, more-
over, ^onc with equal momentum in all lands, and
there is in Eurcme to-day a great variety of
practice. In England, there it a State Church,
with tolerated » religious communions outside
It. The same conditions exist in Austria, where
the Roman Church is established, but with the
exception that the clergy of aU legaUy recognised
religious bodies are paid by the State.
have virtually the same status as civil servants,
and for their support a religious tax is levied,
exemption from which is, however, granted to
pwsons who dedare themselves to be of no
religion. This is much the situation in modem
Germany, but exemption from the religious tax
mvolves an exceedingly cumbersome process. In
Jrancc, the connection of State and Church has
been completely severed by the legislation of
1904 and 1905. It has been said that the plight
into which the Law of Associations and its sequel,
the Law of Separation, plunged the Catholic
Church in France was the recoil on its own head
ot Its persecutions of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. But however this may be.
It is hardly to be doubted that the main motive

ru u ''^^ power of

the Church in order to assert and exercise an
extreme doctrine of State authority. M. Combes
the state»nan most responsible for this legislation,'

THB mUKKUJI RMl MBUOIOUS LIBERTY

Stated his view that " there are, th»e can be, no
rights except the right of the State, and there is,
and there can be, no other authority than the
authority of the State "*; and in accordance with
this doctrine the right of existence was denied to
any corporation save only as it received reayii-
tion from the State. Before the Associations Law
was pa -^ there were 910 recognised religious
bodi 33 not recognised. Of these latter.

448 V- cr recognition, and it was denied to
then . /one seemed to expect, for it was

well knov.xi that the law was directed against the
religious orders. By the Separation Act, the
Communes ceased to pay the salaries of the
clergy. Catholics, like other religious bodies,
were, however, allowed to form associations cul-
tuelleSy associations for public worship, but
there was no guarantee that these associations
either o>uld {reserve the Episcopal c^ovemment
alone recognised by CathoFics or could retain the
necessary property of the Church with any
security. It was an inexcusably harsh piece of
legislation and is not improperly regarded as a
persecution of the Church by men who wanted,
as they said, to "de-christianise" France. But
proceedings of this kind recoil upon the heads of
those responsible for them; and so far from
movi^ in Uie direction of a secularised Frmott
subsequent events have stimulated a deep and
widespread revi\ J of French Catholicism. The

* Quoted ia J. N. FiggU. "Churche* in the Modern Statc^" p. 56.

M THB CHURCH W THE COMMOWWlALTH

events of the war may, moreover, go far to rc
establish the Church in the affecSons of the
i'rcnch people; and if it be wise enough to be
satisfied with securing a real liberty, without pro-
ceeding according to its unfortunate custom, to
utilise the arm of the State for the promotion of
Its own purposes, there seems no reason why it
should not become, under the influence of modern
liberal ideas, a great regenerative force. To seek
a monopoly will be deadly to it. Roman Catholi-
cism IS at Its best and commends itself most
successfully to reasonable men where it is set over
against other popular religious communions. It
presents a very different spectacle in England and
America from that which it presents in Spain; but

r„^l '1 P^""*^« 'he Roman

Cuna of the truth -f this fact. The example of
Belgium IS, howr -r, to hand for demonstration.
In that now unhappy little country, « the fieedom
ot religions, and their public exercise, as well as
the right of expression on all subjects, are guaran-

J^LiTa- u ^*<«P'»°« of misdemeanours
committed in the exercise of the right.** There
IS, perhaps, no European country in which the

noimced; yet it owes none of it to the possession
tj^l T^ -''"'^^ been the

of ?hf '•^'•f ^^S^^"'" devotion
of the clergy Kas been equalled by their strong

reattionary tendencies; and pre-war Belgium ™

distinguish^ neither by a high ethical t?ne noTa

eaRBSBSBSSSSSBBSBaHBnSBBBBBSSBBSSSaSS

rm wnoooiM ton, mlrhoos uurty

genuine national culture. It may be that tne fires
of war will {wesent the wcnrld with the spectacle
of a new Bdgian nattcm ia the days to come.

Religious liberty, providing as it does the
opportunity for the expression of all the ceaseless
variations in which a living reli^on is bound to
express itself, is a necessary condition of health in
Church and nation. Where the Church, whether
with or without the will of the State, secures a
monopoly in any territory so that it is impossible
for independent religious bodies to establish
themselves successfully, it has always degenerated.
Religious uniformity, however achieved, is a
siffn of death. And the ideal condition is that in
which religious communities have a free and un-
fettered existence so lonf as their practices are not
notoriously and palpably offensive to the public
conscience and injurious to the public good. Alone
of modem States, the United States of America
presents these conditions. " The Federal Constitu-
tion contains the following provisions: —

"Art. VI. No religious test shall ever be

required as a qualification to any office or public

trust under the United States.

"Amendment i. Congress shall make no

law resi)ectine an establishment of religion or

prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

« No attempt," says Lord Bryce, « has ever been
made to alter or infringe upon these provi-
sions, . . .

THl CHOICH IN THl COMMOII WEALTH

«* Every State constitudon contitiit provisioiit

generally similar to the above. Most declare that
every man may worship God according to his own
conscience; or that the free enjoyment of all
rehffious sentiments and forms of worship shall
be held sacred; most also provide that no man
shall be compelled to support or to attend any
Church, some forbid the creation of an established
Church, and many the showing of a preference to
any particular sect; while many provide that no
money shall ever be drawn from the State treasury
or from the funds of any municipal body to be
applied for the benefit of any church or sectarian
mstitution or denominational school.** •
„,®f:^^"^ '""ch history. Roger

WiJJiams, who seen.s to have been the first affec-
tive apostle of the principle of the complete
detachment of Christian communities from the
«cuiar power, the Puritan theocracies in New
England, the Connecticut Law of 1818, which put
all religions on an equal footing— this and ver>r
much would have to be entered in any

record of the sequence of events which led to
the present position. It is not, however, to be
supposed that the religious freedom of the Ameri-
«n Commonwealth implies an actual neutrality.
On the contrary, the general attitude of the State
to religion is one of friendliness and encourage-
ment; and nothing could be ferther from the truth
than the suggestion that because there is no formal

•Bijrce. "The" • Commonwealth," II, p. 764.

TMB mVOOLB POR KBLiniOVS LIBIKTY

national recognition of religion, the nation is a
godless nation. This is, perhaps, more untrue of
the American nation than it is of the great majority
cf nations which make a public recognition of
religion. In point of fact, the public recognition
of religion in the form of a State Church or of the
Sttte maiateniiioe of dergj nmkes ou *'he whole
for the depression of religious life.

CHAPTER VI: THE STATE
CHURCH

THE coming of toleration in England
finally dissolved the shadowy tradition of
a national Church. It became the State
Church — that is, the particular religious com-
munion which is recognised by the State as the
official organ of public religion. Alongside of it,
within the commonwealth, is a number of religious
bodies to which the State has conceded their ri^ht
to exist as independent communities and to give
free public expression to their peculiar witness and
ideals of worship. The situation is satisfactory to
neithor.

The State Church is placed in a position which
compromises its liberty and forbids the free
development of its genius as a Christian society.
In return for State recognition it has to submit to
a measure of State control; and situations have
arisen in which the decisions of the State are in
conflict with the Church's principles. A recent
case in point is the position which has arisen in
England consequent upon the legalisation of
marriage with a deceased wife's sister. Now, the
Church is within its rights in requiring certain
conditions of communion, and it may continue to
include among these conditions an archaism such
as ^M^idding marriage with a deceased wife's
sister. But if it be a State Church it can onlf
continue to demand this condition, when the
State has legalised such marriages, at the cost of

THE STATE CHURCH

repudiating that State control which is the price of
State recognition. Either the State Church must
fulfil its contract or dissolve its connection with the
State.* It cannot have it both ways. Whether the
advantages of State-recognition are worth this
saaifice of liberty it is for the Church itself to
determine.

But the trouble cuts even deeper than this. It
is a comparatively small thing, after all, whether a
particular piece of State enactment is in conflict
with an ancient canon of the Church; but it is a
matter of the greatest consequence whether the
Church's obligation to the State does not per-
manently depress its perception of the moral
requirements entailed by a Christian profession.
When Constantine added the Cross to his stock of
military emblems he was symbolising in an extreme
form the real implications of a union of Church

* The Bishop of Manche»ter recognises that the price of freedom is
Disestablishment : " By Church reform he meant what was sometimes
etUrf democratising the Church. At present their powers of self-reform
were esceedin^jr limited. For Prayer Book revision, for parish councils
with statutory authority, for wholesale readjuitmcnti of incomes, for new
ccclniaatical courts, for reform of patronage, for prosecution of heresy, for
power* of enomniHiiieatioa, etpecially since many Churchmen refused to
obey existiflg conrtt» recount mutt be had to Parliament. They also knew
perfectly wdl that th«r had ao intentiM of tr)'ing to pass a number of
ecdetiattical by-lawt diroufh PafUaamt, and that they could not if thnr
would. They ought to make up their minds whether thejr would approadl
Parliament for aelf-govemment, and whether thejr dctired telf-|OTemineat
so eagerly that they were prepared to accept it in the form of DitcttaUiah-
ment and Disendowment. For that was the coat which, in hi< opinion,
they would certainly be called upon to pay." -eSfiwrkwlrrCsiefrfiin, October
ao^ 1916.

94 THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

and State; and there is no case on record of a State
Church which has refused to follow the drum.
Wherever there is a State Church, the State am
count on a blessing of its arms in any li ilitary
adventure. In the last resort, the ethic of a State
Church will be the ethic of the State.

Now, the ethic of the State, in a democratic
community, can nevo' rise above the moral average
of the community. The morality of the State at
the best reflects the normal moral level of the
people as a whole. It is indeed questionable
whether it always reaches even that moderate
height; and, however plainly in ordinary times the
Church may proclaim the Christian moral ideal,
its ethical counsel in a time of crisis will always
exjMress the immediate requirements of the State.
Naturally, it will agree (as it always does) on these
occasions that the recognition of the Church by the
State invests the State with sonie kind of religious
character; and the acts of the State are accepted as
regulative of the moral counsels of the Church.
This was what Coleridge saw when he spoke of
the function of a " national " Church as that of
diffusing "legjality" through the people. It is
not without significance diat Bishop Creighton,
when he distinguishes between Church and State,
should speak of the latter as the nation's organ for
the arrangement of common life, and the former
its or^ for maintaining the principles on which
riiat life is based.* If fetish civili»tion is a real

* "Oaui Hvm Vtiftn," Striw f,jt', — — — -

THE STATE CHURCH

embodiment of Christianity, no quarrel with
Bishop Creighton's statement is possible. It is, of
course, to beg the question to establish the
Christian character of a Church or nation on its
relation to the creeds of Christendom. " By their
fruits shall ye know them " — and there is no
modem State or nation which would be recognised
as Christian by its ethical practice. In this im-
perfect world, ethic will always lag behind creed;
but the claim to be Christian does at least imply
an e^rt to co-ordinate conduct to creed. But
modon States do not ground — and, indeed, do
not profess to ground — their conduct on Christian
principles, and a study of the proceedings of any
State in Christendom would speedily disabuse any
fond belief in their acknowledgment of a Christian
obligation. Lowell speaks contemptuously of
" the patched-up broils of congress, venal, full of
meat and wine,'' and of " laws of cotton texture
wove by vulgar men for vulvar ends and parlia-
ments still generally behave m much the same way
and achieve much the same results. Whatever the
voice of the State may be, its speech is not re-
cognisably Christian. It was not mere irony that
induced Carlyle to take Emerson to the British
House of Commons to convince him of the
existence of the devil; and any other legislature
would have served as well. That a Church which
is to any extent bound to the State as we know it
should escape a blunting of its faculty of moral
insight is inconceivable; and in the long run it has

9< THB CHURCH IN THl COMMOWWIALTH

to equate its own moral teaching to the require-
ments of the State.

This is the reason why revivals of religion in a
State Church have almost always led to separation
and schism. Spirituality bears a close relation to
moral sensitiveness and vitality; and a Hying
Christian ethic reveals itself as a creative thing,
ever reaching out to "the things which are
before," and in all genuine spiritual revivals there
is a strong ethical emphasis. This accounts for the
ahnost consistently^ Puritan character of revivals of
this kind. Donatism and Montanism, and to some
extent the monastic movement, the Franciscan
movement, and English Separatism were all in
their measure Puritanical; and one has only to
read Wesley's sermons in order to realise how fully
his Gospel was charged with ethic It may be that
the Puritanism of such movements as these had a
legal basis and was too much concerned with
externals; but it was nevertheless a very real
witness to the intimacy of the spiritual and moral
in the life of men. But, speaking generally, State
Churches have found no room for these outbursts
of spirituality, and they have been compelled to
express themselves ** without the gate and it is
further significant, as to the Christian status of the
State Church, that these extruded movements have
all stood for a conscious endeavour to return to
primitive Christian standards and ways of life.

If we carry the analysis a stage further we shall

THB STATE CHURCH

find that the limitations of ethical insight and
power in a State Church arise from ihe necessity
(entailed by its status) of harmonising incompati-
bilities. It has been said with truth that the
progress of civilisation is registered by the measure
in which force dirappears nrom amone tlw »iic-
tions of common life. While it may oe granted
that in a modern democracy, government by
consent is gradually supplanting government by
force, force still remains the last resource of the
State. In external afiairs, the reign of force is not
yet modified to any material extent; it is still the
ultimate logic of diplomacy. The normal relations
of ordinary folk within the commonwealth are
govmied, it is true, not by physical force but by
irorce in other forms — public opinion, convention,
and the like. But the only form of social sanction
which the Church, if it be true to itself, can re-
cognise and teach is love. The State opposes force
to crime; it is the business of the Church to teach
men to overcome social evil with good. The one
works by coercion; the other works by conversion.
It is impossible to bless or to sanction coercion and
at the same time preach love. If the Church
chooses to speak half in the speech of Ashdod die
must not complain if men fail to recognise her as
the true Israel. Here, again, it is impossible to
have it both ways. Coercion is the denial of con-
version; and no complacent references to die hi^y
English genius for compromise are going to recon-
cile the contradiction.

9t THE CHVRCH IN THB COMMONWEALTH

The case of the Christian ethic against the
practice of the State is peculiar^ strong in relation
to external affairs. That the State has been
influenced in Christian ways, and that much
modern legislation reflects an increasing apprecia-
tion of the worth of personality (which is the
pniauy Christian contnbution to the science and
practice of politics), may be conceded. But in
external zfhirs this influence is far less perceptible.
It has expressed itself chiefly in international a^ee-
ments to prevent war or to mitigate its sevoitics
(though recent events have shown that this han
lagged far behind the modern elaboration of
instruments v hich have multiplied the horrors of
war a hundredfold), and in occasfonal altruistic
enterfHises in relirf of oppressed peoples. But all
these taken together make a very inconsiderable
off^set to the persistent and assertive self-regard of
States. The State is in practice self -regarding; it
is the doctrine in some countries that it shoiddand
must be so. The Christian ethic is the negation of
self-regard and the affirmation of the sovereignty
of love and service. The normal condition of
international afl&irs is competition, and States have
yet hardly learnt to co-operate in anything but in
war. The Gospel of the Church is a Gospel of co-
operation, of mutual service, of the overcoming of
mutual alienation; but the Church actually preaches
a Gospel in which these things are overshadowed
by the exigencies of a State which is in practice the
<M^anisation of national self-interest.

THE STATE CHURCH

This contradiction is sometimes reconciled by
asserting that the Christian ethic is an affiur for
individuals but not for the State — ^in which case the

Christian echic has poor prospects in some modern
States. For many voices bid us believe that the
conduct of the individual must be wholly governed
by the requirements of the State. The English
Military Service Acts have brought theologians
and preachers into the field to uphold the doctrine
that the demand of the State is identical with the
Christian obligation. But those who tell us that
the Christian ethic is not binding on States hardly
realise the impasse of thought into which they lead
themselves. To say that what is right for the
State may be wrong for the individual is to predi-
cate an impossible monl dualism. It presupposes
two ultimate moral standards opposed to each
other — which is to conceive a God divided against
Himself, who would be no God at all. There is
only one mcH^al order in a m<md univme; and both
individuals and States must stand or fall by it. Our
moral criticism of the State and of individuals
must rest on identical ethical grounds. Historic-
ally, the State has represented the organised native
selfishness of human nature; and it is the business
of the Church to convert it. The alliance of the
Church with the State has failed to effect that con-
version; and the failure is due to the compromise
of the monl auth<Mity of the Chunrh by its
recognition of State control. Probably the Church
has mfluenced the Stiite less than ^ State has

toe

THS CHUKCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

influenced the Church; and the prevailing religion
of State Churches is a polite paganism touched Mre
and there by a Christian grace.*

The present position is no more satisfactory
from the standpoint of the tolerated or "free"
Churches. For one thing, their legal position has
been raised in an acute form for the present genera-
tion by the judgment oi the House oi Lords in
the Scottish Churches' case. It is unnecessary to
recall the facts of the case beyond saying that it
arose out of the question whether a Church had by
a majority decision the right to modify its original
stanciards. In this case the Free Church by its
union with the United Presbyterians had, so the
minority claimed, departed from its original basis.
This view the House of Lords sustained, with the
result that the entire property of the Free Church
was legally handed over to a small and insignificant
remnant of dissidents. The result of the judg-
ment in this case was, to quote Dr. Figgis's
summary, on the one hand to " deny to a Free
Church the power of defining and developing its
own doctrines," and, on the other hand, while dis-
claiming interference in theological matters, the
juc^ment docs interfere in Acm '* under the plea
(rf conridering the question whether or not the

* Of conn^ thm are jieaty of noble personal excepttMii, lai aa
•eotriead greop ^iridda a tett Ouirch of which thU U ant trat.

THl STATE CHURCH

101

trust had been viokted.»»* This virtually ties a
Free Chiirch up almost as effectually as the State
Church; and it is possible for a small dissentient
minority to hold up, by recourse to litigation, the
proceedings of the majority in any Church if it
can be legally demonstrated that such proceedings
entail any kind or extent of departure from its
trust deeds. Its right to develop its own inherent
life is subject to the law of the State, which ouries
with it that its very right to exist is a concession oi
the State. This is a position not statedly defined
in English law or observed in practice; but it is un-
doubtedly implied in the Lords' judgment in the
Scottish Churches' case. The conception of the
Church as a body possessing an inherent life and
mind of its own, capable of growth and change, is
not recognised in English law; the law regards it
as a corporation based upon certain articles of
association, from the letter of which it may not
depart without losing iti identity and therefore its
right to retain the property necessary for the
conduct of its work. In other words, the Free
Churches are anything but free; thev are free only
within the narrow circle of a palpably inadequate
legal interpretation. That the State could ever
abolish a Church is inconceivable, because it is
impossible; but it might deprive it of its material
resources. That would be a hardship; but the
deprivation of the property of the Free Church of
Scotland only served to bind closer the union out

* "Otnrcktt in tkc Modem SUtc," p. sx.

loz TFIE CHURCH IN THI COMMONWBALTH

of which the trouble grew. The life of t religious
community was not created by the State, and the
State cannot destroy what it did not create. But it
does retain the claim to define the conditions of
the community's life even in the matter of its most
intimate inner existence.

It is, of course, obvious that the holding of
material property brings the Church to that extent
withal the jurisdiction of the State; and it is the
business <^ the State to see that no Church acts in
the matter ai its fvopaty in a way injurious to
other communities or to the general good. But
it is intolerable that the State should have power
to make the retention of its property by the Church
conditional upon its own sanction of the Church's
proceedings. Some of the Free Churches have
taken steps to safeguard themselves and their
property from the possibility of alienation or
confiscation by the State, but it is highly question-
able how far these saf<^:uards are ^ectual. For
the conception of the sovereign authority of the
State is deeply embedded in the law of the land;
and the claim of the State to interfere in the life
of Churches is simply a logical development of
the Austinian doctrine of sovereignty. Nothing
will ever effectually free the Churches from the
authority of the State but a changed doctrine of
the State itself. Perhaps that change will come
with the recognition of the inherent right of
independent religious societies to live and grow
within the commonwealth; for tliis will actually

THB rrATB CHimCH

involve an accqitance of diminished and qxialificd
authority. It will be the end of the Sovereign
State, and that event is not far off.

But the precarious standing of the « tolerated "
Church is not the only unfavourable elenient in
the existing position. In the past, not in this
country alone, the State Church has more or few
consistently sought advantages for itself which
were denied to other religious communities. It
has sought to establish a monopoly or to secure
preferential treatment— with varying immediate
success, but generally with ultimate injury to itself.
That at the present time the State Church in
England is beginning to take a more charitable
view of its religious neighbours must be freelv
acknowledged; but we are stiU burdened with
the inheritance of past struggles against the claims
and encroachments of the State Church. The
attitude of resistance to Mr. Balfour's Education
Acts which was evoked in the Free Churdies
has made for the perpetuation of .under-
standing and the postponement of ..utual
knowledge which would have createa a very
different kind of atmosphere. And, in addition
to this, it forced the Free Churches into the arena
of political conflict, to their own great injury.
To-day it remains the fact that the State Church
stands, on the whole, with one political party,
while the Free Churches generally support the

I04 THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

rival part^. The game of politkt at it isplayed in
Rnghjnd it at alien to the geaiut d die Qmrch at

war is; and it has been an unfortunate and
disastrous circumstance that over and over again
the pulpit has become the platform of a political
party, and the Gospel hat had to imke way a

party catchword. And all this has again led to
an ascription of an authority to the State to which
ever Churches must needs bow. The war of the
Churdiet has been (of the support of that superior
power which can act as «* judge and divider " over
them. It has tended to an unwholesome exaltation
of the State, which has virtually made flie Free
Churches into State Churches as well. That this
is no exag^;eration is sufficiently proved by
ahnost unanimous voice of the Free Churches in
favour of the State in the present war. To them,
as to the State Church, the security of the State is
a necessity to which the preaching ^ the Gospel
must be postponed.

This tends to depress in the Free Churches the
perception of what is involved in the Christian
ethic as gravely as in the State Church, though it
must be conceded that there are other causes. The
Free Churches have also come to regard themselves
as corporations with rights to be maintained; and
institutionalism has had its own dulling effect
upon the keenness of mind and life. TTie position
of affiiirs which " establishes " one religious com-
munity and " tolerates " others is one which will
continue to hinder the progress of the Kingdom of

THB STATt CNimCH

10$

God, unless the anomtly is overcome, not by
legislative change but rather as a consequence of
the growth of mutual knowledge and goodwill
between the communities concerned. And of this
consummation there is to-day some ground for
hopCt

CHAPTER Vn: THE ESSENTIAL
CHURCH

THE history of the Church shows that it
failed to escape the eStcts of the twofold
craving of human nature for security and
power. That this craving is natural and legiti-
mate is beyond doubt, but the Question remains
whether the secdar state or the Christian society
have conceived security and power rightly, and
have in consequence sought them by right and
effectual methods. It seems fairlv clear that in
the case of the secular state the traaitional method
of armament has been historically a failure; and in
so far as we have data for the judgment, it is a
reasonable presumption that those societies which
have sought security by the method of trusting
and dealing fairly with their neighbours have
found a better and more effectual way. The his-
tory of Pennsylvania seems to be a case in point.
Bergson maintains that in the evolution of nature
those types which have retained their protective
armament — the Crustacea — have been Ictt behind,
and that those have had the greater successes who
have taken the greatest risks. A similar case might
be made with a good deal of weight for human
societies. The greatest successes oi^British politics
have been those cases in which apparently enor-
■)us risks were taken, such as, for instance, the
grant of self-government to the conquered Boer
territories of douth Africa. It is true that the
analogy between Nature and human societies must
not be pressed too far. In Nature, security was

THE ESSENTIAL CHURCH

sacrificed to mobility, and armaments were dis-
carded in the interests of a larger security. But in
human society mobility has not been substituted
for but added to armament, and the organ of
security has become the organ of aggression. But,
further, in human societies greater security has not
achieved its end. The establishment of security
has generally been followed by a relaxation of
moral fibre — the notorious cause of the undoing of
great States. It would appear that the full security
of human societies is connected with the taking of
what seemingly is the infinitely greater risk of
trusting to the armament of goodwill. It has yet
to be shown that moral sanctions unreinforced by
physical armament arc inadequate to the business
of self-preservation, whether for individuals or for
groups. It is no longer in need of demonstration
that material and outward defences, however
strong and well organised, do not secure the life of
human societies, but rather put them in jeopardy
every hour. Their real security and true strength
lies not in the barricades with which they surround
themselves, but in the integrity and goodwill of
their inner life.

But so strong is our human confidence in exter-
nal sanctions that the Church has continuously
devised measures to safeguard its life and in-
tegrity. It has resorted to organisation, consoli-
dation, definition, centralisation — the orthodox
machinery of secular societies which have quite
other interests to safeguard. By the beginning of

io8 THB CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

the second century the unity of the Church was
held to be secured by the appointment of bishops,
and it was the view of Ignatius that the bi^op was
the symbol and centre of the Church's unity. In
the same spirit, we have seen the effort to safe-
guard the message by defining it and casting it into
formal statements. These measures did indeed
make for the security of the Church, but at the
cost of substituting for its early fellowship a rigid
institutional form. From the worst effects of Sis
process the Church was saved by the opposition of
the outer world and the persecution to which it was
consequently exposed. But when the temptation
of power confronted the Church, its increasing
institutionaliun enfeebled its resistance to it; and
the Church walked into Constantine*8 parlour. It
henceforth possessed security and power of the
" worldly " kind — but at the cost of the security
and power proper to its own nature.

It is true that the measures which the Church
took in the interests of its security and in the
acceptance of power and prestige were sincerely
intended for the furtherance of the Kingdom of
God. These seemed to constitute the obvious and
swift route to its goal. But the Church's leaders
were unable to discern that these measures were
wholly contrary to the method imposed on the
Church bjr the natiire of its purpose. The security
of the Church's message lay not in defining it
but in preaching it. To define it was to confine
it. The Church's integrity was to be preserved

109

by the cohesive energy of a love which made
fomud sanctions superfluous. If it had been on
the Christian programme to bring the Kingdom of
God by the method of power, why should Jesus
have eschewed it for Himself, as He deliberately
did in the Temptation ? Had the Church remained
true to that precedent, it would have remained in
the world "the suffering servant" by whose
stripes the world might have been healed. Both
security and power of the external order arc alien
to the essential Church. Its task is the high
adventure of saving the world by serving it, and
suffering by and for it.

Historically the Church has never been quite
able to free itself from this evil inheritance. In
many ways it has led to an assimilation of a
« worldly " scale of values, and its effect has been
to divert the Church from its first intention and to
entangle it in controversies in which it has been
continually (and often effectually) tempted to
abandon its own appointed weapons of offence and
to bdie the spirit of its Lord. It has been drawn
into dances and struggles which have distorted
its vision and crippled its ministries. Now it is
as-^c dng its authority against the State; at another
ume it MS sought to reinforce it by alliance with
tht State; in both cases it has had recourse to fleshly
weapons and has discarded its own spiritual and
immaterial armament. Nothing has been more

no THI CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

disastrous to the Church than its use of the civil
arm to enforce conformity with itself and to
persecute the dissenter. A conversion by coercion
lacks moral reality; and moral reality is of the very
essence of authentic religious life.

This subjection to methods incongruous with
the nature of its purpose shows itself in many ways.
There is, for instance, a pathetic and inveterate
faith in the efi" acy of mass action. The story of the
English Free Church Council is full of it. It has
passed numberless resolutions on this topic and
that, presuming that what is called " the united
voice of the Free Churches " carries authority and
materially affects public opinion and governmental
action. It is not perceived that the resolution habit
is a method of indirect coercion. It is an attempt
to influence public policy by the pressure of a mass-
opinion. The method has been a conspicuous
foilure, aca>mplishing little or nothing because it
is not organic to, or congruous with, the essential
functions of the Church. The notion of Churches
organised into a more or less compact unity,
exercising pressure upon Governments, is a denial
of the Christian method of transforming the
world. Where this pressure is exercised in the
maintenance of " rights," that is, in defence of the
interests of a particular communion or group of
communions, it is not merely futile but self-
defeating. The Christian method, and therefore
the Church's only way, of overcoming the evil that
may be purposed against it is the imperturbable

THB BSSBNTIAL CHURCH

III

endurance <rf ill in the spirit of love. The Church
of Christ was never meant to " stand up for its
rights." This may seem a strange doctrine for this
generation; it is nevertheless a true one, and a little
thought in the light of the New Testament ?hould
prove it so.

We have observed how the mstmctive feeling
for security led to the development of institution-
alism; and in course of time the Church was over-
taken by the peril latent in this movement. One
— and perhaps the most obvious — consequence of
institutionalism is a dread of innovation. The
frontiers have been delimited and they must not
be disturbed. Where the intrinsic life of a religious
society is strong enough, it will soon or late dis-
regard the frontiers and break through them; but
where there is no such strength of the inner life,
the society is under sentence of dcat^. The Church
has lived because its inner life has been, and is,
mightier than all the institutions in which it has
from time to time embodied itself. All religions
show within ** -nselves two tendencies, which may
be roughly ibed as the priestly and the pro-
phetic. Th oriper is a ^ rinciple of authority,
order, definition. Its instinct is for the institution.
The latter is the principle of freedom, and it works
with an unexpectainess and a waywardness which
to the shallow looks like caprice. The former is
prone to suspect the new; the latter is for ever
expressing itself in new ways. It is a principle of

lis THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

growth, the kinetic energy of religion, and the
difficulty of harmonising the growing perception
of the will of God, of which the prophet is the
organ, with the authority and the order of which
the priest is the custodian, lies at the root of all the
really matmal controversies in religious history.
The problem of the modern Chiirch is the dis-
covery of the way by which these two tendencies
may be harmonised. The institution has its place;
its danger is to monopolise all the room and crush
out the necessary freedom and spontaneity of
religious life.

Not only does Christianity possess this pro-
phetic element, but there is also the restless creative
quality of the Christian ethic. Christian morality
is not a thing of law and codes. It is the reverse
of all legalism. It defines no " terminus ad
queniy" which being reached a man may say, " I
have attained." On the contrary, a living Christian
ethic is essentially creative, for ever seeing new
heights to climb, for ever seeking to transcend its
own best. Christianity is essentially the religion
of the moral pioneer — neither in its spiritual nor
ethiod aspects does it take kindly to dranition and
formulation. The formula is well enough as zn
account of ground already covered, but when it is
regarded as an authoritative statement, a precise
conformity to which alone justifies a man's title to
the Christian name, it becomes a prison and a drag
upon the human spirit. But the life of Christianity
has not endured any bond in perpetuity. The

THE ESSENTIAL CHURCH

Church needs to be as free from itself as it should
be free from the State if it is to be an effective
organ of the ^irit of God.

It is curious that the Church has never re-
cognised how vulnerable its formal safeguards in
time make it. For one thing, authority has a
tendency to accumulation and centralisation. The
end of the journey on which the Church started
when it ascribed authority to a statement or an
individual was the doctrine of Papal infallibility.
Here authority is claimed over the whole extent
of religious life, yet concentrated in one individual.
This is a bondags to which the spirit of man cannot
long submit; soon or late, at some point or other,
it is bound to challenge authority, whether it is
ascribed to a document or to a person. The prin-
ciple of authority has therefore evoked the spirit of
revolt, and the Church has been riven and torn in
sunder in consequence. Further, the definitions
and formulae which the Church has devised and
worked out in the interests of its security have too
frequently become the targets of the enemy. It
has been reduced again ancTagain to a condition of
panic by the assaults which have been made upon
its " standards." Because it was tied to a particular
dogma of creation it was shaken to its foundation
by the theory of evolution; because it was wedded
to a particular doctrine of inspiration it has
shivered in the face of the higher criticism. It has
taken up arms against its assailants with a vehe-
mence which has made religious controversy

114 THB CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

proverbial for its uncharitablcncss. In an age of
growing knowledge it has been compelled to take
up an apologetic attitude, and apologetic is nnther
attractive nor redemptive. If die Church's life be
not apologia enough, then no other will avail any-
thing. In a polemic one argument merely evokes
another; it is a region of contradictions and
controversies. The confusion of logic is only
overcome by life. That the Church has survived
is not due to the learning or subtlety of its doctors.
On the whole, it has lived its real life in SPJ^ of
them; and the assaults on it have in the end ftuled
because they did not touch its essential life. They
only shook outposts that were already obsolete and
doomed to be abandoned.

One result of the institutionalising of the
Church has been an excessive preoccupation with
itself and its "rights." After the Scottish
Churches case many churches spent long in
devising means of safeguarding tteir property.
Some " property," in the shape of conveniences
for worship, the Church should no doubt possess,
but to spend five minutes in devising legal safe-
guards for it is a waste of time. There is no
modern State which would hesitate to over-nde
such safeguards if it suited its purpose, and the
Church is not called upon to take such steps as
these to preserve itself or to secure its property.
It should simply go on with its business and take
the consequences. Some of the most in^iring

THE ESSENTIAL CHURCH

passages in Christian history are those in which,
deprived of its property, the Church found a place
of worship which had the bare earth for floor and
the vault ci lieaven for ceiling. The Church has
a task to accomplish in the world; it is only safe
when it is busy with this task and with nothing
else. It is never in greater peril than when it
begins to be anxious for its security. Indeed, this
principle goes a great deal deeper. The Church
has built up, under this illusion of needing safe-
guards, a system of discipline. It is right that it
should take thought of its purity; but when it
seeks to presove its purity by a discipline which is
a mode of legalism, it is binding itself and com*
mitting itself to tepidity and mediocrity. " When
Friends began to care more for the purity of
Quakerism than for the conversion of the world
their chance oi universal service was thrown away,
and they degenerated into a mere sect."* The
only safeguard of the purity of the Church is the
intensity of its own missionary passion, which will
of itself extrude the alien elements which make for
corruption and indifierence.

How then is the Church to redeem its failwe in
the modern world } The issue of our ai^fument is

fairly plain. The path of recovery lies in an
endeavour to reproduce the primitive type of

* H. T. Ho^^n, *<The MitMonarjr Spirit and the Present Opporta-

ti6 THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

Christian fellowship under the conditions of the
twentieth century. Reunion is being preached
to-day as a panacea for the ills of the Church,
but this is to begin at the wrong end. The
creation of an ecclesiastical leviathan is really the
logical issue of the tendency to centralisation which
has been so detrimental to the Church throughout
its history. To tie up into a bunch the officitl
nuchinary of so many religious communions is
not to produce Christian unity. The unity of
Christendom is not to be secured by the co-ordina-
tion of machinery or by a creda! uniformity. These
luive had their day. If there is to be a real unity
it must be the unity of Christian folk in love and
service. The modern Church has not realised
itself effectually as a Christian society, and yet the
strength and the effectualness of the Church in the
world is directly contingent upon the maintenance
and culture of its common life. It is the peculiar
privilege and duty of its members to add to the
volume and power of this life, each in his own
measure. In some ways the most astonishing cir-
cumstance in modern Church life has been the casual
nature of its members' relation to it, and the nriea^e-
ness, even the grudgingness, of their contribution
to its life. The result has been a singular absence of
a real social character in the Church. For the most
part it has not been a society but a mob, not a
congregation but a crowd. Such social elements as
have survived within the Church have been
sectional and partial. Class divisions have rent it

THB ESSENTIAL CHURCH

117

and the one thing for which one might look fruit-
lessly for years in the modem Church is a genuine
Christian fellowship — not the worked-up sociable -
ness of an occasional evening, for of this there has
been enough and to spare, b"* that deeper com-
munion of spirits in wnich men consdoiisly make
common cause in the pursuit of holiness, and throw
their personal experience of the quest into the
common stock for the heartening and enlightening
of their fellows. It is the appointed means by
whidh conduct and experience achieve sanity and
balance; it is no less the appointed means by which
the redemptive purpose or God is made effectual
in the world.

For this is no fellowship for its own sake. It
is called to a specific ministry, and its work in
the world is not fruitful without the collective
momentum of a living Christian community.
It is entrusted with a Gospel by which a word
and a race of redemption are mediated to the
world. " Its aim is the willing and lowly return of
the soul to God, the reconciliation of God and
man. Vhe C istian society is essentially mis-
sionary, and its missionary passion is first and last
its one real safeguard. It has been said that the
Church which ceases to be evangelistic soon ceases
to be evangelical; and this is a true saj^ing. The
faith wUl be safe so long as the Gospel is preached
by wcid and by life. There is an old evangelical
phrase which the Church needs t<. recover, though

■It THI CHVICH IN THB OOMMONWIALTH

with a new connotation — " the passion for souls.**
The word has been in the put too much tstodtted

with negative ideas of salvation, the plucking of
brands from the burning and the like, as though
the end of the Gospel were to provide men with
•ecurity against perdition. But there is a larger
and more positive sense for the phrase. Frederic
Myers makes St. Paul say :

" Oaljr M MuU I Mc the folk thereunder,
Munuti «riMtlMaUeeafuer,sl«vw«4ioilMd4b*kiagi'*l

and this is a true definition of the Christian view
of mm. The final office of the Church is the
emancir ition and the enthronement of man by the
creation in him of the ims^e of the Son of God;
and things will not be welf with the Chinxh until
it recovers a Pauline ** passion fof souls."

**TIkii with ■ thrill dw iatdtnMe erwriaf
Siiven throii|h me like n truaqpet cdl—
Oh to tave thete, to perith for their taviag,
Die for their life, t>e offered for them •Ul"

And this italised and understood not as the narrow,

yet in its way not unworthy, solicitude that men
should escape from the wrath to come, but as deep
persuasive love that longs and strives and gives
it.«elf freely that man may enter upon his
inheritance of kingship and joy and peace, will
(and nothing else will) rehabilitate the Church in
this generation. But neither the word nor the
sacrament by which the gift of God is mediated to
men will be effectual save only as they are con-
sciously realised as social trusts. Hiey are vested
in a society, and they call for a social presentation.

The preacher and the priest must be really and not
formally the organs of the collective prophethood
and priesthood of a Christian community; and it
U only as the Church is a living fellowship tl»t
its ministry is endowed with tn authentic soari

impulse. 7* . . •

It would take us too far afield to inquire into
the causes of the comparative obscuration of the
Church's missionary function in our time. It is
partly due to the supposed need already referred
to of maintaining an apologetic attitude in the
face of the challenge of the new knowledge. But
it is probably to some extent due to the effect upon
the propagandist character of the Gospel of the
endwvour to harmonise it with the theory ot
evolution. That evolution is involved in the order
of the world no sane person at this time of <^
would deny; but that the principle has been applied
in regions where it is only very partially or doubt-
fUUy applicable should be no less obvious. It has in
particular led to a view of human progress which
wiii bear neither historical nor ethical criticism. We
have come to suppose that we live in a world m
which there is an essential bias to improvement.
There is a vis a tergo which is sending it up a gently
inclined slope to the City of God. Some time we
shall arrive : there is a golden age awaiting us on
the crest of the hiU. On this theory Christianitjr
becomes a push by the way to this laborious cosmic
climb— a gentle accessory to the evolutionary
process,— and the business of the Church is to

ISO THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

propel this obstinate old world up its predestined
slope, car^Uy adjusting its driving force at each
stage to what it thinks the world will stand with-
out jibbing. The Church has to accommodate its
moral witness and its gospel to the world as it is,
not driving it too hard or asking too much from it.

But this is not a world which takes kindly to
improvement. On the contrary, it exhibits an
inveterate and persistent aversion from the prophet
and the reformer. It is only to be improved as it
is converted. In nature the charactenstic process
is creative evolution; in human societies the
primary process in all progress is creative revolu-
tion. The present war will no doubt introduce
great modifications into the evolutionary interpret-
ation of history. For, as a revelation of modern
State morality, it tells a tale not of advance but of
degeneration. The mitigation of the severities of
war, which we hailed as a sign of moral advance,
is dwarfed to vanishing point by the newly devised
horrors of war. The gift of the Church to the
world is not a stimulus to its bias to improvement,
but a reniedy for its tendency to degeneracy. The
Church is an organ not of reformation but of
redemption. It was created not to make a better
world but a new world. And in these days when
we are told on every hand that the only thing that
can change the world is a changed temper and a
changed way of life, the Church would again find
its opportunity, if it could remember that the first
word of its Gospel is Repent.

THE ESSENTIAL CHURCH •*»

The edge of the Church's message has itmwc-
ovcr been duUcd by the emergence of the idea of
moral mass-movement, and this is again a bye-
product of the evolution hypothesis. And the
philosophers have helped us to identify the mass
with the State— with so much success, indeed, that
the theologians have begun to preach that the State
and the Church are the divinely appointed twin
organs of the Kingdom of God. The result of this
process has been a very perceptible depression m
the view of the Christian moral obligation. On
this view good churchmanship and good citizenship
are co-extensive terms. That the good churchman
should be a good citizen is only to say that the
greater should include the less. Yet it is not the
business of the Church to produce citizens, but
saints; it is to /-reate a certain type of moral per-
sonality, which is not to be defined by reference to
the requirements of the State, but by reference to
the personality of Jesus Christ. Its characteristic
product is not law-abidingness, but holiness; and
there have been times when Christian holiness
and conventional good citizenship have been at
extreme antipodes. According to the modem
theory, the martyr was not merely a fool, but a
criminal who deserved all he got. He had no right
to allow his own sense of moral obligation to differ
from that which the State prescribed.

The recovery of the Church is connected with
a frank return to first principles, to a reappropna-

ISS THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

tion of the New Testament outlook. This does
not mean that revelation is to be regarded as
having ceased at the close of the New Testament
canon. On the contrary, we must believe, as Brad-
ford did, that " God has ever more light and truth
to break from His holy Word." Nevertheless, all
revelation must cohere with the New Testament
and be able to {m>ve its ancestry. The modern
doctrines of accommodation are not developments
from the New Testament position, but look very
much like apostacies from it. The thought that
justifies the Church in taking "a sub-C3iristian
platform " is a perversion due to misplaced
emphasis upon the doctrine of evolution and an
exaggerated devotion to the State. The real cry
for tnc Church to-day is Back to the New Testa-
ment. It may be urged against this view that it
is what Dr. Forsyth calls lay religion (which
apparently means religion unauthorised by theo-
logians), that it takes no account of all that has
happened since the first century. It is may be
asserted) an attempt to .''ep back over the history
of nineteen hundred years, and to reproduce the
conditions of primitive Christianity, without allow-
ing for the development of thought in the interval.
It entails writing off that vast mass of painful
theological construction which indicates the
advance of speculation into, and experience of, the
deep things of God. The answer to the charge is
that it is based upon a reading of the wrong
history. The true history of Chnstianity as a life

THE ESSENTIAL CHURCH **i

and a reality of experience is not identical with the
external history of Christian institutions. The
apostolical succession is an affair of saints and not
of hierarchs; and it is only to minds of the legal
and doctrinaire type that it is not obvious that the
living elements of Christianity have been historic-
ally preserved as « lay religion." It is not to be
denied that there e been periods in which
institutional Chris. " has served a certain pur-
pose of conservatio; , out the institutions have at
last become reactionary in effect. And it is only
as lay religion has succeeded fi-om time to time in
disentangling itself from the strangulating meshes
of officialism and tradition that Christianity has
sustained its continuity through the ages.

We can afford th»efore to accept the charge of
« lay religion " without misgiving; and to plead
guilty gladly to the imputation that we desire to
reproduce the conditions of first-century Chris-
tianity in the twentieth. Not that we suppose for
a moment that we can repeat the external circum-
stances of that far-off time. What is of more
consequence is that the inner experience of
Christianity may and can be reproduced, and th^t
if it possesses the peculiar intensity of the primi-
tive experience it will constrain the twentieth
century to make room for it. This is very far,
however, from a desire to skip the intervening
history. On the contrary, this present plea triscs
directly from the actual historical circumstances of
this time, read in the light of the history of the

IH THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

past. We are looking upon the bankruptcy of the
traditional syntheses in Church and State; they are
lying in ruins at our feet, and not for the first time
recovery is bound up with revolt. The need of the
moment is the repudiation of the conventional and
orthodox habits of thought which have issued in
this present tragedy; and for the Church it means
breaking away from the perversions wrought by
temporary phases of thought and the pressure of
a false politics, to " the faith once delivered to the
saints,'* which is, in substance if not in statement,
unchanged, to a gospel which is true to the abiding
facts of life and rests upon " a moral order that
cannot be repealed."

When St. Paul wrote to the Philippian Church,
" We are a colony of heaven," it was with the
historical origins of Philippi in mind. The word
contained an allusion which every Philippian at
once understood. When the Roman statesmen set
out to consolidate their conquests into the Empire
they settled a community of veterans in the new
territory, and they trusted to these colonies to
romanise the surrounding country. Every colony
was designedly a miniature of the imperial city.
It is this circumstance that St. Paul lays hold of in
order to illustrate his thought of the Church. Just
as Phihppi had been, and, indeed, then was, a com-
munity planted in a strange land to assimilate it to
the Empire, so was the Church, a community of
people belonging elsewhere, settled in this place
and that to permeate the surrounding world and to

THE ESSENTIAL CHtJRCH

annex it to the Kingdom of God. The peril of the
Roman colony was its invasion by the barbarian
standsirds of its neighbours; no less was it the
pcrU of the Church to be poisoned by the entrance
of pagan influences from the unregenerate world
without. It was a peril which, as we know,
frequently overtook the Church. Sir William
Ramsay gives us a vivid glimpse of the process in
his account of the Nicolaitans :

Especially it is highly probable that the Nicolaitans either already had or
soon would have reached the conclusion that they might justifiably comply
with the current test of loyalty, and burn a little incense in nonour of the
Emperor. The Church was not disloyal ; even its most fanatical defenders
claimed to be loyal ; then why should its members make any difficulty about
proving their loyalty by burning a few grains of incense ? A little mcense
WM nothing. An excellent and convincing argument can be readily worked
out I «nd then— the whole ritual of the State religion would have followed
•s a matter of course j Christ and Augustus would have been enthroned
side by side as they were in the compromise attempted by the Eniperor
Alexander Severus more than a century later ; and everything which was
Tital to Christianity would ha»e been lost*

It is no longer a question of a little incense; the
form of the issue has indeed often changed. But
this is its substance. Is the Church to retain its
« colonial " character or is it to lower its standard
the more easily to win the surrounding world Is
it to make a concordat with the State? Does it
not by that very compromise lose its propagandist
force and sink undistinguished into the general
welter of secular life ? If the Church is to remain
a "colony of heaven," then it must assuredly
retain without compromise and preach without
reserve its own distinctive gospel and ethic, nor

•Sir W. M. Ramsay I "The Lettert to the Seven Churches" pp.
30of.

»a« THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

pause to co-ordinate them to new knowledge or
political exigencies. These may be left to adjust
themselves rightly in the process of time. And it
may be maintained that the Church has survived
its secularisation only because in every age a few
obscure people have kept the old flag flying— often
through bonds and imprisonments — ^and refused
to surrender either to sophistry or to persecution.

Perhaps the greatest miracle of the life of the
Church is its seemingly inexhaustible quality of
renewal. Not even the most sterile periods of
Christianity have been without their hidden centres
of life and light. The altar fires have never
utterly gone out. Again and again, the Church has
^emed to rise out of its ashes, like the phoenix.
Whether another such resurrection is imminent,
we will not dare predict. It may be, indeed, that
the Church has to endure still greater agony
of failure and humiliation before the great and
notable day of its renewal come. But when it does
come. It will be the result of the recovery by some
prophetic remnant of the reality of Christian
fellowship, and of the primitive missionary pas-

T j", ^° of its renewal we

gladly affirm. Wc believe that its existing institu-
tions wi not stand the fires of resurrection, that
there will be new and unexpected alignments and
affiliations, at the same time a widening and a
narrowing of its gates. « Long," sang Francis
Thompson, "hath been the hour of thy un-
quecning » but the Bride of Christ may yet be, « a

THE ESSENTIAL CHURCH

glorious bride without spot or blemish or any such
thing," fit mate and mirror of her Lord, " whose
feet arc coming to her on the waters," and may
show to mankind " the face of Jesus Christ," so
that all men may see Him, and seeing, stoop down
to kiss the hem of His garment.

CHAPTER Vm; THE CHRISTIAN
STATE

IT is as true of the State as it is of the Church
that its ml history is written not in the record
of external events, but in the hidden and
largely unrecorded life of the people. This does
not mean that the common life of nations has not
frequently emerged into the light of histonr. It
luis done so again and again, and the great and truly
epoch-making passages of recorded history are
those which have to do with popular risings. For
the rest, the thing that commonly passes for history
is largely an irrdevanqr so far as the progress of
popuHir culture is concerned; and this in the end
is what really matters. That historical accidents
and events have again and again entailed changes
in national duuracter and outlodc must indeed
be frankly admitted; but speaking generally,
these are minor factors in the real development
of humanity. And there have been times when
men have deliberately turned away from the State
in despair that it would ever do anything for the
welfare of the people. Robert Owen preached
the doctrine of political indifferentism, and urged
the people to work out their own salvation
independently of the machinery of State. And
this, in point of fact, the people have always done.
The history of States is not the history of peoples.

The modern veneration of the State and our
faith in its omnicompetence is largely due to the
collectivist reaction from the indi^dualism which
reigned in the early nineteenth ttntury. In the

THI CHRISTIAN tTATB

form of State socialism this tendency was greatlj
reinforced; and the logical issue of this develop-
ment is to be seen to-day in the considerable
limitations imposed by the State upon personal
initiative and freedom, and in the ludicrous
theological apotheosis of the State which bellicose
professors in England and Germany have been
preaching. But from this extravagance, it is
certain that the near futiire will see a considerable
reaction. What we have to secure is the via media
between the anarchistic negation of the State and
the preposterous modern worship of it. There are
some grounds for believing that we are on the way
to a new political synthesis.

Augustine spoke disrespectfully of the State;
the first State, he said, had a fratricide for its
founder. But it does not follow that we accept
Augustine's summary verdict if we point out that
the origin of the State is questionable from the
point of view of the Christian ethic. The first
impulse to statecraft came from the instinct of self-
preservation, the desire to secure the political in-
stitutions and property of a group of people. The
motive of statecraft is the same as that of creed -
making. It is the passion for security. The State
is the product of a process of consolidation in the
interests of safety; and consequently it has been
chiefly concerned with the external relations of
the community. It has re{»«sented histcmcally

THB CmiRCH IN TIU COMMONWEALTH

a principle of group-individualism; and it has
naturally taken up an attitude of excluMvenesa and

fuspicion towards other States. When its security
has been cs " lished, the instinct which sought
security grovv» by a natural development into the
instinct for power. Nationalism passes over into
imperialism, with all that this implies of the
aggravation of suspicion, jealousy, and othei
divisive and war-breeding tempers. Historically
the State, while it has m«ic for the consolidation
of geographical groups had also made for the
disintegration of the human family.

The desire to safeguard political institutions and
national territory is itself not unworthy or evil;
but a lone enough historical perspective will show
the futility of the attempt to preserve these
things permanently by the traditional methods of
States. The atavistic confidence in physical force
only survives on the short view. Empires have
had no permanence and their stability has been
illusory. And the armament of force has had the
consistent effect of accentuating the divisive
tendencies of State-organisation. The relations
of States have been deto-mined by considerations
not of right or wrong but of relative strength; and
the State has sought as near an approach to omni-
potence as possible. This, primarily intended for
Its external relations, has, however, reacted in-
ternally; and the State has generally endeavoured
to achieve over its constituent people the same kind
of sovereign authority as it has sought over other

THS CHRISTIAN STATB

»1»

nations. The concq>tiofi of power has dominated
it; and it is of the very nature of power that its
possession breeds the craving for more. It is the
most powerful and demoralising of intoxicants;
and it is high time that the Christian consciousness
among Western peoples should be awakened to
realise the hopeless illusion which the conception
of the State as power involves. It is at last not
preservative but destructive of the very things it
was intended to safeguard. The first contribution
which the Christian Church should make to
modern nations is to deliver them from the
" monstrous regiment " of this barbarism. Bui
if it is to render this ministry, it must itself be
delivered from its own illusions about power.

It has been already pointed out that the doctrmc
of State-absolutism is breaking down before the
facts of life. The reaction of the war will stimulate
a process which was well under weigh before the
war. The TafF Vale and tht Scottish Churches
judgments, the exploits of M. Combes in France,
the apotheosis of the State in Germany (the tragedy
of which is before our eyes to-day), all these and
other circumstances had led gradually to the
assertion of the independent and original life of
permanent groups within the commonwealth, and
the denial that they owe their right to a corporate
existence to the permission of the State. The
ferment of thought set up by the European war is
most certainly bound to reinforce this conviction

i]i THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

Besides this, the increasing effect of the discovery,
which modern historians arc helping us to make,
that the life of a community is only partially
embraced by the State, that indeed the State only
exprenes one aspect of it, is going to add greatly
to the strength of the movement for the destruc-
tion of the notion of the sovereign State. It is
becomire ever plainer that the structure of society
cannot be fruitfully discussed in terms of an
abstract individual over against an abstract State;
our social life is a complex and many-coloured
fabric; it is a luxuriant mass of social forms and
shapes, each possessing a spontaneous and indepen-
dent life of its own, each responding to some
specific need of our nature. The task of political
philosophy in the days to come is to discover the
wavs and means not merely of relating the
individual to the whole, but of relating rightly both
to the individual and the whole, and to one another,
the various forms of social organisation in which
the life of the community resides. And in such a
political philosophy the State will necessarily cease
to be unitary and will become federal; and its office
will be the co-ordination and adjustment of the
outward and material relationships and affairs of

whole. Mr. Ernest Barker, in a review of actual
tendencies in modern political thought, tells us thut
" the new doctrine of the right of groups " ..." in
the sphere of legal thecay, assumes the form of
insistence on the real personality, the spontaneous

associations which make up the

THE CHRISTIAN STATE »n

origin (and with sonie of its exponents) the
* inherent rights ' of permanent organisations.
In thif fomt, the doctrine has been urged on the
one hand by advocates of the rights of Trades
Unions, and on the other hand, by the champions
of the rights of Churches and ecclesiastical
bodies. In both forms it has tended to produce
a federalistic throry of the '^tatc, whether the State
is regarded as a union of guilds or ' a cr inn -lity
of communities ' which embraces groups. only
economic but also ecclesiastical and national. . . .
We may need and we may be moving towards a
new conception of the State, and more especially a
new conception of sovereignty which shall be broad
enough to embrace these new ideas. We may have
to regard every State, not only the federal State
proper, but also the State which professes to be
unitary, as in its nature federal; we may have to
recognise that sovereignty is not single and
indivisible, but multiple and multicellular."*

Whatever the form of the political machinery
requisite for the working of the federal State may
be, it is obvious that the conception makes larger
room for private opinion and freedom of con-
science, on the one hand, and gives, on the other,
ample safeguards for an order which will be no
mere uniformity. The strength of the idea of the
sovereign State is that it provides the community

• ••Poiitic«l Thought, fr»m Spencer to To-day," pp. 249f. (1915).

»34

THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

with security against individualism; but it does
so at the cost of depressing individuality. It tends
to uniformity, and does not (as a wholesome social
order should^ stimulate the variety which accom-
panies growing life. The federal State would
save us, on the one hand, from the confusion of
unchecked individualism, and, on the other, from
deadening uniformity. It preserves the only con-
ditions on which liberty and order are adequately
and harmoniously maintained, and these are also
the only conditions under which moral personality
can find room to grow.

In the sovereign State the limitations upon per-
sonal freedom and initiative must be to a large
extent uniform and mechanical. It draws a line
which the individual must necessarilv toe. The
problem is to discover the means by wnich personal
relations can be adjusted within the commonwealth
conformably with the free development of person-
ality. Coercive methods obviously do not satisfy
this condition; and it is difficult to see how this
mnblem is to be solved except by recognising the
function of the smaller group of freely associated
persons within the political order. As things are,
where the individual conscience refuses to assent
to the requirement of the State the tendency is to
anarchy. But it is perfectly clear, human nature
being what it is, that conscience must submit itself
to a social test. Yet it is of the very nature of the
case that the test must be one which the individual
conscience itself freely accepts. Our m(xnl in-

THE CHRISTIAN STATE »3$

tuitions must be put to the proof of the common
sense of a group; but the group must be one the
common sense of which we are prepared to trust.
That is, indeed, one of the reasons why the Church
came into being. Our religious instmcts need the
balance of a social environment. Holmcss is essen-
tiaUy a social product. Religious mdividualism
leads to eccentricity and faddiness. The Christian
experience can only preserve balance and normality
in a social setting. And within the commonwealth
the freely associated group will naturally provide
those checks and arrests upon individual action
which will save it from lawlessness; and it will do
so the more effectively as it is done freely and with
the consent of the person concerned. It may
perhaps be argued that this is true of the State also,
since the State represents such a group. But the
sufficient answer to this is that the State tails to
satisfy these conditions— firstly, because the in-
dividual does not stand in a freely chosen relation
to it (usually he belongs to it by accident of birth,
and is unable to dissociate himself from it;; and,
secondly, because the State stands in the common
mind for the way of coercion, which precludes the
possibility of an attitude of affection to it, ami
therefore of that trust in it which will evoke ready
and willing submission to its authority. No one
ever loved the State as men have loved their
university or their church.

And if groups of freely associated persons have
the right to Uve their own distinctive life within

«3«

THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

the commonwealth, personal liberty is safeguarded
also. Indeed, a great deal of what has been called
the struggle for individual Ubertv lus historically
been a struggle for the liberty of small voluntary
groups. The straggle for religious liberty in
England, for instance, has been coloured through-
out by its first phase — the fight for life which the
early Separatist ccmununities made. The principle
which was at issue was the right of free association,
and in England, so far as religion is concerned,
little more needs to be secured beyond the full
recognition of the autonomy of religious associa-
tions, their entire independence <rf the State as
regards their inner life, the State touching them
only as their temporalities require adjustment in
reference to those of other groups. But the
principle requires to be carried a good deal further.
The trade unions, the friendly societies, the univer-
sities, and all permanent associations should receive
the same recognition of their inner freedom, and
should have their own place in the formuktion ci
the national polity.* To the clumsy and inadequate
geographical constitution of the legislature there
should be added the representation of the great
poTnanent human interests which are embodied in
the manifold groups in which men are gathered
together in the commonwealth. That the groups
should satisfy certain broad general conditions
before they are thus acknowledged is obvious; but

* That li, ai a friend obierve*, a territorial Houte of Common* and a
•^nuttaditt" Howe.

THE CHIUSTIAN STATE

»17

it is only in some such way as this that the State
can be organised 80 that k ifcill irprriient the fiihiesi

of the common life.

Moreover, the sovereign State has historically
been exclusive and divisive in temper, for ever
building and strengthening waBs ci partition
between itself and other States. But a State which
recognises itself as intrinsically federa' will find it
easy to conceive the thought of external federation.
The sovereign State which fights for its cmn hmnd
in the outer world is char^ with the temper
which sets interests and bodies within itself fight-
ing ' ' their own hands. The struggles of capital
? u' ' our, and such deplorable and unhappy
t cs as the education controvert in En^Md,
b' ■ J naturally to a sovereign State. Its con-
stituents regard each other as the State regards
other States — predatory enemies in posse if not in
esse. But a federal State in which the intrin^
life of groups is respected, in which the office of
the State is the harmonious adjustment of the
external relations of the groups, in which a rivalry
of service is superseding the fight for rights, will
soon evolve a corresponding eth<a far its rclatio«§
to other States outsi<te itself. The coming of the
federal State will be the greatest step conceiv^
m the direction of a world commonwealth.

2^ariah's vision of Jerusalem as a city with-
out Wis* is a parable for poUticMttis. The yom^

• Ztdiariali iU 1-5.

ij8 THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

man who was measuring Jerusalem, surveying it
for the building of the walls, is symbolical of the
tendency to ddine, to limit, to enclose, and to
exclude. The angel bade him desist, on the
ground that the Jerusalem to be would be in-
habited as a city without walls, a city so charged
with life within that no walls would be able to
contain it, a city so charted with friendship that no
walls would be required to protect it. Jerusalem
was to be unenclosed and unconfined, open and
unencumbered, accessible to all who would enter,
open to every traffic and influence of good. The
vision was virtually a protest against the old tradi-
tional exclusiveness and isr 'ation. It was a fore-
telling of a new State with a policy of inner free-
dom and unencumbered intercourse with the rest
of the world. The old barriers and barricades dis-
appear; there is to be something even better than
a polity of open doors — there will be no door, or,
rather, it will be all door. The city would live by
free intercourse, free interchange of ideas and
things, free trade, giving as much as it receives.

One wonders how long it will take men to see
that free trade is not merely a kind of fiscal policy,
but a principle of life. Protection as a remedy for
a declining industry is so plausible, so obvious,
that the natural mind leaps to it readily and with-
out argument. Tlw case for free trade cannot
be fully stated in this rough and ready way, for its
strength lies, not in its efficacy as a remedy for

THE CHRISTIAN STATE «M

economic distress or as a specific for economic
prosperity, but in its character as a symbol ot a
Lat and ultimate spiritual fact. The absence of a
Stfiff barrier may bear hard upon this industry or
that; but the presence of a tariff wall is a strangle-
hold upon all industry. For it is symptomatic <rf
a Dolicv of segregation and exclusiveness whicli
mist zt last prove deadly to all life. Protection
flourishes only on the short viev It may mean a
great immediate increase of wealth; but it does m
the long run make for a very real impovcnshmcnt
of life. To build tariff walls is to acnficc life to
things. For the free interchange of commodities
means the free interchange of much more-ot
knowledge and thought, of art and culture. 1 He
door that is shut on foreign trade shuts at the same
time on a score of other things. To no nation
alone is given the full complement of life's good;
and it is only as each nation pours out its own
peculiar share of that good into the common stock
that it receives its tuU mea^-ure of the many-
coloured wisdom of God and achieves its own
destiny. To this view of things the stupid com-
placencies of war time blind us, and shortsighted
politicians are busily planning a policy of partition -
walls after the war and introducing an enfeebling
and poisonous falsehood into the natic.al outlook.
The city of God is a city without walls, and it :s
the eternal type for all the cities of men. The
Samaritans were once a considerable and powerful
community; to-day they are a mere handful ot

■40

THB CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

physically degenerate and intellectually contempt-
ible people. They remain to all time the ckssk
instance of the tragedy of isolation, of buikiing
walls and keeping within them.

From the federal State, therefore, we may look
not only for the welfare of the world but for the
real enrichment of the nation. It is no part of our
present purpose to attempt to forecast the political
machinery of such a State. Our interest in it is
that it is the only kind of State in which religion
can be truly free, and which can be regarded as
Christian in its temper and its ethos. The
sovereign State involves the denial of a Christian
moral order, both within and without, and,
whether in conflict or in alliance with it, the
Church has suffered grave injury from it. But
whatever the political machinery of such a State
may turn out to be, the Church should have
no formal relation to it sa t that of assent.
For it is in the very nature of things that
the State will be chiefly concerned for the exterior
and temporal aspects of the affairs of the com-
monwealth; and of the State the Church will
require no more than elbow-room. It should hold
so lightly to its temporalities that its concern with
the temporal affairs of the commonwealth would
be infinitesimal; and, so long as ft sedulously
eschewed the old illusion of power, it would
preserve a relation of so great a mutiud goodwill

THB CHRISTIAN STATE «4»

with the rest of the commonwealth, that »ts J""
poralities would ncvar be in danger or be meddled
with. And even if the State encroached upon its
liberty (which it could only do by seizing some of
its temporal possessions o' by persecution), then
it is its part to submit quietly, in the confidence
that no external coercion can affect its inner life
or destroy it, and that it will win by the patient
ways of endurance rather than by imitating the
aggressor. The salvation and the security of the
Church is the remembrance of its Master's word,
and its acceptance of it as regulative for itself : " I
am among you as he that serveth." " The Son of
Man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister"; and His bride must follow in His
train. Its ideal is not that of the great and impres-
sive corporation, but that of a lowly handmaiden,
grateful for the opportunity to serve. When Dr.
Forsyth says that the relation between Church and
State is that of « the courtesy of moral peers," he
was not only forgetting the history of the State but
also the true quality of the Church. Between the
modern State and the Church of the New Twta-
ment is so great a gulf fixed that even a nodding
acquaintance is inconaivablc.

The passage from the sovereign State to the
federal presupposes a moral revolution. For the
sovereign State as we know it chiefly represents the
organisation of the self-regarding instincts. It is

THB CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

the habit of the moment to hold Germany up as the
"awful example" of the over-developed State
idea; and that unhappy country is the object of
much ocecntioii at the hands or the self-righteous
among its enemies. But these people would do
well to look nearer home; — a right understanding
of the claims of the State in most European
countries might lead io a fairor judgment. The
German State has made no greater claim than M.
Combes has made on behalf of the French State.
The only difference between them is that Germany
spoke of the State with a religious farvour which
M. Combes's secularism nude impossible for him.
And if it be fondly supposed that the British State
is no such leviathan, its war time performances
nevertheless do show that the German doctrine is
latent in the British. In Great Britain, however,
the claims of the State have always been kept in
check by the existence of religious bodies, which
in greater or less measure preserved the tradition
of the historical struggle for religious liberty and
were therefore understood to be ready to oppose
any invasion of personal liberties by the State. It
has been to the detriment of Germany undoubtedly
that it has had no " free churches.** But the salt
may lose its savour, and in England, when it was
found that those bodies were prepared to endorse
the restrictive measures whicn the official mind
supposed to be necessary for the purposes of war,
it todc no long time for the latent Prussianism <^
the British State to assert itself even to the invasion

THB CHRUnAM STATE

141

of those rights of conadencc which before the war

the public opinion of the country had deemed to be
inviolable. The tragedy of the situation was that
these very bodies whose existence was due to the
successful assertion of the rights of conscience had
nothing to say in criticism of this monstrous
performance. A few isolated voices broke the
shameful silence; but the Free Churches, as a
whole, wrote off their title to existence. M Out
goes to point out how profound and racUcal ft
revolution of moral perception is necessary to
deliver us from our still pagan politics. The
Church no less than the State needs an evangelical
conversion.

And this can only come by the Church's re-
discovery of its own metier. Its business is
the creation of moral personality, the type and
exemplar of which is her histoncaJ Lord. For this
task she is equipped with Word and Sacrament and
this will be her supreme contribution to the State
and to mankind. There can be no new State apart
from the new nature. By the miracle of conversion
only will the ethic of self-regard be superseded by
the ethic of self-surrender, the policy of competi-
tion by the policy of co-operation. It may be a far
cry to a wholly Christian State; but it is not too
wild a dream that the State should be progressively
Christianised. Mr. Hogg, in Christ's Message of
the Kingdomy draws a valid distinction between
those who are " the salt of the earth " and those

THE CHURCH IN THE COMMONWEALTH

who are " salted," that is, between those who have
entered upon the reality of a Christian experience
and those whose lives have been inHuenced in t
Christian way by the pressure of a Christian
environment. The primary task of the Church is
the manufacture of " salt," the creation of the
characteristic moral personality which will by
the process of personal contacts at last induce a
Christian direction in the collective will. Ti-is
involves the abandonment of all those futile h' js
of christianising the State by " resolutions i ^n
public questions," and all the political *' methods
of mass action which the modem Church has
adopted without reference to their appropriateness
to its own genius. It may appear to be the longest
way round; it is nevertheless the only way there.

The contribution which the Church will make
to the State \ ill from the nature of the case be
indirect. It is no part of its business to evolve
policies andjprogrammes for the commonwealth or
to |»royide formal solutions ior its {»^blems, still
less to impose its own will upon it. Its gift to the
commonwealth is the creation and the multiplica-
tion of a type of character which, by being true to
itself in everything, will give an increasing
Christian bias to the collective will. It has been
ixt too commonly assumed that the " laws " which
seem to operate in the realm of economics and
politics are fixed, immutable conditions, to which
we have to submit with the best po^ble grace,
divine institutes from which ihtatt can be no

THE CHRISTIAN 8TAT1

appeal. But these " laws " are simply statements
of the ways in which men habitually act; and if
men»8 habits were changed, then we should soon
have to formulate a new set of ** laws." It is to
this business of changing men's habits that the
Church should give itself. It looks upon a world
/ hich, left to itself, has again and again plunged
into fer-flung tragedy. It sees man's social destinv
in time frustrated by the strength of his self-
regarding instincts. Over against this welter it
proclaims a Kingdom of God, seat of which is
m the human spirit. It oppose^ the will to serve
to the will to sucoeed, the will to love to the will
to power. It has power to effect in men that moral
revolution which dethrones what St. Paul called
"the law in his members," and vests the
sovereignty in " the law of the mind." It endowt
men wfth a spiritual point of view and a spiritual
scale of values. The New Testament antithesis of
" flesh " and " spirit " summarises the eternal op-
position of the self-regarding and the self-renounc-
ing instincts, the temper and ethic of the superman
and those of the Son of Man. It is the mission of
the Church to carry men over this gulf and to open
to them the Kingdom of God. Its contributionto
die commonw«Jth is not a point of view or a creed
or a doctrine, but a character which will bear its
own appointed fruit of service and social good
within the commonwealth and affect its policies
conformably with the rigfateousiien of the King-
6om oi Goo.

But this has a corollary. This type of charactsr
must express itself in a corresponding 7Pf«
social existence within the Church. Just, iiKked,

as the Church stands for an ideal of character, so it
should be in itself an experiment in ideal social
life. It was the sense of some such obligation that
lea to the communistic experiment ci the Apostolic
Church, and later to the bounty which the Apos-
tolic Churches sent to their distressed brethren in
Jud«a. Uhlhorn has shown the persistency of tins
feeling through the early history at Christiadty.
It was perhaps inevitable that there should be an
attempt to give an economic embodiment to this
new sense of solidarity; it was, however, fore-
doomed to failure. Economic insulation is an
unworkable programme at any time, and every
to create economic oasM in the desert of
our social confusion seems soon or late to come
to grief. But what underlay the apostolic
experiment, the new spirit of soct^ solidarity,
was a priceless permanent possession and a new
thing in the world. The possihil • "s of socia
life were raised *o a new plane, and thert
was a community of men and wmmn who had
learnt how to give themselves to each other in a
love and service ^Ahich had no reserve, > nich
the withholding of anything wr a d- ly dit
loyalty. It was the coming of a i w qua ty id
intensity of social demai^ upon the uidivWuai
the demand in itt spiritual aspects wss w^ -v

HE CHRISTIAN ' ^ATF

•47

greater and more exa ing than uic pa* icular
cconoi ic oWigauon whu h sec \cd to be cb aikd
by it. HttB cruelty in the worid," saki ue
hm joi» FiriK, ' * »risfr:> out of stupid incapacity
to "ut ourselves in the places of other people," and
the habit of our generation has intensified our
of oac aiiother and our imaginative in-
M\W to wiM^ Ac need <^ fdlows We
have done our durity by iwoxy ; our human servir
it vicarious. V e 'ack th love and the couraec i ->
oMnc down to trie pcrsvim usiness of brothcrhoo-.
cwsclves. B«t tlie Churc ^lould show the world
aootlwr order of mutual personal relationshi^^
fellowsht^ n wh. h the joy and the sorrow of
arc liic coi smon property of all, in whlc^ the s
a iecp spirit al cummBniam which can be tn? ted
to work o«t JES own eccmomic consequences diae
time. What " c world is needing is a ne con-
ception and \ a tice of fellowship — a realisation
that the solution of our public and social problenw
is bound up with a revision ci persoad r< noo-
ahips. We are shocked into a momer em-
pathy with the collier when the fire damp xplodes
in a mine and a multitude of homes are shattered;
we raise public funds to alleviate the consequrat
sufferings; and then our Qffw kindled sympathy
falls asleep until it is reawakened by another
catastrophe. In the interval the oier. whom we
have hailed as heroes and martyr'^ make a ^emmad
for a higher wage, and we say dark A stormy
things about the rap*^ el ^ w«»ki>aaa. Thw

I4S THB CHURCH IN THB COMMOWWKALTH

will not do. What we need is that mutual know-
ledge which will steady our judgments of each
other, and that can only come through a franker
and more catholic fellowship than we have ever yet
learned. The Church should set the example and
be the active focus of such a fellowship, the nucleus
of that regenerate human society which is the
Kingdom of God.

But the ultimate seat of this Kingdom is within
us; and when the Kingdom of God is established
in the souls of men, they will shape for themselves
a State which shall be an organ of the Kingdom
as no State in this world has ever yet been. It will
be a State in which the spirit of Christ shall express
itself in moral action without let or hindrance; a
State which will shape its own life in righteousness
and look over its frontiers not in suspicion and fear,
but with imperturbable goodwill, and will carry on
its affairs in the unassailable security of that spirit
which takes away the occasion of wars. But to
reach this goal— and let us not imagine that it is
not yet far away — ^we must, as it were, turn again
to the beginning of things, reproduce wheresoever
the opportunity offers something of the primitive
Christian fellowship, and in such fellowship actmire
an abundance and an energy of spiritual life which
shall set up a contagion of renewal here and

there ^until throughout the land the dead bones

live and a new nation be born. We shall need
patience and courage— all the way; and we must be

THE CHWSTIAM STATE

prepared for disappointments and reverses. Bat
in our hearts wc shaU cherish and be fortified by
the knowledge that wc arc leading no forlorn hope.
" For the greater part of the seeming prosperity ol
the world » suys John Ruskin, « is, so far as our
present knowledge extends, vam; wholly useless
for any kind of good, but haying assi^cd to it a
certain inevitable sequence of destruction and ot
sorrow. Its stress is only the stress of wandering
storm; its beauty, the hectic of plague; and what is
caUed the history of mankind is too often the
record of the whirlwind and the map of the
spreading of the leprosy. But underneath sdl that,
or in narrow places of dominion in the midst ot it,
the work of every man, 'qui non acccpit tn
vanitatem animam suam,» endures and prospers,
a small remnant or green bud of it prevailing at
last over evil. And though faint with sickness,
and encumbered in ruin, the ' ue woricers redeem
inch by inch the wUdemess into garden ground;
by the help of their joined hands the order of all
things is surely sustained and vitaUy expanded, and
although with strange vacillation, in the eyes of tite
watcher, the morning cometh, and also the mgh^
there is no hour of human existence that does not
draw on towards the perfect day."

INDEX

PAGE

Acton, Lord (ruoted) i7,»o,43,7jf
America, U. S. of. Church and

State in - - - - Sgflf
Apoidtt' Crttd - - - ?•
Apottolicat Comtitutiont - 24
Aquinat - - 4} footnote, 49
Archbithopt' Committee on

Church and State - - 1
Report (quoted) - -53>$4
AitocUtiant, Law of (France) - 86f
Auguttine - - - - 129
Auttria, Church and State in- 86
AatoaoBjr of laify Gkriftian

Sodetiet- ... 24iF

BabjflomtA Capttiitf - - $0
Barker, Erneat (quoted) - ijzf
Belgium, Church and State in 88
Battwinin 79
Bcatoa, Arckbithop (quoted) - $7,67
P«Moa (quoted)- - - 106
Biihapt, early Appoi n tm« at «t 14!

Bow&cc VIII. - 4*

BowMt - 79

Bradford (quoted) - - its

Browne, Robert 71

Browniam, Growth of - - 72

Bryce, Lord (quoted) - - t^i

Built, Unam Sanetam - 41

„ Unigmitut - - - 8l

Calvin, John ... jof

Cartwright, Thomat - - 69
Church, The, in the New

Testament - - - 2ifF

Church Rates - - - 77

Cole, G. D. H. (quoted) - 4, 8

Coleridge, S. T. - - - 16

Combes, Emile (quoted) - 86f

Conntcticui Law {it 1%) - 90

Conscientious Objectors - $

Constantia* the Creat - - i8f

C»m*nmtki* Att (1M4) - 76

PAGE

Creighten, Bishop
(quoted) - 43, 61, 62^ 6sf, 94

Curtis, "Creeds and Con-
fessions". • -32 footnote

Dante .... 41
Purgatorio (quoted) - 42
Deceased ffife't Sister Act - i, 92
Declaration of Indulgence - 76
Dicey, A. V. (quoted) - - 4
Didacke - - - - 24

Disruption (Scottish, 1843) - 85
Deoatisto - - - 21, 44, 96

Education Acts, The Balfour- 1«3

Elizabeth 54

Emperon »n4 dM QMiKii • ]!
Empire, A'^man, Barlf

Christist!] fjid- . 17

Empresses, iaiiMace tt - 39

Erastus - - - • fS'
Evolution hTpoAens *ui

preaching ... tiyf

Federalistic State, The - • IJjf
Figgis, Dr. J. N. (quoted) 39, 41, 100
Fiske, John (quoted) - - 14 '
Five Mile Act - - - 7S
Fonyth, Dr. P. T. (quoted) - 14,58
France, Church and State in 78fF,86flr
Franciscan Movement, the - 96
Free Churches - - a, 100
Free Church Council • - 1 le

Calliciau LH*rtk$t Tb* - - jtf
German7,ChaRltaa4Sutcin 83f,86
(Herka^ O. (yiotad) -

Habeas Corpus Act - - 76

Henry Vm. - - - 53

Hodgkin, H. T. (quoted) - 115

Hogi, A. G. (quoted) - - 143

Hofy Roflua Bnvirt^ Titt -39^43

Ignttiut - - "

lame*, William ((luoted)
Jumiilwn -

Knox, John - - -
KmlmrUmpf - - "

Lambert, FranSoi*
«*l«jMreligion" -
luOmft Dr. T. M. (quoted) -
Louis XIV<- - -
LowdU Jatnet Runell (quoted)
Luther, Martin -

49
ti

5'
84

49
122

3«

79f

tmk - - "

Rcttoratioa.

Maitland, F. W. (suotcd) - 8
Manche»ter,Bi»hop of (quoted) 93
Mariilius of Padua - -4».49

Mant Movement
Milan, Edict of -
Milton, John

Mitchell, P. Chalmer»(quoted)
Monasticitm

Montanitm • -A

Myw^r.W.H. (quoted) .

Kcvoto^ffrcAch
Rraiaa See, aKCMUncy of
RottMew •

121
20

7 if
57
44
4.96

iiS

MCI

7»
7S
■ 16
Sz

Samaritans -

Schaff, P. (quoted) - Ji,
Scottith Churches' Csse
Scottith Reformation -
Scriptural Teaching on the Sute
Separation of 15^6
SoTCfC^ty, Mediaeval ideas of

^ Austinian -
Sute, the, in the Apocalypse-
^ ^ and moral progress
_ - _ the Christian
" Ethic
SUte Socialism -

NrtioBalitjr. -57^
NMimut Church in Scotland- 51
^ » i" England. 5»ff

New- John Henry
(c • . .19^29^33

• «4

. 128

"39f
34i 35
I

I2f

59
106

i»4

"4f

5'
■ 2
68

50
102

1 1

12
129
S4

Old Ik n! l.ct
Oman, j jhn (quoted)
Owen, Robert
Paul, St, and the State
Pearson, C. H. (quoted)
Pennsylvania

Philippi . . - -
Praemunire, Statutes of
PreabyterianChurchofEngland
Picfcrtf, Bcdctiaiticd. a,

IUmM]r,8irW.M.(quoted) 14,1 8, 1 2 s
RtfermatiM - 49^

^ iala^aad • S^K

Taf Vale judgment - 3
T*s» ^ff (1672) repealed - 76
Thompson, Francis (quoted) Sl,ia6
Toleration under Common-
wealth - - - - 75
ToUration Act {l6»g) - - 77
Tolcrttion of Roman Catholics 78
„ of Jews - - 78
Trade Unions - - • 3
Tyrrell, George (quoted) . 27

Uhlhora (quoted).
Vnam Smciimi

Uniformity, Act «/(i 5 59)
n n («662)

Utt^num -

. 146

• 4«

- 54

- 74f
. It

Wales, Disestablishment in . i
Wesley, John ... 96
William of Ockham -4*149
WiUiam IIL and Mary. . 77
IfntliMM, Roger ... 90

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