Establishment and church reform : a paper read at a meeting of the Society of the Holy Spirit on January 22, 1901

LI B RARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

OF ILLINOIS

ESTABLISHMENT AND

CHURCH REFORM.

— '♦-

A PAPER

READ AT A MEETING OP THE

J&ociefg of ityt I)ofg eM*if

ON

JANUARY 22, 1901,

BY

GEORGE JOHN TALBOT, M.A.,

Chancellor of the Dioceses of Lincoln and Ely.

LONDON :

PRINTED BY EYRE AND SPOTTISWOODE

HIS MAJESTY'S PRINTERS,

EAST HARDING STREET, E.C.

ESTABLISHMENT AND CHURCH REFORM.

I have prepared a short paper on a large subject. It may serve as
suggesting some heads for reflexion, and does not pretend to do more.

I confess to some prejudice or predisposition against disestablish-
ment. In the first place, it practically involves disendowment. The
Church may of course be despoiled, but I cannot think it right for a
particular generation of her members voluntarily to abandon property
with which she has been entrusted for the purposes of her work. Then,
again, when I attempt to forecast the probable eftect of disestablish-
ment on what may be called Church politics, I see no likelihood that
it would include any advantage to that party which attaches particular
importance to the position of the Church of England as a part of the
Church Catholic.

The great mass of Churchmen would, I believe, in a "disestablished
Church, resist any proposal to alter the Prayer Book or Articles, being
convinced that in such resistance would lie the only chance of escaping
disruption. The unaltered Prayer Book and other formularies would
have to be construed, in case of dispute, either by a new court con-
stituted by the disestablishing Act of Parliament or by the governing
body of the disestablished Church, or by the ordinary Law Courts.
1 see no reason whatever for thinking that such tribunals would be
more favourable to what is called the Catholic position than those
which we have.

These considerations, though not decisive of the question before
us, are, I think, important in their bearing upon it. Let us go on to
ask how far establishment prevents desirable Church reform. Two
preliminary caulions are needful. We must not say that establishment
prevents us from doing a thing unless we can be sure that we should
be able to do it if the Church were disestablished. Again, we must
bear in mind that if, and so far as, establishment hinders desirable
alterations, it probably also hinders undesirable ones. At various times
in the past history of the Church facility of alteration in Church matters
would probably have produced changes which we should think ruinous.

The phrases "the establishment of the Church," "the established
Church," are rather a popular summary of the result of our history
upon the position of the Church in this country than the accurate

expression of any legal or constitutional conception. Their history is
curious. They have their origin in the phrase " or by law established,"
which first appears in connexion with the Church in the latter part
of the seventeenth century. We commonly assume that in this
expression the word " established " is used in the sense adopted by
the modern phrase " established Church " ; and that " the Church as
by law established " means the • Church which is constituted by law
an established Church. But in truth the emphasis is not on "estab-
lished " but on " law." The meaning is " the Church in the condition
and order settled by law," law including not only the canons and
binding customs of the Church, but also Acts of Parliament accepted
expressly or impliedly by the Church. The phrase, in fact, means pretty
much "the Church as at present constituted." So, in what is perhaps
the earliest use of it, Charles II., in his Declaration on Ecclesiastical
Affairs in 1660, speaks of "the esteem we have for the Church of
England as it is established by law."

The word as used in our own day is certainly a somewhat unfortunate
one, in that it implies a definite status given by definite enactment and not
the complex result of a long series of events. But though the word is
unhappy, there is of course a meaning behind it, which may perhaps be
approximately expressed by describing an established Church as one
which is recognised by the law of the State as the representative of
religion in the realm, and as having therefore rights and a position other
than those which any body may derive from the consent of its members.
Apart from the dignity of the Church's position in the Kingdom, the chief
practical incidents of establishment in England appears to be (1) The
prerogative of the Crown in the appointment of Bishops. (2) The presence
of spiritual peers in Parliament. (3) The parochial system. (4) The
recognition by the State of Church law and Church Courts not created
by Parliament either in fact or in theory. It ought to be added that it
would be evidently contrary to historical fact to infer that because the
relation of Church and State can be stated in the form of a deliberate
compact, any such compact in truth exists. The analogy of the
philosopher's fiction of the social contract is obvious.

The Church came to England as part of a great society already
existing, with known customs and structure which were extended without
vital modification to every place which she occupied in her advance to
conquer the world. The relation of Church and State is the result of the
attitude to this Divine Society of the men among whom it has been
planted, and of those who have governed them.

At one time so great a proportion of the people are unquestioning and
hearty believers in the authority of the Church and in the supreme

importance of things spiritual, and on the other hand the Church has
so strongly national a character, that the arrangements of the Kingdom
in all their parts have a religious object and colour. A distinction is
scarcely drawn between Church and State, or between the position of a
man as Churchman and as citizen. The infirmity of men would always
make such a state of things precarious, and in England its disappearance
was hastened by the increasing centralisation of the Western Church.
The claim of Rome passed from one of primacy to one of Sovereignty.
Rome was often more secular than spiritual, with political objects and
under political control ; and in proportion as the local Church realised its
connexion with, and subordination to Rome, so it realised its distinctness
from the State in which it was. King and people naturally were not
disposed to leave to a body greatly under foreign influence whose law and
system were largely moulded by foreign hands, which moreover felt and
emphasised its position as something apart from the State, that undefined
and unlimited influence which it had naturally exercised while it was
merely the nation considered as Christian, paying hardly more than a
vague deference to the foreign Churches with which it was in communion.
They were obliged to define and limit its authority and its privileges ; the
boundaries of secular and ecclesiastical law had to be determined ; the
results varied from time to time with the relative power and zeal of
the disputing parties, but the separation of the conceptions of Church and
State became palpable and was recognised in formal law. On the other
hand the position of the Church as the representative of Christianity, the
Church of Christ, in the realm was unchallenged. No one dreamed of
disputing it, or of doubting that it was the business of the King to lend
his aid to the Church in enforcing her discipline in matters which were
properly subject to it.

Then came the Reformation. It is impossible, of course, to describe
adequately that complicated series of events in few words, but one thing
seems certain : there was no intention to alter fundamentally the relation
of the English Church to the English State. The change designed was
the emancipation of the English Church from usurped foreign control.
The emancipation did, however, undoubtedly involve important practical,
though not formal changes, in the mutual relation of Church and State.
To begin with, the Church was practically much weakened. The habit
of deference to ecclesiastical authority was shaken ; the support of the
rest of the Holy Catholic Church was gone ; some of the stoutest
champions of Church rights remained behind when the Church rejected
the dominion of Rome ; the nation, once at least outwardly united in
the faith, split into many sects. A Church so weakened was naturally
much less able than formerly to resist encroachment by the Crown and

Parliament. That encroachments were made is much less surprising
than that they were, comparatively speaking, so few.

But though actual and deliberate encroachment has not been extensive,
the conception of the Church as a Divine Society, with rights which
being altogether apart from those given or allowed by the State, are not
defeasible by it, was so impaired that, when the Tractarians asserted it,
it came as a surprise even to many who were very familiar with the
formularies in which it is both implied and declared. The Church, cut
off practically from the rest of Christendom, had come to be identified
in popular conception with the nation beyond which it scarcely extended.
The effect of the practical isolation of a National Church in increasing
the intimacy of the connexion between Church and State may, I believe,
be illustrated by the case of the Russian Church and its relation to the
Emperor.

In England the form of English legislation has helped the process.
The absolute legal power of an Act of Parliament, assented to by King,
Lords and Commons, to accomplish its object, whatever it be, is a
fundamental doctrine of English lawyers, and neither before nor after
the Reformation has it been customary for Acts of Parliament on
ecclesiastical matters to recite the approval of Convocation, whether in
fact obtained or not. And, indeed, though the fair result of a survey of
Church legislation down to the end of the seventeenth century is that it
was regarded as right a ad normal that Convocation should be consulted
upon it, it would be quite impossible to show, either before or after the
Reformation, that this general principle had in no case been infringed.
Accordingly, in the dark days when the sittings of Convocation were
altogether suspended, there was no change in the outward form of
legislation affecting the Church, and no pretence for any legal argument
that Parliament had encroached upon her province. And so most men
assumed that Parliament was the regular and sufficient legislature for
Church as well as State, and forgot that there was anything whatever
to be said against such an arrangement. It should be observed in
passing that the power of Parliament to legislate for an unestablished
Church is exactly the same, neither more nor less, as that which it has
for an established Church.

I venture to think that the common conception of the disadvantages
of establishment is to some extent due to a disregard of history. It is
assumed that Church and State came to an understanding by which,
in consideration of certain privileges granted by the State to the
Church, the Church agreed to submit to certain restrictions at the
hands of the State. It is desired to get rid of the restrictions, and it
is inferred that this can be done by abandoning the privileges of which

they were the price. In point of fact, the restrictions usually complained
of were devised and imposed by the Church, the State merely conceding
to the Church that coercive sanction of force which she could not
herself provide. lake, for instance, the familiar case of the Acts of
Uniformity. It was the Church which drew up a book to be the
manual of her worship, from which no one was to be at liberty without
lawful authority to depart. All that Parliament did was to provide,
at the Church's request, a punishment for anyone who departed from
it. So as to the discipline of the Clergy. It is the Church which
insists that her priests shall be orthodox and blameless, but these
requirements she is unable to enforce without the arm of the State.
All this is perfectly true, and it makes a good deal of difference in our
attitude to these questions if we realise that to represent the Church
as tied hand and foot by the State or by Parliament is at any rate to
imply a very erroneous view of history. But yet it cannot be denied
that the legislation of Parliament on Church matters, though designed
and sought for the assistance and not for the repression of the Church,
has practically had a fettering effect. When a thing takes the form
of an Act of Parliament, whether at the Church's instance or not, it
cannot be altered except by like means. This is not in strictness a
result of establishment, for it is equally true of some u reestablished
bodies which have thought fit to come to Parliament for help in the
regulation of their affairs. But, as a practical matter, if the Church
were to be disestablished and disendowed, Parliament would no doubt
empower some Church body to arrange her constitution and alter her
law, as has been done in other like cases. Whether the title of
a legislature armed with such powers by Parliament would be admitted
by the many persons amongst us who are astute to discover objections
to the validity of supposed ecclesiastical authority may be a question.
Moreover, there is no reason for thinking it impossible that without
disestablishment Parliament might consent to allow to Convocation a
power of provisional legislation. To attain this is an object to which
effort may be well directed and not without hope of success.

In another direction, there is no ground for supposing that if
Churchmen could agree on such more definite organisation of lay
influence in parochial or diocesan matters as is desired by many who
are forward in the movement for "Church Reform," Parliament would
refuse its help. The Clergy Discipline Act, 1892, and the Benefices Act,
1898, are two recent and most important examples of Church Reforms
agreed on by the Church, and consequently obtained from Parliament.

I turn for a moment to the subject of Church Courts. Here again the
great stumbling block of a parliamentary and secular Court for the final

decision of Ecclesiastical Causes is no necessary result of establishment*
Rather it is a violation of the principle of establishment, since it is, as we
maintain, an anomalous and indefensible exception to the recognition by
the State of Church Courts properly so called as independent within their
own jurisdiction. This is, in my opinion, a matter of the most vital
urgency. No body of men, certainly no Church, can long endure the
abeyance of all legal modes of enforcing discipline ; but it is better
nevertheless to stand still than to move in the wrong direction. Here
again we should bear in mind that it is the disagreement among ourselves,
far more than any obstruction or hostility outside, which stops the way.
The same disagreement might produce consequences in the event of
disestablishment which would make us regret our present condition, bad as
that is. No doubt Parliament, if it disestablished the Church, would
see that some tribunal was set up for the settlement of legal disputes,
whose decisions would be enforced on those who should agree to be bound
by them. Can we feel any security that in point either of technical
authority or of practical working the tribunal so constituted would be
satisfactory ? On the other hand, if we were agreed now as to what we
want, Parliament would have great difficulty in refusing it.

My conclusion on the whole matter would be that there is hardly any
development of practical autonomy for the Church which is inconsistent
with, or not obtainable under, establishment ; that though no doubt
disestablishment would in practice facilitate change, that taken by itself
might be a most disastrous result ; that at any rate the gain from
disestablishment is extremely uncertain, while the sacrifice of the national
position with which the Church has been entrusted, as we must believe
for some high purpose, and of the material resources which she
unquestionably needs for her work, is great and clear. By removing
needless causes of offence amongst ourselves, and at the same time
pressing steadily and fearlessly the high claim of the Church against the
thoughtless Erastianism which has unhappily taken so deep a hold on
England, we shall, I believe, in time secure the objects which we desire
without sacrificing (perhaps in vain) that which we have no right to
give up.

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